Never, Ever Let Anyone Forget What They Did To Gaza
Caitlin Johnstone, 16 May 25, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/never-ever-let-anyone-forget-what?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=163621431&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I will never forget the Gaza holocaust. I will never let anyone else forget about the Gaza holocaust.
No matter what happens or how this thing turns out, I will never let anyone my voice touches forget that our rulers did the most evil things imaginable right in front of us and lied to us about it the entire time.
I will never stop doing everything I can with my own small platform to help ensure that the perpetrators of this mass atrocity are brought to justice.
I will never stop doing everything I can to help bring down the western empire and to help free Palestine from the Zionist entity.
I will never forget those shaking children. Those tiny shredded bodies. Those starved, skeletal forms. The explosions followed by screams. The atrocities followed by western media silence.
I will never forget, and I will never forgive. I will never forgive our leaders. I will never forgive the western press. I will never forgive Israel. I will never forgive the mainstream US political parties. I will always want for them exactly what they wanted for the Palestinians.
No matter what happens or what they do in the future, they will always be the people who did this to Gaza. They will always be the people who inflicted this nightmare upon our species. That will always be the most significant thing about them. It will always be the single most defining characteristic about who they are as human beings.
And the same is true of all the ordinary members of the public who continued to stand with Israel long after evidence of its criminality became undeniable. They are genocide supporters, first and foremost.
If you stood on the side of Israel during the Gaza holocaust, then that is the most important thing about you, and it always will be. It doesn’t matter if you go to church on Sunday. It doesn’t matter if you are nice to your children and your pets. It doesn’t matter if you give money to charity, support local farmers, or drive an electric vehicle. The thing that matters most about you as a person is that you supported history’s first live-streamed genocide, and it always will be the thing that matters most about you.
I will keep bringing this up. Year after year. Decade after decade. I will keep rubbing everyone’s face in it. I will never tire of doing so. I will always do my part to remind the world who these people are, and what they did to Gaza.
The pro-nuclear drive and Zionism are inter-twined.
https://theaimn.net/the-pro-nuclear-drive-and-zionism-are-inter-twined/ 10 May 25
For many years, I’ve been running websites devoted to the nuclear-free movement. People have asked me why, over the past two years, I’ve been including news about Israel and Gaza.
What on earth do Israel and Gaza have to do with the pro-nuclear cause?
Well, unfortunately, quite a lot.
“While everyone believes that the Israelis possess a sizable nuclear arsenal, no one really knows how big that arsenal is. In 2008, President Jimmy Carter estimated that Israel probably had a minimum of 150 weapons in stock ready to use if the most dire circumstances warrant. Six years later, the former President revised that estimate and put the figure in the 300 range, which—based on Carter’s calculations—would mean that Israel doubled its arsenal from the 2008-2014 time-period. “
Of course the Israeli government “does not confirm or deny” that they’ve got nuclear weapons, and the cowardly governments that support Israel similarly do not officially confirm it. And of course Israel has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), or participated in any kind of weapons control negotiations.
In Sep 22, 2023 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran at the United Nations of a “nuclear threat” in what his office quickly walked back as a slip of the tongue. In July 2024 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in a scathing speech to Congress on Wednesday to achieve “total victory” against Hamas.
The Zionist philosophy means that the Jews are God’s chosen people. And the Islamics certainly are not. The attitude of Israel towards the Palestinians is that they are not the same kind of human being as the Jews are. Indeed, it’s OK to starve Gazan children to death – after all, they are some kind of untermenchen.
Well, the genocide of Gazans is being achieved without any need for nuclear weapons. But what about the other Islamics? There’s Yemen, and there’s Iran. Netanyahu believes that Iran poses an existential threat to the Zionist state, and could make a nuclear weapon in a short period of time, making Israel and even the US unable to defeat or contain it.
To what lengths might Netanyahu go, to prevent that? Bomb Iran’s nuclear sites?
And would Donald Trump, an enthusiastic fan of Israel, support that option.
Here’s Trump, seven months ago, urging Israel to make such a strike,
While I’ve been thinking about this for some time, I was prompted to write about it now, after reading an article by Lucy Hamilton in Australian Independent Media, about the close involvement of Australian pro-nuclear front groups with the Zionist movement.
It’s not only Israel that we must worry about, in Australia, and presumably world-wide. If we aim to be nuclear-free, we are up against a lobby determined to have nuclear-weapons superiority, and the Zionist movement is right up there in that determination.
Will the World Speak up Against Israel’s Likely Attack on Humanitarian Activists?
The Conscience was carrying no weapons. It posed no threat. Its only crime was daring to challenge a brutal siege and slaughter that the United Nations itself has condemned as illegal and inhumane.
Medea Benjamin, May 02, 2025, Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/freedom-flotilla-attack
In the early hours of May 2, the quiet of night was shattered aboard the Conscience, a civilian vessel anchored in international waters, 17 kilometers off the coast of Malta. Aboard were 18 crew members and passengers, jolted from sleep by the sound of two explosions. Flames and smoke filled the air. The ship had just been struck—by what the crew members say were drone attacks.
The very day of the attack, more passengers from 21 countries were waiting in Malta to be ferried out to join the Conscience. Among those slated to join the ship were world-renowned environmentalist Greta Thunberg, retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, and longtime CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry.
The Conscience is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, a network of international activists that has been challenging Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza since 2008.
“The U.S. condemns the Houthis for stopping ships carrying weapons to Israel—and bombs Yemen mercilessly for it. But will they condemn Israel for attacking a peaceful ship on a humanitarian mission to Gaza?”
The group alleges that the attack came from Israel—an allegation bolstered by a CNN investigation. According to CNN, flight-tracking data from ADS-B Exchange showed that an Israeli Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft departed from Israel early Thursday afternoon and flew at low altitude over eastern Malta for an extended period. While the Hercules did not land, its path brought it in proximity to the area where the Conscience was later attacked. The plane returned to Israel approximately seven hours later. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the flight data.
The ship suffered significant damage, but fortunately, no one was hurt. That was not the case when the Freedom Flotilla was attacked in 2010. This May 2 attack comes just weeks before the 15th anniversary of the infamous raid on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship that led a previous flotilla to Gaza in 2010. On May 31 of that year, Israeli naval commandos stormed the ship in international waters, killing 10 people and injuring dozens. The Mavi Marmara had been carrying over 500 activists and humanitarian supplies. That attack drew condemnation from around the world and calls for an international investigation—calls that Israel dismissed.
One of this year’s flotilla organizers, Ismail Behesti, is the son of a man killed in the 2010 raid. In videos circulating after the recent strike, Behesti is seen walking through the damaged interior of the Conscience, his voice resolute as he condemns what he believes was another Israeli act of aggression against civilians on a humanitarian mission.
“People are asking how Israel can get away with attacking a civilian ship in international waters,” said Tighe Barry, speaking from the port in Malta. “But since October 8, 2024, Israel has shown complete disregard for international law—from bombing civilian neighborhoods to using starvation as a weapon by blocking food from entering Gaza. This is just one more example of its impunity.”
“Where is the outrage?” Barry continued. “The U.S. condemns the Houthis for stopping ships carrying weapons to Israel—and bombs Yemen mercilessly for it. But will they condemn Israel for attacking a peaceful ship on a humanitarian mission to Gaza?”
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition and activist groups such as CODEPINK are calling on governments and international bodies to speak out and take action.
The Conscience was carrying no weapons. It posed no threat. Its only crime was daring to challenge a brutal siege and slaughter that the United Nations itself has condemned as illegal and inhumane. That’s the real threat Israel fears—not the ship itself, but the global solidarity it represents.
So, will the world speak up about Israel’s latest outrage? Or will this, too, be quietly buried beneath the waves?
Pope Francis Refused to Be Silent on Gaza. Will His Successor Follow Suit?
Even from his hospital bed, Pope Francis continued his near-daily video calls in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza
By Seraj Assi , Truthout, April 27, 2025
Pope Francis, who died on April 21, was a rare beacon of hope for many Palestinians in the long months of the Gaza genocide. The pope refused to be silent on Gaza. For 18 months, he made nearly daily video calls in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, including recent calls he made from his hospital bed. He rang the Holy Family Church in Gaza City every night, speaking with church leaders and displaced Palestinians sheltering there, usually for about 15 minutes.
Pope Francis began one of his most memorable calls to parishioners in Gaza earlier this year by saying “As-salaam Alaikum” (“Peace be upon you”). The video of that call showed his intimate relationship with the small Palestinian Christian community that remains in Gaza, many of whom he came to know by name. His final call to the Gaza Strip, made two days before his death, lasted 30 seconds.
For many in Gaza, those phone calls were a ray of light that shone through the horrors of Israeli genocide, which has killed over 51,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. “His Holiness the pope was not an ordinary person,” Musa Antone, a Christian resident of Gaza, told CNN. “He was a man of faith who inquired about both Christians and Muslims.”
The surviving Christian community in Gaza now mourns Francis’s loss. “We felt like ‘Oh my God, we’re like orphans now,’” lamented George Anton, a local Catholic, and the emergency coordinator in the Holy Family church. “He was a real father to us. Pope Francis was like a shield for the Christians in the enclave. He was the fighter. He was fighting for our rights and for our protection.”
Kamal Anton, a 72-year-old who had taken shelter at the church amid the genocide, said: “During his call, he prayed for peace and resilience for us in Gaza. He never forgot the word ‘peace’ in any of his calls with us throughout the war. His support included all of us — Christians and Muslims alike. He prayed daily for our safety.”……………………………………………
In a tribute to the late pope, Palestinian theologian Munther Isaac wrote Monday: “He conveyed true compassion to Palestinians, most notably to those in Gaza during this genocide. The pope left our world today, and the occupation and the wall remained. Even worse, he left our world while a genocide continues to unfold.”
Pope Francis’s last public appearance was a plea to end the war in Gaza. In an Easter message one day before his death, the pope, visibly very sick, renewed his call for a ceasefire
The appeal culminated Francis’s months-long antiwar legacy in Gaza. In 2024, the pope wrote that, “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” while calling for an international investigation. He called Israel’s genocide in Gaza “shameful,” “deplorable” and a “useless slaughter” of civilians. He also labeled Israel’s massacres of civilians in Gaza “terrorism.” In December, after an Israeli strike in Gaza killed Palestinian children, he said: “Children have been bombed. This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”…………………………………
Last Christmas, in a bold symbolic gesture against genocide, Francis unveiled a Nativity scene portraying baby Jesus in a crib lined with a Palestinian Keffiyeh, which was likely inspired by Palestinian Rev. Munther Isaac’s iconic “Christ in the Rubble” Christmas sermon in Bethlehem………
Pope Francis’s support for the Palestinian people was not merely humanitarian; he also unequivocally recognized Palestinian independence and freedom. Ten years ago, when he visited Bethlehem, widely recognized as the birthplace of Jesus, he referred to the land as “the State of Palestine.” Shortly after, the Vatican signed a treaty recognizing the State of Palestine. “Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists,” affirmed Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.
Pope Francis’s unwavering solidarity with Gaza stood in sharp contrast with the shameful complicity of the Western political class. “This campaign has made Pope Francis arguably the most consistent high-profile defender of the humanity of the Palestinian people during a period when the Israeli assault on Gaza has been pursued with relentless violence,” wrote John Nichols ………………………………………..
In a move that has caused some controversy within Israel, according to the Israeli news site Ynet, the foreign ministry in Israel sought to prevent its ambassadors from expressing condolences following the pope’s passing. Middle East Eye reports: “Without providing an explanation, the ministry instructed its missions and diplomats to delete any social media posts mourning the former pope, according to Yedioth Ahronoth” (a major Israeli newspaper). Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waited more than three days after Pope Francis’s death before finally offering his own condolences on Thursday, following backlash over the foreign ministry’s deletion of condolence tweets.
Certainly, Francis’s broad antiwar vision, which made him a champion of nuclear disarmament who opposed and denounced nuclear weapons as “immoral,” did not endear him to warmongers………………………………..
Amid urgent concerns about the ongoing genocide in Gaza and rising attacks on the LGBTQ community in the U.S. and beyond, Palestinians and progressive supporters of the church are nervously awaiting news about who the pope’s successor will be.
One notable candidate to replace Pope Francis is the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a longtime advocate for the Christian minority in the Holy Land.
Cardinal Pizzaballa has praised the late pope’s moral clarity on Gaza, saying:
War is not just weapons. War is sometimes words. Pope Francis recently, especially in the last year, has been very outspoken about the situation of the Holy Land, calling for the liberation of the hostages, but also condemning the dramatic situation, the ongoing war in Gaza and the situation for Palestinians.
Cardinal Pizzaballa, an Italian Franciscan prelate, is the top Catholic in the Middle East with an archdiocese encompassing Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Cyprus. He has appealed for peace from both sides, and led a Christmas mass both in Gaza and Jerusalem. The cardinal, who visited Gaza in May 2024 after months of ceasefire negotiations, nearly one year after he offered to be exchanged for Gaza hostages, would be expected to continue some aspects of Francis’s leadership of the church……………………………………………………………
Cardinal Sarah, who has branded himself as a “parallel authority” to Pope Francis, has defended clerical celibacy, denounced “gender ideology,” and refused any “theological dialogue” with Islam –– a stark departure from the late pontiff’s legacy, who made notable progress in interfaith relations, particularly with Muslims. As Katherine Kelaidis writes at Vox, it’s important to note that “millions of dollars have been spent pushing a conservative social agenda in Africa” — a dynamic at play in the rise of socially conservative church leaders like Cardinal Sarah…………………………………………………………..
Another more progressive candidate is Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, who hails from the Philippines. Described by some commentators as “Asian Francis,” the Filipino prelate has been praised for his commitment to social justice and equality, particularly for marginalized groups like LGBTQ people and the poor, though he simultaneously maintains a hardline anti-abortion stance.
……………………………………………. like most of the candidates, Cardinal Tagle’s views on the Gaza genocide remain to be seen.
Meanwhile, Raymond Burke, the Wisconsin-born cardinal, and Trump’s favorite candidate — a rabid Islamophobe who is highly conservative and clashed with Pope Francis on issues ranging from LGBTQ rights and the role of women in the church, to immigration — is perfectly positioned to become Trump’s papal puppet in the Vatican if he is chosen.
Pope Francis’s bold political stance on Palestine will put to the test the apolitical and eerie silence among his progressive successors, few of whom have expressed substantial views on Palestine. One of the few who have done so is Matteo Zuppi, the cardinal from Bologna, who was Francis’s peace envoy between Russia and Ukraine, and has worked extensively to broker peace there. He been outspoken in the wake of October 7, calling for peace, urging the need to understand the “root causes” of the conflict. He also called Hamas “the worst enemy of the Palestinian people.” He visited Bethlehem, called for a ceasefire, and highlighted the suffering of Palestinian children.
The other candidate who has publicly expressed a view on Palestine is Pietro Parolin,the first person Francis made a cardinal, in 2014. As secretary of state, he was involved in the George W. Bush administration’s attempts to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He argued against deportation of Palestinians in Gaza in a rebuke to Trump’s plan, urged for lasting peace in Gaza and called for respect for humanitarian law. But he is hardly a liberal………………………
Most of the other candidates have hardly ever addressed Palestine, save for general allusions to peace. The issues of Palestine, social justice and immigration are inexorably linked, and many Palestine solidarity activists are hoping that the next pope will not fail to see that justice should be whole and not selective or partial.
Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, brought a limited yet desperately needed progressive spirit to the Catholic Church. For all his reluctance to bring about church reforms on social issues, he will still go down as a symbol of a more compassionate and tolerant Christianity; a steadfast voice of peace and opponent of genocide; and a defender of the oppressed in Gaza, immigrants and the poor. Judging from the list of potential candidates, a move rightward seems likely………………………………………………….
Seraj Assi is a Palestinian writer living in Washington, D.C. and the author, most recently, of My Life as an Alien (Tartarus Press).
What Would Jesus Do?
George D. O’Neill. The American Conservative, Sat, 19 Apr 2025
And is there anything particularly Christian about Christian Zionism?
When did Jesus say it was acceptable to starve the poor, slaughter women and children while turning a blind eye to the suffering of the weak? The answer, of course, is never. Yet for years, a vocal strain of American Christian Zionist leaders have supported policies that do precisely that — enabling the starvation and slaughter of Palestinians while underwriting broader wars that have decimated ancient Christian communities across the Middle East. How did we arrive at a place where those who claim to follow the Prince of Peace justify such unchristian horrors.
The Biblical call for compassion is clear: Leviticus 23:22 commands, “When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you.” This is a divine directive to care for the vulnerable, not an optional gesture. James, the brother of Jesus, is yet more emphatic: “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you” (James 1:27). What kind of religious leaders cheer the bombing of Gaza’s widows and orphans, left destitute by policies supported by American and Israeli leaders? Decades of war propaganda have numbed many Americans to the atrocities committed in their name. Yet a growing awareness is stirring both here and abroad.
American Christian Zionist leaders often frame their support for Israel as a divine mandate, dismissing Palestinian suffering as collateral damage in a prophetic plan. Pastor Robert Jeffress declares, “The Bible says this land belongs to the Jewish people — period… God has pronounced judgment after judgment in the Old Testament to those who would ‘divide the land,’ and hand it over to non-Jews.” Likewise, Pastor John Hagee insists, “You’re either for the Jewish people or you’re not.” But where in the Gospels do we find Jesus exalting land rights or ethnic loyalty over human lives? Why did Jesus tell his fellow Jews to be like the Good Samaritan if not to call all people out of their tribalism? The only time He spoke of snakes was to call the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 23:33), condemning their ethnonationalism that blinded them to His message of nonviolence and forgiveness of enemies. He urged, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13), a rebuke to those who prized vengeance and power over compassion. Did He not say, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and instruct us to “turn the other cheek”? How do religious leaders who celebrate military might over mercy square with the Messiah who dined with sinners and healed the outcast?
The fruits of this ideology are death and destruction. For decades, some American Christian Zionist leaders have backed Israel’s destructive actions, often at the expense of the very people Jesus called us to protect. They support the decades-long blockade of Gaza, where malnutrition haunts the population, and the wider wars in Iraq and Syria, which have all but erased Christian communities dating back millennia. In Syria, America’s decade-long support for “moderate insurgents” — coupled with the theft of Syrian oil, much of it shipped to Israel — helped topple the government. Now, Al Qaeda affiliates hold sway in parts of that land. Who benefited? Not the Syrian Christians and other religious minorities who are being killed, displaced, and fleeing for their lives.
And then there’s the inconvenient truth about Hamas. For years, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facilitated funding to Hamas through channels like Qatar, a policy aimed at keeping Palestinians divided and weakening the Palestinian Authority. The State of Israel, with American Christian Zionist leaders’ applause and U.S. support, has trained, equipped, and empowered Hamas to serve its own strategic ends. Decades of this cynical game have propped up a terrorist group that Israel and its allies now use as a pretext to justify slaughtering Gazan children by the thousands. How can Christians reconcile killing innocents for the actions of a monster they helped enable? Worse still, many believe Netanyahu’s government may have had foreknowledge of Hamas’s October 7 attack plan yet allowed it to proceed, amplifying the tragedy to justify further escalation of the abuse of Gazans.
God made a covenant with Abraham, promising his descendants a legacy (Genesis 12:2-3). But the Apostle Paul clarifies this promise in Galatians 3:16: the covenant finds its fulfillment in Jesus. Many well-meaning Christians, however, were misled into believing otherwise by the questionable biblical interpretations of Cyrus Scofield. In certain circles, his 1917 edition of the Scofield Reference Bible was very influential.
What would Jesus do if asked to condone the terrorist actions involved in Israel’s founding? The 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun, killing 91 people under the guise of a “liberation” struggle, or the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, where Zionist militias slaughtered over 100 Palestinian villagers to terrorize others into flight — would He bless such bloodshed? And what of the Nakba, the catastrophic expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes that same year, leaving them refugees in their own land? Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion himself acknowledged in 1918, “We have no reason to assume that the inhabitants of the country who remained after the destruction of the Second Temple were uprooted. On the contrary, the Jewish farmer, like his neighbors, clung to the soil and continued to live in the land, eventually adopting Christianity and later Islam.” If even Israel’s founding father recognized the deep roots of Palestine’s people, how can Christians justify their dispossession? Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem and called for mercy, would surely mourn the dispossessed, not celebrate their displacement.
With countless lives lost and trillions of dollars spent since, can anyone claim this is a policy God has blessed? America’s veterans from our Christian Zionist-supported Middle East wars face high suicide rates, their families shattered by the toll of endless conflict. Our witness to the region lies in ruins, as America plays Israel’s enforcer — destroying Israel’s enemies while partnering with Al Qaeda in Syria and enabling ISIS in Libya and Iraq. Would God bless us and Israel for intentionally putting radicals like Hamas in power over Gaza, sidelining moderate voices from other Palestinian groups? How does any of this reflect faithfulness to Christ? As we approach Easter 2025 — the celebration of Christ’s sacrifice and triumph over death — shouldn’t we reflect on whether our actions honor the One who died for all, not just a favored few?
Jesus Himself opposed violent religious zeal for Israel’s sake. When the Zealots pressed for rebellion, He chose nonviolence. Even Peter, His disciple, was rebuked for cutting off Malchus’ ear in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus told him, “for all who live by the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Where is that spirit being promoted by leading Christian Zionists?
The American political class enables this madness, funneling billions in aid to Israel each year — more than to any other nation — often bypassing Congress entirely. Much of the non-Israel foreign aid is used to bribe neighboring countries into compliance or to destabilize regimes deemed insufficiently pro-Israel. You know them by their fruits, and these fruits are war and suffering.
What would Jesus do? He would likely overturn the tables of this unholy alliance, as He did the money-changers in the temple. He would call us back to the edges of the field, where the poor and the foreigner await the compassion we’ve withheld. He would remind us that true faith is measured not in bombs dropped or wars waged, but in the love we show to the least of these. So I ask: If caring for orphans and widows is the mark of pure religion, what does it say of Christian leaders who justify their death and destruction?
About the author
George D. O’Neill, Jr., is a member of the board of directors of the American Ideas Institute, which publishes The American Conservative, and an artist who lives in rural Florida.
Saying It’s Antisemitic To Oppose Genocide Is Like Saying It’s Anti-Catholic To Oppose Pedophilia
Caitlin Johnstone, Apr 15, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/saying-its-antisemitic-to-oppose?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=161378744&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
On Sunday Israel bombed the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, which readers may remember as the hospital that Israel ferociously insisted it didn’t bomb in October 2023 and accused anyone who said otherwise of antisemitic blood libel. According to a statement from the Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Jerusalem, this is now the fifth time this hospital has been bombed since the beginning of the Gaza onslaught.
The IDF is predictably claiming there was a Hamas base in the hospital, because that’s what they always do. The hospitals are Hamas, the ambulances are Hamas, the journalists are Hamas, the UN is Hamas, the schools are Hamas, the children are Hamas, every building in Gaza is Hamas, and anyone who disputes this is also Hamas.
God this gets old.
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Israel, October 2023: How dare you say we bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital? We would never bomb a hospital!
Israel, 2023–2025: *bombs all hospitals in Gaza*
Israel, April 2025: We just bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital again.
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Saying that opposing genocide is hateful toward Jews is like saying that opposing child molestation is hateful toward Catholics.
Western Zionists will be like, “All this hate for Israel makes me feel anxious and unsafe!”
Really? Are you sure that’s what you’re feeling? Are you sure it’s not guilt? Gut-wrenching guilt about all those dead kids in the genocide you support? Or cognitive dissonance, because your entire worldview is wrong?
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People often say I hate Israel, but what’s weird is they say it like it’s a bad thing.
So far the “President of Peace” has started a relentless bombing campaign in Yemen, reignited the Gaza holocaust, and shifted more US war machinery to west Asia in preparation for war with Iran, all while getting ready to announce the first ever trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.
Trump is just as awful a warmonger as Biden. If there’s a war with Iran he’ll be far worse. He hasn’t even gotten a Ukraine ceasefire.
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The western political faction that’s doing the most to help murder children in Gaza are not the “Yeehaw kill them Arabs” fanatics of the far right, but the “Gosh it’s so complicated, both sides hate each other and they’ve been at war for millennia” fence-sitting of the so-called moderate.
So far the “President of Peace” has started a relentless bombing campaign in Yemen, reignited the Gaza holocaust, and shifted more US war machinery to west Asia in preparation for war with Iran, all while getting ready to announce the first ever trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.
Trump is just as awful a warmonger as Biden. If there’s a war with Iran he’ll be far worse. He hasn’t even gotten a Ukraine ceasefire.
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The western political faction that’s doing the most to help murder children in Gaza are not the “Yeehaw kill them Arabs” fanatics of the far right, but the “Gosh it’s so complicated, both sides hate each other and they’ve been at war for millennia” fence-sitting of the so-called moderate.
And this isn’t an ancient conflict, it’s the culmination of abuses which were initiated by western powers dropping a brand new settler-colonialist ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization after the second world war. There was no reason to believe the middle east would not have joined the rest of the world in settling into a more peaceful status quo after WWII without western imperialists forcefully inserting an artificial apartheid state into the region like a shard of glass into a foot and then keeping it there by any amount of violence necessary.
Sure the middle east had plenty of violence prior to the world wars, but if you’ve ever read American and European history you’ll know this wasn’t anything unique to the middle east; it was the norm around the world. It wasn’t until after WWII that things settled down a bit and westerners grew accustomed to a more peaceful status quo; the only reason the middle east wasn’t allowed to join in that movement was because of aggressive western intervention.
By just shrugging saying “Yeah the Israelis hate the Palestinians and the Palestinians hate the Israelis, who’s to say who’s right,” this mainstream line tacitly promotes the notion that we should just let things play out as they are rather than doing everything we can to stop an active genocide that’s being backed by our own leaders. And this is the position put forward by most of the people with prominent voices in our society. They’re not just not helping, they’re discouraging everyone else from helping too.
The Journey Beyond Nukes Begins with an Apology
Robert C. Koehler 7 April 25 https://abombtribunal.campaignus.me/34/?q=YToxOntzOjEyOiJrZXl3b3JkX3R5cGUiO3M6MzoiYWxsIjt9&bmode=view&idx=158534555&t=board
When the powerful speak, mushroom clouds emerge – oh so easily. Power is about conquest; winning the war, getting what you want no matter the cost.
For instance, Israel should nuke Gaza. “Do whatever you have to do.” Thus declared Sen. Lindsey Graham last year in a Meet the Press interview, comparing the current genocide in Palestine to the U.S. decision to end World War II by A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “That was the right decision,” he said, spewing out the historical abstraction that still rules the world.
Nothing is more sacred than self-defense! And nothing is more necessary for that than nuclear weapons, at least for the countries that possess them. To think beyond this abstraction – to cry out against the pain of the victims and declare their use is potential human suicide – violates the political norm of the powerful and is easily categorized by the media, often sarcastically, as naïve.
And thus we’re stuck in a MAD world, apparently: a world under unending threat of mutually assured destruction. If you have a problem with that, you’re probably a weakling singing “Kumbaya.”
Or so the global war machine wants us to believe, reducing humanity’s anti-nuke – antiwar – sanity to a hollow hope.
It is in this context that I heard Sim Jintae and Han Jeong-Soon speak at a small event the other day in suburban Chicago, sponsored by an organization called – brace yourself – The International People’s Tribunal to hold the U.S. accountable for dropping A-bombs. The two speakers (via translator) are Korean victims of the bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima neaarly eight decades ago. Sim Jintae is a first-generation survivor: He was 2-years-old when the bomb was dropped. Han Jeong-Soon is a second-generation survivor – the child of survivors of the inferno, who has suffered throughout her life from the after-effects of the bombing. Their message: Nuclear war lasts forever!
Well, that’s part of their message. Note: The movement they represent is Korean. A little known fact about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that thousands of Koreans were what you might call doubly victimized by the horror, This was during an era when Japan had colonial control over Korea, and some 100,000 Koreans had been forcibly moved to Japan to do wartime labor. Many of them, including Sim Jintae’s parents, had been working in a munitions factory in Hiroshima.
About 40,000 Koreans died in the bombings. Those who survived suffered the after-effects in silence . . . until they reclaimed one another and found a collective voice. This is the voice I heard last week at the event I attended, and it resonated as loud as – perhaps louder than – the pro-nuke media and their supplicants. Their collective voice emerges from reality, not abstraction. My God, I hope it’s louder than that Lindsey Graham, and so many other politicians.
Here is the voice of Han Jeong-Soon. Born in Korea fourteen years after the destruction of Hiroshima – her parents had also been forced laborers there, living a few kilometers from the epicenter of the bomb blast – she suffered all her life from birth defects: heart problems, chest pain, lung issues. She had multiple surgeries. She suffered on her own . . . until she saw a film about the bombing in 2004. Then:
“I realized my pain was not only my pain but other people’s pain,” she told us. She began organizing other second-generation survivors, and began telling the world: “My war has not ended. No war should be allowed or tolerated. No to all war.”
Is this the voice that will drown out the military-industrial complex? The People’s Tribunal is demanding, as the starting point of the human journey beyond war, for the United States to apologize for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was an action that instantly expanded the scope of hell the human race could inflict on itself.
When I heard that word, “apologize,” in the context of first- and second-generation Korean A-bomb victims – victims who were denied necessary health care, by both Japan and the United States – what I heard was a soul scream: a demand that the perpetrator grasp and acknowledge the full extent of the harm it caused, and in so grasping, vow never to use such a monstrous weapon again . . . and, indeed, vow to transcend war itself.
The International People’s Tribunal put it this way:
“The A-Bomb Tribunal aims to establish the illegality of the U.S. atomic bombings in 1945 to secure the basis for condemning all nuclear threats and use as illegal today. The fact that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illegal under the international laws in 1945 means that the use and threat of nuclear weapons today are also illegal.
“The A-Bomb Tribunal aims to overcome the nuclear deterrence theory that justifies the use and threat of nuclear weapons by nuclear-weapon states, and contribute to the realization of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a nuclear-free world.”
Let us listen to those who have suffered the most. Let us hear the cry of their throbbing souls and begin to understand that the time has come for us to create a world beyond dominance and war. Indeed, let us begin listening to one another and, in so doing, learn that we all matter. This is the true nature of power.
Netanyahu’s nuclear gamble: The risks of escalation with Iran
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/netanyahus-nuclear-gamble-the-risks-of-escalation-with-iran 27 Mar 25
While Netanyahu convinces the Israeli public and the U.S. administration to wage war on Iran, it cannot be known ‘for whom the bells will toll’ at the end of such an escalation.
n 1992, when he was a 42-year-old Knesset member, Benjamin Netanyahu raised concerns about Iran’s nuclear threat, stating, “Iran is close to producing a nuclear weapon within three to five years, and this threat needs to be uprooted by an international front led by the U.S.” In 1995, in his book, he discussed Iran’s nuclear threat and emphasized that it was a vital issue for Israel. A year later, he came to power for the first time.
The Israeli prime minister’s political career has been marked by security-focused rhetoric. In a country like Israel with high security concerns, this is not unusual, but what makes Netanyahu different is his constant focus on issues like Iran, Hamas and Palestine, and his personalization of the message that “only I can protect Israel.” So much so that rabbis like Nir Ben Artzi and Moshe Ben Tov preach, “Netanyahu must remain prime minister until the Messiah comes.”
Last year, Netanyahu’s posing with Lubavitch movement leader Rebbe Schneerson’s book in the Knesset and claims that Schneerson had prophesied 30 years ago that Netanyahu would “become Israel’s prime minister and transfer the duty to the Messiah” have added apocalyptic meanings to Israel’s war environment.
Factors such as Netanyahu’s brother being Israel’s national hero and his father being one of the important figures of Revisionist Zionism make the situation even more mystical. Revisionist Zionism essentially argues that Jewish rights can only be protected by force; that reconciliation with Arabs is impossible and that the Jewish state encompasses all the historical Eretz Yisrael territories. All these arguments align quite well with Netanyahu’s policies.
Throughout his 40-year political career, Netanyahu’s emphasis on “the last few years” for Iran to become a nuclear threat has led to criticism, especially from his political rivals, that he is exploiting this issue and using it to consolidate power. However, today, Netanyahu appears closer than ever to achieving this goal. Over the past 30 years, Netanyahu has faced three obstacles to his hawkish steps regarding Iran’s nuclear capacity: convincing the bureaucracy and domestic public opinion, convincing the U.S. and convincing the international community.
It is known that in 2010-2011, Netanyahu, together with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, ordered the military to prepare to strike Iran. The order to put the Israeli Air Force on alert for a long-range airstrike was made with a small group of advisors within the security bureaucracy. However, figures such as Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Mossad Chief Meir Dagan objected, characterizing such an operation as an “illegal war decision” before the necessary military preparations were completed. Netanyahu was forced to back down. It is also known that the U.S. repeatedly restrained Netanyahu.
Plans of a warmonger
Today, there is a broad consensus in Israel, both from the government and the opposition, that Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons is unacceptable. The rhetoric “we will strike alone if necessary” resonates with society, and the developments in October reinforced this determination. Netanyahu’s threat at the U.N., “If you strike us, we’ll strike you,” has gone beyond rhetoric and has been implemented. This has given Israelis the confidence that “we can defend ourselves, we can act preemptively if necessary.” A significant portion of public opinion polls and media support Israel taking unilateral action if diplomacy fails and Iran reaches the nuclear threshold. Especially after Iran’s direct attack, a psychology of “there’s nothing to fear anymore, if they did it, we can do it too” has emerged. All this indicates that Netanyahu has been highly successful in socializing the issue.
Another obstacle for Netanyahu was bureaucratic issues. As mentioned above, Netanyahu’s desired steps had been stuck in domestic politics and bureaucracy. Netanyahu, who was cornered before the Oct. 7 attacks, has used the attacks as a significant lever and has begun taking radical steps to leave his political legacy as the one who solved the “problems” of Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, (if possible) the West Bank and Iran. In this process, he has virtually crushed anyone who stood in his way without regard to domestic politics. His newly appointed Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, has declared 2025 a “year of war” and indicated that they will focus especially on Gaza and Iran. Zamir’s 2022 report for the Washington Institute, titled “Countering Iran’s Regional Strategy: A Long-Term, Comprehensive Approach,” is quite noteworthy. Every step Zamir proposed in this report has been taken after Oct. 7.
Lastly, Israel has significantly neutralized Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. Both the Israeli Air Force and the U.S. Air Force are conducting “exercises” for long-distance attacks with their strikes on Yemen. The distance between Tel Aviv and Sanaa is 2,000 kilometers (just over 1,240 miles), while the distance between Tel Aviv and Tehran is 1,500 kilometers.
Strike before being struck
During President Donald Trump’s first term, the U.S. came to Netanyahu’s desired line, and radical steps such as withdrawing from the nuclear agreement, declaring Jerusalem as the capital, and the killings of Qasem Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh were taken. The fundamental question is: What has changed from yesterday to today that would make Trump take a different step from his 2018-2020 line? In other words, Netanyahu’s thesis since 1992, “this can’t be done without the U.S.,” seems to be coming true. The U.S. administration is now openly threatening Iran with military intervention. Internal objections and opposition in Israel seem to be of no concern to the Netanyahu government. Therefore, Netanyahu faces the third and final obstacle: convincing the international community.
Netanyahu’s U.N. speeches were also aimed at convincing the international community that Iran would not comply with nuclear negotiations and that diplomacy was “not a path.” The revelation of nuclear documents smuggled from Iran in 2018 by himself and the emphasis that Iran was a “liar” who did not abandon its intentions despite the agreement are diplomatically significant.
From Israel’s perspective, it is necessary to be sure that Russia will not provide support to Iran at this point. Recent developments in Ukraine are likely to keep Russia away from Iran. The U.S. government may also be providing suggestions to Russia on this matter. The Iranian domestic public opinion does not trust the Russians on this issue. Especially the events in Karabakh and Syria have created great disappointment among Iranians.
As for the other actors, European countries do not appear to be able to actively get involved at this stage due to the security crisis they are in. Although China has been providing covert diplomatic and technological support to Iran against Israel for some time, it does not seem possible to expect it to directly enter the field militarily in such an intervention. Therefore, Iran presents an image that has lost its proxy forces in the region, largely lost its effectiveness in the field, and lacks popular support.
The Iranians are aware of the approaching threat. On the one hand, they are conducting tremendously flexible diplomacy. On the other hand, they complain about the threats made against them, saying, “There can be no negotiation with threats.” They express at every opportunity that they do not want war, but on the other hand, they conduct military exercises almost every week. They particularly focus on air defense and naval forces in these exercises. Commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) say they will not bow to threats and will give a clear response to any attack.
According to Zamir, Iran’s center of gravity is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He thinks that if the center of gravity is targeted, the regime will dissolve on its own. Indeed, the IRGC dominates almost every corner of the country and, although not openly stated, is at odds with civilian politics and institutions in the country. The dominant figure in the IRGC is Mojtaba Khamenei.
Triggering the unplanned
Israel’s first step will be covert activities, similar to Lebanon. At this point, it is very likely that assassinations and sabotage (especially targeting leading IRGC figures) will be seen very soon. Indeed, information in this direction is also reflected in open sources. Likewise, ethnic fault lines in many parts of Iran, such as Urmia, can break very violently. It is a known fact that Iran is concerned about pan-Turkist movements within it. So much so that the election engineering of Masoud Pezeshkian, who was vetoed in the parliamentary elections a week before the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s death, and frequent emphasis on the “Iranian Turkishness-Anatolian Turkishness” distinction through events such as the Chaldiran commemorations, are results of this concern.
Whatever happens, if popular movements follow the chaos created by the paralysis of the political mechanism (or vice versa), the regime in Iran may be seriously at risk. Because both in the 2009 protests and the Mahsa Amini protests, the influence of Khamenei and those under his command is known. With the elimination of this influence, the ground in Iran may completely change.
In conclusion, all experts agree that the Netanyahu government cannot end Iran’s nuclear capacity by striking nuclear facilities. However, the basic strategy is to completely paralyze Iran by directly targeting the regime and rendering all its activities, from ballistic missiles to nuclear, from proxy forces to drone work, dysfunctional.
However, this situation can open Pandora’s box. If things don’t go as planned and Iran enters a total war by mobilizing all its available means, it may not be able to deliver fatal blows to Israel, but it will cause tens of thousands of Israelis who already find Israel unsafe to leave their country, companies to withdraw their investments from Israel, and in the medium and long term, the establishment of a climate of insecurity. Therefore, Netanyahu is taking a huge gamble and paving the way for a path that could make Israel more insecure. Because the biggest risk is an uncalculated risk, these steps threaten the future of the region from beginning to end. As the famous poet John Donne said: “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Chris Hedges: Trump’s Christian Fascists and the War on Palestine
the usual absurdity that the Hebrew Bible, written 4,000 years ago, can be used to draw contemporary national borders.
March 11, 2025, By Chris Hedges / ScheerPost
Christian Nationalists who form the bedrock of support for Donald Trump — 80 percent voted for Trump in the last election according to a voter survey by the Associated Press — have mounted a concerted campaign calling on the White House to back Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and Gaza.
This campaign includes visits to Israel by prominent leaders, including Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins and Mario Bramnick, petitioning the White House, lobbying Congress and calls for annexation at Christian conferences, including a resolution of support for Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank adopted at the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference. The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Convention in Dallas, in March, gathered over 200 signatures from pastors and right-wing religious leaders from across the United States calling for the annexation of “Judea and Samaria” — the purported biblical name for the West Bank —and declaring the two state solution “a failed experiment.”
American Christian Leaders for Israel, which says it represents a network of “over 3,000 organizational leaders from across the nation, including the National Religious Broadcasters,” endorsed the NRB resolution and sent it to Trump. Congresswoman Claudia Tenney and five other members of the congressional “Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus,” sent a letter to Trump asking to “recognize the right of Israel” to declare sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories, arguing that it will advance “the Judeo-Christian heritage on which our nation was founded.”
Trump, who rescinded a Biden administration executive order that sanctioned Jewish colonists in the West Bank for human rights violations, promised, on Feb. 4, to make an announcement in the “next four weeks,” about possible annexation of the West Bank. This follows Trump’s call for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and death threats to the Palestinians unless they release Israeli hostages. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One.
The agenda of Zionist extremists and Christian fascists, who hold senior positions throughout the Trump administration, have long converged. The language, iconography and symbolism used by the Christian and Jewish fascists is biblical. But the bonds are political, not religious.
I detail the history and ideology of our homegrown fascism and its kinship with Jewish fascism in my book, “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a Baptist minister, has been nominated by Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has said there is “no such thing as a Palestinian” and asserted that Palestinian identity is “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.” He proposes that any Palestinian state should be created outside of Israel in neighboring countries such as Egypt, Syria or Jordan. He dismisses the two-state solution as “irrational and unworkable.”
“I believe the scripture. Genesis 12: Those who bless Israel will be blessed; those who curse Israel will be cursed. I want to be on the blessing side, not the curse side,” Huckabee says.
John Ratcliffe, appointed by Trump to run the Central Intelligence Agency, advocates assisting Israel in what he described as its “foot-on-their-throat” approach against Iran.
Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who argues that “Zionism and Americanism are the front-lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today” — pedals the usual absurdity that the Hebrew Bible, written 4,000 years ago, can be used to draw contemporary national borders…………………………………………………………………………………….
Jewish supremacy, like the supremacy of the Christian fascists, is, these fanatics claim, sanctified by God. The slaughter of the Palestinians, who Benjamin Netanyahu compared to the biblical Amalekites, are the incarnate of evil and deserve to be massacred. Euro-Americans in the American colonies used the same biblical passage to justify the genocide of Native Americans. Violence and the threat of violence are the only forms of communication those inside the magical circle of Jewish nationalism or Christian nationalism speak…………………………………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2025/03/11/chris-hedges-trumps-christian-fascists-and-the-war-on-palestine/
Why is an ‘ethical’ investor funding arms companies?
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund holds shares in UK weapons firms that arm Israel, despite its ethical guidelines.
ANDREW FEINSTEIN and JACK CINAMON, 5 March 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/why-is-an-ethical-investor-funding-arms-companies/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Button&utm_campaign=ICYMI&utm_content=Button
Scandinavian countries are often held up as models for a better society. None more so than Norway, flush with North Sea oil wealth, which it can invest responsibly.
The money is put aside in a sovereign wealth fund, owned by the Norwegian government and managed by the country’s central bank, Norges Bank. It is the largest such fund in the world, worth £1.4 trillion.
Called the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), or just the Oil Fund, it is supposed to adhere to ethical guidelines by excluding certain companies from its portfolio.
That’s if they are involved in serious violations of human rights – especially in conflicts – gross corruption, the production of nuclear weapons and more.
However, in outright contradiction to these guidelines, the GPFG invests billions of pounds in many of the world’s largest arms companies. In fact, it owns stakes in exactly half of the world’s top 100 arms companies, accumulating at almost £14 billion.
This includes arms companies here in the UK that supply Israel – despite Norway recognising the state of Palestine as recently as May 2024 and excluding companies from the GPFG involved in activities violating international law.
So why is Norwegian money finding its way into Britain’s arms industry, which supplies Israel?
Arming Israel
Among these investments is QinetiQ in which the GPFG holds over £46 million in shares.
The British defence tech firm has collaborated with the Israeli military to develop the Watchkeeper drone system, a joint project with Israel’s Elbit Systems, a company dropped from the fund in 2009 for supplying surveillance systems for the separation barrier in the West Bank.
Following sustained direct action from Palestine Action, Elbit Systems UK lost its largest-ever British arms contract, worth over £2.1bn, after the UK Ministry of Defence scrapped its Watchkeeper drone programme.
QinetiQ subsidiaries, such as QinetiQ Australia, are involved in the F-35 fighter jet program. Israel has used its fleet of these aircraft to pound Gaza.
Then there is the almost £35m invested in Babcock International, another UK company in Norway’s portfolio. It claims to not provide weapons to Israel, but with partnerships involving Israeli defence firms IAI, Elbit, and Rafael Systems, the line between ‘not involved’ and ‘indirectly arming’ becomes quite blurry.
Babcock also sustains the entirety of the UK’s submarine fleet, including by delivering through-life support and life extension of the UK nuclear armed Vanguard class submarine.
Rolls-Royce and Leonardo
Norway’s largest UK arms investment, however, is in British engineering giant Rolls-Royce, where the fund holds around £1.07bn in shares, representing over 2% of the company.
Rolls-Royce is not just about luxury cars, it is a critical supplier on the F-35 program, powering Israeli military operations. Case in point: Rolls-Royce’s German subsidiary, MTU, produces the engines for Israel’s Merkava tanks and most of the Israeli Navy’s vessels.
Divesting from the UK defence sector is far from unlikely, as the Oil Fund previously decided to exclude BAE Systems, the UK’s largest arms company, from its portfolio in 2018 for its involvement in nuclear weapons production.
However, few investments in Norway’s portfolio illustrate its ethical blind spots as starkly as its stake in Anglo-Italian arms manufacturer Leonardo. Leonardo’s presence in the UK comes largely from its ownership of Leonardo UK, formerly AugustaWestland.
Leonardo operates from several locations in the UK, and has deep collaborations with the UK MOD, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and MBDA UK, especially with reference to its joint venture program, the Tempest new-generation fighter jet, expected to enter service in 2035.
With around £165m invested; the company has become a focal point for divestment campaigns – and for good reason.
Leonardo supplies weapons to Israel, including naval guns for Sa’ar 6 warships used in the bombardment and siege on Gaza, and it is a key player in the F-35 program.
Ignorance or hypocrisy?
Despite a history of corruption – linked to bribery scandals in Indonesia and India – Leonardo remains on the GPFG portfolio, even managing to convince the Council of Ethics (the body tasked with reviewing investments) “that the risk of gross corruption in the company’s operations no longer is unacceptable” as they occupied an observation list for five years until being revoked from assessment in 2022.
The company has recently been accused of providing the military junta in Myanmar with weapons in violation of a UN arms embargo. The company also contributes to nuclear weapons production through MBDA, a joint venture with BAE Systems and Airbus SE. Leonardo’s role in Israel’s military operations and its corruption scandals demand urgent re-evaluation by the Council on Ethics.
The fund clearly channels billions of pounds into corporations that fuel violence, sustain occupations, and profit from human suffering. These aren’t just financial decisions; they’re moral failings, directly contradicting the fund’s stated ethical guidelines.
How does Norway square these investments with its loud-and-proud commitment to peace and human rights? Is this ignorance or hypocrisy? Norway must divest from UK arms companies, sending a powerful message: that peace and human rights are not negotiable, and profit should never come at the expense of human lives.
To see the full list of investments in the world’s top 100 arms companies click here.
Part of a more detailed blog published by Corruption Tracker
Archbishop Gallagher: Nuclear weapons pose existential threat
As Pope Francis strongly affirms, Archbishop Gallagher insisted, it is necessary “to overcome the logic of confrontation and embrace instead the logic of encounter.”
The Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, expresses the Holy See’s “deep concern” over the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons, in his remarks to the High-Level Segment of the UN’s 2025 Session of the Conference on Disarmament.
By Deborah Castellano Lubov, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2025-02/gallagher-addresses-2025-session-of-conference-on-disarmament.html
“Immense military expenditures, that often go far beyond what is necessary to ensure legitimate defense, foment the vicious circle of an exhausting arms race that diverts vital resources away from poverty eradication, justice, education, and healthcare.”
Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, stressed this on Wednesday in a statement to the UN’s High-Level Segment of the 2025 Session of the Conference on Disarmament taking place in Geneva on February 24-28.
Offering the participants the Pope’s cordial greetings, he said, “Today we stand at a turning point.”
“Together, as a family of nations,” he encouraged, “we can take just and courageous actions for a general, balanced, and complete disarmamentunder effective international control.”
Otherwise, he warned, the alternative “is the perpetuation of conflicts, violence, increasing inequalities, and environmental degradation, from which ultimately benefits no one but the arms lobby.”
‘Hostage to a stalemate’
Archbishop Gallagher said the Conference on Disarmament “has been held hostage to a stalemate” that has continued year after year “without the adoption of a proper negotiating mandate.”
The raison d’être of this body, he recalled, is to negotiate multilateral disarmament instruments and to deliver concrete results.
In this regard, he said, it must be recalled that all peoples of the world have a vital interest in the success of the disarmament negotiations.
Duty and right to participate in negotiations
“Consequently,” he underscored, “all States have the duty—as well as the right—to contribute and to participate in such negotiations.”
“Massive and competitive arms accumulation,” Archbishop Gallagher observed, “seems to contradict the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, in which States resolve “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace.”
The Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States recalled Pope Francis’ recent appeal to “reduce military expenditures on weapons” and to “use at least a fixed percentage of the money earmarked for armaments to establish a global Fund to eradicate hunger and facilitate in the poorer countries educational activities aimed at promoting sustainable development and combating climate change.”
Before it is too late
As Pope Francis strongly affirms, Archbishop Gallagher insisted, it is necessary “to overcome the logic of confrontation and embrace instead the logic of encounter.”
Therefore, he said, the Holy See encourages the conference to adopt a renewed sense of urgency and commitment to reach concrete and lasting agreements for the sake of the common good, “before it may be too late.”
Archbishop Gallagher said the Holy See remains “deeply concerned” about the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons and their proliferation.
“Peace and international stability,” he observed, “are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation.”
Serious negotations required
He expressed concern over the “continuous expansion and modernization of nuclear arsenals, accompanied by escalating rhetoric and threats concerning their deployment.” The means to promote peace and stability today, he insisted, should not be of those that would reignite or fuel the dangerous pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“Moreover,” he appealed, “it is urgent that nuclear weapons states engage in serious negotiations to reduce and eventually eliminate their stockpiles in accordance with their obligations under Art. VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”
Concerns for weaponization of artificial intelligence
He also discussed the weaponization of Artificial Intelligence (AI), observing “the ability to conduct military operations through remote control systems has led to a lessened perception of the devastation caused by those weapon systems and the burden of responsibility for their use, resulting in an even more cold and detached approach to the immense tragedy of war.”
In particular, Archbishop Gallagher reminded the participants that Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), which are capable of identifying and striking targets without direct human intervention and control, “are a cause for grave ethical concern’ because they lack the ‘unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making.”
Are Blinken and Biden’s Gaza genocide denials any different than Nazi WWII genocide denials?
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 12 Jan 25.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the NY Times he’s not worried about history judging him as a genocide enabler.
When asked he replied, “No. It’s not (genocide), first of all. Second, as to how the world sees it, I can’t fully answer to that.”
Blinken will deny to his death his $22 billion in weapons that Israel has used to utterly destroy sustainable life for 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza’s 139 square miles is genocide. But the entire world aside from the Biden administration is correct in viewing it as genocide
It isn’t that Blinken “Can’t answer to that” (the world viewing it as genocide). He simply won’t answer to what is the most monstrous crime a national leader can commit. From Day 1 in the genocide Israel embarked upon in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, Blinken and his boss Biden have been calling the genocide their weapons enable ‘self-defense.’
Denying genocide is what the Nazi war criminals did to a man at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials after WWII.
There will be no war crime trials for Blinken and Biden for the genocide that could not take place their tens of billions in weapons, vetoes of ceasefire resolutions in the US Security Council, public support and their endless ‘self-defense’ refrain.
In a bitter irony for humanity, it was the US which helped establish the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 to ferret out and prosecute war criminals. But with criminal US wars devastating Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has turned on the ICC in fear of becoming ICC war crime targets. The US has abstained from membership and has blasted the ICC indicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his Gaza genocide. President Biden called the indictment “outrageous” and declared “We will always stand with Israel.”
Is that any different from denying, even condoning WWII Nazi genocide?
Blinken and Biden, barreling toward historical infamy with their blank check enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The Moral Bankruptcy of the West
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-moral-bankruptcy-of-the-west, 24 Dec 24
On 19 December 2024, Human Rights Watch issued a 179-page report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
On 5 December 2024, Amnesty International issued a 296-page report detailing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice found that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Given the West’s presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.
Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide.
Moreover, almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and in the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide. The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israel’s actions.
One wonders what people in the West who have either supported Israel’s genocide or remained silent tell themselves to justify their behavior and sleep at night.
History will not treat them kindly.
What happened to integrity and honor in the age of Technocracy?
Charles Hugh Smith, oftwominds.com, Fri, 06 Dec 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/496524-What-happened-to-integrity-and-honor-in-the-age-of-Technocracy
The hope here is that facing the reality of moral collapse frees us of the delusion that fiddling with technocratic financial abstractions and policy tweaks can reverse moral collapse.
Ours is a technocratic culture with a short attention span, and so problems and solutions are understood to be 1) technocratic and 2) instant. The problem is something that can be distilled down to a spreadsheet, formula, algorithm or legalistic policy, and the solution is some modification of spreadsheet, formula, algorithm or legalistic policy: all our problems will go away if we just end the Fed, switch to cryptocurrency, tweak some laws, get rid of the bankers, eliminate an agency, and so on.
These solutions will offer immediate relief. The problems will start melting away the minute we modify the spreadsheet, algorithm, financial settings or legal code.
But what if the problem is the collapse of integrity and honor, a moral rot that has consumed the foundations of our social order? If this is the root problem, then technocratic-financial solutions are the equivalent of excising a wart from the big toe and declaring that as a result of this procedure, the brain cancer has been cured.
What if the problem is that everything we’re cheering as Progress is actually the opposite–it’s Anti-Progress? What if all the technocratic “advances” that are constantly being hyped as wondrous are actually harming our physical and mental health?
So a product labeled as a “veggie snack” that’s nothing more than fat-soaked, sugary potato starch is lauded because it’s immensely profitable, a virtue gained by deceiving parents into thinking a “veggie snack” is a healthy snack.
That this is a culture in moral collapse is obvious, but we dare not admit it. That integrity and honor have decayed to the point of parody is equally obvious, but that too doesn’t register in a culture attuned to novelty, profit, gadgets, legalese, techno-fantasies and technocratic “solutions” to problems that aren’t even visible to technocrats.
Integrity and honor have, along with everything else, been commoditized into something we sell as a “product” or “enhancement.” Virtue-signaling has replaced actual integrity, and as the host of my latest podcast observed, the job of corporate CEOs is not to make quality products; their job is to elevate the corporation’s stock price by whatever means are available–including hollowing out quality, reliability and durability.
Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)
In this state of moral collapse, we look to centralized authorities to solve all our problems. But the collapse of integrity and honor does not have a legal, financial or technocratic solution. We have to reverse that collapse ourselves rather than rely on centralized diktats from on high to fix what’s broken.
Before we get to the hope, let’s first review reality. Here is loneliness–soaring. – [excellent graphics here, on original]
And we all know how positive online interactions are for our collective mental health:
Every one of these graphics depicts a social order in collapse, yet this truth is greeted with silence or delusional misdirections and self-referential parodies being passed off as “solutions.”
Let’s say we want a lifestyle stripped of denial, moral rot, techno-fantasies and technocratic delusions, a lifestyle of responsibility, accountability, integrity and honor. Oops, sorry, that lifestyle is out of stock and we don’t anticipate any reordering.
The hope here is that facing the reality of moral collapse frees us of the delusion that fiddling with technocratic financial abstractions and policy tweaks can reverse moral collapse and Anti-Progress. We are then free to see the problem is spiritual and cultural, realms that we change in our own lives, not by waiting around for central authorities–the state, Big Tech, etc.–to fix for us.
We need a new way of living, not more gadgets and financial “innovations.” A restoration of basic integrity and honor cannot be achieved by technocratic “solutions”–policies, crypto, apps, algos, AI–for the belief that these are solutions has blinded us to the decay and collapse of the foundations of the social order.
Yes, it’s understandable that we all want a solution to the collapse of integrity and honor to be done for us by some new app or a new law, but that’s like thinking the wart on the big toe is the source of the brain cancer. Real social change comes from the ground up, not the top down. I explore these themes in my new book The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century.
(free sample chapter)
New podcast:Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)
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