Is your insurance company funding Israeli war crimes?
13 March 2025, Paula Lacey, https://newint.org/arms/2025/your-insurance-company-funding-israeli-war-crimes
A new campaign called Boycott Bloody Insurance exposes the extent of the insurance sector’s financial support for Israel’s assault on Palestine. Paula Lacey reports.
A new report has exposed the extent of the insurance sector’s financial support for Israel’s assault on Palestine. The newly-launched Boycott Bloody Insurance campaign reveals investments totalling over $1.7 billion, from a range of multinational insurers, into companies supplying military equipment used by Israel since 7 October 2023.
‘Insurance giants claim to protect communities, but they’re funnelling our money into war, exploitation, and violence,’ says Monika Nielsen, lead researcher at Boycott Bloody Insurance.
The research details how global insurers such as Allianz, Zurich, AIG, RSA, Aviva and AXA underwrite and fund firms such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems and BAE Systems. Many of these companies are already the subject of national campaigns due to their direct implication in documented war crimes in the Gaza Strip, such as attacks on civilians using white phosphorus and precision guided munitions.
Besides those that explicitly supply weaponry and military equipment, other companies such as Maersk – insured by AIG – provide logistical and shipping support to the Israeli military. The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) have incorporated the report’s findings into their ongoing campaign ‘Mask off Maersk’.
‘Insurance, just like logistics, is crucial for arms transfers to oppressive regimes,’ says Yara Derbas of the PYM. ‘Our actions target the corporate complicity enabling Israel’s ongoing crimes. This isn’t just about Palestine – it’s about global justice and ending corporate exploitation.’
The Boycott Bloody Insurance campaign calls for urgent civic action against the companies named in the report, as a way of ‘demand[ing] accountability from insurers profiting from human suffering,’ explains Nielsen. Co-ordinated actions across the UK are set to take place on 25 March to urge institutions, charities, and businesses to shift to ethical insurers, incurring reputational damage and financial cost to complicit firms.
This call joins a wider chorus to enact Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) against all companies and institutions complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. PYM stands alongside a number of pro-Palestine organizations in endorsing the report and campaign, along with the Palestinian BDS National Committee and the Watermelon Index.
This week’s report is the first in a damning series set to be released by Boycott Bloody Insurance over the coming months, with future reports promising similar analyses of the insurance sector’s financial support for harmful industries such as fossil fuel companies, controversial weapons manufacturers and the UK detention industry.
Calls to restart nuclear weapons tests stir dismay and debate among scientists
Testing “has tremendous symbolic importance,” says Frank von Hippel, a physicist at Princeton University. “During the Cold War, when we were shooting these things off all the time, it was like war drums: ‘We have nuclear weapons and they work. Better watch out.’ ” The cessation of testing, he says, was an acknowledgment that “these [weapons] are so unusable that we don’t even test them.”
A U.S. return to underground detonations would have wide-ranging implications.
Science News, By Emily Conover, March 27, 2025
hen the countdown hit zero on September 23, 1992, the desert surface puffed up into the air, as if a giant balloon had inflated it from below.
It wasn’t a balloon. Scientists had exploded a nuclear device hundreds of meters below the Nevada desert, equivalent to thousands of tons of TNT. The ensuing fireball reached pressures and temperatures well beyond those in Earth’s core. Within milliseconds of the detonation, shock waves rammed outward. The rock melted, vaporized and fractured, leaving behind a cavity oozing with liquid radioactive rock that puddled on the cavity’s floor.
As the temperature and pressure abated, rocks collapsed into the cavity. The desert surface slumped, forming a subsidence crater about 3 meters deep and wider than the length of a football field. Unknown to the scientists.
working on this test, named Divider, it would be the end of the line. Soon after, the United States halted nuclear testing.
Beginning with the first explosive test, known as Trinity, in 1945, more than 2,000 atomic blasts have rattled the globe. Today, that nuclear din has been largely silenced, thanks to the norms set by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, or CTBT, negotiated in the mid-1990s.
Only one nation — North Korea — has conducted a nuclear test this century. But researchers and policy makers are increasingly grappling with the possibility that the fragile quiet will soon be shattered.
Some in the United States have called for resuming testing, including a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump. Officials in the previous Trump administration considered testing, according to a 2020 Washington Post article. And there may be temptation in coming years. The United States is in the midst of a sweeping, decades-long overhaul of its aging nuclear arsenal. Tests could confirm that old weapons still work, check that updated weapons perform as expected or help develop new types of weapons.
Meanwhile, the two major nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, remain ready to obliterate one another at a moment’s notice. If tensions escalate, a test could serve as a signal of willingness to use the weapons.
Testing “has tremendous symbolic importance,” says Frank von Hippel, a physicist at Princeton University. “During the Cold War, when we were shooting these things off all the time, it was like war drums: ‘We have nuclear weapons and they work. Better watch out.’ ” The cessation of testing, he says, was an acknowledgment that “these [weapons] are so unusable that we don’t even test them.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
“A single United States test could trigger a global chain reaction,” says geologist Sulgiye Park of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group. Other nuclear powers would likely follow by setting off their own test blasts. Countries without nuclear weapons might be spurred to develop and test them. One test could kick off a free-for-all.
“It’s like striking a match in a roomful of dynamite,” Park says.
The rising nuclear threat
The logic behind nuclear weapons involves mental gymnastics. The weapons can annihilate entire cities with one strike, yet their existence is touted as a force for peace. The thinking is that nuclear weapons act as a deterrent — other countries will resist using a nuclear weapon, or making any major attack, in fear of retaliation. The idea is so embedded in U.S. military circles that a type of intercontinental ballistic missile developed during the Cold War was dubbed Peacekeeper…………………………………………………
….. . The last remaining arms-control treaty between the United States and Russia, New START, is set to expire in 2026, giving the countries free rein on numbers of deployed weapons………………………………………………………………………………..
The United States regularly considers the possibility of testing nuclear weapons……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Is there a need to test nuclear weapons?
Subcritical experiments are focused in particular on the quandary over how plutonium ages. Since 1989, the United States hasn’t fabricated significant numbers of plutonium pits. That means the pits in the U.S. arsenal are decades old, raising questions about whether weapons will still work.
An aging pit, some scientists worry, might cause the multistep process in a nuclear warhead to fizzle. For example, if the implosion in the first stage doesn’t proceed properly, the second stage might not go off at all.
Plutonium ages not only from the outside in — akin to rusting iron — but also from the inside out, says Siegfried Hecker, who was director of Los Alamos from 1986 to 1997. “It’s constantly bombarding itself by radioactive decay. And that destroys the metallic lattice, the crystal structure of plutonium.”
The decay leaves behind a helium nucleus, which over time may result in tiny bubbles of helium throughout the lattice of plutonium atoms. Each decay also produces a uranium atom that zings through the material and “beats the daylights out of the lattice,” Hecker says. “We don’t quite know how much the damage is … and how that damaged material will behave under the shock and temperature conditions of a nuclear weapon. That’s the tricky part.”
One way to circumvent this issue is to produce new pits. A major effort under way will ramp up production. In 2024, the NNSA “diamond stamped” the first of these pits, meaning that the pit was certified for use in a weapon. The aim is for the United States to make 80 pits per year by 2030. But questions remain about new plutonium pits as well, Hecker says, as they rely on an updated manufacturing process………………………
the benefits of performing a test would be outweighed by the big drawback: Other countries would likely return to testing. And those countries would have more to learn than the United States. China, for instance, has performed only 45 tests, while the United States has performed over 1,000. “We have to find other ways that we can reassure ourselves,” Hecker says…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Underground tests are not risk-free
Tests that clearly break the rules, however, can be swiftly detected. The CTBT monitoring system can spot underground explosions as small as 0.1 kilotons, less than a hundredth that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That includes the most recent nuclear explosive test, performed by North Korea in 2017.
Despite being invisible, underground nuclear explosive tests have an impact. While an underground test is generally much safer than an open-air nuclear test, “it’s not not risky,” Park says……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Even if the initial containment is successful, radioactive materials could travel via groundwater. Although tests are designed to avoid groundwater, scientists have detected traces of plutonium in groundwater from the Nevada site. The plutonium traveled a little more than a kilometer in 30 years. “To a lot of people, that’s not very far,” Park says. But “from a geology time scale, that’s really fast.” Although not at a level where it would cause health effects, the plutonium had been expected to stay put.
The craters left in the Nevada desert are a mark of each test’s impact on structures deep below the surface. “There was a time when detonating either above ground or underground in the desert seemed like — well, that’s just wasteland,” Jeanloz says. “Many would view it very differently now, and say, ‘No, these are very fragile ecosystems, so perturbing the water table, putting radioactive debris, has serious consequences.’ ”…………………………………..
more https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nuclear-weapons-tests-comeback-threats
Walt Zlotow: UK to push 250,000 Brits into poverty to increase unneeded defense spending.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 28 Mar 25
Now that President Trump has bailed on endless US funding of failed Ukraine war, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has picked up the slack.
Starmer is delusional that Russia seeks to recreate the Soviet empire. He joins equally delusional French President Emmanuel Macron that the EU must replace the disappearing $175 Billion in US treasure to continue the lost Ukraine war.
Starmer wants to boost UK defense spending to 3% of GDP from the current 2.3% tho no foreign enemy is anywhere in sight. To pay for this senseless squandering of UK treasure, Starmer proposes cuts in welfare spending. He appears oblivious of reports that such cuts may push 250,000 Brits into poverty, including 50,000 kids.
Alas, Starmer also remains oblivious that the hundreds of billions the US and EU has squandered in Ukraine has merely cost Ukraine hundreds of thousands of casualties, 10 million fled and 45,000 lost square miles of land. But the only words echoing in Starmer’s brain are: ‘The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.’
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.”
The rush to war in space only needs a Gulf of Tonkin incident, and then what happens?
| Spacecom Protecting Homeland From Growing Threats March 26, 2025 | By David Vergun , https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4136285/spacecom-protecting-homeland-from-growing-threats/ |
The Defense Department must prepare for conflict in space to ensure deterrence. If that fails, the U.S. military is ready to fight and win, said Space Force Commander Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, who testified today at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces.
He said threats continue to expand at a breathtaking pace and pose a risk to the joint force.
The Defense Department must prepare for conflict in space to ensure deterrence. If that fails, the U.S. military is ready to fight and win, said Space Force Commander Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, who testified today at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces.
He said threats continue to expand at a breathtaking pace and pose a risk to the joint force.
Whiting said no other country can match the United States’ understanding of the complexities of space and the requirements to operate effectively in the most challenging areas of responsibility.
“Our military has the best trained, most capable space warfighting force in the world, and they stand dedicated to for America,” he added.
The general said Operation Olympic Defender is an example of working with allies and partners. He noted that Germany, France and New Zealand recently joined the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia as participating nations.
The operation’s mission optimizes space operations, improves mission assurance, enhances resilience and synchronizes efforts, according to a Spacecom news release.
This growth further strengthens partnerships and enables our allies to share the burden of collective space security, Whiting said.
“These advantages and our ability to deter potential adversaries cannot be taken for granted,” he said. “Deterrence in space is consistent with other domains. It requires a keen understanding and clear communication of what we are deterring against, credible, acknowledged capabilities to impose costs on those who attack us, and resilient architectures to dissuade attack by making any effort futile.”
Whiting said Spacecom is fully integrated into and contributing to the department’s efforts to establish a Golden Dome for American missile defense shield, adding that Space Command requires stable funding, as well as effective and efficient acquisition programs that deliver advanced space capabilities.
He identified the most pressing issues as the delivery of integrated space fires, enhanced battlespace awareness, and integrated command and control capabilities to achieve space superiority, which enhances homeland defense while protecting and enabling the joint force.
“Although many challenges lie ahead, the future of space holds tremendous promise for America if we actively and thoughtfully protect it,” he said.
In Whiting’s prepared testimony submitted to lawmakers, he wrote: “Spacecom is partnering with U.S. Northern Command and other stakeholders to write an initial capabilities document aimed at defining capability-based requirements for the Golden Dome architecture, based on forecasted threat scenarios. As these capabilities develop and deliver, we stand ready to take an active role in the operation of a next-generation space architecture which will be resident in our in support of protecting American citizens from attack.”
In his prepared testimony, he also addressed China’s views on space technology and its goal of becoming the dominant power in East Asia and a global superpower.
” seeks to rival the United States in nearly all areas of space technology by 2030 and establish itself as the world’s preeminent space power by 2045. Since 2015, China’s on-orbit presence has grown by 1,000%, with 1,094 active satellites as of January 2025. Its sophisticated space and counter-space systems enhance its ability to secure territorial claims, project power, and challenge U.S. advantages.”
New nuclear arms race looms as US threatens to pull atomic shield
For decades the nuclear weapons ‘club’ has been limited to nine nations. But fears Trump could withdraw America’s ‘nuclear umbrella’ is threatening proliferation
When Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held their latest phone call a week
ago, the leaders of the two countries with the world’s largest nuclear
arsenals agreed on “the need to stop proliferation of strategic
weapons”. The point of accord between Moscow and Washington was in many
ways the continuation of a stance that has endured for the best part of 80
years – namely, that it is in the interests America, Russia and their
respective allies to keep the global “club” of nuclear-armed nations as
small as possible.
In order to do so, the United States has extended its
so-called “nuclear umbrella” – a promise of nuclear protection in
return for allies not seeking atomic weapons themselves – to some 30
countries. But it is a post-war consensus that is increasingly under
strain.
Indeed, in his efforts to make his “America First” policy a
geopolitical reality, there is growing evidence that Trump is flirting
dangerously with starting a new nuclear arms race. From Berlin to Seoul,
alarm bells are ringing that the United States, the lynch stone of the
Western security apparatus in Europe and Asia for three generations, is no
longer a reliable guarantor of the ultimate deterrence offered by nuclear
weapons.
iNews 26th March 2025,
https://inews.co.uk/news/new-nuclear-race-looms-usa-threatens-pull-atomic-shield-3604636
Now that Washington is potentially an unreliable ally, the UK needs to revisit its nuclear strategy
The Trump administration’s volatile approach to its allies has forced
the UK to reconsider fundamental pillars of its defence policy, including
whether it can rely on the US. This extends even to the UK’s nuclear
deterrent, with many questioning whether the UK needs a nuclear weapons
system that is less dependent on the US for maintenance and support.
Unlike most US allies in NATO, the UK is officially a nuclear weapons state, and
therefore less reliant on Washington’s nuclear extended deterrence
guarantee. It has its own nuclear weapons system, Trident, which is based
in Britain and ostensibly operates independently. However, Trident is
closely linked to the US’s nuclear programme, raising concerns about its
independence. The missiles are US-built, and the system relies on the US
for maintenance.
Chatham House 24th March 2025 https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/03/uks-nuclear-deterrent-relies-us-support-there-are-no-other-easy-alternatives
Trump’s Star Wars Revival: The Golden Dome Antimissile Fantasy
March 26, 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/trumps-star-wars-revival-the-golden-dome-antimissile-fantasy/
Bad ideas do not necessarily die; they retire to museums of failure and folly, awaiting to be revived by the next proponent who should know better. The Iron Dome shield vision of US President Donald Trump, intended to intercept and destroy incoming missiles and other malicious aerial objects, seems much like a previous dotty one advanced by President Ronald Reagan, known rather blandly as the Strategic Defense Initiative.
In its current iteration, it is inspired by the Israeli “Iron Dome” multilayered defensive shield, a matter that raised an immediate problem, given the trademark ownership of the name by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Given the current administration’s obsession with all things golden, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has dubbed this revived endeavour “Golden Dome for America”. The renaming was noted in a February 24 amendment to request for information from industry. Much sniggering is surely in order at, not only the name itself, but the stumbling.
Reagan, even as he began suffering amnesiac decline, believed that the United States could be protected by a shield against any attack by Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. The technology intended for that endeavour, much of it requiring a space component, was thin on research and non-existent in development. The envisaged use of laser weapons from space and terrestrial components drew much derision: the President had evidently been too engrossed by the Star Wars films of George Lucas.
The source for this latest initiative (“deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield”) is an executive order signed on January 27 titled “The Iron Dome for America.” (That was before the metallurgical change of name.) The order asserts from the outset that “The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles and other advanced aerial attacks remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.” It acknowledges Reagan’s SDI but strikes a note of disappointment at its cancellation “before its goal could be realized.” Progress on such a system since the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 had been confined to “limited homeland defense” efforts that “remained only to stay ahead of rogue-nation threats and accidental or unauthorized missile launches.”
The Secretary of Defense is also directed, within 60 days, to submit to Trump “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield.” Such a shield would defend the US from “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and the other next-generation attacks from peer, near-peer and rogue adversaries.” Among some of the plans are the accelerated deployment of a hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor layer; development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors and the development and deployment of capabilities that will neutralise missile assaults “prior to launch and in the boost phase.”
The original SDI was heavy on the intended development and use of energy weapons, lasers being foremost among them. But even after four decades, US technological prowess remains unable to deploy such weapons of sufficient power and accuracy to eliminate drones or missiles. The Israelis claim to have overcome this problem with their Iron Beam high energy laser weapon system, which should see deployment later this year. For that reason, Lockheed Martin has partnered with Israeli firm Rafael to bring that technology into the US arsenal.
To date, Steven J. Morani, currently discharging duties as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, has given little away about the herculean labours that have been set. “Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump’s [executive order],” he told the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington earlier this month, “we’re working with the industrial base and [through] supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome.” He admitted that this was “like the monster systems engineering problem” made even more difficult by being “the monster integration problem.”
The list of demerits to Golden Dome are many, and Morani alludes to them. For one, the Israeli Iron Dome operates across much smaller territory, not a continent. The sheer scale of any defence shield to protect such a vast swathe of land would be, not merely from a practical point but a budgetary one, absurd. A space-based interceptor system, a point that echoes Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy, would require thousands of units to successfully intercept one hefty ballistic missile. Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute has offered a calculation: a system of 1,900 satellites would cost somewhere between US$11 and US$27 billion to develop, build and launch.
A study for Defence and Peace Economics published this year goes further. The authors argue that, even if the US had appropriate ballistic missile defence technology and a sufficient number of interceptors to be distributed in a two-layer defence with an efficiency return of 90%, 8 times more would have to be spent than the attacker for a bill between US$60 and US$500 billion. If it was assumed that individual interceptor effectiveness was a mere 50%, and the system could not discriminate against decoys, the cost would be 70 times more, with a staggering bill of US$430 billion to US$5.3 trillion.
The most telling flaw in Golden Dome is one long identified, certainly by the more sober members of the establishment, in the annals of defence. “The fundamental problem with any plan for a national missile defense system against nuclear attack,” writes Xiaodon Liang in an Arms Control Association issues brief, “is that cost-exchange ratios favor the offense and US adversaries can always choose to build up or diversify their strategic forces to overwhelm a potential shield.” As Liang goes on to remark, the missile shield fantasy defies a cardinal rule of strategic competition: “the enemy always gets a vote.”
Monster system; monstrous integration issues. Confusion with the name and trademark problems. Strategically misguided, even foolish. Golden Dome, it would seem, is already being steadied for a swallow dive.
‘Deeply concerning’: British General’s Israeli weapons job criticised.
“That the UK’s former chief of the defence staff is now advising Israeli arms companies exemplifies the extent of the links between the British state and Israel’s arms industry. “
General Carter signed a military treaty with Israel. Now he advises Israeli arms firms.
PHIL MILLER, 20 March 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/deeply-concerning-british-generals-israeli-weapons-job-criticised/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Image&utm_campaign=ICYMI&utm_content=Image
The former head of Britain’s armed forces is providing advice to Israeli arms firms, sparking questions over his role in a country whose prime minister is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
General Sir Nick Carter was chief of the defence staff – Britain’s most senior military position – from 2018-21. Months before stepping down, he signed a military cooperation agreement with Israel.
That pact has never been published – despite freedom of information requests and questions in parliament – but it was hailed as a landmark moment in relations between the two militaries.
Carter had visited Israel earlier in his tenure, touring military bases and shaking hands with his opposite number, General Aviv Kohavi.
That experience of rubbing shoulders with the top of the IDF is likely to come in handy for his new job at Exigent Capital, a boutique financial services firm based in Jerusalem.
Carter is one of Exigent’s two “domain experts” in its “strategic advisory” wing, with his focus on “aerospace and defence”.
His role there is to “develop international growth strategies for our clients as well as identify and open doors to new business opportunities that accelerate growth”, according to the company’s website.
Or, as the Jerusalem Post put it, Carter provides “strategic consulting services to Israeli companies operating in the defense sector.”
Doing business
Carter attended a military tech summit in Tel Aviv in December 2024 – before the ceasefire had been signed in Gaza – when he told a journalist: “Israel is very significant in the world of defense tech.”
Carter added: “We appreciate the extraordinary innovation that Israeli defense companies exhibit and sometimes adopt what we see in Israel. It’s impressive to see the innovation of Israeli companies”.
The British army has bought Israeli-made drones, rifle sights and air defence systems.
More recently, he felt “privileged” to have signed the “successful” UK-Israel military deal in 2020, commenting: “It’s very important for both militaries to work together, share the best training, and understand together the complexity of the modern battlefield. This is a very good way to do business.”
General Carter: Caught in the revolving door?
However campaigners are criticising Carter’s business decisions. Dr Sara Husseini, director of the British Palestinian Committee, told Declassified: “That the UK’s former chief of the defence staff is now advising Israeli arms companies exemplifies the extent of the links between the British state and Israel’s arms industry.
“These revelations are deeply concerning, particularly at this moment in which Israel is recommencing its large-scale bombardment of Gaza, killing more than 400 Palestinians in the past two days.
“Rather than aligning with a state which is on trial for genocide and – as the Foreign Secretary acknowledged earlier this week – is in breach of international law, Keir Starmer’s government must now halt its military collaboration with Israel, including scrapping the agreement signed by Sir Nick Carter.”
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, said: “Serious questions arise from former defence officials working with arms companies in states that have a track record of serious violations of international law.”
Turning to Labour’s partial embargo on weapons exports to Israel, Doyle commented: “It also raises longer term questions about whether former officials should be allowed to work with arms companies in countries where there is a ban on arms exports because the government has already acknowledged a serious risk of human rights abuses.”
Arms trade expert Andrew Feinstein from Shadow World Investigations remarked: “This is an example of what used to be called the revolving door – or is now known as the open plan office – between the British state and arms companies. It raises the question of whose interests the most senior political and military figures are working in: their own material interests, or the interests of Britain?”
‘System is bust’
Under government rules supposed to prevent conflicts of interest, former Generals must inform Whitehall’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) of any job offers they receive for two years after leaving the military.
General Carter notified ACOBA of 12 jobs he had been offered since stepping down from the army in July 2022, although Exigent was not among them.
General Carter and Exigent did not respond to a request for comment on when they began working together. A LinkedIn post by the company shows they had started at least three months ago, when Exigent said: “We look forward to sharing his unparalleled expertise, insights and network with our clients.”
His other job offers encompassed unpaid roles at Harvard and Stanford universities, plus a trusteeship at the Royal United Services Institute think tank.
Paid positions included working part-time as a strategic advisor for Schroders bank, plus advisory roles at Helsing – a German AI defence start-up – and an insurance firm.
On top of this, Carter spends 30 days per year “as a thought partner for Tony Blair in his role as Executive Chairman” at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
And he is chairman of Equilibrium Gulf Limited, which advises the crown prince of Bahrain on the autocratic country’s notoriously brutal interior ministry.
While he claims no military experience is required for the Bahrain role, previous Equilibrium directors include another former defence chief, General David Richards, and MI6’s one-time Middle East controller Geoffrey Tantum.
Lord Pickles, who oversees ACOBA, has acknowledged there are weaknesses in the system supposed to regulate Whitehall’s ‘revolving door’ between government positions and corporate careers.
Pickles said of ACOBA last year: “The system is bust and needs fixing.”
Militarize Ukraine ‘to the teeth’ – Finnish president
Comment: Is the Finnish President among those that do not really want a settlement in Ukraine any time soon?
Thu, 20 Mar 2025 https://www.sott.net/article/498616-Militarize-Ukraine-to-the-teeth-Finnish-president
Alexander Stubb has also called for stronger sanctions against Russia and the seizure of its frozen assets
Finnish President Alexander Stubb has called on Kiev’s Western backers to pump Ukraine with military resources and financial aid, claiming that this will deter Russia. He made the call shortly after meeting Vladimir Zelensky in Helsinki and as EU lawmakers negotiate doubling the bloc’s weapons budget.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas had pitched a plan to increase the bloc’s cashflow for Ukraine from €20 billion ($20.9 billion) in 2024 to €40 billion ($43.7 billion) this year. However she admitted to La Stampa that she was opposed by Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. The Italian newspaper has reported that a €5 billion cap has been placed on the donation.
Stubb told Politico on Wednesday that “Deterrence – which is based on militarizing Ukraine to its teeth,” would be the best way to end the Ukraine conflict.
The Finnish president lamented the fact that Kallas failed to gather support for her plan, expressing hope that that heads of state and government would be able to salvage the package.
“It’s very important now to send a message from Europe that the military, political and economic support continues,” he said, emphasizing that sanctions against Russia should be bolstered, while its frozen assets should be seized to ramp up pressure.
Hungary has refused to sign a joint EU summit statement on Ukraine, according to TASS, which reported that both lethal and non-lethal aid had been rejected by Budapest.
The Finnish president also supported potential Ukrainian membership in the EU and in NATO. Finland, which only joined the US-led military bloc in 2023, has been a strong backer of Kiev since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in February 2022.
Moscow has consistently condemned NATO expansion towards its borders, describing the bloc as a threat to Russia’s national security. President Vladimir Putin and other officials have repeatedly stressed that efforts to include Ukraine in the military bloc had been one of the root causes of the escalation of the conflict in 2022.
Stubb’s comments come amid negotiations for a 30-day ceasefire aimed at halting long-range strikes on energy infrastructure by both sides advocated by US President Donald Trump. Another round of talks between Russian and US delegations is scheduled for March 24 in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
The US hypocrisy about Israel’s nuclear weapons must stop
What stands out from the television series is the grip Israel has had over US policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons.
a secret federal bulletin that threatens disciplinary actions for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons.
The existence of these weapons may have started as a deterrent against another Holocaust but has now morphed into an instrument of an aggressive and expansionist Israel.
By Victor Gilinsky, Leonard Weiss | March 21, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/the-us-hypocrisy-about-israels-nuclear-weapons-must-stop/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel%20s%20nuclear%20weapons&utm_campaign=20250324%20Monday%20Newsletter
An extraordinary three-part series on Israeli television, The Atom and Me, lays out how the country got its nuclear weapons. It takes for granted what anyone who pays attention has known for years. But the series goes well beyond a general discussion about Israel’s nuclear weapons. It shows the country’s single-minded determination to get the bomb no matter what it took, including stealing nuclear explosives and bomb components from the United States and violating a major nuclear arms control treaty to which Israel is a party—and lying about it.
As the Trump administration is in serious discussion about joining Israel in attacks on Iran to stop it from getting nuclear weapons, it is useful to shed illusions about Israel’s modus operandi.
US officials stay mute. A thread running through the three episodes is a continuing conversation, before he died in 2018, with Benjamin Blumberg, the head of Lakam, the Israeli scientific intelligence agency responsible for the nuclear missions that led to the Israeli bomb, some so secret they were kept from the Mossad. (Mossad is the Israeli agency that handles foreign intelligence collection and covert action.) Blumberg was in failing health and agreed to talk so long as the interview was not aired until after his death.
That conversation is mixed with archival material and recent interviews. The significance of the series lies not in showing what was not previously known—although there are details in that category—but in the admissions on Israeli public television, with the approval of the Israeli censors, about events that have been denied by Israel’s supporters in the United States, including the US government.
Several events discussed in the television series deal directly with the United States: the theft in the 1960s of bomb quantities of uranium 235 from the NUMEC facility in Pennsylvania, where the leaders of the Israeli team that spirited Eichmann out of Argentina appeared inexplicably in 1968 with false identities; the illicit purchase of hundreds of high-speed switches (krytrons) for triggering nuclear weapons, and spiriting them out of the country in the 1980s by Israeli spy and arms dealer, and by then Hollywood producer, Arnon Milchan; and, most significantly at this point, Israel’s 1979 nuclear test in the seas off South Africa of what appears to be the initial fission stage for a thermonuclear weapon. The nuclear test violated the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty to which Israel is a party.
What stands out from the television series is the grip Israel has had over US policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Not since John Kennedy has any US president tried to rein in Israel’s nuclear program. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, did not challenge the Israelis on nuclear issues (and covered up Israel’s attempt during the 1967 six-day war to sink the US spy ship Liberty). Such has been Israel’s political clout in the United States.
No one was ever charged in the disappearance of nuclear material from NUMEC. When the issue of Israel’s involvement arose again in 1976, President Gerald Ford’s attorney general suggested to the president the possibility of charging US officials, presumably in the Atomic Energy Commission, with failing to report a felony. But it was too late. Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter, who let the matter drop. Milchan was never charged for the filching of krytrons even though he later bragged about his arms dealing and spying for Israel. And Carter—and every US president after him—took no enforcement action in response to the illegal 1979 nuclear test.
The United States’ indulgence of Israeli nuclear weapons has not escaped international attention, and the evident hypocrisy has undermined US nonproliferation policy. The US government’s public position continues to be that it does not know anything about Israeli nuclear weapons, and this will apparently continue until Israel releases the United States’ gag. This policy is allegedly enforced by a secret federal bulletin that threatens disciplinary actions for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Israel brags about its nukes. Ironically, the Israelis feel free to allude to their nuclear weapons whenever they find it useful. The best example is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2016 speech on receipt of the Rahav, the latest submarine supplied by Germany. The Times of Israel, using the standard “according to foreign reports,” described the submarine as “capable of delivering a nuclear payload.” In his speech, Netanyahu said, “Above all else, our submarine fleet acts as a deterrent to our enemies … They need to know that Israel can attack, with great might, anyone who tries to harm it.” How else, other than with nuclear weapons, can a submarine be a deterrent? The submarines’ long-range cruise missiles could not only hit Iran’s capital, Tehran, Israel’s main security concern, they could also hit any European capital.
Those submarine-based cruise missiles—if they exist—might be tipped with thermonuclear warheads, which are also carried on planes and ground-based rockets. Light-weight thermonuclear weapons allow flexibility in delivery, but the two-stage designs are highly sophisticated. The Israelis logically decided that they had to conduct at least one low-yield fission test—even though they had promised not to do this—to be sure their first stage produced the radiation that would initiate the thermonuclear fuel in the second stage.
In the last episode of the Israeli television series, journalist Meir Doron, who has written on Israel’s security secrets, says: “After the nuclear test, for the first time, the heads of the Israeli nuclear program, Blumberg, Shimon Peres, and all the people from the reactor, could sleep soundly at night. They knew that what they’re building works.”
While Israel did not sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it signed and ratified the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which obligates parties not to explode a nuclear device in the atmosphere or oceans. Such a test also triggers a nonproliferation provision of US law, the 1977 Glenn Amendment (Sec.102 (B) to the Arms Export Control Act), that imposes severe sanctions on any country (other than the five approved in the NPT) that explodes a nuclear device after 1977. Upon learning of such an explosion, the president is supposed to impose the wide-ranging sanctions “forthwith.” That, of course, did not happen.
The nuclear explosion’s characteristic two-hump signal was detected by a US satellite on September 22, 1979, and US intelligence agencies were convinced Israel was the culprit. President Carter did not want to risk his ongoing Middle East policy efforts by blaming Israel. The White House asked a group of scientists whether the detected light flash could somehow have been unconnected with a nuclear explosion. The scientists came up with some ideas that gave the president a public out. At the same time, the White House kept classified Navy reports on ocean sound waves from the explosion that supported the satellite data. And Carter wrote in his diary: “We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa.” All this was essentially a cover-up.
The Glenn Amendment allows the president to delay sanctions on national security grounds or waive them entirely with the help of congressional action. The law does not allow the president to ignore it. But that is exactly what all of them have done.
The price of silence. The US government’s silence on Israel’s nuclear weapons has meant silence about them in discussions on Iran’s nuclear program. Public debate is an essential part of US policy development and, in the case of Iran, is hobbled by an inability to have an honest appraisal of the nature and purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons.
The existence of these weapons may have started as a deterrent against another Holocaust but has now morphed into an instrument of an aggressive and expansionist Israel.
The inability to have honest public discussion allows for the pretense by Israel and its supporters that it faces an existential threat from Iran, which is ready to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv as soon as it gets one. Various aspects of the Iran issue are hidden by an inability to weigh all the elements of policy needed to arrive at an intelligent US policy.
The US government’s silence has also taught the press to avoid the issue. The last time a White House correspondent asked about Israeli nuclear weapons, even then indirectly, was when Helen Thomas asked President Obama in 2009 whether he knew of any nuclear weapons in the Middle East. She got a chilly non-response—Obama said he was not going to speculate.
An exception to the general lack of press interest in the issue is a 2018 New Yorker report by Adam Entous, revealing how US presidents have signed secret letters to the Israelis promising to do nothing to interfere with Israel’s nuclear weapons or acknowledge their existence.
Israel claims this US obligation flows from a “deal” made by Nixon and Golda Meir in their 1969 meeting during the 15 minutes when they were alone. William Quandt, Kissinger’s aide at the time, says in the third episode, “There is no documentary record on the American side to this day. No one else was in the room.” Nor has any Israeli record appeared. Without any record, there can be no enduring obligation.
So why did US presidents go along with the Israeli version of the US obligation, including denying any knowledge about Israeli nuclear weapons, long after it ceased to be in the United States’s interest to do so? Entous reported that when Trump first entered office in 2017 his staff was confronted by Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer (a former American who switched allegiance to Israel). He is said to have acted “like he owned the place,” but it worked. He got his way.
The single-mindedness of the Israeli establishment—that what it thinks is best for Israel overrides all other considerations—is caught at the end of the third television episode. The conversation with Benjamin Blumberg turns to Israel’s more-than-amicable relations with apartheid-era South Africa, from which it got uranium to fuel the Dimona reactor and later permission to conduct the 1979 nuclear test, and to which Israel provided tritium to upgrade South Africa’s nuclear weapons. He is asked, was not South Africa an oppressive racist regime? “All true,” said Blumberg, “but what do I care. I wanted what was best for Israel.” It’s time to realize that what is “best for Israel” is not necessarily good for the United States.
Editor’s note: Victor Gilinsky was a commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time of the events in question. Leonard Weiss was a long-term aide to Senator Glenn and the author of the first version of the Glenn Amendment. They both appear in the mentioned Israeli TV series.
Chris Hedges: The Last Chapter of the Genocide
March 23, 2025
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost
This is the last chapter of the genocide. It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza. No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity. Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.
The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies. The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas. The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially bobby trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties. The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.” The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.
Israel’s naked genocidal visage is exposed. It has ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza where desperate Palestinians are camped out amid the rubble of their homes. What comes now is mass starvation — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on March 21 it has six days of flour supplies left — deaths from diseases caused by contaminated water and food, scores of killed and wounded each day under the relentless assault of bombs, missiles, shells and bullets. Nothing will function, bakeries, water treatment and sewage plants, hospitals — Israel blew up the damaged Turkish-Palestinian hospital on March 21 — schools, aid distribution centers or clinics. Less than half of the 53 emergency vehicles operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society are functional due to fuel shortages. Soon there will be none.
Israel’s message is unequivocal: Gaza will be uninhabitable. Leave or die.
Since Tuesday, when Israel broke the ceasefire with heavy bombing, over 700 Palestinians have been killed, including 200 children. In one 24 hour period 400 Palestinians were killed. This is only the start. No Western power, including the United States, which provides the weapons for the genocide, intends to stop it. The images from Gaza during the nearly sixteen months of incessant attacks were awful. But what is coming now will be worse. It will rival the most atrocious war crimes of the twentieth century, including the mass starvation, wholesale slaughter and leveling of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 by the Nazis.
Oct. 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalization and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that calls for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine. What we are witnessing is the historical equivalent of the moment triggered by the annihilation of some 200 soldiers led by George Armstrong Custer in June 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. After that humiliating defeat, Native Americans were slated to be killed with the remnants forced into prisoner of war camps, later named reservations, where thousands died of disease, lived under the merciless gaze of their armed occupiers and fell into a life of immiseration and despair. Expect the same for the Palestinians in Gaza, dumped, I suspect, in one of the world’s hellholes and forgotten.
“Gaza residents, this is your final warning,” Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz threatened:
The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza and the second Sinwar will completely destroy it. The Air Force strikes against Hamas terrorists were just the first step. It will become much more difficult and you will pay the full price. The evacuation of the population from the combat zones will soon begin again…Return the hostages and remove Hamas and other options will open for you, including leaving for other places in the world for those who want to. The alternative is absolute destruction.
The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was designed to be implemented in three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, would see an end to hostilities. Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023 — including women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses — in exchange for upwards of 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children imprisoned by Israel (around 1,900 Palestinian captives have been released by Israel as of March 18). Hamas has released a total of 147 hostages, of whom eight were dead. Israel says there are 59 Israelis still being held by Hamas, 35 of whom Israel believes are deceased.
The Israeli army would pull back from populated areas of Gaza on the first day of the ceasefire. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians would be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel would allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.
The second phase, which was expected to be negotiated on the sixteenth day of the ceasefire, would see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel would complete its withdrawal from Gaza maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt. It would surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
The third phase would see negotiations for a permanent end of the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Israel habitually signs agreements, including the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Peace Agreement, with timetables and phases. It gets what it wants — in this case the release of the hostages — in the first phase and then violates subsequent phases. This pattern has never been broken.
Israel refused to honor the second phase of the deal. It blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza two weeks ago, violating the agreement. It also killed at least 137 Palestinians during the first phase of the ceasefire, including nine people, — three of them journalists — when Israeli drones attacked a relief team on March 15 in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza
Israel’s heavy bombing and shelling of Gaza resumed March 18 while most Palestinians were asleep or preparing their suhoor, the meal eaten before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan. Israel will not stop its attacks now, even if the remaining hostages are freed — Israel’s supposed reason for the resumption of the bombing and siege of Gaza.
The Trump White House is cheering on the slaughter. They attack critics of the genocide as “antisemites” who should be silenced, criminalized or deported while funneling billions of dollars in weapons to Israel.
Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is the inevitable denouement of its settler colonial project and apartheid state. The seizure of all of historic Palestine — with the West Bank soon, I expect, to be annexed by Israel — and displacement of all Palestinians has always been the Zionist goal.
Israel’s worst excesses occurred during the wars of 1948 and 1967 when huge parts of historic Palestine were seized, thousands of Palestinians killed and hundreds of thousands were ethnically cleansed. Between these wars, the slow-motion theft of land, murderous assaults and steady ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continued.
That calibrated dance is over. This is the end. What we are witnessing dwarfs all the historical assaults on Palestinians. Israel’s demented genocidal dream — a Palestinian nightmare — is about to be achieved. It will forever shatter the myth that we, or any Western nation, respect the rule of law or are the protectors of human rights, democracy and the so-called “virtues” of Western civilization. Israel’s barbarity is our own. We may not understand this, but the rest of the globe does.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes an online column for the website ScheerPost. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.
An Extreme Ultimatum for Iran
The public still needs to be aware of the danger that the U.S. is on course to start a war with Iran for no good reason.
Daniel Larison, Mar 24, 2025, https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/an-extreme-ultimatum-for-iran?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=73370&post_id=159715611&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Mike Waltz confirmed again that the Trump administration’s demands for Iran are extreme:
MARGARET BRENNAN: Can you clarify? Is the U.S. seeking the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program, or verification, like what President Obama put in place back in 2015 and President Trump pulled out of?
MIKE WALTZ: Full dismantlement [bold mine-DL]. Iran has to give up its program in a way that the entire world can see.
Recent remarks from Trump’s Middle East envoy seemed to suggest that the administration would be satisfied with an agreement that ensures that Iran’s nuclear program remained peaceful, but Waltz shot that idea down without qualification. The administration’s ultimatum to Iran is every bit as unreasonable as we thought, and the Iranian government is not going to agree to such humiliating terms. As we mark the 22nd anniversary of the invasion of Iraq this month, it is alarming to hear the drumbeat for another unnecessary and illegal war in the Middle East.
The demands that the administration delivered to Iran in Trump’s letter were far-reaching, and they touched on issues far beyond the nuclear program itself. In addition to telling Iran to give up domestic enrichment and their entire nuclear program, the president’s letter said that they are supposed to halt all support for allied groups throughout the region, and they must withdraw all their forces from Iraq and Syria. According to the Emirati official who delivered the letter, Trump gave Iran two months to comply with these demands or they would face “large-scale military action.”
This is unfortunately consistent with what we have been hearing for the last two months. Last month, it was reported that Trump had reached an understanding with Netanyahu on Iran that paved the way for military action. On a related note, Trump appeared to be on board with seeking a “Libya-style” dismantling of Iran’s entire nuclear program. This is such an obvious non-starter for Iran that we have to assume that the administration wants this to give themselves a pretext for war.
Later in the interview, Waltz said, “But we want to be clear, this isn’t some kind of, you know, kind of tit for tat that we had under the Obama administration, or Biden. This is the full program. Give it up, or there will be consequences.” The interviewer failed to ask Waltz what the consequences would be, but it is clear enough that this is a public threat to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran if their government refuses to cave to the administration’s preposterous demands.
When Trump kept Mike Pompeo out of the second administration, some people thought that this was a sign that the president wouldn’t be pursuing such a braindead, aggressive foreign policy this time around. So much for that. As it turns out, Trump’s foreign policy is every bit as hardline as it was when Pompeo and Bolton were there (and possibly even more so) because Trump favors hardline policies and reliably surrounds himself with hardline advisers. Pompeo may not be in government anymore, but judging from the absurd demands that Trump sent to Iran he might as well be.
Americans are understandably preoccupied with the extensive damage that the administration is causing at home, but the public still needs to be aware of the danger that the U.S. is on course to start a war with Iran for no good reason. If the administration is serious about this two-month deadline, it is possible that we could be looking a U.S. or U.S.-backed Israeli attack on Iran by the end of May. Americans need to begin organizing and mobilizing against that attack now if we are going to have any chance of stopping it.
Report: Israel Planning More Aggressive Invasion of Gaza
The IDF will take control of the humanitarian aid in the Strip
by Kyle Anzalone, March 24, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/03/23/report-israel-planning-more-aggressive-invasion-of-gaza/
According to the Washington Post, the Israeli military is gearing up for a major ground operation in Gaza that could last months or longer. Last week, Israel broke a ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas and conducted large-scale bombings in the Strip that killed hundreds.
The Post spoke with current and former Israeli officials, who explained that “The new and more aggressive tactics” would probably include “direct military control of humanitarian aid,” “targeting more of Hamas’s civilian leadership, and evacuating women, children and vetted noncombatants from neighborhoods to ‘humanitarian bubbles.’”
The officials said those who are not evacuated would face a siege that is a “more intense version of a tactic employed last year in northern Gaza.” In 2024, the Israeli military carried out a version of the “general’s plan,” an outline for ethnic cleansing drawn up by retired IDF generals for Northern Gaza.
The plan called for the complete evacuation of all Palestinian civilians south of the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by the Israeli military. Under the plan, if civilians don’t leave, they are to be treated as combatants and killed, either by military action or starvation.
The Post reported the more brutal strategy reflects a change in military leadership, and the new policy is more in line with the view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi stepped down from that post earlier this month. He was replaced by Eyal Zamir.
Amir Avivi, a former deputy commander of the military’s Gaza division, explained to the Post that President Donald Trump’s vigorous support for Tel Aviv gives Israeli military commanders more faith that they will have the equipment needed in Gaza.
“Now there is new [IDF] leadership, there is the backup from the U.S., there is the fact that we have enough munitions, and the fact that we finished our main missions in the north and can concentrate on Gaza,” Avivi said. “The plans are decisive. There will be a full-scale attack and they will not stop until Hamas is eradicated completely. We’ll see.”
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has decimated the Strip and killed at least 50,000 Gazans. Still, Israeli and US officials have said Hamas has returned to its prewar strength. The Post noted that the IDF would not be less restrained in order to defeat Hamas.
Yossi Kuperwasser, a former senior IDF intelligence official and head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security think tank explained, “There is less opposition now with Zamir and [Defense Minister Israel] Katz. They are more ready.”
“The government was committed to removing Hamas from power,” Kuperwasser added. “The security establishment was not happy with this idea. They were trying to focus more on military assets and less on civilian assets. Because once you remove Hamas from Gaza, the IDF would have to rule Gaza.”
While the Post report says the IDF plans to wage a counterinsurgency in Gaza, Katz has said Tel Aviv will expel the Palestinians and annex the Strip. “I have instructed the IDF to seize additional areas in Gaza, while evacuating the population, and to expand the security zones around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities and IDF soldiers,” he said on Friday.
On Saturday night, the Israeli Security Council established a new office that will coordinate the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Since breaking the ceasefire and hostage deal last week, Israel has resumed large-scale bombing in Gaza. Additionally, Israeli troops have attacked Rafah in southern Gaza and the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute. He hosts The Kyle Anzalone Show and is co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Connor Freeman.
Israel Makes Its Most Explicit Statement Of Genocidal Intent Yet
Caitlin Johnstone, Mar 20, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-makes-its-most-explicit-statement?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=159470039&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=357cr&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has published an explicit statement of genocidal intent toward the people of Gaza, threatening civilians in the enclave with collective punishment in the form of “total devastation” if they do not find a way to overthrow Hamas and free all Israeli hostages.
Katz’s statement reads as follows:
“Evacuation of the population from combat zones will soon resume. If all Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not kicked out of Gaza, Israel will act with force you have not known before.
“Residents of Gaza, this is your final warning. The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza, and the second Sinwar will bring upon it total ruin. The Israeli Air Force’s attack against Hamas terrorists was only the first step. What follows will be far harsher, and you will bear the full cost.
“Take the advice of the U.S. President: return the hostages and kick out Hamas, and new options will open up for you — including relocation to other parts of the world for those who choose. The alternative is destruction and total devastation.”
When Katz says “Take the advice of the US president,” he is referring to a statement made by President Trump earlier this month which made essentially the same threat addressed “to the People of Gaza,” saying, “A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!”
When I criticized the US president for these remarks which explicitly threaten Gaza’s civilians, I got a deluge of Trump supporters telling me he wasn’t really talking about “the people of Gaza” as he said, but was rather speaking only about the ones who are actively holding hostages. Katz’s statement makes it abundantly clear that they were wrong, and that those of us who called a spade a spade at the time were correct.
The Israeli defense minister is simply following Trump’s position and reiterating what everyone who isn’t a blinkered partisan hack knew Trump was saying two weeks ago. He is doing this in exactly the same way Benjamin Netanyahu followed Trump’s position on ethnically cleansing Gaza last month by enthusiastically endorsing the plan Trump put forward to permanently remove all Palestinians from the enclave. Trump puts forward the plan, and Israeli officials put it into action.
So you’ve got both the US and Israeli governments openly threatening the entire population of the Gaza strip with the war crime of collective punishment if they don’t somehow kick Hamas out of Gaza, and additionally announcing the intent to inflict “total devastation” upon that population if they do not.
This is about as explicit an admission of genocidal intent as you can possibly come up with.
In its genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, South African prosecutors compiled a mountain of evidence of Israeli officials announcing the intent to commit genocide in Gaza, such as Netanyahu describing Gaza’s population as “Amalek” in reference to a Bible story about a people who were completely annihilated on the orders of God, or former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant describing Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals” while declaring a “total siege” on the enclave.
Al Jazeera’s Raz Segal and Penny Green wrote the following regarding the ICJ case last year:
“The crime of genocide has two elements — intention and execution — both of which have to be proven when accusations are made… Intention is usually harder to prove when accusations of genocide are made; the petitioner has to be able to prove “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” in the language of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. But in Israel’s case, intention too has been laid bare by an ample amount of evidence — as the South African legal team pointed out.”
And Katz’s statement is probably the most clear and explicit admission yet. It’s hard to imagine a clearer declaration of genocidal intent than delivering a video statement addressed to a civilian population threatening them with “total devastation” if they don’t do as they’re told.
We may be sure that these statements by Katz and Trump have been added to files held by those who hope to successfully prosecute these monsters for war crimes one day. We may also be sure that they will be recorded in what will eventually be seen as one of the darker chapters in our civilization’s history.
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