Dreams about Gaza: Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Proposals

5 September 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/dreams-about-gaza-israels-ethnic-cleansing-proposals/

I’m Let’s be done with the pretence of decency and soggy references to just resolution in the face of extreme circumstances. Be done with the hilarious stage acts of referring to legal doctrines that either do not exist or cannot exist in the bloodied context they are being forced to refer to. The State of Israel is intent, with every arm, administrative faculty and office bearer of consequence, to achieve ethnic effacing and utopic bliss with the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, with the former going first.

Speaking on September 2 at a conference organised by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz returned to a theme so rapidly hardening it is likely to ossify at any given moment: that a Gaza filled with Palestinians is not a tenable proposition from the perspective of his country’s interests. Whatever dubious tag is attached – immigration, migration, or depopulation – the current populace could simply not remain. “In the end, there is no real solution for Gaza without this migration.” The emigration of Palestinians would take place “by any means” (“by sea, by air, by every way possible”), the process having only been put on ice by US President Donald Trump.

It had been one of those moments of mental arrest, but Trump engendered a sharp frisson in the ranks of the Netanyahu government with his February 2025 proposal to relocate the residents of Gaza. Once done, developers and builders could come in and turn the strip into a tourist destination replete with the vulgar fripperies typical of such resorts. By October 2025, Trump’s peace plan envisaged something else; the relocation-development scheme seemed to have not so much stalled as died in its sleep, with the promise that the residents could stay and engage in the process of rebuilding the devastated territory. Point 12 of the plan is explicit on this: “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.” Not so, according to Katz. “The [depopulation] plan hasn’t been cancelled; it is being discussed all the time, even now, and I think there is no other solution for everyone’s good.”

When asked when this odious object might be facilitated, Katz airily suggested that the conduct of Hamas could be the catalyst, notably “when it becomes clear that [it] is not fulfilling its commitment[s]” under US peace plans. “Then we will get a green light to advance militarily, territorially, and in other areas as well.”

During a visit to an IDF post close to the Yellow Line demarcating Israel’s area of control from the rest of the Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his firm intentions. “We are not withdrawing,” he stated in a video message distributed by his office. “We are staying on this line. We control 60% of the Strip. And there is still more to come, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us – we do this day in and day out.”

Gallingly, Katz had the temerity to suggest that the Gazans wished to leave – some 80% – making passing reference to vague, unsubstantiated surveys that had been conducted by Israeli authorities. (It’s always curious how the rabidly patriotic always assume that no other group can cling, so desperately and tenaciously, to a strip of land, whatever the cost.) If only other countries were willing to accept those apparently willing residents of Gaza, the problems would vanish. “Hamas isn’t allowing them [to leave], and there are no countries in the world taking them in. President Trump put the issue on the agenda. Now every country needs to take people in – and that’s the big issue.”

This deplorable language, condemned by US Democratic Senator for Maryland Chris Van Hollen, received a boost of patriotic umami from Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The minister tends to make a habit of going to prisons to gloat about their ruinous conditions, all the time threatening Palestinian inmates with impending death, ensuring the deprivation of basic human rights (they, the reasoning goes, do not deserve them) while encouraging the inexorable de facto annexation of the West Bank. On September 3, he also advanced his oxymoronic version of a “voluntary emigration” plan dubbed “Disengagement 710”, a nod to Israel’s exit from Gaza in 2005 and the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.

The plan entails the removal of 250,000 Gazans in the first year, 1.11 million within three years and 1.86 million within seven. A sinister “Emigration Ministry” will oversee the process. “Instead of [Gazans] digging tunnels, it’s time to pack suitcases,” reasoned Ben-Gvir. To sweeten the abuse, emigrants would receive an “absorption package” comprising “assistance with travel, initial housing, vocational training, employment and support for up to 24 months.” Payments would also be made to recipient States.

In his remarks, Ben-Gvir also had room to draw inspiration from Trump. Ignoring the Gaza Peace Plan, the minister preferred to focus on the President’s initial proposal to “encourage emigration [as] a solution to the Gaza issue.” From being “treated as a delusional extremist,” he mused about his own standing, plans of removing Palestinians had “become legitimate. Suddenly, everyone became Ben-Gvir.”

The second part of the Palestinian eradication program involves the full assertion of sovereign control over the West Bank, though the process there is necessarily staggered, a form of slow-motion extermination of a culture and people that is taking place before an international law system petrified and mostly silent. So far, things are coming along nicely – from the settlers’ perspective. They are the spear carrying proxies for an ethnic cleansing regime. The Israeli authorities have their backs and, when they do intervene to curb any zeal, a mild slap on the wrist is the best to expect. The consistently promoted narrative is that the more violent perpetrators are errant buffoons with a death wish yet sporting a good heart, buffoons in good standing with the broader annexation drive that has been approved by the Knesset in a non-binding motion.

A word, to finish off, on the very euphemistic term “ethnic cleansing.” To say cleansing is a ghastly concession to the supposed wickedness of impurity. Something needs rinsing, the stains need removal. This application of ideological detergent assumes that there is something deficient or suspect in a race, an ethnicity or a religious group, a people, in short. It follows that what is happening to the Palestinians is ethnic in nature and not so much cleansing as eradicative.

September 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

For A Westerner, Opposing The Empire Is The Only Path To Dignity

Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 05, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/for-a-westerner-opposing-the-empire?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=214242987&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The only way to truly have dignity and integrity as a westerner is to put your energy into opposing the empire under which you live.

Under the individualism of our capitalist society, we are indoctrinated with the belief that the most important and interesting things about us are the personal characteristics which distinguish us from other people: our likes and dislikes, our lifestyle, our interpersonal relationships, our sense of fashion, how successful we are professionally, academically and romantically, etc.

But when you live under the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on the planet, your individual little quirks and facets are a lot less significant than the extent to which you oppose the abuses that your rulers are inflicting upon human beings around the world. If you met a German in 1940, you would probably be a lot less curious about his taste in music and fondness for dapper suits than you would be about his level of support for Adolf Hitler.

That’s you right now. You’re the German in 1940. The most interesting and relevant thing about you is the extent to which you oppose the globe-spanning empire you live under. At this point in history, everything else about you is a very distant second.

I’m sure you’re a nice person. I’m sure you try to be decent to everyone you encounter, and I’m sure you’ve created a really nifty personality for yourself over the course of your life. You probably own some cool stuff and have some fun stories about things you’ve experienced over the years. But as a westerner, none of that matters nearly as much as the degree to which you stand in opposition to the psychopathic dominators who run your society today.

If we lived in Africa, Asia or Latin America, the unique qualities of our individual personalities would have more relevance, because we wouldn’t be materially benefiting from an empire which murders, exploits and steals from the people of the global south. But we are westerners, and the river of blood which feeds our way of life is always the loudest thing in the room.

For us, opposing that river of blood is the only path to a respectable life. We have no control over the fact that right now we live in a society that is fueled by a system of imperialist extraction propped up by the barrel of a gun, but we can control our response to that reality. We can do something every day to throw sand in the gears of the imperial machine. We can help weaken public trust in its propaganda services. We can help open the eyes of our fellow westerners to the reality of what our governments are doing in our name. We can work to foment a revolutionary zeitgeist. We can help construct a robust and widespread anti-war movement.

Your choice to do that or not is the most interesting and significant thing about you as a person. I mean no disrespect to your other wonderful attributes when I say this; that’s just the reality of what it means to be born into this particular slice of spacetime.

September 8, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

From memory of harm to culture of responsibility

August 30, 2026 by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/08/30/from-memory-of-harm-to-culture-of-responsibility/

The International Day Against Nuclear tests should never be treated as merely symbolic but as a moment to pause before a human memory that remains painfully alive, writes Dr. Ghassan Shahrour

Every year on 29 August, the world marks the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. It should never be treated as merely a symbolic entry on the global calendar. It is a moment to pause before a human memory that remains painfully alive. Since the first nuclear explosion in 1945, more than two thousand nuclear tests have been conducted across different regions of the world. Behind these numbers and locations are human stories: people exposed to radiation, families who lost loved ones, and communities forced to live with health and environmental consequences that have stretched across generations.

From the plains of Kazakhstan to the islands of the Pacific, and from former Soviet test sites to American testing grounds, nuclear tests were never merely technical experiments. They left deep marks on human lives and ecosystems. The last confirmed nuclear explosive test was conducted by North Korea in 2017, a reminder that the prohibition against nuclear testing cannot be treated as a settled achievement.

From Memory of Harm to a Culture of Responsibility

Remembering the victims of nuclear tests is not a return to the past for its own sake. Memory, when joined with responsibility, becomes a force for preventing the repetition of harm. Years of discussions and seminars on nuclear disarmament and human security have shown that the challenge is not only to keep the danger of nuclear weapons visible, but also to ensure that the voices of those harmed do not disappear behind technical and strategic language. Behind every test site there is a human life. Behind every number there is a family, a community, and a memory.

This is why a human-centered culture of disarmament is needed. Such a culture does not view weapons solely through their technical capabilities, nor does it measure security by the size of arsenals or the strength of deterrence. It asks a more fundamental question: What happens to human beings when military power becomes a permanent source of danger?

Nuclear weapons may be described in terms of strategy, deterrence, and balance, but nuclear tests reveal another side of the story: bodies exposed to radiation, environments damaged, and communities forced to live with consequences they never chose. When we restore this memory, disarmament becomes a human issue before it becomes a technical one.

From General Calls to Specific Responsibility

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty CTBT has not yet entered into force, decades after its adoption. Its incomplete entry into force is a reminder that the global norm against nuclear testing is still unfinished. In a world where strategic competition is intensifying and nuclear arsenals are being modernized, calls for the treaty to enter into force cannot remain general. They must become more focused political and civic efforts.

This is where responsibility for the remaining Annex 2 states whose ratification is still required becomes central. The international community, civil society, parliaments, media, and scientific and medical institutions should intensify their calls for these states to take the necessary steps. The goal is not condemnation, but clear and sustained encouragement to fulfill their responsibility toward a global system that prevents the return of nuclear testing.

The CTBT is not merely a technical treaty. Its verification system is essential, but its significance is broader: it is a central pillar of the international effort to prevent nuclear testing and advance nuclear disarmament. Its entry into force would strengthen a vital international norm and reinforce confidence that nuclear testing must not return.

Every year that passes without the treaty entering into force is a missed opportunity to strengthen a norm that protects people, the environment, and future generations.

Civil Society: Turning Memory into Action

This is where civil society plays a decisive role. Survivors, affected communities, humanitarian and medical organizations, and peace advocates do not offer mere testimonies about the past. They carry human knowledge that must inform decision-making. When the story of a person who lived through radiation exposure becomes a heard testimony, and when the memory of an affected community becomes part of public debate, the nature of the issue changes. Nuclear tests are no longer numbers in reports or points on maps. They become human lives with names, memories, and rights.

This is the power of humanization in disarmament: restoring the human face to issues that technical language can obscure. Policy does not change through statements alone. It changes when human harm becomes visible, understandable, and impossible to ignore.

From 29 August: From Memory to Action

The International Day Against Nuclear Tests must be more than a day of remembrance. It should become a yearly point of mobilization for action: raising awareness, supporting survivors, strengthening education, and increasing civic and diplomatic pressure for the completion of the treaty ratification requirements. Media should bring the issue back into public debate. Education should help new generations understand the link between past tests and future risks. Civil society should keep the voices of affected communities at the heart of the campaign and sustain focused pressure on governments whose decisions are necessary for the treaty to enter into force.

Memory alone is not enough. What protects the future is the action that grows from memory. Preventing nuclear tests is not only a matter of treaty law. It is an expression of a culture that says human life is not a field for experimentation, the environment is not a space for sacrifice, and the security of future generations cannot rest on risks they may be forced to pay for.

On 29 August, we do not only remember what happened. We remember the human beings who paid the price. We turn memory into responsibility, responsibility into action, and action into a norm that protects the future. A culture of disarmament begins when human life becomes the starting point.

Dr. Ghassan Shahrour, coordinator of Arab Human Security Network, is a medical doctor, prolific writer, and human rights advocate specializing in health, disability, disarmament, and human security. He has contributed to global campaigns for peace, disarmament, and the rights of persons with disabilities. This article first appeared on the Arab Human Security Network website and in multiple other outlets.

September 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why the clean energy transition needs information integrity

by Juan Pablo Medina Bickel, Dido Gompertz, Sebastian Kiecker, 25 Aug 2026,
https://www.e3g.org/news/why-the-clean-energy-transition-needs-information-integrity/

The energy transition is accelerating, with renewable energy generation continuing to break records. Yet this is taking place in an increasingly contested information environment – one in which information manipulation can shape public perceptions, political discourses and ultimately the conditions for climate action.

This matters because climate and energy policy are politically sensitive. They are particularly vulnerable to attempts to influence public opinion, as it runs counter to the interests of political and economic incumbents benefiting from the fossil fuel economy. Rapid advances in generative AI and increasingly sophisticated digital tools are also lowering the cost and increasing the scale and speed at which misleading content can be produced and distributed.

Climate disinformation deliberately seeks to obstruct or delay climate action. At a time when the cost of living dominates headlines and public concerns, climate disinformation spreads misleading narratives or falsehoods about the affordability and reliability of renewable energy, from technical claims about inefficient infrastructure design and deployment to macroeconomic arguments about excessive state support and related fiscal burdens. The influence of these claims often relies on emotional manipulation that aligns with personal beliefs. As a common tactic, disinformation seeks to erode trust in scientific climate consensus to discredit climate policy itself.

Information integrity as a key solution

Beyond countering individual pieces of mis-or dis-information we need an information environment where civil society businesses and policymakers can access, understand and trust the information they need to make decisions about the energy transition. Information integrity enables access to reliable information about climate change and action. It also aims to protect scientific consensus by strengthening communication strategies and information channels that expose and counter information manipulation.
Despite the complex challenges that climate-related information integrity faces in today’s global political environment, the agenda is increasingly moving from the margins to the mainstream.

Turning global discussion into actions

At the international level, Brazil, the United Nations and UNESCO launched the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 2024. The initiative aims to strengthen research and action addressing climate disinformation and to support more reliable information environments.

At COP30 in Belem, the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change was launched, establishing shared commitments to address climate disinformation and promote accurate, evidence-based information. The UNFCCC has subsequently described information integrity as central to effective climate action, highlighting the importance of reliable, science-based nformation for public trust, civic engagement and informed decision-making.
This is an important shift. Alongside its impact on communications in general, information integrity is increasingly recognised as part of the enabling infrastructure for climate action.

The economics of the transition are changing the information landscape

One of the most powerful ways to strengthen the information environment is also one of the simplest: ensuring public conversation reflects the rapidly changing reality of the energy system. Clean energy is now widely recognised as the most cost-effective power source in most of the world, playing a key role in bolstering national energy security amid volatile oil and gas markets. Despite growing political and economic headwinds against renewables, the strong deployment of renewable energy provides factual arguments to counter affordability and energy-security disinformation campaigns.

This does not mean that every renewable project is cheap, that deployment is frictionless, or that legitimate concerns about grids, permitting, supply chains and financing can be dismissed. In fact, acknowledging these challenges is essential to maintaining trust. But it does mean that political discussions about the transition need to keep pace with the underlying economics

Businesses are already responding to this changing landscape, including US investors. In a recent global business leader poll, 91% of executives say renewables-powered electrification would improve energy security, while 79% say geopolitical instability has made their own business shift to electrification more urgent.

Civil society at the heart of the solution

Academics, think-tanks, and NGOs have become key partners to governments, corporates, and multilateral organisations to leverage information integrity for climate change and action.

They play a key role in monitoring and exposing falsehoods through campaigns to counter viral climate disinformation. Their work also seeks to bridge public perception gaps and serve as a preventive measure before people encounter disinformation. These include underscoring the robust scientific consensus on human-induced climate change (97%) and the often-overlooked global public support (89%) for governments to take stronger climate action.

Actions also include strategic communication, which covers the promotion of trusted messengers to bring accessible and comprehensible science to different audiences across platforms. Advertisement campaigns also provide diverse frameworks and methodologies to expose corporate greenwashing, as well as support communities in overcoming climate misinformation and endorse renewable energy projects.

Ensuring the agenda takes hold

Despite the growing momentum behind the global information integrity agenda, it is key to extend its reach beyond experts so that a resilient information environment with accessible and comprehensive scientific information guides public and political discussions. For this, information integrity should be widely recognised as a key component of the critical infrastructure supporting the clean energy transition.

Recent spaces like COP30 and the Climate Summit during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week 2025, and civil society platforms such as London Climate Action Week in 2026, have brought information integrity to the centre of the clean energy transition agenda. More of these are needed.

Advancing the information integrity and climate action agenda depends on coalitions of diplomats, policymakers, industry leaders, and civil society progressing evidence-based discussions. Such collaborations enable mutual learning and strategic partnerships to build a secure and expansive information ecosystem that supports a rapid and ambitious transition to renewables.

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Not Even Israelis Are Willing To Die For Israel

And Other Notes

Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 22, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/not-even-israelis-are-willing-to?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=207992457&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said during a conference on Tuesday that Israel “has no interest” in participating in the ongoing military exchanges between the US and Iran, asserting that “the current situation is the best one for us.”

While Smotrich is certainly correct that it is to Israel’s benefit to stand aside and let the Americans do all the fighting and dying in this conflict, this is a noteworthy admission about a war that the US State Department says the White House ordered “at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally.”

There are three groups of people who consistently say “I’m not fucking dying for Israel”:

1. US soldiers,

2. Americans at risk of being drafted into a large-scale war, and

3. Israelis.

You see this all the time. Back in March when the US was contemplating a ground invasion of Iran, the Israeli press were churning out reports assuring their audiences that government officials said the IDF would not be participating in any such operations. Israelis are happy for Americans to die for Israel, but they are unwilling to put their own lives on the line for the Zionist project.

You know who would lay down their lives for their homeland? The Palestinians.

The Palestinians have made it clear that they are willing to die for Palestine, while the Israelis have made it clear that they are unwilling to die for Israel. For the Israelis, Israel is merely a nice-to-have which they would happily give up if it became too dangerous.

For the Palestinians, that land is home.

The New Yorker has an article out titled “How Biden Enabled Israel’s Aggression Toward Gaza — and Iran,” with the subtitle “Top officials from the previous Administration now express regret over their failure to rein in Netanyahu.” It quotes Jake Sullivan saying “I will say straightforwardly — we should have put more pressure on Israel to take a different approach” on Gaza.

And to that I can only say, fuck you. Seriously, FUCK you.

You don’t get to do this now. You don’t get to turn around and go “Oopsie poopsie, we made a mistake!” This was YOUR genocide, motherfuckers. YOURS. You chose it. You own it. Forever. The stench of the rotting corpses in Gaza will sully your names for all time.

They always planned to do this. They backed a genocide knowing they could always try to spin it as a regrettable error in hindsight, and let their sad feelings of contrition wash their hands of their sins.

Fuck that bullshit. That’s not happening. We’ll never let them forget what they did and what they are.

That same New Yorker article says Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Biden administration to keep secret any small concessions he made in allowing aid into Gaza, saying the Israeli prime minister “feared a domestic backlash for not starving Gaza’s women, children, and other civilians.”

Think about how fucked up a society has to be for its politicians to fear domestic backlash for not starving civilians.

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The other day Fox News host Jesse Watters joked and laughed about how the US military’s new testosterone testing policy is going to lead to soldiers with overloaded testosterone levels sexually assaulting women.

“Yeah, I want these guys on it, but you know what’s gonna happen? The guys that don’t need it are gonna take it, to triple boost,” Watters said Thursday, chuckling. “And then they’re gonna get out there, and women on base, you guys better be careful. Port calls, women in Asia, you better be careful, because these guys are gonna be wild animals and you better watch out.”

Ho ho, ha ha, watch out ladies you’re gonna get raped by US soldiers just like untold millions of other women around the world throughout history, ha ha, wocka wocka, comedy laugh laugh.

The Murdoch press is cancer.

I saw a tweet from Zionist pundit Joe Walsh saying “If you hate the state of Israel, you hate Jews. If you are pledged to the destruction of the state of Israel, you hate Jews. If you do not believe the state of Israel has a right to exist, you hate Jews.”

If you keep feeding the public the lie that they need to choose between supporting genocide and hating Jews, people are going pick hate Jews, because they don’t want to support genocide. When that happens, the blame will rest on all these pricks who circulated this lie.

You don’t get to just pretend all this fretting about “antisemitism” is happening separately from the agenda to stomp out all criticism of Israel and its abuses. You don’t get to demand that I treat them as separate things. They’re inseparable agendas. I wish they weren’t, but they are.

If you come up to me babbling about how Jews are afraid and mistreated, then I’m going to automatically treat this as apologia for a genocidal apartheid state, because that’s the primary agenda that this rhetoric is being used to promote today. It’s not my fault that this is how I respond to allegations of antisemitism. It’s the fault of the people who have weaponized such allegations to promote genocide, apartheid, war, and tyranny.

If you want me to take allegations of “antisemitism” seriously, then you must first bring to an end the campaign to use that term as a cudgel to shut down pro-Palestine protests and silence Israel’s critics. That is what you’ll need to do before I will give you the benefit of the doubt and listen to you like you’re a good-faith actor. The information ecosystem is currently far too full of genocidal Zionists lying about their experiences, their feelings, their intentions, and what has happened to them for me to listen credulously to stories about discrimination against Jews in the year 2026.

It’s so surreal how we are still expected in mainstream western society to listen to concern trolling about “antisemitism” without immediately thinking about things like Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, war, and genocide. We’re expected to listen patiently to stories about how western Jews feel unsafe without ever looking at all those elephants in the room. It’s insulting. It’s degrading.

If the main reason antisemitism gets mentioned these days is because of opposition to Israel’s mass atrocities, then obviously I’m going to assume that’s the driving motivator behind your words when you mention it. Of course that’s going to be my default assumption. Obviously. Duh.

July 27, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Theocratic Trap – How Divine Claims Become Engines of Destruction

20 July 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/the-theocratic-trap-how-divine-claims-become-engines-of-destruction/

I. The Definition: A Mask for Power

The word “theocracy” was coined by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the first century CE to describe the polity of ancient Israel – a form of government in which God himself is recognized as the head of state, and divine law is the statute book. Taken literally, theocracy means “rule by God” and refers primarily to an internal “rule of the heart.”

But what begins as a claim to divine guidance inevitably becomes something else. As Josephus himself understood, theocracy is a form of government in which “the laws of the commonwealth are the commandments of God, and they are promulgated and expounded by the accredited representatives of the invisible Deity, real or supposed—generally a priesthood.”

This is the fatal flaw. The claim to speak for God is the ultimate abdication of personal accountability. When human beings claim divine authority, they place themselves beyond criticism, beyond question, beyond moral restraint. The hierarchy that forms around such claims – the priesthood, the clergy, the self-appointed guardians of divine will – becomes an engine of control that inevitably turns toward violence.

II. The Pre-Westphalian Pattern: Religious Wars as the Norm

For more than a century before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europe was consumed by religious wars arising from the Protestant Reformations. The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which the Peace of Westphalia finally concluded, was the last great religious war in Western Europe – a conflict that had “broken out as a result of confessional conflicts between Catholic and Protestant states” and “inflamed vast regions at the heart of Europe.”

The lesson of that era is clear: when religion becomes the justification for war, there is no limit to the violence. The theocratic impulse – the claim that God is on your side and that your enemies are God’s enemies – creates a permission structure for atrocity. As one scholar notes, the pre-Westphalian era was “riven by murderous ideological divisions” that produced wars fought not for faith alone, but for dominance.

The Peace of Westphalia introduced the radical idea that peace was more important than religious unity. It was a turning point—but not an endpoint. The theocratic impulse did not disappear. It merely found new forms.

III. The Jewish Bund: Human Rights, Democracy, and Universalism

In 1897, the same year that Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, another Jewish movement was born in Tsarist Russia: the General Jewish Labour Bund.

The Bund was “a secular, socialist, defiantly Jewish, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist revolutionary party.” Its members were “young Jewish Marxists who wanted to overthrow the tsar and establish democratic socialism, but also to liberate their own people.”

The Bund’s political project was built on:

Do’ikayt (“here-ness”) – the principle that Jews should build viable communities wherever they lived, rather than seeking an ethnostate in Palestine.
Internationalism – the belief that Jewish liberation was inseparable from the liberation of all peoples.
Universal human rights – the demand for “equal civil and political rights for the Jews in Russia” and for all oppressed peoples.
Anti-Zionism – the rejection of the idea that Jewish identity required a state of its own. The Bundists “fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but ‘here where we live.’”

As Bundist leader Henryk Erlich presciently warned in 1938: “Zionism, in point of fact, has always been a Siamese twin of antisemitism… The Zionists regard themselves as second-class citizens in Poland. Their aim is to be first-class citizens in Palestine and to make the Arabs second-class citizens.”

The Bund was “deeply committed to universal humanist values and to socialist politics.” It rejected “all ethnonationalism, including Zionism” and believed that “Jewish national problems arising within the countries where Jews reside can be solved on the basis of freedom and democracy.”

This was the alternative to theocracy: not divine rule, but human rights. Not exclusivity, but solidarity. Not conquest, but coexistence.

IV. Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism: The Theocratic Turn

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, represented a fundamentally different vision. He advocated a “revision” of practical Zionism in favour of “political Zionism” – the idea that Zionism was essentially a political movement, not a cultural or spiritual one.

Jabotinsky’s ideology was built on:

Exclusivism – the belief that Jewish national identity must take precedence over all other considerations.
State sovereignty – the conviction that only a Jewish state could solve the “Jewish problem.”
Ethnonationalism – the elevation of Jewish national identity above universal human values.

By the late 1930s, Revisionist Zionism had become “a right-wing tendency” with branches that included the Irgun, which conducted campaigns of violence against British authorities in Palestine. After World War II, Revisionist ideology evolved into the political and religious movements that now dominate Israeli politics.

In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the “nation-state law,” which codified “Jewish supremacy” into law and “effectively mirror[ed] the Nazi-era legislation of ethnoreligious stratification of German citizenry.” As one analysis notes, the law stipulates that “actualisation of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people” – meaning that the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel are “without sovereignty or agency, forever living at the mercy of Israeli Jews.”

The theocratic impulse had found its modern expression: not a priesthood ruling in God’s name, but an ethnostate ruling in the name of a chosen people.

V. The Modern Manifestation: Gaza and the Theology of Extermination

The invocation of divine mandate has been central to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. In a speech on March 2, 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “In this week’s Torah portion, we read ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember and we act.”

This reference to Amalek – the Biblical nation that God commanded King Saul to “destroy all they have, and do not let them live. Kill both man and woman, child and baby” – has become “an oft-used phrase at the highest levels of Israel’s government, a dog whistle well understood to call for the extermination of the Palestinians.”

UN institutions, international and Israeli human rights NGOs, and scholars of genocide studies have “classified the wide use of the Amalek rhetoric across Israeli politics and the military as a clear incitement to genocide.” Netanyahu’s invocation of Amalek was “explicitly cited as direct incitement to genocide.”

In June 2026, a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.” The commission found that the “intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued, causing unprecedented death, injury and trauma to Palestinian children.”

The theocratic claim – the assertion of divine mandate – has become the justification for atrocity. As one report notes, “Wipe out the memory of Amalek” has become a rallying cry for those who seek the extermination of the Palestinian people.

VI. The Two Threads: Universalism vs. Exclusivism

The divergence between the Bund and Revisionist Zionism represents two fundamentally different visions of Jewish identity:

The Bund (Universalism) Revisionist Zionism (Exclusivism)
Human rights for all Rights for Jews only
Democracy and socialism Ethnostate and supremacy
Coexistence where you live Conquest of Palestine
International solidarity National chauvinism
Anti-Zionist Zionist

As Molly Crabapple’s recent history of the Bund documents, “Bundists themselves foresaw the inevitable inversion of victim and perpetrator demanded by Zionist ideology.” The Bund’s philosophy of do’ikayt – “here-ness” – offered a vision of Jewish life that did not require the dispossession of another people.

Today, those who place “human values, human rights and universalities above themselves” – the heirs of the Bund’s internationalist tradition – face threats not only from the Israeli far-right but also from figures like Donald Trump, who has embraced the same ethnonationalist rhetoric that fuels theocracy.

VII. The Pattern: How Theocracy Becomes Killing

The pattern is consistent across history:

A claim to divine authority – human beings assert that they speak for God.
The creation of hierarchy – a priesthood or ruling class that interprets divine will.
The denial of accountability – those who claim divine authority place themselves beyond criticism.
The dehumanization of the “other” – those who are not part of the chosen community are cast as enemies of God.
The justification of violence – killing in the name of God becomes not only permissible, but sacred.

This pattern is visible in the pre-Westphalian religious wars of Europe, in the Nazi regime, and in the modern State of Israel. As one commentator notes, “the genocidal ideology the fans espouse” is rooted in “extremist religious nationalism, and the concentration of executive power.”

The claim to divine authority is always a mask for human power. The theocracy is always a hierarchy. And the hierarchy always protects itself – even at the cost of genocide.

VIII. Conclusion: The Choice Before Us

The theocratic impulse – the claim to speak for God – is the oldest and most persistent engine of human violence. It allows the powerful to place themselves beyond accountability. It allows the hierarchy to claim divine sanction for its crimes. It allows the killers to believe they are doing God’s work.
But there is another way.
The Bund offered it: a vision of Jewish identity rooted in universal human rights, democratic socialism, and international solidarity. A vision that rejected ethnonationalism and embraced do’ikayt – the commitment to build a just society wherever one lives.
That vision was nearly destroyed by the Holocaust and by Stalinism. But it survives – in the memory of those who fought for it, and in the example of those who continue to resist the theocratic impulse.

The choice is clear. We can continue to worship the theocracy – to bow before those who claim divine authority and commit atrocity in God’s name. Or we can choose the Bund’s path: human rights, democracy, and the recognition that no one speaks for God.

Theocracies are not built by the devout. They are built by the powerful, who use God’s name to mask their own ambitions. And they always, always lead to killing.

References

Theocracy. Wikipedia.
Theocracy. Catholic Encyclopedia.
Peace of Westphalia. World History Encyclopedia.
The Enduring Lessons of the Jewish Bund. The Nation, 10 April 2026.
‘For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’. The Guardian, 8 April 2026.
Revisionist Zionism. Wikipedia.
Israel Is Using Its Genocidal Gaza Playbook on Iran. The Nation, 6 March 2026.
Israel’s ‘nation-state law’ parallels the Nazi Nuremberg Laws. Al Jazeera, 26 July 2018.
UN commission: Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children. UN News, 23 June 2026.
Blot Out the Memory of Amalek from Under Heaven. De Gruyter Brill, 2025.
General Jewish Labour Bund. Wikipedia.
Bundism. Wikipedia.

July 24, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

The Forgotten Jewish Movement That Rejected Zionism.

By Nadege Bizimungu, The Tea with Myriam François, Jul 21, 2026

Jewish mass movement that rejected the idea of a Jewish state ever existing was, for much of its history, more popular than Zionism. Here’s why almost nobody has heard of it.

Poland in the 1930s had the largest Jewish population in Europe, and the single most popular party among Jewish voters there wasn’t Zionist. It didn’t want a Jewish state at all.

It ran schools, published newspapers and even organized armed militias to defend Jewish communities. According to an analysis of Bund election results published in the Yiddish studies journal In geveb, the party won roughly 38 percent of the vote for Jewish parties in the last Polish municipal elections before the war, more than any single Zionist party, though the combined Zionist lists narrowly edged it out overall. Its members were fiercely opposed to Zionism and thought it was a fantasy, and they said so bluntly and often.

That party was the Jewish Labour Bund. Today, few people know its name, but at its peak it was one of the most important Jewish political movements in Europe. Its existence challenges a common idea about Jewish history: that Zionism was the only response to antisemitism. For decades, millions of Jews supported a different vision. They believed the answer was not a new country, but fighting for equality where Jews already lived.

The Bund was founded in October 1897, when thirteen young Jewish Marxists met secretly in an attic in Vilna, then part of the Russian Empire. That’s the same year Theodor Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel. Zionism argued that Jewish safety required leaving Europe and building a state. The Bund argued the opposite: stay, and fight for equality where Jews already lived, in solidarity with non-Jewish workers and socialist movements. The Yiddish word for this was doikayt, “hereness,” and it rejected the idea that Jewish life needed a single homeland at all.

The party grew fast, and contemporaries noticed. The Menshevik theorist Georgi Plekhanov reportedly called Jewish workers “the vanguard of the labor army in Russia.” Historian Bertram Wolfe later described the Bund as the largest and best organized body of workingmen inside the Russian empire. By 1906 its membership had reportedly reached around 40,000, briefly making it the biggest socialist organization in the empire, and by interwar Poland it had built an entire subculture: youth movements, sports clubs, a network of secular Yiddish schools. Jack Jacobs’s research on the interwar Bund treats it as a genuine mass institution, not a fringe faction.

None of this was naive pacifism. Bund militias organized armed self-defense against pogroms and antisemitic gangs on the streets of interwar Warsaw, decades before “Jewish strength” became coded as an Israeli idea. When the Nazis invaded, Bundists fought in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first urban revolt against Nazi occupation anywhere in Europe. One of its fighters, a Bundist teenager named Lusiek Blones, was thirteen years old.

The rivalry between Bundists and Zionists ran deep, and it was rooted in a real disagreement about what antisemitism demanded of Jews. Bundists argued that if European governments were insisting Jews were foreign and should leave, then Zionism, by proposing that Jews do exactly that, was conceding the antisemites’ premise rather than refuting it. Zionists saw it differently: as a response to the repeated failure of emancipation and assimilation to protect Jews anywhere in the diaspora. After the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain backed a Jewish “national home” in Palestine, Bundists increasingly viewed Zionism as bound up with imperial power rather than freed from it, a colonial project underwritten by the same empires that had failed to protect Jews in the first place.

The Bund wasn’t beaten in that argument, though. It was murdered. The Holocaust wiped out the working-class Jewish communities that had sustained the party for half a century. Historian David Slucki has documented how the postwar Bund never came close to rebuilding its prewar scale, plateauing at just a few thousand members worldwide by the late 1950s. Daniel Blatman’s research on the Bund’s final years in Poland, from 1939 to 1949, traces a parallel political defeat: Stalinist repression, including the 1942 murder of Bundist leaders Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter by Soviet secret police, finished what the Nazis had started.

Zionist institutions in Palestine, meanwhile, survived the war intact. In her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country, artist and journalist Molly Crabapple, whose account of the Bund this piece draws heavily on, argues that Zionist organizations controlled much of the rations, housing, and paperwork in the displaced-persons camps after the war, and used that leverage to funnel traumatized survivors toward Palestine. A movement with no population left to organize couldn’t compete with one that still had territory, infrastructure, and international backing behind it.

That imbalance is also why the Bund disappeared from memory rather than from relevance. It lost its people, not its argument, and a movement without survivors to carry its institutions forward simply stops being written about, no matter how large it once was.

The premise Zionism was built on, that Jewish safety requires a Jewish ethnostate, is now facing its sharpest public challenge in decades. Nearly three years into Israel’s war on Gaza, which the UN and earlier findings from Amnesty International and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have described as genocide, support for Israel has fallen sharply, including among Jews themselves. Younger American Jews are significantly less likely than older generations to see support for Israel as central to Jewish identity, while nearly half of American Jews under 35 now say they would support a single binational state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians. In Britain, young Jews who identify as anti-Zionist or non-Zionist now roughly match those who identify as Zionist.Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, a longtime critic of his own government, has called this the “beginning of the end of the Zionist project,” pointing to internal political fracture, international isolation, and economic strain as evidence.

For Crabapple, this shift is also personal. She spent seven years writing Here Where We Live Is Our Country, much of it while Israel’s campaign in Gaza was underway. in an interview on Democracy Now!, she said there was something almost unbearable about reconstructing the destruction of Warsaw’s Jews while watching a country invoke the Holocaust to justify what was happening in Gaza. “It broke me,” she said, “in probably ways that I have difficulty expressing.”

What this history suggests, isn’t a clean answer to the hardest questions about what a just political future looks like after decades of occupation and violence. It’s something narrower, and maybe more useful: proof that at the exact moment Jewish nationalism was taking shape, a mass, organized, genuinely popular Jewish movement existed that rejected the idea that Jewish liberation had to come at another people’s dispossession. It didn’t lose that argument. It was destroyed by fascism, the Holocaust, and Stalinist repression, and its ideas went down with it, not because they were wrong, but because there was no one left alive to keep making the case.

July 23, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, history, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Anti-zionist Jew Exposes Zionism’s Best Kept Secret | Molly Crabapple

Dr Myriam François

July 23, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

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.

July 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

What ceasefire? People still being killed and Gaza still under siege

by Cathy Peters | Jul 11, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/what-ceasefire-gaza-still-under-siege/

As Jillian Segal denied the undeniable at the Bondi Royal Commission this week, not much is changing in Gaza, and Trump’s Board of Peace stands by idly. Cathy Peters with the latest.

In a move that’s been largely unreported here, Hamas announced earlier this week that it would dissolve its governing Emergency Committee with the resignation of its acting leader.

This move has been recognised as an attempt to hasten the transfer of administrative authority to the Trump-appointed Board of Peace’s National Committee for the Management of Gaza (NCAG), a body of Palestinian technocrats, assembled and waiting in Cairo to manage public administration, security, recovery and transition throughout the Gaza Strip as part of the agreed ceasefire plan.

However, despite being established in January this year, the NCAG has not yet been given access to enter Gaza by the Board of Peace or Israel.

Trump’s controversial Board of Peace predictably dismissed Hamas’ move, stating that the NCAG is not yet in a position to take on this role while Hamas retains control of weapons. Hamas maintains that while Israel is still killing Palestinians, it will not disarm.

Nine months since the Gaza ceasefire and Trump’s 20-point peace plan of October 2025, conditions throughout the Strip have remained unlivable and deadly for Palestinians, with more than 1000 killed by Israeli forces and more than 3,500 injured.

“Parents stay awake all night in their tents to stop rats feeding on their children”

The amount of humanitarian aid is far short of what is required, and there is a trickle of medical evacuations despite some 16,500 Palestinians needing urgent medical transfer out of Gaza.

A Board of inaction

The UN Security Council supported the establishment of the Board of Peace in November last year, noting that it would be temporary and transitional, although Trump subsequently declared it would address other world conflicts beyond Gaza.

The composition of the Board of Peace Executive and the Gaza Executive Board includes a number of Trump’s leadership team, plus other Republican operatives, wealthy U.S.businessmen and real estate magnates, as well as Tony Blair.

Donald Trump – Chairman for life
Marco Rubio – U.S. Secretary of State

Jared Kushner – U.S. presidential advisor and son-in-law

Steve Witkoff – U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East

Tony Blair – Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Marc Rowan – CEO of Apollo Global Management

Ajay Banga – President of the World Bank Group

Qatar and the UAE and more Republican government appointees. Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff and former Trump campaign adviser. and Robert Gabriel, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor.

According to the UN Security Council Resolution 2803, this body has UN support to ‘set the framework and coordinate funding for the redevelopment of Gaza’ until the Palestinian Authority has ‘satisfactorily reformed’. It also authorised the Board to deploy a temporary International Stabilisation Force in Gaza; however, this has not occurred.

Israel has moved some of the anti-Hamas Palestinian militias it’s been arming and funding for three years now into the area it has occupied behind the yellow line. These various militias, led by factional gangs, drug lords and criminals, pose additional threats to Hamas disarming and the transition of power to a Palestinian-led reconstruction committee and the ultimate withdrawal of the IDF.

Yellow and orange lines

The Israeli-defined ‘yellow line ’, according to Israel’s legal NGO Gisha, pushes more than two million people into less than half of the Strip’s territory, exacerbating unbearable overcrowding that is harming public health, including outbreaks of disease and infestation of rats and other pests.

Israel’s seizure of such vast areas also prevents Gaza residents from returning to their homes and lands. Most of Gaza’s agricultural lands lie east of the Yellow Line, meaning they are within areas controlled by Israel. Continued denial of access for farmers to their lands prevents the rehabilitation of vital food sources.

From March 2025, Israel instituted the ‘orange’ line, a line that delineates almost 48% of Gaza’s land mass where any international organisations are prohibited from moving with prior coordination with Israeli authorities. Gisha reports that this orange line is now a new border that has expanded the area that Israel now directly controls.

While negotiations have stalled for 9 months on the initial implementation of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF, following on from Netanyahu’s call in May, has now occupied almost 70% of Gaza, with the yellow cement perimeter markers defining an ever-shrinking area where 2.1 million war-wounded and dispossessed Palestinians are helplessly surviving.

Remote-controlled machine guns

Everyone in Gaza is constantly monitored by drones, and now occupying the eastern perimeter of this dystopian landscape are 23 massive military cranes equipped with remote-controlled machine guns and high-tech surveillance cameras inside the Israeli IDF-defined yellow line. Gaza journalist Tamar Nahed posted this description of Israel’s latest killing apparatus,

“These cranes have turned the entire city into an open field. The latest military technologies are directed at civilians. We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons. The horror is not just in the sound… it is the constant feeling of being an exposed target at all times.”

In the first week of July, the Board of Peace declared that there was no role for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, which is a continuation of the Israeli ban on this aid organisation, which has supported Palestinians with essential humanitarian and educational aid in Gaza since 1948.

This announcement negates the Charter of the United Nations, international law principles and fundamental human rights standards.

Shelters or camps?

Despite the Board’s apparent refusal to allow the Palestinian committee of bureaucrats (NCAG) into Gaza, the Israeli news outlet Israel Hayom just reported on plans aimed at relocating Palestinian residents into barbed wire fenced designated areas. This will allow the IDF to ‘deepen its grip on areas outside of the yellow line’.

“Surviving Palestinians will be herded into fenced “humanitarian shelters” policed by foreign forces,” as reported by Israel Hayom on July 2.

Images of a camp that’s been described as a concentration camp have emerged in Tel Al-Sultan, an area near Rafah where a pilot project of ‘humanitarian shelters’ will be established. Civilians will be channelled into Tel Al-Sultan, which was a densely populated area of Rafah from which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ordered to flee in April last year.

This image of stark, freshly flattened land surrounded by barbed wire fences and covered with masses of metal box shelters and no evidence of any permanent cement structures (as directed by Israel) appears to be a horrific precursor to

“a very grim future for Palestinians in Gaza.“

It recalls Israel Defence Minister Katz’s plan of a year ago of a ‘humanitarian city’ on the ruins of Rafah, where the goal was to screen people before they were allowed to enter to ensure they were not Hamas and then refuse any exits except to third countries.

Legal immunity

The Board of Peace convened in Cyprus at the end of June for 3 days to “reset” after “the Iran war has completely shifted the attention in the last several months,” according to an official source. It sought to address the funding shortfalls, logistical delays and security challenges.

One of the more controversial draft resolutions was the Board’s plan to grant legal immunity to its members, contractors, and security forces; therefore

“shielding the whole enterprise from potential legal proceedings”.

As reported widely, human rights lawyers are highly critical of this proposal, including Palestinian American lawyer and academic, Noura Erakat, “They are basically saying there’s no external oversight, including applicable international law regarding occupation. It’s creating a legal system unto itself.”

At the same time, the IDF has reportedly called for fighting to resume as senior officers in the IDF claim that Hamas’ military wing is rebuilding. Hamas has maintained that it will only disarm under the auspices of the Palestinian NCAG and when Phase 1 of the ceasefire agreement is achieved, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces to agreed positions, full implementation of humanitarian measures and a complete end to Israel’s military attacks.

The nightmare on the ground in Gaza for Palestinians continues. The machinations of Trump’s Board of Peace appear to be

“stymying any chance for genuine reconstruction of Gaza“

led by Palestinians for Palestinians. The available evidence at this point is that the 1000-day-plus Israeli genocide in Gaza continues apace behind the veneer of Trump’s ‘peace’ plan and the continuing indifference of world powers.

Cathy Peters

Cathy Peters is a former ABC RN producer/executive producer and Greens councillor on the former Marrickville Council. She also worked for a state Greens MP and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights. In 2014, she co-founded PSNA / BDS Australia. She has Jewish heritage, has travelled and volunteered in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

July 18, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Empire Managers Invent Fake Threats So We Won’t Fight The Real Monsters

Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 04, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/empire-managers-invent-fake-threats?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=205002670&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Western politics is mostly just empire managers making up fake problems to fight so they don’t have to address the real problems.

Can’t stop waging wars or the western empire will collapse. So they make up fake threats from dictators and tyrants and take action to stop them.

Can’t stop inflating the military budget and circling the planet with more and more war machinery or the military-industrial complex will stop reaping profits. So they tell you to be afraid of Muslims and “terrorists” and Russia and China and take action to protect you from them.

Can’t stop polluting the world and destroying the biosphere or capitalism will perish. So they split us into two mainstream warring factions arguing about culture war wedge issues and promise to protect each faction from the other side.

Can’t stop supporting Israeli atrocities or they’ll hamstring their hegemonic agendas in west Asia and make an enemy of the Zionists. So they create a boogie man of “antisemitism” and set up envoys, inquiries and task forces dedicated to stopping it.

Can’t get money out of politics and stop wealthy oligarchs from using their riches to manipulate western politics to their advantage, because the oligarchs run the empire. So they fearmonger about “communism” on the right and tell the centrists that the leftists are costing them elections.

Can’t stop ramping up authoritarianism and eroding the civil liberties of the citizenry or else they won’t be able to suppress future revolutions. So they cite unpopular people and groups as reasons why the authoritarianism is necessary to protect the public while constructing a giant cage of surveillance and control around everyone.

Can’t stop coercively extracting resources and labor from the global south because that’s the whole reason the empire was set up in the first place. So they tell everyone the immigrants are the source of all their problems and make western politics revolve around immigration policy.

The empire managers make up fake problems to solve because the empire is the source of all the real problems

They make up fake monsters to protect us from because they themselves are the real monsters.

They make up imaginary ghouls and goblins lurking around every corner because they don’t want us looking up and seeing the real bastards who are poisoning our world.

July 7, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Root Cause of Criminal War Against Iran: Islamic Law Prohibits Usury.

April 10, 2026, Source: ScheerPost.com, Article republished by Jerry Alatalo, https://onenessofhumanity.wordpress.com/

[Editor’s note: Islam prohibits usury, known as riba, which is considered a major sin because it involves unjust exploitation and unfair gains in financial transactions. (Usury inculcates man with corruption and takes him from the main objective of his existence and makes him a slave of money. It turns him from a human being into a money seeker who is blinded by money and for whom money is the most important thing in life.) The Quran explicitly condemns riba, emphasizing that it leads to economic injustice and social inequality

All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars: Iran and the Bankers’ Endgame – https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/10/all-wars-are-bankers-wars-iran-and-the-bankers-endgame/…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

June 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Religion and ethics, weapons and war | 1 Comment

“Our Hands Are Dirty”: Jeffrey Wernick on America’s Founding Principles, Foreign Entanglements and the Moral Cost of Empire

Invoking George Washington, John Quincy Adams and the American abolitionist tradition, Jeffrey Wernick argues that permanent foreign attachments and endless war have pushed the United States far from the values it claims to defend.

XCNEERPOST, May 28, 2026, Joshua Scheer

Jeffrey Wernick delivers a sweeping and deeply provocative meditation on American foreign policy, arguing that the United States has abandoned the very principles its founders warned were essential to preserving the republic. Drawing on George Washington’s farewell address and John Quincy Adams’ warning that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” Wernick contends that modern U.S. policy has become defined by permanent alliances, military entanglements and moral contradictions that the founders would have viewed as dangerous to both liberty and republican government.

At the center of the speech is a sharp critique of America’s relationship with Israel and the broader logic of interventionist foreign policy. Wernick argues that U.S. support for occupation, military domination and endless regional conflict cannot be reconciled with the founding ideals of consent of the governed and universal human equality. At the same time, he rejects the cynical argument that America’s own historical crimes somehow excuse present injustices. Instead, he insists that the nation’s history of slavery, colonialism and war should deepen the obligation to resist repeating those patterns — not normalize them.

Moving between constitutional argument, moral philosophy and historical reflection, Wernick frames the current moment as a crisis of American identity itself: whether the country will continue down a path of empire and permanent war, or recover what he describes as the original American tradition of diplomacy without domination, commerce without conquest and principles applied universally rather than selectively.

Transcript

Our Hands Are Dirty: A Question of American Values

Jeffrey Wernick

In 1796, George Washington gave a farewell address to the American people. In it, he gave one specific warning: avoid permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

He didn’t say avoid trade.
He didn’t say avoid diplomacy.

He said avoid the permanent attachments — the standing commitments that would entangle America in disputes that weren’t its own, generate domestic factions whose loyalties divided, and corrupt republican judgment with what he called:

“Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists.”

That sentence was written 230 years ago. Read it again. It describes our present moment with uncomfortable precision.

Twenty-five years after Washington’s address, John Quincy Adams stood as Secretary of State and faced calls for America to intervene on behalf of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks were a sympathetic cause. They were fighting for freedom. They wanted American support.

Adams refused.

And the words he used to refuse have come down through American history:

“She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

He went further. If America went abroad in search of monsters, he warned:

“She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

This was the American foreign policy tradition at its founding.

Not isolationism.

Commerce with all nations.
Diplomacy with all nations.
Temporary cooperation when American interests required it.

But no permanent attachments.
No going abroad to fight other people’s wars.
No identification of American interests with the interests of any particular foreign country.

That tradition has been almost entirely abandoned in modern American foreign policy.

And it wasn’t abandoned through democratic deliberation. It was set aside quietly through executive arrangements and political pressure until departing from it required explanation, while maintaining it became invisible.

When we accept the modern framework as the natural baseline, certain questions become almost impossible to ask — the very questions Washington and Adams considered foundational.

Should the United States maintain treaty-equivalent commitments to foreign countries without ratified treaties?

Under the founders’ framework, the answer is obviously no. The Treaty Clause exists precisely to prevent permanent attachments from forming without Senate deliberation.

When such attachments form anyway through executive agreements, lobbying pressure and political momentum, they bypass the constitutional architecture designed to prevent them.

Should American military resources be expended defending another nation’s territory when that nation has chosen not to enter a treaty that would create reciprocal obligations?

Again, under the founders’ framework, no……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

American forces have expended more strategic missile defense ordnance defending Israel than Israel itself has expended defending itself.

This is in service of a war Israeli leadership reportedly pushed the United States to join.

Iran is not invading the United States.
Iran has no capability to invade the United States.

Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 and accepted the most intrusive nuclear inspections regime ever applied to any country under the JCPOA.

Israel has not signed the NPT, has no IAEA inspections, and maintains an undeclared nuclear arsenal.

The state that accepted inspections is treated as the proliferation threat.
The state that refused inspections is treated as the legitimate party demanding constraints on the inspected one……………………………………………………………………………………..

Permanent military rule over millions of people who have no voting rights in the government controlling their lives, no freedom of movement, no citizenship and no realistic political path to acquiring any of these — that is government without consent of the governed.

Exactly the kind of illegitimate rule the founders identified when they applied the analysis to themselves………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

So let me ask the question plainly:

Is it an American value to conquer, occupy and permanently subjugate another people?

Is it an American value to treat some human beings as less than fully human?

No…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/28/our-hands-are-dirty-jeffrey-wernick-on-americas-founding-principles-foreign-entanglements-and-the-moral-cost-of-empire/

June 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, USA | 1 Comment

Barbarism With Better Software: Pope Leo Warns of the AI Future

Joshua Scheer, May 26, 2026 , https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/26/barbarism-with-better-software-pope-leo-warns-of-the-ai-future/

Pope Leo XIV is warning that artificial intelligence, if left in the hands of profit-hungry corporations and unaccountable tech oligarchs, could unleash a “social calamity” by replacing human work. And now even the markets are beginning to price in the fear. Prediction traders on Kalshi see a 60% chance that U.S. unemployment crosses 8% before 2030, while also betting that AI may already be the leading cause of job cuts this month.

With the Pope writing “Work remains a fundamental dimension of the human experience, for not only is it a means of sustenance, but it is also a context for expression, relationships and contributing to the community,” … A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity, a lack of responsibility and the absence of daily tasks and stimuli, resulting in human and cultural impoverishment.”

Tolkien, Gandalf and the Fight Over Humanity in the Age of AI

In one of the encyclical’s most striking moments, Pope Leo invokes the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien while calling for humanity to “disarm” artificial intelligence and resist technological domination. Without directly naming Gandalf, Leo references a passage from one of Tolkien’s novels that reflects a central moral theme running through The Lord of the Rings: ordinary people confronting immense forces of power and corruption not by controlling the world, but by defending what is human within it.The passage speaks to the responsibility of people to care for “the fields that we know,” preserving a livable future for those who come after us rather than seeking mastery over all things.

The reference is notable not only because it is believed to be the first major incorporation of Tolkien into a high-level Vatican doctrinal document, but because it reveals the philosophical core of Leo’s warning about AI. Like Tolkien, the Pope appears deeply concerned with the dehumanizing effects of technological power when detached from morality, community and human dignity.

Rather than treating technology as destiny, Leo frames the struggle over AI as a profoundly human and ethical question: whether society will allow machines, corporations and systems of profit to dominate human life — or whether people can still reclaim technology for the common good.

What is striking is not that the Vatican is sounding the alarm. It is that Wall Street, usually eager to celebrate every job-killing “innovation” as efficiency, appears to share the anxiety. The same financial class that cheers automation when it boosts margins is now wagering on the social wreckage it may leave behind.

Pope Leo XIV vs. the AI Oligarchy

Leo’s warning cuts directly through Silicon Valley’s favorite lie: that technology is automatically progress. Work, he argues, is not merely a paycheck. It is dignity, community, purpose and participation in society. A world where machines enrich the few while millions are pushed into “forced inactivity” is not advanced. It is barbarism with better software.

The AI revolution is being sold as liberation. But without democratic control, labor protections and a moral economy, it risks becoming the most sophisticated union-busting machine ever built — a system that turns human beings into obsolete costs while calling the wreckage innovation.

The high priests of the digital economy are beginning to admit what workers have feared for years: artificial intelligence is not simply another technological innovation. It is a mechanism for social restructuring on a scale capable of hollowing out entire societies while concentrating unprecedented power into the hands of a tiny technological elite.

Now, in an extraordinary moment that reveals just how deep the anxiety has become, Pope Leo XIV has entered the fight.

In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Leo issued a direct moral indictment of the AI economy now being constructed by Silicon Valley and Wall Street. He warned that mass unemployment caused by automation could produce “social calamity,” condemning an economic order that treats human beings as disposable inputs in the pursuit of profit.

“The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs,” Leo wrote, arguing that the human person “is an end, not a means.”

The remarkable thing is not simply that the Pope is saying this. It is that the financial markets appear to agree.

On prediction platform Kalshi, traders now place a 60% chance that U.S. unemployment rises above 8% before 2030, with nearly even odds it surpasses 9%. Those are recession-level numbers — the kind associated historically with economic collapse, mass foreclosures and social instability. Yet this time the fear is not merely financial panic. It is technological displacement.

The same corporate class that spent the last decade promising AI would “augment” workers is now openly discussing which sectors can be eliminated first.

Customer service. Journalism. Translation. Design. Coding. Accounting. Legal research. Teaching assistance. Medical diagnostics. Administrative work. Truck driving. Retail logistics. The language has become chillingly clinical: “labor optimization,” “efficiency gains,” “redundancy reduction.” Human lives reduced to balance-sheet obstacles.

Silicon Valley presents this process as inevitable — a law of nature rather than a political choice. But Leo’s encyclical rejects that mythology outright. Technology, he argues, is not neutral when it is controlled by systems organized around extraction and domination.

The Pope’s critique goes far beyond unemployment statistics. He warns that AI is creating a new form of digital colonialism in which data itself becomes the raw material of empire. Entire populations, he writes, are being transformed into “rare earths of power” — mined not for minerals but for behavioral information, biometric profiles, consumption patterns and predictive intelligence.

A handful of corporations now possess more behavioral information about humanity than any government in history. They monitor speech, movement, emotion, consumption and political behavior at planetary scale. AI supercharges that power by transforming raw data into predictive control systems — systems capable not merely of understanding populations, but manipulating them.

And as wealth concentrates upward, the social contract below begins to collapse.

Leo warns that a society where only a small fraction of people maintain meaningful employment — despite immense technological abundance — risks “human and cultural impoverishment.” Work, he insists, is not simply economic survival. It is participation in human life itself: purpose, responsibility, relationships and community.

This is precisely what Silicon Valley’s utopian rhetoric ignores.

For decades, tech billionaires promised automation would liberate humanity from drudgery. Instead, millions find themselves trapped in algorithmic management systems, precarious gig work, surveillance workplaces and endless digital dependency. Productivity exploded while wages stagnated. Corporate profits soared while social bonds disintegrated.

AI threatens to accelerate this process to catastrophic speed.

Even some within the industry appear unnerved by what they are building. Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, appearing beside Pope Leo at the Vatican, admitted there is “a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale.” He acknowledged that no mechanism currently exists to distribute the gains globally or prevent mass social devastation.

That admission alone should shatter the fantasy that the architects of AI possess a coherent plan for humanity’s future.

Because the truth is increasingly obvious: the market has no moral framework for handling technological power of this magnitude.

Capital rewards efficiency, not justice.
Profit, not dignity.
Extraction, not community.

If replacing millions of workers with algorithms increases shareholder returns, the system treats that outcome as success — regardless of the social consequences. Entire regions can collapse into unemployment while stock valuations soar.

This is why Leo’s intervention matters.

He is not merely criticizing technology. He is challenging the economic religion surrounding it.

The modern AI boom rests on an almost theological belief that technological progress is inherently good, that innovation justifies itself, and that those who question the social costs are irrational enemies of the future. Silicon Valley speaks of AI in messianic terms: salvation through computation, transcendence through automation, immortality through machines.

But Leo offers a radically different vision. Human beings are not inefficient machines to be optimized away. Society cannot survive if millions are stripped not only of income, but of meaning and social participation itself.

The danger is not simply that AI becomes powerful.

The danger is that it becomes powerful inside an economic system already defined by staggering inequality, democratic decay and corporate domination.

Under those conditions, automation does not liberate workers.
It liberates corporations from workers.

And unless democratic control over technology emerges soon, the future now being constructed may look less like liberation than a technologically sophisticated form of mass abandonment — a world where unprecedented wealth and productivity coexist beside social despair, permanent unemployment and the slow erosion of human dignity itself.

You can read Leo’s words here:

ENCYCLICAL LETTER
MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS
OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE LEO XIV
ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON
IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

May 29, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

How do you justify a war?

27 May 2026 , Michael Taylor, AIM Extra, https://theaimn.net/how-do-you-justify-a-war/

There comes a point when the language of war stops matching the reality of it:

Bombed apartment blocks become “targets”
Dead children become “collateral damage”
Starving civilians become “human shields”

And anyone who questions the destruction is accused of supporting terrorism. Or, as in extreme cases, of being antisemitic.

Watching Gaza burn, Lebanon bombed, and Iran drawn deeper into conflict, I find myself asking a simple question: How much is enough?

I understand the fear Israel felt after the October 7 attacks. I understand the anger. I understand the desire for justice.

What I no longer understand is the growing acceptance of endless civilian deaths as though morality itself now depends on which side is doing the killing.

At the time of the first bombings of Iran I wrote thaṯ:

“Every night, the news flickers across my screen, a parade of tragedies reduced to numbers and soundbites. Gaza burns, its streets choked with rubble and grief, thousands dead under Israeli bombs. Iran mourns too, its people buried beneath the chaos of escalating strikes. Yet the world’s voice is strangely muted, a whisper where a scream should be. But when Iran’s missiles streak toward Israel, claiming far fewer lives, the headlines roar with horror, and leaders amplify their outrage. I sit in my quiet room… trying to unravel this knot of hypocrisy. Why do some deaths ripple across the globe while others sink like stones in a silent pond?”

Perhaps the most disturbing part of all this is that the violence no longer appears temporary. What began as retaliation now feels like permanent war.

Gaza destroyed. Lebanon bombed. Iran attacked. Assassinations, airstrikes, threats of escalation; each one defended as necessary, each one promising security, while the region grows more unstable by the day.

At some point the world must ask whether this is still self-defence, or whether the Netanyahu government has become trapped in a cycle where military force is no longer a last resort but the first instinct.

A nation traumatised by terror has every right to defend itself. But defence without restraint can slowly transform into something else entirely.

History is filled with governments that believed overwhelming force would finally bring peace. More often, it deepened hatred, radicalised future generations, and left entire regions scarred for decades.

The tragedy is that every new bomb seems to push peace further away:

Civilians bury their children.

Entire cities learn to live with trauma.

Anger hardens across borders.

And leaders, notably Netanyahu and Trump – especially Trump – continue speaking the language of so-called security while ordinary people inherit the consequences of endless war.

This is disturbing. Not simply the bombs or the missiles, but how quickly human suffering becomes normalised when it is politically convenient.

Somewhere beneath the rubble are children who will never grow old, parents who will never return home, and entire generations learning that the world values some lives more than others.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is not that this “justified” war brutalises people, but the silence that eventually surrounds it.

History has taught us that.