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Chris Hedges: The Gaza Riviera

Text originally published July 26, 2025.

Scheerpost, By Chris Hedges / The Chris Hedges Report, August 4, 2025 , https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/04/chris-hedges-the-gaza-riviera-2/

TRANSCRIPT:


Israelis do not see the images of skeletal corpses of Palestinian children who they have starved to death as a curse. They do not see the slain families they gun down at food hubs — designed not to deliver aid but lure starving Palestinians into a massive concentration camp in the south of Gaza in preparation for deportation — as a war crime. Israelis do not look at the savage bombing and shelling that kill or wound dozens of Palestinian civilians, where an average of 28 children die daily, as anything extraordinary. They do not see the wasteland of Gaza, pulverized by bombs and methodically being torn down by bulldozers and excavators, leaving virtually the entire population of Gaza homeless, as barbaric. They do not see the destruction of water purification plants, decimation of hospitals and clinics, where doctors and medical staff are often unable to work because they are weak from malnutrition, as savage. They do not blink at the assassinations of doctors as well as journalists, 232 of whom have been murdered for trying to document the horror.

Israelis have blinded themselves morally and intellectually…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The genocide in Gaza signals the abolition, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, of the rule of law. It marks the obliteration of even the pretense of an ethical code. Israelis are the barbarians they condemn. If there is any warped justice in this genocide it is that Israelis, once they finish with the Palestinians, will be forced to live together in moral squalor. https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/04/chris-hedges-the-gaza-riviera-2/

August 7, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Israel’s Genocidal Intentions Have Been Obvious This Whole Time

Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 03, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israels-genocidal-intentions-have?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=169999925&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Liberal Israelis are slowly beginning to join the rest of the world in admitting that what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide — a fact that has been clear to anyone with eyes and a basic sense of morality from the very beginning of this nightmare.

It was obvious in October 2023 that Israel intended to eliminate all Palestinians in Gaza, in part because you would never treat a population that way if you intended to leave survivors on your border. Because you’d know they’d seek revenge later on.

Call it the Inigo Montoya problem — if you kill someone’s father right in front of him, it’s a safe bet that he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to kill you. If you intend to act in monstrous ways that fill young children with thoughts of revenge, then you need to get rid of the children, and you need to get rid of the women who will give birth to them. Otherwise you’re just creating a problem for your own children and grandchildren down the road.

The Nazis understood this. Heinrich Himmler famously said, “I did not feel I had a right to exterminate the men — i.e. kill them or have them killed — while allowing the children to grow up and take revenge upon our sons and grandsons. We had to reach the difficult decision of making this nation vanish from the face of the earth.”

The savagery of Israel’s post-October 7 onslaught was so horrific right off the bat that it was clear they didn’t intend to leave anyone alive in Gaza. It was clear they intended to kill as many people as possible and force any survivors to leave, because there’s no way they’d be acting with such sadistic bloodlust if they had any plans to leave survivors within striking distance of themselves.

And that is exactly how it has played out. They’ve intentionally turned Gaza into an uninhabitable wasteland while creating a waking nightmare of death and unfathomable suffering, and Trump and Netanyahu are openly saying that it’s not going to end until all the Palestinians have been removed one way or another.

If you’re going to rape and torture a child, you probably don’t intend to then drop them off at the nearest hospital when you are done with them, because you know the police will be at your door the next day. If you’re going to murder your enemy’s wife and kids in front of him, you probably don’t intend to leave him alive to seek revenge at a later date. Once you’ve gone all-in on perpetrating a sufficiently terrible act, you often need to do some extra killing on top of it to protect yourself from the consequences of your actions.

That’s one of the many reasons why it has always been clear that Israel’s intentions for Gaza are genocide and ethnic cleansing. Even if Israeli officials hadn’t been making openly genocidal statements, and even if genocidal sentiments hadn’t been proliferating throughout the collective consciousness of apartheid Israel for many years — hell, even if you knew absolutely nothing about Israel and Palestine and just looked at the reality on the ground in Gaza — it would still have been obvious to you that Israel did not intend to leave any of those people there. Just because of where they were located and how Israel was treating them.

So when people claim at this late date that they are coming to the reluctant conclusion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, I have a hard time believing them. It was obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of human nature that Israel had no intention of leaving any survivors of this mass atrocity on its border. People are just covering their own asses and trying to wash their hands of their guilt for their complicity in a 21st century holocaust over the past 22 months.

August 5, 2025 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Anti-nuclear weapons demo takes place at Faslane base

HM Naval Base Clyde is home to the Royal Navy’s four Vanguard-class submarines – HMS Vanguard, Vengeance, Victorious and Vigilant – which each carry Trident 2 D5 nuclear missiles.

Gemma Ryder Reporter, 02 Aug 2025,
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/anti-nuclear-weapons-demo-takes-35664128

The “No To Nuclear Weapons” gathering was organised by Justice & Peace Scotland, and brought people of all faiths together for prayer, reflection, and a public stance against nuclear arms.

Those in attendance included Most Rev William Nolan, Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow and Bishop-President of Justice & Peace Scotland; Rt Rev Rosie Frew, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; and Most Rev Mark Strange, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

They were joined by members of the Quakers, the Iona Community, the United Reformed Church, and other religious groups amid growing global tensions.

The UK is preparing to upgrade and expand its nuclear weapons system and President Trump ordered two nuclear submarines to be deployed “in the appropriate regions” in response to comments by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on social media.

Archbishop Nolan said: “The phrase ‘never again’ gained much currency 80 years ago.

“But the actions of nuclear powers, including our own, run contrary to that.

“As the late Pope Benedict articulated, the very concept of a nuclear deterrence has instead fuelled an arms race as those on opposing sides keep seeking to outdo the other.

“We have seen this in the replacement for Trident. Deterrence itself, therefore, has increased insecurity and does nothing to build up trust which is necessary to encourage disarmament and build up peace.”

HM Naval Base Clyde — located near Helensburgh on the Gare Loch — is home to the UK’s four Vanguard-class submarines, each armed with Trident 2 D5 nuclear missiles, capable of striking targets up to 4,000 miles away.

Rt Rev Frew said: “On the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seems right to stand with other Christians saying ‘No’ to nuclear weapons and ‘Yes’ to peace.

“My hope and prayer is to live in a world without war or the threat of war, a world without the threat of the deployment of nuclear weapons.

“I know opinion is very divided on holding nuclear weapons but I don’t believe anyone would ever wish them to be deployed, both those who will gather outside and those who serve in HM Naval Base Clyde.

“The Church of Scotland stands in solidarity with all those who work at Faslane in the service of the United Kingdom, while praying for peace in a world where there is no threat of nuclear weapons ever being used.”

Justice & Peace Scotland said the use and threat of nuclear weapons is incompatible with Christian teaching, and called on political leaders to reject a future based on “fear and power-wielding”.

They added: “Nuclear weapons are fundamentally incompatible with this call as their existence threatens indiscriminate destruction and a future built on fear and power-wielding rather than on fraternity amongst nations.”

August 5, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, Religion and ethics, UK | Leave a comment

Time to De-Zionize the Israeli Mind

What lies ahead is undoing or rejecting Zionist ideology that centers on Jewish nationalism and exclusivism, and replace it with alternative Jewish that emphasizes universalism, religious adherence, or political justice.

By W.O. Munce / August 1, 2025, https://www.thepostil.com/de-zionize-the-israeli-mind/

Israel is a deeply sick country which become monstrous. How is it that the descendants of the victims of Nazi atrocities feel that they can proudly film themselves carrying out similar atrocities? This is bitter fruit of cultivating the “Holocaust industry,” in which Jewish victimhood has been made so sacrosanct that it has created an entire generation that feels that it can do whatever it wants, that crimes can never be committed by Israelis.

Genocides do not happen in a vacuum. At least, when the Nazis were carrying out their murderous plans, they had the “decency” of trying to hide all their crimes, so the world would never know. But such is not the case with Israelis when it comes to the genocide in Gaza. Rather, it is now commonplace for ordinary Israelis to film their enthusiasm for genocide, and post it all on social media—because (a) they do not see killing Palestinians as a crime, and (b) they wear genocide as a badge of honor, because they see it as yet another expression of their exalted victimhood.

For example, videos and images have circulated showing Israelis, including soldiers and settlers, holding barbecue parties near the Gaza border, while—obviously—Palestinians inside Gaza starve. Multiple sources confirm footage of these barbecues near Gaza, while those deemed to be “less human” face famine and widespread starvation.

What kind of satisfaction do these Israelis derive from such behavior? What has the Israeli mindset become that it can imagine that this kind of criminality will meet with approval of the world?

Perhaps, the time has come to begin speaking of an urgent process—the minds of the Israelis have to be de-Zionized.

Fear and hatred play a central role in maintaining Zionist views by creating a psychological and emotional framework that sustains exclusivist national identity and resistance to change. Fear, rooted deeply in historical trauma including the Holocaust, is learned and collective among Israeli Jews. It fosters a sense that the Jewish people face an existential threat from Arabs and the wider world, framing conflicts as struggles for survival against enemies, intent on destruction. This fear is harnessed into a collective, fear-driven hatred directed at Palestinians, portrayed as a monolithic hostile force. Such emotions justify ongoing security measures, territorial claims, and resistance to peace efforts, reinforcing a binary worldview of “us vs. them” where people and states are either friends or enemies.

Hatred, as part of this emotional complex, promotes internal solidarity within Jewish Israelis, reinforces group boundaries, and inhibits empathy towards Palestinians. It can also justify violence and exclusionary policies as necessary defensive actions. The emotions of fear and hatred thus work together to entrench Zionist nationalist ideology by making alternative narratives or conciliatory approaches psychologically and emotionally difficult to accept.

The main psychological barriers to de-Zionizing the Israeli mindset are socio-psychological forces deeply embedded in Israeli Jewish society that inhibit the acceptance of alternative narratives and impede peace processes.

These are rigid, ideological beliefs that justify the continuation of nationalist and territorial claims, such as the belief that Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza is legitimate and that Jews are the main contributors to peacemaking efforts. Such beliefs strengthen exclusivist national identity and resistance to compromise or territorial withdrawal.

Negative emotions toward Palestinians, including fear of security threats and hatred, create emotional resistance to changing perspectives or accepting Palestinian narratives.

There is a biased, closed-minded tendency to selectively process information that supports the dominant Zionist narrative while rejecting or ignoring conflicting information about Palestinians or peace efforts.

Many Israelis sustain a strong sense of collective victimhood from historical trauma (such as the Holocaust or past wars), which fuels defensiveness and reluctance to acknowledge Palestinian suffering fully.

The idea that time is on Israel’s side discourages urgency or willingness to make territorial concessions, promoting a wait-and-see attitude that can reinforce inaction.

Traits that favor traditionalism and authority can increase in-group loyalty and delegitimize Palestinians, reducing openness to peace negotiations.

These barriers operate in an integrated way, involving cognitive, emotional, and motivational dimensions that combine to make shifts away from Zionist nationalist ideology psychologically difficult for many Israelis. They also perpetuate selective bias and resistance to change, complicating efforts to “de-Zionize” or fundamentally rethink the Israeli identity in more inclusive or non-nationalist terms.

What lies ahead is undoing or rejecting Zionist ideology that centers on Jewish nationalism and exclusivism, and replace it with alternative Jewish that emphasizes universalism, religious adherence, or political justice. This process is complex and varies widely depending on religious, political, or social perspective.

Groups like Neturei Karta reject Zionism as apostasy, arguing it undermines Jewish Law and faith by emphasizing secular Jewish nationalism over religious devotion. They seek to restore Judaism as primarily a religious identity, not a nationalistic or territorial one. This includes opposing the State of Israel’s Zionist foundation and advocating for alliances with Palestinians based on shared religious ethics rather than nationalism.

Some Jewish voices oppose Zionism on liberal or humanistic grounds, emphasizing justice and equality for all peoples, including Palestinians. Opposition here focuses on dismantling structures of racial and national exclusivity, advocating for a future Israeli society based on equal rights, democratic principles, and recognition of Palestinian national rights.

Former Zionists or Israelis disengaging from Zionism often describe a journey of critical reflection, learning about Palestinian histories and suffering, and rejecting exclusionary nationalism. This mental de-Zionization involves questioning nationalist narratives, recognizing the impact of occupation, and embracing solidarity with Palestinians.

Left-wing Israeli critics see de-Zionization as abolishing Jewish exclusiveness codified in laws like the Law of Return, ending imperialist ties, and transforming Israel into a multi-national democracy that grants equal rights to all inhabitants regardless of ethnicity or religion.

Perhaps the only path forward, then, is not to advocate for a two-state solution, because the question that must be answered by those who claim support for this idea is rather straight forward: Can a state that has committed genocide suddenly become acceptable by the world community?

The answer can only be—no.

More and more, it will become obvious that if this part of the world is to know any peace, then Israel must be de-Zionzed—and the only way to do that is to create a one state in the Levant, in which everyone can live equally, a state in which Zionism will be banned and illegal.

It is time for the Israeli mind to be freed from all notions of grandeur and superiority. Otherwise, Zionism will continue to produce atrocities.

If this is not done, then the slaughter will go on, generation after generation, until the world grows sick of such crimes—and what happens then will be a lot worse

August 3, 2025 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

When Israelis Call It Out: Finding Genocide in Gaza

29 July 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/when-israelis-call-it-out-finding-genocide-in-gaza/

It’s been almost an article of faith among Israeli officials: the state they represent is incapable of genocide, their actions always spurred by the noblest, necessary motivations of self-defence against satanic enemies who wish genocide upon Jews. Over time, as Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov writes, “Ethical concerns and moral qualms were brushed aside as either marginal or distracting in the face of the ultimate cataclysm that is the genocide of the Jews.”  

This form of reasoning, known otherwise as “Holocaust-ism” or “Shoah-tiyut”, is a moral conceit left bare in the war of annihilation being waged in Gaza against the Palestinian populace. Israeli human rights groups have taken note of this, despite the drained reserves of empathy evident in the Israel proper. (A Pew Research Center poll conducted last month found that a mere 16% of Jewish Israelis thought peaceful coexistence with Palestinians was possible.)

In its latest report pointedly titled Our Genocide, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem offers a blunt assessment: “Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads us to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”  

The infliction of genocide, the organisation acknowledges, is a matter of “multiple and parallel practices” applied over a period of time, with killing being merely one component. Living conditions can be destroyed, concentration camps and zones created, populations expelled and policies to systematically prevent reproduction enacted. “Accordingly, genocidal acts are various actions intended to bring about the destruction of a distinct group, as part of a deliberate, coordinated effort by a ruling authority.”

Our Genocide suggests that certain conditions often precede the sparking of a genocide. Israel’s relations with Palestinians had been characterised by “broader patterns of settler-colonialism”, with the intention of ensuring “Jewish supremacy over Palestinians – economically, politically, socially, and culturally.”

B’Tselem draws upon three crucial elements centred on ensuring “Jewish supremacy over Palestinians”: “life under an apartheid regime that imposes separation, demographic engineering, and ethnic cleansing; systemic and institutionalized use of violence against Palestinians, while the perpetrators enjoy impunity; and institutionalized mechanisms of dehumanization and framing Palestinians as an existential threat.” The attacks on Israel by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7, 2023 was a violent event that created a “sense of existential threat among the perpetrating group” enabling the “ruling system to carry out genocide.” As B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak notes, this sense of threat was promoted by an “extremist, far-right messianic government” to pursue “an agenda of destruction and expulsion.”

Israeli policy in the Strip since October 2023 could not be rationalised as a focused, targeted attempt to destroy the rule of Hamas or its military efficacy. “Statements by senior Israeli decision-makers about the nature and assault in Gaza have expressed genocidal intent throughout.” Ditto Israeli military officers of all ranks. Gaza’s residents had been dehumanised, with many Jewish-Israelis believing “that their lives are of negligible value compared to Israel’s national goals, if not worthless altogether.”

The report also notes the use of certain terminology that haunts the literature of genocidal euphemism: the creation of “humanitarian zones” that would still be bombed despite supposedly providing protection for displaced civilians; the use of “kill zones” by the Israeli military and the absence of any standardised rules of engagement through the Strip, often “determined at the discretion of commanders on the ground or based on arbitrary criteria.”

Wishing to be comprehensive, the authors of the report do not ignore Israel’s actions in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Airstrikes regularly take place against refugee camps in the northern part of the territory since October 2023. Even more lethal open-fire policies have been used in the West Bank, with the use of kill zones suggesting “the broader ‘Gazafication’ of Israel’s methods of warfare.”

Another group, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI), has also published a legal-medical appraisal on the intentional destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, finding that the Israeli campaign in Gaza “constitutes genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.” The evidence examined by the group “shows a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system and other vital systems necessary for the population’s survival.” The evolving nature of the campaign suggested a “deliberate progression” from the initial bombing and forced evacuation of hospitals in the northern part of the Strip to calculated collapse of the healthcare system across the entire enclave. The dismantling of the health system involved rendering hospitals “non-functional”, the blocking of medical evaluations and the elimination of such vital services as trauma care, surgery, dialysis and maternal health.  

Added to this has been the direct targeting of health care workers, involving the death and detention of over 1,800 members “including many senior specialists” and the deliberate restriction of humanitarian relief through militarised distribution points that pose lethal risks to aid recipients. “This coordinated assault has produced a cascading failure of health and humanitarian infrastructure, compounded by policies leading to starvation, disease and the breakdown of sanitation, housing, and education systems.”

PHRI contends that, at the very least, three core elements of Article II of the Genocide Convention are met: the killing of members of a group (identified by nationality, ethnicity, race or religion); causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of that group and deliberately inflicting on the group those conditions of life to bring about its destruction in whole or in part.

In accepting that genocide is being perpetrated against the Palestinians, Our Genocide makes that most pertinent of points: the dry legal analysis of genocide tends to be distanced from a historical perspective. “The legal definition is narrow, having been shaped in large part by the political interests of the states whose representatives drafted it.” The high threshold of identifying genocide, and the international jurisprudence on the subject, had produced a disturbing paradox: genocide tends to be recognised “only after a significant portion of the targeted group has already been destroyed and the group as such has suffered irreparable harm.” The thrust of these clarion calls from B’Tselem and PHRI is urgently clear: end this state of affairs before the Palestinians become yet another historical victim of such harm.

July 30, 2025 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

“Release Israeli hostages? Get serious. We’ve got a genocide to complete”

28 July 2025 AIMN Editorial By Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, https://theaimn.net/release-israeli-hostages-get-serious-weve-got-a-genocide-to-complete/

As reported in The Times of Israel July 24, far-right Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu told Haredi radio station Kol Barama that:

“The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out. Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on ‘Mein Kampf’.

“All Gaza will be Jewish. We aren’t racists… We are fighting those who fight us.”

Tho one of the most explicit Israeli public statements admitting Israel’s Gaza genocide, it’s just one of many from Israeli government officials and pundits thruout this 22 month long atrocity. America remains fully committed to the genocide with tens of billions in weapons, intel, logistics, vetoes of UN ceasefire resolutions. That would be like FDR sending the Nazis Zylon B gas to finish off European Jewry and other Nazi undesirables during WWII.

The US just withdrew from ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas because Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire, ending the genocide before releasing remaining Israeli hostages.

Neither Israel nor America prioritizes the hostages’ release. That goal is a distant second to wiping out the remaining starving Palestinians so Gaza can be rebuilt, possibly by Trump Inc., as a waterfront showplace of Greater Israel.

More on Amichay Eliyahu here. He’s nasty.

July 30, 2025 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | 1 Comment

Chris Hedges: The Gaza Riviera

 July 27, 2025 ,By Chris Hedges / ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/07/27/chris-hedges-the-gaza-riviera/

Israelis do not see the images of skeletal corpses of Palestinian children who they have starved to death as a curse. They do not see the slain families they gun down at food hubs — designed not to deliver aid but lure starving Palestinians into a massive concentration camp in the south of Gaza in preparation for deportation — as a war crime. Israelis do not look at the savage bombing and shelling that kill or wound dozens of Palestinian civilians, where an average of 28 children die daily, as anything extraordinary. They do not see the wasteland of Gaza, pulverized by bombs and methodically being torn down by bulldozers and excavators, leaving virtually the entire population of Gaza homeless, as barbaric. They do not see the destruction of water purification plants, decimation of hospitals and clinics, where doctors and medical staff are often unable to work because they are weak from malnutrition, as savage. They do not blink at the assassinations of doctors as well as journalists, 232 of whom have been murdered for trying to document the horror.

Israelis have blinded themselves morally and intellectually. They view the genocide through the lens of a bankrupt media and political class that tells them only what they want to hear and shows them only what they want to see. They are intoxicated by the power of their industrial weapons and license to kill with impunity. They are drunk on self-adulation and the fantasy that they are the vanguard of civilization. They believe that the extermination of a people, including children, condemned as human contaminants, makes the world, especially their world, a happier and safer place.

They are the heirs of Pol Pot, the killers that carried out the genocides in East Timor, Rwanda and Bosnia and, yes, the Nazis. Israel, like all genocidal states — no population since World War II has been dispossessed and starved with such speed and ruthlessness – has a final solution that would have earned the stamp of approval from Adolf Eichmann.

Starvation was always the plan, the preordained final chapter of the genocide. Israel methodically set out from the beginning of the genocide to destroy sources of food, bombing bakeries and blocking food shipments into Gaza, something it has accelerated since March, when it severed nearly all food supplies. It targeted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — on which most Palestinians depended on for food — for destruction, accusing its employees, without providing evidence, of being involved in the attacks of Oct. 7. This accusation was used to give funders such as the United States, which provided $422 million to the agency in 2023, the excuse to halt financial support. Israel then banned UNRWA.

Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and U.S. mercenaries in the chaotic scramble to get one of the few food packages distributed during the brief blocks of time, usually an hour, at the four aid sites set up by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.

Once Gaza was turned into a moonscape after 21 months of saturation bombing, once Palestinians were forced to live in tents, under crude tarps or in the open air, once clean water, food and medical aid became nearly impossible to find, once civil society was obliterated, Israel began its grim campaign to starve the Palestinians out of Gaza.

One in three people in Gaza are going multiple days without eating, according to the U.N.

Starvation is not a pretty sight. I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took an estimated 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs — scars from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated and did not.

I watched hundreds of skeletal figures, ghosts of human beings, trudge at a glacial pace across the barren Sudanese landscape. Hyenas, accustomed to eating human flesh, routinely picked off small children. I stood over clusters of bleached human bones on the outskirts of villages where dozens of people, too weak to walk, had laid down in a group and never got up. Many were the remains of entire families.

The starved lack enough calories to sustain themselves. They eat anything to survive — animal feed, grass, leaves, insects, rodents, even dirt. They suffer from constant diarrhea. They have trouble breathing because of respiratory infections. They rip up tiny bits of food, often spoiled, and ration it in a vain attempt to hold off the gnawing hunger pains.

Starvation reduces the iron needed to produce hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles, coupled with a lack of vitamin B1, which affects heart and brain function. Anemia sets in. The body, in essence, feeds on itself. Tissue and muscle waste away. It is impossible to regulate body temperature. Kidneys shut down. Immune systems crash. Vital organs atrophy. Blood circulation slows. The volume of blood decreases. Infectious diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera become an epidemic, killing people by the thousands.

It is impossible to concentrate. Emaciated victims succumb to mental and emotional withdrawal and apathy. They do not want to be touched or moved. The heart muscle is weakened. Victims, even at rest, are in a state of virtual heart failure. Wounds do not heal. Vision is impaired with cataracts, even among the young. Finally, wracked by convulsions and hallucinations, the heart stops. This process can last up to 40 days for an adult. Children, the elderly and the sick expire at faster rates. This is the future Israel has preordained for the two million people in Gaza.

But it is not the future Israelis see. They see paradise. They see an ethno-nationalist Jewish state where Palestinians, whose land they stole and occupied and whose people they have subjugated and forced into an apartheid existence, do not exist. They see cafes and hotels rising up where thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of bodies lie buried under the rubble. They see tourists frolicking on the Gaza beachfront, a vision enhanced by an Artificial Intelligence-generated video uploaded to social media by Israeli Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Gila Gamliel. It is what a Gaza devoid of Palestinians would look like, echoing the absurdist AI video posted by Donald Trump.

In the new video, carefree Israelis eat at seaside restaurants. Anchored in the sparkling Mediterranean are luxury yachts. Gleaming hotels and office high rises, including a Trump Tower, dot the beachfront. Attractive residential neighborhoods stand where now there are broken, jagged mounds of concrete. The video shows Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, as well as Trump and Melania, strolling along the seaside.

Gamliel, like other Israeli leaders and Trump, cynically uses the term “voluntary emigration” to describe the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This omits the stark choice Israel actually offers the Palestinians — leave or die.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for a “security annexation” of the northern Gaza Strip and vowed that Gaza will become an “inseparable part of the State of Israel.” He made the remarks at a Knesset conference called “The Gaza Riviera — from vision to reality,” which presented proposals for the building of Jewish colonies in Gaza. Smotrich said Israel would “relocate Gazans to other countries,” and that Trump endorsed the plan.

Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who once proposed dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, declared that “All Gaza will be Jewish.” The Israeli government “is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu said. He described Palestinians as Nazis. “Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on ‘Mein Kampf.’”

Genocidal killers embrace fantasies of eradicating a native population and expanding their ethnonationalist state. The Nazis carried out their genocidal assault, which included mass starvation, on Slavs, Eastern European Jews and other indigenous people, dismissed as Untermenschen, or subhumans. Colonists were then to be shipped to Central and Eastern Europe to Germanize the occupied territory.

These killers do not reckon with the darkness they unleash. The upscale beachfront properties dreamt of by Israel will never appear, just as the modern, exclusively Serb capital, with its golden domed cathedral, imposing presidency building, 15-story clock tower, state-of-the-art medical center and national theater with a 72-foot revolving stage was never built on the ruins of Bosnia.

Rather, there will be ugly apartment blocks, populated by the usual miscreants, proto-fascists, racists and mediocrities who live in the Jewish colonies in the West Bank. These ultranationalists, who have formed rogue militias to seize Palestinian land and joined the Israeli army in murdering over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, will define Israel. They are the Israeli version of the 3-million-strong Pancasila Youth — Indonesia’s equivalent of the Brown Shirts or the Hitler Youth — that in 1965 helped carry out the genocidal mayhem that left half a million to one million dead.

These rogue militias, equipped with automatic weapons provided by the Israeli government, lynched Saifullah Musallet, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American, who was attempting to protect his family’s land two weeks ago. He is the fifth U.S. citizen killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.

Once these Israeli goons and thugs are done with the Palestinians, they will turn on each other.

The genocide in Gaza signals the abolition, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, of the rule of law. It marks the obliteration of even the pretense of an ethical code. Israelis are the barbarians they condemn. If there is any warped justice in this genocide it is that Israelis, once they finish with the Palestinians, will be forced to live together in moral squalor.

July 28, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

It’s A Genocide, But It’s Also So Much More Than That

Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 23, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/its-a-genocide-but-its-also-so-much?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=169008966&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The mass atrocity in Gaza is a genocide, obviously, and is an undisguised ethnic cleansing operation.

But it’s also a lot more than that.

It’s an experiment — to see what kinds of abuses the public will accept without causing significant disruption to the imperial status quo.

It’s a psychological operation — to push out the boundaries of what’s normal and acceptable in our minds so that we will consent to even more horrific abuses in the future.

It’s a symptom — of Zionism, of colonialism, of militarism, of capitalism, of western supremacism, of empire-building, of propaganda, of ignorance, of apathy, of delusion, of ego.

It’s a manifestation — of violent racist, supremacist and xenophobic belief systems that have always been there but were previously restrained, meeting with the unwholesome nature of alliances that have long been in place but have been aggressively normalized.

It’s a mirror — showing us accurately and impartially who we currently are as a civilization.

It’s a disclosure — showing us what the western empire we live under really is underneath its fake plastic mask of liberal democracy and righteous humanitarianism.

It’s a revelation — showing us who among us really stands for truth and justice and who has been deceiving us about themselves and their motives this entire time.

It’s a catalyst — a galvanizing force and a rallying cry for all who realize that the murderous power structures we live under can no longer be allowed to stand, and a blaring alarm clock opening more and more snoozing eyes to the need for revolutionary change.

It’s a test — of who we are as a species and what we are made of, and of whether we can transcend the destructive patterning that is driving humanity to its doom.

It’s a question — asking us what kind of world we want to live in going forward, and what kind of people we want to be.

It’s an invitation — to become something better than what we are now.

July 24, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Gaza Isn’t Starving, It Is Being Starved

Caitlin Johnstone Jul 21, 2025 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/gaza-isnt-starving-it-is-being-starved?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=168826710&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza are beginning to climb, with the health ministry reporting 18 in a single 24-hour period. Doctors report that people are “collapsing” in the street, and Gaza journalist Nahed Hajjaj is warning the world not to be surprised if the remaining reporters in the enclave are soon silenced by starvation.

Unless something drastically changes, things can be expected to get much worse very rapidly.

Meanwhile Israeli forces are setting new records with their massacres of starving civilians seeking aid, with 85 killed in a single day on Sunday.

If this isn’t evil, then nothing is evil. If Israel isn’t evil, then nothing is.

So what’s the plan here? Do we just sit and watch Israel starve Gaza to death with the support of our own governments?

And then what? We just go along with our lives, knowing that that happened? That this is what we are as a society? That our civilization is comfortable allowing something like that to happen? And that our rulers could do the same thing to another inconvenient population at any time?

We’re just meant to be cool with that? And go on living like it’s normal?

I’m genuinely curious. How exactly is everyone planning to go about living their lives after that point? How does that work, exactly?

I’m asking because I don’t know. I mean, I know what my own government and its allies should do, but I don’t know what we as ordinary members of the public are supposed to do.

You’ll see western pundits and politicians asking “How do we get a ceasefire in Gaza?” or “How do we end hunger in Gaza?” as though it’s some kind of ineffable mystery, which is kind of like a man strangling a child to death while saying “The child is being strangled, but HOW do we stop the child strangulation from occurring?”

It’s not some mystery how to get a ceasefire in Gaza; the empire is the fire. It simply needs to cease firing. Israel’s holocaust in Gaza is made possible only by the support of its western backers, primarily the United States. Numerous Israeli military insiders have acknowledged that none of this would be possible without US support. If the United States and its western allies ceased backing Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, a ceasefire would have to occur.

Likewise, it is not a mystery how to get food into Gaza. You just drive the food on in and give it to people. They’ve got roads and gates right there. The only reason people in Gaza are starving is because western governments (including my own Australia) conspired to pretend to believe that UNRWA is a terrorist organization to justify cutting off critical aid, while doing nothing to pressure Israel into allowing aid to flow freely.

And now Israel and the US empire are monopolizing the delivery of “aid” through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose facilities now see civilians massacred every day for the crime of attempting to obtain food.

The organizations, funding and delivery systems to feed Gaza are all 100 percent fully available (at no cost to Israel, by the way). They’re just not being allowed to provide aid because the goal is to remove all Palestinians from Gaza via death or displacement. The people of Gaza are starving because the west is helping Israel starve Gaza. It really is that simple.

This isn’t some kind of unfortunate famine caused by a drought or natural disaster. It is a deliberately manufactured starvation campaign, implemented with genocidal intent.

To paraphrase Utah Phillips, Gaza isn’t starving, it is being starved. And the people who are starving it have names and addresses.

July 22, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

80 Years After Trinity

No longer represented as a plausible deterrent, the bomb now stood poised to become what Los Alamos Director J. Robert Oppenheimer would describe shortly after the war as “weapons of terror, of surprise, of aggression… [used] against an essentially defeated enemy.”

Why Was There So Little Dissent at Los Alamos and What Does It Mean Today?

By Eric Ross, 17 July 25, https://tomdispatch.com/80-years-after-trinity/

In recent months, nuclear weapons have reemerged in global headlines. Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan approached the brink of a full-scale war, a confrontation that could have become an extinction-level event, with the potential to claim up to two billion lives worldwide.

The instability of a global order structured on nuclear apartheid has also come into sharp relief in the context of the recent attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States. That system has entrenched a dangerous double standard, creating perverse incentives for the proliferation of world-destroying weaponry, already possessed by nine countries. Many of those nations use their arsenals to exercise imperial impunity, while non-nuclear states increasingly feel compelled to pursue nuclear weapons in the name of national security and survival.

Meanwhile, the largest nuclear powers show not the slightest signs of responsibility or restraint. The United States, Russia, and China are investing heavily in the “modernization” and expansion of their arsenals, fueling a renewed arms race. And that escalation comes amid growing global instability contributing to a Manichean world of antagonistic armed blocs, reminiscent of the Cold War at its worst.

The nuclear threat endangers not only global peace and security but the very continuity of the human species, not to speak of the simple survival of life on Earth. How, you might wonder, could we ever have arrived at such a precarious situation?

The current crisis coincides with the 80th anniversary of the Trinity Test, the first detonation of an atomic weapon that would soon obliterate the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and so inaugurate the atomic age. So many years later, it’s worth critically reassessing the decisions that conferred on humanity such a power of self-annihilation. After all, we continue to live with the fallout of the choices made (and not made), including those of the scientists who created the bomb. That history also serves as a reminder that alternative paths were available then and that another world remains possible today.

A Tale of Two Laboratories

In the summer of 1945, scientists and technicians at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico worked feverishly to complete the construction of the atomic bomb. Meanwhile, their colleagues at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory mounted a final, ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent its use.

The alarm spreading in Chicago stemmed from a sobering realization. The Manhattan Project that they had joined on the basis of a belief that they were in an existential arms race with Nazi Germany had, by then, revealed itself to be a distinctly one-sided contest. Until then, the specter of a possible German atomic bomb had conferred a sense of urgency and a veneer of moral legitimacy on what many scientists otherwise recognized as a profoundly unethical undertaking.

Prior to the fall of Berlin, Allied intelligence had already begun to cast serious doubt on Germany’s progress toward developing an atomic weapon. By April 1945, with the Nazi regime in a state of collapse and Japan’s defeat imminent, the threat that served as the original justification for the bomb’s development had all but vanished.

No longer represented as a plausible deterrent, the bomb now stood poised to become what Los Alamos Director J. Robert Oppenheimer would describe shortly after the war as “weapons of terror, of surprise, of aggression… [used] against an essentially defeated enemy.”

By that point, it was evident that the bomb would be used not to deter Germany but to destroy Japan, and not as the final act of World War II but as the opening salvo of what would become the Cold War. The true target of the first atomic bomb wasn’t, in fact, Tokyo, but Moscow, with the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sacrificed on the altar of American global imperial ambition.

For the scientists at Chicago, that new context demanded new thinking. In June 1945, a committee of physicists led by James Franck submitted a report to Secretary of War Henry Stimson warning of the profound political and ethical consequences of employing such a bomb without exhausting all other alternatives. “We believe,” the Franck Report stated, “that the use of nuclear bombs for an early, unannounced attack against Japan [would be] inadvisable.” The report instead proposed a demonstration before international observers, arguing that such a display could serve as a gesture of goodwill and might avert the need to use the bombs altogether.

One of that report’s signatories, Leo Szilard, who had been among the bomb’s earliest advocates, further sought to prevent what he had come to recognize as the catastrophic potential outcome of their creation. With Germany defeated, he felt a personal responsibility for reversing the course he had helped set in motion. Echoing concerns articulated in the Franck Report, he drafted a petition to be circulated among the scientists. While acknowledging that the bomb might offer short-term military and political advantages against Japan, he warned that its deployment would ultimately prove morally indefensible and strategically self-defeating, a position which would also be held by six of the seven U.S. five-star generals and admirals of that moment.

Szilard emphasized that the atomic bomb wasn’t just a more powerful weapon but a fundamental transformation in the nature of warfare, an instrument of annihilation. He already feared Americans might come to regret that their own government had sown the seeds of global destruction by legitimizing the sudden obliteration of Japanese cities, a precedent that would render a heavily industrialized, densely populated country like the United States especially vulnerable.

Moreover, he concluded that using such weapons of unimaginable destructive power without sufficient military justification would severely undermine American credibility in future arms control efforts. He observed that the development of the bomb under conditions of extreme wartime secrecy had created an abjectly anti-democratic situation, one in which the public was denied any opportunity to deliberate on such an irrevocable and consequential decision.

As Eugene Rabinowitch, a co-author of the Franck Report (who would later co-found The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists), would note soon after, the scientists in Chicago were growing increasingly uneasy in the face of escalating secrecy: “Many scientists began to wonder: against whom was this extreme secrecy directed? What was the sense of keeping our success secret from the Japanese? Would it have helped them to know that we had an atomic bomb ready?”

Rabinowitch concluded that the only “danger” posed by such a disclosure was that the Chicago scientists might be proven right, and Japan might surrender. “Since there was no justifiable reason to hold the bomb secret from the Japanese,” he argued, “many scientists felt that the purpose of deepened secrecy was to keep the knowledge of the bomb… from the American people.”

In other words, officials in Washington were concerned that a successful demonstration might deprive them of the coveted opportunity to use the bomb and assert their newly acquired monopoly (however temporary) on unprecedented power.

The Road to Trinity and the Cult of Oppenheimer

Seventy scientists at Chicago endorsed the Szilard Petition. By then, however, their influence on the project had distinctly diminished. Despite their early contributions, notably the achievement of the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction in December 1942, the project’s center of gravity had shifted to Los Alamos.

Recognizing this, Szilard sought to circulate the petition among his colleagues there, too, hoping to invoke a shared sense of scientific responsibility and awaken their moral conscience in the critical weeks leading up to the first test of the weapon. Why did that effort fail? Why was there so little dissent, debate, or resistance at Los Alamos given the growing scientific opposition, bordering on revolt, that had emerged in Chicago?

One answer lies in Oppenheimer himself. In popular culture and historical scholarship, his legacy is often framed as that of a tragic figure: the reluctant architect of the atomic age, an idealist drawn into the ethically fraught task of creating a weapon of mass destruction compelled by the perceived exigencies of an existential war.

Yet the myth of him as a Promethean figure who suffered for unleashing the fundamental forces of nature onto a society unprepared to bear responsibility for it obscures the extent of his complicity. Far from being a passive participant, in the final months of the Manhattan Project, he emerged as a willing collaborator in the coordination of the coming atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When Oppenheimer and physicist Edward Teller (who would come to be known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb”) received Szilard’s petition, neither shared it. While Oppenheimer offered no response, Teller provided a striking explanation: “The things we are working on are so terrible that no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls.” He further rejected the idea that he held any authority to influence the bomb’s use. “You may think it is a crime to continue to work,” he conceded, “but I feel that I should do the wrong thing if I tried to say how to tie the little toe of the ghost to the bottle from which we just helped it escape.”

Teller later claimed to be in “absolute agreement” with the petition, but added that “Szilard asked me to collect signatures… I felt I could not do so without first seeking Oppenheimer’s permission more directly. I did so and Oppenheimer talked me out of it, saying that we as scientists have no business meddling in political pressure of that kind… I am ashamed to say that he managed to talk me out of [it].”

Teller’s explanation was likely self-serving given his later acrimonious rift with Oppenheimer over the hydrogen bomb. Yet further evidence indicates that Oppenheimer actively sought to suppress debate and dissent. Physicist Robert Wilson recalled that upon arriving at Los Alamos in 1943, he raised concerns about the broader implications of their work and the “terrible problems” it might create, particularly given the exclusion of the Soviet Union, then an ally. The Los Alamos director, Wilson remembered, “didn’t want to talk about that sort of thing” and would instead redirect the conversation to technical matters. When Wilson helped organize a meeting to discuss the future trajectory of the project in the wake of Germany’s defeat, Oppenheimer cautioned him against it, warning that “he would get into trouble by calling such a meeting.”


The meeting nonetheless proceeded, with Oppenheimer in attendance, though his presence proved stifling. “He participated very much, dominating the meeting,” Wilson remembered. Oppenheimer pointed to the upcoming San Francisco Conference to establish the United Nations and insisted that political questions would be addressed there by those with greater expertise, implying that scientists had no role to play in such matters and ought to abstain from influencing the applications of their work.

Reflecting on his mindset at the time, Oppenheimer explained, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.” In a similar vein, his oft-quoted remark that “the physicists have known sin” was frequently misinterpreted. He was not referring, he insisted, to the “sin” of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but to pride for “intervening explicitly and heavy-handedly in the course of human history.”

When situated within this broader context of a professed commitment to scientific detachment, Oppenheimer’s behavior becomes more intelligible. In practice, however, his stated ideals stood in stark contrast to his conduct. While he claimed to reject political engagement, he ultimately intervened in precisely such a manner, using his position to advocate forcefully for the bomb’s immediate military use against Japan without prior warning. He emerged as a leading opponent of any prospective demonstration, cautioning that it would undermine the psychological impact of the bomb’s use, which could only be realized through a sudden, unannounced detonation on a relatively untouched, non-military target like the city of Hiroshima. This position stood in sharp contrast to that of the Chicago scientists, of whom only 15% supported using the bomb in such a manner.


That climate of deference fostered a culture of complicity, where questions of social responsibility were subordinated to uncritical faith in authority. Reflecting on that dynamic, physicist Rudolf Peierls acknowledged, “I knew that Oppenheimer was on a committee and was briefing with the high-ups. I felt there were two things one could rely on: Oppenheimer to put the reasonable ideas across, and that one could trust people. After all, we are not terrorists at heart or anything… Both these statements might now be somewhat optimistic.”

Ultimately, the only member of Los Alamos to register dissent was Joseph Rotblat, who quietly resigned on ethical grounds after learning in November 1944 that there was no active Nazi atomic bomb program. His departure remained a personal act of conscience, however, rather than an effort to initiate a broader moral reckoning within the scientific community.

“Remember Your Humanity”


The legacy of Oppenheimer, a burden we all now carry, lies in his mistaking proximity to power for power itself. Rather than using his influence to restrain the bomb’s use, he exercised what authority he had to facilitate its most catastrophic outcome, entrusting its consequences to political leaders who soon revealed their recklessness. In doing so, he helped lay the groundwork for what President Dwight D. Eisenhower would, in his farewell address to Congress in 1961, warn against as “the disastrous rise of misplaced power.”

Yet we are not doomed. This history should also remind us that the development and use of nuclear weapons was not inevitable. There were those who spoke out and a different path might well have been possible. While we cannot know exactly how events would have unfolded had dissent been amplified rather than suppressed, we can raise our own voices now to demand a safer, saner future. Our collective survival may well depend on it. How much longer a world armed with nuclear weapons can endure remains uncertain. The only viable path forward lies in renewing a commitment to, as Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell urged, “remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” With ever more nations developing increasingly powerful arsenals, one thing remains clear: as the Doomsday Clock moves ever closer to midnight, there is no time to waste.

July 20, 2025 Posted by | Religion and ethics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Three Blows Against Zionism in a Single Day

A court ruling in Australia, an election result in New York and a military setback for Israel, all coming on Tuesday this week, signaled a serious turn of events for Zionism and its supporters, writes Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/06/26/three-blows-against-zionism-in-a-single-day/

The impunity with which Zionism invades and bombs its neighbors and shuts up its critics in Western nations was thrown into question perhaps as never before on Tuesday as Zionism suffered a legal, a political and a military defeat all in one day.

A Military Defeat in the Morning

On Tuesday morning Washington time, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a cessation of hostilities after an 11-day war that saw Israel seriously deplete its air defenses, undermine its economy and suffer the worst damage from enemy fire in memory.  

A war that Israel — and especially its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — had lusted after for three decades had finally been launched. Netanyahu at last found an American president willing to join him in unprovoked aggression against Iran to extend Israel’s regional dominance well beyond the Jordan River.

That would require the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and the overthrow of the Iranian government to be replaced by a puppet regime led by Israel and the United States.  

Instead, Israel had to cut short the operation despite U.S. involvement because it was not going to plan.  U.S. intelligence says the so-far merely civilian nuclear program was only set back a few months and the Iranian government has never been made more secure.

As it touts itself as the most invincible (and “moral”) army, the failure to achieve its goals in Iran and the physical damage it took from Iranian missile and drone attacks makes what just transpired a humiliating military defeat for Zionism. 

And though U.S. presidents have privately groused about Israeli leaders before, never has Israel been cursed out before in public by a president, as Trump did on Tuesday morning.

A Legal Defeat in the Evening

Then at 8:15 pm Tuesday, U.S. East Coast time (10:15 am Wednesday in Australia), a federal judge in Sydney found the courage to stand up to the organized thuggery of Zionist lobbies by ruling that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) had succumbed to intense pressure from Israel lobbyists to sack a radio presenter because she shared an instagram post from Human Rights Watch which accurately reported that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war.

That is the exact charge formally leveled in Netanyahu’s arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Australian judge ruled that the presenter, Antoinette Lattouf, was wrongly dismissed and that the ABC must pay her restitution.

Judge Daryl Rangiah said the ABC had “appease[d] … pro-Israel lobbyists” because Lattouf “held political opinions opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.” Rangiah said that “the complaints [to the ABC] were an orchestrated campaign by pro-Israel lobbyists to have Ms Lattouf taken off air.”

ABC managing director Hugh Marks apologized to the public on air, saying, “Any undue influence or pressure on ABC management or any of its employees must always be guarded against.”

It was a major setback for a powerful Israel Lobby in a Western nation. These lobbies have been untouchable until now no matter what underhanded tactics they employ to create cover for genocide and wars of aggression by smearing and silencing legitimate critics of Israel. 

A Political Defeat in the Night

Still on Tuesday, at around 11 pm in New York City, a Muslim politician who has vowed to arrest Netanyahu based on the ICC warrant if he steps foot in the city while he is mayor, defeated a Democratic Party machine politician in the party’s primary election for mayor.

Despite being repeatedly smeared as an anti-semite, Zohran Mamdani has refused to renounce his strong support for Palestinians, including refusing to retract his labelling of Israel’s war on Gaza “genocide.”

Mamdani’s electoral victory has incensed Zionists everywhere, setting off gnashing of teeth. “NY Democrats have fully embraced Marxism, antisemitism, anti-capitalism, and sheer insanity,” said fanatical Zionist Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler called Mamdani “a radical, antisemitic socialist.”

The election result shows that a sizeable number of voters in the city with the largest population of Jews after Tel Aviv don’t care anymore about the taboos constructed and enforced against criticizing Israel.  Israel has their live-streamed genocide to thank for that. 

A Beginning, Not an End

Anyone of these events alone would signify a momentous turning of the tide against decades of built-up injustice committed by Israel and its lobby. The baseless smears of anti-semitism are losing their effect. The image of an all-powerful Israeli military is tarnished. 

June 24, 2025 may be seen as the day in which fear of Israel was overcome on a scale not seen before. There is a long road ahead filled with enormous obstacles, but this day could usher in an era in which Israel and its enablers are at last held accountable for their many crimes. 

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. 

June 28, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, Legal, politics, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Meet the Israeli fanatic running Ted Cruz’s office

Wyatt Reed·June 23, 2025, The Grayzone

After Ted Cruz’s humiliation by Tucker Carlson, attention has focused on a top staffer of the self-proclaimed “leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate.”

On June 18, former Fox host Tucker Carlson published a video which, though marketed as an interview, was more of a snuff film. Over the course of two hours, Carlson can be seen rhetorically disemboweling his debate opponent, US Senator Ted Cruz, on the politician’s determination to see the US attack Iran on Israel’s behalf.

While Cruz presents himself as a Christian Zionist moved by his own zealotry to support Israel, the politician’s Tel Aviv-driven policy line can also be traced back to his Senior Advisor for Policy and Communications, an Israeli-born Zionist lobbyist named Omri Ceren.

Before overseeing Cruz’s public relations, Ceren managed his foreign policy docket as his national security advisor. Prior to joining the Senator’s staff, Ceren served as the press director for The Israel Project, a Zionist pressure group which was forced to close down after being exposed as a de facto Israeli government front by Al Jazeera’s groundbreaking undercover investigation, The Lobby. Before that, Ceren cut his teeth lobbying for Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who relied on Ceren as a registered foreign agent lending his marketing expertise to the embattled regime.

Ceren has consistently opposed a nuclear deal with Iran since at least 2015, when he declared that any agreement would simply ensure Tehran was “able to cheat with impunity.” At a talk hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute think tank in 2018, he suggested Washington should continue preaching about “freedom” and encouraging Iranian protesters to pursue regime change while simultaneously maintaining Trump’s ban on Iranians entering the US…………………………………………….

Since the attack, Cruz has posted 14 comments on Twitter/X. 12 of them consisted of breathless statements cheering the bombing or attacks on opponents of the war, whom he branded as “the death to America crowd.”… https://thegrayzone.com/2025/06/23/israeli-fanatic-ted-cruz-office/

June 27, 2025 Posted by | Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Ghoulish US Congresspersons applaud dastardly Israeli attack on Iran

17 June 2025 By Walt Zlotow  ,https://theaimn.net/ghoulish-us-congresspersons-applaud-dastardly-israeli-attack-on-iran/

No surprise upon hearing the news, supreme US warmonger Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) immediately chortled “Game on. Pray for Israel.” That would be like a US Senator saying “Game on, pray for Germany” after their September 1, 1939 attack on Poland. Just like Germany, Israel cited ‘self-defense’ for their criminal, senseless bombardment that could provoke a regional if not nuclear war.

Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-FL) was a tad less ecstatic but bloodthirsty nonetheless charging: “The threat from Iran will only stop when the regime is destroyed. Anything less is just a temporary respite from the existential threat Iran poses to our allies and the free world.”

Even relatively moderate Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins offered up this huge whopper before hoping for an Israeli victory. “Our country too is at risk as Iran continues its development not only of fissile material but also of ballistic missiles.” The only risk this conflict has to America is destroying every decent, peaceful, humane value our country should be embracing.

The majority of congresspersons commenting, fully support the Israeli regime change attack on Iran just as they’ve been supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza for the past 20 months. Most are Republicans but one Democratic Senator, John Fetterman, offered this bit of heartless cruelty to the bombarded Iranians: “Our commitment to Israel must be absolute and I fully support this attack. Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel We must provide whatever is necessary – military, intelligence, weaponry – to fully back Israel in striking Iran.”

We can only surmise why these unhinged congresspersons support the most heinous conduct any governmental leader can inflict on a people posing no threat to America. But in so doing they disgrace their office, they disgrace America, they disgrace themselves.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL

June 18, 2025 Posted by | Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

The ‘unsustainable’ reason behind who can have nuclear weapons, and who can’t

there was no evidence of active weaponisation, or that Israel’s strike was “pre-emptive in the sense that Iran was clearly planning an attack on Israel that was imminent”.

“the most flagrant example of double standards that you could possibly imagine”.

Israel has said its attack on Iran on Friday was partially aimed at destroying its nuclear infrastructure. But it’s far from the only country to have developed its capacity in recent years.

By Alex Gallagher, 16 June 2025, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-unsustainable-decision-on-who-gets-to-have-nuclear-weapons-and-who-doesnt/dpk5breh3

On Friday, Israel launched its largest attack on Iran in decades, with a wave of airstrikes that hit nuclear facilities, military sites and residential buildings in the capital, Tehran.

Iran responded with retaliatory strikes on Israel, and the two countries have continued trading missile fire for days.

Iran’s health ministry said 224 people have been killed by Israel’s attacks, while Israel said 13 have been killed by Iranian strikes. Hundreds of people have been wounded in both countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the goal of Friday’s strikes was partially to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program, calling the strikes “pre-emptive”.

The strikes caused significant damage to linked sites such as the Natanz nuclear facility and a uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan, and killed multiple nuclear scientists in addition to military officials and civilians.

Israel has long claimed Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, with Netanyahu calling it an “existential threat to Israel”.

Iran has consistently denied it is developing nuclear weapons, saying its uranium enrichment program is exclusively for peaceful purposes such as energy, and international assessments have found no evidence that Iran, over the past 20 years, has had an active nuclear weaponisation program.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly said there is an Islamic fatwa — a legal ruling — against the development of nuclear weapons, and that such development is prohibited under Islamic law.

Shortly before Israel’s strikes on Iran, the United Nations’ global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), declared Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.

The IAEA cited “many failures” since 2019 to uphold its obligations to provide the agency with “full and timely co-operation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities”.

Earlier this month, the IAEA said Iran had enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.

In recent days, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Opposition leader Sussan Ley have all described Iran’s nuclear program as a significant “threat” to international peace and security.

Tilman Ruff is an honorary principal fellow at The University of Melbourne and the co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and was a founding chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

He told SBS News while it’s “pretty clear that Iran was flirting with nuclear weapons” and had an early nuclear weapons program around 20 years ago, there was no evidence of active weaponisation, or that Israel’s strike was “pre-emptive in the sense that Iran was clearly planning an attack on Israel that was imminent”.

Israel has never formally confirmed or denied if it has nuclear weapons itself, long maintaining a policy of deliberate ambiguity.

It’s also never signed two key international agreements aimed at the non-proliferation and prohibition of nuclear weapons. These factors have contributed to the widely held perception that Israel owns nuclear weapons.

Ruff described Israel’s “extremely dangerous” attack on Friday as “the most flagrant example of double standards that you could possibly imagine”.

When it comes to countries developing nuclear capacities, Ruff said the “inherent ambiguity” of nuclear programs made it a far bigger issue than just Iran.

“Any country that’s determined to do so, that’s got either an enrichment plant or a nuclear reactor, can build a nuclear weapon,” he said.

“If you can produce uranium to run in reactors, then you’ve got everything you need to enrich it to weapons grade. And there are other countries with vast stocks much larger than Iran’s of weapons-usable material.

“There are many other countries who have been flirting with having nuclear facilities and the capacity to produce fissile material quickly to shorten the path to a weapon, should they choose to do so.”

Which countries have nuclear weapons?

Eight countries have declared they have nuclear weapons: Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Russia and the US control the vast majority of these weapons, together possessing around 90 per cent of the 12,241 estimated warheads that exist globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

While Israel is also strongly believed to have nuclear weapons, including by SIPRI, it has long maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity.

Ruff said there had been “very clear threats” of nuclear weapon use from Israeli government members.

Most recently, in November 2023, Israeli minister Amihai Eliyahu said a nuclear strike on Gaza would be “one way” of responding to Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.

Some viewed Eliyahu’s comments as an implicit admission that Israel had nuclear capabilities.

The comments were disavowed by Israeli politicians, including a rebuke by Netanyahu.

SIPRI, in its annual assessment of armaments, disarmament and international security on Monday, warned the world’s nuclear arsenals were being enlarged.

SIPRI stated that the nine nuclear-armed states continued to modernise and upgrade their nuclear capabilities throughout 2024.

SIPRI’s Hans M Kristensen said: “The era of reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in the world, which had lasted since the end of the Cold War, is coming to an end.”

“Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements.”

What steps have been taken to limit nuclear weapons?

Multiple international agreements have aimed at curbing the spread of nuclear weapons with a view towards disarmament.

The United Nations-backed Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Weapons (NPT) came into effect in 1970, and included agreements from Russia, the US, the UK, China and France.

Those states agreed to pursue disarmament in exchange for the rest of the treaty’s signatories agreeing never to acquire nuclear weapons.

The treaty has overwhelming support, with 191 states being party to it, including Iran.

Israel is one of the few countries — along with India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Sudan — to not have signed on, due to its policy of deliberate ambiguity.

Ruff said a shortcoming of the treaty was that, while it contained a detailed regime regarding non-proliferation by states that didn’t already have nuclear weapons, there were no clear details or timeframe for other countries to implement disarmament.

June 17, 2025 Posted by | Iran, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

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