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By Richard Falk

[Prefatory Note: The post below was published in a modified form as an opinion piece by the Andalou Agency in Turkey on February 27 with the title Trump’s Riviera Proposal for Gaza’s ‘Day After. Trump’s brazen imperial outreach, articulated with neither qualifications, embarrassment, nor some claim of benevolence. In similar evasions of  the sovereign rights of Panama, Greenland, Canada, and Mexico Trump early in his second term as the US President has shaken the stability of the Westphalian world order, at least as it emerged from World War II..

This rebirth of overt Western imperial expansionism seems part of a geopolitical shakeup that looks also to bypass the long Atlanticist partnership with  Europe, denigrates alliance diplomacy, implements anti-immigrant exclusionary policies, as well as pursues a regressive form of economic nationalism that wields tariffs as a weapon and tacitly aspires to be a market-driven economic superpower that either challenges or eclipses a state-guided Chinese economic superpower, while these rivals each engage openly in anti-democratic patterns of domestic governance.

Against this background, the removal of the rubble and the people of Gaza and in their place  create a new fantasy playground for affluent (and insensitive) tourists is a metaphor for the crassest imaginable human sensibility that avows banishing a people decimated by genocide from their homeland, a shock display of human cruelty when empathy is absent and greed takes over. However enacted, Trump’s plan inflicts a permanent punishment on the survivors of the Gaza death camp in collaboration with the main perpetrator of a transparent genocide.

The wider Trump plan for Palestine can be summed up in a single word: erasure. it was recently signified by the mandatory US adoption of the biblical name for the West Bank long in use in Hebrew discourse within Israel–Judea and Samaria. This together with other signals from Washington suggesting that Israel’s annexation of part or even all of the West Bank would be endorsed by the US Government in defiance of the international and UN understanding of the legal and political status of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).]

 

The US President, Donald Trump, surprised the world with his proposal for the reconstruction and development of Gaza after the Israeli genocide subsides. The main features of the plan were forced transfer of the surviving Palestinian population to foreign countries and the takeover of the Gaza Strip by the United States to manage the formidable reconstruction effort, with financing mainly extracted from the Arab governments in the region, especially the rich Gulf countries, as the price of sustaining the geopolitical protection services provided for decades for regimes isolated from their own citizenry. As the Saudi ruler, Mohamed bin Salman put it succinctly some months ago, “I don’t care about the Palestinians, but my people do.”

Since its issuance on February 4, 2025 at a White House press conference at which Trump was standing next to the visiting Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the global response to the plan was largely one of shock unaccompanied by awe. Even the Israelis seemed initially puzzled by how to respond, Netanyahu displaying a soft form of support, likely pragmatically driven, for the general contours of the proposal, but with an explicit endorsement only of its most objectionable feature–the clear commitment to the ethnic cleansing of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, which currently numbers over two million severely traumatized Palestinians. How could it be otherwise? To date, Israel has officially refrained from responding to the real estate and imperial aspects of the plan, that is, this bizarre vision of a Middle Eastern Riviera and an imperial US grab of land over which they had neither a prior claim nor a present connection.

From the perspective of human rights and international law population transfer was the characteristic of the plan that unsurprisingly generated the most opposition, first of all from the Palestinians, but also from persons and governments of minimal conscience all over the world. A weak form of justification was offered by Trump and his most loyal supporters, mainly in the US, in the form of insisting that no approach to Israel’s Gaza problem has previously had worked, so it was time to try something different. Yet an outlandish, one-sided proposal that serves Israel’s interests by depopulating the Occupied Palestinian territory in a manner that would exceed the largest and most dramatic previous forced removal of Palestinians since the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 when upwards of 750,000 Palestinians were coerced and terrorized to leave their homes, many soon to discover that their villages were being demolished, and learn that their right of return bestowed by international law and human decency was to be forever denied.

These days Palestinians disagree about whether this phase of massive ethnic cleansing should be treated as a second nakba or the nakba be viewed as a continuous process of the denial of the most basic rights of the Palestinian people and is continuing. It commenced in 1948 (or earlier) and continues into the present, denominated by Ilan Pappe as ‘incremental genocide.’ Both perspectives have merit. A focus on the most traumatic events is illuminates the high points of oppression and abuse while giving attention to the continuity of abusive denial of rights in apartheid structures and genocidal policies and practices of the Israel occupation also captures the essence of the Palestinian narrative of ethnic repression, exploitation, and resistance in their own homeland.

No abuse is more continuous in this tragic history of the Palestinian people than is the denial of their most basic right of all, the right of self-determination, a legal entitlement of all peoples, enshrined as common Article 1 in both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights that both entered into force in 1966, and were preceded by expressions of international consensus that stressed the affirmation of a right of resistance against colonial rule that included armed struggle.

It is also significant that the UN, often the target of Israel’s defamation due to its record of symbolic support of Palestinian rights over the years, was itself responsible for a crucial denial of Palestinian human rights by its proposed solution of the emergent struggle for the future of Palestinian in 1947 by way of decreeing partition of mandate Palestine, which amounted to a continuation of British colonizing tactics of ‘divide and conquer.’ The Zionist movement accepted the partition proposal, as set forth in General Assembly Resolution 181, while the Arab governments and the representatives of the Palestinian people rejected it leading to the 1948 War. Such a division was to be expected as all along the Zionist Project was opportunistic in taking what it could get in various political climates but never abandoning its ambition to have all of Palestine. The Palestinian refused to go along with a sequel to the quasi-colonial administration of Palestine after World War I that was couple with the British pledge in the Balfour Declaration to support the Zionist Project at least to the extent of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It is important to recognize that this encroachment on Palestinian basic rights preceded by more than a decade the rise of Hitler in Germany.

This tactical ploy by the leadership of the International Zionist Movement of pretending to be satisfied by an improvement of their position in relation to their goals was a master stroke of international public relations. In this sense ‘partition’ was an improvement on the UK colonialist Balfour Declaration that pledged support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine but not a state, while partition offered the Jewish people a state of their own. From a Palestinian perspective the UN was furthering the colonialist goals of Britain, which sought to neutralize Palestinian nationalism by the counterweight of Jewish immigration, and its competing nationalist vision, which indeed backfired by producing a Zionist phase of anti-colonial struggle seeking the removal of British hegemonic presence in Palestine under the guise of being the mandatory power with a supposed ‘sacred trust’ from the League of Nations to promote the wellbeing of the people under its protective control.

Trump’s proposal is an extremist version of this practice of denying Palestinians any agency over their own future as a people or a nation. The initiative issuing from the White House presumes an imperial prerogative and a reminder that Orientalism persists in the 21st Century here taking the form of self-proclaimed superior Western civilizational management and entrepreneurial skill when if comes to global problem-solving. As if to be unashamed of such an approach Trump makes not the slightest claim that he has consulted with respected Palestinian leaders or even sought genuine Arab or Turkish advice, much less their overt endorsement, although he did claim with evidence or concrete references enthusiasm for the plan among those had previously discussed these intentions.

The only possible saving grace is to suggest that this is an application of Trump’s preoccupation with deal-making in international relations. Seen in this transactional light, he purpose of the Riviera proposals is to agitate other political actors to put forward alternative plans of their own. It was not so implausible as it might at first seemed. The Gulf governments held a meeting prior to an Arab Summit in Cairo with Gaza on the top of the agenda, both in relation to assuming some economic responsibility for restoring viability to the social existence in the Gaza Strip and offering to allow substantial number of Gazans to be transferred to their respective countries. Even if this dynamic produces a more plausible plan for Gaza its evolution seems to exclude Palestinian participation or consent, and if anything, will likely stir a new cycle of militant resistance. The Palestinian people, more generally, have suffered too severely and too long to swallow an arrangement devised by others that does away with its long deferred legal and moral entitlement to self-determination, although it is wrong to be too sure, given the deep trauma, the extension of genocidal tactics to the West Bank and several of Israel’s neighbors, and an undoubted Palestinian ‘realism’ in adjusting to the obstacles standing in the way of liberation.

Subtly embedded in the Trump proposal are valuable ‘get out of jail’ cards for Israel. It is notable that Israel is not even held accountable for reparations or bearing any of the economic or ecological burdens of the multiple challenges of social reconstruction in Gaza, much less are Israeli leaders made accountable for the commission of genocide and related crimes. Instead, the core perverse idea prevails in the West that the victims should pay for the crimes of the perpetrators, yet again prolonging the underlying injustice inflicted for more than a century on the Palestinian people, and certainly not acting in accord with the moral imperatives of law. human dignity, and justice, or even the prudential virtues of regional stability. If anything resembling the Trump Riviera Plan becomes the sequel to the Gaza Genocide, it will most likely produce a range of Palestinian resistance strategies, including forms of armed struggle. Despite the dark shadows hovering over the current situation of the Palestinian people, either long confined to refugee camps or now traumatized by genocidal agendas of forced dispossession, including in the West Bank, the future of Israel is not assured, nor is the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination foreclosed.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years.

28 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

The Houthis are firing at the heart of the Israeli depth. The military escalation is increasing despite US President Donald Trump’s warning that the Yemeni group, also called Ansar Allah, are set to be destroyed. But there is no proof of that as yet!

Ever since Israel restarted its military campaign on Gaza on 19 March, exactly two months after it ceased its military operations on the enclave, the Houthis reinitiated its trajectories, drones and hypersonic missiles on Israel. It adopted an eye-for-eye point of view — that as long as Israel stops humanitarian aid to Gaza, Houthi missiles would continue on the Zionist state.

The latest Houthi ballistic missiles were fired Wednesday during the day, a first-time shocker for these trajectories are delivered in the middle of the night. It was reported by the Hebrew media that millions hurried to underground shelters where sirens went off in 250 cities, towns, and settlements to the chagrin of many Israelis whose lives were turned upside down in the war on Gaza.

Wednesday will be remembered as a hard day for many as the ballistic missiles, which according to the Israeli army were intercepted and shot down from the air by counter trajectories. Such a series of Israeli military actions sent an intense amount of debris hurling down across a wide area of central and southern Israel including in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Analysts are saying it’s back to the old days of attempting to readdress the strategic equilibrium of Houthis and Hezbollah missiles targeting the Israeli depth. While Hezbollah is on the border with Lebanon, the Houthi missiles, and their success in reaching their targets, were fired all the way from Yemen, 2000 kilometers away into Israel.

This time, and like before during the course of 2024 where hundreds of trajectories were fired on the Zionist entity, the hypersonic missile was meant for the Ben-Gurion Airport, a busy hub for international travelers. Because of the timing of the trajectories it was reported that a significant number of the incoming planes had to be diverted and re-routed to Larnaca in Cyprus as a stopover and wait for the calm to set in.

Again this is a first-time development because the disruption usually lasted for no more than 30 minutes whilst this time around it paralyzed the airport and its aviation systems and meant to send a Houthi signal to the Israelis and their American allies especially, that this would be the status quo from now on unless the onslaught on Gaza is stopped and humanitarian aid allowed in the enclave.

Today, the incoming missiles on the different parts of Israel have been almost daily, at least for the last one week. This is seen as a signal that a new and forceful strategic approach is being adopted by the Houthis who are daring the Americans despite their daily military strikes on Yemen that Israel would continue to be a legitimate target.

The American navy through its USS Harry Truman destroyer in the Red Sea is striking Yemen with such force and vehemence whilst assuring the Israelis that they will do the job and end the Houthi presence.

But this is not having the military affect the Americans would like it to have for Yemen is a big country with its harsh setting and difficult geographical terrain that makes such strikes seem like ‘bee stings” rather than painful blows. On Tuesday, the US struck different locations in Yemen 17 times and before that the strikes were carried out with the same level of intensity.

But the Houthis are not being brought to their knees, a proving fact that has cost the preceding Biden administration an estimated $2 billion to attempt to rein in the Houthis but with no apparent success despite the level of destruction inside the country for Yemenis, across-the-board, and not just the Houthis, have proven to be a formidable force over the years.

It’s still too early to see for how long Trump will follow in the footsteps made by former US president Joe Biden. This is bearing in mind that the new man in the White House doesn’t like to spend US money and therefore will likely lose steam as the days pass bye and especially because the Houthis started to target the US destroyer and any other ships going to Israel with the group determined to continue to upset the international trading system unless there is a reprieve on Gaza.

Dr Marwan Asmar  is a writer based in Jordan and the above analysis appeared in crossfirearabia.com

28 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said that 82 percent of humanitarian aid movements in Gaza were denied by the Israeli occupation between March 18 and March 24.

OCHA said on Wednesday that 40 out of 49 attempts by humanitarian organizations to coordinate their movements with Israeli occupation between 18 and 24 March faced access denied, adding “tasks as critical as picking up essential supplies or refueling bakeries are effectively blocked.”

Five out of seven such attempts were denied on Monday and six out of nine were rejected on Tuesday, OCHA explained.

It has now been three and a half weeks since Israel imposed a total blockade on all aid to Gaza, including food, fuel, and medicine, pushing the entire population to the brink of famine amid widespread condemnations and accusations of using starvation as a weapon of war.

The Israeli decision to ban the entry of humanitarian aid and any other supplies via all land crossings into Gaza is the longest such closure since October 2023, OCHA added, warning that gains made during the ceasefire to support survivors “have been reversed”.

Medical teams in Gaza are also exhausted “and urgently need protection and reinforcement” from ongoing Isareli strikes across the Strip, OCHA said on Wednesday.

It cited new reports of attacks against health workers, ambulances and hospitals and warned of “hundreds of casualties, a severe drop in medical stocks and a lack of equipment, blood units and personnel” since the ceasefire ended.

“No one is safe. The world must have zero tolerance for atrocities,” the UN agency insisted.

Nearly 800 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in recent days following the resumption of Israeli bombardment on 18 March, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

In just the last week, eight aid workers have been killed in Israeli attacks in the enclave, bringing the total killed in Gaza to 399. That number includes at least 289 UN personnel, OCHA said, with staffers from the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) killed last Wednesday in an apparent Israeli tank strike on a UN compound in Deir al-Balah that also seriously wounded six others.

WCK Volunteer Killed in Israeli Attack in Gaza

World Central Kitchen confirmed that one of its volunteers in Gaza was killed after an Israeli airstrike hit the area near one of its kitchens during meal distribution on Thursday.

“Our hearts are heavy today,” the organisation said, mourning the loss.

The attack also left six others wounded as Israel’s relentless bombardment continues to devastate humanitarian operations in the besieged territory.
“Jalal was tragically killed and six other people were injured,” WCK said.

“We will continue to support community kitchens throughout the region and operate our field kitchens where possible, based on daily assessments,” added the group, founded by celebrity chef José Andrés. “We hope for peace for all and a lasting ceasefire.”

Andrés reposted the message, adding, “The people of Gaza must have a future free of Israeli attacks against civilians, humanitarians, children……just as the people of Israel deserve to live without fear of terror and attacks by Hamas…. Enough…Let’s build peace….lets free the hostages ,let’s restart a ceasefire and let free flow of the humanitarian aid again… and start hoping of a better tomorrow.”

This week’s strike came less than a year after an Israeli strike killed seven of WCK’s volunteers on April 1, 2024.

About a week ago, the UN confirmed that one of their international aid workers was killed by an “explosive ordnance” at the UN guesthouse in central Gaza, and five others were injured. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza blamed the attack on the Israeli military, which the military denied, claiming it had not conducted an airstrike in the vicinity of the guesthouse. However, a CNN investigation revealed Israel’s involvement in the attack, confirming that weapon fragments found at the scene match the M339, an Israeli tank projectile.

The situation for humanitarian workers in Gaza continues to deteriorate. Farhan Haq, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, confirmed that at least 280 UN employees have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s genocide started on October 7, 2023.

Since March 18, Israel has intensified airstrikes across Gaza, killing and injuring hundreds. Despite a ceasefire agreement brokered in January, Israeli forces have resumed attacks, further deepening the suffering of civilians.

28 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

In the past two decades, the external debt of developing countries has quadrupled to $11.4 trillion (2023). It is important to understand that this money owed to foreign creditors is equivalent to 99% of the export earnings of the developing countries. This means that almost every dollar earned by the export of goods and services is a dollar owed to a foreign bank or bond holder. Countries of the Global South, therefore, are merely selling their goods and services to pay off debts incurred for development projects, collapsed commodity prices, public deficits, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the inflation due to the Ukraine war. Half the world’s population (3.3 billion) lives in countries that allocate more of their budget to pay off the interest on debt than to pay for either education or health services. On the African continent, of the fifty-four countries, thirty-four spend more on debt servicing than on public healthcare. Debt looms over the Global South like a vulture, ready to pick at the carcass of our societies.

Why are countries in debt? Most countries are in debt for a few reasons:

• When they gained independence about a century ago, they were left impoverished by their former colonial rulers.
• They borrowed money for development projects from their former colonial rulers at high rates, making repayment impossible since the funds were used for public projects like bridges, schools, and hospitals.
• Unequal terms of trade (export of low-priced raw materials for import of high-priced finished products) further exacerbated their weak financial situation.
• Ruthless policies by multilateral organisations (such as the International Monetary Fund – IMF) forced these countries to cut domestic public spending for both consumption and investment and instead repay foreign debt. This set in motion a cycle of low growth rates, impoverishment, and indebtedness.

Caught in the web of debt-austerity-low growth-external borrowing-debt, countries of the Global South almost entirely abandoned long-term development for short-term survival. The agenda available to them to deal with this debt trap was entirely motivated by the expediency of repayment and not of development. Typically, the following methods were promoted in place of a development theory:

1. Debt relief and debt restructuring. Seeking a reduction in the debt burden and a more sustainable management of long-term debt payments.
2. An appeal for foreign direct investment (FDI) and an attempt to boost exports. Increasing the ability of countries to earn income to pay off this debt, but without any real change to the productive capacity within the country.
3. Cuts to public spending, largely an attrition of social expenditure. Shifting the fiscal landscape so that a country can use more of its social wealth to pay off its foreign bold holders and earn ‘confidence’ in the international market, but at the expense of the lives and well-being of its citizens.
4. Tax reforms that benefited the wealthy and labour market reforms that hurt workers. Tax cuts to encourage the wealthy to invest in their society – which very rarely happens – and a change in trade union laws to allow greater exploitation of labour to increase capital for investment.
5. Institutional reform to ensure less corruption by greater international control of financial systems. To open the budgetary process of a country to international management (through the IMF) and allow foreign economists to control the fiscal decision-making.

Each of these approaches separately and all of them together provided no assessment of the underlying problems that produced debt, nor did they offer a pathway out of debt dependency.

Effectively, if this is the best approach available, then developing countries need a new development theory.

A New Development Theory

It is by now understood that the entry of FDI and the export of low-priced commodities do not by themselves increase the gross domestic product (GDP) of a developing country. Indeed, FDI – in an age of financial liberalisation and without capital control – can create enormous problems for a poor country since the money can operate to destabilise the economy. The latter requires long-term investments rather than hot-money transactions.

Research by Global South Insights (GSI) and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research shows that it is not FDI that increases GDP over long periods, but that there is a high correlation between an increase in net fixed capital investment and GDP growth (net fixed capital investment is the increased spending on capital stock above depreciation). In other words, if a country invests money to increase its capital stock, it will see a secular rise in its growth rate. That is the reason why countries such as China, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia have sustained high growth rates in a period when most countries (illustratively in the Global North) have had low to negative growth rates (particularly when considering rising inflation). Even the World Bank agrees that the exit from the ‘middle-income trap’ is to increase investment, infuse technologies from abroad, and innovate technologies internally (they call it the ‘3i method’). At the heart of the project must be an increase in net fixed capital investment.

Our research shows that as GDP grows, life expectancy rises as well. There are many elements here that require investigation: for instance, if the quality of GDP growth improves (more industry, better social spending), what does this do for social outcomes? To talk about the quality of GDP is to raise issues of allocation of social wealth into specific sectors, which brings up the importance of both robust economic planning and proper fiscal policy that is not motivated by paying off foreign bondholders but by building the net fixed capital in a country over the long-term.

But how does one get the finance to both service debts and build capital stock? That is not an impossibility since most developing countries are rich in resources and solely need to build the power to marshal those resources. The answers might be found less in the laws of economics than in the unequal relations of power in the world. With the churning of the global order, there might now be an opportunity to create new financial strategies for development.

The basis of a conversation about development theory should not be how to sustain an economy in a permanent debt spiral that leads to deindustrialisation and despair. It should instead be about how to break that cycle and enter a period of industrialisation, agrarian reform, growth, and social progress. It is this insight that motivates us to begin a fresh conversation, not about the need for this or that economic policy to salvage a bad situation, but for a new development theory altogether.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

27 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ann Wright

Yesterday, in the US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the US government, Senator Tom Cotton, accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.

During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to US national security and yelled ‘Stop Funding Israel,’ since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton and Vice Chair Mark Warner had mentioned Israel in their opening statement nor  had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.

As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist party of China.”  Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.

Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army Colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK and it is not funded by Communist China.”  I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.

After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarty lie, “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK which interrupts a hearing about Israel illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”

Senator Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s intelligence committee.

Senator Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a US Congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends and family.  In today’s polarized political environment we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021 with President Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s capitol building in their attempt to stop the Presidential election proceedings.

CODEPINK members have been challenging in the US Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Senator Cotton was elected as a US Senator in 2014.  We have been in the US Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden and now Trump again.

After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Senator Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to this office staff.

We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee for the untrue and libelous statements Senator Cotton made in the hearing.

The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests of U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country and now the McCarthy intimidating tactics used by Senator Cotton in a Senate intelligence committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge U.S. government politics, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza must be called out and pushed back against.

And we must push back against US Senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries.  Senator Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.

Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.

27 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Explaining Arab political failure to challenge Israel through traditional analysis—such as disunity, general weakness, and a failure to prioritize Palestine—does not capture the full picture.

The idea that Israel is brutalizing Palestinians simply because the Arabs are too weak to challenge the Benjamin Netanyahu government—or any government—implies that, in theory, Arab regimes could unite around Palestine. However, this view oversimplifies the matter.

Many well-meaning pro-Palestine commentators have long urged Arab nations to unite, pressure Washington to reassess its unwavering support for Israel, and take decisive actions to lift the siege on Gaza, among other crucial steps.

While these steps may hold some value, the reality is far more complex, and such wishful thinking is unlikely to change the behavior of Arab governments. These regimes are more concerned with sustaining or returning to some form of status quo—one in which Palestine’s liberation remains a secondary priority.

Since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023, the Arab position on Israel has been weak at best, and treasonous at worst.

Some Arab governments even went so far as to condemn Palestinian resistance in United Nations debates. While countries like China and Russia at least attempted to contextualize the October 7 Hamas assault on Israeli occupation forces imposing a brutal siege on Gaza, countries like Bahrain placed the blame squarely on the Palestinians.

With a few exceptions, it took Arab governments weeks—or even months—to develop a relatively strong stance that condemned the Israeli offensive in any meaningful terms.

Though the rhetoric began to shift slowly, the actions did not follow. While the Ansarallah movement in Yemen, alongside other Arab non-state actors, attempted to impose some form of pressure on Israel through a blockade, Arab countries instead worked to ensure Israel could withstand the potential consequences of its isolation.

In his book War, Bob Woodward disclosed that some Arab governments told then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that they had no objections to Israel’s efforts to crush Palestinian resistance. However, some were concerned about the media images of mutilated Palestinian civilians, which could stir public unrest in their own countries.

That public unrest never materialized, and with time, the genocide, famine, and cries for help in Gaza were normalized as yet another tragic event, not unlike the war in Sudan or the strife in Syria.

For 15 months of relentless Israeli genocide that resulted in the killing and wounding of over 162,000 Palestinians in Gaza, official Arab political institutions remained largely irrelevant in ending the war. The US Biden administration was emboldened by such Arab inaction, continuing to push for greater normalization between Arab countries and Israel—even in the face of over 15,000 children killed in Gaza in the most brutal ways imaginable.

While the moral failures of the West, the shortcomings of international law, and the criminal actions of Biden and his administration have been widely criticized, for serving as a shield for Israel’s war crimes, the complicity of Arab governments in enabling these atrocities is often ignored.

The Arabs have, in fact, played a more significant role in the Israeli atrocities in Gaza than we often recognize. Some through their silence, and others through direct collaboration with Israel.

Throughout the war, reports surfaced indicating that some Arab countries actively lobbied in Washington on behalf of Israel, advocating against an Egyptian-Arab League proposal aimed at reconstructing Gaza without ethnically cleansing its population—an idea promoted by the Trump Administration and Israel.

The Egyptian proposal, which was unanimously accepted by Arab countries at their summit on March 4, represented the strongest and most unified stance taken by the Arab world during the war.

The proposal, which was rejected by Israel and dismissed by the US, helped shift discourse in the US around the subject of ethnic cleansing. It ultimately led to comments made on March 12 by Trump during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin where he stated that “No one’s expelling anyone from Gaza.”

For some Arab states o actively oppose the only relatively strong Arab position signals that the issue of Arab failures in Palestine goes beyond mere disunity or incompetence—it reflects a much darker and more cynical reality. Some Arabs align their interests with Israel, where a free Palestine isn’t just a non-issue, but a threat.

The same applies to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, which continues to work hand in hand with Israel to suppress any form of resistance in the West Bank. Its concern in Gaza is not about ending the genocide, but ensuring the marginalization of its Palestinian rivals, particularly Hamas.

Thus, blaming the PA for mere ‘weakness,’ for ‘not doing enough,’ or for failing to unify the Palestinian ranks is a misreading of the situation. The priorities of Mahmoud Abbas and his PA allies are far different: securing relative power over Palestinians, a power that can only be sustained through Israeli military dominance.

These are difficult, yet critical truths, as they allow us to reframe the conversation, moving away from the false assumption that Arab unity will resolve everything.

The flaw in the unity theory is that it naively assumes Arab regimes inherently reject Israeli occupation and support Palestine.

While some Arab governments are genuinely outraged by Israel’s criminal behavior and growingly frustrated by the US’ irrational policies in the region, others are driven by self-interest: their animosity toward Iran and fear of rising Arab non-state actors. They are equally concerned about instability in the region, which threatens their hold on power amid a rapidly shifting world order.

As solidarity with Palestine has increasingly expanded from the global South to the global majority, Arabs remain largely ineffective, fearing that significant political change in the region could directly challenge their own position. What they fail to understand is that their silence, or their active support for Israel, may very well lead to their own downfall.

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

27 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Yasmin Abu Shammala

Yesterday, my brother called me by my grandmother’s name after I had gone through all my siblings’ names before finally realizing his and addressing him correctly. My eyes widened in surprise for a moment before I burst into laughter. At just twenty-three, I had already become a grandmother–if only in name. My focus had begun to wane under the overwhelming weight of keeping pace with the relentless tide of my life. My ceaseless rambling was not the only sign… It was merely another stage in my gradual decline—one of the many inevitable scars war leaves upon you as long as you remain fully immersed in its reality.

I have started to ramble and forget… I do not deny it. What human being, when subjected to the sight of unrelenting horror, could keep their mind intact? I live through every moment of the terror that engulfs us in Gaza. Here, if someone’s mind remains unshaken, it is, to us Gazans, a cause for suspicion. How does a mind endure without faltering—without the silence of night or the steady rhythm of day? This is the question that slips from our lips whenever we encounter such an anomaly—if such a thing even exists in Gaza.

Here, while the rest of the world drifts into slumber, enveloped in the silence of the night and seeking solace in their beds, I fall asleep—if sleep ever finds me—only after taking headache medication, lulled by the symphony of Israeli drones that never loosen their grip on Gaza. And because the world has surrendered all its time to Israel’s whims and its genocide machines, Israeli aircraft never depart from our skies. They tarnish its blue serenity, grow agitated by its vast stillness, then decide to relieve their turmoil by raining destruction upon us. Their distress fades at the sight of our blood—thirsting for it just as their creators do.

After fifteen months of the Israeli genocide in Gaza since October 2023, I thought the war would come to an end with the signing of an agreement titled “Ceasefire Agreement” on its cover. I thought we would be granted even one day from our past lives—a day to release all the sorrow that had consumed us, to let it flow in tears we never had the luxury of shedding throughout the genocide. But we did not. At least, I did not. I longed to begin searching for the self that had shattered amid this devastation.

I began by attempting to regain my stability, returning to the home I had once been forced to flee, and then striving to acclimate my two children to a life under the shadow of their stolen rights, which I continue to struggle to reclaim from Israel’s grip. I sought inner peace to soothe my weary soul. Only then could I embark on the journey of healing my body, which had somehow evaded Israel’s relentless wrath for fifteen months—by one means or another.

But the ceasefire, which was supposed to mark a new beginning—a reset to zero, as we Gazans have done so many times before—brought no change to my life, except for laying the foundation of a semblance of stability for my children.

Only two months passed before Israel discarded the agreement—and Gaza—like mere scraps of paper. Two months were not enough for me to savor the joy of returning home, as I soon found myself displaced once again when the genocide resumed. Two months were not enough to heal my fractured psyche, of which I have yet to find even the first thread to pull myself back together.

Two months were not enough to treat the pain in my back, inflicted when an Israeli airstrike hit our neighbor’s house, causing the ceiling of our displacement shelter to collapse on me. Two months were not enough to treat the eczema that spread across my fingers after I resorted to washing clothes by hand, as Israel had cut off our electricity from the very first days of the genocide. Two months were not enough to find an eye doctor who could explain the cause of my persistent headaches and the pain in my eyes from the dim light we have lived under for over a year and a half.

Two months were not enough to treat the heartburn in my stomach, caused by my unrelenting psychological torment. I found no remedy for my psychological pain, nor did I find the time to seek out a doctor who could ease my physical pain.

And now, as the genocide resumes, Israel takes pleasure in eroding our existence gradually, rather than all at once. I, who had longed for a fresh start, found myself sinking below zero—unable to even pinpoint a new beginning to anchor myself to.

Here in Gaza, if an airstrike does not kill you outright, it ensures you suffer a fate worse than death, leaving you to bleed until your soul, weary of clinging to a broken body, finally surrenders. In the end, you become a bird, gathering the remnants of your dreams, rewriting them into a life where there is no repetition of zero—only a singular zero, and from it, an infinite peace.

27 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – Since resuming its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip on 18 March, Israel has been killing at least 103 Palestinians and injuring 223 more every day. Additionally, it never stopped employing other genocide tactics prior to 18 March, and has imposed lethal living conditions since 7 October 2023 designed to eradicate the Palestinian population in the Strip, including starvation and the tightening of its illegalblockade.

Since dawn on Tuesday 18 March, the Israeli occupation forces have killed 830 Palestinians and injured an additional 1,787 in hundreds of airstrikes, artillery shellings, and fire from military vehicles and drones throughout the Gaza Strip, according to the Euro-Med Monitor field team.

The Israeli occupation army also continues tobomb homes with occupants still inside, killing large numbers of people. The most recent incident occurred at dawn today (26 March) in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, when the Israeli army bombed the al-Najjar family’s homeand killed eight Palestinians, including five children.

Without any military justification, the Israeli occupation army has committed the crime oftargeting homes—or what is left of them—every day, including targeting tents where civilians have sought safety following almost 18 months of genocide. This is a clear component of a systematic Israeli policy that aims to kill Palestinians, ruin their lives, and impose a horrificreality that makes it impossible to survive.

Two Palestinian journalists were killed by Israel in two different, deliberate attacks on 24 March. Palestine Today TV journalist Mohammed Mansour was killed and his wife was gravely injured when Israeli planes bombed his home in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Journalist Hossam Shabat, who worked as a correspondent for Al Jazeera Mubasher, was killed when his car was targeted.

The Israeli army has also recently killed civilian government officials in administrative positions, including supervisors working in the education sector. The victims include Jihad al-Agha, the head of the Supervision Department at the East Khan Yunis Education Directorate, who was killed in an airstrike targeting his home on 23 March along with his wife, child, and three daughters, and Manar Abu Khater, the Director of Education in East Khan Yunis, who was killed along with two of his sons in an Israeli airstrike on Khan Yunis on 24 March.

An individual does not lose their civilian status or become a legitimate target for attack simply because they hold an administrative or civilian position within a governmental or organisational structure, unless they are actively and consistently engaged in hostilities, which was not the case in the situation of al-Agha or Abu Khater.

The Israeli occupation forces have also been invading the Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood in the west of Rafah since 23 March, committing heinous crimes, including unjustified field killings.

According to testimonies given to Euro-MedMonitor, the occupation forces shot civilians while they were trying to escape, leaving their bodies lying in the streets. Around 50,000 civilians are still confined to a small geographic area in Rafahwhile Israeli military activities, such as shelling, bombing, and raids, are taking place around them.

For the fourth day in a row, the Israeli occupation army has kept the whereabouts of 15 ambulance and civil defence workers in Rafah a secret, raising concerns that they might be killed, subjected to torture, or otherwise mistreated. Since these people are humanitarian personnel protected by the Geneva Conventions, their continued detention without formal notification of their whereabouts or health status is a serious violation of international law and a full-fledged crime of enforced disappearance.

For the roughly 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip who now face Israeli policies of daily killings and starvation due to the continued closure of the border crossings and the denial of aid and medicine, Israel’s return to widespread killing andthe systematic destruction of buildings and property imposes a catastrophic reality on their lives. These acts of genocide are similar to thoseexperienced by residents of the Strip for 15 months before the January 2025 ceasefire.Israel’s recent intensification of its genocide, demonstrated by the increasingly lethal living conditions imposed on Palestinians, will result in slow and gradual death without international intervention.

The public declarations made by Israeli officials regarding their acceptance of United StatesPresident Donald Trump’s plan to drive Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and the proposal of its execution are alarming. Following the destruction of the vast majority of homes, shelters, and buildings in the Strip by the Israeli occupation army, hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee yet again, without any shelter, under the pretence of evacuation orders for residents’ “own safety” and ongoing intense aerial bombardment.

These statements represent a reality that is being played out on the ground through mass killingsand the imposition of intolerable living conditions, rather than just threats. The US gives political and military cover for the continuation of Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip by providing financial and military aid, blocking international efforts to hold Israel accountable, and interfering to stop the issuance or implementation of UN resolutions that could stop these violations. Israel’s actions are carried out with the direct support and acquiescence of the US, making the US a major actor in the ongoing crime of genocide.

In just one week, over 200,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been forced to leave their homes, and thousands more are preparing to leave by looking for temporary housing. Meanwhile, basic services and security remainunavailable across the Strip.

The international community’s virtual silence has incited Israel to carry out its crimes, includingkilling and injuring people without consequenceand attacking international organisations and UN headquarters in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s complete disregard for the rules of international law—rules that give UN headquarters and employees special protection—alone is an international crime of the highest calibre that needs to be addressed right away.

All states, both individually and collectively, must fulfil their legal obligations and act quickly to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian civilians there must be protected in every way possible; the blockade must be lifted completely and immediately; the movement of people and goods must be unhindered; all crossings must be opened without arbitrary conditions; and effective measures must be taken to protect Palestinians from the slow killing and forced displacement plans of Israel and the United States. An urgent international response is needed to appropriately address the population’s immediate needs including the provision of adequate temporary housing.

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

27 March 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Seth Staton Watkins

Original Song

Oh Palestine, Oh Palestine (Original Song) by Seth Staton Watkins

31 March 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Middle East Monitor

28 Mar 2025 – Israeli occupation forces executed nine missing Palestinian medics from the Red Crescent and Civil Defence in Rafah, buried them and destroyed their ambulances, the Palestinian Civil Defence confirmed yesterday.

The medics had been missing for five days after Israeli forces advanced into western Rafah. Their fate remained unknown until rescue teams, coordinated with the Red Cross, entered the area. They discovered that Israeli occupation troops had executed the missing medics and buried them near the barracks. The soldiers also destroyed all Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defence ambulances at the site.