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By Jeffrey D. Sachs

The best strategy for the superpowers is to stay out of each other’s lanes.

21 Apr 2025 – President Donald Trump is again loudly complaining that the US military bases in Asia are too costly for the US to bear.  As part of the new round of tariff negotiations with Japan and Korea, Trump is calling on Japan and Korea to pay for stationing the US troops.  Here’s a much better idea: close the bases and return the US servicemen to the US.

Trump implies that the US is providing a great service to Japan and Korea by stationing 50,000 troops in Japan and nearly 30,000 in Korea.  Yet these countries do not need the US to defend themselves.  They are wealthy and can certainly provide their own defense.  Far more importantly, diplomacy can ensure the peace in northeast Asia far more effectively and far less expensively than US troops.

The US acts as if Japan needs to be defended against China.  Let’s have a look.  During the past 1,000 years, during which time China was the region’s dominant power for all but the last 150 years, how many times did China attempt to invade Japan?  If you answered zero, you are correct.  China did not attempt to invade Japan on a single occasion.

You might quibble.  What about the two attempts in 1274 and 1281, roughly 750 years ago? It’s true that when the Mongols temporarily ruled China between 1271 and 1368, the Mongols twice sent expeditionary fleets to invade Japan, and both times were defeated by a combination of typhoons (known in Japanese lore as the Kamikaze winds) and by Japanese coastal defenses.

Japan, on the other hand, made several attempts to attack or conquer China.  In 1592, the arrogant and erratic Japanese military leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched an invasion of Korea with the goal of conquering Ming China.  He did not get far, dying in 1598 without even having subdued Korea.  In 1894-5, Japan invaded and defeated China in the Sino-Japanese war, taking Taiwan as a Japanese colony.  In 1931, Japan invaded northeast China (Manchuria) and created the Japanese colony of Manchukuo.  In 1937,  Japan invaded China, starting World War II in the Pacific region.
Nobody thinks that Japan is going to invade China today, and there is no rhyme, reason, or historical precedent to believe that China is going to invade Japan.  Japan has no need for the US military bases to protect itself from China.

The same is true of China and Korea.  During the past 1,000 years, China never invaded Korea, except on one occasion: when the US threatened China.  China entered the war in late 1950 on the side of North Korea to fight the US troops advancing northward towards the Chinese border.  At the time, US General Douglas MacArthur recklessly recommended attacking China with atomic bombs.  MacArthur also proposed to support Chinese nationalist forces, then based in Taiwan, to invade the Chinese mainland. President Harry Truman, thank God, rejected MacArthur’s recommendations.
South Korea needs deterrence against North Korea, to be sure, but that would be achieved far more effectively and credibly through a regional security system including China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, than through the presence of the US, which has repeatedly stoked North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and military build-up, not diminished it.

In fact, the US military bases in East Asia are really for the US projection of power, not for the defense of Japan or Korea.  This is even more reason why they should be removed.  Though the US claims that its bases in East Asia are defensive, they are understandably viewed by China and North Korea as a direct threat – for example, by creating the possibility of a decapitation strike, and by dangerously lowering the response times for China and North Korea to a US provocation or some kind of misunderstanding.  Russia vociferously opposed NATO in Ukraine for the same justifiable reasons.  NATO has frequently intervened in US-backed regime-change operations and has placed missile systems dangerously close to Russia.  Indeed, just as Russia feared, NATO has actively participated in the Ukraine War, providing armaments, strategy, intelligence, and even programming and tracking for missile strikes deep inside of Russia.

Note that Trump is currently obsessed with two small port facilities in Panama owned by a Hong Kong company, claiming that China is threatening US security (!), and wants the facilities sold to an American buyer.  The US on the other hand surrounds China not with two tiny port facilities but with major US military bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, the Philippines, and the Indian Ocean near to China’s international sea lanes.

The best strategy for the superpowers is to stay out of each other’s lanes.  China and Russia should not open military bases in the Western Hemisphere, to put it mildly.  The last time that was tried, when the Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, the world nearly ended in nuclear annihilation.  (See Martin Sherwin’s remarkable book, Gambling with Armageddon for the shocking details on how close the world came to nuclear Armageddon).  Neither China nor Russia shows the slightest inclination to do so today, despite all of the provocations of facing US bases in their own neighborhoods.

Trump is looking for ways to save money – an excellent idea given that the US federal budget is hemorrhaging $2 trillion dollars a year, more than 6% of US GDP.  Closing the US overseas military bases would be an excellent place to start.

Trump even seemed to point that way at the start of his second term, but the Congressional Republicans have called for increases, not decreases, in military spending.  Yet with America’s 750 or so overseas military bases in around 80 countries, it’s high time to close these bases, pocket the saving, and return to diplomacy.  Getting the host countries to pay for something that doesn’t help them or the US is a huge drain of time, diplomacy, and resources, both for the US and the host countries.

The US should make a basic deal with China, Russia, and other powers.  “You keep your military bases out of our neighborhood, and we’ll keep our military bases out of yours.” Basic reciprocity among the major powers would save trillions of dollars of military outlays over the coming decade and, more importantly, would push the Doomsday Clock back from 89 seconds to nuclear Armageddon.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

5 May 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Oneindia

25 Apr 2025 – NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte met with President Trump to discuss the upcoming NATO summit. A key topic was the increase in European and Canadian defence spending. Rutte praised Trump for encouraging NATO allies to invest more in their security. He promised that NATO will become stronger and fairer with trillions in defence funding.

Rutte discussed the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. He noted that the situation is now in Russia’s hands. Trump’s peace deal is still being developed. NATO unity and defence priorities remain important. Rutte expressed optimism about recent progress in peace talks.

He highlighted that NATO has already increased spending by hundreds of billions. This amount is expected to grow to trillions in the coming years. This increase will help ensure safety and strengthen NATO’s defence capabilities.

The meeting included Secretary Rubio, Secretary Hackset, and Security Advisor Mike Wolfson. They all expressed excitement about the increased defence spending. The goal is for European and Canadian contributions to match those of the U.S.

Rutte mentioned a successful meeting in London, but refrained from commenting on specific details. He emphasised that Russia is seen as a long-term threat to NATO and Euro-Atlantic territories.

The focus remains on ensuring that NATO becomes stronger and more balanced in its defence efforts. The increased spending aims to make NATO more capable of defending its territories effectively.

NATO chief Mark Rutte faces the media after meeting with Trump

5 May 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ghalia Mohamed

Social media users condemned Israel’s drone strike on the vessel and demanded international action.

2 May 2025 – Social media has erupted in anger after Israeli drones struck a ship with 30 rights activists and humanitarian aid headed for the besieged Gaza Strip.

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

Israeli soldiers forced an 80-year-old Palestinian man to walk ahead of them with an explosive-laced strap around his neck—then shot him and his wife as they tried to flee.

3 May 2025 – A senior officer in the Nahal Brigade tied an explosive-laced strap around the neck of an 80-year-old Palestinian man and forced him to walk ahead of soldiers as a human shield for eight hours, according to an investigation by Israeli outlet The Hottest Place in Hell.

The incident reportedly took place in May during an operation by Division 99 in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

According to testimonies from Israeli soldiers present, the officer attached a detonating fuse—connected to an initiating detonator—around the elderly man’s neck as a leash, threatening to blow up his head if he disobeyed orders.

“They explained to him that if he did something wrong or not as we wanted, the person behind him would pull the rope and his head would be severed from his body,” one soldier told the investigative outlet.

“He walked around with us like that for eight hours, even though he was an 80-year-old man and even though he couldn’t escape us. And this was in the knowledge that there was a soldier behind him who could pull the rope at any second—and he would be finished.”

According to the report, the Israeli military refers to this practice as the ‘Mosquito Procedure’, a euphemism for forcing Palestinian civilians to serve as human shields in combat zones.

Forced into Danger, Then Shot by Another Unit 

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original 

5 May 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ann Garrison

The U.S. increases pressure on Burkina Faso through military propaganda, as Africans rise to protect the developing project.

30 Apr 2025 – On April 3, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) Commander Michael Langley testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee during an excruciating two hours obsessively devoted to the ill-fated project of preserving US hegemony. Langley’s testimony was all about stopping Russia and China’s advances on the continent. Some Senators expressed concern that Trump had dispensed with the soft power—their term—projected by USAID and worried that China is stepping in to fill the breach.

Alarm bells went off in Africa, the African diaspora, and peace and justice communities all over the world when he turned attention to Burkina Faso and its leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, accusing him of using the gold reserves he nationalized “to protect his junta.”

It would be challenging, of course, to come up with a more arrogant, illogical, and downright idiotic assertion.  The head of AFRICOM, a military command openly devoted to securing US interests, with a $2 billion dollar annual budget, accuses an African leader of devoting his own country’s resources to its security?

In a pathetic attempt to give this a bit of humanity or legitimacy, Langley complained that Traoré was using the country’s gold to finance his own security rather than for the benefit of his people, as though there were some universe in which this was a plausible US concern. In the same breath he described North Africa as “NATO’s southern flank.”

Since mid-April a slew of social media posts have reported that the Burkina Faso diaspora, particularly in France, have been protesting and demanding that Captain Traoré step down, accusing him of being a dictator, with some even calling for his arrest. None of these posts are conclusively evidenced, and their scale, sometimes described as “hundreds” or a “small group,” varies across reports. No major news outlets seem to have reported such protests, but real or not, they’re a classic element in the Western regime change playbook.

Human Rights Watch has been playing its usual role as well, reporting that Burkina Faso has cracked down on dissent and that some members of its civilian militia, Volunteers in Defense of the Homeland (VDH), have killed members of the Fulani ethnic minority. It seems likely that there is some incidence of VDH violence against the Fulani, but this is an internal problem for the Burkinabe people and their government, not cause for the “humanitarian intervention” that’s usually on the US/EU/NATO drawing board before these reports are published. Watch out for the emergence of the word “genocide.”

Volunteers in Defense of the Homeland are civilian self-defense militia organized to defend communities against the jihadist violence unleashed by the US/EU/NATO destruction of Libya. In response to Ibrahim Traoré’s mobilization call, the numbers of volunteers increased to 90,000, well beyond the goal of 50,000, according to ACLED .

These are Western playbook moves for overthrowing any government that actually tries to do something for its people in the Global South.

Traoré’s Crimes, in the Eyes of the West

What are Traoré’s crimes in the eyes of the West? As Langley alleged, he nationalized much of the country’s gold reserves. Imagine that. In November 2023, he approved the construction of Burkina Faso’s first refinery to process gold domestically, halting the export of unrefined gold to Europe and advancing the industrialization and skills development needed to create a prosperous domestic economy and lift the Burkinabe people out of the imperialist extractive economy trap.

He suspended export permits for small-scale private gold production to combat illicit trade, such as smuggling, and to regulate the artisanal gold sector.

He renegotiated mining contracts with foreign corporations, demanding greater percentages of ore extracted and favoring local participation, again developing skills needed for a complex, prosperous domestic economy.

He prioritized local processing in other sectors, such as agriculture and cotton. He established two tomato-processing plants and a second cotton processing plant, alongside the National Support Center for Artisanal Cotton Processing, to enhance local value addition and further reduce reliance on exporting raw materials.

In a broader push for economic autonomy, he invested in agriculture to achieve food self-sufficiency, providing farmers with modern machinery and improved seeds, leading to a 2024 harvest of nearly six million tons of cereal.

He expelled French military forces from Burkina Faso. In January 2023, he announced the termination of a 2018 defense agreement with France, giving French forces one month to leave. This followed public protests in Ouagadougou demanding their departure. They’d been stationed in the country for over a decade to combat jihadist insurgencies, which had only gotten worse. By February 2023, French forces had withdrawn , marking the end of their failed Operation Sabre.

He established military sovereignty and diversification of military partnerships, including partnerships with Russia.

Upon assuming the presidency, he announced that he would continue to live on his army captain’s salary.

He appealed to the Pan-Africanist ideals of Burkina’s revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara, who served as its president from 1983 to 1987 before being assassinated in a French-backed coup d’état. He erected a new statue of Sankara on the site where he was assassinated,

Africa, the African Diaspora, and Peace and Justice Communities Rise in Response to Langley’s Threat to Traoré

On April 22, Burkina Faso’s Security Minister Mahamadou Sana told press that security forces had foiled a “major plot” to assassinate Captain Ibrahim Traoré, with the army alleging the plotters were based in neighboring Ivory Coast. He said they had aimed to “sow total chaos and place the country under the supervision of an international organisation.” This is one of many coup plots reported since Traoré assumed the presidency, and heavy security has been instituted around him.

AFRICOM’s annual Operation Flintlock is underway now, until May 14. This year it’s based in Burkina Faso’s Ivory Coast, the alleged site of the foiled coup plot, whose president, Alassane Ouattara, could not be a more dedicated US/EU/NATO collaborator .

Commander Michael Langley arrived for its outset on April 24-25 .

When Commander Michael Langley identified Captain Traoré as an enemy of US interests to the Senate Armed Services Committee, alarm bells went off in Africa, the African diaspora, and peace and justice communities worldwide. There have since been cries that there must never be another Libya all over social media, including countless YouTube channels. A global rally in support of Captain Traoré and Burkina Faso was called for April 30 , the date of this publication. News and video will no doubt be available across the Web.

Long live revolutionary Burkina Faso and its Captain Ibrahim Traoré!

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

5 May 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Dr. David Adams

1 May 2025 – In my last blog I asked the question: “we cannot sit still, and we must act, but how?”

Now we have an answer, the Peace Manifesto 2025.

As we launch the Peace Manifesto today, May 1, 2025, it seems to me like a symphony of music composed and played by an orchestra that I have had the great privilege to conduct. Curiously for an orchestra, none of us met in person, but we met virtually in an ever increasing rhythm of emails and zoom and WhatsApp conversations.

It all began here on this blog last July with the title “A manifesto for action.” It was the result of a request in the blog of June for “suggestions on how to relaunch a global movement for the culture of peace.” Two other Davids, David Wick and David Hazen, responded to the request and together we called for “taking up the Manifesto 2000 where it left off, renaming it the Manifesto 2025, gathering signatures once again and initiating action.”

With the invitation of Fred Arment of International Cities of Peace (ICP), we three Davids designed a course for the culture of peace, based on a new manifesto and it was published on the ICP website in September.

Where to go from there? We bounced around various ideas, but the key advance came from Dane Ramshaw, an informatics specialist and friend of David Hazen. Dane agreed to join our little team that was now meeting weekly in zoom conversations. He suggested that we rely on social media, and especially youth, to disseminate a manifesto. And he criticized the website that we had constructed, saying it was old-fashioned, suggesting that we ask youth for advice on how to make it more appealing.

We received almost 300 suggestions, mostly from youth, when we asked for advice. In response, a young activist from Brazil, Myrian Castello, joined our team and she designed our new homepage that was attractive as well as new logos and graphics.

We now had a nice website, but remained a small team with a small following.

I received an email from Alicia Cabezudo who had worked with me on the report during the UN International Decade for a Culture of Peace, 2001-2010. She comes from Argentina, but is working for peace in Colombia. She said she was stepping down from some of her responsiblities and she joined our team to provide a Latin American and Spanish perspective.

I received another email from an old friend, Toh Swee-Hin, that I knew from my work at UNESCO thirty years ago when he won the UNESCO prize for peace education. Swee-Hin said he wanted to devote his energies to the culture of peace, and I asked him to join our team. He came in along with his wife Virginia, and lists of former students, many of whom the two of them had taught when they were on the staff of the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica.

We contacted the former students of Swee-Hin and Virginia and most of them agreed to participate in our initiative. Two of them, Nawal Amjad from Pakistan and Munira Beisenbayeva from Kazakhstan joined our team as youth advisors, bringing new ideas and perspectives. They assisted the translation of the website into Urdu (Nawal) and Kazakh and Russian (Munira) while others helped with Chinese and Korean.

Time was passing, and we decided to launch the project on May 1. We needed partners of the Manifesto that would give weight to our announcement to go to the mass media. I contacted the Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire who had helped us with Manifesto 2000. Although weakened by a hunger strike to protest the genocide of Gaza, she gave us her support and engaged the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. Many other major peace and justice organizations joined our partner list, and this week we sent out press releases about this to progressive mass media around the world.

So here we are. The big day has arrived and the Peace Manifesto 2025 is launched into social media. I want to thank everyone who has contributed!

Reflecting about the way we have communicated, I think of the great classical and romantic composers of the 19th Century. They had their pianos to compose and their instruments to perform. What is the equivalent today? We have used emails, zoom and whatsapp conversations, and now more than anything else, the social media.

May they be the instruments of a grand orchestra that will bring us a culture of peace.

That would be the greatest music of all!

Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network.

5 May 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ann Garrison

23 Apr 2025 – Somalia’s recognition of SSC-Khaatumo as its sixth Federal Member State (FMS) has radically shifted the Horn of Africa’s geopolitical dynamics, with implications for Israel, Palestine, and Ansar Allah (“the Houthis”).

The geopolitical dynamics of the Horn of Africa region are always volatile, but more so now than ever. The world’s attention is most drawn to the region by Ansar Allah’s disruption of crucial maritime routes in the Red Sea in support of Palestine and Donald Trump’s despicable proposal to remove and dump the entire population of Gaza in war-torn Sudan, Somalia, and/or Somaliland, the unrecognized Somali secessionist state.

Both the US and Israel have considered recognizing secessionist Somaliland as a state in order to turn it into a US/Israeli military enclave on the Gulf of Aden, near the mouth of the Red Sea and just across from Houthi-controlled Yemen. However, on April 14, when the federal government recognized SSC-Khaatumo as Somalia’s sixth Federal Member State (FMS), the formal boundaries of the secessionist state radically shrank to roughly 45% of what was the former British Somaliland. What will Israel and/or the US recognize now? A Somaliland with its territory cut in two? There is also nationalist resistance in northwestern Somaliland, where the people of Awdal region want to be part of the Somali nation.

I spoke to Dr. Abdirahman M. Abdi Hashi , senior advisor to Abdiqadir Ahmed Aw-Ali , the leader of the new regional state of SSC-Khaatumo, about the implications of Somalia’s recognition of SSC-Khaatumo.

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original 

5 May 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- World Central Kitchen (WCK) has stopped cooking meals and baking bread in Gaza after running out of supplies. The group says Israeli border closures since early March have blocked food and fuel deliveries, making continued operations impossible.

Over the past 18 months, WCK served more than 130 million meals and baked 26 million loaves of bread in Gaza. Until recently, it was still producing 133,000 meals and 80,000 loaves each day, using alternative fuels like wood pallets and olive husk pellets to stretch its dwindling resources. But now, “we have reached the limits of what is possible,” WCK said in a statement.

The group’s two large field kitchens have shut down, and its mobile bakery — the last working bakery in Gaza — has no flour left. More than 80% of WCK-supported community kitchens have also stopped working due to a lack of food and fuel. Only water deliveries remain active where possible.

WCK says its trucks filled with food and fuel have been waiting at the Gaza border for over a month. More aid is ready to ship from Jordan and Egypt, but none of it can enter Gaza without Israeli approval. “Our pots may be empty, our cooking fires snuffed out — but World Central Kitchen will keep serving,” said founder José Andrés.

“The borders need to open,” said Wadhah Hubaishi, WCK’s Gaza Response Director. “If given full access, we could provide 500,000 meals a day to families in Gaza.”

The collapse of WCK’s operations comes amid a deliberate Israeli starvation campaign in Gaza. Israel’s total closure of border crossings since early March has choked off food, fuel, and water. Multiple other community kitchens and aid organizations have also announced they can no longer operate due to a lack of supplies.

8 May 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kathy Kelly

“We were so close,” Cassandra Dixon wrote, from Malta -where she had hoped to board Conscience, the aptly named Freedom Flotilla ship which two weaponized drones bombed on May 2, 2025, almost certainly launched by Israel. Cassandra had traveled to Malta after spending six weeks in Masafer Yatta, the West Bank region where, for two months, she lived among villagers whom local Israeli settlers constantly persecuted.

In a blog post entitled Hard Days in Masafer Yatta, Cassandra told of villagers stunned and bewildered by round after round of violent attacks. Vehicles torched, olive trees destroyed, wells poisoned. Settlers barged into homes, beating villagers who had been sound asleep. With their vehicles destroyed, villagers relied on a hostile Israeli military for transport to emergency rooms and intensive care units. The military would then arrest dozens of young villagers for indefinite detention without trial.

In a recent letter, Cassandra wrote about a man who lay on the ground, bleeding, after attacking settlers shot his leg. Soldiers chatted amiably with the settlers before finally arresting him, shackling him to a gurney, and taking him to an Israeli hospital where a surgeon amputated his leg.

During a 2023 sojourn among villagers in the south Hebron hills, a settler fractured Cassandra’s skull with a heavy stick. Not one to draw attention to herself, she persisted with a court case in hopes of building precedents to protect vulnerable Palestinians.

She and her companions aiming to reach Gaza insist on breaking the siege. Their effort to deliver food, fuel, medicine, tents, and water represents international sanity, a symbolic, challenging effort to nonviolently resist Israel’s savagery.

They long to reach Gaza’s shore with supplies for victims of Israeli bombardment, knowing the victims’ skin grafts will not heal without adequate nutrients. They want to help doctors in Gaza’s hospitals treat diabetes patients denied insulin by the Israeli blockade. They know the heart-wrenching consequences when hospitals lack cardiac catheters, blood pressure medicines, and potable water. They shudder when they hear reports of women fueling ovens with old sneakers, or Doctors Without Borders assessments that Gaza’s main desalination plant now produces potable water at only 10 percent of its former capacity.

“Chose life, that you and your descendants might live,” (Deuteronomy 30), speaks to their deepest values.

Urgently, onlookers must conscientiously choose between the rhetoric of unarmed peacemakers and the ugly threats of Israel’s leaders.

“They need to starve,” said Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu on May 6, 2025, speaking about Gaza to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. “If there are civilians who fear for their lives, they should go through the emigration plan” – (a term for ethnic cleansing into tent refugee cities).

“Whoever harms us will be harmed by us, sevenfold,” Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a May 5 statement, vastly understating the brutal disproportionality of Israel’s escalating regional violence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/world/middleeast/houthi-missile-tel-aviv-israel.html

In fact, Mr. Katz is securing deepened isolation for Israel, a country now surrounded by populations it has remorselessly bombed and bullied. With nuclear weapons bunkered at the Negev desert’s Shimon Peres Nuclear Research Center, among other locations, Israel’s defiance of international law incalculably intensifies the nuclear threat throughout its region and the world.

Now, lead Trump envoy Steve Witkoff hints at an upcoming expansion of the Abraham Accords, a set of bilateral treaties between Israel and U.S. allied autocracies which essentially serve as massive arms deals in exchange for normalization of relations with Israel. To date, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan have entered into these agreements which leave the issue of Palestinian safety and self-determination totally out of the picture. One by one, the Arab countries entering into the Abrahamic Accords abdicate meaningful solidarity with Palestine in exchange for economic deals and access to state-of-the-art U.S. weapons which they use to subjugate domestic dissent and engage in foreign wars.

Pressing forward with the Abraham Accords will embolden Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear technology from the United States. So far, Mohammad bin Salman has refused cooperation with UN oversight agencies, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has assured the world that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will also get them.

The Abraham Accords are not a peace deal: they represent a confederacy of killers.

Why should countries that have sown havoc and suffering throughout the region be exalted as brokers of peace? The nations of the world should be forging strong bonds to resist Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing by suspending Israel from the General Assembly, halting all weapon shipments to Israel, and ending all trade with illegal Israeli settlement industries. The United Nations Security Council should be invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter to set up a peace-keeping entity tasked with ensuring delivery of food and humanitarian aid to Palestinians now being starved by Israel.

President Trump and his envoy Steven Witkoff understand real estate transactions. Bludgeoning opponents, in their undereducated views, will lead to success. Hence, it seems the Abraham Accords will imminently be signed. These accords normalize Israel’s bloodthirsty refusal to acknowledge Palestinian human rights, including the right to live.

In contrast to the sluggish, dull response of the world’s political leaders, I think of Pope Francis, who, before his death, asked that the specific “Popemobile” he had used to criss-cross Palestine during his final visit there be turned into a mobile health clinic.

Rev. John Dear tells about French peace activists who sought Pope Francis’s advice, a few years ago. “Start a revolution,” Pope Francis responded. “Stir things up. The world is deaf. You have to open its ears.”

Last spring, a worldwide student movement for Gaza led us closer and closer to conversion, turning away from greed and fear, extending the hand of friendship to those who are most in need, telling the truth to, and about, the powerful, and exposing the sins of militarism.

In the Old Testament we are told that when Father Abraham had raised his arm, bearing a knife, to slay his son, Isaac, an angel appeared to him, saying “Do not lay a hand upon the boy.” In Wilfrid Owen’s interpretation of the story, the angel continues: “Behold, / a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; / Offer the ram of pride instead.”

This is the Abraham Accord that should be enacted, releasing all captives, making reparations for suffering caused, and vowing to end to all wars.

Kathy Kelly is board president of World BEYOND War. She has visited multiple war zones, including Gaza, and has been imprisoned in federal prison for protesting weapons and wars.

8 May 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

The situation in Gaza today starkly highlights Israeli exceptionalism. Israel is employing the starvation of two million Palestinians in the blockaded and devastated Gaza Strip as a tactic to extract political concessions from Palestinian groups operating there.

On April 23, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described the current humanitarian situation in Gaza as “the worst ever seen throughout the war”. Despite the severity of these pronouncements, they often appear to be treated as routine news, eliciting little concrete action or substantive discussion.

Israeli violations of international and humanitarian laws regarding its occupation of Palestine are well-established facts. A new dimension of exceptionalism is emerging, reflected in Israel’s ability to deliberately starve an entire population for an extended period, with some even defending this approach.

The Gaza population continues to endure immense suffering, having experienced the loss of approximately 10 percent of its overall numbers due to deaths, disappearances and injuries. They are confined to a small, largely destroyed area of about 365 square kilometers, facing deaths from treatable diseases and lacking access to essential services, and even clean water.

Despite these conditions, Israel continues to operate with impunity in what seems to be a brutal and protracted experiment, while much of the world observes with varying degrees of anger, helplessness, or total disregard.

The question of the international community’s role remains central. While enforcing international law is one aspect, exerting the necessary pressure to allow a population facing starvation access to basic necessities like food and water, is another. For the people of Gaza, even these fundamental needs now seem unattainable after decades of diminished expectations.

During public hearings in The Hague starting on April 28, representatives from many nations appealed to the International Court of Justice to utilize its authority as the highest court to mandate that Israel cease the starvation of Palestinians.

Israel “may not collectively punish the protected Palestinian people,” stated the South African representative, Jaymion Hendricks. The Saudi envoy, Mohammed Saud Alnasser, added that Israel had transformed the Gaza Strip into an “unlivable pile of rubble, while killing thousands of innocent and vulnerable people.”

Representatives from China, Egypt, Algeria, South Africa, and other nations echoed these sentiments, aligning with the assessment of Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, who stated, last March, that Israel is employing a strategy of “weaponization of humanitarian aid”.

However, the assertion that the weaponization of food is a deliberate Israeli tactic requires no external proof; Israel itself declared it. The then Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, publicly announced a “complete siege” on Gaza on October 9, 2023, just two days after the start of the genocidal war.

Gallant’s statement – “We are imposing a complete siege on (Gaza). No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly” – was not an impulsive outburst but a policy rooted in dehumanizing rhetoric and implemented with extreme violence.

This “acting accordingly” extended beyond closing border crossings and obstructing aid deliveries. Even when aid was permitted, Israeli forces targeted desperate civilians, including children, who gathered to receive supplies, bombing them along with the aid trucks. A particularly devastating incident occurred on February 29, 2024, in Gaza City, where reports indicated that Israeli fire killed 112 Palestinians and injured 750 more.

This event was the first of what became known as the “Flour Massacres”. Subsequent similar incidents took place, and, in between these events, Israel continued to bomb bakeries, aid storage facilities, and aid distribution volunteers. The intention was to starve Palestinians to a degree that would allow for coercive bargaining and potentially lead to the ethnic cleansing of the population.

On April 1, an incident occurred where an Israeli military drone struck a convoy of the World Central Kitchen, resulting in the deaths of six international aid workers and their Palestinian driver. This event led to a significant departure of the remaining international aid workers from Gaza.

A few months later, starting in October 2024, northern Gaza was placed under a strict siege, with the aim of forcing the population south, potentially towards the Sinai desert. Despite these efforts and the resulting famine, the will of the Gazan population did not break. Instead, hundreds of thousands reportedly began returning to their destroyed homes and towns in the north.

When, on March 18, Israel reneged on a ceasefire agreement that followed extensive negotiations, it once again resorted to starvation as a weapon. There was little consequence or strong condemnation from Western governments regarding Israel’s return to the war and to the starvation policies.

“Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” is classified as a war crime under international law, explicitly stated in the Rome Statute. However, the relevance of such legal frameworks is questioned when those who advocate for and consider themselves guardians of these laws fail to uphold or enforce them.

The inaction of the international community during this period of immense human suffering has significantly undermined the relevance of international law. The potential consequences of this failure to act are grave, extending beyond the Palestinian people to impact humanity as a whole.

Despite this, hope persists that fundamental human compassion, separate from legal frameworks, will compel the provision of essential supplies like flour, sugar, and water to Gaza. The inability to ensure this basic aid will profoundly question our shared humanity for years to come.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

8 May 2025

Source: countercurrents.org