Thirteen films that are essential to understanding the nuclear age
Bulletin, By Alex Wellerstein | July 16, 2026
Nuclear films are both reflections of the zeitgeist in which they are made and shapers of it. They feed off of both popular and expert anxieties, while also helping to solidify the terms on which these anxieties are engaged. While some themes are apparently universal (how many ways are there to blunder into nuclear war), some feel very much of their particular time and place…………………………………………………………………………………………..
This list has a strong Anglophone bias, and with a few notable exceptions approaches the topic from largely American points of view. This is a reflection of its author’s limitations and the film’s relative accessibility to an American. Undoubtedly lists could (and should) be created from different cultural and national perspectives. The list is presented chronologically and can be thought of as an unfolding of the nuclear perspective from the early nuclear age to the present.
Godzilla
1954, Toho. Directed by Ishirō Honda. Released in the USA as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, in 1956. Inspired in part by the 1954 Castle Bravo fallout disaster, which killed a Japanese fisherman and led to a boycott on tuna in Japan, Godzilla (Gojira in the Japanese original) is a more complicated film than just “radioactive monster attacks Tokyo.”…………………………….
On the Beach
United Artists, 1959. Directed by Stanley Kramer. The premise of On the Beach, adapted from the 1957 novel by the British author Nevil Shute, is that a future global nuclear war using cobalt bombs has both eradicated most of human civilization and created a massive, deadly cloud of fallout that is gradually circulating the globe, killing all in its path. Those in the southern hemisphere are momentarily safe, but the cloud is coming……………..
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
1964, Columbia Pictures. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy about the risk of unauthorized and accidental nuclear war fundamentally altered the lexicon with which we talk about nuclear weapons…………………… . When Daniel Ellsberg, then still at RAND and having just completed a classified study into the command and control problems central to the plot, saw the film in theatres, he was amazed — it was, he wrote later, “essentially, a documentary.”
Fail Safe
1964, Columbia. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Fail Safe might be remembered as the film of mid-1960s nuclear anxiety had it not come out the same year as Dr. Strangelove and overlapped so significantly with its themes………… its management of tension has led to its retrospective status as a critical success.
The China Syndrome
1979, Columbia Pictures. Directed by James Bridges.The sole film specifically about nuclear power on this list, The China Syndrome is a taut thriller that was elevated into something even more by its historical moment. ………………………..The film would work on its own merits, but the fact that the film premiered less than two weeks before the Three Mile Island accident catapulted it to the position of prophecy—for better and for worse.
Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen)
1983, Kyodo Eiga. Directed by Mori Masaki. Barefoot Gen, first a manga (Japanese comic book) published in 1976, is a fictionalized version of writer and illustrator Keiji Nakazawa’s experiences of being a six-year-old boy growing up in Hiroshima before, during, and after the atomic bombing.
The Day After
1983, ABC. Directed by Nicholas Meyer. This classic made-for-television movie about the run-up to nuclear war and its immediate aftermath ……………… The film is sometimes cited as a factor in Reagan’s willingness to initiate talks with the Soviet Union and initiate “the golden era of arms control.”
Testament
Paramount, 1983. Directed by Lynne Littman. Among the crowded field of “the day after nuclear war” films of the early 1980s, Testament stands out for its relative quiet, reasonableness, and lack of sensationalism. ………………………………..
WarGames
1983, MGM. Directed by John Badham. WarGames is simultaneously a very ridiculous film and a very intelligent one. A teenage computer hacker infiltrates a government mainframe that, unbeknownst to him, is actually an advanced supercomputer at NORAD run by a highly capable-but-flawed artificial intelligence. ………………with nuclear war, “the only winning move is not to play.”
Threads
BBC, 1984. Directed by Mick Jackson. Widely regarded as the darkest and most dismal of the “day after” genre,………………………………………………………..
When the Wind Blows
Recorded Releasing, 1986. Directed by Jimmy T. Murakami. This distinctly British animated film, adapted from a 1982 graphic novel of the same name by Raymond Briggs, follows an aging couple living in rural Sussex before, during, and after a nuclear war. Stereotypically British stiff upper lips, enhanced by blundering ignorance, keeps them in largely non-complaining good humor even as the world collapses around them. ………………………….
Oppenheimer
2023, Universal. Directed by Christopher Nolan. There have been several attempts to represent the complicated life of J. Robert Oppenheimer on film. Nolan’s is the most stylized and artistic, and it’s based on the best source material ………………………
A House of Dynamite
2025, Netflix. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. This recent nuclear thriller depicts the 20 minutes between the detection of an unattributed missile launch heading towards the United States, and its arrival at its target……………….
Honorable mentions
There are many other films one might want to include in such a list. Those that did not make the cut, but came close to it for me, included the suppressed British nuclear aftermath pseudo-documentary The War Game (1966); the ruminative Soviet post-apocalyptic Dead Man’s Letters [Pisma myortvogo cheloveka] (1986); the impending nuclear attack cult-classic Miracle Mile (1988); the Japanese Hiroshima family retrospective Black Rain [Kuroi ame] (1989); the late-Cold War Tom Clancy submarine defection thriller The Hunt for Red October (1990); the Cuban Missile Crisis dramatization Thirteen Days (2000); and the post-Cold War Tom Clancy nuclear terrorism thriller The Sum of All Fears (2002). https://thebulletin.org/premium/2026-07/thirteen-films-that-are-essential-to-understanding-the-nuclear-age/
The Killing Machines -Governments and Technology Obsessing Over Efficient Death
“…………………………… The NATO event looks like essentially —a trade show—except the newfangled hoopla is of a different kind. World leaders, all decked out in fine suits (nerds of a special kind), stroll the aisles admiring missiles and tanks engineered for maximum lethality. Billions are spent to make killing more efficient. While societies debate the cost of keeping one person alive in their final months, trillions flow into perfecting the technology of death. People who still think can see the terrible clarity in this inversion: when the soul recedes and the material world reigns, efficiency in killing becomes one of the highest values of our age.
Personally, I don’t think there is a better definition of insanity than the way humans delight in war and death. Yes, there was a time when killing your neighbour because they wouldn’t let you eat an apple growing on their side of the tribal fence made a tiny bit of sense. But what it has evolved into today is pure insanity. Humans are supposed to be capable of compassion. We are supposed to be able to sort out our differences with other tribes. We are supposed to care more about human life than we did in the cave days, when it was all about survival and who would or would not get the apple. What happened to all of that? For any of us to justify wholesale killing the way we do only proves we haven’t gotten anywhere in hundreds of thousands of years.
It is all so screwed up, as is nearly everything. Nothing makes sense anymore. ……. This is the kind of arithmetic they are running through their heads while strolling the aisles at their NATO war show: “Now tell me again—how many people will this weapon kill, and how much does it cost? That’s some nice bang for the buck! I’ll take 20 of ‘em!” Insane.
I just read that Canada is deep in debt and running persistent deficits, while Ukraine sits on roughly $4 billion worth of gold reserves. So, Canada (and everyone else that can) keeps giving money to a country that already holds billions in gold, all so more people can be killed. And don’t tell me, “Russia ruthlessly attacked Ukraine! They should pay for it!” Yeah, right. If you are saying that right now, you are, unfortunately, still thinking like an ignorant caveman. That is not the whole story; in fact, it is very little of it. But Russia doesn’t get off the hook either. Grow up, people. Figure this shit out and quit acting like ten-year-olds playing in the backyard with stick guns.
…… It is astounding to think that most of us work a lifetime just so our country has the resources to kill—or help kill—thousands of other working stiffs who are simply minding their own business and trying to get through life in one piece. Almost no one fighting in these wars has any real inkling why they are out there killing other people……… It is all a game now—not for the people dying from the weapons their leaders are buying, but for the leaders themselves and the oligarchs who own the companies making all this hardware. It is their little game. And they are having a blast.
I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it until I’m blue in the face. It is all a game—a sophisticated 3D chess game. And we, the common useless eaters, are not at the table playing it. In fact, we barely even exist to the real players. Sure, they use us for kill stats. The more of us who die, the more some oligarch or world leader can claim victory and collect his chips.
Look at the actual numbers if you still doubt it. According to the latest available data from SIPRI and the International Institute for Strategic Studies:
The United States leads the world by a wide margin, spending roughly $920–950 billion a year on its military.
China follows at around $250–340 billion.
Russia is third at approximately $186–190 billion (about 7.5% of its GDP).
Germany has surged to over $100–114 billion.
India sits near $90 billion.
The United Kingdom spends close to $90 billion.
Ukraine, despite its size, is now pouring roughly $84 billion into its military—an almost unimaginable 40% of its entire GDP.
Saudi Arabia, France, Japan, and others round out the top tier with tens of billions each.
Canada, after years of lagging, has ramped up significantly and is now spending in the range of $35–40 billion (with recent announcements pushing it higher to meet NATO targets).
These are not abstract figures. These are the concrete resources extracted from ordinary people—through taxes, inflation, and delayed infrastructure, healthcare, and housing—so that a small circle of decision-makers can keep the machinery of death humming. Trillions of dollars every year, worldwide, flow into the business of preparing for, and conducting, the efficient slaughter of other human beings.
And still the game continues. The leaders meet, the contracts are signed, the missiles are ordered, the justifications are written, and the body counts are tallied. The rest of us are expected to cheer for “our side,” wave the correct flag, and never ask why the same people who claim to care so deeply about human life are so eager to spend our money perfecting the art of ending it. And nobody seems to care. As long as their game of pickleball is not disrupted, the leaders they seem to adore so much can continue to play their game to their heart’s content.
I don’t know how much longer this particular round of the game will last. I only know that as long as we keep accepting the premise—that war is inevitable, that leaders know best, that the dead on the other side somehow matter less—the players will keep dealing the cards and raking in the chips. The rest of us will keep paying the price, both in treasure and in blood.
Autonomous Weapons: The Wave of the Future in Military Conflicts Worldwide
Thalif Deen.. UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 2026 (IPS) –
As the international community continues to weigh the good, the bad and the deadly in artificial intelligence (AI), which is spreading far and wide with apparently no guardrails, the United Nations is taking a closer look at the impact, both positive and negative, of AI.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last week that “the technology is heightening the danger, with sophisticated and increasingly autonomous new weaponry, including drones, able to inflict massive harm on populations.”
The new weapons, particularly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, seem to be a new wave of killing machines in recent conflicts, including the US vs. Iran, Israel vs. Palestine and Lebanon, and Russia vs. Israel, plus scores of civil wars in Africa and Asia.
Simon Adams, Professor of Human Rights at Murdoch University in Australia and former President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture—a leading international human rights and humanitarian NGO—told Inter Press Service no country in the world has openly admitted to deploying a weapon that is completely autonomous in the sense of killing humans without a person also being involved in the decision-making process.
“But there are already a number of powerful states—including several that sit around the table at the UN Security Council—who are increasingly dependent on drones, robots and AI systems to fight wars for them. Algorithms are choosing bombing targets and are already responsible for killing civilians in some major conflict zones.”
AI has the potential to improve the lives of billions of people on this planet. It would be a moral failing of epic proportions and a global tragedy if AI were harnessed to innovate new ways for humans to outsource the dirty work of waging war to robots, he said.
“Killer robots are a horror that belongs in science fiction. There is nothing more sinister than outsourcing killing and warfighting to emotionless, faceless machines that will select which humans get to live or die. Lethal autonomous weapons systems are ethically indefensible and should be illegal. We need a global ban before it is too late.”
Guterres has also reiterated his call to have them banned by international law, adding that some decisions must remain forever human, none more than taking a human life.
David Swanson, campaign coordinator for RootsAction, told IPS dozens of national governments have already stated their support for banning autonomous weapons, and dozens of others expressed their inclination to support such a ban.
So, a treaty could be established among those nations, on the model of the recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and then work could be done to add more nations to it. The initial signers and ratifiers would be the small and medium nations with the most willingness to defy the will of the U.S. government.
This banning of a particular type of weapon would ignore, as does the TPNW, the existence of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which requires disarmament of all weapons. It would also fail to address the morally repugnant act of ordering a young person, on pain of severe punishment, to press a button that sends a missile into people thousands of miles away—an act of dubious moral superiority to setting loose fully autonomous killer robots, he declared.
“But the biggest denier of reality in all of this is the U.S. government, which pioneered drone wars, was widely warned that it would not like the results when other nations followed suit, went on to suffer huge damage from foreign drones in places like the Persian Gulf during the current war on Iran, and altered its agenda not one iota. As guns sometimes appear to have more rights within the United States than children do, all forms of weaponry seem to be treated as deserving first consideration in U.S. foreign policy’,” he said
According to the New York Times of July 13, for decades Western governments have ordered supplies like tanks, fighter jets and submarines from contractors such as Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman—items that take years to deliver and are dizzyingly expensive: an F-35 jet can run to over $100 million.
“But the current trend is clear: defense technology is becoming cheaper and nimbler, with breakthroughs developed by privately funded companies rather than governments,” says an article authored by Vivienne Walt.
Of the Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion budget request by the current US administration for next year, about $55 billion is earmarked for the creation of a new unmanned, AI-powered arsenal.
Singling out a more positive non-military use of drones, the Times said last month that Sri Lanka, faced with one of the worst outbreaks of dengue fever in years, is using military drones to scan rooftops and find mosquito breeding grounds to eliminate them. The country’s air force has been routinely flying drones over high-rise buildings to identify breeding sites.
Nick Mottern, co-coordinator of the Weaponized Drone Ban Treaty Campaign, told IPS: “We are calling for a treaty to remove all weapons from drones, rather than to ban drones controlled autonomously by AI.
This is because all militaries will claim that there will always be a human in ultimate control of AI-augmented drones in spite of the fact that the drone will identify targets using AI, select weapons using AI, and present a human with all elements of the decision to kill using AI.
A treaty banning weapons on drones is the only way to stop the drone tsunami, he declared
Speaking at the First Global Dialogue on AI Governance in early July, Guterres said the world faced more than 120 conflicts in 2025.
Conflicts are becoming more protracted, more complex, and more interconnected, he pointed out. “We see widespread violations of international law and a growing sense of impunity. Technology is heightening the danger, with sophisticated — and increasingly autonomous — new weaponry, including drones, able to inflict massive harm on populations.”
“And online hate speech, misinformation and disinformation are spread and amplified in an instant. Too often, early warning signs are ignored. And responses are often a little too late.”
How Fear of Nuclear Armageddon Leads Me to Protest
Simply put, the U.S. maintains a first-strike nuclear option to be deployed against even a non-nuclear enemy. Paradoxically, China does have a “no first use” policy for its nuclear arsenal. Hey, U.S. adversaries, don’t even look at us the wrong way!
How radically and overtly hypocritical that the U.S., the greatest military power in the world—holding such a nuclear posture—initiated a war with Iran on the basis that the country might one day develop nuclear weapons, even though there is no conclusive evidence that it intends to do so. But then, this is how big bullies operate.
The blindness of Americans to the reality of nuclear annihilation begins with a national hypocrisy, one that we hold as the first and only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in war, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It is a striking example of our hypocrisy that is blatantly clear to most of the world beyond our borders.
For nearly two decades, I have been arrested, ignored, and dismissed for protesting nuclear weapons—but as the Doomsday Clock inches toward midnight, giving up is not an option.
Scott Fina, Current Affairs, July 2026
Our tiny protest gathering at Vandenberg had a “micro-Woodstock” feel to it. One of us was dressed like an angel, in a white gown with flashing, battery-powered lights on wings attached to her back. She held a peace sign that also had blinking lights. She started beating a drum she had brought, and broke into an Indigenous chant she had learned from a local Chumash (Native American) community, whose descendants continue to protest military installations on their ancestral homelands. She had driven hours to the military base from her home in central Los Angeles—the likely source of her captivating creativity.
So, there we were, observing the flight of the most dangerous weapon ever created and possessed by humanity: an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that had been launched from an underground silo on the base. The Minuteman III ICBM we were watching could carry multiple nuclear warheads. Fortunately, the missile was not armed, and its launch was a test, sending it 4,200 miles over the Pacific Ocean to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The U.S. military has adopted a nickname for such missile flights: “Glory Trips.”
As protesting observers, we failed to see any glory in the exhibition of the ICBM test launch. But if watching an ICBM launch isn’t glorious enough for some folks, they can go to the U.S. Department of War (DOW) website and check out the “multimedia experience” of the military’s nuclear triad delivery system. The online presentation blatantly and unabashedly explains in detail how the U.S. military can readily make nuclear strikes against its adversaries using not only land-based, silo-launched missiles, but also submarine and fighter plane launchings of nuclear bombs.
The DOW’s flashy, action-filled nuclear triad website is full of bravado, and seemingly overloaded with testosterone. It looks like a violent video game. One can imagine Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, messing around with the website, tapping at the keyboard with one hand, while holding a beer in the other.
Interestingly, the introductory section of the DOW nuclear triad website includes a statement which reads, in part, “…the triad ensures a credible and flexible nuclear deterrent, providing the president of the United States with options to accomplish objectives if deterrence fails.”
Those are nuclear options currently available for Donald Trump, who alone has the authority to order a nuclear attack. Having such choices on which weapons to use has got to be alluring, if not tempting, for our president. Imagine what goes on in his brain at times when he thinks about the power he has over nuclear weapons and the fate of humanity. Think, “eeny, meeny, miny, moe…”
On top of all its muscle flexing, there is another feature in the U.S. nuclear weapons policy that exhibits a kind of bullying. I refer here to the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) published by the Biden Administration in 2022. The NPR remains operative under the Trump Administration.
Consider this statement in the NPR, which is readily available for the world to see:
We conducted a thorough review of a broad range of options for nuclear declaratory policy – including both No First Use and Sole Purpose policies – and concluded that those approaches would result in an unacceptable level of risk in light of the range of non-nuclear capabilities being developed and fielded by competitors that could inflict strategic-level damage to the United States and its Allies and partners.
Simply put, the U.S. maintains a first-strike nuclear option to be deployed against even a non-nuclear enemy. Paradoxically, China does have a “no first use” policy for its nuclear arsenal. Hey, U.S. adversaries, don’t even look at us the wrong way!
But wait! There’s more going on with the U.S. nuclear arsenal: modernization.
The replacement of over 400 ICBM Minuteman III missiles is currently in the works. These weapons have been in use (on alert but not fired off) for over 55 years, and have been kept viable thanks to “a series of life extension programs,” according to the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. In the early 2030s, even more deadly ICBM Sentinel missiles will take their place. According to the Air and Space Forces Magazine, these new ICBMs will cost over $140 billion.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Many protesters at Vandenberg have also gone to prison for their nonviolent, civil disobedience: crossing a green line that demarcated where protest was allowed. The case of one courageous protester, Dennis Apel, who was arrested 15 times at Vandenberg, landed at the U.S. Supreme Court……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Hundreds of Americans protest against nuclear weapons every year at various military bases, and also at private corporate facilities that are connected to the U.S. nuclear program (and make big bucks). Unfortunately, anti-nuclear protesters often go unheard in the U.S., regardless of the often deep, personal sacrifices they make. Also, those voices have been aging and declining in number over the years.
Since I first joined protesters at Vandenberg in 2008, our numbers have dwindled to less than a dozen who gather monthly at the main gate. Annually, on or around the dates of August 6 and August 9—the anniversaries of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively—the number of protesters grows to a few dozen at Vandenberg, with most coming from Los Angeles. The somewhat larger crowd draws a good number of well-armed, military security guards who line up in formation a hundred yards down the base entry road.
The soldiers wait for protesters to cross the green line, and every year, a few do. Over a loud speaker, the military officer in charge of the formation warns these brave folks to cross back over the line within two minutes or they will face arrest. The protesters ignore the command, are handcuffed, cited, and then driven off the base in a van by the soldiers.
This scene is both moving, and a little comical, depending on one’s perspective. You see, these days most of the protesters at Vandenberg are old and grey (including myself). We are also a motley group, and frumpy. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine us as a collection of outsized Ewoks from a Star Wars film, standing up to Stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire. If someone played a John Williams score over a music box in the background, we’d have a real show.
Admittedly, probably most Americans would see the protesters at Vandenberg as preposterous, daring to confront the most powerful military on the planet with little hope of disarming our nation of nuclear weapons. Perhaps we are. But we are driven by a moral and humane purpose. . And if observers—even those who are patriotic—were more objective and opened their eyes widely, they might see what we protesters deeply sense: that the huge and deadly U.S. nuclear arsenal and forces contain our nation’s own demise.
The blindness of Americans to the reality of nuclear annihilation begins with a national hypocrisy, one that we hold as the first and only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in war, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It is a striking example of our hypocrisy that is blatantly clear to most of the world beyond our borders……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The most recent, significant multilateral treaty, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), was adopted at the United Nations in 2017, and entered into force in 2021. In sum, this treaty calls for nations around the world to either commit to never creating, possessing, testing, or transferring nuclear weapons if they have not yet done so, or to fully rid themselves of nuclear weapons—disarm—if they already have them.
To date, 95 nations have signed onto the TPNW. While that seems promising, it really isn’t, yet. The TPNW has been ignored by all the nuclear states, including the U.S. Still, it’s premature to write the treaty off at this point. But consider what looms over humanity’s head in the meantime.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an international coalition of non-governmental organizations and winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, warns that even limited nuclear conflicts will cause global devastation.
………………………. The second Trump Administration has said it is pursuing a “peace through strength” policy in national security and foreign affairs. The National Defense Strategy emphasizes the importance of modernizing the U.S. nuclear deterrent in response to increased nuclear threats.
“Peace through strength!” That doesn’t quite sound like a winning catchphrase that could inspire adversaries to surrender their nuclear weapons. More accurately, the image I get is Pete Hegseth crushing an empty beer can against the side of his head. Add on the “weapons modernization” program and you don’t really improve nuclear deterrence, but embolden the arms race already in place by nuclear adversaries.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..What JFK described in his peace address is a very different America, one that respects other nations and treasures humanity. It presents an America that tries to lead, rather than rule the nations around the world. Consider these comments:
“What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. … I am talking about …the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, … that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.
I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”
Currently there is a movement in Congress echoing JFK’s thinking on peace……………………………………………………
JFK’s thinking on peace is radically different from Trump’s and Hegseth’s. In our day and age, Kennedy’s perspective would be widely held as preposterous—just like the case of protesters who make personal sacrifices in attempts to waken our nation to see its almost hypnotic violence and self-destruction threatened by nuclear weapons.
……………………………………………………………………………………………Recently, the DOW has posted television and social media ads about “peace through strength” that compliment its multimedia presentation on the nuclear triad. One asks: how do most Americans carry on daily life, seemingly unconscious of the deeply disconcerting possibility of nuclear Armageddon? Is it because our populace is errantly convinced that immense, superior weaponry will fully protect us from our adversaries? Have we drank a soon-fatal dose of the potion of military propaganda? https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-fear-of-nuclear-armageddon-leads-me-to-protest
Hamas’s Governance Exit Exposes Israel’s Real Objectives
Abbas Hashemite, July 15, 2026, https://journal-neo.su/2026/07/15/hamass-governance-exit-exposes-israels-real-objectives/
Hamas’s decision to relinquish governance of the Gaza Strip appears to be derived from domestic and international strategic needs, and to further weaken the Israeli propaganda.
Hamas’s Administrative Withdrawal Amid Gaza’s Humanitarian Catastrophe
After ruling Gaza for around two decades, Hamas recently announced that it was prepared and willing to hand over the Strip’s governance to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the technocratic administration set up under US President Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace. According to the spokesperson of Hamas, the decision was made to “remove any pretexts for the [Israeli] occupation.” Indeed, the Israeli genocide, war crimes, occupation, and war of extermination against the Palestinian people persist despite the ceasefire, which took effect in October 2025.
According to a UNOCHA report, “nearly all of Gaza’s current population of 2.1 million people has been displaced, lacking access to sufficient shelter, food, life-saving medical services, clean water, education, and livelihoods.” According to some reports, the IDF has butchered more than 80000 Palestinians from October 7, 2023, to January, 2025; the actual figure is estimated to be much higher, as many bodies are still buried under rubble. The Israeli Defense Forces have also committed many other war crimes, such as raping Palestinian women and intentionally bombing hospitals, mosques, churches, and educational institutions, along with targeting journalists and welfare workers.
There are several indications that the Zionist regime may resume its full-scale genocidal operations in Gaza, using the resistance group’s refusal to surrender its arms and weapons as a pretext. Nonetheless, it appears that the Western nations have put the onus of honoring the deal only on Hamas, and Tel Aviv enjoys the freedom to violate the ceasefire at its will. This is evident from the fact that the IDF continues to kill Palestinian civilians, including women and children, despite the ceasefire. Moreover, it continues to control around 70 percent of the Gaza Enclave.
Why Relinquishing Governance Is a Strategic Calculation, Not a Defeat
Considering these developments, Hamas, in a strategic move, has decided to dissolve the Government Emergency Committee in Gaza. However, considering it as a surrender or defeat would be erroneous. In the current regional and domestic scenario, this was the most accurate move that Hamas could make. Through this move, the resistance group has reaffirmed its commitment to implementing the ceasefire deal and fulfilling Hamas’s objectives.
Even after one of history’s most horrific wars, the Zionist occupational regime has failed to achieve its primary objective: eliminating Hamas. The resistance’s decision to relinquish Gaza’s administration allows Hamas to reorganize its operational and institutional structures, minimize its institutional exposure, and focus on its fundamental objective, the struggle of Palestinian national liberation from the Zionist occupation. The Israeli government has long leveraged on the political, geographical, and ideological division between the West Bank and Gaza. This move would end this leverage and allow the two sides to unite.
A New Test for Israel and International Mediators
Despite this decision, the new administration would not mean complete foreign control over the Strip or exclusion of native Palestinians from politics, as Gaza belongs to its native population, not to any foreign-backed administration. Therefore, the most crucial challenge for the Western mediators will be to rebuild a representative and deeply rooted Palestinian leadership capable of raising the genuine concerns of the native people in the West Bank and Gaza. Otherwise, this new administrative structure will lose its credibility and domestic acceptance.
Another significant point to understand is that resisting and governing are two distinct functions. Therefore, this move must not be mistaken for a withdrawal from resistance. Hamas took this decision to advance its broader strategic objectives. For years, the Zionist regime of Israel has justified its war crimes, genocidal operations, and blockade of the Strip under the pretext of Hamas’s so-called threatening presence for the state.
After the resistance group’s complete compliance with the terms of the ceasefire and its announcement to transfer the administration of the Strip, the Zionist regime now seeks to hinder the implementation of the deal and hamper the National Committee from assuming the administrative responsibilities, to amplify the sufferings of the Palestinian people. This further exposes the propaganda of the Israeli government. It demonstrates that the actual ambition of the occupational regime was never to eliminate Hamas from the government; it was to deprive the Palestinians of their fundamental rights and resistance.
According to the Israeli government, the objective of this recent war was to end Hamas’s government in Gaza. After the recent decision by Hamas, the Israeli government has no reason left to blockade or bomb the Strip. Through this strategic move, Hamas is now confronting all the mediators and actors with their responsibilities. Moreover, this decision has further increased complications for the Zionist regime to legitimize its military aggression and genocidal operations in Gaza. It has been revealed once again that Hamas’s government was never the actual problem, but the refusal of the Palestinians to submit to the Israeli occupation. Through this decision, Hamas has not only gained strategic leverage but also achieved an opportunity to reorganize and restructure itself.
Аbbas Hashemite is a political observer and research analyst for regional and global geopolitical issues. He is currently working as an independent researcher and journalist
‘Seismic Shift’ as Over 100 House Democrats Vote to Cut Off US Military Aid to Israel
“This should be a blaring wake-up call for Democratic leaders,” said one campaigner. “The political tide is clearly turning against unconditional US military support for Israel.”
SCHEERPOST, Brett Wilkins Common Dreams, July 16, 2026
Nearly half of all Democrats in the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to cut off US military aid to Israel, a move that underscored a dramatic shift away from the US support the Mideast ally has enjoyed for nearly 60 years.
While House lawmakers ultimately rejected Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) amendment to a national security spending bill that would have eliminated the $3.3 billion in annual foreign military financing provided to Israel’s military, the details of the vote were viewed as an encouraging sign by defenders of Palestine and the rule of law.
Massie and 103 Democrats voted for the measure, while 215 Republicans and 98 Democrats rejected it. The overall tally was 104 for, 314 against, and 10 “present” votes, with 9 absences.
“I cannot vote for aid to a country that committed genocide and has used tax dollars to detain Americans like me,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said ahead of the vote, referring to an incident in which heavily armed residents of an Israeli settler colony stopped and surrounded him last week in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine.
Speaking to reporters after the vote, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas)—who had urged colleagues to support Massie’s amendment—noted, “It used to be that just a small number of House Democrats would vote against sending taxpayer dollars to weapons for the Israeli military.”
“Today, over 100 House Democrats voted for a measure to block billions of dollars in weapons to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” he continued. “That is enormous progress. That is a victory for our movement, for security, peace, and justice for all people.”
The vote, Casar said, “sasends a strong message to Netanyahu that the days are over of an unaccountable blank check to his wars and his war crimes, at least from the Democratic Party.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/16/seismic-shift-as-over-100-house-democrats-vote-to-cut-off-us-military-aid-to-israel/
The five countries that could go nuclear next – and how worried we should be
Arms control deals between the great powers are breaking down. Now other nations are looking for radical security solutions
iNews 15th July 2026, Kieron Monks Foreign news and feature writer
As wars and predator states reshape the world order, fears are growing that a new nuclear arms race is already under way.
Agreements between the great powers over the control of nuclear weapons are breaking down. Middle powers, from South Korea to Saudi Arabia, are considering radical solutions to their security concerns.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which binds 190 countries to the status quo of restricting nuclear weapons to the handful of states that already possess them, has largely held for a generation. North Korea is the only new nuclear power of the 21st century.
Dr Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher into weapons of mass destruction at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), noted a rise in “magic wand thinking”, with several governments openly discussing nuclear development. “There is this idea that nuclear weapons just work automatically to protect you, when the reality is more complicated,” he said.
John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington DC, said factors such as Russia’s nuclear threats and China’s expanding nuclear arsenal made this a more dangerous era for proliferation control.
While he did not expect a country to cross the threshold in the near future, one new nuclear nation could trigger a flood. “If Iran were to build a nuclear weapon, I believe several other countries would as well,” he said.
Here are the countries that are among those most likely to join the ranks of nuclear powers…
South Korea
Seoul has lived under threat from its nuclear northern neighbour for decades within a still-unresolved frozen conflict that dates back to 1950.
In 2023, the then president Yoon Suk-yeol – now mired in legal trouble over a failed coup – warned that South Korea could rapidly develop its own nuclear weapons if Pyongyang’s threats became “more serious” – a position that reflected public opinion and the country’s capabilities.
Taehwa Hong, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said the country was a “plausible candidate” to join the nuclear club, more so for the US downsizing its military presence there.
“The drivers are real,” said Hong, who is working on a book about South Korean strategy. “Public support for an independent arsenal has run at 70 to 80 per cent for over a decade, Korea has a world-class civil nuclear industry, and confidence in US extended deterrence has been eroding under America First pressures.”
“But the restraints are equally real. Weaponisation would require NPT withdrawal, expose one of the world’s most trade-dependent economies to sanctions, strain the very alliance it is meant to compensate for, and risk a proliferation cascade running through Japan.”
The most likely scenario is for Seoul to approach the nuclear threshold through peaceful enrichment of nuclear fuel without crossing it, the analyst said. But that could change if the US withdraws more forces or its “nuclear umbrella” from the country, or in a scenario of China attacking Taiwan
Poland
Poland’s President, Karol Nawrocki, said in February that he would support the development of an independent nuclear deterrent. “The path toward a Polish nuclear project, in full respect of all international regulations, is a path Poland should pursue,” he said.
Those sentiments were echoed by the liberal Prime Minister, Donald Tusk – usually a fierce opponent of Nawrocki. Polls have shown a majority of public opinion supports Poland having its own nuclear weapons outside the US umbrella.
Dr Jakub Bordio, a professor of political science at the University of Wroclaw, said these were unprecedented developments driven by a sense that the “international security architecture is developing, from our perspective, in the wrong direction”.
Iran …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Turkey.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Saudi Arabia ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://inews.co.uk/news/world/five-countries-go-nuclear-how-worried-4635284
Grant to support expansion of TRISO-X nuclear fuel campus
X-Energy subsidiary TRISO-X has received a grant from the State of
Tennessee of USD11 million to support the continued development of its fuel
fabrication campus in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, including a potential second
commercial fuel facility and a dedicated research and development centre.
World Nuclear News 16th July 2026 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/grant-to-support-expansion-of-triso-x-nuclear-fuel-campus
Challenging New York Times’s Suggestion That We Should Stop Worrying and Love Radiation
The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) substantiates Liner No Threshhold LNT, as did the 2021 NRC decision to deny a 2015 request to get rid of LNT.
Karl Grossman, July 15, 2026 https://fair.org/home/challenging-nyts-suggestion-that-we-should-stop-worrying-and-love-radiation/
Alfred Meyer, long active in Physicians for Social Responsibility and former co-chair of its Radiation and Health Committee, challenged an article in the July 3 New York Times, headlined “US to Overhaul Radiation Safety Rules to Spur Nuclear Expansion.”
In a July 6 letter to the article’s author, Brad Plumer, Meyer wrote:
When I read the New York Times business page, I assume that there is a high level of investigative journalism being presented so that the news I read will present thorough and well-researched information about the topic at hand. This is not the case with this article.
Plumer began his piece by paraphrasing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposal on July 1 to overhaul its safety rules for radiation exposure at nuclear power plants. As he put it, the commission was concerned by the cost of the regulations and their tendency to “go beyond what is needed to protect human health.”
The NRC’s proposal asserted that current regulations often incur additional costs “without a measurable safety benefit”—for example, Plumer supplied, when regulators install additional equipment at plants in order to push radiation exposure “far below the legal limits.” Maximum dose limits, the agency said, are already set “well below levels associated with known health effects.”
This was meant to corroborate Plumer’s characterization about costliness, but Meyer noted the lack of substantiation:
You provide no rationale, evidence or citations for these claims, making simple conclusions about a very complex topic. How do you know that human health is indeed being protected, or as you imply, being over-protected? What examples can you provide of radiation exposure being “far below the legal limits”?
Trying to ‘simplify things’
Meyer focused on Plumer’s denial of “measurable safety benefits” from nuclear regulations, the premise of the central question Plumer posed in his piece: How much protection against low levels of radiation is worthwhile? Meyer took issue with Plumer’s framing:
For decades, many researchers and regulators have tried to simplify things by adopting what’s known as the “linear no-threshold model,” which says that the effects of radiation scale down linearly with the dose, and that even tiny amounts of radiation can have small negative effects.
Calling the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model an attempt to “simplify things,” Meyer noted, is “a rather pejorative comment in light of the significant scientific evidence at hand”:
The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) substantiates LNT, as did the 2021 NRC decision to deny a 2015 request to get rid of LNT.
Plumer “never mentions the history and current state of study and knowledge of the health effects of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation,” Meyer said, pointing to 80 years of research:
The atomic photographer Robert Del Tredici includes a lengthy endnote in his 1985 book At Work in the Field of the Bomb, which recounts Karl Z. Morgan, the father of health physics—aka the study of the health effects of radiation—discussing how the effects of low-level radiation were well-researched in the late 1940s and were found to be significant. As Morgan’s medical perspectives raised public health questions about further expansion of the nuclear enterprise, they were minimized and ignored.
One of Plumer’s unquestioned and unexplored assertions especially stood out:
Experts agree that high doses of radiation are dangerous and can cause various types of cancer. But there’s much more disagreement about the effects of lower doses of radiation, such as the amounts that workers at nuclear power plants might receive in the course of their jobs. Different studies have found that low doses can be harmful, neutral or even beneficial.
The idea that low doses of radiation may be “even beneficial” refers to “radiation hormesis”—a widely dismissed claim of some nuclear promoters that exposure to radiation exercises the immune system and thus is healthy.
‘History of atomic press censorship’
“This piece,” said Meyer,
serves to promote the current government policies to greatly expand nuclear activities—it is not investigative journalism that thoroughly considers the topics at hand to give the public the information necessary for informed decision-making.
Meyer added: “The New York Times has an uncomfortable history of atomic press censorship.” Meyer cited as “a prime example” William Laurence, who, he noted, helped craft the official military line on Hiroshima while still ostensibly a Times journalist. Laurence was a Times science writer who also worked for the Manhattan Project, for which he drafted press releases and other government statements.
Back at the Times after the war, for years Laurence glorified nuclear technology. As author Beverly Deepe Keever wrote in her book News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb, Laurence “served as a scribe writing government propaganda” to obscure the deadly and harmful effects of radiation.
More recently, Matthew Wald, who spent 38 years at the Times with a beat including the nuclear industry, left the paper in 2014 and the following year joined the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry’s Washington-based trade group, as a policy analyst and communications consultant.
“Is history repeating itself, or can the New York Times cover the whole story here?” Meyer wrote. “The future of our genome is at stake.”
Meyer signed his letter as the treasurer of Physicians for Social Responsibility New York. He was also formerly the chapter’s president, the executive director of PSR Wisconsin, a longtime member of PSR’s national board, and the program director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. He has not yet received a response from Plumer.
ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
Research Assistance: Emily Marie Spencer
Liberals Have Relaxed About Trump Because They Trust Him To Keep The Wars Going
Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 16, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/liberals-have-relaxed-about-trump?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=207158487&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Have you noticed how the liberal establishment hasn’t been nearly as emotional and outraged about Trump’s second term as they were about his first? Now that he’s the president who bombed Iran, the entire western political/media class is cool with him.
The term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” has always been used by the MAGA crowd as a blanket pejorative to protect the president from criticism, but during Trump’s first term it wasn’t entirely unfair. You’d see Democrats shrieking their lungs out over Trump doing things that other US presidents did all the time like cozying up with dictators and tyrants. They’d lose their minds over relatively sane things like Trump talking about moving troops out of Syria. The whole Russiagate thing was liberals going bat shit over a crazy conspiracy theory that caused them to push for the escalations against Russia which ultimately gave rise to the war in Ukraine.
We’re not seeing any of that in Trump’s second term. That extra layer of screeching emotionality simply isn’t there. There are no Russiagates or emotional support Maddows this time around. Democrats hate Trump, but they hate him about as much as they’d hate any Republican president. The emotional response to his second presidency is wildly, wildly different from the first.
Which is nuts, because he’s quantifiably far worse this time around. His domestic policies are much more tyrannical. He’s as evil a warmonger as the White House has ever seen. He’s so corrupt that he’s just openly admitting to being bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs while making his family a fortune using the power of his office. Now that he doesn’t have to worry about re-election, he’s being completely nakedly monstrous.
And what’s creepy is that’s why the liberal establishment is so much more mellow about him. They’re no longer worried that he’s going to promote “isolationist” foreign policy and roll back the US war machine. He went to war with Iran, so they like him now. Because they know he’s fully compliant.
I’ve had many a Trump supporter tell me that all the anti-Trump vitriol we saw from the imperial political/media class was evidence that he really was fighting the Deep State and draining the swamp, but that was never what was actually happening. As I have been arguing since Trump’s first term, the oligarchs and empire managers never opposed Trump because they believed he was opposed to them. Rather, they simply viewed him as a poor steward of the empire. They didn’t trust him to keep the imperial gears turning in the way they must turn to maintain the status quo.
Clearly that has changed. They trust him now. They know he will keep the bombs dropping, keep the capitalism chugging along, and keep the power centers where they are.
They view him as one of their own now. When he finally dies, he will be lovingly eulogized by all the same liberal institutions which called him a second Hitler during his first term. He did enough to reassure them that the presidency of the United States had not been accidentally awarded to a decent human being.
‘Extreme risk’: AUKUS warnings as Garrett’s inquiry docks in Adelaide
“Extreme” economic risk and nuclear waste disposal concerns for the $368 billion AUKUS submarine project are being heard at an independent inquiry in Adelaide today.
The risk associated with the Federal Government’s $368 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine project are being criticised by former federal senator and self-described ‘transparency warrior’ Rex Patrick this morning at an independent inquiry held in Adelaide today.
And transparency warnings were raised over the government’s plans for nuclear waste from submarines built at Osborne in South Australia, Patrick saying he was fighting in the Federal Court for information to be made public.
Meanwhile, former South Australian Liberal MP Christopher Pyne, who was Minister for Defence from 2018 until his retirement in 2019, said he “thought twice about appearing” at the inquiry led by famed Australian musician and former federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.
Pyne said he bit the bullet because he believed in the “battle of ideas”.
The independent inquiry into the defence agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States was established earlier this year to scrutinise the deal.
It is being led by former Labor MP and Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett, with public hearings taking place across the country, including in Adelaide today and tomorrow.
Other commissioners included First Nations leader Karina Lester, former West Australian Premier Carmen Lawrence, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie and co-CEO of the Australia Institute Leanne Minshull. A final report was expected on October 30.
“Adelaide is at the epicentre of the AUKUS project,” Garrett told reporters at a press conference before the inquiry started.
“Whether it’s questions on the safe, long-term storage of radioactive waste, whether it’s the impact on communities in Adelaide and around Osborne, whether it’s the question of opportunity cost for the Adelaide economy.
“It is a matter of some regret that the AUKUS decision – the biggest-ever decision by any Australian government to spend public money on submarines, some not even built – was made with minimal public debate.”
The inquiry has been supported by trade unions and non-profit organisations to address questions over whether risks – economic and political – were being managed appropriately, Patrick telling the inquiry the country was taking on a “hugely risky program”.
“From an absolute cost perspective, it is unaffordable and it is bankrupting,” he said.
“There’s also an opportunity cost. You know – $360 billion – if you think about what you can spend with that amount of money… we wouldn’t be worrying about fuel security, we wouldn’t be worrying about industrial resilience.”
He added that nuclear waste storage was “a problem that needs to be solved”, noting he was fighting in the Federal Court for the release of documents around where the government was planning to store waste from the nuclear submarines.
“I’m not asking for the release of documents that relate to how fast a submarine might go, how many weapons it might have… I’m asking for information that is incidental to this project but really important to it: Where are you going to put the waste associated with this?” Patrick said.
Pyne gave evidence ahead of Patrick, and emphasised the importance of the AUKUS project in terms of national defence against China, saying the uplift in defence capability would be imperative “if we find ourselves on our own in the worst case scenario”.
He described AUKUS as “unstoppable” and said it would deliver a permanent boost for defence spending, an upgrade to Australia’s bases and facilities, an investment in STEM and trade skills, and would be a permanent change to Australia’s national security.
The inquiry was set to continue until this evening, with other speakers including anti-nuclear campaigner David Noonan and SA Greens MLC Melanie Selwood.
The Greens today released new findings from a survey of 343 South Australians, showing 83.7 per cent of respondents were “mostly concerned” about AUKUS.
Seventy-one per cent said AUKUS would make Australia less secure, and 74.5 per cent said they did not see “clear benefits” from the defence pact.
AUKUS was set to be a boon for the South Australian economy and jobs creation, with the nuclear submarine shipbuilding yard set to be constructed at Osborne at a cost of at least $30 billion.
Both the state and federal governments said they hoped the project would create 10,000 jobs in design and construction as well as up to 1000 apprentices per year at an on-site training facility, with the first newly built submarines expected to be delivered to the Australian Navy in the 2040s.
Enough steel to make 17 Eiffel Towers as well as 710,000 cubic metres of structural concrete will be used in the construction of the 420-metre-long fabrication hall.
However it has already weathered several hiccups.
In June, Federal Defence Minister Richard Marles announced Australia would only buy three second-hand nuclear-powered submarines instead of the promised mix of new and used US vessels.
This plan was expected to happen before Australia eventually built its own submarines using US nuclear-propulsion technology and parts made in Britain.
The second-hand subs announcement comes after the US has struggled to make enough Virginia-class submarines for its own use, leading some American lawmakers to question how it could also build enough of the boats to meet Australia’s needs.
Australia faces a critical window to receive the submarines before its existing, 1980s-designed Collins-class vessels are retired from service.
No, Israel Does Not Have ‘A Right To Exist’
there is no such right in international law. None.
the International Court of Justice has repeatedly found that Israel has no right to claim self-defense in its attacks on occupied Palestinian territories. (In essence, you cannot break into someone’s house and then claim a right to self-defense when they resist you).
Unlike the Zionist claim that “Israel has a right to exist,” my assertion is rooted in international law. Of course, given Israel’s propensity for violating such laws, it’s no surprise they’re still claiming a right that has no basis in reality.
Mondoweiss, By Craig Mokhiber July 14, 2026
News that, in the midst of the genocide in Palestine, the German parliament was this week advancing legislation that would criminalize speech that denies that Israel has a “right to exist,” with penalties of up to five years in prison, came as a surprise to virtually no one.
This is, after all, the same Germany that perpetrated genocide first in Namibia and then in Europe, and is now actively and enthusiastically participating in the ongoing genocide in Palestine while brutally repressing all who dare speak out against it inside Germany.
Indeed, alongside Israel and the U.S., the German state today has the dubious distinction of being among those most captured by Zionist interests and most corrupted by Zionist ideology.
The German state even has an official policy (Staatsräson) dedicating the German state to the continued existence of the Israeli regime, and a formal declaration of Israel’s “right to exist” is required to acquire German citizenship. (No such declaration of Germany’s right to exist is required).
But the statement that the Israeli regime has no right to exist is not only a legally protected opinion. It is also demonstrably true, as a matter of both fact and law.
Of course, the statement that Israel “has a right to exist” has always been nonsense, unrooted as it is in either law or fact.
But this Zionist claim rings familiar to the ear of people in the West because it has been so often repeated as a pillar of Zionist propaganda, echoed by Western politicians benefiting from Israel lobby bribes, and by Israel-aligned media corporations dutifully buttressing the impunity of the regime.
Ask yourself if you have ever heard a similar refrain asserting Italy’s right to exist, or Canada’s — or Germany’s, for that matter? And yet the claim is constantly made that the Israeli regime (and only the Israeli regime) somehow has such a right.
The most obvious conclusion is that the regime and its proxies in the West are so deeply insecure about the legitimacy of the state, given the lawless and bloody history of its founding and expansion, that they have deemed it necessary to impose an enforced (and fictional) orthodoxy, rooted in an idea of Israeli exceptionalism and state-sponsored impunity.
But there is no such right in international law. None.
Inconvenient facts
Indeed, when I first entered the corridors of the United Nations in the 1980s, many states then existed that no longer existed when I left in 2023. Did the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and the United Arab Republic have a “right to exist?” No. And neither does Israel.
States come and go, but none of them has a “right to exist.” As a factual matter, this is undeniable.
And yet, some still actively parrot the baseless Zionist fabrication that the Israeli regime somehow possesses it, others accept it without question, some (like Germany) even seek to compel others to declare it, and still others prohibit any attempts to challenge the lie.
There is no “right to exist” for states under international law. Thus, Israel cannot claim such a right.
Of course, states do have some rights. For example, states normally have a right to sovereign equality, to territorial integrity, and to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. But even these rights normally afforded to states are subject to conditions and qualifications, many of which would exclude Israel’s claim to them.
For example, the International Court of Justice has repeatedly found that Israel has no right to claim self-defense in its attacks on occupied Palestinian territories. (In essence, you cannot break into someone’s house and then claim a right to self-defense when they resist you).
Its 1949 “Green Line” with Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza, is not an international border, but rather an armistice line merely meant to separate forces. The regime cannot claim it as a lawful border.
Moreover, given that the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force is a jus cogens norm (the highest, peremptory rules) of international law and a binding obligation under the UN Charter, it cannot claim any of that land as part of its lawful territory. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Even a cursory examination of international law reveals that, to the contrary, the Israeli regime should not exist.
The international community of states has obligations to cease recognition of the regime, to isolate it, and to work for its dismantlement and for the liberation of the Palestinian people from the regime.
Clearly, no one would today argue that Nazi Germany, or Apartheid South Africa, or Vichy France, or Khmer Rouge Kampuchea had a “right to exist.” Nor would we entertain claims for eternal colonial regimes in Algeria, India, Namibia, or Kenya. For the same reasons, no legal (or moral) argument could justify a right to exist for Zionist Israel.
To the contrary, international law requires that, where breaches of peremptory norms of international law are integral to the creation, expansion, and sustaining of a state (as was the case in apartheid Namibia and Rhodesia), such entities should not be recognized or accepted as legitimate states and should in no way be assisted.
Israel’s record is clear. It was founded on the breach of two peremptory (jus cogens) norms: the right to self-determination of the people of the land, and the rule on the non-acquisition of territory by force, as well as on the two highest crimes in international law: genocide and aggression.
Since then, it has refused the return of refugees and their compensation, and has continuously expanded its unlawful evictions, land theft, and colonization.
The United Nations and every major international human rights organization have concluded that the Israeli regime is guilty of apartheid and racial segregation, unlawful occupation, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
The regime is now on trial for genocide at the ICJ, charges that the Court has found plausible enough to issue a series of preliminary orders (all of which the regime has ignored).
And the same Court has found the regime guilty of unlawful occupation, the forced denial of self-determination, the unlawful acquisition of territory by force, war crimes, apartheid, and racial segregation.
And the International Criminal Court has indicted the regime’s leaders for crimes against humanity.
For the full eighty years of its existence, the Israeli regime has held the distinction of being in breach of the highest number of UN resolutions and ICJ decisions of any country on the planet.
Today, the regime is unlawfully occupying Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, attacking Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and beyond, and perpetrating genocide in Palestine.
It has carried out assassinations across the region and has admitted to (indeed, bragged about) transnational terrorist attacks with booby-trapped pagers in Lebanon
Judged against the imperatives of international law, Israel is, in the strictest sense of the term, a rogue regime, illegitimate in its founding, and devoid of all legitimacy in its conduct ever since.
To declare that such a regime has a “right to exist” is an affront to generations of its victims, to international law, and to human decency itself. And the threat that it poses extends far beyond Palestine.
The Israeli regime is driven by a deeply racist and fundamentally violent ideology. It is armed with advanced technologies of surveillance and death, holds powerful conventional weaponry, and possesses stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
It has declared policies mandating the mass murder of civilians (the Dahiya Doctrine), the killing of its own citizens (the Hannibal Directive), and the potential nuclear destruction of the world (the Samson Option).
Its spies are active in countries around the globe, and its proxies are actively engaged in corrupting governments and institutions across the West.
Does such a regime have a “right to exist?” No.
In fact, dismantling such a regime and its replacement with a free Palestine with equal rights for all is not only a legal requirement, but also an existential imperative for all of humanity. https://mondoweiss.net/2026/07/no-israel-does-not-have-a-right-to-exist-quite-the-contrary-actually/
Iran Accuses Kushner, Witkoff of Pursuing Profits Over Peace in Diplomatic Talks
Drop Site reported that Iran warned Vice President JD Vance that “the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal.”
Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Jul 16, 2026
Iranian officials reportedly warned US Vice President JD Vance late last month that two officials leading the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East—special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—were trying to profit from their proximity to critical negotiations rather than working to secure a lasting peace agreement.
According to Drop Site, which cited an unnamed Iranian official, “Iran conveyed to Vance that the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal.” The Iranian side also “expressed concern about repeated leaks from Kushner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Iranian officials reportedly warned US Vice President JD Vance late last month that two officials leading the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East—special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—were trying to profit from their proximity to critical negotiations rather than working to secure a lasting peace agreement.
According to Drop Site, which cited an unnamed Iranian official, “Iran conveyed to Vance that the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal.” The Iranian side also “expressed concern about repeated leaks from Kushner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Iranians estimated that people with inside information have raked in $9 billion in profits stemming from financial market moves related to the US-Israeli war on Iran, which sparked significant volatility in energy and equity prices.
On several occasions during the war, massive trading volumes have closely preceded major conflict-related announcements by US President Donald Trump. (Kushner is Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff is a close personal friend of the president.)
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian Parliament and the country’s top negotiator, accused the Trump administration in March of peddling “fake news” to “manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”……………………………………………..
“The public has no reason to trust Jared Kushner’s integrity as a government official to put their interests above his financial benefit,” Donald Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said after Trump formally named Kushner a special peace envoy in February.
Less than a month later, The New York Times reported that Kushner was trying to raise at least $5 billion in funding for his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, from Middle East governments. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is the largest investor in Affinity.
Witkoff, a real estate investor, has also faced scrutiny for potentially massive conflicts of interest.
Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) noted during a House hearing last month that Witkoff “co-founded the cryptocurrency venture firm World Liberty Financial, alongside President Trump and President Trump’s children.”……………………………………. https://www.commondreams.org/news/kushner-witkoff-profit-iran-war
The West Won’t Punish The Settlements. Its Two-State Solution Was Always a Sham.
Western elites cannot imagine a world without Israel as their military thug in the oil-rich Middle East any more than you can imagine life without your arm.
If Israel wants the settlements to continue expelling Palestinians off their lands until there are no Palestinians left on those lands, then the West is not going to naysay it.
July 15, 2026, Jonathan Cook Substack, https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-west-wont-punish-the-settlements
For decades, the EU has devised ever more convoluted ways to avoid penalising Israel’s illegal settlements, even as they devour a two-state solution it claims is the only path to regional peace
If I asked you to cut off your arm, would you do it?
What if I pointed out that that your arm regularly punched a neighbour in the face so violently that it broke their nose and teeth, and left them unconscious? Would you cut your arm off then?
I’m guessing the answer to both questions is a firm, “No.”
Which is exactly why the European Union, Britain and the United States have precisely no intention of severing their support for Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, however violent the Jewish colonisers who live on stolen Palestinian land prove to be.
For decades, settler militias – backed by Israeli soldiers – have beaten up Palestinians, shot them, poisoned their wells, chopped down their olive groves, torched their homes, all in an attempt to ethnically cleanse them from their historic homeland.
The relentless expansion of these illegal settlements has left any hope of a two-state solution in tatters. The West Bank is now an archipelago of Palestinian villages and towns isolated from one another by marauding violent settlers, apartheid roads only for Jews, steel and concrete barriers, and army checkpoints.
All of this has happened in full view of western states over many decades. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, ruled back in 2004 – nearly a quarter of a century ago – that these Jewish settlements violated international law and needed to be dismantled.
It reiterated that demand in a decision two years ago in which it identified Israel as an apartheid state ruling over Palestinians. It warned states to “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assists in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory”.
And yet the West has done nothing meaningful year after year as the settlements have stolen more land from Palestinians, made their lives there ever more miserable, and trashed any chance of the West’s supposed ambition of two states living alongside each other.
Remember this when Israel’s apologists tell you to wait for the same court’s definitive ruling – in a year or two, or maybe three – on what it deemed in early 2024 to be a “plausible” genocide in Gaza, just three months into Israel’s mass slaughter there.
Not only will any such ruling be far too late to make any difference to the victims of the genocide, but the US, Britain and Europe will do precisely no more to punish Israel for this crime of crimes – one we can see for ourselves without an ICJ ruling – than they have done in punishing Israel for the settlements.
Punching fist
Why? Because most western states no more wish to impose a penalty on Israel for its crimes than you would want to amputate a healthy arm.
If they refuse to lift a finger to stop a live-streamed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, why on earth would anyone imagine they are ready to do anything to stop Israel’s violent settlers ethnically cleansing the West Bank?
The settlements are as deeply integrated into Israel as your arm is attached to your shoulder. And in turn, Israel is as much the punching fist of the imperial West’s war machine as the City of London – and its former tax-haven colonies – are the beating heart of the imperial West’s financial machine.
Western elites cannot imagine a world without Israel as their military thug in the oil-rich Middle East any more than you can imagine life without your arm.
That explains why no one really believed that EU foreign ministers, meeting once again this week to discuss banning settlement products – the bare minimum they have long been obligated to do under international law – would reach an agreement.
More than 100 legal scholars had earlier written to the European Commission’s top trade and foreign policy officials stressing the EU’s “international legal obligation”.
But as everyone predicted, EU ministers kicked the can down the road – until at least October, when they agreed to more talks about talks.
The EU has been delaying meaningful action on dealing with the settlements since at least 2004, when the ICJ ruled them illegal.
A year after that ruling, the EU issued a Technical Agreement that removed preferential trade tariffs of the kind Israeli goods enjoy from any items produced in the illegal settlements. Israel agreed only because there were so many loopholes and workarounds it had no practical effect whatsoever.
It was another seven years – in 2012 – before the EU started to express concern about these loopholes, including the fact that Israel was routinely mislabelling settlement products as “Made in Israel”.
Fast forward another three years and the EU finally got around to pretending to be closing the loopholes. In November 2015, 11 years after the ICJ ruling, the EU issued an “interpretative notice” requiring labels on settlement goods to state: “Product from the West Bank (Israeli settlement).”
Again, Israel simply ignored the notice and continued mislabelling products, or blended them with products made in Israel, making it hard to determine the provenance.
Pure pantomime
Remember, these lengthy, meaningless battles were not about banning settlement products or even imposing punitive tariffs. They were simply about labelling them correctly.
To this day, the overwhelming majority of consumers across the EU have no idea, even if items are correctly labelled, which they almost never are, that they are buying products supporting Israel’s violent campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland.
It was because of this utter farce that civil society organisations started to noisily accuse the EU of complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and demand instead the outright banning of all settlement products.
These critics have now been banging their heads against a brick wall for over a decade. They have still achieved nothing, as this week’s EU meeting once again confirms.
Even were they to win a victory a year or two hence on banning settlement products, Israel would still be able to use the same workarounds it has been for the past 22 years to avoid any meaningful impact. European consumers would still be directly subsidising the violence of Jewish settler militias and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes.
All of this has been pure theatre – or more accurately, pantomime – to suggest that some kind of administrative process is in hand, that legal avenues are being pursued, that Israel will one day pay a price for its decades-old programme of ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
And yet nothing ever actually happens. The most the EU is prepared to do is throw a sop to its critics by imposing symbolic sanctions on a couple of dozen of the most violent settlers – out of a total settler population of nearly 700,000.
Those settlers did not end up in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by accident. Most were encouraged there by the Israeli state with offers of cheap housing, lower mortgage rates and higher funding of educational and other municipal services.
Note too that this abject failure relates to Israel’s explicit goal in expanding its settlements: to eviscerate the two-state solution the West says it craves as the only way to bring peace to the region.
The fact is Europe, Britain and the US have no interest in the two-state solution. If they did, they would have used the ICJ ruling in 2004 as grounds to ban settlement products, give that ban real teeth, and threaten Israel with a loss of all preferential trade with the West until it abided by international law and removed all obstacles to Palestinian statehood, including the settlements.
They did none of this because that was never their intention.
Their only concern is keeping Israel – their pit bull in the Middle East – fed and watered.
If Israel wants the settlements to continue expelling Palestinians off their lands until there are no Palestinians left on those lands, then the West is not going to naysay it.
Just as if Israel wants to continue deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza for death, as a United Nations inquiry recently determined, then the West will turn a blind eye to that too.
If Israel’s soldiers and Jewish settler militias want to take a US Congressperson hostage in the West Bank, as they briefly did to Democrat politician Ro Khanna last week, no western leader is going to make a fuss about it.
Israel may be a rogue state but it is a rogue state made entirely in the western elite’s image. The West’s only real concern is in ensuring its own publics don’t realise, as they watch a genocidal state disappear the Palestinians, that they are looking into the mirror.
TELL Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Don’t weaken radiation standards
July 16, 2026, https://beyondnuclear.org/tell-nrc-dont-weaken-radiation-standards/
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission draft proposed rule (PR), allowing more radiation exposure at the industry’s discretion, has been published in the Federal Register. Deadline for comments is August 31, 2026. The PR would allow greater exposures “just to save the nuclear power industry money,” says Ed Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists. But it is also to appease Trump’s tech billionaire donors who want AI data centers.
Please comment before the deadline. You can be guided by talking points Beyond Nuclear has created, and NRC questions in the PR, to organize and create your comments. Please also watch the Coalition to Stop Radioactive Pollution’s webinar and join the Protect Better Campaign. Push back against this radiation trainwreck and health onslaught by commenting and sharing this information on social media.
Sign up for the Protect Better Campaign.
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