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By Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad

Let us begin with a provocation, for nothing less will do: if courage had a capital in Pakistan, it would not be in Rawalpindi’s General Headquarters. It would be on the deck of a civilian vessel headed toward Gaza, with five Pakistanis—including former Senator Mushtaq Ahmed Khan—who have dared to place their fragile, mortal bodies in the path of an Israeli war machine notorious for its appetite for blood. These men are not naïve. They know very well the grisly fate of flotillas past, gunned down in cold blood by a state that shoots aid workers with the same ease it drops American-financed bombs on refugee camps. And yet they go. Not with tanks, not with drones, but with sacks of flour and medicine. And somehow, in that terrifying imbalance, their courage outshines every medal ever pinned on a general’s chest.

It is almost comical, if it weren’t so tragic, to compare them to our own brass-buttoned overlords—the Pakistani generals. These titans of self-advertised bravery, these chronic vomiters of “ghairat” (honor) in every press briefing, are so busy polishing their boots on American rugs that they cannot spare even a bullet, even a whisper, for Gaza. Instead, they distribute medals to Washington’s most fanatical Zionists, as though the Holocaust itself were reborn not in Gaza but in Rawalpindi’s banquet halls, where the generals toast with their patrons. They even had the gall to suggest a Nobel Peace Prize for the man affectionately nicknamed “Holocaust Donald.” One wonders whether the generals’ sense of irony has been surgically removed along with their spines.

Meanwhile, five civilians—just five, from a nation of 250 million—are willing to sail into the jaws of death to say, at the very least: “Not in our name.” Their action is both pitifully small and immeasurably great. Small, because they cannot undo a genocide conducted with American weapons and Israeli enthusiasm. Great, because they expose the moral bankruptcy of an entire state apparatus whose sole definition of bravery is bulldozing its own people and arresting students with a fondness for free speech.

Consider the imagery: on one side, civilians boarding rickety ships with humanitarian aid; on the other, generals in perfectly pressed uniforms, trembling at the thought of offending their masters in Washington. On one side, risk without hope of reward; on the other, safety wrapped in cowardice and medals pinned for services to empire. If hypocrisy were an Olympic sport, Pakistan’s top brass would sweep the podium.

And the media? Ah yes, our gallant “free press.” Where is their wall-to-wall coverage of this flotilla, this act of Pakistani defiance? It is nowhere. They whisper about it in the margins, careful not to embarrass the cowards in uniform who might choke on their imported cigars if confronted with actual courage. It is safer, after all, to report on cricket scores and celebrity weddings than to admit that five ordinary Pakistanis have done more for Palestine than the entire defense establishment has done in decades.

This silence is no accident. The generals understand that the real enemy is not Israel, nor America, nor even India—it is embarrassment. To be outshone by civilians with nothing but their faith and a few supplies is intolerable to men who measure honor by the tonnage of their real estate portfolios. Better to suppress the story, to make it invisible, than to risk the public asking uncomfortable questions: “If five men can go, why not fifty thousand? If a senator can risk his life, why not an army?” These are questions that shake thrones, so better not to ask them at all.

The Americans, of course, look on with approval. Their lunatic Zionists in power—those grinning armchair genocidaires who write billion-dollar checks to Israel with the same casualness that they order frappuccinos—are delighted to see Pakistan’s army playing the role of obedient client state. They know that Rawalpindi will never dare to send real material support to Gaza. At most, a few crocodile tears at the UN, followed by a discreet military parade to reassure Washington that nothing serious is brewing. The empire sleeps well knowing that its client generals are too busy saluting to fight.

But the flotilla changes something. It is not the power of arms—Israel can sink those ships in an afternoon, and America will applaud. It is the power of shame. Those five Pakistanis have revealed a chasm between the rhetoric of honor and its practice. They have demonstrated that even in a country suffocated by cowardice at the top, there remain conscientious souls willing to stand where history demands they stand.

Let us not romanticize too much. They are not going to liberate Palestine. They will not stop the genocide. But their act carries symbolic power greater than the sum of their lives. They remind us that history does not always belong to those with the biggest guns, but sometimes to those with the clearest conscience. They remind us that Pakistan’s generals, for all their swagger, have been unmasked as little more than security guards for empire, while the real defenders of dignity are unarmed civilians sailing into danger.

There is, too, an element of humor here—dark humor, to be sure. Imagine the generals watching footage of the flotilla on their plasma screens. Imagine the panic: “How dare these civilians do what we have not done? How dare they embarrass us by acting like men while we polish medals for Zionists?” It is the kind of comedy that borders on tragedy, like watching a lion flee from a mouse.

And so we arrive at the stark contrast: five men with nothing to lose but their lives, against an entire military machine with everything to lose but its conscience. Five men who know they may be sailing to their deaths, and yet find meaning in that sacrifice. Five men whose courage has already eclipsed the cowardice of their so-called guardians of the nation.

This is why their voyage matters. It is not simply about aid to Gaza. It is about reclaiming the very idea of courage from those who have debased it. It is about reminding a nation of 250 million that true honor is not measured in parades or medals or rented alliances, but in the willingness to stand with the oppressed even when the cost is death.

At the end of the day, the flotilla may be destroyed, the volunteers may be killed, and Israel may chalk up another “victory” in its gruesome tally. But the moral ledger will remain open. And on that ledger, the names of five Pakistanis will shine brighter than the entire constellation of stars on the shoulders of our generals.

The generals may have their guns, their medals, their patronage networks, their American visas. But what they do not have—and what they cannot fake—is courage. Five men sailing into the abyss have stripped them bare. And no amount of propaganda, no quantity of medals for Zionists, no thunderous declarations of “strategic depth” can ever clothe that nakedness again.

Let the last word be this: nations are not remembered for their generals. They are remembered for their heroes. And in this moment, Pakistan’s heroes are not in Rawalpindi, not in Islamabad, not in the palatial cantonments that dot the land like parasites. They are on the open sea, carrying bread where others carry bombs, carrying hope where others carry shame. If Pakistan has any future worth the name, it is with them—not with the cowardly brass who confuse surrender for strategy.

And so the flotilla sails, into danger, into history, into the conscience of a nation that has long forgotten what courage looks like. Perhaps now, at last, it will remember.

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Law, Religion, and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID), Islamabad, Pakistan.

6 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kathy Kelly

In his last minutes of freedom before Israeli Defense Forces arrested him, Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, clad in a medic’s white coat, walked alone toward two Israeli tanks. His captors awaited him amid the rubble of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital. An artist swiftly created a dramatic poster showing Dr. Safiya striding through the ruins of the hospital he directed. The artist, David Solnit, recently updated the poster’s caption. It now reads:   Free Dr. Abu Safiya   Eight months in prison Dec. 27, 2024 – August 27, 2025.

Dr. Safia had already endured agonizing losses at the Kamal Adwan hospital. In late October 2024, an Israeli drone attack killed his son, also a doctor. In a November 2024 attack on the hospital, Dr. Safiya was wounded by shrapnel, but continued working, insisting he would not close the hospital. He witnessed his colleagues being humiliated, beaten, and marched off to prison. By December 27, 2024, when Dr. Safia’s ordeal as a prisoner began, most hospitals in Gaza were non-functional.

On August 28, 2025, Dr. Safiya’s lawyer, Ghaid Ghanem Qassem, visited him in the Ofer Prison. She reports he has lost one third of his body weight. While imprisoned in in the Sde Teiman military Detention Center, located in an Israeli military base in the Negev desert, he showed signs of torture. Subjected to beating with electric shocks and batons, he sustained blows which may also cause him to lose his right eye. Yet his message remains intact:  

“I entered in the name of humanity, and I will leave in the name of humanity… We will remain on our land and continue to provide healthcare services to the people, God willing, even from a tent.”

Regimes conducting a genocide have more than one reason to eliminate brave professionals attempting, life by precious life, to undo their inhuman work: doctors not only seek to slow down the dying, but they, like the journalists the Israeli regime so frantically targets, are specially positioned and specially qualified to accurately report on the intensity and nature of Israel’s extermination campaign. Silencing the citizens most capable of reporting on genocidal savagery is a key objective of genocide.

In one of the most egregious efforts to eliminate a key eye witness, Israeli naval forces, on May 9, 2025, killed twelve-year-old Mohammed Saeed al-Bardawil, who, as a passerby alongside his father, had witnessed Israel’s March 23^rd pre-dawn execution of 15 unarmed emergency rescue workers. The murdered paramedics had driven their clearly marked ambulances to a spot where they intended to retrieve victims of an earlier attack. The bullets that killed them were fired over six minutes as Israeli soldiers advanced to shoot directly into the survivors’ heads and torsos, afterwards using earth-moving equipment to bury their corpses and vehicles. On that day, Mohammed and his father were detained and made to lie face down near a burning ambulance. He is listed as a source in a well-documented NYT video on the massacre, dated May 2^nd. Eleven days later, an Israeli gunboat fired on his father’s fishing boat, killing Muhammed in his father’s presence off the coast of Gaza’s southern Rafah governate.

It was less than two weeks ago, on August 25^th, that Israel killed Reuters camera operator Hussam Al Masri and nineteen others, four of them also journalists, in a series of double-tap precision guided aerial attacks on buildings and a stairway of the Al Nasser Hospital. Al Masri was easily targetable as he broadcast a live video feed from a Reuters outpost on a top hospital floor. Describing the second wave of the attack,  Jonathan Cook writes:  “And when Israel struck 10 minutes later with two coordinated missiles, it knew that the main victims would be the emergency workers who went to rescue survivors from the first strike and journalists — al-Masri’s friends — who were nearby and rushed to the scene … Nothing was a “mishap.” It was planned down to the minutest detail.”

Snipers and weaponized drone operators routinely kill Palestinians who courageously continue to don bullet proof press jackets, set up cameras, and report on Israel’s atrocities. Israel refuses entry to foreign journalists and when brave, grieving, impassioned young Palestinians insist on carefully documenting their people’s agony for Western news outlets, Israel carefully targets them using the traceable phone and broadcasting equipment necessary to their work, before posthumously branding them Hamas operatives. Craven Western officials watch from within Israel’s patron states, discounting brown lives on whatever flimsy pretexts white authorities offer them. Almost daily, new faces appear in an assemblage of photos showing hundreds of journalists Israel has killed.

Health care workers and journalists who are still alive do their work amid struggles to prevent their families, their colleagues, their neighbors, and of course themselves, from deaths not just by direct massacre but by militarily imposed starvation and its handmaiden, epidemic disease. Surgeons speak of being too weak to stand throughout an operation. Reporters document their own starvation.

Palestinians long for protection, but even the prospect of UN mandated protective forces carries terrifying possibilities. What if “peacekeepers” assigned to monitor Palestinians collect data the Israelis will use to control them? Weaponized “stabilizing forces,” equipped with U.S. surveillance technology, could be used to target, imprison, assassinate, and starve even more Palestinians.

In the summer of 1942, in Munich, Germany, five students and one professor summoned astonishing courage to defy a genocidal regime to which we, reluctantly, have to look if we want to find a racist cruelty comparable to that currently seizing not just Israel’s leadership but, in poll after poll, strong majorities of its non-native population. The students’ collective, called The White Rose, distributed leaflets denouncing Nazi atrocities. “We will not be silent” was the final line of each leaflet. Hans Scholl, age 24, and his sister, Sophie Scholl, age 21, hand-delivered the leaflets to their university campus in February of 1943. The Gestapo arrested them after a janitor spotted them disseminating the leaflets. Four days later, Hans and Sophie, as well as their colleague Christopher Probst, were executed by guillotine.

With Israel’s nuclear arsenal capable of out-killing the Nazi regime over the course of a few minutes, and in the process inciting humanity’s final war; and with its leadership and populace radicalized through decades of fascist impunity to the point of endorsing not just a genocide but multiple, preemptive military strikes upon most of its neighbors at once, we may well be arriving at the moment when, as a result of our having let Israel assassinate, with impunity, the reporters of its crimes, there will be no-one in the outside world left to receive reports. 

The silence we allow ourselves today may soon be involuntary and absolute. Let us summon up a fraction of Dr. Safia’s, of young Mohammad’s, of Sophie Scholl’s and Hussam al-Masri’s courage and speak while we can.

Kathy Kelly (kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is board president of World BEYOND War.

6 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

The Israeli genocide starting on 27 October, 2023 through mass bombs and missiles dropped on the Gaza Strip is being discribed as hell-on-earth. After 700 days of slaughter in which the enclave was reduced to ruin, debris and mass killings, Gazans speak of the “hell” they are going through between multiple and countless displacements, starvation and waiting in limbo for what is going to happen next. Their lives have been turned upside down and live in limbo of fog.

All the above interviews were conducted by Al Jazeera satellite channel on the 700 days of horrors the Israeli army has subjected the Palestinian civilians of Gaza to.

“700 days and the killings are still going on with the war taking everything from us,” said one man. “The blood of martyrs is still hemorrhaging,” he continued.

“I now envy the people who have died in this slaughter,” said another. “In this past 700 days, journalists were killed, civil defense men gone, hospitals bombed, children murdered and many other things disappeared…”

After 700 days there is nothing left, there is no children left, no food,  no drink, starvation everywhere, life has become extremely difficult. I have started to say to myself I wish I was long dead and have left this sorry place,” said another woman.

What about the handicapped

‘“I have three teenager sons who are handicapped and the process of displacement with them is very difficult…we were forced to move by the Israeli army more than 15 times – I walked them, I sometimes carried them would you believe, there is no transport and walked under bombs and missiles, sometimes they’d fall very near us, the danger of being killed is real,” the father of the three said.

“There is no food, no drink, there is no place to live, the sewerage is bad, we can’t do anything.”

He added on this 700 day of living like this, the Israeli army has just called on us to keep moving. “They want to displace us yet again from the north to the south, what is next we don’t know. 

We don’t have food, we don’t have water, we don’t have tents, we don’t have anything. On the 700 day, the world is just sitting and looking at us while we move from one place to another.

Another 30-year-old who lost her husband and five children and just stares into the void: “Now they are gone I feel life is empty and meaningless. I force myself to work just to forget but its like living in a distant memory and suddenly wake up to this nightmare. 

Another man with five small children moving around him said: “I have a handicapped son – a grown up, as you can see and I have to carry him across my shoulder blades whenever we are ordered to keep moving.

We are at the end of our tethers after 700 days of devastation, we see death in front of our eyes, there is no let up, the kids keep screaming at all hours of the day and night. We don’t know what is going to happen to us and now we are called upon to keep moving.”

The same is true of another lady. Her plight is the same as many others. “We are being displaced from one place to another. After 700 days we are not able to settle down to establish a tent we can live in, being displaced is like losing one’s soul and I don’t know when this will end or how.

We are living in devastation, death, slow death. Today I envy the people who have died and become martyrs.” 

Another man in crutches said: “Our savings have now ended, we are on aid to say alive, my son used to go to Zakim to get some stuff but they shot at him and now sit by me unable to move.

Blood on the streets

“The past 700 days were the deadliest, killings, bombing, starvation, you see blood seething on the streets, laying bodies of martyrs, people with no legs or arms”.

It has been an extremely difficult 700 days for a woman with the responsibility of looking after three children. “How do I cope, how do I make ends meet. My husband went before my eyes, in front of his kids, I saw, my kids saw an incredible sight of their father spluttering on the wall and now that image never leaves me nor them.

In this 700 days you lost a brother, a relative, a friend as you were forced to move from one place to another in between charities, water queues, cutting wood and all the rest of it. I just can’t describe it,” said one young man.

Sullen future

“For me, my future has perished, gone up in flames, I could have been working by now, having just finished university, but I live in a 4 by 6 tent with nothing to look forward, searching for morsels of food and hewing water, carrying buckets of water not just today but everyday, said a young lady.

Nothing is for certain. The people of Gaza, as of yet, have nothing to look forward to but more slaughter. There is a nagging fleeing, frequently made by Israeli ministers, that the aim is to push these people dubbed at around two million to other countries.

But the Gazans, still after two years of slaughter and going to the third, say they are not leaving Gaza except as dead bodies.

Marwan Asmar is the Editor of crossfirearabia.com

6 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Reed

As Israel prepares a massive assault on Gaza City, the Palestinians who remain in the area have been subjected to a new round of destructive air strikes that are wiping out entire residential blocks and sending new waves of panic and desperation throughout the population.

On Friday, Israeli forces struck the Mushtaha Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Gaza City, with at least three projectiles, reducing the 12-story high-rise to rubble. Verified footage and reports from ABC News show the tower collapsing in a cloud of dust, with the shockwaves from the strike shaking tent encampments surrounding it, where hundreds of displaced Palestinians had been sheltering.

According to eyewitnesses, the military issued an evacuation order just 15 minutes before the first strike, leaving many families camped around the building with nowhere to go. The force of the explosion overturned tents and caused panic as people fled. Doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital described being overwhelmed by the number of dead and injured.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said:

The destruction is the systematic erasure of homes, memories, and their community. The city is being leveled and with it their future is torn down one tower at a time.

Hospital personnel reported that it was impossible for the residents and displaced people in the tower and its vicinity to escape in the short time given. The building’s management said the building was filled with civilians.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1963924601710182800]

Israeli projectiles have also struck other residential high-rises, and further attacks are expected as military officials advance the offensive against Gaza City. The measures being taken now by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) can only be described as bloody terror.

Fear and desperation among the population are being deliberately brought to new levels in the barbaric genocide that has been unleashed on Palestinians since October 2023. Israel is wiping out the skyline of the largest city in Gaza in preparation for a massive ground invasion.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1964002174838399463]

Israeli officials have justified these attacks on residential buildings on the grounds that they are used by Hamas for “military operations.” Defense Minister Israel Katz, in statements made on social media and reported by numerous media outlets, declared:

Now the bolt is being removed from the gates of hell in Gaza. When the door opens, it will not close and IDF activity will increase—until the Hamas murderers and rapists accept Israel’s conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all hostages and disarmament—or they will be destroyed.

Katz has issued multiple warnings that Gaza City will meet the same fate as Rafah and Beit Hanoun, which have been essentially turned into rubble by prior offensives. Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir confirmed Friday that IDF activity in Gaza is being “expanded.”

It is undeniable that the Zionist war criminals—with the backing of US and European imperialism—have no intention to end the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza under any circumstances. The fascists Katz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have made it clear that no matter what happens, the aim is to completely seize the Gaza Strip and that there will be nothing left of Palestine.

In the past several days, Israeli airstrikes and fire have killed dozens of civilians in and around the Gaza City, including at least 18 people, seven of them children, in overnight attacks on Friday.

Reports from the Palestinian Health Ministry and hospitals on the ground confirmed that many of the dead were women and children, their bodies recovered from tents and makeshift shelters destroyed in the strikes. Several more were killed in missile attacks on other high-rise buildings and in the sprawling Muwasi zone, where many Palestinians have sought safety.

In just the last two nights alone, over 50 people have been killed across the Gaza Strip. According to an Associated Press report and statements from local health authorities, many of those killed in recent strikes, shootings, and stampedes were attempting to access desperately needed aid at food distribution points or airdropped supplies.

Since May, several hundred Palestinians have died from Israeli gunfire while approaching aid convoys or distribution centers, often after being forced from their homes repeatedly by military operations. The UN and humanitarian agencies have documented how Israel has made the safe delivery of humanitarian aid nearly impossible through blockades and by directly attacking aid-seeking crowds and that this is part of a strategic plan cooked up in the cooperation with the White House of Donald Trump.

The deliberate policy of starvation continues as a weapon in what international human rights groups have characterized as genocide. A global hunger monitor officially declared that famine conditions now exist in northern Gaza, a revelation Israel has denied despite overwhelming evidence.

According to the UN, over 20,000 children have been treated for acute malnutrition. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have denounced the Israeli government for its use of starvation as a weapon of war and for imposing conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinian people.

Amnesty’s recent report stated:

Israel has continued to use starvation of civilians as a weapon of war against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and to deliberately impose conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as part of its ongoing genocide.

The criminality of these measures is multiplied by ongoing restrictions on water, fuel, food and medicine, the destruction of infrastructure, and the refusal to permit adequate humanitarian access to a desperate and exhausted population.

Human Rights Watch condemned the Israeli attacks on residential towers, declaring:

The destruction of civilian infrastructure forced displacement of residents and collective punishment of Gaza’s people constitute war crimes.

Amnesty International issued a statement that said:

Starving civilian populations, razing their homes, and attacking aid distribution points are crimes under international law.

Behind the death and devastation in Gaza stands a detailed “post-war” plan developed in close collaboration between the Israeli government and the Trump administration, with critical roles played by Israeli businessmen, the Boston Consulting Group, the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Fund, and the Tony Blair Institute.

This scheme, as reported by investigative journalists, aims to sweep Gaza clear of its Palestinian population and turn the Strip into a “seaside resort” for Western and Israeli business interests. The plan entails massive new privatization of land and resources, the introduction of special economic zones controlled by foreign investors, and the permanent exclusion of the native population, with the blessing and logistical support of the US and Israeli militaries.

While publicly couched as “humanitarian reconstruction,” the real intent is obvious: ethnic cleansing, economic exploitation, and the utter erasure of Palestinian national rights, engineered by figures like the war criminal Tony Blair and implemented at the direction of the financial and corporate elites behind US and Israeli policy.

6 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 19,424 children have been killed in Israeli attacks over 700 days of genocide in Gaza, the equivalent of one child every 52 minutes. Among the victims are 1,000 infants under the age of one. As relentless Israeli bombardment, forced displacement, and starvation continue, warnings grow louder: nowhere in the enclave is safe for children.

“Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres as early as November 6, 2023.

According to the latest death toll update by the Palestinian Health Ministry, children in Gaza account for more than 30 percent of the deaths as Israel’s genocide entered its 700th day on Friday.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that no place is safe for children in the enclave. UN-run schools have become shelters for “hundreds of thousands of people” in Gaza amid constant Israeli bombardments that have levelled homes, UNRWA said.

Citing the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, UNRWA noted that in the past five months of the war, since Israel violated a ceasefire deal and resumed its assault, “an average of over 540 children have been killed every month, per reports”.

Meanwhile, women (10,138) and the elderly (4,695) constitute 23 percent of the overall death toll. Men make up 46.7 percent of casualties (29,975).

UNICEF communications manager Tess Ingram said that the “suffering of children in the Gaza Strip is not accidental”.

“Malnutrition and famine are weakening children’s bodies as displacement strips them of shelter and care, and bombardments threaten their every move,” Ingram said.

134 children and infants have died due to malnutrition and starvation since the war began, as Israel continues to block aid from entering the enclave, including food, medicine, and fuel.

According to the Ministry in mid-July, more than 900 children were killed by Israel before their first birthday.

Many were killed in their beds. Others while playing. Some were buried before they learned to walk.

Palestinian children have been killed at a rate of more than one child per hour during the Israeli assault. “Consider that for a moment. A whole classroom of children was killed, every day for nearly two years,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council.

6 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Zukiswa Wanner and Jared Sacks

We sail to sustain hope. To lose hope is to give up on the people of Gaza and surrender them to an evil regime.

Food. Medication. Shelter. Freedom of movement. Water. Air.

Six basics for the survival of any human being and yet, for the past 23 months, we have watched with horror as apartheid Israel, backed by some of the most powerful governments in the world, has robbed the people of Gaza of these basic necessities for survival.

Together with many in the world, we have marched, spoken up, boycotted – reflecting the sentiments of the global majority. But this has not been enough to pressure world governments to stop Israel’s siege on Gaza and ensure that a genocide, occurring in real time, is put to an end.

While we are unable to deliver all six of the basics listed above, we hope to break the blockade and deliver food, medication and water to a besieged and starving population. This is the mission of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF).

The GSF is the largest citizen-led humanitarian flotilla mission to Gaza ever, combining previous humanitarian missions to Gaza over land, sea and air. It builds on decades of Palestinian resistance and international solidarity. It includes activists, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy and lawyers – all of whom have come together to take direct action to break the siege.

The South African delegation includes 10 people coming from all over the country and from different backgrounds: Christians, Muslims, Jews, agnostics and atheists united in a common goal of bringing aid to Gaza.

Our efforts are closely aligned with the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on January 26, 2024, and its subsequent orders from March 28 and May 24, 2024, as part of the case of South Africa vs Israel. In the provisional ruling, the ICJ specifically required Israel to take all measures within its power to enable the provision of urgently needed humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

Yet, as South Africa has consistently highlighted in its advocacy before the court and in its leadership role as co-chair and founding member of The Hague Group, Israel has to date failed to comply with these orders. The worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza makes it clear that we cannot remain silent in the face of such impunity.

That is why people of conscience started organising grassroots-run flotillas in an attempt to break the illegal Israeli siege on Gaza.

On June 9, Israeli forces intercepted the Madleen vessel carrying humanitarian aid in international waters. A little more than a month later, on July 25, the Israeli occupation forces intercepted the Handala, another ship carrying supplies, about 70 nautical miles (130km) from Gaza, again in international waters.

While we were able to ensure that the activists on board returned home, some endured physical assaults and trauma at the hands of the Israeli military forces, which constitute crimes and need to be investigated. Apartheid Israel prevented the much-needed food and medicines on board from reaching Gaza, continuing its medieval siege, which amounts to a crime against humanity.

With this history of activists’ attempts at breaking the siege of Gaza, there are those who will ask, why do you think that you will succeed where others have failed before?

To this we answer: Our democracy was won by no small measure with solidarity from the conscientious people of the world who boycotted, divested and demanded that apartheid South Africa be sanctioned. In this sense, sailing on the GSF is the right and humane action to take.

We have protested, we have boycotted, we have demanded divestment from our institutions and we have pressured governments to impose sanctions. The GSF mission is part of this continued action.

Although many nations have the capacity to sanction Israel and even authorise military intervention to end the ongoing genocide, they have done almost nothing beyond rhetorical statements. While we commend the South African government for taking apartheid Israel to the ICJ for the crime of genocide, we also take note that South African companies continue to export coal that fuels the genocide. So far, our government has ignored our demands to impose a coal embargo.

We are sailing on the GSF not only to keep up the pressure but also to sustain hope. To lose hope is to give up on the people of Gaza and surrender them to an evil regime. Having a conscience demands that we do not lose hope.

Part of our strength is that the movement for justice and human rights is growing as more and more people recognise that this is not a war but a genocide. This time around, there is not one flotilla but over 50 from more than 40 countries.

This important mission is comprised of hundreds of people of good conscience from all over the world determined to break the siege and help expose Israel’s planned starvation of the Palestinians. We may be a delegation of only 10 from South Africa, but we represent the majority of South Africans. We, therefore, sail with confidence as our people will be watching and wishing us well because ours is a just mission.

We may be a few hundred on the GSF mission, but we are part of a global majority who have been watching the livestreamed genocide carried out by Israel. As South Africans, as citizens who want a better and just world, we travel on the GSF, noting, as Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego wrote in a letter to the flotilla, “Peace is not a utopia, but an obligation.”

Zukiswa Wanner is an award-winning writer and cultural activist. She received the Goethe Medal in 2020 and later returned it in protest against Germany’s support for Israel.

Jared Sacks is an activist and writer based in Cape Town. He has a PhD from Columbia University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Johannesburg.

7 September 2025

Source: aljazeera.com

By Brett Wilkins

Congress was reportedly never informed about the covert attempt by the first Trump administration to plant a listening device in North Korea during high-stakes nuclear negotiations.

US Navy SEALs shot dead a number of civilians during a botched secret mission to plant a listening device inside North Korea during tense nuclear negotiations between the first Trump administration and the government of Kim Jong Un in 2019, The New York Times reported Friday.

Dave Philipps and Matthew Cole reported for the Times that President Donald Trump personally approved the covert operation, which was tasked to SEAL Team 6’s Red Squadron, the same unit that assassinated Osama bin Laden. Although the elite sailors rehearsed the nighttime mission for months, things fell apart when a small fishing boat appeared out of the dark in what the SEALs thought was a deserted area.

“Flashlights from the bow swept over the water. Fearing that they had been spotted, the SEALs opened fire,” wrote Philipps and Cole. “Within seconds, everyone on the North Korean boat was dead. The SEALs retreated into the sea without planting the listening device.”

Officials familiar with the mission told the Times that the SEALs then pulled two or three bodies from the boat, punctured the victims’ lungs with knives so their bodies would sink, and threw the dead fishers into the sea.

According to the Times:

The 2019 operation has never been publicly acknowledged, or even hinted at, by the United States or North Korea. The details remain classified and are being reported here for the first time. The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law…

The aborted SEAL mission prompted a series of military reviews during Mr. Trump’s first term. They found that the killing of civilians was justified under the rules of engagement, and that the mission was undone by a collision of unfortunate occurrences that could not have been foreseen or avoided. The findings were classified.

It is not known whether or how much North Korea’s government knew about the mission. While Trump’s erstwhile untried tactic of direct negotiations with Kim averted escalation of the 2018-19 standoff, the high-profile summits between the two leaders yielded no substantial progress toward denuclearization or a peace treaty.

The US and North Korea are technically still at war. Between 1950-53 US forces killed an estimated 20% of all North Koreans—around 1.9 million men, women, and children—according to Gen. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, who served as strategic air commander during the war after overseeing World War II firebombing raids on Japanese cities that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

5 September 2025

Source: commondreams.org

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved,” says Isaac Herzog.

by Jamie White

Image Credit: Askin Kiyagan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Israeli President Isaac Herzog was under fire Thursday for asserting that nobody is innocent in Gaza, including Palestinian civilians, as Israel conducts airstrikes against Hamas.

When questioned during a press conference about the humanitarian impact of the IDF’s relentless airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, Herzog angrily claimed all Palestinians bear some responsibility for the rise of Hamas and its attack on Israel.

“We are working, operating militarily, according to rules of international law, period. Unequivocally,” Herzog stated.

“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.”

Israeli President Says No One in the Gaza Strip, Including Civilians, is Innocent

“They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat. But we’re at war. We are at war. We are at war.”

“They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat. But we’re at war. We are at war. We are at war.”

“We are defending our homes,” he continued. “We’re protecting our homes. That’s the truth. And then, when a nation protects its home, it fights. And we will fight until we break their backbone.”

Channel 4 reporter Matt Frei pressed Herzog on his remarks, “You seem to hold the people of Gaza, the civilians of Gaza, responsible for not removing Hamas and therefore, by implication, that makes them legitimate targets.”

Herzog defended his statements, saying they were mischaracterized and that Israel has the responsibility to ensure another attack by Hamas cannot be repeated.

“No, I didn’t say that. I did not say that — I want to make it clear. I was asked something about separating civilians from Hamas. But with all due respect, with all due respect, if you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself? Yes,” he explained. “That’s the situation. These missiles are there, these missiles are launched, the button is pressed, the missile comes up from the kitchen onto my children.”

[https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1712415516978024466]

[https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1712490591689363573]

Contrary to Herzog’s statement that Israel is operating within the boundaries of international law with its airstrikes against Gaza, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk claimed Israel is violating international law by cutting off electricity and water to Gaza ahead of a “total siege.”

“The imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” the High Commissioner said.

“Any restrictions on the movement of people and goods to implement a siege must be justified by military necessity or may otherwise amount to collective punishment.”

[https://twitter.com/UNHumanRights/status/1711670003303424354]

Israel insisted it has been taking measures to adequately warn Palestinian civilians about impending airstrikes and ordered them to evacuate the northern region of Gaza.

[https://twitter.com/Israel/status/1713201571444507018]

Many Palestinians, however, are refusing to leave their homes.

Watch the full press conference:

Israel President Isaac Herzog Press Conference LIVE | Israel-Hamas Attack News Updates LIVE | N18L

15 October 2023

Source: greeknewsondemand.com

By Peiman Salehi

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) summit in Beijing, marked by both symbolism and substance, underscored the slow erosion of Western financial dominance. While mainstream coverage focused on China’s military parade, the real significance lies in the economic agenda advanced by SCO members. Discussions of a potential SCO Development Bank, expanded use of local currencies, and closer coordination with BRICS initiatives point to a growing determination across Eurasia and the Global South to challenge the monopoly long exercised by the United States and its allies through the IMF, the World Bank, and the dollar system.

For decades, these Western-controlled institutions have functioned as instruments of geopolitical leverage. Structural adjustment programs dismantled social protections, imposed privatization, and locked countries into cycles of debt dependency.

The dollar, presented as a neutral global currency, has been repeatedly weaponized through sanctions, financial exclusion, and manipulation of international payment systems. In this context, the SCO’s economic discussions must be seen for what they are: not technical proposals, but acts of resistance. By seeking alternatives to dollar-based finance and conditional lending, SCO members are asserting that the age of Western financial coercion is no longer uncontested.

China and Russia, the central actors in this process, have both experienced the coercive use of Western financial power.

Sanctions on Russia and tariffs on China have reinforced the urgency of building parallel institutions. For smaller states, particularly in the Global South, the stakes are even higher. Access to credit that is not tied to Washington’s geopolitical priorities could mean the difference between austerity and investment, between dependency and sovereignty. The SCO’s proposals are embryonic, but they point toward a broader trend: the emergence of multipolar finance as a shield against unilateral domination.

Critics in the West have rushed to dismiss these efforts, portraying them as impractical or politically motivated. But such dismissals miss the point. The very fact that alternatives are being openly discussed and partially implemented signals the weakening of Western monopoly. The creation of the BRICS New Development Bank, the use of local currencies in trade between Russia, China, and India, and now the SCO’s initiatives all mark a shift from rhetoric to practice. Each new mechanism reduces the ability of the United States to dictate terms unilaterally.

This does not mean China or Russia will replace Washington as the new hegemons. Rather, it means that unipolarity is ending. The world is moving toward a multipolar order in which no single state can control the flows of finance, trade, and development. For Global South nations, this creates both opportunities and risks. It offers the possibility of diversifying partnerships and rejecting conditionality, but it also requires vigilance to avoid reproducing dependency under new patrons. Multipolarity is not a guarantee of justice, but it is a necessary precondition for breaking the cycle of Western domination.

The SCO summit should therefore be understood as part of a larger civilizational struggle over the architecture of world order. Western hegemony has rested not only on military alliances and cultural influence, but on financial coercion. By weaponizing the dollar, Washington has sought to enforce compliance far beyond its borders. The SCO’s economic agenda represents an attempt to reclaim sovereignty in the face of this coercion, to create breathing space for states that refuse to align with U.S. geopolitical priorities.

What emerges from Beijing is not a fully formed alternative, but a direction of travel. Multipolar institutions are being built step by step, challenging the illusion that Western institutions are eternal or indispensable. For countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this is a call to action. It is an invitation to participate in the shaping of a world where development is not dictated from Washington or Brussels, but negotiated among equals.

The mainstream media will continue to focus on parades and symbols, but the real revolution is occurring in the realm of finance. The SCO summit was a reminder that the West’s monopoly on money and credit is cracking, and that the future of global order will be defined not by a single hegemon but by the collective efforts of states refusing to submit. For those seeking peace, justice, and sovereignty, this is a development to be welcomed, nurtured, and defended.

Peiman Salehi is a Political Analyst & Writer from Tehran, Iran.

6 September 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Rima Najjar

From Caracas to Gaza — The Machinery of Demonization

There is a pattern to how empire speaks. It criminalizes resistance, rewrites history, and recasts domination as defense. Whether the target is a Latin American leader, a Palestinian movement, or an Iranian militia, the language is the same: terrorism, fanaticism, chaos. The goal is not just to justify violence — it’s to make it feel inevitable.

This is the logic behind the Trump administration’s $50 million bounty on Nicolás Maduro. Framed as a crackdown on “narco-terrorism,” it’s a textbook case of regime change propaganda. The bounty is not about justice — it’s about spectacle. It tells the world who the villain is, and it sets the stage for assassination as policy.

But this logic doesn’t stop at Caracas. It echoes across the propaganda Hugo B has been spouting in our exchanges on Medium.

Who Is Hugo B?

Hugo B is a prolific commenter whose posts consistently reproduce the ideological scaffolding of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. Over the course of our exchanges, he has:

• Reduced Palestinian resistance to “jihadist nihilism”
• Blamed Arab states for the Nakba while absolving Zionist militias
• Dismissed refugee status as a weapon to prolong war
• Denied the right of return, the right to resist, and the right to narrate
• Framed Jewish self-determination as sacred while denying Palestinian existence
• Rejected international law when it affirms Palestinian rights

His language is not original — it’s derivative of a broader imperial playbook. And it mirrors the same tactics used to justify U.S. intervention in Venezuela, Iraq, Iran, and Palestine.

Shared Tactics Across Geographies

1. Criminalization of Resistance

Maduro is labeled a narco-terrorist. Hamas is reduced to jihadist fanaticism. Iraqi militias are proxies. The goal is to strip movements of political legitimacy and recast them as threats to global order.

2. Erasure of Context

Hugo B speaks of Palestinian violence without acknowledging siege, displacement, or apartheid. U.S. officials speak of Venezuela’s collapse without referencing sanctions, economic warfare, or CIA-backed destabilization.

3. Moral Inversion

The oppressor claims the moral high ground. The U.S. presents itself as a defender of democracy while backing coups and bombing civilians. Hugo B echoes this inversion by portraying Israeli legislation as democratic while denying Palestinians basic rights.

4. Narrative Control

The bounty on Maduro is a media event. It defines the villain. Hugo B’s rhetoric operates the same way: it’s not about debate — it’s about defining who gets to be human and who gets to be erased.

The Broader Pattern

From South America to the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy follows a formula:

1. Identify resistance as extremism
2. Deploy economic, military, or legal force
3. Control the narrative through media and proxies
4. Justify intervention as humanitarian or defensive

This isn’t diplomacy. It’s imperial management.

And Hugo B, whether knowingly or not, is reproducing that logic in miniature — using the language of supremacy, erasure, and moral panic to delegitimize Palestinian life and resistance.

Toward a Just Peace

If peace is ever to be real — whether in Venezuela, Palestine, Iraq, or Iran — it must begin by dismantling the propaganda that criminalizes resistance and sanctifies domination. It must reject the logic that says sovereignty is only legitimate when it aligns with U.S. interests, and that survival is only moral when it belongs to the powerful.

A just peace means:

• Ending siege and occupation, not managing them
• Recognizing the right to resist, not pathologizing it
• Restoring the right of return, not erasing it
• Upholding international law, not selectively applying it
• Centering the voices of the oppressed, not speaking over them

It means confronting the legacy of U.S. interventionism — from coups in Latin America to invasions in the Middle East — and refusing to replicate its logic in our discourse, our media, or our diplomacy.

It means seeing Palestinians not as proxies, but as people. Venezuelans not as narco-states, but as a nation under siege. Iraqis and Iranians not as threats, but as communities with histories, futures, and the right to self-determination.

Peace will not come from bounties, bombs, or rhetorical erasure. It will come from truth, accountability, and the radical act of listening to those we’ve been taught to fear.

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.

7 September 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca