Since I last wrote to you, Mr President, I have lost another 184 members of my extended family in Gaza.

• Ghada Ageel, Aljazeera, 3 Mar 2024

Dear President Biden,

I am writing to you for the second time. I first wrote to you on November 4 after 47 members of my community, including 36 from my own family, were murdered in a single attack by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). The massacre occurred in Khan Younis refugee camp, located in the southern region of the Gaza Strip, where people were supposed to be safe, as claimed by your ally, Israel.

I am uncertain if my first letter reached you or if your media team made you aware of its contents. Either way, you have not changed your position. Your unequivocal support for Israel, including through large weapons transfers, means that many more such massacres have been committed with your help since then.

Since writing that letter, I have lost another 220 members of my own family.

Just a month ago, on January 31, my father’s cousin, Khaled Ammar, 40, who was displaced in Khan Younis, was killed alongside his entire family when the place they were staying in was shelled by an Israeli tank. Khaled’s wife, Majdoleen, 38, their four daughters, Malak, 17, Sarah, 16, Aya, 9, and Rafeef, 7, and their two sons, Osama, 14, and Anas, 2, all perished in the attack.

Among the victims were also Khaled’s disabled brother Mohammed, 42, and their mother Fathiya, 60. Their bodies remained unburied for over a week. Khaled’s surviving brother, Bilal, 35, made repeated calls for assistance to the Palestinian Red Cross Society, but they could not dispatch a rescue team to look for survivors because the IOF did not grant them permission.

Majdoleen and her two young daughters, Rafeef and Aya, came to see me last summer when I visited Gaza. I still remember Rafeef trying to ride the bike of my youngest niece, Rasha. I still remember them racing down the street, eating the candy they had bought from the shop of my cousin, Asaad. Their laughter still echoes in my ears.

But today, Mr President, there is no Aya, no Rafeef, no Asaad, who was also killed by the IOF along with his wife, children, mom, two sisters, sister-in-law and their children. There are no roads, no homes, no shops, no laughter. Only echoes of devastation and the deafening silence of loss.

Today, the residential area of Khan Younis refugee camp I grew up in is reduced to rubble. Tens of thousands of refugees, including all surviving members of my extended family, are now displaced to al Mawasi and Rafah. They are living in tents. They are not faring well, Mr President.

I have not heard from them in a while, as Israel has cut off communication. On February 10, my nephew, Aziz, 23, walked three kilometres despite the danger to reach the edge of Rafah to use the internet. He told me that death has passed by them many times but spared them for now. They are hungry, thirsty, and cold.

There is no power, no sanitation, no medications, no communications, or any services available to them, despite the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel has to ensure the delivery of aid to Gaza.

If people do survive the Israeli bombs, they may not survive wounds sustained in the Israeli bombardment and the explosion of communicable and non-communicable diseases. The health care system has collapsed under the Israeli onslaught.

In February, the IOF laid a siege on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the second-largest in the Gaza Strip. There were 300 medical staff trapped in the hospital alongside 450 patients and about 10,000 internally displaced persons seeking refuge within or in the hospital’s vicinity.

For days, the IOF would not let a rescue team from the World Health Organization (WHO) evacuate patients and staff or deliver much-needed food, medical supplies and fuel. Throughout this time, the medical staff demonstrated remarkable courage and dedication to their patients, trying to keep them alive in the face of the Israeli attacks. Dr Amira Al Assouli, who rushed under Israeli fire to aid one of the wounded in the hospital courtyard is one bright example.

Countless people who sought shelter in the hospital premises were killed or wounded; some of these murders were recorded on camera.

On February 13, the IOF sent a young man named Jamal Abu Al Ola, whom Israeli soldiers had detained and tortured, to the hospital to tell the Palestinians sheltering there to leave. Wearing a white PPE garment and with his hands bound, he delivered the message and then – as instructed – headed towards the gate of the hospital, but was shot dead. His execution was documented by a journalist at the hospital and released to the public.

Will you order an investigation, Mr President? Will you demand that those responsible for the killing of Jamal and the many others at Nasser Hospital be punished or will you accept the IOF’s version of events again?

On February 15, the IOF raided the hospital, expelling thousands of people amid heavy bombardment and forcibly disappearing hundreds – at least 70 of them medical workers. This continues a pattern started in Gaza City. When the IOF raided Al Shifa Hospital, it detained some of its staff, among them, Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the hospital director, who remains in Israeli jail. The excuse then, as now, is that they were hunting for a Hamas command centre – a false narrative, you, Mr President, readily embraced.

During the raid of Nasser Hospital, the cutting off of electricity and oxygen resulted in the deaths of at least eight patients. When a WHO team was finally allowed to enter the hospital, its staffers described it as “a place of death”. After the evacuation of hundreds of patients, some 25 medical staffers stayed behind to care for the remaining 120 patients in the hospital without a secured supply of food, water or medications.

Among the regular patients of Nasser Hospital was my relative, Inshirah, who suffered from kidney failure and required dialysis every week. She lived in the Al Qararah area, east of Khan Younis.

When the IOF bombed her area, she moved to a camp for displaced people. When the IOF attacked the camp, she moved to Hay al Amal. When the latter was bombed, her children decided to move her to the vicinity of Nasser Hospital.

As the conditions at the hospital deteriorated, the frequency of her dialysis sessions was reduced to once every 2 weeks and then to once every 3 weeks, causing her significant suffering. When the IOF besieged the hospital, Inshirah was forced to leave. Then we lost contact with her and her children. We do not know if she has survived.

The vast majority of chronically ill people like Inshirah cannot access proper health care after Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s health care system. This is a death sentence for them. Destroying a health care system is a war crime, did you know that, Mr President?

Mr President, 2.3 million people in Gaza are living in a concentration camp. They are starved and killed relentlessly. They are bombed in their homes, on the streets, while collecting water, while sleeping in their tents, while receiving aid, and even while cooking. In Gaza, people tell me that drinking water costs blood, a loaf of bread is dipped in blood, and moving from place to place means bleeding.

Even the act of seeking food to feed your children can kill you – as happened to many parents on February 28. Some 112 Palestinians were murdered by the IOF as they tried to get flour to feed themselves and their families.

Their deaths are painfully real. As were the deaths of small babies like Anas, children like Aya, mothers like Majdoleen, and the elderly like Fathiya. There are among the more than 30,000 that have been recorded in the official death toll; many more thousands have perished but are recorded as “missing”.

Some 13,000 of the murdered are children. Many are now dying of starvation. Israel is killing 6 children an hour. Each of these children had a name, a story, and a dream that is never to be fulfilled. Do the children of Gaza not deserve life, Mr President?

The Palestinians are among the most educated nations in the entire Middle East. They are a very curious people. Their most burning question they all have today is, “why”? Why do the Palestinian people have to endure genocide at the hands of your ally, carried out with your weapons and money, while you refuse to call for a ceasefire? Can you tell us why, Mr President?

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• Ghada AgeelProfessor of political scienceDr Ghada Ageel is a third-generation Palestinian refugee and is currently a visiting professor at the department of political science at the University of Alberta, Canada

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) speaks alongside Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) at a press conference on December 7, 2023 in Washington, D.C.

(Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“We will not be complicit in Israel’s grave violation of international law,” reads a statement backed by more than 200 legislators from 13 countries.

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Mar 02, 2024

More than 200 lawmakers from 13 countries issued a joint statement Friday expressing opposition to their nations’ weapons exports to Israel and pledging to do everything in their power to halt the flow of arms that are being used to massacre Palestinians in Gaza.

“We, the undersigned parliamentarians, declare our commitment to end our nations’ arms sales to the state of Israel,” reads the statement, which was coordinated by Progressive International. “Our bombs and bullets must not be used to kill, maim, and dispossess Palestinians. But they are: We know that lethal weapons and their parts, made or shipped through our countries, currently aid the Israeli assault on Palestine that has claimed over 30,000 lives across Gaza and the West Bank.”

The statement’s signatories include legislators from Israel’s top allies and weapons suppliers, including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. Just two U.S. lawmakers—Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—backed the statement.

The statement includes six signatories from Germany, which is facing an International Court of Justice (ICJ) case alleging complicity in genocide against Palestinians.

The lawmakers argued that an arms embargo on Israel is both “a moral necessity” and “a legal requirement,” given the ICJ’s interim ruling in late January.

“We will not be complicit in Israel’s grave violation of international law,” the statement reads. “The ICJ ordered Israel not to kill, harm or ‘deliberately [inflict] on the [Palestinians] conditions of life calculated to bring about… physical destruction.’ They have refused. Instead, they press on with a planned assault on Rafah that the secretary-general of the United Nations has warned will ‘exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare.'”

“Today, we take a stand,” the statement continues. “We will take immediate and coordinated action in our respective legislatures to stop our countries from arming Israel.”

Niki Ashton, a member of Canada’s Parliament and a statement signatory, noted on social media that the Canadian government has approved $28 million worth of weapons exports to Israel since its latest assault on Gaza began in October.

“That is horrifying,” Ashton wrote. “Which is why I along with Jeremy Corbyn and 200+ parliamentarians across the world are backing [Progressive International’s] call for a ban on arms exports to Israel.”

“Make no mistake. These weapons are directly used to kill and maim starving Palestinians,” she added. “As Canadians, we can no longer claim to respect international law while sending arms to a country involved in genocidal acts. Enough is enough.”

2

The statement was released amid global outrage over what’s been dubbed the “flour massacre.” On early Thursday morning, Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of Gazans that surrounded an aid convoy in the northern part of the territory, which has been largely cut off from humanitarian assistance.

Israel’s military claimed dozens were killed and injured in a stampede, but witness accounts and video footage show that Israeli forces fired on Gazans as they desperately tried to get their hands on sacks of flour. One Gaza doctor said that 80% of the patients treated at his hospital in the wake of the attack had gunshot wounds, an account corroborated by United Nations teams and rights groups on the ground.

“Witness testimonies obtained by our field researchers and videos shared on social media documenting the events, clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that the crowd was hit by bullets coming from Israeli tanks and snipers,” Palestinian human rights organizations said in a statement Thursday.

A day after the deadly attack, U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza as ground deliveries plummet.

The U.S. president said he would “insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes” for ground shipments, but he didn’t promise to impose consequences if the Israeli government continues obstructing humanitarian assistance.

“Unbelievable,” Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, wrote following Biden’s announcement. “There is a serious risk of genocide and in response the U.S. is proposing to airdrop supplies, while continuing to arm the perpetrator.”

Late last month, dozens of U.N. experts called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel, warning that “any transfer of weapons or ammunition to Israel that would be used in Gaza is likely to violate international humanitarian law and must cease immediately.”

“State officials involved in arms exports may be individually criminally liable for aiding and abetting any war crimes, crimes against humanity, or acts of genocide,” the experts said.

The US president’s team is carefully organising his public appearances so as to minimise “disruptions from pro-Palestinian protests”, reports NBC News.

This includes keeping his public events smaller, not disclosing their exact location ahead of time, and staying away from college campuses, the US outlet said, citing a Biden ally and a source “familiar with his planning”.

The measures come after Biden was interrupted more than a dozen times by pro-Palestinian protesters while speaking at a campaign rally in January.

Protesters at the January 23 event shouted phrases such as “ceasefire now”, “let Gaza women live”, and “genocide Joe”.

—Aljazeera, March 1, 2024

The US was the only member of the Council to vote against the call for a humanitarian ceasefire

by Dave DeCamp , Antiwar, com, February 20, 2024

The US on Tuesday vetoed a resolution at the UN Security Council that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. It marked the third time the US used its veto power on the Council to block a call for an end to the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians.

The US was the only member to vote against the resolution, which was introduced by Algeria. The UK abstained, and all 13 other members voted in favor of the measure.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield slammed the Algerian effort after the vote.

“Proceeding with a vote today was wishful and irresponsible, and so while we cannot support a resolution that would put sensitive negotiations in jeopardy, we look forward to engaging on a text that we believe will address so many of the concerns we all share,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

Thomas-Greenfield claims the resolution would disrupt US efforts to push for a hostage deal, but there’s no sign any progress is being made. Qatar’s prime minister, who is mediating, said over the weekend that the negotiations are “not very promising,” and Israel declined to attend the last round of in-person talks with US, Qatari, and Egyptian officials.

The US is drafting its own resolution that calls for a “temporary ceasefire” if Hamas releases the hostages, which is essentially Israel’s position. The US resolution leaves open the possibility of Israel restarting military operations after the truce.

So far, the Israeli slaughter has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians and wounded over 69,000. About two-thirds of the casualties are women and children. Despite the massive civilian casualty rate, the US continues to provide unconditional support and is preparing to send more bombs.

This brief piece is from last year, Feb. 18, 2023

–Nasir Khan

What one can say with certainty about the Zionist rulers of Israel is that they have followed a systematic and consistent policy that was aimed at ethnically cleansing and marginalizing the Palestinians. That was their way to establish a colonial power in the Middle East that would expand its power and influence to other parts of the world. Their biggest prize was to control the political establishment of the United States. Other Western powers bowed to them and have dutifully followed their lead.

Have they failed or succeeded in their goals? If the success of a policy is to be judged from what it achieved, then the Zionist rulers of Israel have succeeded superbly well. No Zionist ruler of Israel has deviated from the original goals. Internal political struggles between the parties have been only for gaining power; otherwise, they all have followed the same course of gradual colonization, expansion and consolidation of their power.

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https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=7191614414259836&set=a.338633589557987

This piece I wrote in 2019. Some people may find it useful to understand the background to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and killings and terror against the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank.

— Nasir Khan

What do we mean by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine? What do we mean by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine? In my understanding, the notion of ethnic cleansing of Palestine covers all those major historic events and the policies that were used to take possession of the land of other people. What happened and how it happened at the hands of Zionists is part of the story historians call the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (e.g. Ilan Pappe, Richard Falk, etc.).

The Palestinians who opted to become the citizens of Israel had no choice but to accept that a foreign power had taken over their land. If they didn’t like it, then they could follow others who were forcibly driven out of historic Palestine and had become refugees in the neighbouring countries.

However, ethnic cleansing here does not imply that all Palestinians were physically eliminated. Some were killed. This is still going on in the occupied territories, as we saw in Gaza in the summer of 2014 and many times after. But this is part of the Israeli strategy to suppress any voice that stands for the restitution of the political rights of these people to their land, by expropriating and confiscating more land that is still in the hands of Palestinians. This is an incremental Israeli expansion in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and keeping Gaza under siege. All this has been happening because of the Western rulers’ support of Israel and its expansionist policy, chiefly by the United States, Britain and their global allies.

November 27, 2023

Hiba Abu Nada was a Palestinian poet, novelist, and educator. Her novel الأكسجين ليس للموتى (Oxygen is Not for the Dead) won second place in the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity in 2017. She was killed in her home in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli airstrike on October 20, 2023. She was 32.

–

𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴

Hiba Abu Nada

Translated by Huda Fakhreddine

Yesterday, a star said

to the little light in my heart,

We are not just transients

passing.

Do not die. Beneath this glow

some wanderers go on

walking.

You were first created out of love,

so carry nothing but love

to those who are trembling.

One day, all gardens sprouted

from our names, from what remained

of hearts yearning.

And since it came of age, this ancient language

has taught us how to heal others

with our longing,

how to be a heavenly scent

to relax their tightening lungs: a welcome sigh,

a gasp of oxygen.

Softly, we pass over wounds,

like purposeful gauze, a hint of relief,

an aspirin.

O little light in me, don’t die,

even if all the galaxies of the world

close in.

O little light in me, say:

Enter my heart in peace.

All of you, come in!

–

Hiba Abu Nada was a poet, novelist, and educator. You can also read her poem “Refuge” at Protean in Huda Fakhreddine’s translation.

Huda Fakhreddine is Associate Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a writer, a translator, and the author of several scholarly books.

Chaim Weizmann and Lord Montagu of the Zionist Commission, 1917. Anglo-Jewish statesman Lord Edwin Samuel Montagu (1879-1924), was British Minister of Munitions in 1916, and Secretary of State for India from 1917 until 1922. Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), pictured here at the head of the table, was president of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), and in 1949 became the first President of the State of Israel.

(Photo by Jewish Chronicle/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The American Jewish Committee, going back to 1917 in the United States, expressed grave warnings that a Jewish state could oppress non-Jews in Palestine.

Abba Solomon, Common Dreams, Feb 5, 2024

Jewish organizations that now are staunch supporters of the Israeli state were concerned with the same issues that Palestinians protest now.

At the November 1917 issuance of the Balfour Declaration of the British government in favor of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, many American Jewish Committee members and officers had observed that, if successful, the goal of a Jewish state to rule the multi-ethnic land of Palestine would lead to oppression of non-Jews.

In an April 1918 executive committee meeting considering the declaration, a member noted the goal of the AJC to protect civil and religious rights of Jews living as minorities around the world, and worried that a Jewish state could oppress non-Jews:

If a national home in Palestine be established, it may be that there too the good offices of this Committee may become necessary to protect a minority against an arrogant majority.

In 1919, AJC President Louis Marshall asserted an AJC statement on the Balfour declaration had been definitive in rejecting political Zionism:

In April last the American Jewish Committee defined its position in terms which could not be misunderstood, which indicated that, while it hailed with satisfaction the Balfour Declaration, it did so because of the two conditions annexed, namely, that it would not affect the rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine and that it was not to be regarded as in any way affecting the status of Jews who lived in other lands.

In September 1946, when the organization reluctantly adopted a pro-partition position and began lobbying the UN and US government, AJC President Joseph Proskauer told his board, “The so-called Jewish State is not to be called by that name but will bear some appropriate geographical designation. It will be Jewish only in the sense that the Jews will form a majority of the population.”

Mainstream Jewish organizations knew endless violence and oppression would result from imposing a Jewish state in Palestine against the stated wishes of its non-Jewish inhabitants.

The pernicious results of insisting on forcing Jewish sovereignty over Palestine—and necessarily disrupting Arab life there—was well understood within the Jewish organizations and in the general press.

In November 1939, Louis D. Brandeis objected to a planned visit to the United States by Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann: “He (Brandeis) believed the whole thing was a mistake. He was afraid Weizmann would press his plan for political action, based on a future re-shuffling of populations.”

In a February 1940 meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Weizman said that “of course they (Jews) would compensate the Arabs in a reasonable way for anything they got,” creating a Jewish Palestine and incentivizing Arabs to leave.

Historian George Antonius wrote in the widely-read book The Arab Awakening (1939) that “the logic of facts is inexorable. It shows that no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession.”

Journalist I.F. Stone wrote on a 1945 visit to Palestine, “Without the Zionist movement, what has been achieved in Palestine would never have come to pass. …But the strength associated with such a movement also has its corresponding defects, and the defects of Zionism are its failure to take into account the feelings and aspirations of the Palestinian Arab.”

A November 1947 CIA memo noted, “many [American] Zionist organizations, while supporting the objectives of a National Home for Jews, do not advocate an independent Jewish nation in Palestine.”

In a public letter, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others stated that in the years up to statehood, Jewish terrorists “inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and widespread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.”

Commentary monthly magazine (then published by the AJC) reported in March 1948, “The terrorists defeated us,” British officers admit. “We couldn’t track them down. The Jewish population was too frightened of them to help us.”

The AJC knew, from news reports and its on-scene correspondent in Palestine, of the militant fervor that was building for a Jewish state among the Zionist component.

Radical Zionist militias engaged in increasing violence against Arabs, British mandate administrators, and insufficiently-Zionist Jews in Palestine. Zionist terrorism spread to incidents like the 1944 assassination of British administrator Lord Moyne in Cairo, the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, and attacks on Arab communities, markets and busses. The terrorism spread abroad to bombing of British facilities in Rome(1946) and Vienna and a British troop train(1947).

In December 1947 AJC analyst Milton Himmelfarb wrote that one reason for the AJC change of position to favor partition of Palestine was that “The terrorists’ activities in Palestine, and the posterings and mouthings of their supporters here and abroad, led a number of AJC people to wonder whether a Jewish state was the chief enemy. They began to feel that after the state was created, the daily papers in New York at least would no longer carry headlines screaming of King David Hotel explosions and hangings of British sergeants; in short, ‘better an evil end than an endless evil.’”

On the cusp of the implementation of the partition plan, one AJC analysis of the coming “Zionization” of Jews in the United States warned diaspora Jews would be enlisted to the Zionist cause “beyond any consideration of good or evil.”

Terrorist leader and future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir led the September 1948 assassination of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem – to foil the diplomat’s efforts to encourage compromise on land taken by Israel beyond the partition plan, and return of Arab refugees forced from the new State of Israel.

In a draft section that was removed from a February 15, 1948, speech that chairman (and future AJC president) Jacob Blaustein gave on the subject of Palestine partition, he reported “terrorist groups of Palestinian Jews took the offensive” and that “If Partition fails, it is more than likely that these Jewish extremists will resort to terrorism and violence in spite of efforts to control them.”

In the years since, the AJC and other mainstream Jewish organizations have given up any notion of restraining Jewish nationalist ambitions, abandoned concern they had for the right of return of Palestinians exiled from their homes, and serve in the US as defenders of whatever military power the Israeli government exercises against the non-Jewish people of Palestine.

American Jewish leaders increasingly took their cues from Israel, and by 1953 the AJC set up a program of pro-Israeli propaganda, being fed by the Israeli consul in New York obvious falsehoods such as that Israel was a “feat of colonization unique in history, which was accomplished without displacing anyone.”

Mainstream Jewish organizations knew endless violence and oppression would result from imposing a Jewish state in Palestine against the stated wishes of its non-Jewish inhabitants. This has proved accurate, most recently in Israel’s methodical destruction of the means of life for millions in Gaza, and increasing state and settler terror against residents of the occupied West Bank.

[Above citations are from the author’s book: The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech, “The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews,” Given to the Baltimore Chapter, American Jewish Committee, February 15, 1948]

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Abba Solomon

Abba A. Solomon is the author of “The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech ‘The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews,’ Given to the Baltimore Chapter American Jewish Committee, February 15, 1948.”

Supporters and activists of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party shout slogans during a protest demanding the release of PTI leader Imran Khan, in Peshawar on January 28, 2024.

(Photo by Abdul MAJEED / AFP) (Photo by ABDUL MAJEED/AFP via Getty Images)

Covert regime change strikes again. This time in Pakistan.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Dreams, Feb 01, 2024

A principal instrument of U.S. foreign policy is covert regime change, meaning a secret action by the U.S. government to bring down the government of another country. There are strong reasons to believe that U.S. actions led to the removal from power of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan in April 2022, followed by his arrest on trumped-up charges of corruption and espionage, and sentencing this week to 10 years imprisonment on the espionage charge. The political objective is to block Pakistan’s most popular politician from returning to power in the elections on February 8.

The key to covert operations of course is that they are secret and hence deniable by the U.S. government. Even when the evidence comes to light through whistleblowers or leaks, as it very often does, the U.S. government rejects the authenticity of the evidence and the mainstream media generally ignore the story because it contradicts the official narrative. Because editors at these mainstream outlets don’t want to peddle in “conspiracy theories,” or are simply happy to be the mouthpieces for officialdom, they give the U.S. government a very wide berth for actual regime-change conspiracies.

Covert regime change by the U.S. is shockingly routine. One authoritative study by Boston University professor Lindsay O’Rourke counts 64 covert regime change operations by the U.S. during the Cold War (1947 and 1989), and in fact the number was far larger because she chose to count repeated attempts within one country as a single extended episode. Since then, U.S. regime change operations have remained frequent, such as when President Barrack Obama tasked the CIA (Operation Timber Sycamore) with overthrowing Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. That covert operation remained secret until several years after the operation, and even then, was hardly covered by the mainstream media.

From the U.S. perspective, “neutral” is a fighting word.

All of this brings us to Pakistan, another case where evidence points strongly to U.S.-led regime change. In this case, the U.S. desired to bring down the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan, the charismatic, talented, and hugely popular leader in Pakistan, renowned both for his world-leading cricket mastery and for his common touch with the people. His popularity, independence, and enormous talents make him a prime target of the U.S., which frets about popular leaders who don’t fall into line with U.S. policy.

Imran Khan’s “sin” was to be too cooperative with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, while also seeking normal relations with the United States. The great mantra of U.S. foreign policy, and the activating principle of the CIA, is that a foreign leader is “either with us or against us.” Leaders who try to be neutral amongst the great powers are at dire risk of losing their positions, or even their lives, at U.S. instigation, since the U.S. does not accept neutrality. Leaders seeking neutrality dating back to Patrice Lumumba (Zaire), Norodom Sihanouk (Cambodia), Viktor Yanukovych (Ukraine), and many others, have been toppled with the not-so-hidden-hand of the U.S. government.

Like many leaders in the developing world, Khan does not want to break relations with either the U.S. or Russia over the Ukraine War. By sheer coincidence of prior scheduling, Khan happened to be in Moscow to meet Putin on the day that Russia launched the special military operation (February 24, 2022). From the start, Khan advocated that the conflict in Ukraine should be settled at the negotiating table rather than on the battlefield. The U.S. and E.U. arm-twisted foreign leaders including Khan to fall into line against Putin and to support Western sanctions against Russia, yet Khan resisted.

Khan probably sealed his fate on March 6 when he held a large rally in northern Pakistan. At the rally, he berated the West, and especially 22 EU ambassadors, for pressuring him to condemn Russia at a vote in the United Nations. He also excoriated NATO’s war against terror in next-door Afghanistan as having been utterly devastating to Pakistan, with no acknowledgment, respect, or appreciation for Pakistan’s suffering.

[Khan’s] popularity, independence, and enormous talents make him a prime target of the U.S., which frets about popular leaders who don’t fall into line with U.S. policy.

Khan told the cheering crowds, “EU ambassadors wrote a letter to us asking us to condemn and vote against Russia… What do you think of us? Are we your slaves … that whatever you say, we will do?” He added, “We are friends with Russia, and we are also friends with America; we are friends with China and with Europe; we are not in any camp. Pakistan would remain neutral and work with those trying to end the war in Ukraine.”

From the U.S. perspective, “neutral” is a fighting word. The grim follow-up for Khan was revealed in August 2023 by investigative reporters at The Intercept. Just one day after Khan’s rally, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu met in Washington with Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., Asad Majeed Khan. Following the meeting, Ambassador Khan sent a secret cable (a “cypher”) back to Islamabad, which was then leaked to The Intercept by a Pakistani military official.

The cable recounts how Assistant Secretary Lu berated Prime Minister Khan for his neutral stance. The cable quotes Lu as saying that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.”

Lu then conveyed the bottom line to Ambassador Khan. “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.”

Five weeks later on April 10, with the U.S. blunt threat hanging over the powerful Pakistani military, and with the military’s hold over the Pakistani parliament, the Parliament ousted Khan in a no-confidence vote. Within weeks, the new government followed with brazenly manufactured charges of corruption against Khan, to put him under arrest and prevent his return to power. In utterly Orwellian turn, when Khan made known the existence of the diplomatic cable that revealed America’s role in his ouster, the new government charged Khan with espionage. He has now been convicted on these charges to an unconscionable 10 years, with the U.S. government remaining silent on this outrage.

When asked about Khan’s conviction, the State Department had the following to say: “It’s a matter for the Pakistani courts.” Such an answer is a vivid example of how U.S.-led regime change works. The State Department supports Khan’s imprisonment over Khan’s public revelation of U.S. actions.

Pakistan will therefore hold elections on February 8 with its most popular democratic leader in prison and with Khan’s party the subject of relentless attacks, political murders, media blackouts, and other heavy-handed repression. In all of this, the U.S. government is utterly complicit. So much for America’s “democratic” values. The U.S. government has gotten its way for now—and has deeply destabilized a nuclear-armed nation of 240 million people. Only Khan’s release from prison and his participation in the upcoming election could restore stability.

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Jeffrey D. Sachs

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism” (2020). Other books include: “Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable” (2017) and “The Age of Sustainable Development,” (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.

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This text I wrote on January 28, 2022, which I am publishing for the first time.

—Nasir Khan

For most people, the Holocaust under the Nazis means only the killing of Jews. As a result, for the rulers of Israel, it has been the only thing that matters and is still used as a defence to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their land.

The Israeli arguments and response run along such lines: If we have got rid of the Palestinians, then don’t forget, we are the victims of the Holocaust! But why did you destroy Gaza in 2014? Oh, to ask this question is anti-Semitism! Don’t forget what happened to us under the Germans. Thus, the Holocaust is a catch-all defence to every crime Israel has committed and is committing against the Palestinians.

Why are you still illegally expanding in the occupied areas? We can expand wherever we want because this is ‘our land’ that God gave us. But why did the same God create thousands of years ago a people who have lived in Palestine for thousands of years and are called Palestinians? You see, you are anti-Semitic to say a thing like that. You hate us. Why don’t you shut up and mind your own business? Go away, you bloody anti-Semitic scoundrel!

The Holocaust narrative by Israeli Zionists barely mentions what the Nazis did to the Roma, the Poles, and the millions of Soviet citizens during the Second World War.