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By Ranjan Solomon

The BRICS consortium—once dismissed as a loose association of emerging economies—has begun to evolve into one of the most consequential forces of the 21st century. With the Cross-Border Interbank Payments System (CIPS) now spread across 185 countries, allowing global trade in Chinese yuan without touching the U.S. dollar, the signs are unmistakable: the monopoly of Western-led finance is beginning to crack (New Development Bank data, 2025).

For years, the dollar served as both the lubricant and leash of global power. It gave the United States the capacity to sanction, to punish, and to dictate terms to the Global South under the guise of stability. Today, that monopoly is eroding. The **BRICS alliance—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now joined by others including Egypt, Iran, and the UAE—**is reshaping not only the architecture of trade but also the moral geography of global power (Reuters, Oct 2024).

A shift away from the dollar

CIPS, created by China in 2015, is rapidly becoming the nervous system of an emerging non-Western economy. It allows countries to settle trade in local currencies, bypassing the dollar and, by extension, U.S. surveillance and sanctions. The system now links financial institutions across 185 countries—an astonishing expansion that signals a new confidence in the yuan and in the idea of a multi-currency world (Carnegie Endowment, 2025).

This “de-dollarisation” movement is not an act of rebellion; it is self-defence. After decades of dollar dominance, developing countries have learned that the global financial order can be weaponised at will—whether through sanctions, exclusion from SWIFT, or the manipulation of credit ratings. BRICS offers an escape hatch from that coercion (The Guardian, Aug 2023).

The New Development Bank (NDB), headquartered in Shanghai, has further institutionalised this autonomy. By financing infrastructure and development projects without the political strings typical of Western lenders, it gives nations the freedom to borrow and build without being lectured on governance or ideology (NDB Annual Report, 2024).

A multipolar future

BRICS is not just a trading bloc. Rather, it represents a renewed worldview. Its guiding principle is multipolarity: the belief that no single nation should dominate the world’s political and economic life. In this respect, BRICS challenges not only the West’s power but its very idea of what “order” means.

The bloc’s expansion into West Asia and Africa symbolises a profound geopolitical shift. The admission of oil powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran indicates that even the traditional pillars of U.S. influence are recalibrating their loyalties (The National, 2023). Africa, long treated as a pawn in the global chessboard, now finds in BRICS a forum that listens rather than dictates.

For the West, this is unsettling. It means the G7 is no longer the only table that matters. For the Global South, it is liberating—a chance to redefine what development, democracy, and sovereignty might mean on our own terms.

Scenarios for the decade ahead

1. The Best-Case Scenario: The Rise of Equitable Multipolarity

In the most optimistic vision, BRICS succeeds in institutionalising financial cooperation through an expanded CIPS, a BRICS currency for settlements, and a strengthened NDB. Global trade becomes less dollar-dependent, reducing vulnerability to Western sanctions. Regional powers—India, Brazil, South Africa—gain voice in shaping global climate and development policy (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2024).

2. The Middle Path: Parallel Systems, Uneasy Coexistence

In a more probable outcome, BRICS evolves into a robust but fragmented alternative. It builds an impressive financial ecosystem, but internal rivalries—China’s dominance, India’s cautious approach, Russia’s isolation—limit coherence. The global economy becomes bifurcated: one network led by the U.S. and Europe, another by BRICS.

3. The Worst-Case Scenario: Fragmentation and Financial Warfare

The dark possibility is that de-dollarisation turns into confrontation. Western powers retaliate through secondary sanctions, protectionist trade laws, and military posturing. CIPS and SWIFT become symbols of two rival camps, echoing a digital-age Cold War (Financial Times, 2024).

If that happens, countries like India could find themselves trapped between systems, forced to choose sides. Smaller economies could suffer from volatility and reduced access to global finance. The global commons—climate, peace, and poverty reduction—would suffer as great powers lock horns over financial supremacy.

The India factor

India stands at the crossroads of these futures. Its economy is large enough to be indispensable, yet still vulnerable to external shocks. As part of BRICS, India gains access to alternative finance and markets across Africa, Latin America, and Eurasia. But it must tread carefully.

China’s leadership within BRICS remains a double-edged sword. While Beijing’s economic heft fuels the bloc’s rise, it also risks turning the coalition into a Chinese sphere of influence. India’s task is to ensure BRICS remains a truly multilateral platform—one that amplifies rather than subordinates the voices of the Global South.

New Delhi’s diplomatic tightrope will be to deepen cooperation within BRICS without alienating its partners in the West. That balance is not impossible. In fact, it may define the future of India’s global stature—its ability to bridge worlds rather than be trapped between them.

A new moral geography

Beyond economics and diplomacy, BRICS represents a moral reordering. It challenges the assumption that development must follow the Western path or that democracy has a single model. It calls out the hypocrisy of nations that preach equality while perpetuating economic hierarchies.

But power can corrupt any side. The moral legitimacy of BRICS will depend on whether it upholds fairness, transparency, and justice within its own ranks. If it merely reproduces old patterns under new flags, it will be a disappointment.

The hard truth

The world is undergoing a quiet revolution. Power is dispersing. The monopoly of the West—built on centuries of financial control—is being contested by a new coalition that seeks dignity, not dominance. Whether this becomes a more just order or merely another empire in disguise will depend on how nations use this moment.

BRICS is no magic solution. It is, at best, a new architecture under construction—one that might finally give the Global South a say in the design of its own future.

For now, what we are witnessing is not just economic diversification. It is the return of history itself—the struggle of nations to reclaim agency from the few who long monopolised it.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator on democracy, decolonisation, and global justice.

29 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Sean Reynolds

In light of tomorrow’s “No Kings” protests, which will undoubtedly fail to sanction President Trump’s moves toward war in Iran and Venezuela, I wrote up these notes for a peace group I work with on a recent interview I conducted for Iran’s PressTV. I was interviewed by journalist Ramin Mazaheri, all three of whose brilliant and vexing books I’d actually read before my first hint of personally encountering him. I didn’t have much space to bring in the left-right divide so obsessing the West, but it got in regardless.

In finally produced segment I was glad to hear back my wry comment that forever wars are anathema to Trump’s base “and hopefully the Democratic base as well!” since at tomorrow’s “No Kings” rallies, if my previous experience is any guide, I expect to encounter not the slightest antiwar (or antigenocide!) message outside a scattering of signs brought out by a few attendees, unasked.

My banner, tomorrow in Chicago, will read “Our War Money Kills Ukraine, Not One Penny More.” I’ll be standing outside of the rally. Were it a Republican shindig I’d focus on Gaza, since it’s the growing antizionist trend among young conservatives, not liberals, which seems capable of turning the Defund Israel demand from an urbane fashion gesture into a movement likely to really spare Palestinian lives, beyond sparing our entire world the dangers of a U.S.-Iran war. But for a Dem rally it’s the comparably apocalyptic horror which my parents’ generation rightly deemed unthinkable – the liberal-embraced adventure of a NATO-Russia hot war – on which I’ll want to focus precisely in hopes of mitigating the Iran and Venezuela conflicts.

I was glad the piece included my copious mockery of the lesser-evil Presidential option for whom, last November, so many anti-war voters concerned over Ukraine grimly voted. Humanitarians are few and far between even in ordinary life, and it’s long since serious empathy has survived any Democrat’s or Republican’s rise to the highest public office. Trump is, at least, a cynical con man and not a true-believing neocon: a self-devoted opportunist and not a future-focused fanatic intent on stamping our remarkably conservative planet with corporate-technocratic Western-sourced templates.

I didn’t lie observing that Trump prefers to attempt the assassination of rival leaders, often under cover of peace talks (as with Iran last June) seeking to avoid the protracted wars he knows he would find so burdensome to manage. After which it’s TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out and a rushed declaration of peace to get Trump next year’s prize; as if in the leadership of a nuclear-armed global pariah, timidity wasn’t a thing to be welcomed. Trump seems sincerely to fear dying in a nuclear war: for those of us whose obsessing moral commitment is to avoid killing in one, it’s hard to see the Cheeto’s lack of courage as a downside.

Trump seems correspondingly inclined to retreat into our hemisphere from potentially nuclear conflicts in the other, savaging neighbors like Venezuela and even deploying forces within the U.S. so as to seem tough without completing the apocalypse scripted for him in Eurasia. His voting base, without a doubt, fears both tyranny and civil war, and will tolerate talk of domestic troop deployments mostly in what seems to them, as the Jan 6th protests seemed, a defense of democracy rather than an attack upon it.

Tomorrow’s Chicago rally will focus on the few hundred National Guardsmen Trump has sent onto Chicago streets in support of a set of nationally popular federal laws that Trump’s base considers it wrong for the wealthier states to nullify. Liberals are right to lament the terrible suffering now facing decent and hard-working neighbors illegally here, and many full citizens caught up in the chaos besides. Conservatives consider the citizenship bond to be an indispensible contract that is much like a labor contract in there tragically needing to be stern penalties for the otherwise justly pitied (because so often desperate) willing to work outside of it.

At tomorrow’s rally many will be satisfied with self-pronouncements that tighter borders, by restricting the laissez-faire global flow of cheap labor, constitute fascism itself; whereas others will fear the brutality, and the future fascist danger, of using troops untrained in policing to enforce laws which America’s metropolitan wealth centers are making a bid, against the “fascist” preferences of the electorate, to block from being enforced.

I’ll be focused on antiwar, and praying that the Orange Narcissist, although pressured by bipartisan neocon fanatics to remake the world in America’s and Europe’s image, will for his own typically dingy reasons and to humor antiwar cries sometimes sounding loudest from his own base, sate bloodthirsty Washington with bluster, trolling, a mix of real and staged idiocy, and the bare minimum of actual gore allowed to the president of such a violently narcissist imperial nation.

I pray that, instead of Obama’s “kill list” updated weekly over years, Trump will stop at the grisly trophy of several score poor fishermen brutally murdered off the Venezuelan coast, and several score ethnically Venezuelan U.S. citizens sent – I can only pray, briefly – to the new Guantanamo prison bays we are renting in El Salvador.

I will hope that my Ukraine banner, in countering insane calls for a desperate, speciescidal grab for dominance in Eastern Europe, will be giving the Monster space to make a smaller murder-pageant of his Iran and Venezuela wars-in-preparation. I will remember the liberals’ Honduras coup and the unanswerable fact that martyred labor leader Berta Caceres didn’t want to come here and sample our ‘antiracist’ largesse. I’ll carry it against the longed-for day when, with the Petrodollar a distant memory, the entire Global South is at last wealthy enough, relative to a reduced and profitably chastened West, to turn us away from its well-appointed (and sufficiently well-armed) gates, without getting called “fascist” for its trouble.

I can’t have a conscience cleansed of the blood of empire until there can be a left-and-right movement against war, against actual fascism like that of present-day Kyiv and Tel Aviv, and against the Lovecraft-blasphemous American nuclear arsenal, our obscene ambitious gamble with Every Genocide Committed at Once. I can’t be throwing the word “fascist” around at global or domestic majorities, may liberals and conservatives both forgive me – and forgive me long enough to unite behind a world where countries like Venezuela can retain elected leaders not cynically ousted as ‘Kings’ by Western elites; where a very conservative species is spared from how fascism’s birthplace, the inventive, liberal, world-consuming West, has so long been tempted to rule.

Sean Reynolds travelled to Iran in 2019 as a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

18 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

As the ceasefire between Israel and the resistance enters its second week, a new dispute has erupted; this time over Israeli bodies buried by Israel beneath Gaza’s ruins.

Israel has threatened that it may resume the genocide if Hamas fails to find all Israeli bodies still missing in Gaza. The threat came even as US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday night that Hamas is “certainly searching” for the remains and that some are likely buried under the rubble of destroyed homes. Trump said he was “optimistic” the matter would be resolved, though Israeli officials continue to escalate.

But in Gaza, many Palestinians view this dispute with disbelief. While global headlines fixate on the fate of a few dead Israeli prisoners of war, over 9,000 Palestinian civilians remain missing under the rubble, their bodies unrecovered for months, with many of them buried alive, because Israel’s siege and bombardment destroyed the very tools and roads needed for rescue.

Israel’s carpet bombing of the Strip has not only killed tens of thousands of civilians but also buried its own captives beyond reach. What began as a campaign to “free Israeli prisoners” has left a landscape of mass graves, shattered hospitals, and impassable debris fields.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 170,000 injured since Israel’s genocide began on October 7, 2023. Thousands of others remain trapped under collapsed buildings, while civil defense and rescue teams lack heavy machinery, fuel, and safety equipment to dig through the destruction.

Rescue crews say even basic operations are impossible. Many areas are either under Israeli control or sealed off by bomb craters, and those who try to reach the ruins often work with bare hands.

Why Hamas Could Not Find All Israeli Bodies

Four main challenges stand in the way of retrieving the remaining Israeli bodies:

1. Massive destruction: Some of the bodies are believed to be buried under enormous piles of rubble created by Israel’s bombardment, requiring heavy machinery and advanced scanning technology.
2. Restricted access: Over half of Gaza remains under Israeli military control, leaving Palestinian teams unable to move freely or operate safely.
3. Lost information: Many resistance fighters who guarded or documented the captives’ locations were assassinated in Israeli strikes, taking vital information with them.
4. Fragmented control: Some captives were held by smaller Palestinian factions rather than Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, creating further uncertainty.
5. Israel’s blockade: Israel continues to block the entry of heavy machinery and bulldozers into the Gaza Strip, delaying efforts to recover the bodies of its own prisoners, who were killed by its intense bombardment of the enclave.

In addition, Gaza has no DNA testing capacity to identify decomposed remains. Laboratories equipped with PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technology are required to extract genetic material from decayed tissues, a process impossible under Israel’s blockade conditions.

Ceasefire Under Strain

Since the October 11 ceasefire began, the Ministry of Health has recorded 23 new Palestinian deaths and 122 injuries from Israeli violations. Civil defense crews have recovered 381 new bodies from beneath the rubble, while Israel has handed back 120 unidentified Palestinian bodies it had kidnapped.

Hamas has so far returned 10 of 28 Israeli bodies listed in the ceasefire agreement. The rest, the group says, are “buried too deep for current teams to reach.”

US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steven Witkoff told The New York Post he remains confident that all Israeli remains “will eventually be returned,” echoing Trump’s optimism despite Israel’s growing incitement.

Observers say the Netanyahu government bears full responsibility for the delay. They note that Israel’s airstrikes obliterated both Palestinian neighborhoods and the underground sites where captives were held, making recovery physically impossible.

“The occupier created this reality,” Hamas said in a statement. “It destroyed the tunnels and homes where captives were located, and now blames others for the consequences of its own bombing.”

18 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- An Israeli tank fired directly at a civilian vehicle carrying the Shaaban family in Gaza’s Zaytoun neighborhood on Friday afternoon, killing all family members in yet another Israeli violation of the ongoing ceasefire agreement.

Gaza’s Civil Defense said the family was trying to return home when the tank shell hit their vehicle. The attack killed all 11 passengers, including seven children and three women.

The victims were identified as:

Children:

• Mohammad Abu Shaaban, 5
• Ibrahim Ihab Abu Shaaban, 6
• Anas Sufian Shaaban, 8
• Karam Sufian Shaaban, 10
• Jumana Ihab Shaaban, 10
• Nasma Sufian Shaaban, 12
• Nasser Ihab Abu Shaaban, 13

Parents and relatives:

• Ihab Abu Shaaban, 38
• Randa Abu Shaaban, 36
• Samar Shaaban
• Sufian Shaaban

Civil Defense officials said the family’s vehicle had moved east of Gaza City and crossed the yellow line before being struck. “It was possible to warn them or stop them without killing,” a Civil Defense spokesperson said. “But the occupation remains thirsty for blood and determined to kill innocent civilians.”

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the strike, calling it “a deliberate and complete war crime” and a “blatant violation of the ceasefire.”

“The Israeli army fired a tank shell directly at the Shaaban family’s vehicle as they tried to inspect their home in Zaytoun,” the statement read. “Eleven family members, including seven children and three women, were killed instantly.”

Hamas said the attack reflects Israel’s intent to continue its aggression despite the US-supervised ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey earlier this month.

“This horrific crime exposes Israel’s disregard for human life and international law,” the statement said. Hamas urged President Donald Trump and the mediators to hold Israel accountable and pressure it to stop targeting civilians.

The Government Media Office also condemned the strike, describing it as another massacre against defenseless families. It called for an urgent international investigation into Israel’s repeated violations of the ceasefire.

Since October 2023, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed about 70,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 170,000, mostly women and children.

18 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Franklin Frederick

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Maria Corina Machado, a choice that once again demonstrates the European ruling class’s profound contempt for democracy. It is important to remember that the prestigious Sakharov Prize for 2024 had already been awarded to Venezuela’s far right. This prize is awarded by the European Parliament, according to its website:

The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought

“Each year Parliament awards the Sakharov Prize, including a monetary award of €50,000, to honour and support exceptional individuals and organisations defending human rights, democracy and fundamental freedoms.

The prize, launched in 1988, is named after Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet nuclear physicist and a strong defender of democracy and human rights. He won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise awareness to the dangers of the nuclear arms race.”

“The European Parliament awarded the 2024 Sakharov Prize for the Freedom of Thought to María Corina Machado as the leader of the democratic forces in Venezuela and President-elect Edmundo González Urrutia, representing all Venezuelans inside and outside the country fighting for the re-institution of freedom and democracy.

“This award is not just a recognition but also a reminder that the fight for freedom is never in vain. The future of Venezuela belongs to its people and the European Parliament stands proudly with them,” said Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament.”

The committee responsible for the Nobel Peace Prize justified its choice of Maria Corina Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

The committee also reports:

“Ms. Machado has been a key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided – an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government. This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy: our shared willingness to defend the principles of popular rule, even though we disagree. “ (…)

Venezuela’s authoritarian regime makes political work extremely difficult. As a founder of Súmate, an organisation devoted to democratic development, Ms. Machado stood up for free and fair elections more than 20 years ago. As she said: “It was a choice of ballots over bullets.” In political office and in her service to organisations since then, Ms. Machado has spoken out for judicial independence, human rights and popular representation. She has spent years working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people.

Ahead of the election of 2024, Ms. Machado was the opposition’s presidential candidate, but the regime blocked her candidacy. She then backed the representative of a different party, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, in the election. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers mobilised across political divides.»

What both the European Parliament and the Nobel Peace Prize committee are trying to do is legitimize the Venezuelan far right as a “democratic” force and consequently reinforce the narrative of President Maduro’s “dictatorial” government. They act as instruments of the European ruling class and its interests. Information about Maria Corina Machado really is widely available, if the European Parliament and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee were truly interested in defending democracy.

Regarding the 2024 election, a public opinion poll conducted in Venezuela reports the following:

“María Corina Machado’s role as leader of the far-right opposition has been rejected by 64.6% of Venezuelans, according to a study conducted by polling company Datanálisis.

With these disapproval ratings, María Corina Machado is 10 points below her previous overall popularity rating, reflecting a decline in public perception of her leadership, which has been characterized by adherence to the US political agenda and refusal to participate in the dialogue process promoted by the Venezuelan government.” (1)

And among many other articles published in various countries, I also cite this one published in Argentina:

“The violence of the right wing, which shows its true colors, generates widespread revulsion among the population, and this revulsion has certainly been the most important reason why the Venezuelan people did not elect them in times of scarcity, miserable wages, power cuts, gas shortages, preventable deaths due to lack of medicine, international blockades and sanctions, but also due to government mistakes. It was the racist and classist violence of the right wing that motivated that phrase so often heard in Venezuela over the last 10 years: We are suffering, but we do not want those who governed us before to return. María Corina Machado is the most genuine representative of this violence, as she is a white leader from an oligarchic family and has been linked to all the conspiracies, acts of vandalism, and guarimbas that have killed hundreds of Venezuelans. She represents the sector of the opposition that never wanted to run in elections and tried to violently remove Maduro from office. (2)

An important chronology of the violence perpetrated by the Venezuelan far right and published in Venezuela, ends with the following information:

“July 28 to August 3, 2024. Reelection of President Maduro. María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia again alleged electoral fraud and called for protests that resulted in an escalation of violence and destructive chaos, in a context of insurrection with criminal elements and coup tendencies. With a toll of 25 dead and 131 injured, most of the events were concentrated in the Capital District and the state of Aragua; 76.2% of the incidents occurred in the context of violent demonstrations, which were planned and organized, both the events themselves and their unfortunate consequences. Public and private property was destroyed, including educational and health facilities.” (3)

Recently, renowned Latin American political expert Dr. Francisco Dominguez wrote:

“In late 2024, Prince, a professional mercenary, alongside Venezuela’s far right, promoted a plan to deploy a private army to Venezuela. He suggested that if the US raised the bounty on Maduro’s head to $100 million, targeting not only the president but also Diosdado Cabello and the entire government, they could “just sit back and wait for the magic to happen.” Prince and Venezuela’s far right even launched a crowdfunding campaign, Ya Casi Venezuela (“Almost There, Venezuela”), to collect the $100 million. (…)

 On January 12 2025, Prince sent a message of support to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, urging her to “stay resolute.”

Prince had pushed for the bounty to be raised to $100m, but when the Biden administration ignored him, he secured backing from Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, who share his objectives. On September 20 2024, Scott and Rubio introduced the Securing Timely Opportunities for Payment and Maximising Awards for Detaining Unlawful Regime Officials Act of 2024 (the STOP Maduro Act), allocating $100m — taken from seized Venezuelan assets — to fund Prince’s efforts to depose Maduro.”

Long before all this, in 2014, a group of researchers, parliamentarians, and scholars, including Jeremy Corbyn, Dr. Francisco Dominguez, Ken Loach, and John Pilger, among others, signed a letter published by The Guardian newspaper in which they stated:

“We deplore the wave of violence from minority and extremist sections of Venezuela’s opposition, that left three dead, 60 injured and saw physical assaults on government institutions, including shots and Molotov cocktails attacks on the state TV channel and a state governor’s residency. This followed a recently launched campaign by Venezuela’s extreme right for La Salida (the ousting) of the government of President Maduro before his constitutional mandate ends in 2019. La Salida is led by extremist politicians Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado, who were both implicated in the 2002 coup in Venezuela. This is not the first time that the sections of the opposition have sought to oust the elected government by unconstitutional means, having lost at the ballot box.”(4)

Even more serious is this information, published on May 28, 2024 (5):

“Today, opposition member María Corina Machado, better known as La Sayona, who is traveling around the country asking Venezuelans to vote for the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, is the same person who in 2018 sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Argentine President Mauricio Macri calling for an attack on Venezuela under the banner of ‘regime change.’ “

“On her social media account, the opposition justifies the use of force against Venezuela based on false arguments related to drug trafficking and terrorism, which supposedly represented a ‘real threat to other countries, including, and especially, Israel.’”

I am convinced that the international community, in accordance with the doctrine of responsibility to protect, is called upon to give Venezuelans the support they need to promote urgent regime change, with a view to restoring national and international security. For this reason, I recently sent letters to several world leaders with the aim of promoting, before the United Nations Security Council, the adoption of effective measures to protect Venezuela through the promotion of regime change, a measure that necessarily implies a strengthening of international security. Today, I want to ask Israel and Argentina to contribute their experience and influence to move toward a precise and urgent decision-making process in the Security Council,” was La Sayona’s request for foreign troops to mine Venezuelan territory.

“For this reason, this sector of the Venezuelan opposition remained complicitly silent when plans were revealed that the Argentine army had contemplated in 2019 against Venezuela during Macri’s term, which would be carried out under the justification of humanitarian reasons.”

“That is why, even today, sectors of the Venezuelan far right do not condemn the massacre that Israel is perpetrating against the Palestinian people, as they are the same people who called for an invasion of Venezuela a few years ago, solely because of their ambitions to come to power and promote ‘regime change’.”

The European Parliament and the Nobel Peace Prize committee can hardly ignore all this information. Nor should they have ignored this interesting meeting that took place this year in Europe and was widely publicized:

“Convening under the banner of “Patriots for Europe”, two months ago the European extreme right met in Madrid, bringing political leaders of the Trumpist current together like some budget, fascist Avengers. Marching under the flags of ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and neo-fascism, representatives from France, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Austria, Estonia, Greece, and Poland were hosted by Santiago Abascal of Spain’s Vox on February 8.

“In addition to the often-repeated “Make Europe Great Again,” the summit’s other prominent slogan was Reconquista, an ideologically charged term referencing the European military and cultural efforts to expel Islamic influence, culminating in the late 15th century. Viewed by its supporters as a victory for Christianity, the Reconquista involved the forced conversion of Muslims and the expulsion of Jews, while coinciding with the onset of Spanish colonisation in the Caribbean and the Americas.

And while it’s easy to see why the slogan is used by a European ultra-right obsessed with reclaiming its colonialist past and expelling the ‘infidels’ from Europe, the presence of right-wingers from Venezuela and Israel seems less natural. But Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and the Israeli Likud party took part in it, and present themselves as frontline fighters of the same Western civilisational battle. “

But the Nobel Peace Prize committee is right when it says that democracy is under threat,  since both the committee itself and the European Parliament are joining forces to defend the international far right and defame the democratically elected government of Venezuela. And this at a time when genocide is taking place in Palestine, arrogantly ignored by the European champions of democracy.

When Alfred Nobel established the prize that bears his name, he decided that the Nobel Peace Prize would be awarded by a committee based in Norway, not Sweden, like all the others. He could not have foreseen some strange events involving peaceful and developed Norway:

“The Norwegian Oil Fund, officially known as the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, holding assets worth more than $2 trillion.

Built on the windfalls from Norway’s decades-old oil and gas industry, its scale dwarfs that of equivalent funds such as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, or the Kuwait Investment Authority, each of which holds assets worth around $1 trillion.

Its current investments include more than £20bn ($26bn) in shares in 49 of the world’s top 100 arms companies, the majority of which are either directly or indirectly supplying Israel.” (8)

Could this have influenced the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee?

Coincidentally, Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world, and European and US oil companies are eager to get their hands on these resources, which the Venezuelan government—blasphemy! —uses for the benefit of the Venezuelan people! Thus, the European Parliament and the Nobel Committee join Israel in defending “democracy.”

We can no longer have any illusions. What the Nobel Committee and the European Parliament want for the Global South is a return to colonial status—that is the “democracy” they defend, the “democracy” of white supremacy and its brutality.

Meanwhile, US forces are preparing to invade Venezuela, a military invasion now sanctioned by the Nobel Prize. The European “democracies” and their allies have failed to seize Ukraine’s wealth, and they have equally failed in their attempt to seize Iran’s natural resources. Now it is Venezuela’s turn.

Throughout the Global South and in Palestine, however, resistance against white supremacy and the neocolonial order is rising. And it is not the pathetic and desperate European Parliament or the Nobel Prize committee with its ridiculous decisions that will change that. History is moving in another direction, and the future does not lie in Europe.

Franklin Frederick is a Brazilian writer and political activist

14 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Azmat Ali

Today, Palestine stands at a stark crossroads: devastation and dignity, loss and light. The ongoing genocide in Gaza continues, carried out by Israel, yet Palestinians across the world, in science and culture, continue to win global recognition. Their recognition by prestigious institutions marks their resilience and identity. This sends a strong message to those who seek to erase the identity of Palestine: the movement is alive, and righteousness prevails.

On 8 October 2025, Palestinian-American scientist Omar Yaghi, along with Susumu Kitagawa (Japan) and Richard Robson (Australia), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the development of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). Born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan, Yaghi recalls his childhood memories:

“I grew up in a very humble home. There were dozens of us in one small room, sharing it with the cattle we used to raise. I was born into a family of refugees, and my parents could barely read or write. So it’s quite a journey—and science allows you to do it. Science is the greatest equalising force in the world. Smart people, talented people, and skilled people exist everywhere. That’s why we should really focus on unleashing their potential.”

His work symbolises the power of knowledge rising above ruin and destruction.

In August 2025, a different kind of spotlight shone on 27-year-old Palestinian model Nadeen Ayoub, who announced her participation in Miss Universe 2025. Her appearance was more than pageantry; it was a representation of Palestinian identity. In an interview with The New Arab, she spoke about Gaza’s suffering and the resilience of Palestinian women and children. “We don’t just want to survive—we need to thrive,” she said. She urged the world not to remain silent about Gaza’s suffering but to raise its voice against it. She further added: “And when I say beauty, I don’t just mean physical beauty—I mean the beauty of our nation and our culture.”

Another moment of triumph came when the Israeli–Palestinian documentary No Other Land won the Oscar for Best Documentary. It chronicled the ongoing expulsion of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta. Its directors—Hamdan Ballal, Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor—worked across occupation lines, risking censorship and violence to tell a story of land, loss and belonging. Their win transformed testimony into a global platform and added another chapter to Palestinian resilience in the face of Israel’s genocide.

Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza City in an attempt to erase the land and Palestinian identity. More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed, 92 per cent of homes have been damaged or destroyed, and millions have been displaced since October 2023. The UN has declared a famine in Gaza, gripping nearly the entire population, with almost one-third facing catastrophic starvation. Schools, hospitals and cultural centres lie in ruins.

In September, the independent UN Human Rights Commission concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza—a verdict echoing through global forums. Earlier, Amnesty International, Scholars on Genocide, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel reached similar conclusions. In response, diplomats from 142 UN member states have expressed support for the recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state, a permanent ceasefire and a peaceful Middle East. Meanwhile, the proposed “Trump 20-Point Peace Plan” for Gaza now circulates as a tentative blueprint for reconstruction—fragile yet potentially transformative.

Still, life pulses through Gaza’s ruins. Youth volunteers organise community aid; artists paint on shattered walls; children write poems on UN flour bags. “Even under the rubble,” one young painter said, “we paint our history.” From street murals to online galleries, creativity becomes survival. Each brushstroke resists erasure; each word rebuilds memory.

Here, the spirit of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts finds a new meaning. Ibsen warned that silence breeds decay—that the sins we conceal will one day speak. Gaza’s generation refuses that silence. They inherit trauma but translate it into defiance. Their inheritance is not disease, as in Ibsen’s play, but endurance. From the Nobel Prize to pageant stages, from refugee camps to digital screens, Palestinians are turning their ghosts into resistance and resilience.

In a world that once spoke about them, they now speak for themselves. Their message is simple and unbroken: we exist, we create, we win.

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

14 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ellen Isaacs 

As Israeli forces withdrew back from central Gaza, while continuing to occupy 53% of the territory, they gleefully torched homes and the last remaining sanitation plant in Gaza City. There will now be no source of potable water for Gazans attempting to return to their destroyed homes. 1 Gazans will still have to live in tents as 90% of structures are leveled. The sick and injured will not be able to receive anything approaching adequate health care in the destroyed and unsupplied hospitals. Food, water and medicine will long be difficult to access. Indeed, nearly all surviving Gazans are debilitated, ill and/or psychologically devastated, and nothing approaching their need for rehabilitation is available.

Why is this respite even happening now? It’s hard to be sure, but it likely has to do with Netanyahu bombing Qatar, which is so dear to Trump. Not only did Qatar give him his big beautiful (old) new plane, but they just agreed to build a new Trump golf course there and to $243.5 billion in deals.2 Qatar is also the site of the headquarters of US Central Command, which directs military operations across 21 countries, and recently agreed to build a training facility in Idaho for their pilots.3 All this on top of the growing worldwide hatred of Israel, bringing antagonism to the US along with it, was enough for Trump to order Netanyahu to stop his atrocities. Not give up ruling Palestine, just cool it.

Even as Hamas returned all the living hostages and bodies of many of the deceased, Israel began to release only 2000 of the 11,000 prisoners it holds, most without charges. Most of those prisoners have been severely mistreated, and many can expect to be soon re-arrested, as during the previous releases. As Israelis wildly celebrate the return of their captives, Palestinians have been forbidden to celebrate at all or face arrest. This alone makes it clear that there is no liberation involved in this settlement.

What is definite is that the occupation and oppression of Palestinians will not end. The wall around the West Bank and Gaza will remain. The occupation by Israeli soldiers, the check points, the military court system, the surveillance will remain throughout Palestine. All that may be new is that imperialists like the US and their wealthy autocratic allies in the Middle East – Qatar, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia – will have more direct access to Gaza in order to exploit its land and location. The fact remains that near 80% of the world’s fossil fuel resources they value so much are in the Middle East and cannot be ceded. There is no indication that Israel has in any way changed its goal of taking over all of Palestine and getting rid of Palestinians by death or displacement (see https://multiracialunity.org/2023/12/07/ethnic-cleansing-was-always-the-zionist-plan/).

We do not know if Hamas plans to disarm as Israel demands, but we doubt it. Thus Israel may seize upon this or many other issues to restart its war of annihilation. Even if hostilities do not begin again, we do not know if the imperialist-run Board of Peace will allow any Palestinians, including the Palestinian Authority (PA), to play any role in Gaza. But neither the PA nor Hamas has anything to offer Palestinian workers in any case. They both have exploited and abused Palestinian workers to enrich themselves and ensconce themselves in power without regard to the wellbeing of their citizenry. We do not know if the capitalist powers of the world will continue to pay lip service to the idea of a Palestinian state, but we do know that such an entity is impossible in an occupied, disempowered, scattered and impoverished land. In fact, this mythological concept has simply served as pretense of righteousness for those very governments that continued to arm Israel and tolerate genocide.

There is no hope for the workers of Palestine – or for the workers of Sudan, Congo, El Salvador, even Israel and the US, all the world – unless a class conscious, anti-capitalist, anti-nationalist movement can be born out of the ashes. The world is moving closer to much larger and more devastating war between the competing capitalists of the US and China and their allies. The world is experiencing accelerating climate change that threatens all of our existence. Fascism is rapidly advancing even in the most liberal “democracies” like the US and Britain as capitalists’ profits and power fade. Revolutionary system change may not be on the near horizon, but it is critical. Let us start planning to get rid of capitalism and imperialism now, everywhere. Let us start envisioning a world run by and for workers.

1. https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-idf-soldiers-set-fire-food-homes-sewage-treatment-plan-after-ceasefire-announced
2. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-historic-1-2-trillion-economic-commitment-in-qatar/
3. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-qatar-air-force-facility-us-base-idaho/

Ellen Isaacs is a physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org. 

14 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Depending on which source you consult, the twenty-point peace plan of President Donald Trump for securing peace in Gaza shows much exultance and extravagant omission.  The exultance was initially focused on the return of the hostages.  It then shifted to the broader strategic goals of the various parties.  Commentary on this point, even as the living Israeli hostages convalescence after their exchange for Palestinian detainees, sidesteps the Palestinian people, those fly in the ointment irritants who never seem to exit the political scene. 

The peace plan, in effect, is being executed to eliminate Hamas and any semblance of a Palestinian militant movement in favour of an Israel-Arab-US axis of preferment and normalisation.  Doing so puts a firm lid on Palestinian sovereignty and statehood in favour of sounder relations between Israel and the Arab states. 

Consider, for instance, the views from the American Jewish Committee in their October 10 assessment. “President Trump’s unconventional approach created new diplomatic realities and forced Israel and key Arab states to align in new ways.”  The peace plan was “the most credible framework to date for advancing Israeli-Arab peace, creating new opportunities for regional engagement, and countering Hamas’ ideology through a united alliance of Israel and Arab nations committed to peace, security, and prosperity.”  Clearly, Palestinians are, if not footnotes, then invisible ink lines in such arrangements.

This attitude is also echoed in remarks made by the US Vice President, J.D. Vance.  Palestinian subservience is assumed in any new proposed arrangement which prioritises Israeli security and a collective of overseeing nation states that will guard against any mischief in the Strip.  “The President convinced the entire Muslim world really, both the Gulf Arab states, but as far as South-East Asia as Indonesia, to really step up and provide ground troops so that Gaza could be secured in safety.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty gave some sense of what is expected.  “We are going to support and commit troops within specific parameters,” he told CBS.  A UN Security Council mandate would be required, along with clear specifications for what the mission of the troops on the ground would be, “which will be peacekeeping and providing training to Palestinian police.”

Trump’s near cinematic appearance on October 13 in the compact, claustrophobic Knesset after the handover of the hostages set the scene for Israeli grandstanding, staged mawkishness and denial.  Netanyahu was in typical form, accusing Israel’s friends of blood libel stupidity for recognising Palestine; in doing so, they had effectively committed acts of antisemitism, buying “into Hamas’s false propaganda.”  Massacring and starving those in the Gaza Strip warranted no mention, but disarming Hamas and demilitarising the enclave did. With praise for both himself and Trump, Netanyahu spoke of jointly forging “a path to bring the remaining hostages home and end the war. End a war in a way that ensures the disarming of Hamas, the demilitarisation of Gaza, and that Gaza would never again pose a threat to Israel.”

He also thanked Trump for “fully” backing the decision to make the last murderous assault into Gaza City.  This “military pressure” provided momentum that eventually saw Hamas capitulate.  The US President then “succeeded in doing something that no one believed was possible.  You brought most of the Arab world, you did, you brought most of the world behind your proposal to free the hostages and end the war.” 

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, for his part, explicitly denied any genocide or “intentional starvation” of the Palestinians, then proceeded to overlook them in calling on “all the nations of the Islamic world” to engage Israel.

Trump’s own speech was meandering, personal and free of complex turns.  He spoke about his envoy Steve Witkoff as a Henry Kissinger who did not leak, an emissary of singular genius.  An interruption by Hadash lawmakers Ayman Odeh and Ofer Cassif, both demanding that Palestine be recognised, did not faze him.  And then came mention of the Ukraine War, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and more adulatory remarks for the US delegates who have paid homage to the US God King.  They were all part of “central casting”. 

Not a sliver of reference to the Palestinian cause for sovereignty made an appearance, which continues to moan under the strategic expediency of it all, the residents of Gaza doomed to indefinite invigilation at the hands of Trump’s “Board of Peace”.  More to the point, he was happy to admit providing weapons at the request of “Bibi” at a moment’s notice.  The US made “the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”  But the slaughter could not continue, and the Israeli PM would be remembered “far more” for accepting the peace agreement.  “The timing for this is brilliant.  I said, ‘Bibi you’re going to be remembered for this far more than if you kept this thing going, going, going, kill, kill, kill.’”

The Palestinians, granted brief respite from military violence, will be desperately wary.  When Lapid mentioned that Trump had “saved far more than one life, and life is an entire world”, it can also be assumed that killing one life kills a world.  Some 68,000 Palestinian worlds (a conservative estimate) were extinguished by the munitions and weapons of Israel and its backers.  As humanitarian workers return to Gaza, they see the horrors of a lunarscape of devastation.  If only Trump had considered paying a visit to that particular part of earth.

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

14 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Gideon Polya

The Zionist Israeli-permitted Palestinian Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp led to the deaths of 1,200 Israelis, mostly past or present Israeli soldiers. After 2 years of US-backed Zionist killing, Gazan deaths from violence, 174,000, and from imposed deprivation, 698,000, total 872,000. I have carefully tabulated this Gaza Holocaust in terms of 50 numbers that can be used in the war crimes trials of all the Zionist Israeli, US and US Alliance perpetrators.

Gaza suffering from 7 October 2023 to about 7 October 2025 by 50 numbers:

(1). 42,000 with life-changing injuries [1].

UN OCHA: “Over the past two years, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have suffered life-changing injuries in Gaza, one in four are children and including more than 5,000 amputations, according to the World Health Organization” [1].

(2). 10,000 children with life-changing injuries [1].

UN OCHA: “Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have suffered life-changing injuries in Gaza, one in four are children” [1].

(3). >5,000 amputations [1].

UN OCHA: “More than 5,000 amputations” [1].

(4). >565 aid workers killed [1].

UN OCHA: “Four aid workers have been killed in the Gaza Strip on average every week so far in 2025 and at least 565 aid workers have been killed since 7 October 2023” [1].

(5). 4 aid workers killed per week (in 2025)[1].

UN OCHA: “Four aid workers have been killed in the Gaza Strip on average every week so far in 2025”[1].

(6). 2,400 medically evacuated out of Gaza (in 2025) [1].

UN OCHA: “About 2,400 patients have been medically evacuated from the Gaza Strip so far in 2025. This is an average of less than 10 patients evacuated per day” [1].

(7). <10 patients evacuated out of Gaza per day (in 2025) [1].

UN OCHA: “Less than 10 patients evacuated per day” [1].

(8). >1.4 million people in inadequate shelter [1, 2].

UN OCHA: “Most people in Gaza reside in inadequate shelters that fail to meet basic emergency standards, leaving them exposed to the winter conditions, the Shelter Cluster reports” [1]. Shelter Cluster: “Since mid-August, intensified bombardment on Gaza City has displaced thousands as military operations expand. Residents are pressured to move to the south and central areas of the Strip. The shelter situation is catastrophic and there are already 1.4 million people in need of basic emergency shelter based on Shelter Cluster estimations, and likely to increase with ongoing displacement… Site density has fallen below 30 m² per person, stripping families of dignity and safety” [2].

(9). >95% of housing destroyed or damaged [2].

Shelter Cluster: “More than 95 per cent of housing has been destroyed or damaged” [2].

(10). 3,500 trucks of tents, tarpaulins and basic household items needed [2].

Shelter Cluster: “Hundreds of thousands of families are displaced in Gaza, living in overcrowded and unsafe conditions. For the past five months, no shelter materials have entered the Gaza Strip. Meeting existing emergency relief needs alone requires an estimated 3,500 trucks of tents, tarpaulins and basic household items. International humanitarian law recognises shelter as essential to survival and obliges Israel, as an occupying power, to facilitate its provision” [2].

(11). 61 million tons of rubble [3-7].

USA Today: “According to a U.N. damage assessment released last month, any reconstruction would need to begin with clearing the more than 55 million tons of rubble that resulted from sustained Israeli bombardment, much of the rubble containing asbestos and human remains. Clearing rubble, which involves heavy equipment like bulldozers and cranes, could take 21 years and cost $1.2 billion” [3].The Palestinian Information Service: “Gaza’s Government Media Office… also warned that the ban on heavy machinery has left over 55 million tons of rubble uncleared, trapping more than 10,000 missing individuals beneath the debris and obstructing roads, creating a severe health and environmental crisis” [4]. UN: “The resulting debris amounts to nearly 50 million tonnes – an overwhelming quantity of rubble that would take decades to remove under current conditions” [5]. The Guardian: “Israel’s campaign of intense aerial bombing and deliberate tactic of razing territory its troops have seized has led to 78% of Gaza’s estimated 250,000 buildings being damaged or destroyed, generating 61m tonnes of debris, of which about 15% may be contaminated with asbestos, industrial waste or heavy metals” [6]. Zeteo: “55 million tonnes of rubble” [7].

(12). 518 schools damaged or destroyed [6- 8].

The Guardian: “518 schools damaged or destroyed (90% of schools)”. [6]. Zeteo: “518 million schools damaged or destroyed” [7]. UNICEF: “95 per cent of schools damaged or destroyed” [8].

(13). 90-95% of schools damaged or destroyed [6-8].

The Guardian: “518 schools damaged or destroyed (90% of schools)” [6]. Zeteo: “518 million schools damaged or destroyed” [7]. UNICEF: “95 per cent of schools damaged or destroyed” [8].

(14). 658.000 children without school for 2 years [6].

The Guardian: “Children and university-age students out of formal education…Since October 2023, 745,000 students in Gaza have been out of school for more than two academic years, including 88,000 higher education students who have been forced to put their studies on hold” [6]. UNICEF: “With 95 per cent of schools damaged or destroyed, 658,000 children have been out of school for nearly two years, marking one of the most severe education crises” [8].

(15). 745,000 young out of formal education for 2 years [8].

The Guardian: “Children and university-age students out of formal education…Since October 2023, 745,000 students in Gaza have been out of school for more than two academic years, including 88,000 higher education students who have been forced to put their studies on hold” [8].

(16). 90% of educational infrastructure destroyed [8].

The Guardian : “Gaza’s educational infrastructure has been more or less destroyed: more than 90% of school buildings, 79% of higher education campuses and 60% of vocational training centres have been damaged or destroyed”[8].

(17). 1.9 million displaced (many repeatedly) [7, 9].

UNRWA: “According to the UN, at least 1.9 million people – or about 90 per cent of the population – across the Gaza Strip have been displaced during the war. Many have been displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more”[9].

(18). 99% of households food insecure [7, 10].

World Food Program: “According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) snapshot released today, 470,000 people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5), and the entire population is experiencing acute food insecurity. The report also projects an alarming 71,000 children and more than 17,000 mothers will need urgent treatment for acute malnutrition. At the beginning of 2025, agencies estimated 60,000 children would need treatment” [10]. Zeteo: “99% of households food insecure” [7].

(19). <6 litres water /day (1 million), <9 litres water/day (0.5 million) [6].

The Guardian: “Currently, 1 million people cannot access six litres of drinking water a day, while 500,000 people exist on less than nine litres, just over a tenth of what was available before the war” [6]. Target 150: “Target 150 is a voluntary program that encourages every Melburnian to save water and keep us below 150 litres of water per person, per day [total use]” [11]. Mayo Clinic: “The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine determined that an adequate daily fluid intake is: About 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids a day for men. About 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) of fluids a day for women” [12]. UN Action UK: “ In order to survive, humans need 20 to 50 litres of clean water free from harmful contaminants every day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning. Each person in the UK uses 150 litres of water a day, with the average family using 500 litres a day. This takes into account cooking, cleaning, washing and flushing” [13]. UNRWA: “According to a recent assessment by water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) partners, 1 million people are accessing less than the emergency minimum of six litres of drinking water per day” [14].

(20). 1,581 health workers killed in Gaza [15].

Francesca Albanese (Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories): “1,581, this is the number of health workers killed in Gaza” [15].

(21). 790 attacks on doctors and health care facilities [7, 16].

Zeteo: “790 attacks on doctors and health care facilities” [7]. UNWRA: “Over 790 attacks on health workers, patients, and hospitals” [16]. WHO: WHO has recorded 28 attacks on health care in Gaza during this [1week] period and 697 attacks since October 2023” [17].

(22). 346 UN staff killed [15].

Francesca Albanese: “346 is the number of UN staff killed in Gaza” [15].

(23). 270 journalists killed ([7, 18]; see also [15, 19-33]).

X: “Al Jazeera and other sources report up to 270 journalists and media workers killed” [18]. Francesca Albanese: “252 is the number of the journalists, your colleagues, killed in Gaza” [15].

(24). 10,000 Palestinian hostages detained [15].

Francesca Albanese: “10,000 Palestinians have been detained, mostly arbitrarily, by an unlawful occupation, which has been starving, torturing, and even raping inmates, including doctors and patients” [15].

(25). 75 detainee deaths in Zionist Israeli custody [15]..

Francesca Albanese: “Seventy-five is the numbers of detainees who have been reported killed in Israeli custody just in the last 710 days” [15].

(26). 6 US vetoes of United Nations Security Council Resolutions during the Gaza Genocide [34].

Reuters: “The United States vetoed on Thursday a draft United Nations Security Council resolution that would have demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and that Israel lift all restrictions on aid deliveries to the Palestinian enclave. The text, drafted by the elected 10 members of the 15-member council, would also have demanded the immediate, dignified and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups… It received 14 votes in favor. It was the sixth time the U.S. had cast a veto in the Security Council over the nearly two-year war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas” [34] UN: 6 US vetoes over “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question”: 18 September 2025, 04 June 2025 (under Terrorist Trump) , 20 November 2024, 20 February 2024, 8 December 2023, 18 October 2023 (under Butcher Biden) [35]. Al Jazeera: “A history of the US blocking UN resolutions against Israel. Over the past five decades, the United States has vetoed at least 53 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel” [36].

(27). 92 US vetoes of UNSC Resolutions, 50 for Apartheid Israel and 42 for Apartheid in Africa and against victims of US aggression) [34-36].

Al Jazeera: “A history of the US blocking UN resolutions against Israel. Over the past five decades, the United States has vetoed at least 53 UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel” [36]. UN Security Council veto list 1946-2025: 50 vetoes in support of Apartheid Israel and 42 vetoes for Apartheid in Southern Africa and against victims of US aggression [35].

(28). $34 billion in US arms sales to Apartheid Israel since 7 October 2023 [7, 37].

William Hartung: “According to a companion report by Linda J. Bilmes, the U.S. has spent an additional $9.65 – $12.07 billion on military operations in Yemen and the wider region sparked by or in support of Israeli military operations since October 7, 2023, for a total of $31.35 – $33.77 billion and counting in U.S. spending on two years of war” [37]. Zeteo: “$40 billion in U.S. arms sales to Israel since October 7” [7].

[29]. 872,000 Gaza “deaths from violence, 174,000, and deprivation, 698,000, by 7 October 2025 versus Mainstream reported “67, 173” [38].

Reuters: “The latest detailed breakdown released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health on October 7[2025] showed 67,173 killed, including 20,179 children, accounting for 30% of the total… The numbers do not necessarily reflect all victims, as the + estimates several thousand bodies are under rubble and it does not count the 460 malnutrition-related deaths it has recorded amid a famine in North Gaza. Official Palestinian tallies of direct deaths likely undercounted the number of casualties by around 40% in the first nine months of the war as Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure disintegrated, according to a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet journal in January. The U.N. human rights office also says the Palestinian authorities’ figure is probably an undercount” [38]. This is a 13-fold under-count that ignores (a) upwardly revised estimates of violent deaths to 174,625 after 2 years ([39] see also [40-42]) and (b) “Indirect deaths (non-violent deaths from deprivation) that are “conservatively” estimated as 4 times greater than Direct deaths (violent deaths) [43, 44].

An international team of expert epidemiologists published in The Lancet found that 64,260 Gazans had been killed violently by 30 June 2024 (Day 269 of the Gaza Genocide) [39]. Assuming the same rate of killing, this translates to 174,625 Direct (violent) deaths by 7 October 2025 (Day 731 i.e. after 2 years) [39-41]. However other expert epidemiologists published in The Lancet and elsewhere have “conservatively” estimated that deaths from deprivation (Indirect deaths) are 4 times the Direct deaths [43, 44], this implying 174,625 x 4 = 698,500 Indirect deaths and a total of 873,125 “deaths from violence and deprivation” (Google this phrase) by 7 October 2025 [40-42]. Euro-Med Monitor: “ The Israeli army killed 42,510 Palestinians over the course of the 200-day attack, 38,621 of whom were civilians, including 10,091 women and 15,780 children” [44]. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has thus estimated that of deaths reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health the breakdown was 37.1% (children), 23.7% (women) and 39.1% (men) [45] (see also [46]) . Conservatively assuming that these proportions apply to the total of 873,000 Gaza deaths (and in particular ignoring the extreme vulnerability of infants [47]) indicates deaths of 324,000 children, 207,000 women and 341,000 men after 2 years of the Gaza Genocide [39-41] (for related articles see [48-81]).

(30). 324,000 children killed after 2 years, ignoring the extreme vulnerability of under-5 year old children (see #29).

(31). 207,000 women killed after 2 years (see #29).

(32). 341,000 men killed after 2 years (see #29).

(33). 100,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on Gaza [82].

Anadolu Agency: “Israel has dropped 100,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since launching its genocide 19 months ago” [82].

(34). 828 mosques completely destroyed and 167 partially destroyed [82].

Anadolu Agency: “The destruction extended to religious and humanitarian infrastructure, with Israeli forces demolishing 828 mosques completely and 167 partially, targeting three churches, and destroying 19 of 60 cemeteries either fully or partially” [82].

(35). 500,000 people trapped in man-made famine [83].

WHO: “More than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths, according to a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released today. Famine conditions are projected to spread from Gaza Governorate to Deir Al Balah and Khan Younis Governorates in the coming weeks… By the end of September, more than 640 000 people will face Catastrophic levels of food insecurity – classified as IPC Phase 5 – across the Gaza Strip. An additional 1.14 million people in the territory will be in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and a further 396 000 people in Crisis (IPC Phase 3) conditions. Conditions in North Gaza are estimated to be as severe – or worse – than in Gaza City. However, limited data prevented an IPC classification, highlighting the urgent need for access to assess and assist. Rafah was not analyzed given indications that it is largely depopulated” [83].

[36]. 97.5% of Israelis killed on 7 October were adults and hence mostly former or present Occupier soldiers [84].

Gideon Polya: “Analysis of the Israel dead from detailed photographic and statistical data provided by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz yields the following breakdown of Israelis killed: Of the 1,200 Israelis killed 84.2% (1,010) were 18-39 years old (i.e. were current Israeli military, conscripts or reservists), 13.3% (160) were 40 and older (with most being former or existing military), and 2.5% (30) were aged under 18 (children) i.e. about 97% of those killed were legitimate military targets as past or serving Occupying forces”[84].

[37]. 50% or more of Israelis killed on 7 October were killed by the IDF [84, 85].

Gideon Polya: “The firepower of the IDF (shells and missiles) vastly exceeded the firepower of the lightly-armed Palestinians. If deaths in the fire zone are proportional to firepower then most of the Israeli deaths on or about 7 October were due to the IDF” [84]. Tlozek et al.: “Israeli forces accused of killing their own citizens under the ‘Hannibal Directive’ during October 7 chaos” [85].

[38]. 40.6 year average life expectancy versus 75.5 years pre-Gaza Massacre [86].

The Lancet: “In the central variant, life expectancy in the Gaza Strip decreased by 34·9 years during the first 12 months of the war, about half (–46·3%) the prewar level of 75·5 years. Life expectancy losses were larger for males (–38·0 years [–51·6%]) than for females, but nonetheless, females also suffered large losses (–29·9 years [–38·6%])” [86].

(39). About 100% of under-5 infants killed? [47, 87].

Children represented 47.3% of the pre-war Gaza population of 2.4 million i.e. 1,135,000 people [87]. Under-5 children represented 15.25% of the population i.e. 366,000 out of the pre-war 2.4 million Gaza population [87]. Under-5 year old children are highly vulnerable (just remember holding a baby in your arms) and for impoverished countries under-5 year old infants account for 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation [47] . However 70% of the 698,0000 Gaza deaths from deprivation is 488,600 which is similar to the estimated total population of 366,000 under-5 infants. Given all the assumptions made in the calculations, this close approximation is surprising. Is it possible that the Zionist Israelis have killed nearly all of the highly vulnerable under-5 year old infants? Only after the genocidal Zionazi Occupation is ended and forensic teams enter Gaza will we discover the exact extent of this unforgivable genocide and holocaust atrocity.

(40). Zero (0) of 6 key Zionazi impositions have been removed, notwithstanding the present hope for a permanent end to the killing of Gazans [88].

In 2024 I published a huge book entitled “Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation and Palestinian Genocide” [88]. The subtitle lists 6 key things that must happen for Palestine to be free. Notwithstanding the much-vaunted Trump Peace Deal, zero (0) of these impositions have been removed. Zero (0) has special significance for Gaza as explained by William Dalrymple in “The Golden Road” that explores the huge Indian contribution to civilization from East, South and South East Asia to Europe. The Indians discovered zero (0) and communicated this to the brilliant mediaeval Arabic culture. According to William Dalrymple, Indian-Arabic mathematics was communicated to the Crusaders occupying Gaza and thence to Western Europe [89].

(41). Occupied Palestinians are excluded from 100% of the Human Rights set out in the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [90, 91].

(42). 15 Major International Laws and Conventions violated by the Zionazi Occupier Apartheid Israel [90].

The 15 Major International Laws and Conventions violated by the Zionazi Occupier Apartheid Israel include (a). the UN Charter, (b). the UN Conventionon the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UN Genocide Convention) (c). the Rights of the Child Convention (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ), (d). the UN Refugee Convention ( UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees), (e). the Geneva Conventions (f). the International Criminal Court, (g). the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, (h). the “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, (i). the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), (j). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (k). UNGA and UNSC Resolutions, (l) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (m). the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, (n). the 1926 Slavery Convention or the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, and (o). the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement [90].

(43). 4,000 years of Palestinian civilization all but physically erased in the Gaza Urbicide [92, 93].

The Palestinian civilization dates back 4,000 years [92] but its physical presence in the ancient and culturally super-important city of Gaza has been erased in a war criminal Gaza Urbicide [93] by the barbaric and genocidal Zionazi state of Apartheid Israel that is a mere 77 years old [90]. Palestine was part of the Fertile Crescent that brought the world the alphabet, writing, recording, mathematics, astronomy, plant breeding, animal breeding, and philosophy when the much-exalted British were running around near-naked and painted blue. Jump 3,000 years and the Al Aqsa compound including the Dome of the Rock is the third holiest shrine in Islam and was constructed on geometric principles that underlie 1,500 years of brilliant Islamic architecture. (A personal note: my much loved Great Uncle George Polya was a famous Jewish Hungarian mathematician who among many other things proved that there were only 17 basic plane symmetry groups (wall paper patterns), this work inspiring famed lithographer M.C. Escher [94-100]. However Islamic architects and artists had empirically discovered this 1,500 years before, beginning with the Dome of the Rock in Al Quds (Jerusalem) and thence the glories of Islamic architecture from Isfahan in Iran to the Alhambra in Spain [94-100]). In 2025 Palestinian scientist Omar Yaghi (UC Berkeley) shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Richard Robson ( University of Melbourne) and Susumu Kitagawa (Kyoto University) for discoveries about synthetic organo-metallic lattices [101].

(44). 5,000 more abusively imprisoned Palestinian hostages were added during the Gaza Genocide [102] (see #24).

Mainstream media have been saturated for 2 years over the 250 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, but there has been scant concern over the 10,000 hostages abusively imprisoned by Apartheid Israel [102]. Al Jazeera: “For every Palestinian Israel freed in the ceasefire deal, it apprehended 15 more. The number of political prisoners in its jails has doubled since the war began”[102].

(45). 5.6 million Occupied Palestinians held hostage under Zionazi guns over 58 years [90].

Before the Gaza Massacre 5.6 million Occupied Palestinians were held hostage under Zionazi guns and without human rights in the illegal and war criminal Zionist Occupation [90].

(46). 58 years of illegal and war criminal Occupation [90, 103].

The illegal Zionist-imposed Occupation started in 1967 and has endured for 58 years due to 50 vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions by Zionist-perverted America [34-36, 103]. The Office of the UN Human Rights Commissioner on the ICJ’s Gaza effective Peace Plan of 19 July 2024: “Israel and other UN Member States must immediately comply with the authoritative determination by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, independent human rights experts said today. The landmark ruling of 19 July 2024 declared that Israel’s occupation of the Gaza strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, along with the associated settlement regime, annexation and use of natural resources. The Court added that Israel’s legislation and measures violate the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid. The ICJ mandated Israel to end its occupation, dismantle its settlements, provide full reparations to Palestinian victims and facilitate the return of displaced people” [104] (see also [105]). .

(47). 18 countries attacked by Apartheid Israel , 7 in 2025 alone [106].

Gideon Polya: “Post-WW2 and apart from significant border spats, India and China have not invaded any other country, and Russia has invaded 4 countries. However with its recent unprovoked attack on Qatar, a nuclear terrorist, state terrorist, Nazi Germany-style, exceptionalist, genocidal and uncontrolled Apartheid Israel has now militarily attacked 18 countries, a record similar to that of Nazi Germany in WW2. The World must stop Israeli war crimes NOW with draconian Sanctions” [106].

(48). $7.2 trillion in reparations to be paid by Israel, the US and other countries complicit in the Gaza Genocide and Gaza Holocaust [104, 105, 107, 108].

The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to end its occupation, dismantle its settlements, provide full reparations to Palestinian victims and facilitate the return of displaced people [104, 105]. It is estimated that reparations to be paid by Apartheid Israel, America and other complicit countries total $7.2 trillion [107, 108]. My own country, Australia, is second only to the US as a fervent supporter of Apartheid Israel, is complicit in the Gaza Genocide in 20 ways [109], and lies for Apartheid Israel in 35 ways [110, 111].

(49). 24 million people died avoidably from deprivation since 1950 in countries variously occupied by Apartheid Israel [47].

Countries threatened by invasion by genocidally racist rogue states such as US-backed Apartheid Israel and Zionist-perverted America have to divert huge resources to arms and away from peaceful social uses including life-preserving uses. 24 million people died avoidably from deprivation since 1950 in countries variously occupied by Apartheid Israel [47]. By way of comparison, Nazi Germany caused over 30 million “deaths from violence and deprivation” in WW2 [47].

(50). 3.1 million Palestinians killed by violence, 0.3 million, and deprivation, 2.8 million, in the century-long Palestinian Genocide [see #29].

Before the Gaza Genocide it was estimated that 2.2 million Palestinians had died from violence, 0.1 million, and deprivation , 2.1 million [112]. However the Gaza Holocaust has been associate with a further 0.2 million violent deaths and 0.7 million deaths from imposed deprivation. The century-long Palestinian Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust is presently associated with 3.1 million Palestinians killed by violence, 0.3 million, and deprivation, 2.8 million, in the century-long Palestinian Genocide. By way of comparison, the WW2 Jewish Holocaust that wiped my family from the face of Europe was associated with 5-6 million deaths from violence and deprivation [113-115].

JUSTICE!

References.

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[45]. Euro-Med Monitor, “Israeli Army Poised to Demolish Beit Lahia, Gaza”, Mirage News, 24 April 2024: https://www.miragenews.com/israeli-army-poised-to-demolish-beit-lahia-gaza-1221354/ .

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[58]. Middle East Monitor, “680,000 dead”, 13 September 2025: https://x.com/MiddleEastMnt/status/1966532981058605192 .

[59]. Gideon Polya, “Gaza Genocide By Numbers: Apply BDS Over 0.7 Million Gaza Deaths From Violence And Imposed Deprivation”, 4 July 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/07/gaza-genocide-by-numbers-apply-bds-over-0-7-million-gaza-deaths-from-violence-and-imposed-deprivation/ .

[60]. Gideon Polya, “Estimated 273,000 Gazans Killed In the First Year Of Oxford Union-Perceived Gaza Genocide By Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 6 December 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/12/estimated-273000-gazans-killed-in-the-first-year-of-oxford-union-perceived-gaza-genocide-by-apartheid-israel/ .

[61]. Gideon Polya, “Reckoning: 553,000 Gaza Deaths From Violence & Deprivation Demand Global Sanctions & Huge Reparations”, Countercurrents, 21 January 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/01/reckoning-553000-gaza-deaths-from-violence-deprivation-demand-global-sanctions-huge-reparations/ .

[62]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist-perverted, US Lackey Australia Ignores Palestinian Genocide On Anzac Day & Election Day”, Countercurrents, 23 April 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/04/zionist-perverted-us-lackey-australia-ignores-palestinian-genocide-on-anzac-day-election-day/ .

[63]. Gideon Polya, “The Lancet: 64,260 Gaza Violent Deaths Indicating 257,000 Indirect Deaths In 9 Months”, Countercurrents, 14 January 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/01/the-lancet-64260-gaza-violent-deaths-indicating-257000-indirect-deaths-in-9-months/

[64]. Gideon Polya, “Open Letter To Australian MPs: Mainstream Undercounting 0.6 Million Gaza Deaths”, Countercurrents, 5 April 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/04/open-letter-to-australian-mps-mainstream-undercounting-0-6-million-gaza-deaths/ .

[65]. Gideon Polya, “Australian Elections: Australian Voters Deceived By US- And Zionist-perverted Mainstream Media & Politicians”, Countercurrents, 10 May 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/05/australian-elections-australian-voters-deceived-by-us-and-zionist-perverted-mainstream-media-politicians/ .

[66]. Susan Abulhawa, “Math proves that Israel’s stated goals are an epic lie”, The Electronic Intifada, 27 June 2024: https://electronicintifada.net/content/math-proves-israels-stated-goals-are-epic-lie/47371 .

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[70]. Ralph Nader, “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount. 40,000? It’s more like 300,000 – treachery on both sides”, Capitol Hill Citizen, August-September 2024: https://www.capitolhillcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/CHC10.August2024WEB2_01.pdf

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[72]. Gideon Polya, “Stop The Killing & Occupation: Comparisons Of Jewish Israeli-Imposed Gaza Genocide Deaths With Nazi Atrocities”, Countercurrents, 12 November 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/11/stop-the-killing-occupation-comparisons-of-jewish-israeli-imposed-gaza-genocide-deaths-with-nazi-atrocities/ .

[73]. Gideon Polya, “Why Cowardly & Racist Australian Labor Government Won’t Apply Sanctions To Genocidal Apartheid Israel”, Counteercurrents, 27 May 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/05/why-cowardly-racist-australian-labor-government-wont-apply-sanctions-to-genocidal-apartheid-israel/ .

[74]. Gideon Polya, “US Alliance-Backed Genocidal Apartheid Israel: The Last European Settler Colonialism Project”, Countercurrents, 26 June 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/06/us-alliance-backed-genocidal-apartheid-israel-the-last-european-settler-colonialism-project/ .

[75]. Gideon Polya, “LeMay, Albright & Trump: 3 US Officials Who Confessed To US Mass Murder Of Civilians”, Countercurrents,17 March 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/03/lemay-albright-trump-3-us-officials-who-confessed-to-us-mass-murder-of-civilians/ .

[76]. Kevin Maimann, “1.7 million’ Palestinians in Gaza? Trump’s statement raises questions about death toll”, CBC, 13 February 2025: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-gaza-population-relocation-1.7457559 .

[77]. Arwa Mahdawi, Trump’s Gaza remarks are no surprise: ethnic cleansing was always the plan”, The Guardian, 6 February 2025: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/05/trump-gaza-ethnic-cleansing

[78]. Jonathan Cook, “Trump Gaza Plan ”, X, 5 February 2025: https://x.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1887109208752918549 .

[79]. Gideon Polya, “Why Cowardly & Racist Australian Labor Government Won’t Apply Sanctions To Genocidal Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 27 May 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/05/why-cowardly-racist-australian-labor-government-wont-apply-sanctions-to-genocidal-apartheid-israel/ .

[80]. Quds News Network, “377,000 Missing in Gaza, Half of Them Children, from Pre-Genocide Population of 2.2 Million”, Countercurrents, 25 June 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/06/377000-missing-in-gaza-half-of-them-children-from-pre-genocide-population-of-2-2-million/ .

[81]. Stuart Rees, “A century of deceit: Towards a new understanding of the colonisation of Palestine”, Pearls & Irritations, October 2025: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/10/a-century-of-deceit-the-colonisation-of-palestine-towards-a-new-understanding/ .

[82]. Mohammed Sio, “Israel dropped 100,000 tons of explosives over Gaza, wiped out 2,200 families: Media office”, Anadolu Agency, 8 May 2025: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-dropped-100-000-tons-of-explosives-over-gaza-wiped-out-2-200-families-media-office/3561614 .

[83]. WHO, “Famine confirmed for first time in Gaza”, 22 August 2025: https://www.who.int/news/item/22-08-2025-famine-confirmed-for-first-time-in-gaza .

[84]. Gideon Polya, “IDF Killed Israelis On 7 October Enabling 9/11-style Excuse For Gaza Genocide”, Countercurrents, 31 December 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/12/idf-killed-israelis-on-7-october-enabling-9-11-style-excuse-for-gaza-genocide/ .

[85]. Eric Tlozek, Orly Halpern and Allyson Horn, “Israeli forces accused of killing their own citizens under the ‘Hannibal Directive’ during October 7 chaos”, ABC News, 7 September 2024: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-07/israel-hannibal-directive-kidnap-hamas-gaza-hostages-idf/104224430 .

[86]. Michel Guiilot et al., “Life expectancy losses in the Gaza Strip during the period October, 2023, to September, 2024”, The Lancet, vol. 405, 8 February 2025: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02810-1/abstract .

[87]. Linah Mohammad, “Children make up nearly half of Gaza’s population. Here’s what it means for the war”, 19 October 2023: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1206479861/israel-gaza-hamas-children-population-war-palestinians .

[88]. Gideon Polya,“Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation and Palestinian Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2024.

[89].William Dalrymple, “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed The World”, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024.

[90]. Gideon Polya, “Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters”, Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .

[91]. Gideon Polya, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Palestinians. Apartheid Israel violates ALL Palestinian Human Rights”, Palestine Genocide Essays, 24 January 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-palestinians .

[92]. Nur Masalha, “Palestine A Four Thousand Year History”, I.B. Tauris, 2021.

[93]. Gideon Polya, “Jewish Israeli Gaza Urbicide Erasing The Physical Record Of 4,000 Year Gaza History”, Countercurrents, 8 January 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/01/jewish-israeli-gaza-urbicide-erasing-the-physical-record-of-4000-year-gaza-history/ .

[94]. George Pólya, “How To Solve It. A New Aspect of Mathematical Method”, Princeton University Press, 2024 (first edition 1945).

[95]. Harold and Loretta Taylor, “George Pólya. Master of Discovery”, Dale Seymour Publications, 1993.

[96]. George Pólya, “Über die Analogie der Kristallsymmetrie in der Ebene”, Zeitschrift für Kristallographie, 1924.

[97] Gideon Polya, “Isfahan Matisse”: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/4290121654/ .

[98]. Gideon Polya, “Alhambra Pollock”: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/4288352915/in/photostream/ .

[99]. Istvan Hargittai, “Appeal of Symmetry”, IUCr, 33 (5), 2025: https://www.iucr.org/news/newsletter/volume-33/number-5/appeal-of-symmetry/_nocache .

[100]. Gideon Polya, “Art for Peace, Planet Mother and Child”: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ .

[101]. Quds News Network, “Palestinian Scientist Omar Yaghi Wins 2025 Nobel in Chemistry”, Countercurrents, 9 October 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/10/palestinian-scientist-omar-yaghi-wins-2025-nobel-in-chemistry/ .

[102]. Mohamed A. Hussein and Mohammed Haddad, “A nation behind bars: Why has Israel imprisoned 10,000 Palestinians?”, Al Jazeera, 17 April 2025: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/17/a-nation-behind-bars-why-has-israel-imprisoned-10000-palestinians .

[103]. Gideon Polya, “ICJ Gaza Peace Plan Versus Racist Peace Plan Of Genocidal War Criminals Trump & Netanyahu”, Countercurrents, 4 October 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/10/icj-gaza-peace-plan-versus-racist-peace-plan-of-genocidal-war-criminals-trump-netanyahu/ .

[104].UN Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, “Experts hail ICJ declaration on illegality of Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as “historic” for Palestinians and international law”, 30 July 2024: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/experts-hail-icj-declaration-illegality-israels-presence-occupied .

[105]. International Court of Justice, “Summary of the Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024”: https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176 .

[106]. Gideon Polya, “Israeli State Terrorism & Qatar: US-backed Apartheid Israel Has Now Attacked 18 Countries”, Countercurrents, 22 September 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/09/israeli-state-terrorism-qatar-us-backed-apartheid-israel-has-now-attacked-18-countries/ .

[107]. Gideon Polya, “Reckoning: 553,000 Gaza Deaths From Violence & Deprivation Demand Global Sanctions & Huge Reparations”, Countercurrents, 21 January 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/01/reckoning-553000-gaza-deaths-from-violence-deprivation-demand-global-sanctions-huge-reparations/ .

[108]. Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, “A reckoning for Israel awaits”, Countercurrents, 2 May 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/05/a-reckoning-for-israel-awaits/ . [108]. Gideon Polya, “20 Ways Anti-Semitic Australian Labor Government Complicit In Jewish Israeli Gaza Genocide”, Countercurrents, 5 March 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/03/20-ways-anti-semitic-australian-labor-government-complicit-in-jewish-israeli-gaza-genocide/ .

[109]. Gideon Polya, “20 Ways Anti-Semitic Australian Labor Government Complicit In Jewish Israeli Gaza Genocide”, Countercurrents, 5 March 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/03/20-ways-anti-semitic-australian-labor-government-complicit-in-jewish-israeli-gaza-genocide/.

[110]. Gideon Polya, “35 Zionist Media Lies, the Killing of Children, Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel”, Global Research, 24 November 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/35-zionist-lies-child-killing-neo-nazi-apartheid-israel/5841145 .

[111]. Gideon Polya, “Gaza Massacre: 35 Ways Zionist-perverted US, Australia & West Lie For Child-killing, Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 23 November 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/gaza-massacre-35-ways-zionist-perverted-us-australia-west-lie-for-child-killing-neo-nazi-apartheid-israel/ . [108]. Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, “A reckoning for Israel awaits”, Countercurrents, 2 May 2025: https://countercurrents.org/2025/05/a-reckoning-for-israel-awaits/ .

[112]. Gideon Polya, “85 Ways Zionist Australian Labor Government Betrays Palestinian Human Rights & Humanity”, Countercurrents, 16 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/85-ways-zionist-australian-labor-government-betrays-palestinian-human-rights-humanity/ .

[113]. Gideon Polya, “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 19 February 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm .

[114]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969.

[115]. Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”, Michael Joseph, London, 1982.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

14 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (QNN)- At least five Palestinians were killed and others injured on Tuesday by Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip, despite a ceasefire that took effect on Friday.

Local sources reported five people were killed after Israeli quadcopter drones opened fire on residents inspecting their homes in the Shujaiyya neighborhood, east of Gaza City.

In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, two Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire, medical sources at Nasser Medical Complex said.

Hamas slammed Israel’s violation of the ceasefire. The Palestinian group spokesperson Hazem Qassem said, “The Israeli army’s killing of several residents of Gaza this morning through airstrikes and gunfire constitutes a violation of the ceasefire agreement.”

“Once again, we call on all parties to monitor Israel’s actions and ensure it does not evade its obligations to mediators regarding the end of the war on Gaza,” he added.

The ceasefire in Gaza took effect on Friday morning after Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of the 20-point plan brokered by Trump.

On Monday, Hamas concluded the release of 20 living Israeli captives. In exchange, 1,968 Palestinian detainees were freed, ending the first phase of the ceasefire deal.

More than 67,800 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the start of the genocide in Gaza in October 2023.

14 October 2025

Source: countercurrents.org