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By Peter Koenig 

[This article by Peter Koenig was first published by Global Research. You may read it here.]

“The US trade deal will fuel EU’s ‘deindustrialization.’” —Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov

“The European Union is no longer an economic giant, but a political dwarf.” —Russian President Putin

Europe, EU members and those who want to become EU members, a very sick aspiration, have lost all sovereignty, President Putin added.

Answering questions from reporters, President Putin said, “The European Union is no longer deciding its own politics, and a loss of economic sovereignty will follow”.

“Sovereignty plays a key role, including for economic development. It was already clear that the European Union did not have that much sovereignty. Today, it has become clear they have none. And with today’s crisis situation, it is economic losses that will follow,” Putin continued.

See this.

Full proof for Putin’s statement in more ways than just economics, is this recent dictate from Sweden to Ukraine, an EU aspirant:

“Ukraine should extend full legal protections to gay people, including same-sex marriage, as part of its bid for EU membership, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said.”

Such is EU member interference in other members, or those who want to become members, internal matters – see this.

What about Madame Von der Leyen’s trade and import duties deal with the Deal-Maker-in-Chief, President Trump himself?

The unelected President of the European Commission (EC), Ursula Von der Leyen, agreed that almost all European imports into the United States will be charged 15% import duties, whereas no retributory taxes will be levied by the EU on US imports.

In addition, the EU has committed herself to purchase from Washington US$ 750 billion-worth of US energy which will be sold by the USA at close to triple the price offered by Russia for their natural gas. Washington and its secret services – no doubt helped by Mossad and MI6 – has also made sure, with the consensus of Germany, that no Russian natural gas will flow into Germany, by blowing up three of the four Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022.

This inexpensive Russian gas was basically the lifeblood for the German, and by extension, the European economy. The EU, Germany in the first place, by accepting these “sanctions” against Russia and consenting to blowing up of the pipeline, has sealed their suicide pact with the US administration, and, of course, with the European population.

The EU-US framework trade deal, spanning three years, also includes the condition that the EU must invest US$ 600 billion in the US which will result largely in purchasing US weaponry (i) to send to Ukraine, so they can continue fighting a lost cause and losing more millions of their next generation male, and (ii) to arm herself [the EU] to fight Russia, with a total of a trillion Euro military budget, according to Ms. warmonger, Von der Leyen.

What a terrific suicide deal!

As a little consolation, these “framework deals” have little or no legal standing because they are no contracts. Nevertheless, knowing the current heads of the EU and their self-destructing minds, the EU leadership will probably do whatever it takes to stick to the deal; unless, of course, these heads of EU will be “changed” – rather sooner than later.

To be exact, though, these Trump deals, whether with Europe, Japan, China – you name it – have little meaning, other than making for sensation. But your mainstream outlets won’t tell you this.

The China-EU trade summit held in and hosted by Beijing on 24 July 2025, could have been a celebration of 50 years diplomatic relations between China and the EU bloc; an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen cooperation between the EU and China.

Instead, the EU “leadership” delegation arrived in Beijing with a US-made agenda – bickering about and accusing China of her unfair trade practices. These EU non-leaders even had the guts to call on China to “rein in” Russia. Predictably, such nonsense fell on deaf ears, and further worsened EU-China relations. The ideology behind this disastrous approach to further diplomatic and trade relations, are made in Washington.

To exacerbate the “unfriendliness”, Brussels restricted Chinese investments and levied high tariffs on Chinese manufactured electric cars, as well as barred Chinese firms from public tenders of more than five million euros.

In addition, preceding the Beijing summit, Brussels further degraded her approach to China by including two Chinese banks in her latest sanction package against Russia, and using the recent G7 summit (16 to 17 June 2025 in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada), warning about the China shock – accusing China of weaponizing trade.

For more details, see this.

After this disastrous encounter in Beijing, Europe has nowhere to go. She has locked herself into full submission, not to call it enslavement, to the United States and her Wanna-be King.

It is also clear: Europe cannot make peace – only enemies.

***

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst, regular author for Global Research, and a former Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world.

6 August 2025

Source: michelchossudovsky.substack.com

By PATRICK MAZZA

There are times when it is difficult to bring myself to my writer’s desk, when I know there is something that desperately needs to be acknowledged, but I barely have the words for it. And if I could find them, I ask myself what effect could one small voice possibly have. Is this even a meaningful process? Daily seeing pictures of children with bones sticking out of their emaciated flesh, let alone children missing limbs, while most of the western world continues support for Israel, pierces me with a sense of despair at our seeming helplessness to stop this horror.

But finally, I have to make that effort. There could be no more fitting day than this one, August 6, the 80th anniversary of the day the United States seared the Japanese city of Hiroshima with the first atomic weapon used in war, three days before the second was dropped at Nagasaki. Historians generally agree this was entirely unnecessary, that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war tipped the balance to Japanese surrender. After all, the one-day death toll in the firebombing of Tokyo had been even greater.

Now we witness events that, though it staggers belief, are even more destructive. The cumulative power of the bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza amount to six or more times that of the Hiroshima bomb, something like 90,000-100,000 tons of high explosive. The destruction is said to be the greatest of any urban area in modern history, including the Japanese cities. Now an even more pervasive weapon of starvation has been unleashed on the remaining civilian population. Famine has reached the “worst-case,” a U.N. affiliated group says. Overall deaths are often quoted in the range of 60,000, but could well run into the hundreds of thousands. Most of those who survive will experience ill effects through life, physical and psychological.

It is clearly a genocide, and though they are late in the game, Israeli human rights group B’tsalem on July 28 issued a report under the all-caps bold heading, “OUR GENOCIDE.” It concluded, “An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

The same day, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel issued its own statement. It is worth quoting at length.

“Today, PHRI is releasing a position paper that documents this assault for what it is: a deliberate, cumulative dismantling of Gaza’s health system, and with it, its people’s ability to survive. This amounts to genocide. Israel’s bombing of hospitals, destruction of medical equipment, and depletion of medications have made medical care – both immediate and long-term – virtually impossible. The system has collapsed under the weight of relentless attacks and blockade.

“Each day, dozens die of malnutrition. Ninety-two percent of infants aged six months to two years don’t get enough to eat. At least 85 children have already starved to death. Israel has displaced 9 in 10 Gazans, destroyed or damaged 92% of homes, and left over half a million children without schools or stability. It has wiped out essential health services – including dialysis, maternal care, cancer treatment, and diabetes management.

“This is not a temporary crisis. It is a strategy to eliminate the conditions needed for life. Even if Israel stops the offensive today, the destruction it has inflicted guarantees that preventable deaths – from starvation, infection, and chronic illness – will continue for years. This is not collateral damage. This is not a side effect of war. It is the systematic creation of unlivable conditions. It is the denial of survivability. It is a genocide.”

In charging Israel with destroying Gazan society by making conditions unliveable, both groups are using definitions set by the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, one of which is, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

This is accompanied by a general sense the worm is turning on Israel. France, Britain and Canada have announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state, though the latter two with conditions. Major figures are making statements calling for an end to the starvation campaign, including Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Keir Starmer, though the continuing shipment of arms to Israel which Trump could accomplish is not forthcoming. So his words seem to be just empty virtue-signaling.

Why did it take so long?

The general view toward these these statements is – What took you so long? Those with eyes to see have been calling it a genocide since the early days of the war in 2023 when Israel closed the Gaza borders and began mass bombing. That was obvious to Craig Mokhiber, New York office director of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, who on October 28, 2023 announced his resignation. In his letter he wrote, “ . . . the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate . . . This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.”

Israel finally made its genocide too blatant, though words of Israeli leaders at the beginning of the war made clear their intent, a reason why the International Court of Justice in January 2024 ruled in response to a South African charging genocide that it was plausible. Finally, it is no longer possible to plausibly deny it.

Why has it taken so long? Why does it go on? I have to conclude it is because in what Israel is doing in Gaza, and under less scrutiny in the West Bank, the West is seeing the reflection of its own brutal colonial past. The mass slaughter in Gaza is no different than exterminations European conquerors inflicted in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Do we find it unbelievable that Israelis actually say kill children because they will grow up to be terrorists? Do we remember that U.S. Army Col. John Chivingtonordered all to be killed in an assault on a peaceful native camp at Sand Hill, Colorado, including children. ““Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians!…Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.” Many were such massacres, from 1600s New England to 1800s California. Coast-to-coast genocide.

And if we view using starvation as a weapon with horror, let us remember how killing the buffalo herds was central to U.S. Army strategy to defeat the Sioux and Comanche who ruled over much of the west, when it was having trouble defeating them militarily. Gen. Philip Sheridan said it was necessary “to settle the Indian question.” The same Sheridan who reputedly said, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Whether or not he really did say it, it was a widespread sentiment in the 19th century U.S. So we should not be surprised to hear similar statements from the later settler colony of Israel.

What we see today is only a high-tech version of our own history. Instead of Gatling guns mowing down natives at Wounded Knee, it is F-16s dropping 2000-pound bombs on Rafah. We are shocked to see it, because Israel is acting out in the 21st century what western nations did from the 1400s on. Israel is in many ways a throwback. The Zionist idea of a Jewish state emerged in the late 1800s at the height of western colonialism. The idea that European whites were a superior race with a right to rule over others provided an intellectual legitimacy to seizing other people’s lands and committing genocide. We hear that echoed in claims of Jewish supremacy and right to the land of Palestine. It is often based, as were western claims to hegemony, on some kind of religious claim. In the end, it is theft.

If what Israel is doing in Gaza is increasingly compared to what Hitler and the Nazis did, it is partly because Hitler was a kind of throwback himself. It is said that his great crime was to treat white Europeans the same way they treated non-white populations in the Global South. Hitler had a dream Germans would settle the steppes of Eastern Europe that way the U.S. settled the west. He was an avid fan of Karl May, a German writer of western frontier adventures, and named his train The America. Trouble was, in Hitler’s case, the indigenous had tanks and were not so easily genocided.

Colonialism is woven into our lives

If colonialism was simply a historic fact and not present in the modern world, perhaps the tide would have turned against Israel sooner. But it is a fundamental reality, so woven into our lives we are barely aware of it. I started out asking if writing about the genocide is a meaningful act in the face of monumental horror. Of course, I answer that we must all lift our voices, that our many small droplets turn into a tsunami that makes any further support for Israel unacceptable. But to add to that, I think it is this issue of the colonialism that runs through our lives that connects to what I write about here, building the future in the places where we live.

For while political colonialism largely ended in the decades after World War II, it has been replaced by a more insidious economic and cultural colonialism that continues to hold the Global South in thrall. In debt peonage that continues to hinder nations from developing their own economies, which as John Perkins wrote in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is quite purposive. In covert political manipulation that arranges coups and overthrows whenever a national leadership goes out of line. And perhaps most profoundly, in who does the work.

Jason Hickel, one of the world’s leading proponents of degrowth, the idea of reducing material and energy throughput to address the ecological crisis, is not by coincidence one of the world’s leading authorities on economic inequality. In 2024 Hickel published an article in Nature, “Unequal Exchange in the Global Economy.” The results are staggering:

“We find that, in 2021, the final year of data, 9.6 trillion hours of labour went into producing for the global economy. Of that, 90% was contributed by the global South The South contributed the majority of labour across all skill levels: 76% of all high-skilled labour, 91% of medium-skilled labour and 96% of low-skilled labour. In the same year, 2.1 trillion hours of labour went into the production of internationally traded goods (our use of ‘traded goods’ in this paper refers to both goods and services). The relative North–South contribution to the production of traded goods is similar to that of total production, with the South contributing 91% of all labour (73% of all high-skilled labour, 93% of medium-skilled labour, and 96% of low-skilled labour).”

In a 2022 article in which Hickel was the lead author, researchers found a huge portion of the economy of northern countries is extracted from the south, even in the so-called post-colonial era. The system is rigged by keeping resource prices low and finished goods prices high.

“This research confirms that the ‘advanced economies’ of the global North rely on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through induced price differentials in international trade. By combining insights from the classical literature on unequal exchange with contemporary insights about global commodity chains and new methods for quantifying the physical scale of embodied resource transfers, we are able to develop a novel approach to estimating the scale and value of resource drain from the global South. Our results show that, when measured in Northern prices, the drain amounted to $10.8 trillion in 2015, and $242 trillion over the period from 1990 to 2015 – a significant windfall for the North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. Meanwhile, the South’s losses through unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30.”

Israel’s genocide of Gaza is the immediate atrocity in our face. In the background are other proxy wars tied to western resource extraction in Sudan and Congo. Of course, we can look at the run of wars in West Asia and North Africa – Iraq, Libya, Syria, and perhaps one pending with Iran – as struggles over the control of energy and the western drive to preserve its colonial hegemony. It is all of a piece.

So what can we most meaningfully do in the face of all this, as people living in western countries, particularly the final guarantor of western colonialism, the U.S.? As I said, we can and must raise our voices against the current genocide, however small or powerless we feel we are. It is a necessity simply to be whole human beings. Then, at a broader level, we must examine deeply the role of continuing colonialism in our lives, dependent as we are on a flow of labor, resources and income from the Global South. Since much of this is tied to fossil energy, from which most global climate disruption flows, this is also vital to deal with the climate crisis. We need to get an honest living, because ours is not. It is built on centuries of colonial extraction.

The paradigm about which I write here, building the future in place, is all about building community-based economies grounded in the realities of nature, beginning in the communities and bioregions where we live. It is about local control of finance to invest in networks of community-based institutions – worker coops, local food providers, energy coops, circular economies, social housing, community broadband, etc. – that set us free from the global system of exploitation and extraction. That move us from these five centuries of colonialism to a just world for all.

With everything in us, let us push for the agony of the people of Gaza to end and for the colonial experiment of Zionism to be declared the manifest failure it is. It has not only brutalized the Palestinians; It has morally and psychologically twisted a large segment of the Jewish people, a tragic irony considering Jewish history. And at the same time, let us look at why the western world has largely gone along and supported what is clearly a genocide, understanding it as a late expression of what the western world has been pulling for a half-millennium. Then dig into the economic roots of this and our multiple, onrushing global crisis, and undertake the work of change in our own communities. It is hard to see the value in events that has caused so much suffering, but if Gaza spurs us to reflect on our own colonial past and move beyond it, and present, the many who have died will not have died in vain.

This first appeared on Patrick Mazza’s Substack page, The Raven.

8 August 2025

Source: counterpunch.org

By CAIR

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today condemned Israel’s assassination of five Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza and called on U.S. and international media professionals to stand in solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues under attack.

Israel murdered journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, along with camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa in a targeted strike on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City. Israel has assassinated almost 200 Palestinian journalists in the past 22 months.

In June, CAIR similarly condemned the killing of three journalists in an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza City. 

Last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) joined 15 other media and human rights organizations in demanding an end to Israel’s forced starvation and targeted killing of journalists in Gaza.

“Israel’s ongoing campaign of targeted assassinations of Palestinian journalists is a war crime, plain and simple,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. “The murder of these Al Jazeera journalists is not an accident or collateral damage—it is part of a consistent, documented policy of silencing media voices and hiding the truth of the genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza. We call on every media organization, every newsroom, and every journalist of conscience to stand in solidarity with their colleagues in Gaza and to demand accountability. Silence is complicity with censorship and genocide.”

He said CAIR has previously called on the American media to oppose Israeli targeting of journalists. 

A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists found that a record number of journalists were killed in 2024, almost two-thirds of them Palestinians who were killed by Israel.

CAIR’s mission is to protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.       

La misión de CAIR es proteger las libertades civiles, mejorar la comprensión del Islam, promover la justicia, y empoderar a los musulmanes en los Estados Unidos.            

Do you like reading CAIR press releases and taking part in our action alerts? You can help contribute to CAIR’s work of defending civil rights and empowering American Muslims across the country by making a one-time contribution or becoming a monthly donor. Supporters like you make CAIR’s advocacy work possible and defeating Islamophobia an achievable goal. Click here to donate to CAIR.                   

You are receiving this email due to your interest selection from commercial media databases. If you would like to join CAIR’s media list, please sign up here: https://action.cair.com/a/newsletters — For more information, email: info@cair.com, CC ihooper@cair.com  

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10 August 2025

Source: cair.com

By middleeasteye.net

Already targeted by US sanctions, the ICC chief prosecutor’s pursuit of Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders now threatens his career, his reputation, and the future of the court itself

Amajor Middle East Eye investigation has uncovered extraordinary details of an intensifying intimidation campaign targeting the British chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court over his investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes.

The campaign has involved threats and warnings directed at Karim Khan by prominent figures, close colleagues and family friends briefing against him, fears for the prosecutor’s safety prompted by a Mossad team in The Hague, and media leaks about sexual assault allegations.

It has taken place against the backdrop of Khan’s efforts to build and pursue a case against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials over their conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza and accelerating Israeli settlement expansion and violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank.

Last month, Middle East Eye revealed that Khan was warned in May that if the arrest warrants issued last year for Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant were not withdrawn, he and the ICC would be destroyed.

The warning was delivered by Nicholas Kaufman, a British-Israeli defence lawyer at the court, during a meeting with Khan and his wife, Shyamala Alagendra, at a hotel in The Hague.

Kaufman told Khan he had spoken to Netanyahu’s legal advisor and was “authorised” to make him a proposal that would allow Khan to “climb down the tree”, according to a note of the meeting on file at the ICC seen by MEE.

In response to questions from MEE, Kaufman denied threatening Khan. He denied having been authorised to make any proposals on behalf of the Israeli government and said he had shared his personal views with Khan on the Palestine situation.

The meeting came less than two weeks before allegations of sexual assault against Khan, which he has strenuously denied, were first published, and as he was reportedly preparing to seek arrest warrants for more members of the Israeli government.

There is no suggestion of any connection between the Kaufman-Khan meeting and the publication of the allegations.

Khan went on leave shortly afterwards after an attempt to suspend him, prompted by a senior member of his own office, failed and amid an ongoing United Nations investigation into the allegations against him.

Intense pressure on the prosecutor had been building even before Khan became the subject of the now widely publicised allegations.

MEE can reveal details about correspondence between Khan and the complainant, a female ICC staff member, which appear to raise questions about some of the previously reported claims about the case in American and British media.

In response to questions from MEE, the complainant said she had fully cooperated with the UN investigation and could not “engage with the questions posed or correct the inaccuracies” because she is bound by “obligations of confidentiality and professional integrity”.

Khan has declined to comment to MEE on the matters raised in this article.

The timeline of events reveals that pressure on Khan started to build in April 2024 as he prepared to apply for the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, then again in October, before judges issued the warrants.

It intensified further this year as Khan was reported to be seeking warrants for more Israeli ministers, and coinciding with further media leaks about the sexual assault allegations.

MEE spoke to sources with knowledge of the affair and reviewed material understood to be relevant to the investigation into the allegations currently being conducted by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

MEE’s investigation can reveal that:

– In April 2024, weeks before Khan applied for the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron privately threatened Khan that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if it issued warrants for Israeli leaders

– In May 2024, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham threatened Khan with sanctions if he applied for the warrants

– Before the allegations were made, Khan had received a security briefing that indicated that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, was active in The Hague and posed a potential threat to the prosecutor

– The woman accusing Khan of sexual misconduct wrote in May 2024 in text messages to Khan that there were “games being played” and attempts to make her a “pawn in some game I don’t want to play”. Two internal ICC investigations into the allegations were closed after she refused to cooperate with them

– The complainant had previously sought and obtained Khan’s help in another complaint against a second senior ICC official. This was during the period in which she later alleged Khan had repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Investigators found no wrongdoing on the part of the individual who was the subject of her complaint

– Thomas Lynch, Khan’s special assistant, who he tasked to liaise with Israel on the Palestine investigation, played a key role in making the allegations against Khan official. Privately however, Lynch had expressed his own doubts about the allegations to Khan’s wife and said that the timing was suspicious. In response to questions from MEE, Lynch described allegations in this article as “false and misleading”.

– A female ICC lawyer told MEE there was a group of people within the court who disagreed with Khan’s approach and who were working to discredit him. She said she had been approached in May 2024 and asked if Khan had ever behaved inappropriately towards her: “I told them he is the last person on my list of men who would do that”

– Khan met Nicholas Kaufman, the British-Israeli defence lawyer, to discuss the Israel investigation just two weeks before he was forced to go on leave after it was publicly revealed that he was under investigation over sexual assault allegations. According to a note of the meeting on file at the ICC, Kaufman told Khan that if the warrants against Netanyahu or Gallant were not dropped, “they will destroy you and they will destroy the court”

– Two former ICC judges have told MEE they have grave concerns about the way the OIOS investigation into the allegations against Khan has been conducted, questioning why the prosecutor was publicly named as the subject of a complaint, and the need for an external investigation into his alleged misconduct

Hostile measures

The campaign against Khan has taken place in parallel with both punitive and hostile measures taken against the ICC by the United States, and the allegations of sexual misconduct against the chief prosecutor, which started as accusations of harassment but later escalated to accusations of sexual assault.

Since February, Khan has been sanctioned by the US government – which, like Israel, does not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC – over the arrest warrants issued against Netanyahu and Gallant.

On 19 May, the ICC and the prosecutor’s office issued a statement saying that Khan would take leave until the conclusion of the OIOS investigation.

The court said that the work of the prosecutor’s office would continue under the leadership of the two deputy prosecutors.

Last month, the US imposed further sanctions against four judges at the court, which it accuses of “illegitimate actions” targeting the US and Israel.

A senior State Department legal advisor this month warned the court’s oversight body that “all options are on the table” if the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant are not withdrawn.

ICC judges on 16 July nonetheless rejected a request from Israel for the warrants to be withdrawn pending the outcome of the court’s ruling on an ongoing Israeli appeal challenging its jurisdiction in the case.

A source in The Hague, with knowledge of the matter and speaking on condition of anonymity, told MEE: “This has been an attempt not just to destroy Karim Khan but the International Criminal Court – by countries that claim to support the international rule of law.”

The source added that Khan had done everything “by the book” in applying for the warrants.

“If anything, he delayed the process,” the source said.

After Khan was elected as chief prosecutor in 2021, he raised the criteria for applying for warrants to include a realistic prospect of conviction.

The criminal investigation into alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories had been launched just months before Khan took office by his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, a former Gambian justice minister who is now her country’s ambassador in London.

The Guardian revealed last year that Mossad had pressured and allegedly threatened Bensouda in a years-long failed campaign to stop her from opening the investigation, and then placed her successor, Khan, under surveillance.

On 17 November 2023, over a month after the Hamas attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s ensuing bombardment of Gaza, five states – South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, and Djibouti – referred the Palestine case to the prosecutor.

The following month, with his office under pressure to respond, Khan travelled to Israel and also met Palestinian officials in Ramallah in the West Bank.

He visited kibbutzim and the site of a music festival, which were attacked by Hamas on 7 October 2023. In Ramallah, Khan met officials, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as well as “families of Palestinian victims” and heard “personal accounts of their experiences in Gaza and the West Bank”.

Khan pledged that his office would “further intensify its efforts to advance its investigations in relation to this situation”.

Having decided in January 2024 that he had prepared the cases for arrest warrants, Khan took the unusual step of convening an independent legal panel of prominent lawyers, including British-Lebanese lawyer Amal Clooney, to examine the Palestine case.

A number of media reports have suggested that Khan sought arrest warrants on 20 May that year to win support in the context of allegations against him.

But the prosecutor’s decision to apply for warrants was made six weeks before the allegations were made, and the application for the warrants was submitted only after the first internal investigation into the harassment accusations had been opened and closed.

MEE understands Khan’s extensive team of lawyers and researchers had decided they were ready to apply for the warrants by 16 March.

But there were more steps in the process. On 21 March, Khan ordered a complementarity check to examine whether Israel itself was investigating the alleged crimes and concluded it was not.

On 25 March, Khan informed the Biden administration in Washington of his decision. Two days later, he went to the White House to meet Jake Sullivan, then national security adviser, and Brett McGurk, then National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.

A series of threats

On 15 April in London, the prosecutor told British Justice Minister Alex Chalk that he would apply for the warrants. Khan had asked to meet the foreign secretary, David Cameron, but Cameron was out of the country.

Cameron, a former prime minister who had been appointed foreign secretary in November 2023, phoned Khan while the prosecutor was on an official visit to Venezuela on 23 April.

Last month MEE revealed details of the call based on information from a number of sources, including former staff in Khan’s office familiar with the conversation and who have seen the minutes of the meeting.

Cameron told Khan that applying for warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant would be “like dropping a hydrogen bomb”.

According to MEE’s sources, the foreign secretary spoke aggressively and repeatedly shouted over Khan.

Cameron threatened that if the ICC issued warrants for Israeli leaders, the UK would “defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute”.

Cameron did not respond to MEE’s requests for comment. The British Foreign Office declined to comment.

The day after the call with Cameron, 12 Republican senators, including Marco Rubio, who is now Donald Trump’s Secretary of State, wrote a letter to Khan warning: “Target Israel and we will target you”.

They threatened that if the ICC issued warrants against Israeli officials, the US would “sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States”.

On 25 April, British journalist Douglas Murray wrote in the New York Post that in the “next few days”, Khan would seek arrest warrants for Israeli officials. It had not yet been public knowledge that the warrants were imminent.

However, the process was further delayed when the Israeli government said on 28 April that it would allow Khan to visit Israel and Gaza. Such a visit would have been unprecedented for the chief prosecutor of the ICC.

Thomas Lynch, Khan’s assistant, told the prosecutor the visit was on, but Khan insisted on obtaining an official letter from the Israeli government, giving him permission to visit Gaza.

On 1 May, Khan received another significant threat during a conference call with senior ICC officials, Senator Lindsey Graham and a bipartisan group of senators.

According to material reviewed by MEE, Graham told Khan that if he proceeded with the warrants “you may as well shoot the hostages yourself” and “we will sanction you”.

He added that the ICC was “made for Africa and thugs like Putin, not democracies like Israel”.

Khan referenced this remark in an interview on CNN with Christiane Amanpour at the time that the arrest warrants were issued, but did not disclose the name of the state official who had said it.

British barrister Andrew Cayley, who oversaw the ICC’s Palestine investigation, recently told the Observer newspaper that Graham was “screaming at us”.

Graham’s office did not respond to MEE’s request for comment.

In a later statement, in which he claimed that the by-then public misconduct allegations against Khan had cast a moral cloud over his application for Israeli arrest warrants, Graham said the senators had urged Khan “to respect the principle of complementarity and to engage in good faith with Israeli officials before making any decision as to how to move forward against the State of Israel”.

On the morning of 2 May 2024, before Khan had been made aware of the allegations against him, he met Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, the Dutch National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV), whose office is responsible for security in the Netherlands, along with the ICC’s president, vice president and registrar.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the need to urgently enhance security for the ICC, as well as information Khan had been given that Mossad was active in The Hague and posed a potential security threat to the prosecutor and others involved in the case.

A spokesperson said the NCTV could not comment on any matters concerning the safety of persons.

In an NCTV report on state threats, published on 17 July, it noted that the US and Israel had publicly threatened the court and that the US had imposed sanctions on Khan due to the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.

It warned that further measures could damage or halt the court’s operations, and it noted that both the ICC and the International Court of Justice, which is currently examining a complaint of genocide brought against Israel, were “an attractive target for espionage and subversive influence for a large number of countries”.

On 8 May, after the ICC’s Internal Oversight Mechanism (IOM) had closed its investigation into the harassment allegations, Khan wrote to Saklaine Hederaly, the then-head of the IOM, to tell him about the suspected threat from Mossad.

Khan wrote: “The timing is particularly concerning coming as it does along with a tide of other threats from a variety of sources, some of which are public and others are not.”

He went on: “Given the security factor and the nature of the threats… I would like your advice as to how we can manage security risks and threats in a manner that cannot be considered a reprisal. It goes without saying, of course, that I will not engage in any act of reprisal against any individual related to this matter or any other.”

By 19 May, the day before Thomas Lynch was due to fly to Israel ahead of Khan, the official letter from Israel still had not arrived.

Khan cancelled the trip. The next day, in a video statement, he announced that he was seeking warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif – all three now dead – for alleged war crimes.

Complaints against Khan

By the time Khan announced the application for arrest warrants, the ICC’s own investigative body, the IOM, had already closed its first investigation into the allegations of harassment.

On 29 April last year, one of Khan’s colleagues had raised these in a private conversation with two others, one of whom was Lynch, Khan’s close assistant.

They brought it to Khan’s attention on 2 May, and Lynch referred the allegations to the IOM late on 3 May, according to material reviewed by MEE.

But the investigation was ended on 7 May after the woman said she did not want to cooperate.

In October, however, an anonymous account on social media platform X began circulating details of the allegations.

According to the Wall Street Journal, an anonymous source sent information about the allegations to journalists in an email that contained the phone numbers of the complainant and Lynch, next to the Hebrew word for telephones.

The allegations, which were reported by the Wall Street Journal as being drawn from a “whistleblower’s report”, included Khan “sexually touching” the complainant, putting his hand in her pocket and demanding to be let into her hotel room during the night.

On 19 October, the Mail on Sunday reported that Paivi Kaukoranta, the president of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), the ICC’s oversight body, confirmed the allegations had been made.

The IOM then opened a second investigation. But this was also closed within days after the complainant said again that she would not cooperate.

Soon afterwards, the OIOS opened an external investigation at the request of Kaukoranta, the president of the ASP.

In May this year, for the first time, the Wall Street Journal reported on allegations under investigation by the OIOS, which went far beyond the previously reported harassment allegations.

The complainant was reported as having alleged that Khan had sexually assaulted her on a number of occasions, including on various overseas missions, as well as in The Hague. She said the abuse began in March 2023 and had continued for nearly a year.

MEE can reveal that during much of the period in which the complainant alleges Khan was abusing her, she was engaging with external investigators – with Khan’s support – on separate misconduct allegations against another senior court official.

In summer 2022, Khan’s complainant alleged that this other official had behaved inappropriately towards her.

MEE has learnt that Khan sent a letter to the president of the ASP on 31 August 2022 raising the complainant’s concerns on her behalf. As a result, that October external investigators were appointed to examine the complainant’s allegations.

The investigation, which the complainant engaged with, continued until 11 December 2023. On that date, the investigators concluded that there had been “no unsatisfactory conduct” on the part of the senior official under investigation.

This means that several of the occasions when Khan is accused of assaulting his colleague occurred during the same period that she was engaging with this external investigation – with Khan’s support.

MEE understands that the complainant maintained friendly relations with both Khan and his wife throughout the period in which she later alleged she had been regularly assaulted by Khan.

Khan has been widely accused of pressuring the complainant to withdraw her allegations against him.

But text messages between the complainant and Khan after she first made the allegations against the prosecutor, which are among the material reviewed by MEE, appear to raise questions about this accusation.

The complainant messaged Khan during one overseas mission in April 2024, at around 4am, asking Khan if he liked the hotel he was staying in. She ended the exchange: “Text when you’re up. Glad to be back on mission with you”.

This was less than a week before she first made harassment allegations against Khan.

On 6 May 2024 she texted the prosecutor informing him that she had been contacted by the IOM after Lynch referred her allegations to the body.

“I told them I have no interest in talking,” she said.

Khan replied: “You always have my support and confidence. I am here if you need to talk. Or you can go to racine [Mamadou Racine Ly, an adviser to the prosecutor] or the deputies.”

On 8 May, the complainant texted Khan again.

This time, she said she had not cooperated with the IOM, and that “I do not like drama or games being played – I want nothing to do with it”.

She added: “Everyone can do as they wish. I am not playing and I am not a pawn.”

Khan responded that she was “performing an important role in the Office and in the ICC”. He said he agreed “some serious games were afoot. I will leave it at that”.

On 14 May, the complainant texted Khan again, saying she felt that the investigators “were trying to put my back against the wall – and I do not like being pushed”.

She added that it was “as though the ground was shifting under me and I couldn’t find where to place my feet”, and that she felt like a “pawn in some game I don’t want to play”.

In his reply, Khan told her: “You are, of course, free to do what you think is right and we have processes… If you also need time to rest and recover and look after yourself please know you have it.”

Months later, on 17 October, the complainant phoned Khan. By this point, the allegations she had made in April were circulating online.

Khan asked her multiple times if she was recording the call. She denied that she was.

Her recording of the call, which lasted for more than an hour, is also among the material reviewed by MEE that is understood to be relevant to the OIOS investigation.

In the recording, she did not make any accusations against Khan. The woman suggested she should take unpaid leave or resign and that she should “just disappear and go quietly”.

Khan urged her not to do so. He advised her to take the paid sick leave she was entitled to.

Khan is heard to urge her not to be pressurised by anybody “to do something… or not to do something”.

“If, you know, this speculation in the paper that you will go to the president of the ASP and ask for an investigation is correct, okay,” Khan said.

“Then there will be an investigation and that’s your choice.

“And if you don’t want to do that, nobody can force you. And again, that’s your choice.”

He advised her against making “precipitous decisions” and asked if she was feeling pressurised.

“If you’re asking, like, by a particular person,” she replied, “no, but I am feeling pressurized by the situation.”

Later in the conversation, Khan asked if it was her intention to make a complaint to the ASP. He said someone had spoken “apparently on your behalf” suggesting that she wanted another investigation.

“No, but who could that be? Because I’m not even talking to anyone,” she replied.

Somebody was “stirring the shit”, Khan remarked.

He reiterated that the complainant had “full rights to do everything”, but said that one option would be to write to the president of the ASP to reaffirm that she had no intention of making any complaint.

“So these are things for you, but these are things for you to make at a time when you’ll feel able to make them,” he said.

Seven times during the call, Khan urges the complainant to “get better”. Eight times he tells her: “Look after yourself.” And nine times he advises her: “Take your time”.

MEE sent an extensive list of questions to the complainant covering matters including her complaint against Khan, the complaint she had made with Khan’s support against another ICC official, her friendship with Khan and his wife, and comments she made in messages and the phone call to Khan.

She said: “As a staff member of the International Criminal Court, I am bound by obligations of confidentiality and professional integrity, and I therefore cannot engage with the questions posed or correct the inaccuracies contained within it.”

However, she said: “I categorically reject the insinuations and selective characterisations presented, which are highly inaccurate, defamatory, and clearly intended to discredit me personally.”

She said she had fully cooperated with the UN investigation and complied with “all legal and institutional obligations”.

She denied any link between her complaint against Khan and the prosecutor’s investigation into Israel, and said she was not affiliated with, or acting on behalf of, any state or external actor.

She said: “I continue to support all investigations under the Court’s jurisdiction, as I always have. My complaint has nothing whatsoever to do with the Court’s investigation into Palestine. Two things can be true at the same time, and one has absolutely no connection to the other.”

She said the events of the past year had been “deeply painful and personally destructive” and had significantly affected her health and well-being.

She said: “I’d like to emphasize that everything that has transpired over the past year has been deeply painful and personally destructive. I have had nothing to gain from these events. I have only lost.”

‘A very close friendship’

MEE can also reveal the key role played in the proceedings by Thomas Lynch, a senior legal adviser at the ICC and a longstanding friend and colleague of Khan and his wife.

Lynch has known Alagendra for over 25 years. Sources close to them both told MEE they “share a long history of very close friendship”.

Khan had tasked Lynch, who worked in his office as his special assistant, with liaising with Israel on the Palestine investigation.

On 3 December 2023, at the end of his trip to Israel and the West Bank, Khan drafted a press statement before boarding a flight to New York.

But while Khan was in the air, Lynch showed the draft statement to Israeli officials. He then made significant revisions and published it before Khan landed, according to sources and material reviewed by MEE.

The statement was dramatically different from Khan’s draft and usual neutral language, and triggered widespread accusations of pro-Israel bias.

It called Hamas a “terror organisation” and used emotive language, describing the 7 October attacks in southern Israel as “crimes that shock the conscience of humanity”.

Such rhetoric was not used to describe the violence inflicted by Israeli forces on Palestinians in Gaza.

Former staff in the prosecutor’s office recalled that Khan was furious that the statement had been edited and published without his knowledge and initially told Lynch that it should be withdrawn.

According to the material reviewed by MEE, Lynch sought Alagendra’s help in persuading her husband not to take the statement down, and thanked her the next day for her help. Khan was unhappy that Lynch had involved his wife in the matter.

Asked about this episode and other matters raised in this article, Lynch told MEE: “As you are aware, there is an ongoing confidential investigation into this matter that limits my right to reply.”

He said questions put to him by MEE were “false and misleading”, without offering any further clarification.

Privately, Lynch opposed Khan’s decision to pursue the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant and had told Alagendra on 20 April 2024 that doing so would lead to “serious repercussions”.

At an event in The Hague, Lynch told Alagendra that Khan’s decision to seek the warrants was not wise. He said there were “other ways to proceed” and described the Palestine case as “the most difficult file I’ve ever handled”.

On 3 May, Lynch persuaded Khan to delay applying for the warrants because Israel had agreed to allow the prosecutor to visit Gaza.

But despite many verbal assurances that the trip was on, the promised letter from the Israeli government granting him access never materialised.

Lynch also played a significant role in the process by which Khan was forced on leave.

Lynch triggered the initial investigation by the IOM into harassment allegations against Khan in May 2024, after Khan told him to follow the established procedures.

On 4 May, just after the investigation was launched, Alagendra met up with Lynch. According to the material reviewed by MEE, Lynch privately expressed his own doubts about the allegations and said their timing was “suspicious”.

The WSJ reported last month that Lynch said in a statement to UN investigators that Alagendra had intimidated him during the meeting and said she had told him she had heard Lynch was having an “inappropriate relationship” with a colleague.

“At this point, I began to view her comments to me as threatening and became very uncomfortable,” Lynch said, according to the reported statement.

Alagendra categorically denied Lynch’s allegations. “Let’s be honest – I strongly doubt even Tom [Lynch] genuinely believes I threatened him. It’s a convenient narrative, but not a credible one,” she said.

Following the publication in May this year of the sexual assault allegations against Khan, Lynch approached the ICC’s presidency in a bid to have the prosecutor suspended.

Lynch urged the presidency to start a process by which ICC member states could vote to formally suspend Khan.

When this attempt failed, Lynch approached the two deputies and urged them to make the same case to the presidency.

This followed leaked reports that Khan was preparing to request arrest warrants for more Israeli officials.

It was amid this internal turmoil that the decision was made that Khan should step away on leave while the investigation continued.

In a statement at the time, Khan’s lawyers said: “Our client has decided to take a period of leave, not least as the wildly inaccurate and speculative media focus on the matter is detracting from his ability properly to focus on his job.

“Our client remains the Prosecutor, has not stepped down and has no intention of doing so.”

Some within the ICC acknowledge that Khan’s conduct of the Palestine investigation, and his pursuit of senior Israeli officials in particular, has been a divisive issue within the precincts of the court and the tightly woven international legal community of The Hague.

Critics within the system suggest that Khan should have gone for lower-level targets and question whether he has leaned too heavily on open-source evidence, rather than insiders prepared to give testimony, in building his case.

One female ICC lawyer, who has previously worked closely with Khan, told MEE: “There is a whole group of people inside the ICC who were working against Karim Khan who wanted to find something on him long before his team started the process of applying for warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.”

She said she had been contacted in May 2024 by someone who had asked her if Khan had ever behaved inappropriately towards her.

“I told them he is the last person on my list of men who would do that. I worked closely with him, and I never had the slightest sense that he would do this.”

The lawyer said Lynch’s disagreement with Khan over the case was common knowledge within the court. The men had taken different views as early as October 2023, she said.

“[Lynch] said quite openly to people in the court that going after Israel, and particularly the leaders, would be a bad idea because the court could lose its donors and Israel has a right to defend itself. I understand their disagreement was growing in 2024 and was quite open in the court.”

The hotel meeting

On the evening of 1 May, just two weeks before the events leading to Khan stepping down on leave unfolded, the prosecutor had sat down with his wife and another old friend and fellow lawyer at a table in the restaurant of the Hotel des Indes in The Hague.

Nicholas Kaufman is an ICC defence attorney whose current work includes representing Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, who is currently facing trial on a charge of crimes against humanity over the deaths of thousands of people during his so-called “war on drugs”.

According to a note of the meeting filed on record at the ICC and seen by MEE, Kaufman had messaged Khan a few days earlier to propose a meeting to discuss what he described as “an insight into the Israeli mentality regarding the current state of litigation”.

Kaufman told Khan he had been contacted by a Wall Street Journal journalist. He said he had refused to cooperate with him but had spoken to him extensively about Palestine because the reporter had heard he was advising Gallant.

Kaufman said he was not interested in discussing “the scandalous allegations people raise”, and commiserated with Khan that he’d had “to deal with the snakes in the grass in your own office”.

The day before the meeting, Kaufman messaged Khan again to tell him he had spoken to Roy Schondorf, Netanyahu’s legal advisor.

According to the note of the meeting, Kaufman told Khan that he should have gone for “lower-level suspects”, and said that by indicting Netanyahu and Gallant, he had “basically indicted Israel”.

Again, he told Khan that he had spoken to Schondorf, and then told him he had a proposal he said he was “authorised” to make – a way, as he put it according to the note, to allow Khan “to climb down the tree”.

Khan, Kaufman suggested, should reclassify the arrest warrants as confidential. This would allow Israel to challenge them in private.

Khan asked Kaufman why Israel did not “proceed with complementarity”, which would entail investigating the alleged war crimes in Israeli domestic courts.

Kaufman said this was impossible, but suggested to Khan he could contribute evidence to a “non-criminal, non-investigative process”.

But, Kaufman warned, all options would be “off the table” if it emerged that Khan had applied for further warrants against Israeli officials, or if the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were not withdrawn.

According to the note, Kaufman told Khan: “They will destroy you and they will destroy the court.”

The note records that after the meeting, Khan’s wife said to him: “That was a clear threat.” Khan agreed.

In response to MEE’s questions, Kaufman said: “There was absolutely no threat”.

He told MEE: “As friends, we had known each other for years, so I felt myself at liberty to tell him my personal views on the Palestine situation and the case against the Israeli officials which I felt had brought the court into serious disrepute.”

Kaufman confirmed he had spoken to Schondorf prior to meeting Khan, but said that the two men “gossip frequently about the ICC”. He said he is not advising Gallant.

Kaufman told MEE: “I do not deny that I told Mr Khan that he should be looking for a way to extricate himself from his errors. I am not authorised to make any proposals on behalf of the Israeli government nor did I.”

Neither Netanyahu’s office nor Schondorf responded to MEE’s request for comment.

At present, the progress and future direction of the ICC’s investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes rests with Khan’s deputies, pending the outcome of the OIOS investigation.

On 27 May, the Wall Street Journal reported that just before he took leave, the prosecutor had been preparing to seek new warrants for Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, Netanyahu’s key far-right allies in his coalition government, over their roles in expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Whether or not those applications have been filed is no longer public knowledge after the court recently ordered that any further warrants cannot be publicised.

According to the WSJ: “Some officials and legal experts doubt the court would move ahead without a chief prosecutor on the job, given the political risks such a prosecution could bring.”

But the pressure on both the prosecutor’s office and the court itself has continued to build.

Kaufman said on a podcast on 8 June that recent US sanctions on four ICC judges “are meant to be designed to encourage the dropping of the arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant”.

Kaufman added: “Accordingly, most commentators believe that [sanctioning the judges] is a further warning shot over the bows, if I can put it that way, before the sanctioning of the deputy prosecutors who’ve now taken over from Karim Khan, who has gone out on self-imposed leave because of the allegations of sexual misconduct.”

Since being subjected to sanctions by the US in February, Khan has had his American visa revoked, and his wife and children have been banned from travelling to the country. His bank accounts have also been frozen and his credit cards cancelled in the UK.

It remains unclear when the outcome of the OIOS investigation into the complaint against Khan will be completed.

Contacted for comment, the ASP Presidency referred MEE to its public statements and said the findings of the investigation would be “handled in a transparent manner once the investigation has concluded”.

In a statement on 24 June, the ASP Presidency said the report of the investigation, when received, would be assessed by an external panel of judicial experts. It said the work of the panel, which would inform “consideration of the appropriate next steps, would be conducted on a “confidential basis”.

But one former ICC judge told MEE he was “deeply disturbed, even scandalised by the way the proceedings against Karim Khan seemed to be unfolding”.

In a statement to MEE, Cuno Tarfusser, who served at the court from 2009 to 2019, said he believed Khan was being made to pay a price for his “independence and intellectual honesty, together with his imperviousness to outside solicitations”.

Another former ICC judge, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said he was gravely concerned by the way in which Khan had been named as the subject of a complaint in apparent breach of his right to privacy, and by a lack of due process, which he said had taken the investigation into “bandit country”.

He called for the investigation to look into concerns about interference in the work of the prosecutor’s office, as well as the complaint against Khan.

Meanwhile, the ICC finds itself in a precarious position.

In a further threat to the court last month, US State Department legal advisor Reed Rubinstein warned that “all options remain on the table” unless all arrest warrants and the investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes are dropped.

“Israel needed to get Karim out before he went for the next warrants,” a source in The Hague who knows Khan told MEE.

“Now, anyone who dares to speak on his behalf will be viewed as complicit in sexual violence.

“It’s clear that there is a campaign to have the warrant for Netanyahu withdrawn. If the campaign succeeds, it will be the destruction of the International Criminal Court.

“And it will be the end of the rules-based order.”

Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.

1 August 2025

Source: middleeasteye.net

By democracynow.org

[https://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2025/8/5/if_not_now]

Police arrested over 40 people outside the Trump International Hotel in New York City as hundreds gathered for a peaceful action led by Jewish leaders calling for the end to Israel’s starvation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Democracy Now! was at the demonstration and spoke to some of the protesters, including Motaz Azaiza, renowned photojournalist from Gaza, and Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, who was arrested. “We’re here to say, ‘Let Gaza live,’ to risk everything to say, ‘Never again,’” says Fornari.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to turn right now to here in New York. There have been mass protests about what’s going on in Gaza and the West Bank, as Prime Minister Netanyahu says he’s going to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, escalate the war there. In Sydney, Australia, hundreds of thousands of people marched. On Friday, hundreds took over the office lobby of New York Senators Gillibrand and Schumer, who voted against Senator Bernie Sanders’ move to stop arming Israel. Last night, at Columbus Circle outside Trump International Hotel, hundreds also protested in a protest led by the Jewish American group IfNotNow and other Jewish leaders.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!, standing in front of Trump International Hotel at Columbus Circle, right on Central Park. Scores of people have been arrested, including rabbis. Here in front of the hotel, people are holding banners that say “Stop ethnic cleansing,” “Jews say, ‘No more.’” They’re holding banners. There are many signs on the ground: “Stop starvation,” “Stop ethnic cleansing,” “Never again is now.”

PROTESTERS: Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live!

MOTAZ AZAIZA: I’m Motaz Azaiza, genocide survivor from Gaza Strip. Today I’m 26 years old, and I’m witnessing Jewish brothers are protesting against the genocide, against the Israeli occupation turned the genocide in my home in Gaza, to free Palestine from the occupation. It means a lot to me. Around 16 months — after 16 months, people still protesting, people still calling for a free Palestine, to stop the genocide, means a lot, means a lot to me as a Palestinian from Gaza. I lost my family. I lost my friends. And these people are loyal, loyal to us, loyal to our souls.

AMY GOODMAN: Gaza know what’s happening here, these kinds of arrests in front of Trump Tower?

MOTAZ AZAIZA: They know. They watch this on Twitter. Today, I’m going to share it with the people of Gaza. But, unfortunately, if you are starving, your kids are hungry, they didn’t go to school for two years, it’s going to — not going to make you happy, you know? We need something on the ground in Gaza. And this, hopefully, will lead to something to happen in Gaza.

RABBI ARI LEV FORNARI: My name is Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, and I’m a rabbi for ceasefire who believes that they should end the starvation in Gaza. It’s worth taking every risk we can to save every life possible. There are 2 million people in Gaza starving every single day. We just read on Tisha B’Av that if there is a hungry child, you need to feed them bread.

AMY GOODMAN: Why in front of Trump Tower?

RABBI ARI LEV FORNARI: Trump is responsible for funding and fueling this horrible genocide in Gaza and enabling Netanyahu and his genocidal practices. The only way that Palestinians and Israelis can be safe, including the hostages who are held in Gaza, is if the people of Palestine are free. We just saw that Evyatar David, one of the remaining living Israeli hostages, is starving. He’s starving because everyone in Gaza is starving. Food aid to Gaza will save the remaining hostages, and it will save the children and the people of Gaza, who deserve to live. We’re here to say, “Let Gaza live,” to risk everything to say, “Never again. Let Gaza live.”

MOTAZ AZAIZA: Every day, like with a phone — I have two phones. Every day, the two phones don’t stop from messaging. People are starving. People need food. People need money. They don’t have cash. They have — they have nothing. They can’t leave, and they don’t want them to stay. They can’t use the sea. They can’t swim even. So, it’s terrifying, what is happening there and what’s still happening. And today, Netanyahu issued a decision that he’s going to occupy all of Gaza Strip. I’m worried about my grandmother, the rest of my family, my house, my friends.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Motaz Azaiza, the world-renowned Gazan photographer, who just recently left Gaza, as so many of his family and friends have been killed, and the Philadelphia Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari. That does it for that segment. Special thanks to Jake Horgan, Ellie Kahn and Kevin Rabinovich.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org.

5 August 2025

Source: democracynow.org

By News Desk, The Cradle.

Above photo: Reuters.

Demand ‘End To Gaza War’.

The former Israeli officials said Tel Aviv was ‘well past the point’ of ending the war with a significant achievement.

Over a dozen former Israeli security officials issued a joint video statement on 3 August demanding an end to the war in Gaza and warning that Tel Aviv is on the brink of “defeat.”

[https://twitter.com/UnxeptableD/status/1952130031784001791]

Former officials have also demanded that US President Donald Trump pressure Israel to end the genocidal campaign which has raged since October 2023 – in a separate letter accompanying the video and signed by 550 former security officials.

The video statement was made by 19 retired army chiefs, intelligence heads, Shin Bet and Mossad directors, and police commissioners.

Among them is former prime minister and Israeli army chief Ehud Barak, as well as former army chiefs Moshe Yaalon and Dan Halutz.

“Each of these people sat in cabinet meetings, operated in the inner circles, attended all the most sensitive decision-making processes. Together, they have more than a thousand years’ experience in national security and diplomacy,” said a voice over at the start of the video message.

The former security officials said in the video that the war could have been ended a long time ago, while demanding a permanent ceasefire and comprehensive captive exchange.

“We have a duty to stand up and say what we need to say. This war started as a just war. It was a defensive war. But once we achieved all its military objectives, once we achieved a brilliant military victory against all our enemies, this war stopped being a just war. It is leading the State of Israel to the loss of its security and identity,” said former Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon.

Israel is “well over a year past the point where we could have ended the war with a sufficient operational achievement,” according to former military intelligence chief Amos Malka.

Former Shin Bet head Nadav Argaman said, “We are now mostly offsetting losses.”

Additionally, ex-Mossad director Tamir Pardo lamented that Israel is “on the precipice of defeat.”

“What the world sees today is of our own creation,” Pardo added, referring to the famine and unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. “We are hiding behind a lie that we wrought. This lie was sold to the Israeli public, and the world has long since understood that it doesn’t reflect the real picture.”

According to Yaalon, “there are moments that represent a ‘black flag’ in which one must stand firm and say: This far and no further.”

“Right now, we have a government that the messianic zealots have pulled in a certain irrational direction,” added.

Ex-Shin Bet director Yoram Cohen said that anyone who thinks Israel can “reach every terrorist and every pit and every weapon, and at the same time bring our hostages home” is living a fantasy.

In the separate letter, the officials called for Trump to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war.

“Chasing remaining senior Hamas operatives can be done later,” the letter reads.

Netanyahu has been repeatedly accused by opposition leaders, families of the captives, and others of seeking to prolong the war to preserve his ruling coalition, made up of extremists and avid supporters of the settler movement – who have consistently stood against a deal to end the war.

Chief among them are National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

The Israeli premier is also accused of procrastinating in ending the war to avoid the several criminal cases against him.

Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and others in the government are actively pushing for the reoccupation and resettlement of Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army is reporting extreme exhaustion and fatigue, and is leaning increasingly towards a deal – even if the cost is ending the war.

Hamas has continued to demand a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and firm guarantees for a permanent ceasefire. Yet Netanyahu has repeatedly said that fighting will resume after captives are exchanged if the Palestinian resistance movement refuses Tel Aviv’s disarmament terms.

Tensions between Israeli army chief, government ‘reach their peak’

As the Israeli army continues to suffer losses in Gaza, Netanyahu is said to be seeking to release the captives ‘through military victory,’ not a deal.

Tensions “have reached their peak” between Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir and the political echelon over the war in Gaza, according to an Israeli Army Radio report.

Zamir is demanding “strategic clarity” regarding the war, army radio’s military correspondent Doron Kadosh said.

Kadosh noted that “the cabinet hasn’t met for a long time,” and that the “army has no clarity on how to proceed, and is not receiving clear orders and instructions.”

Zamir is “pushing for a deal, saying that flexibility is possible and that an effort must be made to reach it,” he added.

“The army has made it clear that it will be prepared for any deal, regardless of the price,” even if it is a comprehensive deal that ends the war, Kadosh went on to say.

“The army’s position is that it must continue to control the areas under its control along the Gaza Strip border in any future agreement. The army is capable of withstanding the consequences of flexibility, even if Israel is forced to compromise.”

Kadosh also revealed that during closed-door talks, Zamir has told the political echelon that any prolonged military presence in the Gaza Strip “endangers Israeli forces, plays into the hands of Hamas, and increases attrition within the army.”

The army will present two options to the government if a deal is not reached – the first is to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, and the second is to encircle and exhaust it, according to the army radio correspondent.

He added that the army opposes the first option.

“Occupying the entire Gaza Strip is militarily possible and would take a few months, but clearing the area above and below ground could take years,” Kadosh cites the Israeli army chief as saying.

The army prefers the second option. Otherwise, “Hamas will continually drain it through guerrilla operations.”

Resistance operations against Israeli forces by Hamas’s Qassam Brigades and other factions in Gaza have escalated recently.

Eighteen Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza in the month of July alone. The month before, 20 Israeli soldiers were killed in the strip.

Zamir was previously quoted as saying that the army is “exhausted” and is suffering from “deep fatigue.” Meanwhile, the Israeli government continues to push for the occupation and resettlement of Gaza.

According to a diplomatic source cited by several Hebrew media outlets, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to secure the release of captives “through decisive military victory,” further frustrating the families of the captives, who accuse the premier of endangering the lives of their relatives being held by Hamas.

“An understanding is forming that Hamas is not interested in a deal,” the source said. “Israel is in contact with the Americans,” the source added. US envoy Steve Witkoff recently said that Washington is no longer interested in partial deals.

Hamas has continued to demand a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and firm guarantees for a permanent ceasefire. Yet Netanyahu has repeatedly said that fighting will resume after captives are exchanged if the Palestinian resistance movement refuses Tel Aviv’s disarmament terms.

“We reiterate that resistance and its weapons are a national and legal right as long as the occupation persists,” Hamas said on Saturday, in response to Witkoff claiming the resistance movement was ready to surrender its arms.

4 August 2025

Source: popularresistance.org

By Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt

As the Zionist project devolves from apartheid and ethnic cleansing to the final solution of its decades-long genocide, we also commemorate 80 years since the August 6 and August 9 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Let us consider what are the implications of remembering the nuclear genocide in this present moment of technogenocide in Gaza.

On October 24, 2023, Omar El Akkad, Egyptian-American journalist and novelist, posted on X: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” The tweet, viewed over ten million times, was expanded into a book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, published earlier this year. Interspersed with reflections on the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza are reflections on his own and his family’s history. As an Arab and a Muslim, El Akkad muses about how he might respond when told, “Go back to where you came from.” He thinks to himself, “If you like authoritarian governments so much, why don’t you go to where I came from?”

To what extent might anyone been against the atom bombings? And how have attitudes toward the bombings evolved since? In 1945, public opinion in the U.S. favored exacting revenge for Pearl Harbor and destroying Imperial Japan. Portrayals of Japanese as vermin or monkeys drummed up support for the bombing of the civilian populations of all of Japan’s major cities (save Kyoto). The March 9-10, 1945 bombing of Tokyo left some 100,000 dead. Together, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings left some 150,000 to 246,000 dead by the end of 1945. Given the secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bombs, there were very few individuals who might have opposed using them before they were deployed. Among them were Leó Szilárd, a Hungarian physicist who circulated a petition during the summer of 1945, mostly among scientists at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, opposing the use of the weapons without giving Japan an opportunity to surrender.

In 1942, in the Continental U.S., under an executive order signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Japanese-Americans were dispossessed of their land and property and incarcerated in prison camps. Nothing of the like was perpetrated on those of German or Italian descent. Shouldn’t we call this ethnic cleansing? Is it fraught to interpret history through modern categories? While Harry Truman suggested that, by averting the need to invade the Japanese mainland, the atomic bombings spared the lives of perhaps a half-million U.S. troops – most historians say that Imperial Japan knew that it was finished and was ready to surrender. The stated intent of the atomic bombings was to bring about the end of the war. Other unstated reasons included demonstrating the new weapon to the soon-to-be Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, and justifying the cost of developing the weapon to the U.S. taxpayer. While the end result was many Japanese dead, the stated intent was not genocidal – so, therefore, we do not officially call it a genocide. (Of note, however, the etymology of “holocaust” is “to burn all” – and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were certainly that.)

In 2025, every rational person opposes nuclear war, as even a “limited” nuclear war can result in nuclear winter, which can lead to the extinction of the human species. Yet, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moves its Doomsday Clock ever closer to midnight.

Currently, it is at 89 seconds to midnight. The hibakusha (A-bomb survivors), now mostly in their 80s, cry out: “No More Hiroshimas! No More Nagasakis! No Nukes! NO WAR!” As the 80-year memorial approaches, activists for Palestine in Hiroshima are trying to focus this moment not only on the thousands of Japanese, Koreans, and others who were killed and injured in the nuclear genocide, but also as a day of protest against the current genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing throughout Palestine.

In acknowledging 80 years since the bomb, we must also include the history of Japanese imperialism, which is erased from Hiroshima’s state-sanctioned Peace Memorial Ceremony. The defeat of the Japanese Empire should be viewed as the liberation of Asian and Pacific peoples from Japan’s brutal colonial rule. The echo of Japanese imperialism continues in various neo-colonial ways throughout Asia via economic, land, and labor exploitation, tourism, and the sex industry, not to mention the continued occupations of Ainu lands in Hokkaido and Ryukyu lands in Okinawa. In fact, we see the Ceremony itself as a ritual reinforcement of Japanese national mythology and the nationalistic Emperor system that “necessitates” nuclear weapons. Even the way that “Peace” is enforced in Hiroshima through “silent prayer” is a fascistic manipulation of people’s expressions of grief and anger. The City of Hiroshima has convinced the public that folding paper cranes and giving children tours of the Peace Park is enough to bring about “peace.”

In 2024, with the genocide of Palestinians well under way, Hiroshima City shamefully invited an Israeli delegate to attend the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, while not inviting a representative from Palestine. Officials of Nagasaki City, meanwhile, disinvited the Israeli delegate. This year, Hiroshima sent “notifications” instead of “invitations” to try to avoid controversy about which countries are invited and which are not. This “peacewashing” attitude is maintained by the majority of Japanese society, who are also generally uninformed of the atrocities committed by their ancestors in the name of the Emperor.

In The World After Gaza, Pankaj Mishra gives us an overview of the manner in which the Shoah, the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis, came to serve as ideological justification for the Zionist project of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and now, the final solution of genocide. Similarly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the ultimate victimhood stories that Japanese nationalists use to justify militarization, tech and weapons development, and ongoing collaborations with the Israeli government. The Aichi-Israel Matching program, connecting Israeli arms tech startups with Japan’s manufacturing heartland, is the perfect example. The Japanese pension fund (the largest in the world!) is heavily invested in Israeli bonds as well as weapons manufacturers like Elbit Systems (Israel), Lockheed Martin (U.S.), and BAE Systems (U.K.). Japanese corporations like Kawasaki are buying drones from Israel, while Mitsubishi Heavy Industries manufactures parts in the F-35 supply chain.

Meanwhile in the most recent elections, the Trumpian Sanseito party won 14 seats in the government through their xenophobic rhetoric peddled on YouTube playing on Japanese fears of foreign contamination and loss of “pure” Japanese culture. This renewed interest in overt racism paired with rapid development of the artificial intelligence arms industry in collaboration with a genocidal state is what we would consider in Japanese “abunai” – dangerous!

Our most pressing point from ground-zero in Hiroshima is this: Palestine is a nuclear issue. Israel possesses some 90 nuclear weapons and is effectively a U.S. nuclear weapons depot in West Asia. Several of its government representatives have called for the use of nukes on Gaza. The recent demi-nuclear war with Iran destroyed nuclear fuel production facilities, undoubtedly causing chemical and radioactive contamination that no one is ready to even acknowledge, and demonstrated how willing Israel is–with U.S. support–to drag the region towards nuclear war. Hiroshima’s claims to be an “International City of Peace” committed to the abolition of nuclear weapons rings selfish and hollow as it remains completely silent on the nuclear realities of Palestine and continues to obscure Japan’s own war crimes. As an indigenous liberation struggle, Palestine is also connected to the #LandBack movement that intersects with the fight against nuclear colonialism — from the Marshall Islands, to Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, to the Navajo Nation, to the Shinkolobwe in the Congo, to the Aboriginal Australians, and more.

The pain of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and all the mass killings and atrocities of the past 80 years are real, and they still haunt us today. Both the anti-nuclear movement and Palestine liberation movements also emerged and developed during these same 80 years. Activists for Palestine in Japan see through the guise of Hiroshima’s 80th memorial to the reality that Japan’s imperial system, like that of the British, U.S., Germany, etc. – has not actually changed, it has merely shape-shifted. For nearly two years, we have been watching a genocide unfold in Gaza – one in which the perpetrators have vowed to eliminate the Amalek or the “human animals.” As if Israel is experimenting with a medley of methods of killing, we have watched children blown apart by bombs, shot by snipers, and now starved to death. We U.S. taxpayers fund this. Japanese pension plan participants fund this. Our governments and their corporate cronies supply the weapons and provide diplomatic cover. We must not allow our governments to co-opt our stories of pain and suffering in order to justify more pain and suffering. We must not wait until it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable. We must do everything we can to oppose apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. We must fight for the liberation of Palestine and the liberation of all people from domination, militarization, and economies of war.

Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt is an artist and cultural worker engaging in place-based art and research projects. 

4 August 2025

Source: counterpunch.org

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

I and Oliver Stone both spoke at Hiroshima on the anniversary of the first nuclear bombing in human history and we are slated to speak in two days at Nagasaki on the anniversary of the second nuclear attack. My speech is below in English (I will send the Japanese version later). These remain the most starkest of acts of state terror in Human history. I had seen images and video before that made me shudder but being in the City is different. At 8:15 AM on a sunny hot day we laid down next to the dome for three minutes with people from all backgrounds and I stared at the sky and tried to imagine through the tears the terror that came and exploded 600 meters directly above us in the sky 68 years ago. But how can one imagine the horror of dropping a nuclear weapon on a population incinerating and skeletonizing tens of thousands and leaving tens of thousands with burned body skin hanging in rags and worse. Harder to imagine yet is the darkness of the human hearts and minds that took the decisions to do that to fellow human beings.

Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick explained eloquently about the real reasons for dropping the bombs instead of the mythology that is told in school books in America. But does that really make any difference on the horror of what Truman and his generals visited on humanity? Those of us in the medical field understand clinically what radiation poisoning does to the human body but politicians also know that and Truman had detailed reports from the earlier experiments. I met so many hibakushas (survivors of the nuclear blast) and their children and grandchildren. Many told us of the dramatic death of children by leukemia and other cancers and of the congenital deformities. It was more than we could take even as visitors so I can only begin to imagine the actual feelings of people here.

Clearly the monuments to victims were slanted strongly away from nationalism and war; something that reminded us that it is possible for victims to learn that war and nationalism are not the answer. I wished more people can learn that lesson and change the misleading pro-war pro-Zionist message of many holocaust museums to build instead a pro-peace structure.

On the positive side, we were thrilled to see so many children and youth taking the banner of peace. Middles school children collected signatures to ban nuclear weapons around the world. Hundreds of us marched to the electric company in town to ask that they stop using nuclear power (especially poignant after the disastrous Fukushima plant meltdown). Our colorful Palestinian Kuffiyas were welcomed among the colorful banners in our march. We felt love and peace. We saw alternating images of hope and pain and of beautiful people who face-up to right-wing politicians and the few racists who even deny what Japanese soldiers did in China and Korea. Like a roller-coaster, a tour of Japan brings mixed emotions.

As a visiting Palestinian I am struck most of all by the neatness and orderliness of the cities. Everything runs perfectly. Trains are accurate to the minute. Millions ride on these trains both within cities and between cities. Streets are clean and no walls or checkpoints stop us from freely moving around. It is all orderly and peaceful. Crossing streets on cues, trash in its receptacles, lines are straight, and cars and homes are clean and orderly. Just about everyone speaks in low tones and people are courteous to each other.

Japan like most countries is a society burdened by Western style capitalism. Here you see also things like McDonalds, Starbucks, prostitution, and corrupt politicians. Though more homogeneous than other countries, Japan is a very large country of 120 million people and even in a short visit one sees remarkable diversity of ideas and concepts. In Nagoya, we visited an educational table at the main square that tried to challenge the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty (a US Dominated agreement favorable to corporations at the expense of people). The organizer of this table belonged to one of the few native communities of Japan, a great man by the name of Esaman. People stopped by bringing food and sharing stories. In the same square a lone young musician played his guitar asking for donations to build a school in a remote area of Pakistan.

In Nagoya, I attended a discussion of writings by Kobayashi Takiji. The audience were some 30 individuals of diverse background who put their shoes at the entrance of the lecture hall and wore red slippers as they listened intently to a retired bookstore seller discuss and pass around the books by Takiji. Takiji was born in 1903 and showed a talent for writing at an early age. His writings did not please authorities and he was fired from his job and eventually executed by the government at age 30 y.o. His most famous short novel is called Kanikōsen and it is a story about workers at a boat fishing for crabs. The story takes you into an incredible world of suffering of the workers, humanity to fellow workers, and cruelty of their boss. There seemed to be a revival of the interest in this genre of literature after the last Japanese economic bubble burst.

Many Japanese yearn for a more caring society and support global solidarity, including with Palestine. This was shown vividly in our visit to Nagoya and Hiroshima. I reflect on the people I met and saw in get-together, on the streets, in trains, and in restaurants. Here I would see people who reminded me of people I met in America, in Palestine and elsewhere. I thought someone should do a documentary on this carrying a camera around different countries to show that there are individuals in each country virtually twins with those living in other countries. Perhaps this film can bring us all closer to one another. In the meantime, I cannot wait for our upcoming visit to Nagasaki, Osaka, Tokyo, and Kyoto. And I cannot wait to go back to Palestine where hope against all odds still survives. Stay tuned.

Speech by Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh in Hiroshima on the 68th anniversary of the First Atomic Bomb

Kumbunwa and thank you for this invitation. It is a special honor for me to visit Japan. Here in Hiroshima we are most reminded of the horrors of war. Here we have a chance to reflect on the fact that there is no “good war”. We are reminded that nations do not win or lose wars. Wars cause the suffering of common people and makes rich people richer. Money wins wars, people lose wars. That is why President Eisenhauer warned about the power of the military-industrial complex. It is a power we were reminded of by Oliver Stone earlier today. It is this complex that was enriched as US taxpayers were left with 3 trillion dollars more in debt due to the criminal war on Iraq. And it was the same Truman that lied publicly about why he created the catastrophes of Hiroshima and Nagazaki and also the catastrophe (Nakba) of Palestine.

War, as General Butler correctly observed, war is a racket. It is a way to make money for rich people at the expense of poor people. And that is why wars will continue unless common people revolt to stop them. And we the people were able to stop wars before for example in Vietnam and in South Africa. It is this power of the people that I am most optimistic about.

I am one of 12 million Palestinians in the world, 2/3rd of us are refugees or displaced people and the rest live under rule of a foreign government. How did this come about and how can we stop this war on the people?

Palestinians are the endogenous people of the Western Part of the Fertile Crescent in Western Asia. Key milestones in human civilization occurred in this Land of Canaan: animal and plant domestication, development of the alphabet, and development of laws and religions.

We had over 11,000 years of civilization with religious and cultural developments. Short attempts to transform Palestine into one thing or another failed. This included short lived attempts to make it all Christian or make it all Muslim or make it all Jewish. The European crusades were a good examples of this. But for 97% of our history, Palestine remained mutli-religious and mutli-cultural.

Since the late 19th century, the new political idea of Zionism was developed to create a “Jewish state” in Palestine. At that time less than 3% of the population in Palestine was Jewish. This Zionist colonization was aided by western countries notably England and more recently the USA.

An organized and ruthless project to ethnically cleanse the native Palestinians was organized resulting in countless massacres and total destruction of 530 Palestinian villages and towns. It is still the largest refugee crisis after World War II. In that sense my grandmother is a hibakusha.

Today 7 million Palestinians are refugees and five million of us still live on 8.3% of our historic land. The state of Israel was built on the destruction of Palestine. Israel has 55 laws that specifically discriminate against native Palestinians. It fulfills the international legal definition of an apartheid (racial discrimination) state.

Zionists like all other colonial imperial powers try to portray the victims as terrorists. European colonization always did that whether in the Americas or in Africa or in Asia. It maybe convenient to say that we are white civilized people who “circle the wagons” to protect ourselves from native savages. But the truth is that colonization is violence and 10 times more native civilians are killed than invading people.

I can tell you hundreds of stories of the brutality of occupation and colonization. I can tell you about home demolitions, about removal of people from their land, about murders, and about torture. I can tell you about breaking bones of Palestinian children, about using white phosphorous on schools and about Israel’s nuclear weapons. I can tell you about toxic waste dumped on Palestinian villages. I can tell you about prisoners held for years without seeing lawyers or judges.I could tell you about friends I lost killed in peaceful demonstrations. I could tell you my own family stories of suffering. But we do not have time.

I will tell you that Palestinians resisted for the past 100 years this onslaught. This Palestinian resistance took hundreds of forms, most of them unarmed. We had 13 uprisings, on average one every 10 years. South Africa under apartheid had a long struggle with 15 uprisings.

We Palestinians have been innovative in our struggle. We had the first demonstration in human history to use automobiles (cars) when in 1929 Palestinian women gathered 120 cars and drove down the old streets of Jerusalem. We lobbied the Ottoman Empire and the British empire to stop supporting colonialist Zionism. We engaged in tax revolts and other forms of civil disobedience.

We also asked and still ask the international community to help us. Tens of thousands joined our struggle. There is the International solidarity movement. As in the struggle against apartheid in south Africa, there is also the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS). We ask you to join us because this struggle is the most important. It is important because it exposes clearly the hypocrisy of Western governments who speak of democracy and human rights but directly support racism, tyranny, war, and all violations of human rights.

We share this one small blue planet and the era of nuclear weapons when a country like Israel could destroy the earth, we cannot afford to be complacent. We must prove Haegel wrong when he wrote that “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” We do learn from our common history and today in the age of the internet, we are beginning a global uprising against nuclear weapons and against war. When people power is finally realized through global solidarity, we can not only win over war but also over poverty and over climate change and over apathy/indifference. That is really a future worth sacrificing for.

The Budhists tell us to have “joyful participation in the sorrows of this world”. Participation is the key. So indeed may you all have joyful participation in the sorrows of this world…. Arigatu, thank you, shukran, peace, salam.

Mazin Qumsiyeh Teaches At Bethlehem And Birzeit Universities In Occupied Palestine. 

17 August 2020

Source: agitatejournal.org

By Ahmed Adel

The United States and the European Union have reached a deal under which the EU will pay 15% tariffs on most exports. The EU also committed to buying $750 billion worth of American energy and investing an additional $600 billion in the US. With this move, US President Donald Trump has achieved complete economic dominance over Europe.

“As part of President Trump’s strategy to establish balanced trade, the European Union will pay the United States a tariff rate of 15%, including on autos and auto parts, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors. However, the sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper will remain unchanged—the EU will continue to pay 50%,” a White House readout said.

European markets reacted to Van der Leyen’s failure to deter Trump from imposing tariffs, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 index provisionally closing 1.8% lower on August 1, its worst session since April. Stoxx 600 travel stocks closed 2.7% lower, while banks fell 2.9%.

“The fact Trump hasn’t chickened out and pushed back the 1 August deadline to 1 September has soured the tone on the markets,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

Europe’s downward economic trajectory has lasted for more than two decades, and now the US has only added to its woes, as seen from the Stoxx reaction. The problem with the EU economy, primarily Germany and France, is that they are not competitive enough. Obliging Europe to use more expensive American energy sources complicates its competitiveness, or rather, makes it impossible.

Following the meeting with Trump on July 28, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that the agreement would bring stability. However, European business leaders, primarily from Germany and France, immediately warned of the negative effects of 15% tariffs on exports.

The commitment to invest in the US, with a significant portion of it allocated to armaments, is essentially diverting funds that should be used for research and development within the EU to the US. By purchasing energy for $750 billion, the EU is undermining its competitiveness, which is already questionable and low compared to its main competitors. What should be used for European development is instead used for American profits and their own development. It is practically impossible to imagine any development, especially considering severed relations with Russia and largely strained relations with China.

First to react to the agreement was the German Chemical Federation, which stated that the tariffs were too high. French Minister for European Affairs, Benjamin Haddad, also reacted immediately, stating that the agreement was not balanced.

The leader of the French National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, has also spoken out, believing that the trade agreement between the US and the EU is a fiasco and that Europe’s sovereignty is significantly eroding after such an asymmetric agreement.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also spoke out, saying that it was not a deal at all and that Trump had von der Leyen “for breakfast.”

“This is not an agreement… Donald Trump ate Von der Leyen for breakfast, this is what happened and we suspected this would happen as the US President is a heavyweight when it comes to negotiations, while Madame President is a featherweight,” Orbán said, adding that he believes that is why the agreement cannot be considered a real deal.

Twenty-five years ago, the EU had an economic power comparable to that of the US, even slightly ahead of it, and now it accounts for only 60% of the US’s. A whole host of issues has led to the stagnation of Europe, but the most obvious in recent times is the boomerang effect of the anti-Russia sanctions. Now, the failure to convince Trump not to impose tariffs is another black mark on the EU’s increasingly long list of failures, which is why there have been nothing but expressions of disappointment in the deal Von Der Leyen made with Trump.

French President Emmanuel Macron said,

“This isn’t the end of the story and we won’t leave it at that. It’s the first step in a negotiation process that will continue.”

The French president said the agreement had the merit of offering “predictability in the short term” – but also called for Europe to be firmer with the US.

“In order to be free you have to be feared. We weren’t feared enough,” he added.

In this way, the US has achieved complete dominance over Europe, whether economically or militarily, with 84,000 US service members stationed in the European Command area of responsibility, across approximately 50 persistent and other access military sites. Ironically, it is Russia that can help the EU overcome Trump’s crippling economic warfare and achieve complete sovereignty for the continent. However, Brussels insists on an irrational anti-Russian policy.

*

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

5 August 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Yolande Knell

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to propose fully reoccupying the Gaza Strip when he meets his security cabinet, Israeli media say.

“The die has been cast. We’re going for the full conquest of the Gaza Strip – and defeating Hamas,” local journalists quote a senior official as saying.

Responding to reports that the army chief and other military leaders oppose the plan, the unnamed official said: “If that doesn’t work for the chief of staff, he should resign.”

The families of hostages fear such plans could endanger their loved ones, with 20 out of 50 believed to be alive in Gaza, while polls suggest three in four Israelis instead favour a ceasefire deal to return them.

Many of Israel’s close allies would also condemn such a move as they push for an end to the war and action to alleviate a humanitarian crisis.

Within Israel, hundreds of retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, issued a joint letter to US President Donald Trump on Monday, calling for him to pressure Netanyahu to end the war.

One of the signatories, ex-domestic intelligence agency chief Ami Ayalon, told the BBC that further military action would be futile.

“From the military point of view, [Hamas] is totally destroyed. On the other hand, as an ideology it is getting more and more power among the Palestinian people, within the Arab street around us, and also in the world of Islam.

“So the only way to defeat Hamas’s ideology is to present a better future.”

The latest developments come after indirect talks with Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage deal broke down and Palestinian armed groups released three videos of two Israeli hostages looking weak and emaciated.

The footage of Rom Blaslavski and Evyatar David, both kidnapped from the Nova music festival on 7 October 2023, has shocked and appalled Israelis. David is shown digging what he says is his own grave in an underground tunnel.

There has been some speculation that the latest media announcements are a pressure tactic to try to force Hamas into a new deal.

Israel’s military says it already has operational control of 75% of Gaza. But under the proposed plan it would occupy the entire territory – moving into areas where more than two million Palestinians are now concentrated.

It is unclear what that would mean for civilians and for the operations of the UN and other aid groups. About 90% of Gaza’s 2.1 million people have been displaced, some repeatedly, and are living in overcrowded and dire conditions. Humanitarian groups and UN officials say many are starving, accusing Israel of impeding the distribution of crucial aid.

Israel meanwhile says it will allow local businesspeople in Gaza to restart entry of some goods as part of efforts to improve conditions there. Approved items include baby food, fruit and vegetables and hygiene products. Private imports were previously stopped because of claims that Hamas was benefitting.

The Israeli military has previously held back from taking over some areas of Gaza, including central parts, because of an assumption that there are living hostages held there. Last year, six Israeli hostages were executed by their captors after ground forces moved in.

There has not been a formal response but officials from the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank, denounced the Israeli proposal, calling on the international community to intervene to prevent any new military occupation.

Palestinians point out that far-right Israeli ministers have been openly advocating for the full occupation and annexation of Gaza and ultimately want to build new Jewish settlements there.

In 2005, Israel dismantled settlements in the Gaza Strip and withdrew its forces from there.

But alongside Egypt, it maintained a tight control of access to the territory.

The new occupation idea comes amid growing international moves to revive the two-state solution – the long-time international formula to resolve the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict. It envisages an independent Palestinian state being created alongside Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Last week, the UK and Canada joined France in announcing conditional plans for recognising a Palestinian state.

The Israeli PM is now expected to meet with key ministers and military leaders to decide next steps in Gaza. Israeli army radio says they are due to discuss initial army plans to surround the central refugee camps and carry out air strikes and ground raids.

Netanyahu said he would convene a full security cabinet meeting this week.

Israeli media commentators have voiced scepticism and drawn attention to the practical military, political and diplomatic challenges. Writing in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Nahum Barnea says: “Netanyahu has never taken a gamble on this scale before.”

He notes that the Israeli PM has repeated his vow to achieve all of his war goals.

“But after 22 months of bloody fighting, it is hard to take those kinds of promises seriously. It seems that Netanyahu has just one objective in the war in Gaza, to prolong the war.”

Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken to Gaza as hostages.

At least 61,020 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

5 August 2025

Source: bbc.com