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By Claudia Aranda

20 Sep 2025 – Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has issued one of the most severe and painful denunciations in recent years: the real number of deaths in Gaza exceeds 680,000, more than ten times the officially reported figure. Of those victims, roughly half would be children and 75% women and minors. These figures are staggering, yet they represent a cruel truth that demands to be heard and fully understood.

How can one explain this abyssal gap between official figures and what appears to be reality? The answer is simple and devastating: Gaza is almost entirely destroyed. More than 66% of its infrastructure lies in ruins, and in Gaza City, that destruction reaches 70–75%. Homes, buildings, hospitals, schools, roads—the essential service network has been shattered by bombings that reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. With the strip hermetically sealed, with no access for international observers or technically trained and calm rescue teams to remove remains, a physical count of corpses is impossible.

Thus, the figure of 65,000 dead that circulates officially corresponds only to those recovered and registered in hospitals or morgues. What is missing—what truly hurts—are those left beneath the rubble, bodies the world has not yet been able to count or even bury with dignity. And when comparing that figure with the 1.5 million internally displaced persons out of the 2.2 million who inhabited Gaza at the start of the siege, whose movement can be tracked, the conclusion is chilling: we are missing 680,000 souls.

Violence has struck mercilessly even those who work to save lives and tell the story. Albanese details that 1,581 health workers, 346 UN employees—mainly from UNRWA—and 252 journalists attempting to document the tragedy have died in Gaza, a record figure in any conflict. These numbers reveal a systematic campaign not only of civilian extermination but also of silencing and erasing those able to bear witness.

Despite all this, the international community has failed to act with the urgency needed to stop the tragedy. Albanese highlights three countries that, far from condemning or suspending support, continue backing Israel, particularly with weapons: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. These states not only maintain military trade but also enable the constant replenishment of the arsenal used to carry out this genocide.

In addition, the rapporteur warns that more than 10,000 Palestinians are being arbitrarily detained under inhumane conditions, subjected to torture and starvation, and that 75 prisoners have died in Israeli custody over the past 710 days. The level of dehumanization is total: deaths in the West Bank also continue to rise, alongside forced expulsions and the advance of Israeli annexations, which further exacerbate the Palestinian crisis regionally.

It is impossible to imagine that these people have simply fled; Gaza is sealed off like a concentration and extermination camp, where the population has no safe routes and no possible escape. Children, women, and men, all trapped under a genocide that cannot be concealed and yet is systematically denied by its perpetrators and their international allies.

Not even the most horrific natural disasters, such as the Southeast Asian tsunami, exemplify this scale of mass human destruction under constant exclusion, blockade, and oppression. Comparing the numbers with that natural tragedy provides clarity: in both cases, victims disappeared under rubble or waters made it impossible to physically count each victim, yet the demographic devastation remains glaring.

With 710 days of accumulated horror, and those more than 1,500 humanitarian workers dead—let me underline this point—the 252 journalists killed while trying to recount the catastrophe, and the thousands of prisoners tortured or killed in detention, Francesca Albanese stresses that this is a story that can no longer be ignored or minimized.

As an editorialist, I dare to say there is no possible neutrality in the face of this human catastrophe. We are missing 680,000 souls, and their names must be spoken, their lives honored with justice, not with an imposed silence. The international community bears the urgent responsibility to act not merely with words but with decisive measures to stop this genocide and repair, insofar as possible, the damage inflicted.

Today, Gaza speaks to us not only with numbers and statistics, but with the absence of its dead—mothers, children, the elderly who still have no rest. And it is that call for memory and justice that must echo in every corner of the world.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By UN News

16 Sep 2025 – Senior independent rights investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council alleged today that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, a charge flatly rejected by Tel Aviv.

In a new report published against the backdrop of intensifying Israeli military operations in Gaza City, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, urged Israel and all countries to fulfil their obligations under international law “to end the genocide” and punish those responsible.

“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” insisted Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission. “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Danny Meron, dismissed the Commission’s “cherry-picked” findings outright, maintaining that the 70-plus page report “promotes a narrative serving Hamas and its supporters in attempting to delegitimize and demonize the state of Israel. The report falsely accuses Israel of genocidal intent, an allegation it cannot substantiate.”

At a press conference in Geneva, the Commission of Inquiry’s members Ms. Pillay and Chris Sidoti – who are not UN staff but instead appointed by the Human Rights Council’s 47 Member States – explained that their investigations into the war in Gaza beginning with Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel on 7 October 2023 had led to the conclusion that Israeli authorities and security forces “committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.

These acts are:

• killing,
• causing serious bodily or mental harm,
• deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians, and
• imposing measures intended to prevent births.

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

Ms. Pillay maintained that responsibility for the atrocity crimes “lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons”, amid “explicit statements” denigrating Palestinians by Israeli civilian and military authorities.

The Commission also analysed conduct of Israeli authorities and the Israeli security forces in Gaza, “including imposing starvation and inhumane conditions of life for Palestinians in Gaza…genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be concluded from the nature of their operations”, the panel said.

Methodical examination

The Commission’s assertion follows its review of Israeli military operations in Gaza, “including killing and seriously harming unprecedented numbers of Palestinians” and the imposition of a “total siege, including blocking humanitarian aid leading to starvation”, it said.

According to the UN aid coordination wing, OCHA, nearly one million people remain in Gaza City, famine has been confirmed there, and residents face daily bombardment and “compromised access to means of survival after the Israeli military placed the entire city under a displacement order”.

For its latest report, the panel also examined what it called the “systematic destruction” of healthcare and education in Gaza and “systematic” acts of sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians.

Justice call

In addition, the Commission of Inquiry reviewed the alleged “direct targeting” of children and Israel’s “disregarding [of] the orders of the International Court of Justice, which issued an order in March 2024 that Israel should take ‘all necessary and effective measures to ensure…the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians throughout Gaza’”.

“The international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said Ms. Pillay.

“When clear signs and evidence of genocide emerge, the absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity,” she added.

“All States are under a legal obligation to use all means that are reasonably available to them to stop the genocide in Gaza.”

Qatari dimension

In a related development on Tuesday, the Human Rights Council shuffled its schedule to make way for an urgent debate on last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar.

The strike targeted a neighbourhood of the Qatari capital, Doha, reportedly killing six people including five members of Hamas and prompting widespread condemnation including from the Security Council and Secretary-General.

In a statement, António Guterres spoke out against what he called a “flagrant violation” of Qatari sovereignty and territorial integrity.

And at a Security Council meeting called in response to the strike, the UN’s political affairs chief told ambassadors the attack in violation of Qatar’s sovereignty was a serious threat to regional peace and security. It also undermined international mediation efforts to end the war in Gaza and return the hostages, said Rosemary DiCarlo.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Viet Thanh Nguyen

I’m beyond disturbed that my alma mater is wiling to destroy its reputation as the birthplace of the 1960s Free Speech Movement and put students in danger in the process.

18 Sep 2025 – The University of California, Berkeley, famous for its Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, included the names of 160 faculty, students, and staff in documents it recently turned over to the Trump administration as part of an antisemitism probe. It’s yet another worrying sign in the federal government’s efforts to use allegations of antisemitism to discipline academia and suppress resistance to its agenda, including its support for Israel.

As a graduate of UC Berkeley and as someone who was a student activist there in the 1990s, I was particularly disturbed that the university named names to the government.

Naming names was one of the hallmarks of the paranoid era of the 1950s in the United States, when Americans were hauled before Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and interrogated about their political beliefs and suspected allegiance to communism. For those under the anti-communist spotlight, naming the names of other people was one way to avoid being blacklisted or otherwise punished for their real or alleged political beliefs. The spectacle of McCarthyist shaming and persecution signaled to the rest of American society to religiously embrace anti-communism, a legacy that is still strong today.

The most prominent known name that Berkeley included is Judith Butler, the philosopher who made their reputation through interventions into gender and queer theory, and who also happens to be Jewish and anti-Zionist. In response, Butler wrote:

“Antisemitism must be unequivocally opposed along with every other form of racism, but there are campus protocols for investigating such allegations that ensure fairness and which, in this instance, were suspended by the administration. Moreover, it is important to consider which definition of antisemitism is at work. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which the Trump administration accepts, is overbroad, often equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. It acts as a cudgel against freedom of expression and dissent.”

During the McCarthy era, the targeting of suspected communists and sympathizers was inseparable from a general atmosphere of enforced domestic conformity, from patriarchal gender roles to segregation and anti-Blackness. Anti-communist politics also went hand-in-hand with the nation’s post-World War II transformation into the “military-industrial complex” that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of in his 1961 farewell speech. The combination of anti-communist paranoia and an expanding American global hegemony culminated in the American war in Viet Nam (and Laos and Cambodia) in the 1960s and 1970s, waged to stop the spread of communism. The war was a disaster for Southeast Asians and for Americans, with over 58,000 Americans dead and approximately 3 million Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands of Lao, Hmong, and Cambodians killed.

The imperial and murderous excesses of American power generated the antiwar movement and the countercultural movement, while the concurrent suppression of American minorities led to the rise of domestic uprisings by Black Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos, and Native Americans, along with a vigorous resurgence of feminism and a militantly visible movement of queer liberation. The schism within the United States was a civil war in the American soul, which subsided after the end of the war in Viet Nam into 50 years of cultural and political struggle over the meaning of the United States, both for its own citizens and residents, as well as those people of other countries affected by American power.

Butler has been involved with both the domestic and international dimensions of American power. While they became influential with their writing on queer and trans politics, they also spoke out against American wars of the post 9/11 era. The Manichean view of the Cold War, where communists were the enemy, had simply been extended to the Arab and Muslim world, with a fear of “radical Islam” conflating Arabs and Muslims with terrorists. Butler asked a basic question: why do some lives, like those of Americans, Western Europeans, and white people, seem more deserving of grief in Western society than those of Arabs, Muslims, and nonwhite people? That same question could have been asked about Southeast Asian lives during the American war in Viet Nam, and Butler has asked it about Palestinian lives in their condemnation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

That genocide, and the American support for it, has heightened the political and cultural divisions within American society to a pitch not seen since the era of McCarthyism and the American war in Viet Nam. While we remember some of the more famous names who were named in the 1950s, like screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, many more were targeted who were less well-known. So it is with Butler and the 159 others whose names have not yet been revealed, some of whom were included due to anonymous allegations. Their perils are real, as Butler writes: “Will those of us on the list be branded by the government as ‘terrorist sympathizers?’ Will our travel be restricted? Will our email be surveilled? Students on the list are now potentially exposed to abduction, deportation, termination of employment, expulsion from the university, harassment, and detention by a government that has already shown its willingness to do all of the above.”

By naming names, UC Berkeley has eroded its reputation as a stronghold of intellectual independence, cultural nonconformity, and political protest. Its submission is neither inevitable nor rewarding, since every sign of submission has been interpreted by the Trump administration as evidence of weakness that can be further exploited. In the face of this institutional complicity, which stems from the vulnerability of UC Berkeley and many other institutions of higher education to political domination due to their funding being intertwined with the military-industrial complex, the historian Robin D.G. Kelley writes, “We need to create a new university.”

That kind of daring imagination is what Berkeley was supposed to be famous for. But while academic institutions can be and have been corrupted, the ideals that drive certain scholars, from famous philosophers to inquisitive first-year students, still remain. Those ideals include a commitment to recognizing the humanity of those that our society has deemed the enemy, as well as the acknowledgment that our side is as capable of the inhuman behavior with which we charge our enemy. This commitment to mutual humanity, and this troubling understanding of our own inhumanity, reminds us that what we should name in the face of abusive power is not our fellow citizens and residents but the acts of injustice that harm others and – for those of us who remain silent – ourselves.

Pulitzer-Prize Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of several books.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By The Chris Hedges Report 

18 Sep 2025 – Trump’s designation of the amorphous group antifa, which has no formal organization or structure, as a terrorist organization permits the state to charge us all as terrorists. The point is not to go after members of antifa, short for anti-fascist. It is to go after the last vestiges of dissent. When Barack Obama oversaw the coordinated national campaign to shut down the Occupy encampments, antifa — so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass and seek physical confrontations with police – was the excuse.

“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

I have no love for antifa. The feeling is mutual. I was a fierce opponent of the Black Bloc anarchists who identified with antifa. They embedded themselves in Occupy encampments and refused to take part in the collective decision making. They carried out property destruction and initiated clashes with the police. Occupy activists were antifa’s human shields. I wrote that antifa was “a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state.”

David Graeber, whose work I respect, wrote an open letter criticizing my position.

I was doxed. My lectures and events, which received phone threats forcing venues to hire private security, including bodyguards, were picketed by men dressed in black, their faces were covered by black bandanas. They all carried the same sign, no matter which city I was in, that read: “Fuck You Chris Hedges.” During a debate with an anarchist supporter of antifa in New York City, several dozen black-clad men in the audience jeered and interrupted me, often yelling out sarcastically “amen.”

The state effectively used antifa — I am certain antifa was heavily infiltrated with agents provocateurs — to shut all of us down. The corporate state feared the broad appeal of the Occupy movement, including to those within the systems of power. The movement was targeted because it articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines.

Antifa, let me be clear, is not a terrorist organization. It may confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution, but its designation as a terrorist organization has no legal justification.

Antifa sees any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, as the enemy. They oppose all organized movements, which only ensures their own powerlessness. They are not only obstructionist, but obstructionist to those of us who are also trying to resist. They dismiss anyone who lacks their ideological purity. It does not matter if individuals are part of union organizing, workers’ and populist movements or radical intellectuals and environmental activists. These anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left.

John Zerzan, one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States, defended “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the rambling manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, although he did not endorse Kaczynski’s bombings. Zerzan dismisses a long list of supposed “sellouts” starting with Noam Chomsky and including myself.

Black Bloc activists in cities such as Oakland smashed the windows of stores and looted them. It was not a strategic, moral or tactical act. It was done for the sake of destruction. Random acts of violence, looting and vandalism are justified, in the jargon of the movement, as components of “feral” or “spontaneous insurrection.” These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on “feral” or “spontaneous” acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed.

“The Black Bloc movement is infected with a deeply disturbing hypermasculinity,” I wrote. “This hypermasculinity, I expect, is its primary appeal. It taps into the lust that lurks within us to destroy, not only things but human beings. It offers the godlike power that comes with mob violence. Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.”

But while I oppose antifa, I do not blame them for the state’s response. If it was not antifa it would be some other group. Our rapidly consolidating police state will use any mechanism to silence us. It actually welcomes violence. Confrontational tactics and destruction of property justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population, driving them away from any resistance movement. It needs antifa or a group like it. Once a resistance movement is successfully smeared as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob — which those in the Trump administration are working hard to do — we are finished. If we become isolated, we can be crushed.

“Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality,” I wrote. “The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner ‘Bull’ Connor was a thug who would overreact.”

“The explosive rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement came when a few women, trapped behind orange mesh netting, were pepper-sprayed by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna,” I went on. “The violence and cruelty of the state were exposed. And the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.”

I saw how antifa was weaponized to break the Occupy movement. Now it is being weaponized to throttle any resistance, no matter how tepid and benign.

This justification for widespread repression is absurdist theater, characterized by fictions, including the supposed “Red-Green” alliance of Islamists and the “radical left.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, insists there was an “organized campaign” behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whose martyrdom has turbocharged state repression. Any Trump opponent, including billionaire financier George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, will soon be caught in the net.

We are all antifa now.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Maung Zarni

FORSEA Dialogue strives to foster the bond of humanity, especially among the Oppressed, inform the wider public and reach out to those in the world of global privileges and influence.

21 Sep 2025 – When a group of dissidents and political exiles from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar got together in an old chateau in a French countryside village about an hour drive from Paris in the summer of 2018, our focus was on the collective improvement of Southeast Asian region where our roots were.

But quickly we realized that these regional markers or boundaries are themselves silos that the colonial or imperialist White Man has created for us to stick to “our issues”.

Our own regional leaders, mostly unelected and/or authoritarian populists, both civilian and military men, from the Association of South East Asian Nations, occasionally bark back at the “masters of mankind” in the so-called Global North, built on 500-years of loot, theft, land grab and planetary resource rape. But they generally play along in the Masters’ Game, for the crumbs.

ASEAN as a regional bloc of 11 member states – including Indonesia and Myanmar, which were two founding members of the Bandung Conference of anti-imperialist Asia and African nations from the 1950’s – has neither the humanistic vision nor the intellectual leadership that enables the grouping to punch above its weight.

Out of its utter and complete absence of any ideals or principles or humanistic enlightenment, the ASEAN has chosen to remain quiet in all genocides, both in its Southeast Asian backyard and in other parts of the world.

Beyond legal obligation placed on all UN member states, genocides are an affront to humanity. Alas, for politicians that relegate their humanity to corporate and national profits, it’s all business-as-usual.

Enter the never-acknowledged, CIA-assisted Indonesian genocide of native-born Chinese in 1965 to the American War-induced Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia in 1975, from Myanmar’s slow-burning Rohingya genocide – still ongoing – to Israel-US-joint genocide in Gaza and colonial occupation of the entire Palestine.

Citizens are always intellectually and ideologically ahead of those who run Frankenstein creatures which political scientists and academics call “states”.

Donald Trump, the new Genocidaire-in-Chief, who replaced Genocide Joe in the White House, has reportedly been invited to attend the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur next month. Enlightened Malaysian citizens are gearing up to give him a citizens’ un-welcome, if the Master accepts the invitation from Malaysia as ASEAN Chair.

FORSEA fully understand that We the People are inside the world’s history where the oppressed & the oppressor, the exploited and the exploiter, the colonized and the colonizer inevitably confront one another.

We embrace the Big Struggles, not just stay within our little silos of ethno-national concerns and interests.

Friday’s dialogue was our continual attempt to break from the colonialist silos of “area or geography or national focus”, the activist equivalent of the “area studies” in the White Academy.

For human communities under oppression, the only way to connect with wider global struggles is through universal humanism and principles that value life, liberty and love (of fellow humans), not through interests.

That widely reviled Nuremberg-worthy American criminal, Dr Henry Kissinger, was dead wrong when he promoted the view that “no permanent friends, only permanent interests.”

Interests keep changing, only values, ideals and principles give a revolutionary movement(s) a stable moral anchor. In fact, ideals that guide liberation struggles and anti-dictatorship revolts are both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity.

Myanmar’s anti-dictatorship movements have become a lamentable example of multiple-revolts adrift without any inspirational moral ideals, shared empathy or a strategic map, from the now ousted Aung San Suu Kyi and the current political leadership of the opposition National Unity Government to most of the ethnic identity-based armed organizations fighting the repressive military junta.

FORSEA is sharing the transcript of the opening address by our Palestinian sister in struggle Rula Shadeed of Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, which captured the essence of what FORSEA stands for and what we strive – a fundamental change in the relations between the oppressed and the oppressor, the exploited and the exploiter, and the humanists and the anti-human corporate imperialist “masters of the mankind”.

As Rula Shadeed observed, “the only solution (for freedom from colonial repression and genocidal corporate profiteering) is intersectional struggle. Together we are far more powerful than the global minority regimes that survive only by oppressing others.”

Watch the full video below

Resistance and uprisings in Indonesia, Nepal, Malaysia, Myanmar and occupied Palestine Territories

Transcript – Rula Shadeed | 19 Sep 2025

Thank you very much, Zarni. I am very honoured and privileged to be part of this important call about struggles across Asia. What we try to focus on is the importance of intersectional struggles – how we can work together in solidarity, share knowledge, and resist the oppressor. Unfortunately, we see that oppressors learn from each other and apply similar oppressive regimes on people.

Even when facing existential threats, as we are in Palestine and in other countries represented here, we must unite to deal with the situation, and learn from our brothers, sisters, and comrades around the world.

My name is Rula Shadeed, co-director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy. I am a jurist in international criminal law. Our work focuses on introducing a liberatory narrative on Palestine, and on lobbying and mobilising states and movements worldwide to fight oppression in Palestine, while connecting with other struggles globally.

I was asked to comment briefly on the UN General Assembly decision yesterday, and on the US veto in the Security Council. Of course, this came as no surprise – we knew the US would veto. What’s striking is that the language of the resolution did not mention genocide or the ongoing killings, but instead focused mainly on forced famine – the man-made famine imposed by Israel – and the catastrophic humanitarian situation. It avoided addressing genocide, accountability, or sanctions, which are the only meaningful way forward.

Israel is waging what looks like a war against the world, with the United States playing a central role not only in Palestine but across the region and globally.

To explain what is happening in Palestine: the struggle has been ongoing for more than eight decades. Palestinians first resisted British colonial rule, then the Zionist colonial regime established in the aftermath of the world wars. For the past 80+years, Palestinians have been fighting against colonisation.

The discourse has been distorted, especially by US and Israeli propaganda, which reduces the issue to a “conflict.” This frames it as a two-sided dispute rather than colonisation. But the Palestinian situation is clearly one of colonisation. If we misdiagnose it as a conflict, we cannot address it correctly. Colonisation ends only with liberation.

All of Israel’s practices – displacement, ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid, occupation, theft of natural resources, and transfer of the population – fall under colonisation. The current genocide is a continuation of the Nakba. The Nakba began in 1948 when, with British support, Zionist militias took over Palestinian towns and villages and expelled more than 80% of the population – around 800,000 people – who remain refugees to this day. This is why Palestinians form one of the largest refugee exoduses in the world. Even before 1948, Palestinians rose up – notably in 1936 against the British presence and its atrocities. Since then, Palestinians have continued to fight for liberation.

It’s easy to despair today. Perhaps we only see 1% of the horrors in Gaza and the West Bank. But we must remember: Palestinians have fought for 100 years against the most powerful forces globally, and they are still surviving. Despite unimaginable atrocities, despite Israeli colonisation, US hegemony, global crackdowns, and hostile media narratives, Palestinians remain steadfast in bringing dignity and freedom to their people.

Just last week, the United States even sanctioned Palestinian human rights organisations – an unprecedented move. They are treating us like a superpower, sanctioning NGOs as though they were Russia. This shows the extreme levels of control and dominance aimed at breaking Palestinians and preventing liberation.

I would end by saying two things:

The coloniser is brutal – among the most dangerous oppressors in the world –exporting oppression globally. The only solution is intersectional struggle. Together we are far more powerful than the global minority regimes that survive only by oppressing others.

At the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, we focus on alternative diplomacy in the Global South. We have a presence in Latin America and will soon expand into East Asia. From our work in Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina with indigenous movements, we’ve seen how their oppression is often directly fuelled or financed by Israeli companies and the Israeli state.

For example, in Patagonia, Argentina, the Mapuche people are being ethnically cleansed from their land because an Israeli-linked water company signed an agreement with the Argentine government to extract resources. The Mapuche have now been designated as a terrorist organisation by the state.

This pattern is global: Israel exports intelligence, weaponry, and oppressive technology everywhere, including Asia. The oppressor is one.

So the only way forward is for us also to unite, coordinate efforts, identify common targets, and pool our resources to support each other in times of need – and to show people everywhere that liberation is possible.

Thank you, Zarni, and apologies if I went longer than expected.

A Buddhist humanist from Burma (Myanmar), Maung Zarni, nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center – Cambodia.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

13 Sep 2025 – The Gaza littoral – a narrow coastal corridor between Asqalan (Ashkelon) in the north and Rafah at the Egyptian border – occupies a strategic position on the coastal axis linking Africa and Western Asia (the Levant) and is often referred to historically as the Via Maris. Its geography made it a repeated meeting place for goods, peoples, and ideas and explains why archaeological and textual records show continuous human activity from the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze periods onward (de Miroschedji et al.; Tell es-Sakan excavations).

This study synthesizes major published finds and contemporary reporting to outline Gaza’s long-term contributions to Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilization. In the 1947 UN Partition plan, the strip was much larger than it is now (and being demolished). Estimates of 200,000 to as many as half a million perished in the past two years of Israeli onslaught on that land (3/4 women and children, and most of the residents are refugees from the Nakba of 1948-1950).

Recent archaeological work has shown that the Gaza littoral hosted urban settlements as early as 8,000 years ago. Excavations at Tell es-Sakan (discovered during construction work in 1998 and excavated by teams including de Miroschedji) reveal mud-brick urban deposits, storage contexts and evidence for a mixed agricultural-maritime economy during the Early Bronze Age. Such evidence indicates that Gaza’s coastal settlements were part of the emergent urban economies of southern Levant and were in contact with contemporaneous Egyptian administrative and economic activities. The Tell es-Sakan sequence places Gaza within the first waves of coastal urbanization in the eastern Mediterranean.

During the 2nd millennium BCE the Gaza littoral was integrated into the Canaanite network and repeatedly intersected with Egyptian imperial interests. Archaeological assemblages (imported pottery, architecture and small finds) and Egyptian texts show that southern Levantine coastal sites functioned as waystations and focal points for goods moving between the Nile, the Levantine interior and the Mediterranean. Excavation reports and regional syntheses emphasize Gaza’s position as part of coastal exchange networks during this period.

The Iron Age coastal transformation included the arrival (or intensification) of Aegean-influenced material culture in the southern Levant — the so-called Philistine phenomenon — of which Gaza was one of the principal polities in the Philistine pentapolis (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath). Philistine pottery styles, new craft traditions and evidence for specialized workshops and maritime activities attest to cultural fusion between local Canaanite traditions and incoming Aegean elements. Although modern development has limited large-scale excavation directly inside some parts of Gaza City, comparative work from neighboring coastal sites and site surveys indicates Gaza’s role within this dynamic maritime and craft network.

From the Persian through the Hellenistic and Roman periods Gaza sustained major port facilities and urban morphology demonstrating integration into Mediterranean trade networks. Archaeologists have identified the ancient port installations often called Anthedon (sometimes identified with the Balakhiyya/Blakhiya/ Tell Iblakhiyya area north of Gaza) and Maiuma (the port quarter associated with Gaza) among the principal maritime facilities. Excavations and rescue archaeology, including Franco-Palestinian missions at Anthedon, and the 2023 discovery of a substantial Roman-era cemetery (with lead sarcophagi) near Jabaliya, testify to a complex, economically engaged society with elite burial practices and broad Mediterranean connections.

Byzantine churches (recorded on medieval maps such as the Madaba mosaic) and early Islamic administrative records show continuity of urban life and the adaptation of port and land networks and continued fluporsihing economy as well as peaceful coexistence of Christians and Muslims from 6th to 20th century AD. During the Mamluk periods coastal fortifications and administrative structures continued to emphasize the strategic importance of Gaza. Under Ottoman administration and into modernity Gaza functioned as a regional market center and waypoint for caravan and coastal traffic; travelers’ accounts and administrative records document a long continuity of agricultural production, market exchange, and civic life. Throughout its history this heroic strip of territory defeated mighty armies and inspired legendary victories while continuing to prosper [that is until this recent genocide which is not only unprecedented in the region but globally).

Recent decades have seen important archaeological discoveries (e.g., Tell es-Sakan publications, Anthedon excavations, the Roman-era Jabaliya cemetery) alongside increasing concern about threats to sites. Scholarly analyses and investigative reports emphasize the twin pressures of conflict, urban development, coastal erosion and inadequate heritage management on Gaza’s archaeological record. International teams and local scholars have collaborated in rescue excavations, but wartime destruction and damage to heritage structures have been reported (notably during the conflicts of 2023–2024), raising urgent ethical questions about documentation, local stewardship, and international responsibility for preservation and reconstruction.

Our own environmental studies in the area some using detailed satellite images/remote sensing show 1) rich biodiversity, 2) decimation of the tree cover and habitats (see Yin et al. 2025). Thus, there is devastation for both natural and cultural heritage of this rich area.

Gaza also enriched is with thousands of scholars and contributors to human civilization. Here are just a random selection:

Silvanus of Gaza (d. ~311 CE) – Early Christian bishop of Gaza who was martyred during the Diocletian persecution. He is remembered as one of the earliest Christian leaders in the region.

Aeneas of Gaza (~5th century) – Neo‑Platonic philosopher and Christian convert, associated with the Rhetorical School of Gaza. He wrote philosophical works that merged classical philosophy with Christian thought.

Dorotheus of Gaza (~500–560/580) – Monk and ascetic teacher near Gaza, author of spiritual discourses that influenced early Christian monasticism and ethical thought.

Sulayman al-Ghazzi (c. 940–1027) – A Christian bishop and poet in Fatimid Palestine, Sulayman al-Ghazzi was the first known Arab Christian poet to write religious verse in Arabic. His diwan (poetic anthology) offers insights into Christian life during the era of caliph al-Hakim.

Ibn Qudama (1147–1223) – A prominent Hanbali jurist and theologian, Ibn Qudama was born in Gaza and is renowned for his works on Islamic jurisprudence, including al-Mughni, a comprehensive legal encyclopedia.

Abu Bakr al-Nabulsi – A 17th-century Islamic scholar from Gaza, al-Nabulsi was known for his contributions to Islamic jurisprudence and theology, particularly within the Shafi’i school of thought.

Shady Alsuleiman – A contemporary Islamic scholar and imam, Alsuleiman is recognized for his work in Islamic education and community leadership, focusing on promoting understanding of Islamic teachings in modern contexts.

Ayman Hassouna – A Palestinian archaeologist and university lecturer, Hassouna has worked extensively on excavations in Gaza, including the Byzantine Church of Jabalia, contributing significantly to the understanding of Gaza’s ancient history.

Sufian Tayeh (1971–2023) – A physicist and educator, Tayeh served as the president of the Islamic University of Gaza. He was known for his work in physics and applied mathematics and was tragically killed in an Israeli airstrike in December 2023.

Mohammad Assaf (b. 1992) – Singer from the Gaza Strip who gained fame by winning Arab Idol, becoming a symbol of hope and cultural pride for Palestinians.

Dr. Refaat Alareer (1979–2023) – A Renaissance scholar from Gaza, Alareer was a professor and writer who contributed to academic and cultural discourse. He was killed during the 2023 conflict, leaving a legacy of intellectual engagement.

Conclusion: Early urbanization and administrative activities in Gaza contributed to the regional network of production, storage, and exchange that underpinned complex societies in the Near East. Acting as a coastal conduit, Gaza facilitated the transmission of commodities and material culture between Egypt and the broader Levantine-Mediterranean economy. Port infrastructure, long-distance maritime commerce, specialized fisheries and the movement of Mediterranean goods and ideas through Gaza contributed directly to the economic vitality and cultural pluralism of the region. Technological and stylistic exchange (ceramics, metallurgy, textile production, and ship-related crafts) that flowed through the Gaza littoral influenced craft traditions across the southern Levant and beyond.

The Gaza littoral’s long-term contributions to civilization are best understood as a combination of (1) geographical advantage (coastal route and hinterland productivity), (2) sustained maritime and land exchange networks that carried goods and ideas, (3) local craft and agricultural production that fed regional markets, and (4) repeated cultural contact zones that produced hybrid forms of material culture and religious life.

Gaza’s sustained role as a market, agricultural supplier, and transport hub helped to link inland and coastal economies for centuries, transmitting crops, commodities and cultural practices. This was an essential contribution to circum-Mediterranean coastal communities and over 30 countries have direct connections to Gaza. Gaza’s archaeological record informs broader historical narratives of Mediterranean connectivity. Preserving that record is necessary for reconstructing local histories that feed into global understandings of ancient economies, religions, and technologies and is an essential component of knowledge to shape a peaceful future that is not repeatedly marred by genocides and holocausts (due to colonialism, imperialism).

Mazin Qumsiyeh, associate professor of genetics and director of cytogenetic services at Yale University School of Medicine, is founder and president of the Holy Land Conservation Foundation and ex-president of the Middle East Genetics Association.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Lorraine Mallinder 

18 Sep 2025 – The United States vetoed a crucial United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, as Israel expanded its scorched-earth offensive on Gaza City.

The resolution, approved by 14 of the 15 members of the council on Thursday, called for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza respected by all parties”, the release of all captives held by Hamas and other groups, and a lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Drafted by the council’s 10 elected members, the resolution went further than previous iterations to highlight what diplomats called the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Gaza after nearly two years of war in the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 65,141 people, according to Palestinian health officials.

As expected, the United States vetoed the effort. “US opposition to this resolution will come as no surprise,” said Morgan Ortagus, US deputy special envoy to the Middle East.

“It fails to condemn Hamas or recognise Israel’s right to defend itself, and it wrongly legitimises the false narratives benefitting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council.”

Ortagus added that the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s official declaration of famine in the enclave last month had employed “flawed methodology”, hailing the work of the heavily militarised GHF hubs, where so many Palestinians have been killed while seeking food for their families.

After the vote, the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour said the US veto was “deeply regrettable” and had prevented “the Security Council from playing its rightful role in the face of these atrocities and to protect civilians in the face of genocide”

“Unfortunately, the Council remains silent at a great cost for its credibility and authority,” Mansour added. “This demonstrates that when it comes to atrocity crimes, the use of the veto should simply not be allowed.”

Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama also had strong words. “Palestinian brothers, Palestinian sisters, forgive us,” he said.

“Forgive us, because the world speaks of rights, but denies them to Palestinians. Forgive us because our efforts, our sincere efforts, shattered against this wall of rejection.”

The war in Gaza had, he noted, killed more than 18,000 children and 12,000 women, killed more than 1,400 doctors and nurses, and more than 250 journalists. Israel, he added, was “immune”, not because of international law, but because of the “bias of the international system”.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said that Israel needed “no justification” for its war on Gaza. He thanked Ortagus for exercising the US veto.

Reporting from New York, James Bays, Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor, said the vote was a “sombre” moment on the 80th anniversary of the United Nations, with many countries championing “multilateral diplomacy”, while the US insisted on taking an “America-first view of the world”.

“[It is] not a strong advocate … of the United Nations, cutting back much of the humanitarian funding to this organisation,” he said, noting how this had brought the organisation to one of the lowest points in its 80-year history.

‘Lost generation’

With its ground offensive on Gaza City, which started Tuesday, Israel appears to be intent on killing any hopes of a ceasefire.

The Israeli military, which has said multiple times that it wants to definitively crush Hamas, has not given a specific timeline for the offensive, though there are indications that it could take months.

On Tuesday, a team of independent experts commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, with the intent to “destroy” the Palestinians.

Before Thursday’s vote, Israel’s Danon had posted on X that the resolution would “not free the hostages nor bring security”.

Israel, he said, would “continue to fight Hamas and protect its citizens, even if the Security Council prefers to turn a blind eye to the terror”.

Danish Ambassador to the UN Christina Markus Lassen underlined the gravity of Israel’s man-made famine. “Desperate mothers are forced to boil leaves to feed their children, fathers search the rubble for sustenance,” she said.

“People are killed as they try to get food to survive. A generation risks being lost not only to war, but to hunger and despair.”

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Prof. Richard Falk

The Gaza Tribunal is a civil society initiative that seeks justice-driven outcomes to human wrongdoing that are not being addressed by national governments or international institutions. These tribunals offer the people of societies throughout the world an opportunity to express transnational objections to the most notorious international crimes and to encourage solidarity with the suffering and abuse of victims, regardless of nationality. Above all, a peoples tribunal seeks to draw attention to the enforcement, accountability, and complicity gaps in situations where severe failures of the established international order challenge deeply the moral conscience of humanity.

Recourse to a peoples’ tribunal of this character was first undertaken in the middle of the Vietnam War by two world famous intellectuals, Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. Its procedures and findings were dismissed at the time by governments and media as lacking the force of law that could only be achieved by recourse to national and international courts. Unlike standard judicial procedures peoples’ tribunals perform as partisan undertakings that do not pretend to be neutral and do not offer the accused party a fair process allowing for the presentation of defensive arguments by the alleged perpetrator of international crimes. In contrast, all proceedings before the ICJ or ICC project images of political and normative neutrality as integral to the credibility of their legal assessment of legal responsibility.

The Russell Tribunal and every subsequent peoples’ tribunal that has been established in the intervening 50 years has never purported to judge the guilt or innocence of the partes, but to legitimate opposition to certain patterns of behavior, to clarify and document the criminality of accused parties, and to encourage civil society activism as justified ‘enforcement’ of international law and morality from below. The central goal of this unauthorized process is to promote as objectively as possible the exposure of the constituents of abusive behavior on the part of the accused state(s) and setting forth action initiatives and policy recommendations directed at the membership of global civil society, as well as making judgments of the policies and practices of national governments and international institutions. Such civil society tribunals also encourage accountability for the main perpetrators and complicit actors, making a maximum effort to connect persuasively the crime to the alleged criminals.

The best of these tribunals also develop a permanent archive that would offer objective interpretations of evidence, including survivor and expert witnessing, denying all claims of impunity. The resulting archive of such salient controversial occurrences has a potentiality to contribute positively to future citizen education about the events free from state propaganda, not papering over the crimes of the past but highlighting them. The Russell Tribunal inspired many subsequent efforts throughout the world. The organizers of such populist institutions are invariably motivated by sentiments of moral outrage and a politics of empathy for the victims of governmental behavior that is violative of international law, especially breaches of fundamental provisions of the UN Charter and widely shared ethical values. It should be noted that the geographic spread of such initiatives extends to every world civilization.

Each recourse to a peoples’ tribunal is quite naturally sensitive to the distinctive circumstances of the particular case. The Gaza Tribunal was formed in 1994 against this background, with a particular sensitivity to the urgency of reacting to genocide, ‘the crime of crimes.’ The context in which Israel’s policy toward the attack on October 7 unfolded, especially in its first 18 months enjoyed the geopolitical shielding and material support of the world’s leading liberal democracies, situated in Europe and North America, as well as Australia and New Zealand. This web of complicity with Israel’s genocide quite significantly included all important breakaway British colonies that turned out to be ‘the success stories’ of settler colonials, apartheid, and genocidal behavior.

Israel on its side also benefited from a self-censoring mainstream media that heavily filtered the daily spectacle of atrocities and accompanying dehumanizing language used by Israeli leaders to be objectively reported. To this day the media, world leaders, and even the top echelon of UN civil servants refrain from  endorsing any pro-Palestinian populist initiatives, and even from referring to Israel violence in Gaza as ‘genocide.’ There was almost no governmental and institutional opposition to Israel’s behavior in Gaza months passed. When South Africa made its historic submission to the ICJ in late 2023 dramatically charging that Israel was acting in Gaza in violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948 the international discourse became more critical of Israel, but still Western leaders and UN officials, let alone liberal critics of Israel in the US and Europe refuse to name the prolonged Gaza ordeal (spilling over to the West Bank) as genocide. These ‘safe’ crtics content themselves with being advocates of a Gaza ceasefire accompanied by the release of remaining hostages and language that includes the demonization of Hamas.

The Gaza Tribunal formed more than a year ago in response to months of failure by the UN and other political actors to expose and end the ongoing Palestinian ordeal in Gaza. This ordeal resulted from Israel and its supporters defiant disregard of international law and the majority views of the governments and peoples in the world. A defining instance of this defiance was the refusal to comply with the Interim Rulings of the ICJ in 2024 that went so far as to attach the word ‘plausible’ to allegations of genocide and to order Israel to stop interfering with the international delivery of humanitarian aid. One problem with waiting for the ICJ’s final judgment is that it is not expected for at least two years, and that seems too long to provide any meaningful relief to the Palestinians in Gaza, although it should become required reading for all future law students. The Gaza Tribunal plans its final session in Istanbul between October 23-26, which will include a verdict rendered by a Jury of Conscience and a reasoned judgment on the question of genocide and issues of accountability and complicity. But if Israel pays no attention to the ICJ or ICC what makes anyone other than an idealistic fool think it would pay attention to the findings and recommendations of the Gaza Tribunal.

Such cynical reactions miss the point, purpose, and goals of a peoples’ tribunal. In our case it takes for granted the refusal of Israel to give any attention other than words of derision to the Tribunal to avoid giving its actions a scintilla of credibility. Israel is smart enough not to engage with any critical judgment of it guilt by way of substance. For one thing, Israel’s counter-arguments would be so weak if they stuck to the substance that they would be more likely resort to accusations that the Gaza Tribunal is itself unlawful and biased, even viciously antisemitic. The primary audience for the Gaza Tribunal is transnational civil society, including the responsible independent voices in the media.

Its short-term goal is to legitimate allegations of genocide, a task made much easier in recent months by the meticulous reports of the UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, and the release a week ago by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Gaza of its lengthy report that confirmed that Israel’s conduct in Gaza since October 7 violated the Genocide Convention in numerous respects. With such backing, an expected verdict along similar lines by our tribunal’s Jury of Conscience will undoubtedly add to the growing global consensus that Israel has become a pariah or rogue state. This negative branding makes it more politically feasible to insist that Israel needs the pressure of sanctions and boycotts to induce compliant behavior. Punitive costs must be imposed on Israel to improve prospects of curtailing present patterns of criminality that involve a denial of basic Palestinian rights, and also set forth future standards for accountability.

We appeal to all persons of global conscience to join us in this effort of the Gaza Tribunal to bring punitive justice to Israel and offer overdue restorative justice to the Palestinian people. We must not be silent or sit on our hands while the Palestinian tragedy is reaching such grotesque extremes, and vigilance will be vital even after the violence stops to prevent from the perpetrator of genocide to shape future arrangements. Here close to the site of the UN it is still time to enact bold and courageous responses within its framework of responsibilities and capabilities. Above all, it is legally possible for urgent UN action in the form of creative and committed invocations of the Uniting for Peace procedures and Responsibility to Protect norm. The Gaza Tribunal would welcome and ardently support these other kindred moves as initiatives that uphold the mission undertaken by the UN 80 years ago, and rekindle its promises to humanity with respect to peace, human rights, equitable development, and respect for international law.

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee Member, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

22 September 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Hüseyin Vodinalı 

Netanyahu has become a hot potato. He attacks anyone who stands in his way.

He brought Trump to heel in the US with the Epstein files, and if Bibi had to spit in Donny’s mouth, Donny would almost say “Thanks to God!”

Israel commands, the US does. His attack on Qatar is clear proof of this. The attack, which completely destroyed Trump’s already crumbling credibility, was a complete trap.

Trump’s team summons Hamas leaders to a meeting, Israel receives information about the location and time (though it didn’t get it right; it only killed five insignificant people), and “Judas” countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia open their airspace to Israeli aircraft. Even more tragically, the Israeli planes likely refueled with American tanker aircraft, departing from the Al Udeid base in Qatar.

This is one aspect of the situation, but the more important aspect is the geopolitical consequences of bombing a country like Qatar, a Rothschild satellite of the US. Qatar has paid a heavy price for its friendship with Zionism and must now look to new horizons.

If Qatar, already deeply unpopular in the Gulf Arab world, takes the risk, it could acquire the S-400 defense system from Russia to replace its outdated Patriot missile defense system. It could draw closer to the BRICS and the SCO.

This would cause the US to lose its closest non-NATO ally. In fact, Iran immediately intervened, along with Turkey, and sent a message of support to Qatar. Qatar is a small country, but it possesses some of the world’s richest natural gas reserves. The most important point here is that the attack on Qatar also carries a threatening message directed at Turkey.

The Turkish Armed Forces, which have been based in Qatar since 2015, provide training and consulting services to the Qatari army at the base, which was renamed the Qatari-Turkish Combined Joint Force Command in 2017.

The cooperation expanded further in 2024 with the addition of air and naval units. According to a statement from the Ministry of National Defense, Turkey has deployed six F-16 fighter jets and two patrol ships to Qatar.

In other words, Qatar is practically the next stop before Turkey.

Media outlets in Israel have been talking about war with Turkey for some time now. The situation in Syria reveals its reality and its underlying foundation. Israel, of course, cannot openly engage in war with Turkey, but it will do everything in its power. May be Israel planning a new war on Cyprus. USA-Greece-Greek Cypriots on its side. 

Also It could start a proxy war in Syria using the YPG Kurdish forces. As a terrorist and genocidal state, it could easily deploy its proxies in Turkey, such as ISIS and the PKK. This is exactly what I’m waiting for. ISIS sent its first message from Izmir. A 16-year-old psychopathic child raided a police station and killed two police officers. The PKK, on ​​the other hand, is waiting for the negotiations to be overturned in the second peace process. They have made their preparations, armed themselves, and improved their skills in drone warfare.

Erdoğan’s coalition partner Devlet Bahçeli’s statement the other day strengthens the possibility that Turkey and Israel will soon fight in Syria.

The MHP leader said they cannot allow the YPG/SDF to “remain a security problem for Turkey.” US “Colonial Governor” Tom Barrack, however, rebuked Bahçeli, stating that the YPG are their allies and will have an autonomous structure in Syria.

Erdoğan has likely devised a political game plan, saying “if there is no peace, there will be war.”

Developments such as the continuous and rapid armament and the construction of shelters in 81 provinces indicate that we may soon enter a serious war. In such a situation, he believes the declaration of martial law (as if it doesn’t already exist) and the closure of the Y-CHP will be a tactic.

Israel, however, relies not only on the PKK and ISIS but also on the Greek Cypriot side. The news coming from the Greek Cypriot side are significant. It reported that Israel’s Barak MX air defense systems had been transferred from the port of Limassol. British bases in the Greek Cypriot side are already hosting Israel, and British spy planes are providing intelligence, along with the US, on Netanyahu’s genocide.

Netanyahu is deeply convinced that they will establish Erez Israel, or Greater Israel. This includes a Kurdistan established in Syria and Iraq, whose borders also encroach on Turkey and Iran. Bibi dreams of establishing a new hegemony in the Middle East with a Greater Israel and a Greater Kurdistan between the Euphrates and the Nile. That’s why he “managed” to attack six countries simultaneously in the last 10 days! The rest will surely follow.

Türkiye, on the other hand, seems to continue to seek help from its enemies (the US and the EU) and ignore its potential allies (Iran, for example). This will only make things worse, which are already going bad.

Before the 2017 referendum (which gave all power to the AKP Leader Erdoğan), I wrote at that time that a Saddam trap was being set for Turkey.

We’re getting there, step by step!

Hüseyin Vodinalı completed master’s degree (MA) in journalism and TV production at the New York Institute of Technology in the USA between 1992-94.

17 September 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Rima Najjar 

I. The Refusal of Delay

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, is right: judgment of Israel’s atrocities cannot be deferred. History is not a sanctuary — it is a graveyard, and the living will not lie down in it. To defer justice to history is to abandon the living to annihilation and hope that memory will suffice. Albanese dismantles this deferral with precision: “I am not someone who says, ‘history will judge them’ — they will have to be judged before then.” Her refusal is not rhetorical flourish — it is a demand. A demand for immediacy, for moral reckoning in the present tense. Because history, if it ever arrives, will not be enough. And the living cannot afford to wait.

And yes, some will ask — what does it matter if Albanese speaks clearly, if the UN itself is structurally incapable of enforcement? What good is documentation when people are being killed and expelled in real time? But this framing misses the point. Albanese’s role is not to enact change through institutional power; it is to produce legal and rhetorical clarity within a system designed to obscure. Her reports do not liberate, but they do indict. They name apartheid, settler colonialism, and genocide — not as metaphors, but as legal realities. That naming reverberates. It arms movements, scholars, and survivors with language that refuses euphemism. It builds precedent. It unsettles the comfort of “both sides” diplomacy. And it legitimizes testimony from the ground in a forum that, for all its limitations, still shapes global discourse. To dismiss this as distraction is to misunderstand the mechanics of narrative warfare. Albanese’s work is not heroic for saying what we already know — it is necessary because she says it where silence is the norm.

• It refuses delay, euphemism, and diplomatic choreography
• It insists that justice must be rendered while the crime is still unfolding

To archive in real time is to indict in real time. It is to say, with Fanon and with Albanese: they must be judged before then. Because the present is not a waiting room — it is the courtroom. And the people are the judges.

II. The Lullaby of Accomplices

“History will judge,” they say. But history has not been a neutral witness. It has been a weapon of the victors, a ledger of conquest, a narrative shaped by those who hold the pen and the power.

History has been on the side of empire. It has canonized colonizers, sanitized massacres, and reframed resistance as chaos. The Nakba was not merely erased, it was overwritten. The Naksa was not just denied, it was reinterpreted as strategic necessity. From Algeria to Palestine, from Congo to Kashmir, the archive has often served the architecture of domination.

Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, exposes this asymmetry. He writes not of military might, but of the psychic and existential power of the oppressed — their capacity to rupture colonial order through refusal, rage, and revolutionary imagination. Fanon insists that the colonized are not passive victims but agents of historical transformation. Their power lies not in tanks or treaties, but in the will to reclaim narrative, land, and dignity.

This is the power that terrifies empire:

• The peasant who joins the liberation front
• The child who remembers the name of the village erased from the map
• The writer who refuses euphemism
• The mourner who testifies without permission

Fanon reminds us that the oppressed do not wait for history to vindicate them; they make history by refusing erasure. Their resistance is not deferred — it is immediate, embodied, and uncontainable.

And yet, the lullaby persists. It is sung by Washington, Brussels, London, Berlin — those who bankroll and arm Israel while pretending to mourn Palestinian dead. It is echoed by the United Nations, issuing statements while vetoes choke action. It is the chorus of liberal commentators who watch genocide unfold and assure us that someday the record will be corrected.

But the record is already being written — by the living, in real time, in blood and rubble and refusal. And it does not wait for the victors to lose their pen.

III. History’s Inadequacy

History does not rescue the starving child in Gaza. It does not rebuild bombed hospitals or pull families from the rubble of Khan Younis. It does not stop snipers from executing teenagers in Jenin. History is written after the bodies are buried — and more often than not, by the perpetrators.

Even when the oppressed win, their victories are neutered: rage polished into resilience, revolution reduced to reconciliation. Waiting for history is surrender.

We’ve waited before. The Nakba of 1948 — the mass expulsion and destruction of Palestinian life — was archived but never redressed. The Naksa of 1967 — the second wave of displacement and occupation — was documented but never reversed. Each catastrophe was recorded, debated, footnoted. But the dispossession continued. The settlements expanded. The siege deepened. And the world moved on.

These events were not aberrations, they were precedents. And the lesson they offer is brutal: history may remember, but it rarely rescues. It may mourn, but it does not intervene. The archive grows, but the injustice persists.

IV. The Present as Archive

This is not an archive of memory — it is an arsenal of indictment. Each record is not a relic but a weapon, forged in the present to pierce impunity before it calcifies.

The Palestinian cause is not merely just. It is unignorable. No person tethered to their humanity can witness the systematic destruction of Gaza — the detention of children, the starvation of civilians, the criminalization of testimony — and remain neutral. And yet neutrality is the global default. Obfuscation is policy. Containment is strategy.

Grief itself becomes suspect. Survivors are interrogated, not consoled. Their mourning is reframed as incitement. Their memories are redacted before they can be archived.

The Zionist media apparatus — amplified by Western outlets, sanitized by diplomatic euphemisms — manufactures ambiguity where there is none. It reframes genocide as conflict, starvation as collateral, resistance as terrorism. It weaponizes language to flatten asymmetry, to erase context, to make the unbearable seem debatable.

But we know better. We have the records:

• Forensic evidence
• Satellite imagery
• Survivor testimonies
• Legal filings
• Burned schools, bombed hospitals, sanctioned human rights groups

This archive is not retrospective — it is insurgent. It is built in the present tense, against the machinery of erasure. And it carries the weight Fanon described in The Wretched of the Earth: the colonized subject does not wait for history to validate their humanity. They assert it through refusal, through documentation, through the reclamation of voice.

Fanon understood that the colonized are forced into a perpetual present — a present of surveillance, dispossession, and threat. But he also insisted that this present is the site of rupture. The oppressed do not inherit history; they interrupt it. They do not appeal to the future; they indict the now.

In Gaza, the archive is not a memorial-in-the-making — it is a weapon of resistance. Every image of rubble, every censored report, every smuggled testimony is a refusal to be buried in the footnotes of empire. It is what Fanon called the moment of becoming, when the colonized subject ceases to be an object of pity and becomes a force of reckoning.

This is the weight of the present:

• It demands action, not abstraction
• It refuses delay, euphemism, and diplomatic choreography
• It insists that justice must be rendered while the crime is still unfolding

To archive in real time is to indict in real time. It is to say, with Fanon and with Albanese: they must be judged before then. Because the present is not a waiting room — it is the courtroom. And the people are the judges.

V. Naming the Executioners

We do not wait. We indict.

We name the executioners: Israel, the Jewish settler state built on erasure. We name the enablers: the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia — the colonial bloc that arms and shields it.

We name the collaborators: Arab regimes that normalize with apartheid, trading Palestinian blood for diplomatic scraps.

They must be judged now — not by history, but by the living.

VI. Judgment Before History

To say they will have to be judged before then is to refuse the quiet violence of delay.

Accountability must pierce the present — while the crime is still unfolding — before impunity becomes irreversible.

Judgment takes place in multiple registers:

• In the streets where millions march
• In boycotts that choke profiteering
• In solidarity networks that break sieges
• In courts forced to confront their own paralysis
• In urgent petitions filed at The Hague
• In sanctions won against complicit states

The people are the court when institutions collapse into collaboration.

The archive built in real time — images of rubble, testimonies of survivors, evidence smuggled past censors — is not a memorial-in-the-making but the foundation of prosecution.

Justice is not the privilege of future historians — it is the duty of the living.

To wait is to abandon the living to annihilation.

To act is to judge.

And to judge now is the only way history will not become an epitaph of our failure, but a record of our refusal.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

17 September 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca