Just International

Iran thwarts the biggest attack from Mossad agents

By Haider Abbas

A few days back, after Israel-Iran so called ceasefire on June 25, news came that Iran has captured 700 Mossad operatives working for Israel inside Iran. Israel had killed Iran’s top military brass right on the onset of Israel-Iran war on June 13. Mossad is Israel intelligence agency.  Iran has been wrecked due to this internal sabotage which of course has resulted in the killing of its own President Ibrahim Raisi, fingers are being pointed towards Azerbaijan, Hamas chief Ismail Hannieh, Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrullah and numerous nuclear scientists like Mohsin Fakrizade etc.  Now Iran is into hot pursuit of the internal moles and on July 2, Iran has been able to apprehend what was ostensibly going to be the biggest inside attack on Iran.

It has been reported by Xinhua 1 on July 2, that over 50 with alleged ties to Israel have been caught and two killed as well in Iran’s South Easter province of Sistan and Baluchistan, as informed by Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). What was their agenda? Particularly, when Israel defence minister Katz has gone on record to state that soon Israel army is to prepare to enter Iran to finish-off its nuclear programme and foment a regime change, by killing Iran’s supreme leader Ayatullah Khamenie.

Israel capabilities to torpedo Iran’s internal security may have this time got into a bumpy ride, as an attack, which had the wherewithal to throw whole Iran ‘out of gear’ has been halted. Iran has caught a huge co-ordinated network which was allegedly involved into planting ammunition devices close to Iran’s nuclear sites, cyber devices for electronic warfare, cripple Iran’s power grids, oil refineries, military communications, jam security systems, install GPS trackers so that drones flown from inside Iran, for such attacks, were to be channelized.

Israel had been attacking inside Iran through drones fitted with SIM cards and routers, which had forced Iran to stop the entire internet inside the country. However, Israeli agents, it is reported, were able to scale firewalls and had provided real-time intelligence to Israel on Iran’s military movement, storage sites, zones etc due to the advanced US military equipment recovered from its agents. These sleeper cells were to execute further killing of Iran’s top military commanders/scientists etc. All this quite understandably was lead to a massive uprising against Khamenie’s regime. If this gameplan was to succeed, which has been thwarted, obviously there was to be a bombardment from Israel and US together on Iran.  Iran has started to force Afghans out, as more than 60% of them, are engaged into this espionage for Israel. They had fake IDs spoke Persian language and evoked very little suspicion. These 50 caught are the kingpins under whom a whole network was underway. A huge number of drones have also been caught.

The big question is why Iran is now into weaning out this network? After a multitude of its high profile personalities have been killed! The reason is that Iran’s popular opinion is unanimously united that it was never see Khamenie killed, and perhaps, across the whole spectrum, inside Iran, this sentiment has led to this unity. Israel was not to stop there as its President Mahmoud Pezishkian is also on the list, in order to install as Raza Pehalvi, son of the last Iranian king, as the new puppet government in Iran. But, as yet, perhaps, Iran has been able to thwart one of the biggest attacks on it.

In fact, so huge is the Mossad network in Iran that Iran had given all the agents a deadline to confess and seek pardon until this operation was started. But, there is no doubt that despite the neutralization of this network, it may be only the tip of an iceberg, as this stench had got too deep. What are the things to unfold? The Israel-Iran full scale war is all the too soon. US has just provided $510 million sale of bomb guidance kits to Israel. Iran, too has warned that this time it would be the final war against Israel.

Who will survive this latest onslaught is what is yet to unfold. Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to meet US President Donald Trump all very soon. There is a stoic silence from all the Arab states and Turkey as well. All are aligned with Israel and Iran. Had bid their adieu to Palestine long back.

The writer is a former UP State Information Commissioner and writes on international issues.

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Israel continues depopulation efforts in Gaza through successive evacuation orders

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – As part of an explicit and deliberate policy that relies on the systematic commission of various crimes, Israel continues to carry out the forced displacement of Gaza Strip residents.

Israel’s methods of forced displacement include widespread bombing, bulldozing, deliberate starvation, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and expulsion through firepower and evacuation orders. These practices have driven residents into an area comprising less than 15 per cent of the enclave, in apparent preparation for mass displacement beyond it.

Most of the Gaza Strip has been rendered devastated and uninhabitable, both now and in the future, which constitutes a continuation of the genocide carried out over the past 21 months.

Between 28 and 30 June, Israeli forces issued three new military orders demanding the evacuation of residents from large areas in the east and south of Gaza City, as well as parts of the northern Gaza Strip. These orders covered a large area of several square kilometres, forcibly displacing tens of thousands of civilians who were left trapped between continuous displacement, starvation, and relentless bombardment, with no safe refuge anywhere.

The latest orders bring the total number of evacuation orders or renewals issued by the Israeli army since 18 March, the date Israel backed out of the temporary ceasefire, to 51. These orders, coupled with expanding military incursions, are unlawful and have placed over 85 per cent of the Gaza Strip under direct military control or forced evacuation. This reflects a systematic erasure of the Palestinian presence and a clear intent to impose permanent demographic change in the area.

Each of these orders has been issued without any military necessity or even the usual pretexts, such as rocket fire from the area. This indicates that Israel no longer seeks to justify its actions to the international community, and that displacement itself has become an open objective—one that is part of a deliberate policy of systematic uprooting and that constitutes a fully-fledged act of genocide.

Evacuation orders issued since last March have led to the renewed displacement of around one million people, most of whom have been forced to seek shelter in overcrowded or destroyed areas, or sleep in the streets and open spaces, amid widespread disease, severe shortages of water and food, and the collapse of basic services.

The Israeli army is conducting large-scale destruction in neighbourhoods it has invaded or ordered evacuated. These operations include airstrikes, bombing with explosive-laden robots, and widespread demolition and bulldozing of buildings and infrastructure, constituting one of the largest systematic erasures of cities and residential areas in the modern era.

In a testimony to Euro-Med Monitor, Mohammed Hillis, a resident of the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, said: “We fled Shuja’iyya while under bombardment. We walked for hours, not knowing where to go. Every place said to be safe is being bombed. There is nowhere to hide except under the open sky.”

In another testimony, Maram Abdel Aal, a resident of the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, said: “We left the Tuffah neighbourhood under shelling and headed to western Gaza, only to find bombardment surrounding us. I moved to Al-Mawasi in Khan Yunis, but the shelling continued there as well. Entire families were killed in their tents. Not a single neighbouring family survived.”

Israeli forces continue to bomb areas where civilians are forced to flee, including schools, temporary shelters, and tents, carrying out mass killings that target displaced residents already suffering from bombardment and starvation. This constitutes a flagrant and deliberate violation of the most basic rules of international law. It confirms that forced displacement in Gaza is occurring not only under threat but within a deadly and inhumane environment designed to kill and cause suffering, indicating that displacement is being used as a tool in the ongoing genocide.

Five civilians, including a woman and two children, were killed and several others injured on Tuesday, 1 July, in Israeli airstrikes targeting the tents of displaced people in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis. This area has been designated safe by the Israeli army, underscoring a recurring pattern of deliberate and systematic targeting of civilians within displacement areas.

Israeli forces also killed 12 civilians, including women and children, most of them from the al-Hallaq family, by bombing a house in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza. This attack reflects the ongoing pattern of mass killings targeting Palestinian families.

Forced displacement is a war crime under the Rome Statute and a grave violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the forcible transfer of civilians in occupied territories. It also constitutes a crime against humanity when carried out as part of a widespread or systematic attack targeting the civilian population.

The ongoing pattern of displacement in the Gaza Strip meets these criteria, as it is not limited to forced evacuations but is carried out under deadly and devastating conditions. When combined with the intent to partially destroy the Palestinian people by imposing life-threatening conditions, it also amounts to an act of genocide.

The pattern of forced evacuation orders, widespread killings, destruction, and the deliberate use of starvation are all integral parts of an Israeli plan clearly advancing toward its final objective: the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land, particularly beyond the Gaza Strip.

This follows more than 20 months of genocidal crimes, including the killing and wounding of over 200,000 civilians, the destruction of entire towns, the near-total collapse of Gaza’s infrastructure, the eradication of basic living conditions, and systematic internal displacement. All of this has taken place within a broader effort to eliminate the Palestinian community as an entity and existence.

The forced displacement of Palestinians is a direct extension of Israel’s decades-long settler-colonial project, rooted in the erasure of Palestinian existence and the seizure of their land. What sets this phase apart is its unprecedented scale and severity, demonstrated by the comprehensive targeting of all 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023 through genocide and the denial of people’s most basic human rights. The conditions of extreme coercion and deprivation forced upon the Palestinian people represent a deliberate effort to push them out of their homeland, not by choice but as a condition for their very survival. This stands as one of the most blatant cases of planned mass displacement in modern history.

All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal responsibilities by taking urgent action to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, through implementing effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians; ensuring Israel’s compliance with international law and the decisions of the International Court of Justice; preventing the implementation of the US-Israeli forced displacement plan; and holding Israel and its more powerful allies accountable for all crimes against the Palestinians in the Strip. The International Criminal Court must implement the arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.

The international community must also impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its systematic and grave violations of international law. These sanctions should include an arms embargo; an end to all political, financial, and military support; freezing the assets of officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; imposing travel ban on these officials; suspending the operations of Israeli military and security industries companies in international markets; banning involved companies’ access to banking services; and suspending trade privileges and bilateral agreements that provide Israel with economic benefits that enable its continued crimes.

Countries with universal jurisdiction courts must issue arrest warrants for Israeli political and military leaders involved in the ongoing genocide and initiate legal proceedings, even with the accused in absentia, to fulfil their international legal obligation to prosecute serious crimes and combat impunity.

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

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Israel Kills Director of Indonesian Hospital in Gaza Along With His Family

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- An Israeli airstrike has killed Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. His wife and five family members were also killed in the strike on their home west of Gaza City.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza confirmed the deaths in a statement. “With deep sorrow, we mourn the martyr of humanitarian and medical duty, Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan,” the ministry said. “He was killed along with members of his family after Israel targeted his home in Gaza.”

The ministry condemned the attack as part of a deliberate Israeli policy to eliminate medical and humanitarian personnel. “Every crime committed against medical teams confirms Israel’s systematic and intentional targeting,” it added.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1940543145332429045]

In a separate attack, five Palestinians were killed by an Israeli drone strike in central Deir al-Balah. The victims included two doctors from the Baraka Medical Center, two young girls, and a woman. Several others were seriously wounded.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed 1,580 medical workers in Gaza, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Government Media Office.

The Indonesian Hospital had already gone out of service in May after Israeli forces bombed it. The attack destroyed its power generators and damaged several departments. Medical teams were forced to evacuate patients under fire.

Gaza’s health system is on the brink of collapse. Israel’s genocide has devastated hospitals, clinics, and ambulance crews.

Since the genocide began nearly 22 months ago, Israel, backed fully by the United States, over 191,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded, most of them women and children. More than 11,000 are missing, with countless bodies buried under the rubble. Hundreds of thousands remain displaced.

Rights groups have repeatedly warned that attacks on medical personnel and infrastructure are violations of international law. But the killings continue, unchecked, and unpunished.

3 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Profiting From Genocide

By Chris Hedges

The latest United Nations report names hundreds of corporations, banks, technology firms, universities, pension funds and charities that profit from the Israeli occupation and genocide.

War is a business. So is genocide. The latest report submitted by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc., Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institue of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as Blackrock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.

The report, which includes a database of over 1,000 corporate entities that collaborate with Israel, demands these firms and institutions sever ties with Israel or be held accountable for complicity in war crimes. It describes “Israel’s “forever-occuption” as “the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech – providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.”

The post-Holocaust industrialists’ trials and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission laid the legal framework for recognizing the criminal responsibility of institutions and businesses that participate in international crimes. This new report makes clear that decisions made by the International Court of Justice place an obligation on entities “to not engage and/or to withdraw totally and unconditionally from any associated dealings, and to ensure that any engagement with Palestinians enables their self-determination.”

“The genocide in Gaza has not stopped because it’s lucrative, it’s profitable for far too many,” Albanese told me. “It’s a business. There are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation. Israel has always exploited Palestinian land, resources and Palestinian life. The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”

In addition, she said, Palestinians have provided “boundless training fields to test the technologies, test weapons, to test surveillance techniques that now are being used against people everywhere from the Global South to the Global North.”

You can see my interview with Albanese here.

The report lambasts corporations for “providing Israel with the weapons and machinery required to destroy homes, schools, hospitals, places of leisure and worship, livelihoods and productive assets, such as olive groves and orchards.”

The Palestinian territory, the report notes, is a “captive market” because of Israeli-imposed restrictions on trade and investment, tree planting, fishing and water for colonies. Corporations have profiteered from this “captive market” by “exploiting Palestinian labour and resources, degrading and diverting natural resources, building and powering colonies and selling and marketing derived goods and services in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territory and globally.”

“Israel gains from this exploitation, while it costs the Palestinian economy at least 35 per cent of its GDP,” the report notes.

Banks, asset management firms, pension funds and insurers have “channeled finance into the illegal occupation,” the report charges. In addition, “universities — centres of intellectual growth and power — have sustained the political ideology underpinning the colonization of Palestinian land, developed weaponry and overlooked or even endorsed systemic violence, while global research collaborations have obscured Palestinian erasure behind a veil of academic neutrality.”

Surveillance and incarceration technologies have “evolved into tools for indiscriminate targeting of the Palestinian population,” the report notes. “Heavy machinery previously used for house demolitions, infrastructure destruction and resource seizure in the West Bank have been repurposed to obliterate the urban landscape of Gaza, preventing displaced populations from returning and reconstituting as a community.”

The military assault on the Palestinians has also “provided testing grounds for cutting-edge military capabilities: air defense platforms, drones, targeting tools powered by artificial intelligence and even the F-35 programme led by the United States of America. These technologies are then marketed as ‘battle proven.’”

Since 2020, Israel has been the eighth largest arms exporter in the world. Its two biggest weapons companies are Elbit Systems Ltd and the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd (IAI). It has a series of international partnerships with foreign weapons firms, including “for the F-35 fighter jet, led by United States-based Lockheed Martin.”

“Components and parts constructed globally contribute to the Israeli F-35 fleet, which Israel customizes and maintains in partnership with Lockheed Martin and domestic companies.” the report reads. Since October 2023, F-35s and F-16s jets have been “integral to equipping Israel with the unprecedented aerial power to drop an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs, much of it unguided, to kill and injure more than 179,411 Palestinians and obliterate Gaza.”

“Drones, hexacopters and quadcopters have also been omnipresent killing machines in the skies of Gaza,” the report reads. “Drones largely developed and supplied by Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries have long flown alongside fighter jets, surveilling Palestinians and delivering target intelligence. In the past two decades, with support from these companies and collaborations with institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drones used by Israel acquired automated weapons systems and the ability to fly in swarm formation.”

Japan’s FANUC companies sell automation products and “provide robotic machinery for weapons production lines, including for IAI, Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin.”

“Shipping companies such as the Danish A.P. Moller — Maersk A/S transport components, parts, weapons and raw materials, sustaining a steady flow of United States-supplied military equipment post-October 2023.”

There was a “65 per cent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide.” This “generated a sharp surge in their annual profits,” while “Foreign arms companies, especially producers of munitions and ordnance, also profit.”

At the same time, tech companies have profited from the genocide by “providing dual-use infrastructure to integrate mass data collection and surveillance, while profiting from the unique testing ground for military technology offered by the occupied Palestinian territory.” They enhance “carceral and surveillance services, from closed-circuit television (CCTV) networks, biometric surveillance, advanced tech checkpoint networks, ‘smart walls’ and drone surveillance, to cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics supporting on-the-ground military personnel.”

“Israeli tech firms often grow out of military infrastructure and strategy,” the report reads, “as the NSO Group, founded by ex-Unit 8200 members, did. Its Pegasus spyware, designed for covert smartphone surveillance, has been used against Palestinian activists and licensed globally to target leaders, journalists and human rights defenders. Exported under the Defense Export Control Law, NSO group surveillance technology enables ‘spyware diplomacy’ while reinforcing State impunity.”

IBM, whose technology facilitated Nazi Germany’s generation and tabulation of punched cards for national census data, military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management and concentration camp capacity, is once again a partner in this current genocide.

It has operated in Israel since 1972. It provides training for Israeli military and intelligence agencies, especially Unit 8200, which is responsible for clandestine operations, the collection of signal intelligence and code decryption, along with counterintelligence, cyberwarfare, military intelligence and surveillance.

“Since 2019, IBM Israel has operated and upgraded the central database of the Population and Immigration Authority, enabling collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, and supporting the discriminatory permit regime of Israel,” the report notes.

Microsoft, active in Israel since 1989, is “embedded in the prison service, police, universities and schools — including in colonies. Microsoft has been integrating its systems and civilian tech across the Israeli military since 2003, while acquiring Israeli cybersecurity and surveillance start-ups.”

“As Israeli apartheid, military and population-control systems generate increasing volumes of data, its reliance on cloud storage and computing has grown,” the report reads. “In 2021, Israel awarded Alphabet Inc. (Google) and Amazon.com, Inc. a $1.2 billion contract (Project Nimbus) — largely funded through Ministry of Defense expenditure — to provide core tech infrastructure.”

Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., and Amazon “grant Israel virtually government-wide access to their cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, enhancing data processing, decision-making and surveillance and analysis capacities.”

The Israeli military, the report points out, “has developed artificial intelligence systems such as‘Lavender,’ ‘Gospel’ and ‘Where’s Daddy?’ to process data and generate lists of targets, reshaping modern warfare and illustrating the dual-use nature of artificial intelligence.”

There are “reasonable grounds,” the report reads, to believe that Palantir Technology Inc., which has a long relationship with Israel, “has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”

Palantir’s CEO in April 2025 responded to accusations that Palantir kills Palestinians in Gaza by saying, “mostly terrorists, that’s true.”

“Civilian technologies have long served as dual-use tools of settler-colonial occupation,” the report reads. “Israeli military operations rely heavily on equipment from leading global manufacturers to ‘unground’ Palestinians from their land, demolishing homes, public buildings, farmland, roads and other vital infrastructure. Since October 2023, this machinery has been integral to damaging and destroying 70 per cent of structures and 81 per cent of cropland in Gaza.”

Caterpillar Inc. has for decades provided the Israeli military with equipment used to demolish Palestinian homes, mosques, hospitals as well as “burying alive wounded Palestinians,” and killed activists, such as Rachel Corrie.

“Israel has evolved Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozer into automated, remote-commanded core weaponry of the Israeli military, deployed in almost every military activity since 2000, clearing incursion lines, ‘neutralizing’ the territory and killing Palestinians,” the report reads. This year, Caterpillar “secured a further multi-millionaire dollar contract with Israel.”

“The Korean HD Hyundai and its partially-owned subsidiary, Doosan, alongside the Swedish Volvo Group and other major heavy machinery manufacturers, have long been linked to destruction of Palestinian property, each supplying equipment through exclusively licensed Israeli dealers,” the report reads.

“As corporate actors have contributed to the destruction of Palestinian life in the occupied Palestinian territory, they have also helped construction of what replaces it: building colonies and their infrastructure, extracting and trading materials, energy and agricultural products, and bringing visitors to colonies as if to a regular holiday destination.”

“More than 371 colonies and illegal outposts have been built, powered and traded with by companies facilitating the replacement by Israel of the Indigenous population in the occupied Palestinian territory,” the report concludes.

These building projects have used Caterpillar, HD Hyundai and Volvo excavators and heavy equipment. Hanson Israel, a subsidiary of the German Heidelberg Materials AG, “has contributed to the pillage of millions of tons of dolomite rock from the Nahal Raba quarry on land seized from Palestinian villages in the West Bank.” The quarried dolomite is used to construct Jewish colonies in the West Bank.

Foreign firms have also “contributed to developing roads and public transport infrastructure critical to establishing and expanding the colonies, and connecting them to Israel while excluding and segregating Palestinians.”

Global real estate companies sell properties in colonial settlements to Israeli and international buyers. These real estate firms include Keller Williams Realty LLC, which has “had branches based in the colonies” through its Israeli franchisee KW Israel. Last year through another franchisee called Home in Israel, Keller Williams “ran a real estate roadshow in Canada and the United States, jointly sponsored with several companies developing and marketing thousands of apartments in colonies.”

Rental platforms, including Booking.com and Airbnb, list properties and hotel rooms in illegal Jewish colonies in the West Bank.

Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which utilizes land seized from Palestinians in the West Bank.

In the energy sector, “Chevron Corporation, in consortium with Israeli NewMedEnergy (a subsidiary of the OHCHR database-listed Delek Group), extracts natural gas from the Leviathan and Tamar fields; it paid the Government of Israel $453 million in royalties and taxes in 2023. Chevron’s consortium supplies more than 70 per cent of Israeli energy consumption. Chevron also profits from its part-ownership of the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which passes through Palestinian maritime territory, and from gas export sales to Egypt and Jordan.”

BP and Chevron also serve as “the largest contributors to Israeli imports of crude oil, as major owners of the strategic Azeri Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Kazakh Caspian Pipeline Consortium, respectively, and of their associated oil fields. Each conglomerate effectively supplied 8 per cent of Israeli crude oil between October 2023 and July 2024, supplemented by crude oil shipments from Brazilian oil fields, in which Petrobras holds the largest stakes, and military jet fuel. Oil from these companies supplies two refineries in Israel.”

“By supplying Israel with coal, gas, oil and fuel, companies are contributing to civilian infrastructures that Israel uses to entrench permanent annexation and now weaponizes in the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza,” the report reads. “The same infrastructure that these companies supply resources into has serviced the Israeli military and its energy-intensive tech-driven obliteration of Gaza. ”

International banks and financial firms have also sustained the genocide through the purchase of Israeli treasury bonds.

“As the main source of finance for the Israeli State budget, treasury bonds have played a critical role in funding the ongoing assault on Gaza,” the report reads. “From 2022 to 2024, the Israeli military budget grew from 4.2 per cent to 8.3 per cent of GDP, driving the public budget into a 6.8 per cent deficit. Israel funded this ballooning budget by increasing its bond issuance, including $8 billion in March 2024 and $5 billion in February 2025, alongside issuances on its domestic new shekel market.”

The report notes that some of the world’s largest banks, including BNP Paribas and Barclays, “stepped in to boost market confidence by underwriting these international and domestic treasury bonds, allowing Israel to contain the interest rate premium, despite a credit downgrade. Asset management firms — including Blackrock ($68 million), Vanguard ($546 million) and Allianz’s asset management subsidiary PIMCO ($960 million) — were among at least 400 investors from 36 countries who purchased them.”

Faith-based charities have “also become key financial enablers of illegal projects, including in the occupied Palestinian territory, often receiving tax deductions abroad despite strict regulatory charitable frameworks,” the report reads.

“The Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) and its over 20 affiliates fund settler expansion and military-linked projects,” the report reads. “Since October 2023, platforms such as Israel Gives have enabled tax-deductible crowdfunding in 32 countries for Israeli military units and settlers. The United States-based Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, Dutch Christians for Israel and global affiliates, sent over $12.25 million in 2023 to various projects that support colonies, including some that train extremist settlers.”

The report criticizes universities that partner with Israeli universities and institutions. It notes that labs at MIT “conduct weapons and surveillance research funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense.” These projects include “drone swarm control — a distinct feature of the Israeli assault on Gaza since October 2023 — pursuit algorithms, and underwater surveillance.”

You can see my interview with the MIT students who exposed the collaboration between the university Israeli military here.

Genocide requires a vast network and billions of dollars to sustain it. Israel could not carry out its mass slaughter of the Palestinians without this ecosystem. These entities, which profit from industrial violence against the Palestinians and mass displacement, are as guilty of genocide as the Israeli militray units decimating the people in Gaza. They too are war criminals, They too must be held accountable.

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

2 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

On a Dying Multilateralism: What can replace the global order?

By Walden Bello

The recent unilateral strikes by the United States on Iran’s nuclear development sites underline the fact that multilateralism is dead, and has been so for some time.

It is not only when it comes to the question of the deployment of military power that multilateralism is shown to be dead or dying. The key institutions of Western-led globalization are no longer functioning or are in sleep mode. This was underlined by the U.S. government’s decision to boycott both the Finance and Development Summit in Seville, Spain, this week, and the Bonn Climate Summit two weeks earlier.

The World Trade Organization has never recovered from the collapse of the Fifth Ministerial in Cancun in 2003, with the United States, in fact, taking the lead in emasculating it by preventing appointments to its decisive unit, the appellate court.

There has been stiff resistance at the IMF and World Bank to change the shares of voting power to give the China, the other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), and other countries in the Global South the weight they deserve in the changing global balance of economic power. For over four years now, since the end of the G-20 debt suspension initiative, even as many countries in the Global South lapse deeper into a debt crisis worse than that of the 1980s, no new effort at addressing the problem has come from the Global North. Instead, the Paris Club has played a blame game, accusing China of not joining a common front vis a vis the indebted countries.

As for climate finance—despite a conciliatory retreat by the Global South like the Bridgetown Initiative spearheaded by Barbados by folding development into climate finance—the $58 billion delivered after years of difficult negotiations is puny compared to the $1 trillion needed annually for the loss and damage inflicted on the Global South by the climate-destructive activities of the main climate polluters. And with a climate denialist administration now in the saddle in Washington, DC, the other leading climate criminals have been provided the excuse not to add to the commitments to the already weak, voluntary ones they have made. The UNFCCC will meet in Belem, Brazil, in November for its annual Climate Summit, but the reality is that negotiations are dead in the water.

Death of a Grand Strategy

The United States has been decisive in this retreat from multilateralism, and this process unfolded long before the advent of Donald Trump. It is Trump, however, who has cut the cant, shed the hypocrisy, and sounded the death knell on the grand strategy of liberal internationalism that served as the guiding U.S. strategy over the last 80 years, when it was committed to engaging threats to U.S. capital and U.S. state power where ever they were threatened globally. As Viktor Orban, the European figure most admired by Trump, has noted, his fellow strongman’s plan is to retrench to the Americas, focusing on reinvigorating the imperial heartland, North America, while strengthening the U.S. grip on Latin America in an aggressive reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine. And Orban adds, “there will be no more export of democracy.”

Trump may seem unpredictable, but there is a trend line cutting across the zigs and the zags. He is simply recognizing what his predecessors refused to see—that the empire is overextended and no longer has the resources to sustain its multiple engagements. Moreover, he is responding to the most significant and powerful section of his Make America Great Again base. This movement is a product of the four decades-long crisis of capitalism and imperialism. From a progressive standpoint, it has a number of contradictory features. It is, to use Althusser’s term, an “overdetermined contradiction” that combines the worst racist, ethnocentric, and anti-intellectual impulses with deep disdain for the neoliberal, pro-globalization initiatives and interventionist, warmongering policies of the liberal and neoconservative internationalists that have controlled policymaking over the last 80 years. It is fascism, but unlike in the 1930s, it is inward-looking, not expansionist fascism.

What is emerging is an imperialism that is on the defensive, that prioritizes tariff walls against foreign imports. It has adopted harsh measures to prevent the entry of non-white migrants and expel undocumented workers, uprooted the global supply chains set up by U.S. transnational capital, and reshored or brought back their productive facilities to the United States, and, last but not least, divorced the United States completely from collective efforts to address the climate crisis. The MAGA program espoused by ideologues like Peter Navarro, Vice President JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon is very popular, though to orthodox economists, it is madness.

The world is likely entering an era of geoeconomic competition whereby free trade and the free movement of capital are being replaced by close cooperation between national capital and the state to limit foreign penetration of the domestic market and prevent the acquisition of advanced technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI), by rival corporate-state actors. This is industrial policy with a reactionary vengeance. In the case of Trump, the preferred methods of dealing with the Global South are unilateral economic actions rather than multilateral initiatives via the Bretton Woods institutions, and unilateral military strikes rather than joint assaults under NATO, such as the recent attacks on Iran, and definitely no boots on the ground.

Nature, it is said, hates a vacuum. With the U.S.-dominated global multilateral system dead in the water, many in the Global South are scouting around for alternative sources of economic and political assistance. Among the candidates is the formation known as the BRICS, which is backed by something that the G77, for all its virtues as a site of alliance-building for the developing countries, lacks: economic clout.

Rise of the BRICS

The BRICS developed institutionally in a gradual fashion. The New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA), which were conceived as performing functions akin to the World Bank and IMF respectively, were formed in 2015, but they remained relatively low profile, perhaps so as to assure the West they were not meant to supplant these key institutions of the Western-dominated multilateral system as well as discourage developing countries to think of them as major alternative sources of development and emergency finance. As of the end of 2021, the cumulative lending of the NDB came to only $30 billion, a fraction of World Bank lending for the period 2015 to 2021.

As of January 1, 2025, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had joined the original five members.  The 10-country formation boasts a total population covering over 40 percent of the world. They also have a substantial 28 percent share of the global economy, equivalent to $26.5 trillion.

That so many countries, including Thailand and Malaysia, are queuing up to join the BRICS club indicates that the Global South realizes that the scale is steadily tipping against the West, which has grown increasingly defensive, grouchy, and insecure.

Several current and prospective members have significant surplus funds potentially available for development lending. Aside from China’s massive resources, the UAE has $2.23 trillion in its sovereign wealth fund. Saudi Arabia, which has delayed its membership but is expected eventually to join, has $1.3 trillion in its fund. These sums could potentially bolster the firepower of the current CRA and the NDB.

Are these hopes for the BRICS exhibited by many in the Global South realistic?

First of all, the BRICS, especially China, have played a major role in moving the balance of global economic power vis a vis the North to a tipping point. China, in particular, has, over the last quarter of a century, provided many countries in the Global South a source of alternative finance, thereby opening up more development space. As progressive economist Kevin Gallagher has pointed out, China is now the world’s biggest development bank. This has elicited much negative feeling in the West. Although there are certainly flaws in China’s lending activities, there are so many lies being floated by Western sources, like the claim that China is steering many countries into a debt trap. This is IMF-instigated crap. Chinese aid is not disinterested, but it does not have the crippling conditionalities that accompany IMF and World Bank assistance.

Grounds for Caution

Still there are grounds for caution. The BRICS institutional mechanisms for delivering assistance are relatively underdeveloped. It is not only the scaling up of assistance-delivery systems that is in demand. Among the expectations of many queuing up to join is that the decision-making processes in these instiutions would be more participatory and democratic than those of the Western-dominated agencies. So one big question is: Are the key actors in the BRICS going to be open to sharing decision-making power over their resources?

A related question is: The leading forces in the BRICS are a mix of authoritarian and formally democratic states; is it not realistic to expect that they will bring their regime preferences and styles of governance to a multilateral setting?

This year is the seventieth anniversary of the iconic Bandung Conference. The Global South has travelled a long way in terms of decolonization and, especially in the last seven decades, in coming close to the tipping point in the global balance of power vis a vis the Global North. But the Bandung Declaration was not just a document promoting political and economic decolonization. Indeed, the very first of the 10 points of the Declaration was “respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations.”

Two of the key movers in Bandung were India and China, who play central role in the BRICS. Nehru and Zhou En Lai were exemplary voices of the Global South in 1955, when decolonization was the burning issue. However, when it comes to the first Bandung principle, their governments today are not exactly paragons of human rights. India today is ruled by a Hindu nationalist government that considers Muslim second-class citizens. Beijing is accused of carrying out the forcible cultural assimilation of the Uygurs, though there might be exaggeration of this process by the West. As for the other key sponsors of the Bandung meeting, the military regimes in Myanmar and Egypt are notorious for massive human rights violations.

Indeed, most states of the Global South are dominated by elites that, whether via authoritarian or liberal democratic regimes, maintain problematic social and economic structures. The levels of poverty and inequality are shocking. The gini coefficient for Brazil is 0.53, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. China’s 0.47 also reflects tremendous inequality, despite remarkable successes in poverty reduction. In South Africa, the gini coefficient is an astounding 0.63, and 55.5 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. In India, incomes have been polarizing over the past three decades with a significant increase in billionaires and other high-net-worth Individuals.

The reality is that for the vast masses of people throughout the Global South, including indigenous communities, workers, peasants, fisherfolk, nomadic communities and women are economically disenfranchised, and in liberal democracies, such as the Philippines, India, Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, and Kenya, participation in democracy is often limited to casting votes in periodic, often meaningless, electoral exercises. South-South investment and cooperation models such as the Belt and Road Initiative and free trade agreements frequently entail the capture of land, forests, water, and marine areas and extraction of natural wealth for the purposes of national development. Local populations—many of whom are indigenous—are disposessed from their livelihoods, territories, and ancestral domains with scant legal recourse and access to justice, invoking the specter of home-grown colonialism and counterrevolutions.

Two points are important here. Although the Global North has played a role in the perpetuation of poverty and inequality in the Global South, much of our current condition is the creation of the Global South’s own elites. Second, democratic governance at the global level cannot be delinked from democratic governance at the local level.

Capitalism and Multilateralism

There is a third, not minor, consideration when it comes to assessing the future of the BRICS, and here it is useful to compare Bandung’s historical moment to today. At the time of the Bandung Conference, the political economy of the globe was more diverse. There was the communist bloc headed by the Soviet Union. There was China, with its push to move from national democracy to socialism. Neutralist states like India were seeking a third way between the communism and capitalism. With decades of neoliberal transformation in both the Global North and the Global South, that diversity has vanished. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a new, equitable global order is the fact that all countries remain embedded in a system of global capitalism, where the pursuit of profits remains the engine of economic expansion, both creating great inequalities and posing a threat to the planet.

The dynamic centers of global capitalism may have moved, over the last 500 years, from the Mediterranean to Holland to Britain to the United States and now to the Asia Pacific, but capitalism continues to both penetrate the farthest reaches of the globe and deepen its entrenchment in areas it has subjugated. Capitalism continually melts all that is solid into thin air, to use an image from a famous manifesto, creating inequalities both within and among societies, and exacerbating the relationship between the planet and the human community. Whether market-driven, developmental, or state capitalist, the same dynamics of surplus extraction, with massive planetary externalities, cut across these variants of capitalism.

Is it possible to move towards a new, more participatory system of multilateralism without bringing forth a post-capitalist system of economic, social, and political relations?

The world is not doomed to repeat the experience of the West. It’s very positive that the hegemony of the North is breaking up and that the multilateral system it set up to dominate the Global South is breaking down. Rather than try to fix that system, it’s best to pursue the strategic objective of breaking it up, using a mix of negotiation, promoting a radical counter-agenda, and coercion as complementary weapons.

Derail Seville and Belem But…

With the United States pulling out of the Finance for Development process and boycotting the pre-COP 30 meeting in Bonn, the Europeans should be allowed to save multilateralism in Sevilla and Belem. Those assemblies should be used to further discredit multilateralism.

Replacing such a system will not be easy, however, and there will be setbacks and derailments in this process.

As the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci famously said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Getting to a safe harbor is not possible without taking great risks, and, as with Ulysses, the proverbial monsters of Scylla and Charybdis may still menace the voyage.

Walden Bello is currently the International Adjunct Professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

2 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Israel’s Ban on Fuel Entry into Gaza Hospitals: A Tool of Killing and Forced Displacement

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Occupied Palestinian Territory – Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stated that Israel’s ban on fuel entry to hospitals in the Gaza Strip constitutes a tool of direct killing and a means of forcibly displacing civilians, as it paralyzes medical facilities and turns them into death zones.

In a press release today, Euro-Med Monitor explained that the shutdown of generators and vital medical equipment puts the lives of thousands of patients—including newborns, ICU patients, and those with kidney failure—at immediate risk of death. It also forces their families to flee in search of alternative healthcare or energy sources at a time when no fully functioning medical facility exists in the Strip. This, the organization said, reflects a systematic Israeli policy aimed at dismantling the population’s means of survival, forming an integral part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The monitor emphasized that death is taking Gaza’s residents one by one through Israel’s intertwined methods, all of which amount to components of the genocide. Chief among them is the unlawful and systematic blockade aimed at destroying the Palestinian population by deliberately depriving them of essentials for survival.

Beyond the daily toll of victims from direct military attacks, many more die each day as a result of indirect means of genocide—deaths often unregistered in official war casualty records despite nearly 21 months of ongoing aggression.

Euro-Med Monitor highlighted that the total shutdown of the dialysis department at Al-Shifa Hospital today means that “we only have a few days before we begin documenting patient deaths one after another,” warning that this is not merely a health catastrophe but a deliberate execution of a slow-kill policy by Israel targeting the population’s right to life through denial of life-saving care.

The organization warned of catastrophic consequences as kidney dialysis services halt due to fuel shortages, signaling a critical collapse of the healthcare system. This could imminently affect ICU services at Al-Shifa and other hospitals, threatening the lives of thousands of civilians.

Israel is deliberately denying fuel entry, particularly into northern Gaza and Gaza City, with the calculated aim of halting hospital operations and compelling civilian displacement southward in search of treatment—a clear manifestation of forced displacement, banned under international law.

Refusing to allow fuel into hospitals amounts to a death sentence for most patients, Euro-Med said. It reflects a deliberate Israeli strategy to destroy Gaza’s health system by barring essential supplies, in clear violation of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obligates an occupying power to ensure the provision of medical care and prohibits starvation or health sabotage as methods of warfare.

Since March 2, Israel has fully closed Gaza’s crossings, banning fuel, humanitarian aid, and medical equipment. Thousands of aid trucks have been denied entry, causing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.

Gaza’s health system now faces an unprecedented collapse, with:
    •    Severe shortages of medicines and supplies;
    •    Over 50% of hospital labs and 60% of primary care labs destroyed;
    •    Thousands of vital medical devices out of service;
    •    Breakdown of blood transfusions and lab diagnostics.

Meanwhile, infectious diseases like meningitis, malaria, chickenpox, and skin infections are spreading rapidly due to sewage overflows and contaminated water, particularly in overcrowded displacement camps.

According to OCHA and the WHO, harsh conditions in camps and shelters form a “fertile ground for epidemics,” with thousands of confirmed infections and likely many more unreported.

The worsening crisis is compounded by a lack of clean water—in some camps, a single toilet is used by hundreds of people, increasing the risk of widespread disease.

Euro-Med concluded that Israel’s blockade and deprivation policy is a genocidal tool, accelerating the systematic killing of civilians and destroying their means of survival in gross violation of international law, including peremptory norms and the Genocide Convention.

The organization:
    •    Urged UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations to take immediate joint action—legally, diplomatically, and operationally—to halt Israel’s crimes;
    •    Called for the end of Israel’s inhumane aid distribution mechanism and the restoration of humanitarian access;
    •    Called for UN-supervised humanitarian corridors to guarantee food, medicine, and fuel reach all of Gaza;
    •    Demanded independent international monitors be deployed to verify compliance.

Euro-Med also called on states to:
    •    Fulfill their legal obligations to halt genocide in all its forms;
    •    Ensure Israeli compliance with international law and ICJ rulings;
    •    Hold Israel accountable, including through the ICC arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister;
    •    Impose economic, military, and political sanctions, including:
    •    Arms embargoes;
    •    Freezing assets of responsible officials;
    •    Banning their travel;
    •    Suspending Israeli military and security firms from global markets;
    •    Halting preferential trade and financial agreements.

These urgent steps are necessary to stop the deepening catastrophe and ensure justice for the victims.

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

2 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Operation Midnight Hammer: Were Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Damaged?

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike by the US Air Force on three nuclear facilities in Iran authorised by President Donald Trump on June 22, was raucous and triumphant.  But that depended on what company you were keeping.  The mission involved the bombing of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility in Isfahan.  The Israeli Air Force had already attacked the last two facilities, sparing Fordow for the singular weaponry available for the USAF. 

The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned by protective concrete.  For its purported destruction, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were used to drop GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs.  All in all, approximately 75 precision guided weapons were used in the operation, along with 125 aircraft and a guided missile submarine.

Trump was never going to be anything other than optimistic about the result.  “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” he blustered.  “Obliteration is an accurate term!”

At the Pentagon press conference following the attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bubbled with enthusiasm.  “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear.  We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.”  The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine was confident that the facilities had been subjected to severe punishment.  “Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”  Adding to Caine’s remarks, Hegseth stated that, “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.”

Resort to satellite imagery was always going to take place, and Maxar Technologies willingly supplied the material. “A layer of grey-blue ash caused by the airstrikes [on Fordow] is seen across a large swathe of the area,” the company noted in a statement.  “Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility are blocked with dirt following the airstrikes.”

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, also added his voice to the merry chorus that the damage had been significant.  “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted airstrikes.”  The assessment included “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Israeli sources were also quick to stroke Trump’s already outsized ego.  The Israel Atomic Energy Commission opined that the strikes, combined with Israel’s own efforts, had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”  IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir’s view was that the damage to the nuclear program was sufficient to have “set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

The chief of the increasingly discredited International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, flirted with some initial speculation, but was mindful of necessary caveats.  In a statement to an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, he warned that, “At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.” Cue the speculation: “Given the explosive payload utilised and extreme(ly) vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”

This was a parade begging to be rained on.  CNN and The New York Times supplied it.  Referring to preliminary classified findings in a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment running for five pages, the paper reported that the bombing of the three sites had “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months”.  The entrances to two of the facilities had been sealed off by the strikes but were not successful in precipitating a collapse of the underground buildings.  Sceptical expertise murmured through the report:  to destroy the facility at Fordow would require “waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots.” 

Then came the issue of the nuclear material in question, which Iran still retained control over.  The fate of over 400 kg of uranium that had been enriched up to 60% of purity is unclear, as are the number of surviving or hidden centrifuges.  Iran had already informed the IAEA on June 13 that “special measures” would be taken to protect nuclear materials and equipment under IAEA safeguards, a feature provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location, however, would have to be declared to the agency, something bound to be increasingly unlikely given the proposed suspension of cooperation with the IAEA by Iran’s parliament. 

After mulling over the attacks over the course of a week, Grossi revisited the matter.  The attacks on the facilities had caused severe though “not total” damage.  “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”  Tehran could “in a matter of months” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.”  Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.

Efforts to question the effacing thoroughness of Operation Midnight Hammer did not sit well with the Trump administration.  White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt worked herself into a state on any cautionary reporting, treating it as a libellous blemish.  “The leaking of this alleged report is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she fumed in a statement.  “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets.”

Hegseth similarly raged against the importance placed on the DIA report.  In a press conference on June 26, he bemoaned the tendency of the press corps to “cheer against Trump so hard, it’s like in your DNA and in your blood”.  The scribblers had to “cheer against the efficacy of these strikes” with “half-truths, spun information, leaked information”.  Trump, for his part, returned to familiar ground, attacking any questioning narrative as “Fake News”.  CNN, he seethed, had some of the dumbest anchors in the business.  With malicious glee, he claimed knowledge of rumours that reporters from both CNN and The New York Times were going to be sacked for making up those “FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites because they got it so wrong.” 

A postmodern nonsense has descended on the damage assessments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, leaving the way clear for over remunerated soothsayers.  But there was nothing postmodern in the incalculable damage done to the law of nations, a body of acknowledged rules rendered brittle and breakable before the rapacious legislators of the jungle. 

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

1 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

At Least Seven Aid Seekers Killed by Israeli Forces While Waiting for Food in Central Gaza

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israeli forces opened fire on starving civilians waiting for food near an aid distribution site run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in central Gaza on Tuesday morning, killing at least seven people and injuring several others. On Monday, the Israeli military admitted that its forces “harmed” Palestinians seeking aid.

Local and medical sources confirmed at least seven people were killed and 15 others injured while waiting for food after Israeli forces opened fire at a crowd seeking aid near the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza.

Since the GHF started its operations on May 27 in Gaza, over 580 aid seekers have been killed and over 4,216 others injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Additionally, 39 others have been reported missing after heading to the GHF sites to obtain food.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, condemned the “lethal” US-Israel aid distribution mechanism in Gaza. In a post on X, Lazzarini indicated that Palestinian lives “have been so devalued”.

“It is now the routine to shoot & kill desperate & starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries,” he said.

“Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime. Those responsible of this system must be held accountable. This is a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the US-backed aid distribution mechanism is “inherently unsafe” and “it is killing people.”

“Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people,” Guterres told reporters.

Guterres said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel, as the occupying power, is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.

“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres told reporters.

According to a Haaretz report last week, conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered forces to shoot at crowds waiting for food near or at the US-backed GHF aid sites to drive them away or disperse them, despite posing no threat.

“It’s a killing field,” one soldier said. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

On Monday, the Israeli military admitted that its forces “harmed” Palestinian civilians at US-Israeli aid distribution centers in Gaza. The army claimed new field instructions were issued based on “lessons learned.”

1 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Israeli strike kills over 30 Palestinians at Gaza beachfront cafe

By The New Arab Staff

Palestinian artist Frans al-Salmi was among the dead and journalist Bayan Abusultan was wounded in the strike.

An Israeli airstrike has killed more than 30 Palestinians at a beachfront cafe in Gaza City on Monday, according to the health ministry.

Around 50 others were wounded in the attack, which struck the Al-Baqa cafeteria on Monday, one of the few remaining locations with internet access in the area.

Images shared by Quds Network showed emergency responders recovering bodies and searching through the rubble. The cafe was reportedly crowded with civilians, including journalists, at the time of the strike.

Gaza’s Government Media Office confirmed that Palestinian photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab, who has worked with several media outlets and had organised exhibitions about Gaza abroad, was among those killed. His death brings the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October 2023 to 227, according to the same source.

Visual artist Frans al-Salmi was also reported among the fatalities, while famed journalist Bayan Abusultan was wounded in the strike, though her current condition remains unknown.

Witnesses described scenes of blood and carnage as people looking for a rare moment of calm were struck during the strike. Social media images shared by Gaza journalist Belal Khaled showed Abusultan injured and visibly shaken.

Continued attacks across the Strip

In the past 24 hours, Israel launched some of its heaviest air raids in recent weeks. Al Jazeera reported that at least 80 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip since dawn on Monday. The toll includes 57 people killed in northern Gaza and 15 near aid distribution centres in Rafah, in the south.

Two schools in Zeitoun and Tuffah, which were sheltering displaced Palestinians, were struck overnight. A food distribution warehouse in Zeitoun was also hit, as humanitarian infrastructure came under continued fire.

In a post on X, military spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued threats to residents in parts of Gaza City, including East Zaytoun, the Old City, Turkmen, Ajdida, Tuffah, and Daraj.

Evacuation orders in northern Gaza have forced repeated displacement, with over 76 percent of the enclave under military orders as of 15 June, causing severe instability.

Hospitals hit amid fuel shortage crisis

The World Health Organisation in occupied Palestine reported that a tent sheltering displaced people at Al‑Aqsa Hospital in Deir al‑Balah was hit on Sunday, injuring five. The attack damaged the internal medicine department and disrupted the hospital’s oxygen supply.

Since October 2023, WHO has recorded 734 attacks on health care facilities in Gaza. WHO said that “ongoing attacks on health care and continued hostilities near hospitals are fuelling fear among already traumatised communities and placing further strain on facilities struggling to cope”.

A growing fuel crisis now threatens the delivery of essential services, including hospital and water services. As of June 26, only around 140,000 litres of fuel remained in northern Gaza and 272,000 litres in the south, with allocations limited to healthcare facilities for just four days.

Hospitals are operating on minimal power with critical systems, including ventilators, incubators, and cold-chain storage, at risk of shutting down.

OCHA warns that water, sanitation, and waste services are collapsing, and only 40 percent of drinking water production is operational, meaning a failure to lift the fuel blockade is likely to result in more “senseless and preventable death”.

Meanwhile, mediators continue to push for a truce, with Qatar and the US expressing cautious optimism. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister is expected to be in Washington, while Prime Minister Netanyahu and senior officials debate sending a delegation to talks in Egypt or Qatar.

According to reports, more than half of the deal terms are agreed, but disagreements remain over troop withdrawal, Hamas disarmament, and humanitarian monitoring.

1 July 2025

Source: newarab.com

Resistance will never yield to tyrannical US, criminal Israel

TEHRAN, Jul. 01 (MNA) – The secretary general of Hezbollah says the Lebanese resistance movement will never surrender to the tyranny of the United States and the occupying Israeli regime.

“We are in an active defensive mode. Don’t tell us not to defend ourselves! Don’t ask us to surrender to the tyrants who want to control the destiny of humankind. We will never bow down and surrender to aggressors. Never to humiliation!!!” Sheikh Naim Qassem said as he delivered a televised speech broadcast from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, late on Monday.

He called the Israeli occupation of the Lebanese territory temporary, while characterizing its liberation as definitive. “This land will remain noble, dignified, and free, by God’s will. The occupation is temporary, but liberation is ultimate.”

The Hezbollah chief stated that the resistance group’s ongoing confrontation with the US and the Zionist entity is a just and divinely inspired battle, Press TV reported.

Sheikh Qassem then described Israel as “an aggressive, oppressive, and criminal entity,” and the United States as “a tyrannical force” attempting to destroy dignified life around the world.

“Israel is criminal, and America is tyrannical. We have the right to say ‘No’ to both,” the Hezbollah leader said.

“Our commitment to defend our land emanates from the fact that it is ours by right,” Sheikh Qassem said, underscoring, “Others cannot deprive us of this right for the sake of their own interests. We will act in defense of our right.”

The Hezbollah chief stated that Israel is on the rampage, and so is the United States. “They want to exploit the status quo to reshape the region.”

“Whoever supports Israel and the US is the one driving our country towards the brink of the abyss,” Sheikh Qassem noted.

He urged all walks of Lebanese society to establish their national loyalty as their number-one priority, and to refrain from supporting the schemes of the US and Israel, especially at this critical juncture.

“We can shape a future of dignity and have glamour once justice prevails. It is when we liberate our land and prevent Israel and the US from imposing their diktats upon us,” the Hezbollah leader said.

MNA/

1 July 2025

Source: en.mehrnews.com