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By Tareq S. Hajjaj

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has taken over the aid system in Gaza on behalf of the Israeli army by cultivating a local network of companies and organizations to collaborate in its operations. The organizations that refused have been shut down.

10 Jul 2025 – The Israel-backed and U.S.-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been weathering one public relations disaster after another as new information continues to expose the organization’s complicity in Israel’s plans to “concentrate” Gaza’s population in camps ahead of their forcible displacement — in keeping with Israel’s stated military goals of conquering the Strip and expelling its people. In service of these goals, the GHF has replaced the UN’s aid distribution system with what Gazans describe as “death traps,” leading Palestinians to accuse the organization of fulfilling Israeli military objectives under the guise of humanitarianism.

In order to bolster this facade, the GHF has been actively attempting to pressure international humanitarian organizations into cooperating with the GHF and participating in its operations. The GHF has also actively attempted to form a local network of distributors run by companies known to have collaborated with the Israeli army in the past.

Speaking with several individuals and organizations approached by the GHF, Mondoweiss investigations reveal that Israel and the GHF are attempting to coerce local and international actors into cooperating with the U.S.-Israeli aid scheme. In some cases, the GHF has tasked local companies to engage in outreach to the population to advertise its centers and handle distribution and logistics.

According to sources inside Gaza, the Israeli army is also pursuing a broader strategy of pressuring humanitarian organizations to either operate under the GHF framework or cease their activities altogether. The Israeli military has reportedly forced several international organizations to distribute their aid through GHF centers, overriding previous agreements that allowed them to operate independently. In many cases, aid shipments that entered through Israeli-controlled crossings were redirected — without the knowledge or consent of the aid organizations — to the U.S. company’s centers.

An official security source in the Gaza civil government told Mondoweiss in mid-June that Hamas possesses “reliable intelligence” confirming that the GHF has been pressuring local institutions to participate in its operations. These attempts were meant to force organizations to cooperate in a strategy of “engineering starvation and managing chaos,” the official said, which he said was part of “a politically motivated and security-driven project disguised in humanitarian garb.”

“However, these institutions, guided by their national consciousness and ethical commitment, refused to become tools for a party responsible for our people’s suffering,” he added.

But there are some organizations that have cooperated. The GHF and the Israeli army have essentially pursued two paths in dominating the humanitarian landscape in Gaza: forcing international organizations to either work with the GHF or to halt operations, and using local gangs and businesses as part of its “native” network, giving a Palestinian face to an Israeli-U.S. operation with military and political objectives. Here is how it has attempted to achieve the objective of building this network of “aid collaborators.”

The case of the al-Khozandar Company

On the night of June 11, 12 employees working for a local trading company were killed after being publicly detained by groups affiliated with Hamas’s security forces. Locals said they were from the Arrow Force, the Hamas unit tasked with hunting down looters and Israeli-backed gangs in Gaza. After being reportedly beaten and shot in the foot, the security members publicly accused the individuals of working for a company allegedly collaborating with the Israeli military. Eyewitnesses told Mondoweiss that the employees were then lynched by a crowd of people who were allegedly incited by the security members, who reportedly told the crowds that the employees were responsible for the deaths of their loved ones at GHF sites.

It later became clear that the individuals were employees of the al-Khozandar Company, a commercial firm owned by a Palestinian residing in Cairo.

The killing of the employees sparked controversy and outrage, with the victims’ families issuing a statement on June 17 demanding accountability. The statement also denied allegations that their sons were working with the Israeli-backed gang led by Yasser Abu Shabab that loots aid across Gaza, calling the accusations “false and baseless.”

The events surrounding the incident, however, reveal a more complex picture. Before the families had issued their statement, the GHF condemned the “murder of 12 of our aid workers.” In contrast, the families stated that their sons were on their first day of work for al-Khozandar, suggesting that the company was working closely with the GHF.

The security source in the Gaza government who spoke to Mondoweiss in June identified the Mohsen al-Khozandar Trading and Transport corporation, headed by a man named Muhammad al-Khozandar, as a “morally and nationally compromised” company that “coordinates directly with suspicious foreign actors at the expense of our people’s interests.” This company, the source added, “contributes, whether knowingly or not, to the systematic killing and starvation of Palestinians.”

He asserted that “certain measures” have already been taken against the company, and that “more will follow,” including classifying the company as a “complicit entity.”

The Khozandar company has been operating in Gaza for years. Also known as “Three Brothers,” the company specialized in bringing goods into Gaza in coordination with Israel before the war, which led Hamas to classify the company as “collaborating with the occupation,” according to the security source. The source added that, during the war, the company’s activities expanded noticeably beyond trade, raising suspicions of collaboration with the Israeli army’s military plans.

According to the Geneva Council for Rights and Liberties, Palestinian workers employed by Three Brothers have been “forced to work under conditions resembling modern slavery,” and have been forced to sort and load aid boxes under direct Israeli supervision and to “serve American mercenaries.” The workers were subject to degrading searches by Israeli soldiers, and were not paid any wages, only receiving a few cigarettes and a single daily meal as compensation, according to the Geneva Council, based on testimony it says it has verified.

Al-Khozandar began implementing the U.S.-Israeli aid distribution scheme in Rafah after it contracted with Safe Reach Solution (SRS), a military contractor that is also the parent company of the GHF and has reportedly conducted military-intelligence operations in Gaza using Israeli data. According to a Financial Times investigation, the arrangement was for SRS to provide security at the GHF centers, while the Khozandar company would run distribution, specifically at the Tal Sultan center in Rafah.

According to local reports, al-Khozandar’s role in the aid scheme is to engage local individuals and civil society organizations to cooperate with the GHF, while the FT investigation quoted a source that said Three Brothers would be “the first interface with the population” at the distribution sites, and that the Khozandar team “was well known to the Israeli security establishment and had a long history of working with them.”

The FT reported that SRS had approached several other prominent businessmen in Gaza to staff the centers, but that they refused to participate in the U.S.-Israeli scheme, “arguing it amounted to forced displacement of people in the enclave.”

Meanwhile, the al-Khozandar family in Gaza issued a statement in May disavowing the Mohsen Khozandar Company and condemning any activities carried out by Muhammad al-Khozandar and his brothers, who manage the firm. The statement was supported by the Contractors Union and business owners in Gaza, who described any cooperation with this scheme as a “betrayal of national unity” and demanded strict accountability for all those involved.

Local testimonies also indicate that the company’s managers from the al-Khozandar family phoned several prominent influencers and content creators in Gaza, urging them to promote the company’s aid centers and claiming they were safe and free from inspections or any violations of people’s dignity.

Yahya Hilles, a digital creator, told Mondoweiss that a person going by the name of Noor al-Khozandar contacted him and spoke with him for over an hour, trying to convince him to encourage people to go to the GHF centers. Hilles explained that he consulted his family elders, who firmly opposed any involvement in promoting this project.

“Noor al-Khozandar kept insisting, urging me to go, film, and promote the centers, but I repeatedly asked him why he came to me specifically,” Hilles said. “He gave no clear answer. He knew that people trust me and believe what I share on social media, so he wants to drag me into this. He told me there would be no soldiers or Americans, and that I would just carry aid and return home.”

“I knew that, even if things might go smoothly the first or second time, it might later turn into a disaster,” Hilles added. “In that case, I would be responsible before my people, so I categorically refused. I told him clearly: this issue is bigger than one person, with serious security and political implications. It cannot be handled through a simple call from one person to another.”

Israeli army attempts to strong-arm international organizations

Rahma Worldwide is among the most active humanitarian organizations in Gaza since the war began, although it has been operating in the territory since 2017. During the war, it became notably involved in facilitating the entry of medical delegations and volunteers to Gaza hospitals, where they provided services for a limited time before leaving the territory.

The organization has an extensive history in humanitarian relief. Recently, however, the Israeli military attempted to coerce Rahma Worldwide into operating under the umbrella of the GHF. In late May, the organization’s director, Dr. Shadi Zaza, told Mondoweiss that Rahma Worldwide rejected the collaboration.

Zaza stated that the organization operates in Gaza as part of a group that includes several humanitarian institutions, including some affiliated with the UN. He said that the Israeli army had informed them of the addition of a new institution — the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — to this group, and later announced changes to the aid distribution plan, including designating new distribution points where each organization would be required to send its staff.

“We are always on standby,” Zaza said. “We’re ready anytime we’re permitted to bring in aid. Our goods are prepared and waiting at the crossings.” He noted that Rahma Worldwide had received permission the previous month to deliver four trucks carrying 4,000 food parcels, only to be surprised by an Israeli army order to transfer the aid to distribution points managed by the GHF, along with a demand that Rahma staff help with distribution there.

“We categorically refused this request,” Zaza stated. “Our agreement with the army was clear — we would distribute our parcels at locations designated for our organization, not those belonging to any other.”

Despite Rahma Worldwide’s request that the parcels be redirected to their own sites, the army insisted on sending them to the GHF-run facilities. The army also declared that GHF was now the sole authority responsible for aid distribution in Gaza.

Accordingly, the 4,000 parcels were transferred to Rafah, and the army contacted Rahma’s team, urging them to assist with distribution. But the team reached out to the organization’s U.S. headquarters, which unequivocally rejected involvement with the GHF.

“We will not be part of this mechanism. We reject it entirely,” said Zaza, highlighting that the army continues to pressure aid groups, especially those importing goods from Egypt, Jordan, or even the West Bank, insisting that all items be sourced from within Israel.

As a final request, Rahma Worldwide asked for its logos to be removed from the food boxes that were to be distributed at the GHF’s sites to avoid appearing as a participant or collaborator in the distribution scheme. This, Zaza said, reflects the organization’s firm opposition to the scheme.

According to the organization, some of the logos were removed, but boxes bearing the Rahma logo were nonetheless distributed at locations affiliated with the GHF on at least one occasion, which the organization said was beyond its control.

Rahma identified these Israeli efforts early on as attempts to forcibly integrate them into the GHF’s network. Upon the organization’s refusal, the army imposed even more stringent conditions for aid entry.

“We have over 20,000 food parcels ready in our warehouses,” Zaza added. “But we refuse to deliver them through the American organization’s mechanism. That organization was originally just one of many working here—we had no issue with that. But now that it’s trying to monopolize aid and impose its control, that is completely unacceptable.”

This stance of refusal reflects a broader trend among humanitarian organizations in Gaza, many of which oppose the GHF for its role in facilitating Israeli military objectives. Continued pressure for these organizations to work with the GHF or leave, some warn, could lead to the withdrawal of many aid organizations from Gaza entirely, creating a severe gap in humanitarian assistance.

“If Israel continues imposing this style of control and management, we simply won’t bring in aid,” Zaza said. “Other organizations may follow our lead. This policy — though unofficial — may well be Israel’s way of clearing the field of independent organizations and turning humanitarian work into a fully controlled instrument.”

Some international humanitarian organizations have begun cutting ties with the Boston Consulting Group, the company that helped conceive and launch the GHF and had even modelled the costs of “relocating” Palestinians outside of Gaza. Save the Children recently ended a two-decade partnership with the BCG over its role in the GHF, calling the aid organization’s plan to forcibly displace Gaza’s population “utterly unacceptable.” BCG’s chief executive admitted that its involvement in the GHF was “reputationally damaging” and the result of “deliberate individual misconduct” and “missed warning signs.”

The GHF has continued to push organizations to work with it as the humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to worsen. On July 6, the GHF announced that it had met with the Country Director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to propose a plan to help it “feed the north of Gaza.”

“Right now, nearly all their trucks are being looted,” the GHF said. “We hope they will put politics aside and accept our proposal soon so we can achieve our shared mission: getting more aid to the people of Gaza.”

The GHF was responding to a WFP statement that the need for food in Gaza was desperate. “WFP stand ready to assist the entire population,” the WFP said. “We have the food, the capacity and the systems.” The WFP could not be reached for comment regarding whether it had agreed to work with the GHF.

In an abrupt development on Monday, July 7, the GHF announced the closure of its center in central Gaza near the Netzarim Corridor until further notice. This was followed by another announcement on Wednesday, July 9, declaring the closure of its distribution point in Khan Younis. At present, only the GHF’s distribution center in Rafah remains operational.

These announcements come amid ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. One of Hamas’s conditions for the prospective 60-day ceasefire period is that aid distributions be handled exclusively by the United Nations and its agencies operating in Gaza, completely excluding the GHF. This condition was reportedly accepted in the ceasefire talks.

This has led local reporters to speculate that the closure of the GHF’s distribution centers indicates that an agreement regarding the ceasefire’s terms is near, with the GHF complying with Hamas’s demand by halting its operations in the Strip. Local sources say it is expected that the Rafah distribution center may also be closed in the coming days, signaling that the ceasefire might soon go into effect.

Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Gaza Correspondent for Mondoweiss and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union.

14 July 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ellen Brown

8 Jul 2025 – A thriving economy requires that credit flow freely for productive use. But today, a handful of giant banks diverts that flow into an exponentially-growing self-feeding pool of digital profits for themselves. Rather than allowing the free exchange of labor and materials for production, our system of banking and credit has acted as a tourniquet on production and a drain on resources.

Yet we cannot do without the functions banks perform; and one of these is the creation of “money” as dollar-denominated bank credit when they make loans. This advance of credit has taken the form of “fractional reserve” lending, which has been heavily criticized. But historically, it is this sort of credit created on the books of banks that has allowed the wheels of industry to turn. Employers need credit at each stage of production before they have finished products that can be sold on the market, and banks need to be able to create credit as needed to respond to this demand. Without the advance of credit, there will be no products or services to sell; and without products to sell, workers and suppliers cannot get paid.

Bank-created deposits are not actually “unbacked fiat” simply issued by banks. They can be created only when there is a borrower. In effect, the bank has monetized the borrower’s promise to repay, turning his promise to pay tomorrow into money that can be spent today — spent on the workers and materials necessary to create the products and services that will be sold to repay the loans. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, “many that understand Business very well, but have not a Stock sufficient of their own, will be encouraged to borrow Money; to trade with, when they have it at a moderate interest.”

If banks have an unfair edge in this game, it is because they have managed to get private control of the credit spigots.  They have often used this control not to serve business, industry, and society’s needs but for their private advantage. They can turn credit on and off at will, direct it at very low interest to their cronies, or use it for their own speculative ventures; and they collect the interest as middlemen. This is not just a modest service fee covering costs. Interest has been calculated to compose a third of everything we buy.

Anyone with money has a right to lend it, and any group with money can pool it and lend it; but the ability to create money-as-credit ex nihilo (out of nothing), backed by the “full faith and credit” of the government and the people, is properly a public function, the proceeds of which should thus return to the public. The virtues of an expandable credit system can be retained while avoiding the exploitation to which private banks are prone, by establishing a network of public banks that serve the people because they are owned by the people.

The Stellar Example of the Bank of North Dakota

Publicly-owned banks can exist at many levels, from giant multinational infrastructure banks, to national infrastructure or postal banks, to local banks owned by states, counties, cities or tribes. In his 2021 book titled Public Banks, Professor Thomas Marois showed that 17% of banks are publicly owned, with collective assets just under $49 trillion. In the US today, many groups are working on establishing local public banks. But our only existing state-owned bank is the century-old Bank of North Dakota (BND), a stellar model that will be the focus of this paper.

The BND was founded in 1919, when North Dakota farmers rose up against the powerful out-of-state banking-railroad-granary cartel that was unfairly foreclosing on their farms. They formed the Non-Partisan League, won an election, and founded the state’s own bank and granary, both of which are still active today.

The BND operates within the private financial market, working alongside private banks rather than replacing them. It provides loans and other banking services, primarily to other banks, local governments, and state agencies, which then lend to or invest in private sector enterprises. It operates with a profit motive, with profits either retained as capital to increase the bank’s loan capacity or returned to the state’s general fund, supporting public projects, education, and infrastructure.

According to the BND website, more than $1 billion had been transferred to the state’s general fund and special programs through 2018, most of it in the previous decade. That is a substantial sum for a state with a population that is only about one-fifteenth the size of Los Angeles County.

The BND actually beats private banks at their own game, generating a larger return on equity (ROE, that is, net profit divided by shareholder equity) for its public citizen-owners than even the largest Wall Street banks return to their private investors (for figures, see below). These profits belong to the citizens and are generated without taxation, lowering tax rates. On October 3, 2024, Truth in Accounting’s annual Financial State of the States report rated North Dakota #1 in fiscal health, with a budget surplus per taxpayer of $55,600. Small businesses are now failing across the country at increasingly high rates; but that’s not true in North Dakota, which was rated by Forbes Magazine the best state in which to start a business in 2024.

Why So Profitable? The BND Model

For nearly a century, the BND maintained a low profile. But in 2014, it was featured in the Wall Street Journal, which reported that the Bank of North Dakota “is more profitable than Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has a better credit rating than J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and hasn’t seen profit growth drop since 2003.” The article credited this success to the shale oil boom; but North Dakota was already reporting record profits in the spring of 2009, when every other state was in the red and the oil boom had not yet hit.

The average ROE of the BND from 2000 through 2024 (its latest annual report) was 19.4%. Compare JPMorgan Chase (JPM), by far the largest bank in the country, with 2.4 trillion in deposits. Its average ROE from 2000-23 was 11.38% over the same period. For a detailed breakdown, see here.

How could the BND have outperformed JPM, the nation’s largest bank? Most important, it has substantially lower costs and risks than private commercial banks. It has no exorbitantly-paid executives; pays no bonuses, fees, or commissions; has no private shareholders; and has low borrowing costs. It partners with local banks in “participation loans,” avoiding loan origination costs. It engages in old-fashioned conservative banking and does not speculate in derivatives, so it has no losses or risk from derivative trades gone wrong.

The BND does not need to advertise or compete for depositors. It has a massive, captive deposit base in the state itself, which must deposit all of its revenues in the BND by law.  Most state agencies also must deposit there. The BND takes some token individual deposits, but it does not compete with local banks for commercial deposits or loans. As for municipal (as distinct from state) government deposits, the BND generally not only reserves those deposits for local community banks but enhances their ability to secure municipal deposits. In many states, stringent collateral requirements are attached to municipal government deposits, such as a 110% collateral requirement with high quality securities. This essentially prevents local banks from using municipal deposits to fund local lending. In North Dakota, however, the BND provides letters of credit that guarantee the deposits of municipal governments and other public corporations, making collateral unnecessary and making municipal deposits available for local lending. In addition to its deposit base, the BND also has a substantial capital base, with a capital fund totaling $1.059 billion in 2023, along with deposits of $8.7 billion.

Among other costs avoided by the BND are those for fines, penalties and settlements arising from government and civil lawsuits. Since the year 2000, JPM has paid more than $40 billion in total fines and settlements to regulators, enforcement agencies and lawsuits related to anti-competitive practices, securities abuses and other violations; and it is still facing several hundred open legal cases.

The State’s Deposits Are Safer in Its Own Bank

The BND is not only more profitable but also safer than JPM. In fact federal data show that JPM is the most systemically risky bank in the country. The BND, by contrast, has been called the nation’s safest bank. Its stock cannot be short-sold, since it is not publicly traded; and it will not suffer a run, since the state would not “run” on itself.

Compare JP Morgan Chase, which has over $1 trillion in uninsured deposits, the type most likely to be withdrawn in a crisis. In March 2023, the FDIC insurance fund had a balance of only $116.1 billion – only 5% of JPM’s total deposits of $2.38 trillion. JPM also had major counterparty risk in the derivatives market, with close to $60 trillion in total (notional) derivatives. The risks of large notional derivative exposures were highlighted in the 2012 “London Whale” scandal, in which JPM incurred $6.2 billion in losses from exotic derivatives trades.

Not just the Bank of North Dakota but North Dakota’s local banks are very safe, aided by the BND with liquidity, capitalization, regulation, loan guarantees, and other banker’s bank services. No local North Dakota banks have been in trouble during this century, but if they were to suffer a bank run, the BND would be there to help. According to its former CEO Eric Hardmeyer, the BND has a pre-approved fed funds line set up with every bank in the state; and if that is insufficient for liquidity, the BND can simply buy loans from a troubled local bank as needed.

Today, state governments often deposit their revenues in giant Wall Street banks designated as SIFIs (Systemically Important Financial Institutions), including JPM; but those banks are riskier than they appear.  They “insure” their capital with interconnected derivatives backed by collateral that has been “rehypothecated” (pledged or re-used several times over). The Financial Stability Board in Basel has declared that practice to be risky, “[a]s demonstrated by the 2007-09 global financial crisis.” The five largest Wall Street depository banks hold $223 trillion in derivatives — a risk highlighted by the Bank for International Settlements as “huge, missing and growing” in its December 2022 Quarterly Review — and they have a combined half trillion dollars in commercial real estate loans, also very risky in the current financial environment.

Under the Dodd Frank Act of 2010, a SIFI that goes bankrupt will not be bailed out by the government but will be recapitalized through “bail-ins,” meaning the banks are to “bail in” or extract capital from their creditors. That includes their “secured” and “collateralized” depositors, including state and local governments. Under the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 and Uniform Commercial Code Secs. 8 and 9, derivative and repo claims have seniority over all others and could easily wipe out all of the capital of a SIFI, including the “collateralized” deposits of state and local governments. The details are complicated, but the threat is real and imminent. See fuller discussions here and here, David Rodgers Webb’s The Great Taking, and Chris Martenson’s series drilling down into the obscure legalese of the enabling legislation, concluding here.

Even if the SIFIs remain solvent, they are not using state deposits and investments for the benefit of the state from which they come, and often they are betting against the public interest. The BND, on the other hand, is mandated to use its funds for the benefit of the North Dakota public. Other states would do well to follow North Dakota’s lead.

Advantages of a State-owned Bank for the Public, Local Government and Local Banks

Like private banks, a publicly-owned bank has the ability to create money in the form of bank credit on its books, and it has access to very low interest rates. But the business model of private banks requires them to take advantage of these low rates to extract as much debt service as the market will bear for the benefit of the bank’s private investors. A public bank can pass low rates on to local residents and businesses. It can also recapture the interest on local government projects, making them substantially cheaper than when funded through the bond market. As described above, the BND’s profits belong to the citizens and are generated without taxation, lowering tax rates.The BND also serves North Dakota’s local banks. It acts as a mini-Fed for the state, providing correspondent banking services to virtually every financial institution in North Dakota. It provides secured and unsecured , check-clearing, cash management and automated clearing house services for local banks. It participates in their loans and guarantees them, so the banks are willing to take on more risk, and they have been able to keep loans on their books rather than selling them to investors to meet capital requirements.  As a result, North Dakota banks were able to avoid the 2008-09 subprime and securitization debacles and the 2023 wave of bank bankruptcies.

By partnering with the BND, local banks can also take on local projects that might be too large for their own resources or in which Wall Street has no interest, projects that might otherwise go to out-of-state banks or remain unfunded. Due to this amicable partnership, the North Dakota Bankers’ Association endorses the BND as a partner rather than a competitor of the state’s private banks.

Serving the State as a Rainy Day Fund and for Disaster Relief

Unlike the Federal Reserve, which is not authorized to support state and local governments except in very limited circumstances,  North Dakota’s “mini-Fed” can help directly with state government funding. Having a cheap and ready credit line with the state’s own bank reduces the need for wasteful rainy-day funds invested at minimal interest in out-of-state banks.

The BND has also demonstrated the power of a state-owned bank to leverage state funds into new credit-dollars for disaster relief. Its emergency capabilities were demonstrated, for example, when record flooding and fires devastated Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1997. Floodwaters covered virtually the entire city and took weeks to fully recede. Property losses topped $3.5 billion. The response of the state-owned bank was immediate and comprehensive. It quickly established nearly $70 million in credit lines – to the city, the state National Guard, the state Division of Emergency Management, the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and for individuals, businesses and farms. It also launched a Grand Forks disaster relief loan program and allocated $5 million to help other areas affected by the spring floods. Local financial institutions matched these funds, making a total of more than $70 million available.

The BND coordinated with the U.S. Department of Education to ensure forbearance on student loans; worked closely with the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration to gain forbearance on federally backed home loans; established a center where people could apply for federal/state housing assistance; and worked with the North Dakota Community Foundation to coordinate a disaster relief fund, for which the bank served as the deposit base. The bank also reduced interest rates on existing Family Farm and Farm Operating programs. Remarkably, no lives were lost, and the city was quickly rebuilt and restored.

More recently during the COVID crisis, North Dakota distributed unemployment benefits through community banks coordinated by the BND 10 times faster than the slowest state, and North Dakota’s small businesses secured more Paycheck Protection Program funds per worker than any other state.

Progress and Challenges

In the past 15 years, groups across the country have worked diligently to establish publicly-owned banks in their states and communities. A big push came in 2011 with the Occupy Wall Street movement, demonstrating that even the dry subject of banking can incite large groups of people to take action in times of economic crisis. Many people moved their individual deposits out of big Wall Street banks into local community banks, but what about the large public deposits held by state and local governments? No community bank was large enough for their needs. The Bank of North Dakota demonstrated the feasibility of another alternative: the state or city could form its own bank.

Although more than 50 public bank bills and resolutions have been filed since 2010, the only new bank to emerge is the Territorial Bank of American Samoa, founded in 2016. Lobbying in opposition by big private banks has deterred politicians, who are reluctant to rock the boat when times are good and no immediate need is perceived. However, times are not so good today for the majority of the population, and they could soon get worse even for the wealthy.

To muster the political will to take action, politicians need a business plan in which the benefits of establishing their own banks clearly outweigh the costs; and public bank advocates today face hurdles that the BND avoided by being grandfathered in before the relevant agency rules were instigated.

One hurdle is that states today typically require uninsured public funds to be backed by pledged collateral (i.e. surety bonds or letters of credit) exceeding 100 percent of the value of the deposits. California, for example, has state tax revenues exceeding $80 billion. As a single deposit in a bank, only $250,000 of that sum would be covered by FDIC insurance, leaving the balance uninsured; so the state insures that balance with a collateral requirement that is 110% of uninsured deposits. The result is to tie up more liquidity than the deposits provide. Public banking advocates argue that the requirement is unnecessary and unfairly burdensome for state-owned banks. The deposits of the BND, which was chartered as “the State of North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota,” are backed by the state itself. Meanwhile, letters of credit, e.g. from a Federal Home Loan Bank, are a viable alternative.

Another hurdle is that most state constitutions prohibit the state from “lending its credit” to private parties. This has been construed as prohibiting the state from owning a bank, but legal memoranda have refuted that interpretation.

Besides a profitable business plan, politicians need a push from their constituents to take action, and most people haven’t heard of public banks and don’t understand the concept. Wider public exposure and education are necessary. Even many politicians are unaware of how banking actually works. Chartered depository banks have the power to create money as deposits when they make loans, expanding the local money supply and increasing the capacity for local productivity. Over 95% of our money supply today is created by banks in this way. This vast power to create money as credit is one that properly belongs in the public domain.

Times are changing, and public banking momentum continues to grow. By making banking a public utility, with expandable credit issued by banks that are owned by the people, the financial system can be made to serve the people and local enterprise without draining their resources away. Credit flow can be released so that industry and free markets can thrive, and the economy can move closer to reaching its full potential.

Ellen Brown is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, 

14 July 2025

Source: transcend.org

By The Cradle News Desk

China’s foreign minister said the two countries are working to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue.

10 Jul 2025 – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart on 10 July that Beijing and Moscow should strengthen strategic coordination to promote peace in West Asia.

According to a statement by China’s Foreign Ministry, Yi said the two countries should push for a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear issue during a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Kuala Lumpur. “Peace cannot be achieved through force, and applying pressure won’t solve problems.”

Dialogue and negotiations were the solution to the conflict, Yi added.

The two foreign ministers also discussed China–Russia coordination with the countries comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“Russia and China stand united in opposing actions and plans to militarize the region, including attempts to deploy NATO-standard military infrastructure,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry stated after the meeting.

During the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro on 7 July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Moscow was ready to aid in mediating negotiations between the US and Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Lavrov offered Russia’s technical assistance to help Iran replenish its depleted uranium stocks by removing uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels and replacing it with uranium suitable for power generation. “We have technological capacities and we are ready to offer them, taking the excess of overly enriched uranium and returning the power-generation-grade uranium to the Islamic Republic and its nuclear facilities.”

The US and Israel have insisted that Iran end all uranium enrichment on its own soil. Tehran insists that enriching uranium within its borders is its right under international law and according to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Iran is seeking relief from US sanctions in exchange for limitations on its nuclear program, which it insists is for producing energy, not a nuclear weapon.

On 8 July, Iran denied US President Donald Trump’s claim that it had requested to resume talks with the US over its nuclear program.

“No request for a meeting has been made on our side to the American side,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Tuesday.

The US and Iran were engaged in nuclear talks in June when Israel launched a surprise war on Tehran on 13 June. During the 12-day war, Israeli bombing killed 1,060 people, while Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile attacks on Israel resulted in at least 28 deaths.

The US joined the attack on 22 June by bombing three of Iran’s major nuclear sites, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

Trump reportedly used the nuclear negotiations to deceive Iranian leaders into thinking that no Israeli attack was imminent.

“Israel and the US carried out a multi-faceted misinformation campaign in recent days to convince Iran that a strike on its nuclear facilities was not imminent,” the Times of Israel reported.

A US official told the Israeli news site that US President Donald Trump was an “active participant in the ruse,” and knew about the military operation in advance.

14 July 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Militarism is catching on across the countries of advanced economies and beyond.  The sly, disingenuous term of “defence” is used in this context, encouraging arms manufacturers, contractors and the entire apparatus of the military-industrial complex to fatten for the cause. 

The European Union huffs and struts towards higher targets of expenditure that will cull projects for peaceful development in favour of a fatuous rearmament agenda.  Member countries of the NATO alliance, lent on by the administration of President Donald Trump, are doing the same.  The countries of the Middle East continue to add to the numbers, with warring Israel seeing a 65% increase in 2024 to US$46.5 billion, the sharpest annual increase since the Six-Day War in 1967.

In East Asia, military contractors are also preening themselves in Tokyo and Seoul, pressing the flesh and pursuing contracts.  Japan’s military spending rose by a gulping 21% in 2024.  The amount of US$55.3 billion is the largest since 1952.  In Seoul, on the occasion of K-Defense Day on June 8, President Lee Jae-myung made it clear that he did not want South Korea’s own defence industry to miss out on all the fun.  In a closed-door discussion held at the Grand Hyatt Seoul hotel organised by the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), Lee solemnly promised to “do my best to push ahead, as long as we don’t end up being labelled arms dealers”.

This somewhat idiosyncratic caveat is bound to make little difference, given Lee’s ambitions to promote the value of South Korea’s killing inventory.  DAPA, wanting to make the most of its first Defense Industry Day themed “Remembering the dedication and passion of Korea’s Defense Industry”, was in a bullish mood to promote Korean military prowess.  Some well minted propaganda did the rounds, drawing inspiration on the exploits of Admiral Yi Sun-sin on July 8, 1592, when the turtle ship was committed to the Battle of Sacheon against the Japanese fleet.  The turtle ship, in its “historical significance”, symbolised “Korea’s will to protect its territory and its independent technological prowess.”

Those in the defence industry had been worried that the new President might give them the cold shoulder on this grand occasion.  He had previously attacked the installation of the US Terminal High Altitude Defense system on Korean soil, ostensibly to protect South Korea from North Korean missiles, as needlessly provocative.   

The militarists need not have worried.  All the relevant mandarins were in attendance, including the Minister of National Defense nominee Ahn Gyu-baek and Chairperson of the National Defense Committee, Seong Il-jong.  The industry titans were also represented.  Numerous awards of merit were also presented. 

Lee had purportedly told his aides that K-Defense Day, put on the calendar of commemorations by his impeached predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol in 2023, would be a good opportunity to “highlight our support for defence.”  According to Korea JoongAng Daily, Lee outlined his various achievements of late to the closed gathering, including attending the G7 summit held last month in Canada.  “A big reason I went was to showcase the strength of our defence industry and to ask them to buy our submarines.”

In May, it was revealed that a trio of South Korean firms – Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hanwha Ocean and Hanwha Aerospace – had made a combined offer to the Canadian armed forces valued between US$14 to 17 billion in submarines, with US$720 million worth of armoured vehicles and artillery systems.  It was a good time for the Koreans to strike, given the stated view by newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Mike Carney that “the old relationship with the United States based on… tight security and military cooperation is over”.

Lee also explained his purpose for seeking an invitation to the latest NATO summit held in The Hague.  Despite wanting to avoid accusations of being a grubby arms dealer, the ROK President was clearly placing the ambitions and wallets of arms dealers ahead of the common citizenry.  He had become a pimp for arms: “The biggest reason I wanted to go was to advertise our defence industry and weapons.”

Participants at the forum pressed Lee to depart from the view that defence was a matter of procurement and competition between parties rather than a total industry beneficial to the state.  The response was suitably patriotic – at least if you are a merchant of death: “Defence and arms exports are not just a competition between companies; they’re a competition between nations.  We have to win as ‘One Team Korea.’”

In public remarks made at the start of the forum, Lee offered the sort of reasoning that launders the military-industrial complex of its stains, concealing its insatiable appetite to stimulate the cause for war.  “I hope the defence industry not only strengthens our security but also becomes one of Korea’s future growth engines.  The government will continue investing and providing strong support.”

In response to “the rapidly changing security environment”, the government would also “develop state-of-the-art weapon systems using artificial intelligence (AI) and unmanned robots and build a healthy business ecosystem that goes beyond the industrial structure centred on big corporations to allow small and medium enterprises and diverse talent to participate.”  Militarism, following this seedy rationale, should not just be for the big corporations and arms manufacturers.  In the business of killing, the little guys should also be given a chance.

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

13 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Sally Dugman

Imagine being a largely innocent child as you once were, but once again and  being just again a mere child playing games without knowing of the murderous updated versions of any of them now being used. Then, how extremely shocking is the contrast?

That innocence and guiltlessness can never happen now unless children aren’t taught the truth about the ways that their joyful games have become deliberately perverted to kill others — including of children just like themselves! This entire happening, of course, is way beyond heartbreaking — this using of our innocent and fun games that way; instead it is undeniably and excessively unacceptable and atrocious!

Background: Twice a year — my parents, my two siblings and I would travel to the Syracuse-Watertown, NY area of the NorthEast to visit with relatives there since that is from whence my parents derived. What great fun!

We’d eagerly bundle into the station wagon with our little packed suitcases and books to read while traveling and while depending on the weather (such as whether a snow blizzard were taking place), we’d either read or watch scenery go flying by for the time nestled in the car  except for, of course, the expert driver my father who had an attention span of the highest order — just as excellently attentive as a hungry tiger on prowl to find his prey!

So the drive could take six to nine hours — all depending upon road and other surrounding conditions. One knew that there was variation in advance!

Further, when we got to the one set of a grandparents’ home, we’d go immediately to bed after excitedly greeting them and having a little snack. Then the next day and after breakfast, we children would be dressed in our winter outside clothing and shooed out the door where we waited for our three fairly locally living cousins to arrive shortly.

While biding my time in the interim, I would wander around the yard to see about the degree that the apple tree there had grown since I last saw it, the state of my grandmother’s gardens, the overall look of the neighborhood from the front yard and other bits of observances, and awarenesses like the smells of turkeys in the air from kitchens while being cooked in neighbors’ homes since everyone, on holiday like Thanksgiving, liked tge uniform customs and traditions to be followed at such times! How reassuring and pleasant!

Then, my cousins would show up, greet us outdoors after getting out of their own family car and we’d resume our games from our last meeting together half a year before hand. They were Red Light — Green Light, School Day (Daze) wherein one person played the teacher and everyone else played the class and whomever answered all teacherly questions correctly got to be the next teacher, and a third game called pee-pee in  the garden where a designated policeman (one person in our group of children) tried to catch as many others as he could of us pretending to urinate all over grandmother’s beautiful, although now frozen plants! … What replete imaginations we all brought to our fun activities as we made them up as we went along!

Most thrilling of all was, of course, Red Light — Green Light as one gets to to alternately run to stay warm in the frigid outdoors temperature and stand like a statue without even twitching or turning one arm, leg, neck, torso or facial expression. If fact, you’d be sent back to the running start line way behind where everyone else was if you even moved a mere modicum amount.

Then whomever reaches to touch the game leader first becomes the next game’s boss. How sensible is that?

However, I learned a few days ago a new variation of my above happily remembered  game. It’s exactly the same except running forward involves not reaching the game’s leader, but reaching a pile of food in containers like boxes and bags concerning which there are not enough of either in the heap for all who need it. 

In addition, one doesn’t get sent back to the start line for moving during the red light period moment. Instead one gets gleefully shot — whether one is a young child, a mother carrying a squirming infant, an elder ready to faint from fragility and hunger or whomever else is present in the scene.

I’ve even read that one IDF soldier excitedly told another one shooting a rifle gun at the red light moment into the starving and direly hungry, dying crowd, “I think that you got one” as he watched a person slump down to the ground. What extraordinary degree of both hatred and indifference combined can inspire such supreme glee that has as much happiness as I, myself, had as a little girl playing my games? How Utterly depraved is that! Assuredly, it is as extreme as it supremely can possibly get!

Let’s, then, try to return the game to its former form that I recognize and maybe even improve it.

Sally Dugman writes from and lives in MA, USA.

13 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Occupied Palestinian Territory – The international community and complicit governments bear responsibility for the ongoing horrific crimes against starving civilians at aid distribution points operated by the Israeli-American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in central and southern Gaza Strip.

The organisation’s operations must be halted immediately, and an independent international investigation must be launched to ensure its officials are prosecuted before international and national courts for their involvement in systematic mass killings at distribution sites. These sites are run by a criminal entity forcibly imposed by the Israeli military as a replacement for the UN mechanism that had operated in the Strip for nearly a year and a half.

International and national judicial bodies must move to hold US President Donald Trump criminally accountable for his complicity in the genocide in the Gaza Strip. This includes his adoption and direct support of the Israeli aid distribution mechanism, imposed by force and transformed into arenas of mass slaughter against starving civilians, as well as his administration’s full-scale provision of military, financial, political, and diplomatic backing that enabled Israel to commit and expand the crime for over 21 months.

The massacre that took place on the morning of Saturday, near an aid distribution point in the Al-Shakoush area north of Rafah city, and resulted in the killing of 30 Palestinians and the injury of over 180 others, came just days after the closure of three central distribution points. This led to the overcrowding of tens of thousands of starving civilians in one area in search of food, amid Israel’s systematic starvation policy used as a main tool in carrying out the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Documented field testimonies indicate the involvement of personnel from a private American security company working for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in opening fire and launching tear gas grenades at gathered civilians, alongside Israeli occupation soldiers. This places direct responsibility on the foundation and its security partners for committing fully-fledged international crimes against the population of the Gaza Strip, including active participation in the crime of genocide.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reviewed circulating video footage showing security personnel affiliated with Gaza Humanitarian Foundation directly throwing grenades at civilians gathered around aid distribution points. This serves as further evidence of the foundation’s involvement in systematic violence against starving residents and its active participation in the commission of grave international crimes.

A survivor of the massacre told the Euro-Med Monitor team:
“There is a large pit roughly 1,000 metres before the entrance to the aid point, which civilians use to hide before the gate opens. Today, we were surprised to see three sand mounds opposite the pit, but as usual, people entered the pit. Once it was full of civilians, we were shocked to see three tanks mount the mounds, each armed with machine guns and accompanied by around 30 heavily armed infantry soldiers and snipers. They began by firing several stun grenades over the people in the pit. When people tried to flee, anyone who attempted to get out was shot at directly. Crowds poured out of the pit, and the tanks opened heavy fire directly at them. Some bullets passed through multiple people at once due to the density of the crowd and proximity of the tanks. All of this happened between 8:30 and 9:30 this morning.”

Israeli forces and American security personnel have killed no fewer than 829 Palestinians and wounded around 5,500 others in less than two months near aid distribution points,?sites deliberately designed to serve as tools of killing, starvation architecture, and the degradation of human dignity.

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation falsely promoted as a civilian relief entity, actually serves as a field cover for policies of siege, starvation, and killing. It plays a direct role in managing aid distribution points in a way that reinforces starvation as a weapon, while providing private security protection for designated killing zones under the guise of “order”.

The United States, through this organisation and other instruments, continues to provide political, logistical, financial, and military cover for Israel’s crimes, rendering current and former American officials, foremost among them President Donald Trump, subject to international criminal accountability.

Even in cases where a threat is alleged, international law does not legally justify the use of lethal force. Security forces are bound by international legal standards to follow the principle of proportionality and gradual escalation in the use of force. Lethal force may only be used as a last resort, and only when there is a real and imminent threat to life—conditions that were not met in the documented cases, rendering such killings a grave and explicit violation of international law.

The deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians, through killing and injuring them while they attempt to access food, alongside the use of starvation as a weapon, constitutes a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and international criminal law. These acts amount to war crimes under the Rome Statute, including wilful killing, targeting civilians, and the use of starvation as a method of warfare—all of which are categorically prohibited in armed conflicts.

The pattern of these violations, with their widespread nature and systematic repetition against the civilian population, meets the criteria for crimes against humanity, particularly murder, persecution, and inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury to body or mental health, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.

Placing these crimes within their broader context, including the systematic destruction of means of survival, the obstruction of humanitarian aid, and the imposition of deadly living conditions on the civilian population, alongside public statements made at various political and military levels in Israel, reveals a clear and declared intent to destroy the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. This constitutes, under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, an act of genocide, specifically through the deliberate killing of members of the group and the imposition of living conditions intended to bring about their physical destruction, in whole or in part.

Israel, as the occupying power, bears a legal obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid and to meet the basic needs of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. However, this obligation does not, under any circumstances, grant Israel the authority to manage or control the distribution of such aid. The distribution of humanitarian assistance must remain solely in the hands of neutral and specialised humanitarian actors. Any military or political interference by Israel in this process constitutes a grave violation of international law and a distortion of the humanitarian purpose of relief efforts.

Israel, which is using starvation as a central tool in carrying out the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,?with the goal of eliminating them as a national group, cannot, under any circumstance, be regarded as a legitimate party in any humanitarian operation. Involving Israel in organising or overseeing aid efforts only serves to transform that aid itself into a weapon of destruction, used to eliminate the population, impose coercive choices on survivors, and pave the way for their forced displacement as part of a colonial project aimed at erasing their presence and annexing their land by force.

The continued management of aid distribution points by complicit parties has become an existential threat to Palestinian civilians. These locations have turned into open graves, where civilians are lured by hunger, only to be bombed or deliberately shot at.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor calls for holding U.S. President Donald Trump and all state and government leaders involved in the crime of genocide committed in the Gaza Strip accountable, whether through direct or indirect participation in its execution, by providing political, military, or financial support, or by facilitating its commission in any form. Such acts constitute criminal complicity under Article 25 of the Rome Statute. It holds states that failed to take serious measures to prevent or stop the crime legally responsible under their international obligations, particularly under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Euro-Med Monitor further calls for independent and comprehensive international investigations into the role played Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in facilitating and executing grave crimes against Palestinian civilians. These investigations must include individual accountability for the organisation’s founders, directors, logistics coordinators, team leaders, and any of its personnel, whether through planning, facilitation, direct contribution, or conscious omission that enabled the commission of crimes.

Euro-Med Monitor further urges all states with territorial or universal jurisdiction to launch immediate criminal investigations against all individuals associated with the organisation or its contracted private security firms, to hold them accountable for their roles in crimes committed against Palestinians in Gaza, particularly wilful killings, starvation, and cruel or degrading treatment.

It also calls for civil lawsuits to be initiated in national courts, demanding that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and all implicated entities and individuals provide compensation for the severe harm inflicted on victims and their families. This includes deaths, physical and psychological injuries, and the forced deprivation of the right to life, food, and dignity. Ensuring criminal and civil accountability for those involved is essential to achieving justice for victims, ending impunity, and preventing future crimes from being committed under the guise of humanitarian work.

Euro-Med Monitor urges all states and international bodies to exert maximum pressure on Israel to stop killing starving civilians and immediately end its inhumane aid distribution mechanism. It calls for urgent steps to restore humanitarian access and lift the illegal Israeli blockade on Gaza, as the only way to halt the rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis. This includes ensuring the entry of humanitarian aid and goods amid the looming threat of famine, establishing safe humanitarian corridors under UN supervision to ensure food, medicine, and fuel reach all areas of Gaza, and deploying independent international observers to verify compliance.

Euro-Med Monitor calls on all states—individually and collectively—to fulfil their legal obligations and act urgently to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip in all its forms, taking all effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians. States must also ensure that Israel complies with international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice, and that it is held accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people. It further urges the implementation of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against the Israeli Prime Minister and former Minister of Defence at the earliest opportunity, and for them to be handed over to international justice, in accordance with the principle that there is no immunity for international crimes.

Lastly, Euro-Med Monitor calls on the international community to impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel for its grave and systematic violations of international law. This includes a comprehensive ban on the export or import of weapons, spare parts, software, and dual-use goods; an immediate halt to all forms of political, financial, military, intelligence, and security support to Israel; the freezing of financial assets belonging to political and military officials involved in crimes against Palestinians; the imposition of travel bans on them; the suspension of Israeli military and security companies from international markets; the freezing of their assets in international banks; and the suspension of trade, customs, and bilateral agreements that grant Israel economic advantages enabling it to continue committing crimes against the Palestinian people.

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

13 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network)

Gaza (Quds News Network)- At least ten people, mostly children, were killed and others injured in an Israeli strike that targeted civilians queuing for drinking water in central Gaza on Sunday morning.

Local and medical sources said at least 10 thirsty people were killed, including 6 children, and 16 others injured after an Israeli strike targeting a water distribution point in al-Nuseirat camp.

Chronic shortages of water in Gaza are worsening as Israel’s expanding its assault and desalination and hygiene plants are running out of fuel.

The UN has said its partners are warning that, without immediate fuel deliveries, a full shutdown of water and sanitation facilities is possible.

Days after Israel imposed its blockade on aid in early March, it also cut off power lines to the main desalination plants, a vital source of water for Gazans.

Israel has intensified its attacks on shelters of displaced families, civilian gatherings, and food distribution points.

13 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

Syria honors its indigenous majority; Israel manufactured one at gunpoint

The debate surrounding the possible removal of “Arab” from the official name of the Syrian state — Syrian Arab Republic — has reignited foundational questions about national identity, ethnic plurality, and historical justice.

While some actors in the Trump-era negotiations have expressed support for retaining the term, Israel’s involvement and commentary on this issue are rife with hypocrisy. For a state that engineered its own demographic transformation through violence and terror — benignly termed “settler colonialism” — and continues to deny national recognition to millions of Palestinians, Israeli pronouncements on Syria’s naming appear not only politically untenable but ethically incoherent.

Syria’s Arab-majority identity is a demographic and cultural reality, rooted in centuries of indigenous continuity. The inclusion of “Arab” in its national name reflects this foundation — not an imposed fiction.

While Ba’athist ideology may have elevated Arab nationalism in exclusionary ways, this should not be conflated with Syria’s legitimate identity as an Arab-majority nation. Minority communities such as Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, and Turkmen have contributed richly to Syria’s cultural mosaic, yet their presence does not dilute the centrality of its Arab character. The notion that Syria must alter its name to reflect a form of symbolic inclusion is both conceptually flawed and disproportionate to demographic truth.

Indeed, the call to drop “Arab” from Syria’s name collapses under comparative scrutiny. Should France abandon “French Republic” because of Algerian or Vietnamese minorities? Should Japan reconsider its national identity to account for Ainu and Korean residents? Would Turkey drop its name due to a substantial Kurdish population? In each of these cases, the answer is clearly no.

The nation-state reflects its majority identity while safeguarding minority rights through institutions — not through semantic erasure. Syria’s case is no different. Arabs constitute approximately 80–90% of the population, with Kurds around 10%, and other minorities each comprising far smaller proportions. To suggest that Syria’s name must be changed based on these demographics is an argument that fails both empirically and ethically.

“Syria will always remain the beating heart of Arabism and will never give up its national identity.”
 — Bashar al-Assad

Though spoken by a leader whose regime distorted Arab nationalism into authoritarian control, the statement inadvertently affirms a deeper truth: Syria’s Arab identity is not a Ba’athist invention but a reflection of historical continuity rooted in its indigenous majority. The irony is that even the machinery of exclusion had to invoke the undeniable legitimacy of Arabism to justify its grip.

By contrast, it is Israel’s national identity that warrants scrutiny. Unlike Syria’s organic majority, Israel’s Jewish majority was manufactured through a settler colonial enterprise that reconfigured land and population, through a campaign of terror, to suit an exclusivist project.

The Zionist movement, backed by British imperial policy and galvanized through the Balfour Declaration, orchestrated immigration waves that displaced indigenous Palestinians and reshaped the region’s demographic fabric. The 1948 Nakba, the Absentee Property Law, and the Alia process institutionalized mechanisms of exclusion and erasure, transforming a historically Arab-majority land into a Jewish-majority state through violence and legal manipulation.

Even today, Israel demands recognition as a “Jewish state,” despite the fact that millions of Palestinians — whether citizens within its borders, subjects under occupation, or refugees exiled to neighboring countries — remain politically unacknowledged and excluded from the national framework. When the full geography of historic Palestine is considered — including Gaza, the West Bank, and the refugee communities in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria — Palestinian Arabs comprise a demographic majority. This enduring reality dismantles the myth of Jewish national dominance and exposes the artificiality of a state narrative built on displacement and denial.

This demographic reality exposes not only the ethical contradictions in Israel’s national claims, but the historical misrepresentation on which they rest. It stands in stark contrast to the foundational myth of Israel as a Jewish homeland, which was established when Jews were a small minority in the region. The persistence of this majority — despite decades of displacement, occupation, and demographic engineering — renders Israel’s claim to exclusive national identity not only untenable, but deeply at odds with the lived geography of the land.

Naming a nation isn’t cosmetic — it encodes sovereignty, legitimacy, and moral vision. Syria’s Arab designation reflects what is. Israel’s demands reflect what was forcibly made. One name stands with history. The other stands in its way.

Naming a nation is never merely symbolic — it carries the weight of history, sovereignty, and moral vision. Syria has held that line. It is Israel that must now confront the truth it has long refused to name.

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.

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Gideon Polya

This article is based on excerpts from a talk by Prof. Gideon Polya at the third KP  Sasi Webinar on ‘Israel: The last outpost of White European Colonialism’ held on 22 June 2025. Dr Polya’s presentation is from 7.47 minutes to 29.10 minutes

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKA2Pyj04os&t=42s]

Firstly, I want to address the theme of Israel as the last European settler-colonial project by going right back to about 10,000 BCE, with the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, which involved cereal crops, animal husbandry, and permanent settlements. Settled agriculture created the need to protect agricultural surpluses and settlements. It led to male militarism, patriarchy, wars, the evolution of military technology, cities, city-states, nation-states, and empires. Ultimately, it has led to the nuclear weapons of our time that can decimate humanity and the biosphere—a fact we are very conscious of today.

The Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and Muslim dominance of North Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia prevented Western European expansion in those areas. As explained by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, in expanding elsewhere, Europeans especially prized lands that could support European-type agriculture (i.e., wheat, sheep, and cattle). Diamond also makes the fundamental point about the historical technical superiority of Europeans, which was derived from the east-west axis of Eurasia. This meant that an advance in agronomy or technology, say in China, would be rapidly transmitted along this axis to Western Europe, but not so for the north-south axes of Africa and the Americas. In seizing land and expelling or killing the indigenous inhabitants, European invaders adopted the lie of terra nullius, which means “an empty land” in Latin.

This racist lie was adopted by the European settler-colonials in the Americas, Australia, and Southern Africa. Terra nullius was also adopted by the genocidally racist Apartheid Israel, the last settler-colonial project that wants all of Palestine plus other lands between the Nile and the Euphrates, with the indigenous inhabitants to be killed, expelled, or confined to ghettos and concentration camps.

It is useful to look at the deaths from European settler-colonialism, something the West does not want to acknowledge. About 100 million Indigenous Americans died from violence, deprivation, and especially from introduced diseases like smallpox. In the Pacific Islands, there was mass mortality due to European colonists introducing novel diseases such as measles. In Australia, about 1 million Indigenous Australians died from violence, deprivation, and introduced diseases in the first century after the British invasion in 1788. Overall, about 2 million Indigenous Australians have died from violence, dispossession, deprivation, and disease since 1788. Of the 350 to 700 Indigenous Australian languages and dialects present in 1788, only about 120 survive today, of which over 20 are endangered.

In India, the vastly outnumbered British adopted a deliberate strategy of keeping the conquered population—about 300 million in 1860—at a bare subsistence level, controlled by British forces and a large body of British-led and well-fed Indian sepoys. It is estimated that 1.8 billion Indians died avoidably from imposed deprivation over two centuries. For example, despite a very high birth rate, the Indian population was about 300 million in 1860 and was still 300 million in 1930. There were many man-made famines in India between the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million killed) and the World War II 1942-1945 Bengal Famine (six to seven million killed). Indeed, in 1935, Winston Churchill, an architect of the Bengal Famine, told the British Parliament, quote: “in the standard of life they have nothing to spare. The slightest fall from the present standard of life in India means slow starvation and the actual squeezing out of life, not only of millions but of scores of millions of people.” India needed to import one to two million tonnes of grain annually before World War II, but the average yearly importation of grain in 1942-1945 was about 0.5 million tonnes, barely enough to feed the 2.5 million-strong Indian army.

In China and the Congo, the populations also exceeded those of the colonial invaders. Nevertheless, an estimated 20 to 100 million Chinese died in the British Opium Wars and the connected Taiping Rebellion. In the Congo, the Belgian colonizers killed about 10 million Congolese while maximizing the extraction of rubber and ivory; hands were chopped off if there was insufficient delivery. An estimated 35 to 40 million Chinese died under the Japanese occupation from 1937-1945.

By way of comparison, we can then turn to deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the Gaza genocide and the broader Palestinian genocide. The Palestinian breakout from the Gaza concentration camp and the 57-year Zionist Israeli occupation was associated with the deaths of 1,139 Israelis. However, prize-winning Western journalists have disputed the official Zionist Israeli narrative, and it seems extremely likely that the October 7, 2023, breakout was enabled by the Zionist Israelis to provide a 9/11-style excuse for the destruction and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Many of the Israelis killed on October 7 were victims of the IDF’s high-explosive firepower, operating under the Hannibal Directive to prevent hostage-taking, even if it meant killing the hostages.

From data published in the leading medical journal, The Lancet, it is estimated that by April 25, 2025, Gaza deaths from violence will be 136,000 and from imposed deprivation will be 544,000, for a total of 680,000. This is based on the conservative assumption that indirect deaths from deprivation are four times the number of violent deaths. Exhaustive analysis of avoidable deaths from deprivation in all countries since 1950 reveals that under-five infant deaths constitute about 70% of such avoidable deaths in impoverished countries, as detailed in my book, Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality Since 1950. Infants are highly vulnerable, as we all know. Accordingly, the 544,000 Gaza deaths from forced deprivation include about 380,000 infants under five years old. This horrendous death toll can be further broken down into 380,000 infants, 479,000 children, 63,000 women, and 18,000 men.

However, the Zionist-perverted mainstream media ignores the notion of deaths from deprivation and, at the moment, reports only around 50,500 deaths from violence, ignoring the huge number of indirect deaths. Presently, Gaza deaths from violence and deprivation total about 0.7 million, as opposed to the 50,000 you will read in the newspapers. Interestingly, the NSA advisor to Trump has repeatedly indicated that of the pre-war population of 2.4 million, 1.7 million surviving Gazans will have to be moved to make Gaza a nice, Riviera-style luxury resort. This implies that 0.7 million Gazans are missing (2.4 million minus 1.7 million). We know that about 0.1 million managed to escape to Egypt, which suggests that about 0.6 million Gazans have died from violence and deprivation—a shocking figure. What Trump has said is actually in accord with what top British epidemiologists are saying, but what is reported is the 50,000.

The Palestinian genocide essentially commenced in 1908 with the discovery of oil in Iran. Britain invaded the Ottoman Empire in 1914, occupying Iraq, which eventually led to the French and British invasion of the Middle East. One should also consider the European backing of Israel in what it has been doing for 77 years, and in particular, over the last 20 months. Before the bombing of Iran, the G7—all of whom possess, host, or endorse nuclear weapons (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and the US)—responded to the Israeli bombing of Iran by falsely declaring, “We, the leaders of the G7, reiterate our commitment to peace and stability in the Middle East. In this context, we affirm that Israel has a right to defend itself. We reiterate our support for the security of Israel. Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” Australia, which is not a member of the G7 but was invited to the recent conference, falsely agrees with the G7.

The reality is dramatically otherwise. The US-backed Israeli attack was unprovoked and violates international law. Israel has 90 nuclear weapons, but Iran has none. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but Israel is not. For 50 years, Iran, other Muslim countries, and the UN General Assembly have demanded a nuclear-free Middle East. Iran has invaded no country for millennia, but Israel bombed five countries in 2025 and has attacked 14 in its 77 years of existence. And of course, if Iran actually did have nuclear weapons, why would it use them against Israel when half of its subjects are Palestinians? And why would it commit suicide by using nuclear weapons against the West? The same flawed argument was used, you may remember, when weapons of mass destruction was the excuse to destroy Iraq.

The question has been asked why the former genocidal colonial powers of the G7 support genocidal apartheid Israel. The truth is, except for Japan, they are all European. That is a simple proposition. The United Kingdom has managed to invade 123 countries over the last thousand years. The United States has invaded or otherwise had a military presence in all but three countries in the world. All 32 countries of NATO, all European, firmly support Israel. Many of them belong to the Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which fervently supports Israel with propaganda.

To summarize the European complicity in the Gaza genocide and the unprovoked, war-criminal devastation of Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen:

First, overwhelmingly, European countries are allied with the serially war-criminal and Zionist-perverted America, which, since Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1960s, has become the dog being wagged by the Zionist Israeli tail.

Second, all G7 members were involved in the US and NATO-imposed Afghan Holocaust that killed 7 million Afghans through violence and deprivation. The G7 countries and many of their non-G7 associates have further records of involvement in war, imperialism, and the genocide of Indigenous people.

Third, all G7 countries and many of the non-G7 European countries have a prior record of racist settler-colonialism and genocide. The genocidally complicit racism of the European supporters of Israel persists, as revealed by their sustained pro-apartheid Israel conduct for 77 years and by their political rhetoric. This is borne out by how they vote at the United Nations General Assembly.

The 1.7 million surviving Gazans are forced to choose between starvation or risking being shot by Zionist Israelis when seeking food. This is what I see as I eat my dinner each night and watch the television news. Gaza, the 4,000-year-old city that trans-shipped the perfumes of Arabia to the Roman Empire, has been demolished. William Dalrymple’s marvellous book, The Golden Road, details how India had a massive effect on human civilization from Indonesia and Japan to Spain. He argues that Gaza, when it was conquered by the Crusaders, was a key place for the transmission of the wonderful Indian-Arabic flowering culture of the Middle Ages to Europe. The Crusaders took this Arabic-Indian learning and mathematics back to Western Europe.

The world must immediately act with draconian sanctions against US-backed apartheid Israel and all its supporters, notably the US, UK, Australia, the G7, and the EU. The genocidal oppression of the Muslim world by the racist West must end immediately. The US could end it by simply abstaining at the UN Security Council. The century-long suffering of the Palestinian people would end if the world simply insisted, under pain of draconian sanctions, that Palestinians are accorded all the human rights enjoyed in the West and elsewhere.

After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, where 69 Africans were killed, the world imposed ultimately successful sanctions on apartheid South Africa. It should do likewise over genocidal apartheid Israel. This toll of 680,000 Gazans killed by April 25, 2025, is nearly 10,000 times the number killed at Sharpeville.

Thank you for your attention.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (2003). He has also published “Body Count.

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in occupied Palestine, stands as a testament to the notion of speaking truth to power. This “power” is not solely embodied by Israel or even the United States, but by an international community whose collective relevance has tragically failed to stem the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Her latest report, ‘From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,’ submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on July 3, marks a seismic intervention. It unflinchingly names and implicates companies that have not only allowed Israel to sustain its war and genocide against Palestinians, but also confronts those who have remained silent in the face of this unfolding horror.

Albanese’s ‘Economy of Genocide’ is far more than an academic exercise or a mere moral statement in a world whose collective conscience is being brutally tested in Gaza. The report is significant for multiple, interlocking reasons. Crucially, it offers practical pathways to accountability that transcend mere diplomatic and legal rhetoric. It also presents a novel approach to international law, positioning it not as a delicate political balancing act, but as a potent tool to confront complicity in war crimes and expose the profound failures of existing international mechanisms in Gaza.

Two vital contexts are important to understanding the significance of this report, considered a searing indictment of direct corporate involvement, not only in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, but Israel’s overall settler-colonial project.

First, in February 2020, following years of delay, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) released a database that listed 112 companies involved in business activities within illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. The database exposes several corporate giants – including Airbnb, Booking.com, Motorola Solutions, JCB, and Expedia – for helping Israel maintain its military occupation and apartheid.

This event was particularly earth-shattering, considering the United Nations’ consistent failure at reining in Israel, or holding accountable those who sustain its war crimes in Palestine. The database was an important step that allowed civil societies to mobilize around a specific set of priorities, thus pressuring corporations and individual governments to take morally guided positions. The effectiveness of that strategy was clearly detected through the exaggerated and angry reactions of the US and Israel. The US said it was an attempt by “the discredited” Council “to fuel economic retaliation,” while Israel called it a “shameful capitulation” to pressure.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza, starting on October 7, 2023, however, served as a stark reminder of the utter failure of all existing UN mechanisms to achieve even the most modest expectations of feeding a starving population during a time of genocide. Tellingly, this was the same conclusion offered by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who, in September 2024, stated that the world had “failed the people of Gaza.”

This failure continued for many more months and was highlighted in the UN’s inability to even manage the aid distribution in the Strip, entrusting the job to the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a mercenary-run violent apparatus that has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians. Albanese herself, of course, had already reached a similar conclusion when, in November 2023, she confronted the international community for “epically failing” to stop the war and to end the “senseless slaughtering of innocent civilians.”

Albanese’s new report goes a step further, this time appealing to the whole of humanity to take a moral stance and to confront those who made the genocide possible. “Commercial endeavors enabling and profiting from the obliteration of innocent people’s lives must cease,” the report declares, pointedly demanding that “corporate entities must refuse to be complicit in human rights violations and international crimes or be held to account.”

According to the report, categories of complicity in the genocide are divided into arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities, and charities.

These include Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, IBM, and even Danish shipping giant Maersk, among nearly 1,000 other firms. It was their collective technological know-how, machinery, and data collection that allowed Israel to kill, to date, over 57,000 and wound over 134,000 in Gaza, let alone maintain the apartheid regime in the West Bank.

What Albanese’s report tries to do is not merely name and shame Israel’s genocide partners but to tell us, as civil society, that we now have a comprehensive frame of reference that would allow us to make responsible decisions, put pressure on, and hold accountable these corporate giants.

“The ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture,” Albanese writes, citing Israel’s massive surge in military spending, estimated at 65 percent from 2023 to 2024 — reaching $46.5 billion.

Israel’s seemingly infinite military budget is a strange loop of money, originally provided by the US government, then recycled back through US corporations, thus spreading the wealth between governments, politicians, corporations, and numerous contractors. As bank accounts swell, more Palestinian bodies are piled up in morgues, mass graves, or are scattered in the streets of Jabaliya and Khan Yunis.

This madness needs to stop, and, since the UN is incapable of stopping it, then individual governments, civil society organizations, and ordinary people must do the job, because the lives of Palestinians should be of far greater value than corporate profits and greed.

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

12 July 2025

Source: countercurrents.org