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My Mazin Qumsiyeh

I remain hopeful on day 679 of this genocide. More millions of people are
waking up to the ruthless nature of the Zionist projects. Governments are
beginning to respond (tough weekly) to pressure from the people. I do not
underestiate the strength of he pro-genocide (aka Zionist) lobby around the
world or the strength of their blackmailing politicians. But I do have
faith in people. Here in Palestine I also have faith in our people
especially in Gaza strip who endure and do all they can under the
circumstances to resist the onslaught. The day we overcome grows nearer.
The Zionist system is more ostracized than ever now.

Is Israel collapsing? https://youtu.be/2b5_Ql_tD_k

“Israel Hides MASSIVE IDF Casualties and Losses in Gaza,” Say Former IDF
Generals https://youtu.be/PafLClsdRqQ

Database of hundreds of documented Israeli genocidal statements
https://intent.alhaq.org/
(important evidence of intent)

Al-Haq Newsletter starts with Gaza starving and lists legal actions to stop
western support of the genocide
https://mailchi.mp/alhaq.org/al-haq-midyear-newsletter-when-the-international-community-fails-to-act-we-must-hold-them-accountable-9488095

The famines in Gaza and other conflict areas are a moral failure
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01542-9/abstract

Break the selective silence on the genocide in Gaza
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01541-7/fulltext

No life without water: How Israel’s actions in Gaza echo past genocides
https://thebulletin-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thebulletin.org/2025/07/no-life-without-water-how-israels-actions-in-gaza-echo-past-genocides/amp/

Parched and Imperiled: Gaza’s Deteriorating Water Security in the Wake of
the October 2023 Aggression
https://cris.unu.edu/parched-and-imperiled-gaza%E2%80%99s-deteriorating-water-security-wake-october-2023-aggression

Who profits from oppresion: The SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing and military services companies in the world, 2023
https://www.sipri.org/visualizations/2024/sipri-top-100-arms-producing-and-military-services-companies-world-2023

World nuclear forces (9 states have them and could end up destroying
civilization!)
https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/YB25%2006%20World%20Nuclear%20Forces.pdf
Laith Marouf: The Zionist Colony Ends Or We All Die In Nuclear War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjipDxPcHOM

The bravado of the Israeli Gestapo chief Ben Gvir as he taunts a
Palestinian resistance leader (considered a hero by 98% of the indigenous
people of Palestine)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-gvir-filmed-visiting-cell-of-palestinian-terror-convict-barghouti-taunting-him/

UN can end this genocide
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hanslak_sanctions-embargo-unitingforpeace-activity-7360249848622718976-hqHh

Makan- Education for Liberation https://www.makan.org.uk/

People’s Conference for Palestine: Detroit 29-31 August 2025
https://www.codepink.org/peopleconference2025

Israeli targeting of a media tent killed journalists and camera men in the
continuing program to shut out the truth of what is happening in this
genocide. The colonial regime claimed that one of the seven murdered (Anas Al-Sharif, young father of two) was a Hamas resistance member (they call “terrorist”) without providing any shred of evidence. Some Zionist managed western media like Bild in Germany parroted the Israeli claim as if it was fact. They failed to mention that 242 journalists were assassinated by Israeli forces (any of them who could have been part of the resistance could certainly have been “arrested”!). They fail to mention that some murdered like Shireen Abu Aqle was Christian and could not be a member of Hamas Islamic resistance movement. They fail to mention that 240 media persons killed is more than what was killed in all global conflicts
combined for the past 100 years! They fail to mention that the Zionist
regime since 1948 is very well known for its endless lies (see ongaza.org).

Weeks ago, Sham, daughter of slain journalist Anas Al-Sharif, pleaded with
the world to stop the war, saying, “I’m afraid for my father because of the
bombing.” Today, her fears became a tragic reality after Israel
assassinated her father, Anas, in a strike that targeted the journalists’
tent at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1954848600002851229

Last will of the martyr Anas
“This is my will and my final message.⁣ If these words reach you, know that
Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.⁣
First, peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings.⁣
God knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a
voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and
streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that God would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But God’s will came first, and His decree is final.⁣
I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss
many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is,
without distortion or falsification—so that God may bear witness against
those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked
our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.⁣
I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world,
the heartbeat of every free person in this world.⁣
I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who
never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies
were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn
apart and scattered across the walls.⁣
I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be
bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of
dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.⁣
I entrust you to take care of my family.⁣
I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed.⁣
I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and
accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission.⁣
I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that God grants her strength and rewards her on my behalf with the best of rewards.⁣
I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend—patient, trusting in God, and carrying the
responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith.”⁣⁣
I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after God Almighty.⁣
⁣If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before God that I
am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured that what
is with God is better and everlasting.⁣
O God, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and
make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people
and my family.⁣
Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I kept
my promise and never changed or betrayed it.⁣
⁣Do not forget Gaza…⁣
And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and
acceptance.”⁣
⁣                                     – Anas Jamal Al-Sharif⁣

and what is happening since they killed Anas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvtL-T7jIUU

The Hunt for Anas Al-Sharif’s Killers: HRF and PCHR  Bring Israel’s War on
Journalists to the ICC
https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/perpetrators
Must watch on his murder https://www.youtube.com/live/NQZtOUZJoyY
New film on targeting journalists
https://www.bravenewfilms.org/palestinianjournalists

UN General Assembly: Deploy International Protection Force to Gaza
https://accuracy.org/release/un-general-assembly-deploy-international-protection-force-to-gaza/

Stay Humane and keep hope alive

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinenature.org
facebook pages
Personal https://www.facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9
Institute https://www.facebook.com/PIBS.PMNH

17 August 2025

By Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal

Israel’s full license for war crimes

Israel is enjoying free license to kill anyone it likes. So the Israeli Army is killing the babies, the children, the women, the men, the journalists, the doctors, the paramedics and whoever they like. More than 60 thousands people have already been killed and the killing continues. The Israeli Army has no red line. The criminal state of Israel enjoys full impunity. No one can touch its killers. Even the International Criminal Court (ICC) looks powerless and can’t capture even one of the most notorious killers in human history like the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The UN also stands helpless; it can’t even condemn the worst genocidal act in modern history like the Israeli genocidal war crimes in Gaza.

The US, the EU, and the UK hardly have any time or intention to think about stopping the Israeli war on Gaza; the most important priority of these countries is to stop the war between two Christian countries like Ukraine and Russia. In fact, these sponsor countries are no less criminal than Israel. Every Israeli act of occupation, massacre, destruction and forced evacuation of Palestinians gets prior approval by these sponsors as the security needs of Israel. Hence, Israel could carry out such a policy from day one of its illegal creation in 1948. The US and its Western allies are supplying necessary weapons, money and intelligence to continue its execution.

Israel has a propaganda aim to cover up its war crimes. It doesn’t want to see the propagation of any other narratives apart from its own. So it is an Israeli plan to kill the messengers who tell the truth to the world -especially about the real picture of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and other parts of Palestine. So killing reporters is a deliberate policy of the Israeli Army. On 10 August 2025, Israel killed 4 members of Al Jazeera TV network by bombing a tent designated for the press. Israel justifies such killing by labelling the reporters as Hamas operatives; but never bothered to provide any proof for that.

The US and its allies also have clear policies vis-à-vis the Middle East. They allow peace, freedom and security only for the Israelis. For the people of Palestine they allow nothing more than forced displacement, massacre, destruction, and starvation. All forms of Israeli war crimes are called Israel’s legitimate right to exist. Whereas any effort of the Palestinians to end Israeli occupation is labelled as terrorism. They are not ready to give the Palestinians their survival rights.

In fact, the US has no other policy other than the Israeli policy. Israel has dropped bombs on Gaza equal to three more than nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima. Such a cataclysmic Israeli crime never got condemned by the US and its allies; rather it always got approved as the security need for Israel. The US, the UK and Germany continued to replenish its war machinery.

The US and its allies always want kings in the Middle East and no democratic government. Democracy is considered a great threat to Israel’s security. Because, democratic system empowers people and encourages freedom movements of occupied people. Hence, democratic Arab World could have strengthened the liberation movement of Palestine. Therefore, the US and its allies support brutal autocrats to keep the Arab people in cages. So, they conspired and dismantled the election victory of the Islamic Salvation Party in Algeria in 1989, of Hamas in Palestine in 2006, of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 2012 and Al Nahda Part in Tunisia in 2011.  Thus the Arab world has become a paradise for the tyrants and an open air prison for the freedom loving people.  

The crime of the Muslim rulers

Apart from constant silence, inaction and endorsement of the Israeli and US policy, the Muslim rulers have no policy vis-à-vis Israel’s genocidal war. Such silence and inaction are indeed the complicity in crimes. In this regard, except a few, most of the Muslim rulers are criminals. The Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia show their visible silence and inaction. It is shocking that the Muslim countries like UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain don’t feel any shame to keep their diplomatic relations with Israel. Egypt has a border with Gaza; but the Egyptian government doesn’t allow any food, water, medicine and fuel to enter Gaza. Those who raise against the Israeli crimes are labelled as terrorists -not only by Israel but also by these Arab rulers.

The Israeli policy is indeed the policy of the Arab autocrats. This is why when the US President Donald Trump visited UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the heads of these states didn’t even bother to ask him to stop the Israeli war. These rulers are only concerned about their own security. They have their own war against their own people who want democratic rights. And to fight that domestic war, these autocrats need Israeli and the US help. Hence the issue of Gaza is not a matter of concern for them.

It is very clear that the US government is intensely complicit in every form in every Israeli crime. Hence, the condemnation of Israel is the condemnation of the US. This is why the US has stopped every UN effort for condemnation of Israel, and also blocked every UN initiative for stopping the war by exercising its veto. It is also a shame that the Pakistani Army Chief General Asif Munir, the de facto ruler of Pakistan, has recommended Donald Trump -the partner in Israeli war crimes for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Saudi ruler has promised one trillion dollar investment in  the US; but he didn’t send any food or drink to the people of Gaza. The autocrat of Qatar also promised hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the US but didn’t send any food, drink and medicines for the people of Gaza. The same is true for the UAE. Allah SWT has given huge wealth to these Muslim countries, but such wealth is not being used for the benefit of the Muslim Ummah, rather get spent for the people known for their enmity against democracy and people’s rights.

The crimes of the Ummah

The crimes of inaction of the general Muslims are no less either. More than 1.5 billion live in the world. These Muslims have the ability to speak, to write,  to rally and to raise voice against the war criminals and their supporters. They could make protest marches in millions. But that didn’t happen in Muslim cities like Karachi, Cairo, Istanbul, Jakarta, Dhaka. Such silence exposes their heartlessness. History will also document that these Muslim people had hundreds of  rallies for their  political   and economic interests, but they seldom did any rally for the people of Gaza. This is utter inhumanity and incompetence of the common Muslims. Whereas one can see huge anti-Israeli protest rallies almost every Saturday or Sunday in London, Washington, New York, Paris, Rome, Sydney and other non-Muslim cities. Most of the participants are non-Muslim.  

History will never hide the truth about the ruling autocrats of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco that stay silent on Israeli crimes. History will never hide the truth that the rulers of the oil rich countries enjoyed huge luxuries while the people of Gaza died of starvation. History will also record that while these rulers spent hundreds of billions of dollars to buy weapons, the people of Gaza died without food, drink, shelter and hospital care. History will also tell that these Arab rulers begged President Donald Trump for their own security but they didn’t ask him to stop the genocidal Israeli war. Such acts of betrayal can only earn Divine curse and punishment for them. History will also record that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) didn’t hold a single meeting for stopping the war. History will also note that while the Muslim world is flooded with oil, gas and other assets, millions face abject poverty in Gaza, Yemen and Sudan. After hundreds of years, while the progeny of Muslims will read such history of betrayal with the people of Palestine, they will be astonished with the level of the betrayal.    

Why Israel can’t stop its war?

These criminal colonial settlers and their sponsors always keep on changing their political goal post. They started with the settler colonies in Palestine after the British occupation of Palestine in 1917. That goal post was quickly changed in 1948 to create a Jewish state of Israel in the occupied land. The next goal post was to deceive the Palestinians by a promise of two states: one for the Jews and another for the Palestinians . It was a ploy to get recognition of Israel from the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation). The PLO fell into the trap.

Now the US -like Israel doesn’t talk about a two state solution of Palestine. Their final goal post is to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from the whole occupied land. Therefore, the only option kept open for the people of Gaza is to leave this strait of land with their entirety to make room for a greater and secure Israel. The Palestinians currently living in the West Bank will be forced to leave the land in the same way. The US leaders think such a ethnic cleansing a strategic necessity for a safer Israel.

So, it is now clear that the destruction of the whole Gaza and killing its all people are now the planned Israeli policy. The people of Gaza have been given an option to voluntarily leave Gaza. If that option is denied, they will be forced to leave either by enforced starvation or by destroying every inch of Gaza.

This is why Israel can’t stop the war. Stopping war means stopping the ethnic cleansing. This is why ending war is not the Israeli as well as the US policy. Israel is now creating a new reality in Palestine. It will be a land without any Palestinian. This is why the US Vice President JD Vance could say sarcastically in public that recognising the Palestine State, as announced by France and the UK, is unrealistic. He argued that there exists no ground reality for such a state there.    

There is little hope that the Muslims of the world will behave differently. They will only follow the US line. They will continue to have the same policy of silence and inaction. It is not a new cowardice inaction of the Muslims. They showed the same cowardice while Jerusalem was taken by the European Crusaders in 1099 and Spain was cleansed of the Muslims by the Christian Army in 1492. Hence what happened to the Muslims in Spain in 1492, it is not unlikely that the same fate may repeat in Palestine too.

Every Muslim has a duty

A Muslim can never claim to be Muslim if he or she fails to perform his or her assigned duty. And the assigned duty is no less than his or her role as the khalifa (viceroy) of the Almighty Allah on the earth. In fact, such a role has been the only reason for a human’s existence on this planet. And it falls in the premise of his or her duty to eradicate the wrongs and enforce the right. Since a catastrophic degree of wrongs are being done against the Palestinians, the viceroys of the Almighty can’t stay silent and inactive. Standing for the liberation of the unfortunate fellow Muslims  is a non-negotiable part of Muslims’ duty. Such a role is in fact designed to test every Muslim’s readiness and competence in performing the assigned role; only those who pass the test will be rewarded with a place in paradise. A person of inaction against a tyrant can never be a true Muslim.            

Since the majority of the Arab Muslims  stand under the occupation of the autocrats, these Arab countries are de facto prisons. Muslims of these countries are unable to come to the help of occupied people of Palestine. So the liberation must start from home; only the liberated Muslims will be able to help the people of Gaza.

Those who believe that the US and its allies will bring peace to the Middle East are living in fools’ paradise. Wolves can be friendly only with other wolves. This is why the county that could drop nuclear bombs in Japan and commit genocide in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria could be the perfect partner of Israel in its genocidal war crimes in Gaza. So, they could kill any hope of peace in the Middle East. A country of morally sound people can never be complicit in such barbaric crimes.

Now it is the time for the common Muslims to show their own faith, ability and determination. Allah SWT has given them huge  power, wealth and intellect to invest for the sake of the oppressed people -especially the people of Palestine. They must start from their own home. They must struggle to remove their own corrupt, compromised and complicit governments. Their own governments are indeed the stooges of the Western powers. They have already proved their inefficiency to do any good for the helpless people of Gaza. Now it is the time for the people to firstly free their own lands from occupation by the brutal autocrats.Gazi Salah Uddin could free Palestine only after freeing Egypt and Syria from the occupation of the wrong people. Only then, the consolidated state power can work as an effective weapon against an occupying power like Israel.

13/08/2025

The author was born and received early education in Bangladesh, graduated in medicine from King Edward College, Lahore, Pakistan; received Masters in Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA and post-graduate Diploma in Dermatology from the University of London.

Source: drfirozmahboobkamal.com

By badil.org

States have played a decisive role in the continuation of the Israeli genocidal war in the Gaza Strip. While states’ complicity has enabled the Israeli regime to carry out international crimes in Gaza, it is also states’ performative acts and inaction that have entrenched and expanded Israeli impunity. Symbolic gestures, such as state recognition or targeted sanctions against individuals, serve primarily as a means for states to buy time for genocide and to evade their obligations to take meaningful measures. The minimum obligation of states is to impose diplomatic, economic and military sanctions against the Israeli regime to bring an end to the genocide and hold it accountable for its ongoing international crimes

The genocide in Gaza has now entered its 23rd month, with 62,000 Palestinians killed, over 1.9 million forcibly displaced multiple times, and the entire population facing famine. The need for decisive intervention is long overdue. Yet state rhetoric and symbolic gestures remain the staple of states’ “actions” from the start of the genocide to today, even as the Israeli Prime Minister openly declares plans to colonize the Gaza Strip and forcibly displace its population outside of it.

The United States’ (US) actions have been the most consequential. While sustaining the capacity of the Israeli regime to commit a genocide in Gaza through the continuous flow of arms and political support, it has also prolonged the genocide through false promises and paralyzed the international community from taking meaningful action. It has assumed a false mediator role, posing as a neutral party in the genocide, while posturing that a ceasefire is imminent and promoting the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as a pernicious “solution” to a starvation campaign it helped manufacture. The US has also actively blocked international measures, weaponizing its veto and threatening states, such as South Africa, that are fulfilling their legal obligations under international law to end genocide. This is all part of the machinery that has ensured that the Israeli regime is able to continue committing its international crimes in Gaza with impunity.

Instead of fulfilling their obligations, other states have offered numerous empty, token measures: the European Union (EU) merely “reviewing” rather than suspending the EU–Israel Association Agreement; sanctions limited to individual Israelis, rather than the regime itself; and symbolic moves such as Ireland’s proposed Prohibition of Importation of Goods Bill, which only prohibits products from Israeli colonies and not the entirety of the Israeli regime. Not only are these measures mostly ineffectual, but they cloak states’ inaction and serve to diffuse and placate the international solidarity movement.

States are also using the recognition of a Palestinian state to distract the public, avoid their legal obligations and obfuscate their complicity. France, Malta, Canada and Australia have announced their intention to do so at the September 2025 UN General Assembly. Meanwhile, the UK is using Palestinian statehood as a bargaining chip—threatening to recognize Palestine unless the Israeli regime agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. The recognition of a theoretical, quasi-state does nothing to end the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip nor ensure the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. In fact, states’ posturing buys time for the genocide through meaningless and time consuming debates and conferences on the merits of a two-state solution, rather on ending Israeli genocide, crimes and impunity.

This follows a pattern used by states to portray a facade of action. For example in February 2024, as the Israeli regime was preparing for a large-scale ground invasion of Rafah, the EU merely “asked” the Israeli regime not to escalate its “military action in Rafah.” The EU and member states’ statements proved to be ultimately useless, unaccompanied by any concrete actions, as the Israeli regime continued to invade and destroy Rafah unabated. Today, in the face of an explicit Israeli colonization plan for Gaza, the EU and its member states are once again issuing hollow appeals for the Israeli regime to “urgently reverse this decision and not implement it.”

Such statements, from the very powers arming and shielding the genocidal regime, are willful attempts to obscure facts and shirk their legal obligations, including to take measures to stop genocide and refrain from being complicit. These states are not powerless bystanders without leverage or political power. In fact, their role has surpassed inaction and even complicity to active participation in genocide. The Israeli regime is not acting in a vacuum; its capacity to commit and sustain genocide exists only because these states provide it with weapons and diplomatic cover.

As the Israeli regime continues to escalate its crimes, complicit states like Germany are attempting to distance themselves from the genocidal war. However, Germany’s announcement – that it will stop supplying the Israeli regime with weapons for use in Gaza – does not erase 23 months of military and political complicity, and is not nearly sufficient in fulfilling its obligations to stop genocide. Anything less than the imposition of blanket sanctions is inadequate and ensures that the Israeli regime remains belligerent in the commission of genocide and international crimes against the Palestinian people.

States have also taken no actions beyond generic statements and condemnations against Israeli imposed starvation in Gaza, the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and the ongoing dismantlement and replacement of the UN-led humanitarian system in the Gaza Strip. In terms of language, these states have avoided acknowledging the reality of deliberate starvation, refusing to use the term famine and instead reducing it to the depoliticized label of a “humanitarian crisis.” Months ago, several states issued warnings and threatened measures in response to these conditions, yet no concrete steps have followed. This calculated inaction has ensured the uninterrupted continuation of policies that deprive the Palestinians in Gaza of life-sustaining aid and services, thereby entrenching the mechanisms of genocide and maintaining its status quo.

Since the Nakba has been ongoing for 77 years, and the genocide for 23 months, it is undeniable that past and present  state “actions” are wholly insufficient and ineffective in ending Israeli crimes. States must stop the provision of unconditional military and diplomatic support to the Israeli regime and the imposition of unsolicited political solutions on the Palestinian people. To abide by their obligations under international law, including the Genocide Convention, states must adopt decisive measures, including at the very minimum, the imposition of military, economic, and diplomatic sanctions against the Israeli regime.

15 August 2025

Source: badil.org

By Dr Maung Zarni

As a seasoned dissident in exile, I have been deeply troubled by the emerging news report – and ensuing advocacy pieces – that Myanmar’s anti-Junta opposition in the diaspora and their Western supporters are dangling before Trump’s transactional administration the prospects of a fire sale of the country’s strategic natural resources , namely rare earth materials, in exchange for political recognition, material assistance and so on for the so-called National Unity Government.

Former US marine and ex-Chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jim Webb has, for instance, made the case for such support to a country seen through the American eyes as “Asia’s prize”.

I was American-educated and had lived and worked in the United States, including in “Washington swamp”, for 17 years (1988-2005). Then I “self-deported”, to borrow the current White Nationalist language of Trumpian xenophobes –from the USA for good, out of my profound disgust after the 2nd American invasion of Iraq and the resultant destruction of an entire society there.

Having studied Washington’s largely failed foreign policy missions – particularly militaristic adventures – since the start of the Cold War in the early 1950’s, I have zero confidence or trust in the US foreign policy elite. They have never really been “friends of democracy”, much less “allies in liberation struggles”. Just ask the Hungarian democrats, Czechoslovakian dissidents, South Vietnamese, Cambodians, Afghanis and, as of this writing, Ukrainians.

Washington barks or used to until Trump’s second coming, human rights, democracy and freedom. But it is all bark and no bite. Worse still, the bipartisan United States is the co-perpetrator (along with its European poodles Germany and UK) in Israel’s textbook ongoing genocide in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank. Washington weaponises law to punish any opposition against crimes against humanity.

The painful truth is the people of Myanmar have no real good option.

The country is in the early stages of internal disintegration. Admittedly, the authoritarian and genocidal national military bears the lion’s share of responsibility for this spectacular failure in state building over 60-years.

But Myanmar’s ethnic regions have zero chance of emerging as new republics ala post-Yugoslavia states. Painfully, no central or real organization is in a position, politically, geographically or militarily to speak for the entire 55 million peoples of diverse ethnicities, faiths, political creeds and material interests.

For better or for worse, the junta is effectively treated by virtually all neighbouring regimes and national militaries – including India and China, as well as the Association of South East Asian Nations as the only reliable institutional partner in Myanmar. Four years after Myanmar Spring revolution rose organically in response to the military coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi government, there have emerged credible allegations that besides the junta as the usual violators of human rights and international criminal law, some of the most powerful anti-junta armed militias, for instance, the Arakan Army, have been committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even genocide against the country’s Rohingya people.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDrnP9nhug8]

On TRT World’s Newsmakers program today 13 August, I joined a group of foreign experts with Myanmar expertise from China, Australia and UK to discuss this emerging issue of US-China (potential) contest in Myanmar over the extraction and processing of the rare earth materials. The largest portion of China’s total processing quantity of the rare earth materials are reportedly sourced in Norther Myanmar.

I anchored my argument against the opposition group trying to draw in Washington in our civil war over power, land, revenues, and strategic trade routes, in the immutable reality of the 1,400-miles of Sino-Myanmar borders. We can’t choose our neighbours and we alienate and offend powerful neighbours at our own collective peril.

Besides, the United States has proven to be a force behind destabilizing and destroying wholesale societies all over the world including on the Korean peninsular and Vietnam. Finally, Myanmar is an integral component of China’s global vision, a fact that will ensure that Beijing responds to any American encroachment in its backyard.

Dr Maung Zarni is a scholar, educator and human rights activist with 30-years of involvement in Burmese political affairs, Zarni has been denounced as an “enemy of the State” for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide.i

14 August 2025

Source: forsea.co

The great threat to Israel’s survival is not the Arab nations, the Palestinians, or Iran, but the policies of Israel’s extremist government.

H.E. Gideon Sa’ar

Foreign Minister

Government of Israel

August 9, 2025

Dear Mr. Minister,

I write to you following your speech at the United Nations Security Council on August 5. I attended the session but did not have the chance to speak with you following the session. I want to share my reflections on your speech.

In your speech your failed to recognize why almost the entire world, including many Jews such as myself, are aghast at your government’s behavior. In the view of most of the world, with which I concur, Israel is engaged in mass murder and starvation; you would not have known it from your speech. You failed to acknowledge that Israel has caused the deaths to date of some 18,500 Palestinian children, whose names were recently listed by The Washington Post. You blamed all the mass murder of civilians by Israeli forces on Hamas, even as the world watches video clips every day of Israeli forces killing starving civilians in cold blood as they approach food distribution points. You lamented the starvation of 20 hostages but failed to mention Israel’s starvation of 2 million Palestinians. You failed to mention that your own prime minister worked actively over the years to fund Hamas, as The Times of Israel has documented.

Whether your oversights are the result of obtuseness or prevarication, they would be a tragedy for Israel alone were it not for the fact that you attempted to rope me and millions of other Jews into your government’s crimes against humanity. You declared at the U.N. session that Israel is “The sovereign state of the Jewish people.” This is false. Israel is the sovereign state of its citizens. I am a Jew, and a citizen of the United States. Israel is not my state and never will be.

Your language about Jews in your speech betrayed the gulf between us. You referred to Judaism as a nationality. This is indeed the Zionist construct, but it runs counter to 2,000 years of Jewish belief and Jewish life. It is an idea that I and millions of other Jews reject. Judaism for me and for countless others outside of Israel is a life of ethics, culture, tradition, law, and belief that has nothing to do with nationality. For 2,000 years, Jews lived in all parts of the world in countless nations.

The great Rabbinic sages of the Babylonian Talmud in fact explicitly proscribed a mass return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem, telling the Jewish people to live in their own homelands (Ketubot 111a). Sadly, the Zionists undertook massive campaigns including financial subsidies and scare tactics to induce Jewish communities to leave their own homelands, languages, local cultures, and relations with their fellow inhabitants to draw them to Israel. I have traveled throughout the world visiting nearly empty synagogues and vacated Jewish communities, with only a few elderly Jews remaining, and where these few remaining Jews insisted that their communities once lived in peace and harmony with the non-Jewish majorities. Zionism has weakened or put an end to countless vibrant communities of our co-religionists around the world.

It is an ironic fact that when Zionists convinced the British Government in 1917 to issue the Balfour Declaration, the one Jew in the Cabinet, Sir Edwin Montagu, strenuously objected, stating that he was a British citizen who happened to be Jewish, not the member of a Jewish nation: “I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion.”

In this context, it’s also worth recalling that the Balfour Declaration states clearly and unequivocally that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Zionism has failed that test.

Your government is committed to the permanent occupation of all of Palestine and stands in violent, unrelenting opposition to a sovereign State of Palestine. The founding platform of Likud in 1977 hides nothing in this regard, declaring openly that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” To accomplish this, Israel demonizes the Palestinian people and crushes them physically, through mass starvation, murder, ethnic cleansing, administrative detention, torture, land seizures, and other forms of brutal repression. You yourself shamefully declared that “all Palestinian factions” support terrorism.

Your counterpart at the U.N. Security Council session, Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour, declared just the opposite. He stated clearly: “The solution is ending this illegal occupation and ending this disastrous conflict; it is the realization of the independence and sovereignty of the Palestinian state, not its destruction; it is the fulfillment of our rights, not their continued denial; it is respect for international law, not its trampling; it is the implementation of the two-state solution, not a one state reality with Palestinians condemned to genocide, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid.”

Israel stands against almost the entire world in its endeavor to block the two-state solution. Already, 147 countries recognize the State of Palestine, and many more will soon do so. One-hundred and seventy U.N. member states recently voted in support of the right of the Palestinian people to political self-determination, with only six opposed (Argentina, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Paraguay, United States).

Your presentation utterly neglected the powerful “New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State solution,” issued by the world community at the High-Level International Conference on Implementing the Two-State Solution held on July 29, 2025, just one week before your own speech at the U.N. Security Council. Saudi Arabia and France co-chaired that high-level conference. Arab and Islamic nations all over the world called for peace and normalization of relations with Israel when Israel abides by international law and decency in line with the two-state solution. Your government rejects peace, because it aims for domination over all of Palestine instead.

Israel holds on to its extremist position by a slenderest of threads, backed (until now) by the United States but by no other major power. We also should acknowledge a major reason for the U,S. backing until now: Christian Evangelical Protestants who believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is the prelude to the damnation or conversion of the Jews, and the end of the world. Those are your government’s allies. As for overall American public opinion, disapproval of Israel’s actions now stands at 60%, with only 32% approving.

Mr. Minister, the global revulsion you cited is against the actions of your government, not against Jews. Israel is threatened from within by zealotry and extremism that in turn bring worldwide disapprobation of Israel by Jews and non-Jews alike. The great threat to Israel’s survival is not the Arab nations, the Palestinians, or Iran, but the policies of Israel’s extremist government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The two-state solution is the path—and the only path—to Israel’s survival. You may believe that nuclear weapons and the U.S. government are your salvation, but brute power will be evanescent if Israel’s grave injustice toward the Palestinian people continues. The Jewish Prophets taught again and again that unjust states do not long survive.

Sincerely yours,

Jeffrey D. Sachs

New York City

11 August 2025

Source: commondreams.org

By Ashish Singh

In the sweltering Delhi summer of 2017, an unusual event slipped into the rhythm of urban life, not with the stiff collars of cultural protocol but with the ease of a sudden breeze in a closed room. Titled The Drifting Canvas, this immersive digital exhibition transformed Select City Walk Mall into a corridor of art history. Curated by Russian art historian Yasha Yavorskaya and brought to India by Vikas Nair and Manikantan, it was a quiet rebellion against elitism in the world of art.

This wasn’t a gallery in the traditional sense. There were no guards shushing visitors, no hushed tones of reverence, no glass separating viewers from creation. Instead, over a thousand masterpieces from Van Gogh, Monet, Chagall, Schiele, Rousseau, and Malevich shimmered across massive HD screens, choreographed with music, motion, and light. Time itself seemed to stretch as brushstrokes unfolded slowly before the eyes. Children stood still. Shoppers paused. It was not spectacle for the sake of distraction. It was intervention. A reminder that beauty need not arrive with a price tag or pedigree.

But The Drifting Canvas was not merely a foreign showcase parachuted into an Indian mall. That temptation would have been easy and ultimately shallow. What grounded the exhibition meaningfully in India was the inclusion of Desi Canvas, a powerful countercurrent curated by Delhi-based artist Aakshat Sinha. With over 40 Indian artists ranging from the acclaimed Anupam Sud and Arpana Caur to emerging practitioners, Sinha’s section wasn’t supplementary. It was essential. It reminded viewers that India’s artistic language is not marginal but central, not reactive but assertive in its voice and vocabulary.

Sinha’s curatorial lens was sharp and unafraid. Works tackled caste, gender, myth, memory, violence, desire, and always the self. These weren’t the sanitized images of Indian art packaged for global validation. They were urgent, unsettling, and immediate. In dialogue with Western modernism, they did not defer. They responded.

This wasn’t just about visual pleasure. In a country where access to cultural spaces is still disproportionately urban, upper-class, and English-speaking, The Drifting Canvas quietly pushed back. It did what public institutions in India often fail to do. It created public art, not art in public spaces, but art for the public. When a child in South Delhi can encounter Egon Schiele’s raw emotion or Marc Chagall’s poetic surrealism on her way to the food court, that moment matters. And that’s the kind of cultural legitimacy we need to defend.

Of course, one might raise concerns. Are animated reproductions of masterworks truly art? Is there a danger of oversimplifying or commodifying aesthetics when you place them in a commercial mall? Possibly. But the alternative, hoarding art away from people in climate-controlled exclusivity, is far worse. When art is liberated from its curated silence and allowed to speak where life bustles and breathes, something genuinely democratic begins.

What The Drifting Canvas did was subtle but profound. It tore down the artificial boundary between connoisseur and casual observer. It said you didn’t need a degree in aesthetics to be moved by colour, form, or abstraction. You only needed to be there, to be present. It acknowledged that art, when made public, doesn’t lose its depth. It multiplies its meaning.

Manikantan, one of the key organisers, understood this intuitively. For him, this was not a one-time event but a possibility, a prototype for a different kind of cultural infrastructure, one where technology becomes the medium, not the barrier, for intimacy with art. Vikas Nair, equally invested, had first encountered the exhibition abroad and instinctively knew that India needed this not as indulgence but as a necessity.

Their intuition was right. The Drifting Canvas came at a time when art institutions in India were becoming increasingly insular and state support for creative expression was shrinking. Funding was precarious. Dissent was censored. And yet, here was a show that said art could still show up uninvited where no one expected it. And it could stay.

In many ways, Yasha’s decision to work with Indian collaborators rather than simply license a product was key. It allowed the exhibition to feel rooted even as it reached outward. The inclusion of Indian voices wasn’t decorative. It was dialogic.

Events like The Drifting Canvas remind us that art has the power to intervene in the most ordinary moments and render them unforgettable. They dissolve the outdated binary between the cultivated and the curious. They show us that wonder doesn’t discriminate and cultural legitimacy cannot remain the privilege of a few.

So perhaps it wasn’t just the canvas that drifted into the mall. It was memory, imagination, rebellion, and for a brief moment in Delhi, they all became public property.

Ashish Singh has finished his Ph.D. coursework in political science from the NRU-HSE, Moscow, Russia.

10 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisation (CDRO)

The Jammu & Kashmir Home Department has banned the publication of 25 books on Kashmir, including those by notable authors such as Arundhati Roy, Sumantra Bose and A G Noorani. A notification issued by the Principal Secretary of the Home Department, Chandraker Bharti, by order of Lieutenant-Governor Manoj Sinha, said: “…it has come to the notice of the Government, that certain literature propagates false narrative and secessionism in Jammu and Kashmir… This literature would deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting (a) culture of grievance, victimhood and terrorist heroism. … Some of the means by which this literature has contributed to the radicalization of youth in J&K include distortion of historical facts, glorification of terrorists, vilification of security forces, religious radicalization, promotion of alienation, pathway to violence and terrorism etc.”  As per the notification, these 25 books were “found to excite secessionism and endangering sovereignty and integrity of India, thereby, attracting the provisions of Sections 152, 196 & 197 of Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023” (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/arundhati-roy-noorani-jk-bans-publication-25-books-kashmir-propagating-secessionism-10174625/)

A look into the list of books (provided at the end of this Press Release), which are academical outputs, historical accounts, journalistic descriptions or political commentaries, shows that these books include widely acclaimed The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012 by noted constitutional expert, A. G. Noorani, Kashmir in Conflict – India, Pakistan and the Unending War by the British author and historian Victoria Schofield, Kashmir at the Crossroads and Contested Landsby eminent scholar, Prof. Sumantra Bose from the London School of Economics, Azadi by Booker Prize winner and public intellectual, Arundhati Roy., A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370 by journalist Anuradha Bhasin. According to the notification, these books need to be declared as ‘forfeited’ as per the provisions of Section 98 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita  2023.

The timing of this notification also deserves mention. On the 5^th of August, 2019, the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir was removed, and the constitutional provision, enshrined in the now-abrogated Article 370, was trampled by the present government.  Since then, there has been a seething anger and a burning desire of the people of Jammu and Kashmir to reclaim statehood. Voicing this aspiration, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, on the sixth anniversary of the August 2019 parliamentary decree,  wrote in a letter to all national parties, including the BJP,  “Restoration of Statehood is not a concession to J&K but a course correction that the very idea of India is undermined if the Statehood which is foundational and constitutional right is reduced to the discretionary favour of the central government,” Mr. Abdullah wrote in the letter. “ (https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/jammu-and-kashmir/omar-seeks-restoration-of-jks-statehood-calls-for-course-correction/article69901157.ece). The banning of the books should also be seen against this backdrop of a popular sentiment.

CDRO observes with alarm that this attempt is to stop the reading of widely acclaimed books. We, at CDRO, firmly believe that this is not just an attempt to prevent some specific books from being discussed. These are brazen attempts to curb opinions which are critical of the present regimen and prevent the public to learn multidimensional aspects of political discourses and becoming an informed, rational citizen. Thus, behind this authoritarian step lies the fascist’s desire to control every opinion through the choking of democratic voices.

We note with concern that the bare fangs of fascism are becoming more conspicuous and ready to impose itself on the public, democratic institutions, and the population. CDRO feels that it is high time to stand united against all such onslaughts.  Hence, the CDRO demands an immediate withdrawal of this anti-people notification. It urges all democratic-minded people and, in particular, the authors, journalists and other media personalities, to stand united against the notification and express public solidarity with the authors whose books have been listed. Let us all unite and show our protest through public defiance of the notification.

(Asish Gupta)                                  (Tapas Chakraborty)                    (Kranthi Chaitanya)

Coordinators, CDRO

Constituent Organisations of CDRO:

Association for Democratic Rights (AFDR, Punjab); Association for Democratic Rights (AFDR, Haryana), Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR, West Bengal); Asansol Civil Rights Association(West Bengal); Bandi Mukti Committee(West Bengal); Civil Liberties Committee (Andhra Pradesh); Civil Liberties Committee (Telangana); Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (Maharashtra); Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR TamilNadu); Coordination for Human Rights (Manipur); Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti (Assam); Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights; Peoples’Committee for Human Rights (Jammu and Kashmir); Peoples Democratic Forum(Karnataka); Jharkhand Council for Democratic Rights (Jharkhand); Peoples Union for Civil Rights (Haryana), Campaign for Peace & Democracy in Manipur, Delhi; Janakeeya Manushyaavakasha Prasthanam, Kerala.

The list of Books banned by the recent notification are:

1. Human Rights Violations in Kashmir – Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska

2. Kashmiris Fight for Freedom – Mohd Yusuf Saraf
3. Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building under Indian occupation – Hafsa Kanjwal 
4. Kashmir Politics and Plebiscite – Abdul Jabbar Gockhami
5. Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? – by Essar Batool, Ifrah Butt, Munaza Rashid, Natasha Rather, Samreen Mushtaq
6. Mujahid ki Azan – Imam Hasan Al-Bana Shaheed 
7. Al Jihadul fil Islam – Abul A’la al-Maududi
8. Independent Kashmir – Christopher Snedden
9. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir – Haley Duschinski, Mona Bhat, Ather Zia and Cynthia Mahmood
10. Between Democracy & Nation: Gender and Militarisation in Kashmir – Seema Kazi
11. Contested Lands – Sumantra Bose
12. In Search of a Future: The Story of Kashmir – David Devadas
13. Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War – Victoria Schofield
14. The Kashmir Dispute: 1947-2012 – A.G. Noorani
15. Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict – Sumantra Bose
16. A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370 – Anuradha Bhasin
17. Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation & Women’s Activism in Kashmir – by Ather Zia
18. Confronting Terrorism – Maroof Raza (Editor)
19. Freedom in Captivity: Negotiations of belonging along Kashmiri Frontier – Radhika Gupta
20. Kashmir: The Case for Freedom – Tariq Ali, Hilal Bhatt, Angana P Chatterji, Habbah Khatun, Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy
21. Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction – Arundhati Roy
22. USA and Kashmir – Shamshad Shan
23. Law & Conflict Resolution in Kashmir- Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska
24. Tarikh-i-Siyasat Kashmir – Afaq
25. Kashmir & the future of South Asia – Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal (Editors)

10 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least 100 Palestinian children and infants have died from malnutrition and starvation in Gaza, as Israel continues to block aid, including food, medicine, and fuel, from entering the enclave for five months. The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed on Sunday that the total number of hunger-related deaths is 217.

In a statement, the Ministry said at least 217 have died from malnutrition and hunger since the start of the Israeli genocide in Ocotber 2023. Among them are 100 children and infants.

What We Know

UNICEF has warned that Gaza faces a grave risk of famine, with one in three people going days without food.

Over 100 humanitarian organizations, including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and Oxfam, warned that “mass starvation” is spreading across Gaza, with their colleagues in the enclave wasting away from hunger.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Gaza City has been the area “worst-hit” by malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, with nearly one in five children under five there now acutely malnourished.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “on the verge of catastrophic hunger,” with one in three people in the enclave going days without food.

Health officials in Gaza issued a stark warning lately: Hundreds of severely emaciated Palestinians are on the verge of death, their bodies too weak to resist any longer.

The Director of Al-Shifa Hospital said hospitals are dealing with hundreds suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition. “We don’t have enough beds or medicine,” he said. “We’re seeing symptoms like memory loss, exhaustion, and collapse from extreme hunger.” He added: “We have 17,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition. This is a generation being starved to death.”

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, over 650,000 children under the age of five face an imminent and severe risk of acute malnutrition in the coming weeks, out of a total of 1.1 million children in the Gaza Strip.

Currently, around 1.25 million people in Gaza are living under catastrophic hunger conditions, while 96% of the population is suffering from severe levels of food insecurity, including more than one million children, according to the Office.

UNRWA warned, “The Israeli Authorities are starving civilians in Gaza. Among them are 1 million children.”

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said Palestinians in Gaza face “an acute risk of famine”.

“No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance,” he said.

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) two weeks ago, two out of three famine thresholds for food consumption have been breached across most of Gaza, with acute malnutrition levels in Gaza City confirming aid agencies’ repeated warnings.

“Mounting evidence shows that widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths,” the IPC assessment maintained.

“The worst-case scenario of Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip.”

“It’s clearly a disaster unfolding in front of our eyes, in front of our television screens,” said Ross Smith, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Director of Emergencies.

“This is not a warning, this is a call to action. This is unlike anything we have seen in this century,” he told journalists in Geneva.

The last IPC analysis on Gaza, issued on May 12, forecast that the entire population would likely experience high levels of acute food insecurity by the end of September, with 469,500 people projected to likely hit “catastrophic” levels.

Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said: “Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So while it’s always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024.”

“Israel is starving Gaza. It’s genocide. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s a war crime. I have been repeating it and repeating it and repeating it.”

Is Humanitarian Aid Reaching Gaza?

On March 2, Israel announced the closure of Gaza’s main crossings, cutting off food, medical and humanitarian supplies, worsening a humanitarian crisis for 2.3 million Palestinians, with human rights organizations accusing it of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians.

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

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

Moreover, mass killings of aid seekers near and at GHF aid sites have become a grim daily reality amid chaotic scenes, as desperate Palestinians are given only a narrow window to rush for food and are targeted by Israeli forces and American mercenaries. Testimonies and evidence from US mercenaries working with GHF, as well as from Gaza civilians, reveal that aid seekers are being directly and deliberately targeted, despite posing no threat.

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

According to the UN human rights office, at least 859 people have been killed while seeking food near or at the GHF sites since the GHF began operating in late May. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said: “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military.”

514 were also killed by Israeli forces along the routes of food convoys, OHCHR added.

Human Rights Watch stated last week that Israel’s killing of aid seekers at GHF sites amounts to war crimes.

With starvation across the Strip spreading, international outcry over images of emaciated children and increasing reports of hunger-related deaths pressured Israel to let more aid into the Gaza, the Israeli military announced a “tactical pause” in military activity in some areas of Gaza which it claimed would make it easier to send in UN convoys. However, attacks and killings have been reported across most of the Strip.

A UN worker said the “last minute” aid windows may not be enough to treat malnourished children.

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

Last week, the WFP said it is not getting the necessary volumes of humanitarian assistance into Gaza despite Israel claiming it issued new measures to enable more supplies to enter the enclave.

“We have not gotten the authorisation, the permission to move in the volumes that we’ve requested,” Smith said.

Smith said the disaster unfolding in Gaza is “unlike anything we have seen in this century”, adding that it was reminiscent of famines seen in Ethiopia and Biafra, Nigeria, in the 20th century.

On Sunday, the Gaza Government Media Office and aid groups confirmed that only 1,210 aid trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since Israel announced on July 27 that it would allow the entry of aid, an average of just 84 trucks per day. This represents just 14% of the estimated 4,800 trucks required to meet minimum humanitarian needs.

It added that Gaza requires at least 600 aid and fuel trucks daily to provide for the essential needs of its health, public service, and food sectors.

The Office noted: “We confirm that there are more than 22,000 humanitarian aid trucks currently parked at the Gaza Strip crossing gates, most of which belong to UN and international organizations and various entities.”

On Friday, the World Food Programme (WFP) called on Israel to allow at least 100 aid trucks per day into Gaza, noting that only 60 of its aid truck drivers have been vetted and approved by the Israeli military to date.

The 100 trucks per day the organisation called for is a fraction of the 600 per day other UN agencies and Gaza authorities have said are needed to meet the basic needs of residents in the Strip.

“Since July 27, 266 WFP trucks arriving at crossing points were turned back, 31 percent of which had initially been approved,” the agency’s latest report said.

“Convoy movements are frequently hampered by last-minute changes by Israeli authorities, and heavy insecurity due to military activities along convoy routes.”

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, also noted on Saturday that it has not been allowed to bring any humanitarian aid into Gaza, including food and medicine, for more than five months, depriving hungry and ailing Palestinians of what they need to survive.

“Engineering Starvation” in Gaza

Israel has deliberately engineered famine and chaos in Gaza, the Gaza Government Media Office said, as most of the aid trucks that entered Gaza were looted in a “systematic disorder fostered by the Israeli occupation”.

“What is happening in Gaza is a clear and deliberate model of how the Israeli occupation is consciously fostering chaos and engineering starvation,” the Media Office said, adding that aid is being intentionally prevented from reaching warehouses or intended recipients.

Gaza’s Ministry of Interior and National Security has also accused Israel of pursuing a policy of targeting its staff “carrying out their duty of securing aid trucks distributed by international organisations, preventing them from reaching those in need safely”.

It also accused Israeli forces of sponsoring “networks of thieves and thugs to seize control of aid trucks, depriving more than two million citizens of safe access and perpetuating famine in the Strip”.

“This is a blatant attempt by the occupation to absolve itself of legal responsibility for using starvation as a weapon in times of war,” the Ministry said in a statement.

This strategy forces Palestinians to travel long distances for aid, putting themselves at great risk, the statement read, adding that this has led to the “destruction of some of the aid supplies due to stampede and overcrowding”.

“Meanwhile, the occupation directly targets them and commits massacres, killing dozens daily near the routes leading to the entry of aid.”

10 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Arun Mitra

Everyone by now knows the dreadful effects of the atomic bombs used by the US on human population at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945 respectively. Testimonies by the survivors, the Hibakusha and the reports by the Red Cross speak effectively of the catastrophe that occurred in these two places. Over two lakh people died. Number of people injured, rendered destitute, homeless and orphaned far exceeds this number.  Effect of radiations on the generations after that is still felt. That was the time of unprecedented humanitarian crises and agony never heard of before.   

Dr. Marcel Junod, the new head of the ICRC’s delegation in Japan was the first foreign doctor to reach Hiroshima on 8 September 1945, one month after the dropping of the atom bomb. He described that the center of the city was a sort of white patch, flattened and smooth like the palm of a hand. The medical care was in shambles and rudimentary with any medicines or equipment to support the medical care. Dr Junod noted the consequences of the bomb for Hiroshima’s medical corps; out of 300 doctors, 270 died or were injured; out of 1,780 nurses, 1,654 perished or were injured. He made an appeal for the bomb to be banned outright, just as poison gas was outlawed in the aftermath of the First World War. 

This catastrophe should have been a lesson for the world community to move forward for complete abolition of nuclear weapons from earth. On the contrary the number of nuclear weapons possessing countries increased with present number to be at nine. These include USA, Russia, Britain, France, China, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel. It is an irony that five of these are in Asia, which is relatively a deprived region.

In 2023 China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the UK and US spent a combined $91.4 billion on their nuclear arms, which breaks down to $173,884 per minute, or $2,898  a second.  The United States’ share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together

It is now well proven through various studies that the nuclear weapons are a real threat to not only the human population but the whole flora & fauna on earth. A study on Climate Consequences of Regional Nuclear War has pointed out that even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan using 100 Hiroshima sized nuclear weapons would put over two billion people at risk of starvation and death. A nuclear exchange between the two major nuclear powers, the Russia and the USA could be end of modern civilisation built through thousands years of human labour.     

It is therefore imperative that nuclear weapons are abolished for good. On-going wars must stop. Nuclear weapon will not be used suddenly but conditions for their use are created by the pre-existing war conditions. Any further escalation between Russia and Ukraine as indicated by the NATO, EU and the decision of the US to supply long range missiles to Ukraine could lead to dangerous results. Continuing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by the Zionist Israeli regime and its quest to increase the area under control to other parts of the Middle East could be dangerous in the long run. Recent war between Iran and Israel can be dangerous even now as the tension is not over. Tension between India and Pakistan and also China the three nuclear powered neighbours is to be seen with serious concern. On-going conflicts in parts of Africa add to their concerns for food and health. Trump;s rhetoric to take over Panama Canal, change the Gulf of Mexico, lust to control Green Land and also his desire to make Canada another state of the US is fraught with danger. 

Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Gutteres has said that ‘Humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation’. It is time now that all states must condemn the recent threats to use nuclear weapons, the increase and modernization of nuclear arsenals, and the increased role of nuclear weapons in security doctrines.   

To achieve the goal of nuclear abolition there is need to build strong anti- nuclear narrative. This would need a strong peace movement. The immediate post 2nd world war period saw emergence of such peace initiatives. Powerful public protests in 1980s led to several treaties like the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the START which played a significant role in bringing down the number of nuclear weapons which was at its peak in 1985. Coordinated action by the global south is needed as was seen when the Non –aligned movement was active.  There is need to rejuvenate the NAM, SAARC. Promote Nuclear weapons Free Zones. The so called big power must accept the reality of multi polar world. The Trump administration should shed its plans for global dominance. Any increase in the economic inequalities around the globe will add to tensions and arms race. There is need to reject the thought that peace comes through military power. Peace education should be given from the very childhood child hood to save the future.

Dr Arun Mitra is a Practicing ENT Surgeon in Ludhiana, Punjab. 

8 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released a comprehensive report on July 27 describing the Israeli war on Gaza as genocide. However, the delay in publishing such an indictment is troubling and adds to an existing problem of politically motivated decision-making processes that have, in their own right, prolonged the ongoing Israeli war crimes.

The report accused Israel of committing genocide, a conclusion reached after a detailed analysis of the military campaign’s intent, the systematic destruction of civilian life, and the government-engineered famine. This finding is significant because it adds to the massive body of legal and testimonial evidence affirming the Palestinian position that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.

Moreover, the fact that B’Tselem is an Israeli organization is doubly important. It represents an insider’s indictment of the horrific massacres and the government-engineered famine in the Strip, directly challenging the baseless argument that accusing Israel of genocide is an act of antisemitism.

Western media were particularly interested in this report, despite the fact that numerous first-hand Palestinian reports and investigations are often ignored or downplayed. This double standard continues to feed into a chronic media problem in its perception of Palestine and Israel.

Claims by Palestinians of Israeli war crimes have historically been ignored by mainstream media or academia. Whether the Zionist militia’s massacre of Tantura in 1948, the actual number of Palestinians and Lebanese killed in the massacres of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982, or the events resulting in the Jenin massacre in the West Bank in 2002, the media has frequently ignored the Palestinian account. It often gains a degree of validation only if it is backed by Israeli or Western voices.

The latest B’Tselem report is no exception. But another question must be asked: why did it take nearly two years for B’Tselem to reach such an obvious conclusion? Israeli rights groups, in particular, have far greater access to the conduct of the Israeli army, the statements of politicians, and Hebrew media coverage than any other entity. Such a conclusion, therefore, should have been reached in a matter of two months, not two years.

This kind of intentional delay has so far defined the position of many international institutions, organizations, and individuals whose moral authority would have helped Palestinians establish the facts of the genocide globally much earlier.

For example, despite the ICJ’s historic ruling on January 26, 2024, that determined that there are plausible grounds for South Africa’s accusation of Israel of committing genocide, the court is still unable, or unwilling, to produce a conclusive ruling. A definitive ruling would have been a significant pressure card on Israel to end its mass killing in Gaza. 

Instead, for now, the ICJ expects Israel to investigate itself, a most unrealistic expectation at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promises his extremist ministers that Israel will encourage the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The same indictment of intentional and politicized delays can be attributed to the International Criminal Court. While it issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister on November 21, 2024, no concrete action has been taken. Instead, it is the Chief Prosecutor of the court, Karim Khan, who finds himself attacked by the US government and media for having the courage to follow through on the investigation.

Individuals, too, especially those who have been associated with ‘revolutionary’ politics, the likes of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, among others, have been reluctant to act. On March 22, 2024, Ocasio-Cortez refused to use the term genocide in Gaza, going as far as claiming that, while she saw an “unfolding genocide,” she was not yet ready to use the term herself.

Sanders, on the other hand, who has spoken out repeatedly and strongly against Netanyahu, describing him in an interview with CNN on July 31 as a “disgusting liar,” has had repeated moral lapses since the start of the war. When the term genocide was used by many, far less ‘radical’ politicians, Sanders doubled down during a lecture at a university in Ireland. He said that the word genocide “makes him queasy,” and he urged people to be “careful about it”.

These are not simply lost opportunities or instances of moral equivocation. They have had a profound and direct impact on Israel’s behavior. The timely intervention of governments, international institutions, high courts, media, and human rights groups would have fundamentally changed the dynamics of the war. Such collective pressure could have forced Israel and its allies to end the war, potentially saving thousands of lives.

Delays born of political calculation and fear of retribution have given Israel the critical space it needed to carry out its genocide. Israel is actively exploiting this lack of legal and moral clarity to persist in its mass slaughter of Palestinians.

This must change. The Palestinian perspective, their suffering, and their truths must be respected and honored without needing validation from Israeli or other sources. The Palestinian voice and their rights must be truly centered, not as an academic cliché or political jargon, but as an undeniable, everyday reality.

As for those who have delayed their verdict regarding the Israeli genocide, no rationale can possibly absolve them. They will be judged by history and by the desperate pleas of Gaza’s mothers and fathers, who tried and failed to save their children from the Israeli killing machine and the world’s collective silence or inaction.

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

8 August 2025

Source: countercurrents.org