On February 13th, 2025, President Trump said something few expected to hear. He said, “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many. . . You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons . . . We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive.”
I could not agree more with that statement. But with today’s expiration of the New START Treaty, we face the very real possibility of a new nuclear arms race — something that, to my knowledge, neither the President, Vice President, nor any other senior U.S. official has meaningfully discussed.
The decision to start a nuclear war can be made by a single individual—the President of the United States—with no requirement that he first consult with anyone. A nuclear war could also be started at any moment by Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, or any other leader of a nuclear weapon state. Or, it could be triggered by mistake.
A single use of a tactical nuclear weapon, either by accident or design, could trigger a flurry of escalating responses with far more powerful strategic weapons that would cause incalculable loss of life, widespread radiation poisoning, and destruction on a scale unlike anything seen in human history. We all — regardless of political affiliation — must reaffirm what Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev said 40 years ago: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
For the past eighty years, the probability of mutually assured destruction has deterred the use of nuclear weapons. But in today’s increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world, with mercurial leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, we cannot rely on deterrence alone. Existing nuclear arms control treaties are either no longer adhered to by Russia or the United States, or, as in the case of New START, have expired.
That represents a colossal failure of leadership by both the United States and Russia. There is no greater threat to humanity than a nuclear war, yet there are no negotiations underway to replace the treaty, nor are there discussions to consider a new generation of limits on nuclear weapons.
My colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Ed Markey, and several others in Congress, as well as the arms control community, have sought to counter this complacency. But the danger of a new nuclear arms race has received far too little attention from Congress and the Administration, and with today’s expiration of the New START Treaty, it is staring us in the face.
The United States, and our allies, must urgently seek to reinvigorate negotiations on a verifiable replacement for New START, with more effective mechanisms to prevent the development, proliferation, and use of nuclear weapons. Until then, we and the Russians should agree to continue abiding by the limits under New START. Despite our stark differences with the Russians, they have as much interest in preventing an unwinnable nuclear war as we do.
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We must also invigorate discussions with China, which has some 600 nuclear weapons. That number is expected to more than double in fewer than ten years.
If the U.S. and Russia fail to replace New START despite it being in both countries’ national security interest, there are other steps that we, Russia, and China should take—short of negotiating a new treaty—to help reduce the risk of a nuclear war, whether due to a false alarm, error, or other misperception.
For example:
Creating joint early warning centers to monitor missile launches;
De-targeting, so any accidental launch of a nuclear armed missile lands in the ocean;
Removing all nuclear weapons from high-alert status;
Reducing incentives to respond quickly to an unconfirmed nuclear attack;
Reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons; and
Renouncing first use of nuclear weapons and eliminating the President’s authority to launch nuclear weapons without congressional approval.
Since the 1980s, thanks to negotiators in both countries, the United States and Russia curtailed an unrestrained nuclear arms race that had led to the deployment of staggering numbers of increasingly destructive weapons that could not rationally be justified for deterrence or any other purpose. The START Treaty and New START were historic achievements.
Twelve months ago, President Trump spoke of the need for the U.S., Russia, and China to stop building more nuclear weapons. Yet while his National Security Strategy calls for “the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent,” it says nothing about preventing another nuclear arms race. With respect to New START, he reportedly said, “If it expires, it expires.”
As the New START Treaty fades into history, one commentator has suggested that “one likely successor to nuclear weapons’ sole dominance on the strategic value ladder could be AI technology. . . Either AI technology itself will become the primary strategic weapon—or it will enable the rapid creation of alternatives that render nuclear arsenals increasingly irrelevant to real-world outcomes.”
It is only a matter of time—and probably far less time than we think—before the application of AI technology to warfare creates a whole new impetus for global instability. But even as AI becomes more versatile as a disruptive and destructive force, nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war are not going to disappear.
So, I urge President Trump to elevate nuclear arms control to the top of his national security agenda. Even the modest steps I’ve outlined to reduce the chance of a catastrophic mistake or miscalculation resulting in the use of nuclear weapons should be among our highest national security priorities.
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Dockworkers in more than 20 ports across the Mediterranean marked a historic moment today as they launched an international day of strike and protest against war and rearmament. Dockers also protested the privatization and militarization of port infrastructure.
Unionists involved in preparing the action described it as the result of a long and complex process, built on dockworkers’ solidarity with Palestine and their struggles for dignified working conditions at home.
The impact of the strike was felt even before it fully unfolded on February 6, as reports emerged of ships – vessels that regularly transport military cargo to Israel – disrupting their itineraries due to the actions.
“Ports are places of sweat, not blood”
Demonstrations began in the morning in the Greek ports of Piraeus and Elefsina, in Türkiye’s Mersin, and in Bilbao and Pasaia in the Basque Country. The trade union Liman-İş Sendikası rallied hundreds of its members to send a message against genocide and in solidarity with Palestine, echoing similar dispatches by their comrades from LAB in the Basque Country.
In Greece, dockworkers highlighted the contradiction between massive European investments in rearmament and the imposition of austerity on public services and infrastructure, which is leading to increasingly unsafe working conditions. “We won’t accept work without rights,” said Damianos Voudigaris of the Greek union ENEDEP later in the day. “Development should mean going home alive. Ports are places of work, not war. They are places of sweat, not blood.”
Some of the largest mobilizations of the day took place in Italy. Strikes were organized in Ancona, Bari, Cagliari, Civitavecchia, Crotone, Genoa, Livorno, Palermo, Ravenna, Salerno, and Trieste, involving not only dockworkers and port employees but also students and members of the public. The map of the strikes once again underscored the momentum built by Italy’s labor movement over the past year, including three general strikes for Palestine – mobilizations that have drawn inspiration from some of the dockers collectives’ anti-war activism.
The trade union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) reported from all striking ports, with union representatives addressing assemblies prominently displaying Palestinian and Cuban flags. Workers stressed that Europe’s labor movement must find an internationalist orientation in order to block the anti-worker agenda of the European Union and right-wing governments. Governments including that of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which, as USB activists noted during live broadcasts, was rattled by the determination shown by workers after years of stagnation. According to trade unionists, this panic has translated into a new wave of repression, including measures targeting union members involved in Palestine solidarity actions. USB, however, insisted that resistance to Meloni’s policies would only intensify in the coming weeks.
“Today it’s the ports, tomorrow it will be the entire logistics sector”
While uniting around shared demands – to prevent the militarization of ports, reject rearmament, and stop a war economy from stifling all other priorities – striking workers also raised local concerns. Dockworkers in Trieste warned against port privatization. Elsewhere, including in Bari and Ravenna, workers and students described how port infrastructure was being used, sometimes covertly, to transport military and dual-use materials to Israel. “Everyone here has had enough of that,” one activist in Ravenna said.
Demonstrations held in Civitavecchia, Livorno, and Ancona on Friday evening were notable, with strikers in Ancona describing the day as “monumental.” In Genoa, as has become customary, turnout was massive. Members of the collective CALP – who had previously vowed that “not one nail” would leave the port if Israel attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla en route to Gaza – led the protest. Speaking to media and fellow activists, they stressed that the success of the international strike once again proved that dockworkers keep their promises.
“We promised to block everything – and we blocked everything. We promised a general strike – and we had a general strike. We promised an international strike – and here we are,” they said.
The international dockworkers’ strike, however, is not the end of the road, workers emphasized. “Today it’s the ports, tomorrow it will be the entire logistics sector, and then it will be all workers,” strikers in Ravenna concluded.
Actions were also reported in the ports of Fos-sur-Mer near Marseille, the German hubs of Bremen and Hamburg, and in Corsica. Dockworkers from Morocco’s Democratic Labor Organization (ODT), who had been involved in preparing the strike throughout the process, were forced to postpone their industrial action due to extreme weather conditions that led to port closures.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio listens to a presentation by Trump administration officials about post-war Gaza following a signing ceremony for the “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum on January 22, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The board’s vision for Gaza is a greed-soaked plan dependent on mass murder and land theft, driven by men so wealthy and entitled that they believe they can escape accountability while reaping billions in profit in the process.
While the sheer pomposity, Trumpian megalomania, and painfully paradoxical context surrounding the so-called “Board of Peace” might tempt some to dismiss it as mere spectacle or farce, its criminal, inhumane, and hegemonic nature makes it far too dangerous to ignore.
Last month, President Donald Trump and his new, thuggish boys’ club of heads of state publicly celebrated the launch of the Board of Peace (BoP) at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Its hypocrisy was inadvertently underscored by Elon Musk—Trump’s on-again, off-again ally—when he quipped onstage that one might call it the Board of “p-i-e-c-e,” a venture devoted to claiming “a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela,” to which his interviewer, Larry Fink, billionaire CEO of BlackRock, responded with cheer, “We got one.” Only a room filled with the world’s tech and business elite could find this funny.
In the weeks since, people of conscience around the world have been left to reckon with what may come of this brazen proclamation of a Trumpified world order. In particular, the board’s presentation of plans for “New Gaza” offered stark clarity about the greed-driven intentions Trump, his inner circle, and their Israeli billionaire partners seek to pursue, while raising a fundamental question as to how such a project of colonization and land theft could claim any legal basis at all, let alone a moral one.
As it stands, the BoP charter elevates Trump to a position akin to a global dictator for life, unchecked—on paper— by any external mechanisms of accountability or transparency. Acting as permanent chairman, chief executive, and controlling shareholder of the organization, Trump has declared that he holds absolute veto power, while retaining complete discretion over the potential multibillion-dollar slush fund generated through permanent member fees. In keeping with his long record of felonies and fraud, all budgets, financial accounts, or disbursements the BoP deems “necessary” to carry out its sweeping mission are subject only to the so-called “institutions of controls or oversight mechanisms” designed by the very same Executive Board.
Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.
A few invited world leaders, mostly from the European Union, have done little more than politely decline their invitations. While they have not yet bent the knee to Trump in this mobster’s reality-show version of US imperial power in action, this has not stopped those same governments from endorsing the other “peaceful actions” Trump is poised to pursue under the guise of BoP authority. These include the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the seizure of Venezuelan oil; the execution of dozens of extrajudicial boat strikes that have killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean; threats of war and the promotion of dangerous regime-change fantasies in Iran and Cuba; and support for his complete takeover of occupied Palestine through United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803. That resolution effectively granted Trump authority in Gaza by endorsing his 20-point Gaza peace plan and welcoming the BoP as a transitional governing body. Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.
Despite some rejections, other governments have gone ahead and accepted their invitations for a free three-year membership. The participation of Israel’s wanted genocidaire-in-chief, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should serve as the clearest red flag that this organization has no interest in even pretending to care about the lives of the Palestinian people or any standard of international law. Netanyahu could not even fly to Davos to attend the BoP’s self-appointed pomp and circumstance for fear of being arrested as a wanted war criminal.
Other beacons of democracy and world peace, eager to lend legitimacy to the BoP, include Trump’s own “favorite dictator,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi; Argentina’s scandal-prone, right-wing President Javier Milei; “Europe’s last dictator,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko; Netanyahu’s idea of a “moral conscience,” Albanian President Edi Rama; and Hungary’s model in authoritarianism, Viktor Orbán. Leaders from Arab states—including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Qatar—have also joined, and will presumably stand alongside Trump and the Executive Board to help oversee, and quietly endorse, “New Gaza.”
Their participation set the stage for Davos, where none other than Jared Kushner delivered the first public presentation of an investment plan contingent upon the ethnic cleansing and erasure of a national Palestinian identity. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a member of the BoP “Executive Board,” has long served as the self-styled “master planner” of transforming Gaza into a prime real estate opportunity. He has a track record of articulating his absolute disregard for Palestinian life, describing the besieged Gaza Strip in February 2024 as “very valuable… waterfront property.”
Kushner began his chilling slideshow by urging skeptical investors to “just calm down for 30 days,” declaring, “The war is over. Let’s work together.” Eager to move on to their real business of “peace,” Kushner appeared wholly willing to ignore the ongoing forced starvation, imprisonment, systemic torture, murder, and displacement of Palestinians across the occupied territories. Since the supposed “ceasefire” in October 2025, the Israeli military has killed at least 477 Palestinians in Gaza.
Trump has also failed to address Israel’s continued ban on dozens of international humanitarian and non-governmental organizations, a policy that has deliberately denied lifesaving aid and medical care to the region while newborn babies continue to die of hypothermia. Instead, Kushner outright lied about the current scale of Israel’s designed humanitarian catastrophe, claiming that “100% of the food needs are met” and that “the cost of needs has gone down,” before unironically describing the administration’s role as “the largest humanitarian effort into a war zone that anyone’s been able to tell us about.” Meanwhile, as the conference unfolded, Israeli forces bulldozed the UN Refugee headquarters in East Jerusalem, and the Israeli Knesset voted by an overwhelming majority to annex the entirety of the West Bank.
Amid the distortions and denials of reality, Kushner did allow the logic of the project to surface when he identified the architect behind the purported $25 billion master plan for Gaza: Yakir Gabay, whom he described as “one of the most successful real estate developers and brilliant people I know.” Gabay is an Israeli billionaire and international real estate tycoon with close familial ties to the Israeli government. Reports also indicate that he has participated in efforts to pressure Columbia University administrators to suppress student protests.
Much like Kushner, a recent article by the editor-in-chief of Jerusalem Post described Gabay as having been eager to craft a plan for “New Gaza” from the very first weeks of Israel’s prolonged assault on the densely populated region:
October 7, [Gabay] tends to say, woke him to action. [Gabay] thought: This time, my capabilities can change the face of reality…Other businesspeople heard about his work a year and a half ago. The White House had asked him to develop something even during Joe Biden’s term. He has good relationships with Tony Blair and Kushner, and when Trump won the elections, it became easier to push the issue.
On the whole, Kushner’s “New Gaza” presentation made no attempt to acknowledge a Palestinian state, recognize Palestinian self-determination, nor address Israeli occupation or the implications of Gaza’s “reconstruction” for the other occupied Palestinian territories. Instead, the eerily bizarre AI-generated slideshow of skyscrapers, oil rigs, and industrial complexes offered only a glimpse into the twisted billionaire fantasy that Kushner’s inner circle—including figures like Gabay—has sought to merge with Zionist imaginaries.
The only part of Kushner’s presentation that even acknowledged Palestinians was a single slide on “Palestinian-led demilitarization.” Beyond this ominous token reference, the narrative repeatedly circled back to framing Gaza as “an amazing investment opportunity” to the room full of multimillionaires and billionaires.
Recent reporting from Drop Site News has confirmed and expanded upon this language, revealing “Resolution No. 2026/1,” an unsigned State Department document from December 2025 that declares the Board of Peace aims to transform Gaza into a “deradicalized and demilitarized terror-free zone.”
Here, “deradicalization” functions as a catch-all term to delegitimize resistance and criminalize opposition to Israeli occupation—a legal right under international law. Palestinians who maintain their political consciousness, national identity, or will for self-determination, and who refuse to normalize occupation, are almost certain to be labeled “terrorists” or deemed insufficiently “deradicalized.” Those who take up arms to defend their people against some of the world’s most heavily armed and nuclear powers risk being denied existence in their own lands—murdered or turned away by the very architects of genocide who now claim to bring “peace.” Access to basic rights is made contingent on surrendering political and economic agency, including abandoning a historically rooted cultural identity of resistance under occupation, forsaking traditional livelihoods, and subordinating the desire to shape the future of the land to whatever “economic opportunities” BoP members deem investible.
The document further states that only those who “support and act consistently” to establish a “deradicalized, terror-free Gaza that poses no threat to its neighbors” may participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance. It also bars any individuals or organizations the board deems to have “supported or demonstrated a history of collaboration, infiltration, or influence with or by Hamas or other terror groups”—a sweeping allegation Israel has long weaponized without evidence.
In practice, such standards mean that anyone who stands in firm solidarity with Palestinians, including international NGOs that seek to hold Israel to even minimal standards of accountability, will likely be barred from operating in Gaza. This has already become an entrenched and worsening reality since October 2023. What the BoP presents as a security framework is, in essence, a blueprint for controlling Palestinian movement, erasing any viable possibility of a Palestinian state, and ultimately, advancing ethnic cleansing, while preventing humanitarian organizations from participating in any meaningful process of reconstruction or the delivery of aid. A framework that insists “no one will be forced to leave Gaza”—as if forced removal were ever legitimate—while simultaneously conditioning access to aid, resources, and even limited political participation on compliance with what Trump and his confidants dictate, is not a framework in which any meaningful shred of freedom or dignity can exist.
In essence, Trump now supposedly wields full legislative, executive, and judicial control over the future of Gaza. He alone, along with his board of resort profiteers—who would hastily clear away the rubble burying the bodies of erased bloodlines and the remnants of mosques, churches, hospitals, and schools—will have complete authority over how surviving Palestinians live, how they are governed, and who may participate in decision-making. Only at the very bottom of the BoP’s tyrannical hierarchy sits a so-called “technocratic committee,” nominally including members of the Palestinian Authority. Its role appears purely advisory, permitted to exist only insofar as it appeases Trump and aligns with his agenda. There is little indication that it will serve, or even slightly represent, the people it claims to speak for.
The development is ultimately so jarring, so rooted in supremacist ideologies, and so flagrantly opposed to basic principles of sovereignty and human rights that it has few historical parallels. The closest comparison seems to be the gruesome reign of Belgian King Leopold II.
The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity.
Those who participate in this process, including figures such as World Bank President Ajay Banga, lend legitimacy to a project that advances a perverse vision and a chapter of history that is not inevitable. Collaboration in the name of “reconstruction and development of Gaza” for a project so morally and legally corrupt is not a pragmatic compromise—it is active participation in a plan that has no place in the world. The human cost of this complicity is impossible to ignore.
The BoP plan also offers no conception of justice, reparations, or accountability for Israeli terror. Its version of “peace” is imposed through state violence to silence, control, and force Palestinians into submission. It is a project that raises skyscrapers for Western elites atop mass graves, without including, or even acknowledging, the Palestinians its architects have killed and displaced. It relies too on the pathetic inaction of the overwhelming majority of UN member states.
Much remains unknown about what is immediately required to take a single step toward “peace” in the region: if and when Palestinians may finally find reprieve from Israeli bombardment; whether the Rafah crossing will actually open; what will become of finding and returning the bodies of loved ones buried under the rubble; whether human rights organizations or journalists will even be permitted to document the reality–and work safely–on the ground; if displaced Palestinians will ever be allowed to return to Gaza; and crucially, whether other states will intervene. What is clear, however, is the sheer evil of this project.
Following Kushner’s presentation, many have rightfully said that if this BoP monstrosity were fictional, it would be so dark it would border on being unbelievable. And yet it is profoundly real: a greed-soaked plan dependent on mass murder and land theft, driven by men so wealthy and entitled that they believe they can escape accountability while reaping billions in profit in the process.
World leaders have long entrenched impunity and rewarded the most atrocious US-Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially over the past two and a half years. Yet the board’s ambitions—laid out in a charter that mirrors the UN and spans what Trump calls “the whole region of the world”—reveal a danger that stretches far beyond Palestine. The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity. And still—precisely because of the chaos, confusion, and sheer audacity of their plans—this dystopian vision for “New Gaza” is not inevitable. Those with political and economic power must firmly reject and actively work to rein in this Orwellian BoP. If any entity requires immediate disarmament and deradicalization, it is Trump and his so-called Executive Board.
The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets.
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[Prefatory Note: Initially framed as questions responding to Middle East journalist, Mohamed Abd Elaziz, raising question about Stage II of the Trump Plan for Gaza, inaugurating the Board of Peace at the Davos World Economic Forum this January. The questions raises some key issues. My assessment is that the Board of Peace deserves to fail. It insults the Palestinian people, is blind to flagrant violations of the Genocide Convention, and indirectly further undermines international law and UN authority with respect to global security.]
1- How do you view the legitimacy of establishing an independent peace council to intervene in international conflicts, compared to the traditional mechanisms of the United Nations?
The mechanism may work in certain situation, but not if as in the Trump Plan it is
slanted in favor of the wrongdoers and is prejudicial to the legal rights of the aggrieved and victimized party. The idea of an independent peace council could only achieve legitimacy if it is mindful of the imperative of equality with respect to the parties when addressing conflicts and its activities are professionally shaped by their joint participation, with an eye toward determining whether part of the peace council’s writ covers potential accountability of one or both parties in the form of reparation or recommendations of investigation and possible prosecution for individuals seemingly involved in wrongdoing in relation to law, morality, and human rights. Given the present structure of international relations, it seems highly unlikely that leading states would participate and fund such an independent peace council with a mission of conflict resolution as it would encroach upon the traditional sovereign prerogatives with respect to strategic national interests.
2– Do you believe that such initiatives could serve as leverage for UN reform?
It could in principle, but not in the setting of Israel/Palestine, where the partisan nature of the interactive process is one that by its composition, framework, and agenda rewards the perpetrators of genocide and further victimizes those who continue to suffer from severe and cruel wrongdoing by Israel, the U.S, and complicit enabling states. To the extent that UN affirms such an unjust initiative it brings shame to the Organization as it did by the unanimous endorsement of the Trump Plan in UNCR RES 2803 on January 17, 2026, and further stigmatized of the Organization by the show of support for the resolution expressed by the Secretary General, which included encouragement for the establishment of the misnamed Board of Peace that can be more accurately identified as the Settler Colonial Peace Council.
At this time, it is hard to say whether the Trump Plan, especially the Board of Peace by its apparent intention of marginalizing the UN, dramatized by situated its inauguration at the Davos World Economic Forum rather than within the UN System might generate a strong effort to engage in UN reform. This would require a considerable mobilization of pressure and is risky in that might lead to the US exit, which would actually play into Trump’s anti-internationalism approach that seeks to heighten US transactionalism as well as geopolitical outreach.
3- What are the potential risks if a peace council were to assume a larger role than the United Nations in managing global crises?
I have no confidence that such an independent peace council could work unless free from geopolitical manipulation by the US, Russia, China, and above all the US. It would need to be funded independently, and its executive members determined by some process that assured selection would take account of geographical, civilizational, ideological, gender diversities and maybe even strived to obtain an inter-generational balance. If, and this is a big if. such a peace council could become truly independent of the narcissistic geopolitics of Trump it might pose a constructive challenge to transform the UN as now constituted. The UN has performed disappointingly over the decades when it comes to conflict resolution, the enforcement of international law, the accountability of wrongdoers. This is not an accident. It should be remembered that the UN was set up in a manner that protected the strategic interests of the winners of World War II, as exemplified by conferring the right of veto and permanent membership in the SC as a way to ensure that the UN would act in a manner hostile to their perceived priorities. If a IPC could be based, staffed, and funded on the primacy of justice rather than currently as a reflection of the primacy of geopolitics it might displace the UN in the vital policy sphere of the management of global security. It is with respect to global security that the UN has most consistently failed the peoples of the world. This was illustrated dramatically, grotesquely, and fundamentally, by the recent pathetic efforts of the UN to oppose the Israel/US genocidal partnership that has produced the ongoing acute Palestinian ordeal.
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Richard Anderson Falk (born November 13, 1930) is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees. He is the author or coauthor of over 20 books and the editor or coeditor of another 20 volumes. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Since 2005 he chairs the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
ISRAELI air attacks on Lebanon have reached their highest levels since the 2024 ceasefire agreement, a new report by an international aid group said today.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) accused the Israelis of carrying out a “clear and dangerous” surge in air attacks on Lebanon.
The NRC said that Israeli warplanes had carried out at least 50 air raids on Lebanon over the last month, about double the number of the previous month.
The group said the Israeli attacks make a mockery of the ceasefire agreed between Israel and Lebanon in November 2024, after more than a year of cross-border attacks and a two month long campaign of Israeli attacks that killed thousands.
Maureen Philippon, the NRC’s country director in Lebanon, said: “These attacks, as well as the many ground incursions that continue to happen away from the cameras, have deemed the ceasefire agreement little more than ink on paper.”
This week Israeli warplanes targeted buildings in two villages in southern Lebanon, Kfar Tebnit and Ain Qana. The Israelis claimed the buildings were “military infrastructure” that Hezbollah was attempting to rebuild in order to reset their activities in the region.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of committing an environmental crime after Israeli aircraft sprayed an unknown substance over a number of southern Lebanese towns.
The NRC said the continued attacks have created a climate of fear among the population and were hampering reconstruction efforts caused by previous Israeli attacks.
Ms Philippon said: “Aid agencies, including the NRC, are still dealing with the aftermath and consequences of months of destructive conflict which left much of Lebanon in ruins.”
She called on Israel to stop its attacks on southern Lebanon saying “this vicious cycle has to end.”
This comes a day after Israel’s justice ministry charged a dozen people, including Israeli soldiers with systematically smuggling hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of goods into Gaza, according to a statement by Israel’s prosecutor.
The indictment charged the accused, some of whom included army reservists, with smuggling cigarettes, iPhones and batteries into Gaza and “assisting the enemy during wartime.”
It said the accused committed their actions while aware of the possibility that the goods would reach resistance group Hamas and its operatives.
The statement also linked Bezalel Zini, the brother of Israel’s chief of domestic security, David Zini to the smuggling ring.
Earlier this week Mr Zini’s lawyer said that his client denies all “suspicions” attributed to him.
Published date: 6 February 2026 08:53 GMT | Last update:51 mins 11 secs ago
Clear away the fog of conspiracy theories, and both are the product of an imperialist framework built on a consistent process of dehumanisation
The US Capitol building is pictured in March 2022 (Samuel Corum/Getty Images/AFP)
The release of the latest Epstein files has upended social media, amid a scramble to verify the morality of the names that are on and off the list.
This obsession with “who is in the files” effectively exonerates US institutions, imposing a veil of individual deviance. By framing the Epstein network as a secret cabal of bad actors who are politically compromised by blackmail, this discourse fails to recognise that we are not witnessing an anomaly of power, but rather a manifestation of its most basic structural reality.
As a result, the dominant narrative across the political divide suggests that Washington’s unwavering support for Israel, and its direct complicity in the Gaza genocide, are the result of politicians being coerced by external intelligence assets.
This framework is analytically deficient, operating on the flawed assumption that the American political class is somehow guided by a liberal moral compass; that its support for mass slaughter is a departure from its otherwise benevolent values.
In reality, western colonial and capitalist elites don’t need to be extorted to justify their participation in the destruction of Palestinian life. The American-Zionist alliance is rooted in material and ideological imperatives, with Israel functioning as a key outpost for American hegemony and a strategic military-industrial laboratory in the region.
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From its inception in 1492, American empire has been defined by the systematic displacement, enslavement and extermination of indigenous populations in favour of the expansion of European capital.
The genocide in Gaza is the contemporary expression of this historical heritage. Suggesting that US support for the colonisation of Palestine is a product of political blackmail, ignores centuries of American atrocities around the world. The US commitment to the Zionist settler-colonial project remains constant regardless of who holds office, because the strategic interests of empire demand it.
‘Human animals’
This imperialist framework relies on a consistent process of dehumanisation – one that facilitates both state-sponsored genocide and sex trafficking. In both cases, the human being is systematically stripped of political and moral agency, and reduced to a mere object or commodity.
In Gaza, the dehumanisation of Palestinians is a prerequisite for genocide. When an entire population is characterised as a “demographic threat” or “human animals”, their elimination is no longer framed as a crime, but as a logistical necessity for the “security” of the settler-colonial state.
In the case of the Epstein trafficking ring, victims were reduced to expendable objects who could be traded and exploited for the interests and pleasures of an elite class.
It isn’t accidental that members of the same political and economic class facilitating the ethnic cleansing of two million people in Gaza appear on a list of potential sexual predators. This isn’t about a secret society that hijacked the state; it’s about a class of people whose ideological and materialist worldview is predicated on the absolute exploitation of others.
American empire is not being blackmailed into supporting genocide. It is performing its historical function
For imperialist powers, the body – whether of a Palestinian child in a besieged enclave, or of someone being trafficked on a private island – is simply an object for the sustainability of political hegemony and the pursuit of sexual predation.
The moral degeneracy shown in the Epstein files is the domestic extension of the depravity exported by these same elites to the Global South. Their private sexual predatory crimes reflect the same tenets of empire as their public violent political crimes.
Indeed, their sexual criminality is entirely consistent with their supremacist worldview. If the elite class is comfortable with signing off on the slaughter of children for geopolitical gains, their involvement in sexual trafficking shouldn’t be a surprise.
We must also reject the intellectual laziness that seeks to frame this imperialist and capitalist depravity through the lens of conspiracy theories. Such theories often rely on western antisemitic tropes to explain corruption and evil, effectively protecting western power structures by conflating Judaism with Zionism.
This conflation serves western decision-makers by creating a buffer class, which is blamed for the consequences of imperialist projects around the world. Within the structures of empire, public servants are agents of imperialism regardless of their religious or ethnic identities. Their primary allegiance and objective is preserving the global capitalist order.
False narrative
By reducing the Zionist project or the Epstein ring to the work of a “Jewish cabal”, the dominant discourse serves to exonerate broader western colonial structures and elites, essentially letting imperialist powers off the hook for a project they have historically championed.
This narrative wrongly suggests that the US-Israel relationship is a hijacking of the American agenda, rather than a calculated and strategic partnership between two settler-colonial powers. To frame the liberation struggle as a fight against a religious conspiracy is to naively ignore the material conditions of ethnic cleansing, land theft and resource control.
This distraction is furthered by the algorithmic economy of social media, which rewards engagement farming by prioritising sensationalist fabrications over structural analysis and accurate information.
Attempts to “collect” likes by sharing ridiculous theories undermines the political legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, amid a surge in viral tweets that shamelessly claim to uncover evidence of ancient religious rituals, based on nothing more than obvious digital errors.
From Epstein to Gaza: The depravity of the western elite is now fully exposed
As the conversation shifts towards such fabricated narratives, the architects of the Gaza genocide are portrayed as being driven by ancient myths, rather than by the modern materialist and high-tech military logic of resource exploitation and geopolitical hegemony. Even when ritualistic language is used by the perpetrators, the bombs dropped on Gaza remain tools of a clear settler-colonial project.
The conspiracy framework obstructs a proper understanding of the international order; namely, how elites and powerful institutions make decisions in service of western imperialism.
Conspiracy theories suggest that colonial powers are so clandestine and all-powerful that we must decode their secrets from leaked documents. Yet the actual plots of imperialist powers are rarely secret: they are published in the white papers of think-tanks, discussed by world leaders, and codified in American and international institutions.
The millions of victims over centuries of European and American colonialism highlight the true nature of these imperialist and capitalist projects. The truth is operating in broad daylight: American empire is not being blackmailed into supporting genocide. It is performing its historical function.
The moral degeneracy in the Epstein files isn’t an aberration. It is a true reflection of a colonial and capitalist class that feels invincible in its capacity to exploit the whole world. The Gaza genocide and the Epstein trafficking ring aren’t mysteries to be decoded; they are the logical outcome of a materialist order that has viewed human beings as a disposable commodity since 1492.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Raja Abdulhaq is a Palestinian political organiser and researcher. Raja is a co-founder of Quds News Network and a former Executive Director of Islamic Leadership Council of New York. Raja has a masters degree in Political Science from Brooklyn College.
Since the Cuban Revolution overthrew a US-backed dictatorship and asserted national independence, Cuba has remained in the United States’ crosshairs. The country has endured nearly 600 assassination attempts against its leadership, along with countless covert and overt operations aimed at destabilizing its government. For more than six decades, the US has also imposed an economic embargo explicitly designed to bring about regime change.
By any honest measure, this policy has failed. What it has succeeded in doing is fostering deep resentment toward the United States, not only in Cuba, but across much of the world, while inflicting immense suffering on ordinary Cubans.
Basic necessities such as food, paint, printing paper, baby formula, syringes, and other lifesaving supplies, including vaccines and cancer treatment drugs, are either restricted by the embargo or priced far beyond most people’s reach. A simple walk through Havana tells the story: crumbling infrastructure, uncollected trash, and growing numbers of people gathering near tourist areas, hands outstretched in desperation.
Fuel shortages are widespread, inflation is at historic highs, and a sharp decline in tourism, Cuba’s primary economic lifeline, has made daily life nearly unbearable for many.
It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions.
In response, the Cuban government has expanded the private sector, legalized small- and medium-sized enterprises, decentralized food production, and opened its markets to limited foreign investment, all while attempting to maintain the core socialist principles of the revolution. It has also reduced reliance on fossil fuels, slowly shifting to solar energy. In 2025, renewable energy accounted for more than 10% of Cuba’s energy consumption, an increase from 3% the year before.
Yet these measures alone cannot offset the outsize impact of US policy and the blockade, which has been dramatically tightened in recent months. The latest effort to cut off of nearly all oil shipments to the island has led to daily blackouts and deepened human suffering.
It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions. They are a cruel and inhumane form of collective punishment that disproportionately harms the most vulnerable. These sanctions, without legitimate justification, have restricted travel for Americans, made remittances far more difficult, and unjustly placed Cuba on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. That designation effectively cuts the country off from the global banking system, making even basic international transactions nearly impossible. The absurdity is stark: Cuban biotechnology produced five globally used Covid-19 vaccines, while the US embargo restricted Cuba’s ability to purchase syringes to administer them.
Cuba should not be treated as a political chess piece to demonstrate US economic and military might. It is a proud nation of nearly 11 million people who want nothing more than to be good neighbors. It is time for the United States to end its asphyxiation of Cuba and allow the Cuban people to determine their own future, a future free from US interference, coercion, and perpetual threat.
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Former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon has compared what he described as Jewish supremacy in Israel to Nazi ideology.
Ya’alon – who, as chief of staff in 2002, said Palestinians posed a “cancer-like” threat – criticised rising settler violence in a post on X over the weekend.
The post was prompted by an attack last week by what he called “Jewish pogromists” against Palestinians near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, in which settlers stole Palestinian-owned sheep and set property on fire.
He said “Jewish terrorists” blocked ambulances from reaching the area, delaying medical care for three Palestinians wounded in the attack, who were later taken to hospital.
Ya’alon added that despite the Israeli military telling him the incident was being handled, no action had been taken.
“No Jewish terrorist has been arrested (as in many other cases), because Israel’s police are controlled by a convicted criminal, a racist and fascist Kahanist,” he said, referring to Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security.
He also alleged that the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, is controlled by a representative of “Jewish supremacy”, referring to David Zini, the newly appointed head of the agency.
‘The ideology of “Jewish supremacy”, which has become dominant in the Israeli government, resembles Nazi racial theory’
– Moshe Ya’alon, former Israeli defence minister
Zini, a former major general in the Israeli army and a religious Zionist, has previously described Palestinians as a “divine existential threat” and said that “our enemies are the enemies of the Holy One”.
Ya’alon further criticised the defence minister for preventing the use of administrative detention against “Jewish terrorists”, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who also holds a post in the defence ministry – for “encouraging illegal outposts and equipping them with off-road vehicles in order to make Palestinians’ lives unbearable, to the point of dispossessing them of their land and settling it with Jews”.
Under international law, all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal.
“The ideology of ‘Jewish supremacy’, which has become dominant in the Israeli government, resembles Nazi racial theory,” Ya’alon said.
He warned that should the next Israeli government not reverse course, the ideology of Jewish supremacy would “bring destruction upon our state”.
“The ‘Jewish supremacy’ government – the government of lies and betrayal, the government of messianists, draft dodgers and the corrupt – must be replaced before ruin comes.”
‘Palestinians must be fought to bitter end’
Ya’alon has had a decades-long career in the Israeli military. He took part in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the violent suppression of the first and second Palestinian intifadas, and the 2014 war on Gaza.
He served as the army’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005 and as defence minister from 2013 to 2016.
Ethnic cleansing in Gaza: Why did a former Israeli army chief speak out?
In 2002, Ya’alon said: “The Palestinian threat harbours cancer-like attributes that have to be severed and fought to the bitter end.”
In 2015, he barred Breaking the Silence – an NGO of former Israeli soldiers who document army abuses – from engaging in activities with the military.
In recent years, Ya’alon has adopted a more critical tone towards the current government, accusing it of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza in 2024.
“The path we are being dragged down is occupation, annexation and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip – population transfer, call it what you want, and Jewish settlements,” he said in an interview with the Israeli channel Democrat TV.
Israeli forces have killed over 71,800 Palestinians since October 2023 and destroyed nearly 90 percent of the territory’s infrastructure.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops and settlers during the same period, including 217 minors.
More than 100,000 march in support of Palestine and in rejection of the Trump-led ‘Peace Council’
Middle East Monitor, February 1, 2026 at 10:30 am
London witnessed one of the largest pro-Palestine demonstrations since the ceasefire agreement signed in October 2025, as more than 100,000 people took part in a mass march through central London. Protesters voiced their rejection of the so-called ‘Peace Council’ led by the administration of US President Donald Trump, renewed calls to end the genocide and ethnic cleansing, and demanded the release of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons.
The march drew a broad cross-section of the public, including British families, human rights campaigners, trade unionists, doctors, students, and members of the Arab and Muslim communities. Participants waved Palestinian flags and carried placards calling for accountability for war crimes and an end to UK arms exports to Israel.
The demonstration was called by the Palestine Solidarity coalition, bringing together several of Britain’s leading grassroots and advocacy organisations, including: Palestinian Forum in Britain, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Islamic Association of Britain, and Friends of Al-Aqsa. Organisers said the continued public mobilisation reflects widespread rejection across Britain of political proposals that bypass the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, foremost among them the right to freedom, return, and an end to occupation.
Speakers on the main stage included prominent political, medical and cultural figures: Jeremy Corbyn MP, Ghassan Abu Sittah, John McDonnell MP, Juliet Stevenson, and representatives from several UK trade unions. Tariq Othman delivered remarks on behalf of the Palestinian Forum in Britain, while Samer Jaber spoke representing the Red Ribbons campaign calling for the release of Palestinian detainees.
In his address, Jeremy Corbyn stressed the importance of global solidarity in confronting injustice, saying events in Palestine cannot be treated as distant or marginal. He pointed to the presence of more than 3,509 administrative detainees among thousands of Palestinians held without charge or trial in Israeli prisons, describing the policy as a clear violation of international law. Corbyn also renewed his opposition to proposals from the Trump administration aimed at imposing control over Palestinian land, stating that: those who destroyed Gaza should bear the cost of rebuilding it; there can be no genuine peace without the return of Palestinian refugees to the villages from which they were displaced; ending genocide and ethnic cleansing must be an international priority.
READ: London: Tower Hamlets faith communities stop UKIP again
Red ribbons were distributed to tens of thousands of participants as part of a global campaign highlighting the plight of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. Organisers said the red colour symbolises the immediate danger facing prisoners amid administrative detention, torture, medical neglect and harsh conditions of confinement, adding that the issue will remain central to public action until all detainees are released.
Speaking to the crowd, Adnan Hmidan, coordinator of the Red Ribbons campaign, noted that the demonstration coincided with the first anniversary of the killing of the Palestinian child Hind Rajab. He said Hind was killed alongside members of her family and the paramedics who attempted to rescue her after more than 350 bullets were fired at the vehicle in which they had sought shelter, describing the incident as emblematic of the wider tragedy facing Palestinians. Hmidan said the core message of the demonstration was: “Not allowing the occupation to finish off what remains of the Palestinian people, particularly the detainees enduring extremely harsh conditions in some of the worst prisons on earth.”
Shaima Dallali spoke on behalf of the Muslim Association of Britain, focusing on the catastrophic humanitarian reality left in Gaza. She referred to the recent acknowledgement by Israeli authorities of the casualty figures announced by Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which exceed 70,000 people killed, stressing that each number represents an entire human story, a family that has lost its children and its future. She said the tragedy cannot be reduced to statistics, but remains an open wound on the human conscience.
The London march coincided with coordinated actions around the world highlighting the suffering of Palestinian detainees, with events taking place from the West Bank to Australia, as well as in Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Germany, South Korea, Mexico and elsewhere. Participants said the synchronised mobilisation reflects the growing breadth of international solidarity and rejection of attempts to normalise or obscure crimes committed against Palestinians.
Organisers stressed that the British public will remain present and vocal for as long as genocide continues, occupation persists, and freedom remains denied to a people who have paid the price of their steadfastness for more than seven decades.
A Saudi delegation will also visit the US in an effort to de-escalate tension in the Middle East
by Kyle Anzalone | January 29, 2026 at 2:52 pm ET
Senior Israeli defense officials met with top US officials to discuss a future conflict with Iran. According to Axios, “The Israelis came to DC to share intelligence on possible targets inside Iran.” Israeli military intelligence chief Gen. Shlomi Binder led the Israeli delegation and met with US officials at the Pentagon for two days earlier this week. US officials told the outlet that President Donald Trump is still considering an attack on Iran. One official with knowledge of the meetings said Bidner had brought intelligence that was requested by the President. Late last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed Trump to help Israel take out the government of Iran. The President is reported to be considering a range of options to cause regime change in Iran, including high-level strikes and an oil blockage. Trump has ordered a massive military buildup in the Middle East, including fighter jets, an aircraft carrier strike group, and advanced air defense systems. On Wednesday, Trump renewed the threat to attack Iran if Tehran does not agree to a nuclear deal with the US. Iranian officials have stated they are willing to negotiate with the US if Trump stops threatening Iran. Additionally, Tehran has ruled out agreeing to eliminate its uranium enrichment program. While Israel is pushing for Trump to start a war with Iran, other countries in the Middle East are trying to broker a deal. Turkey has offered to host talks with Iran. Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman will meet with US officials in the Pentagon on Thursday. Axios notes that Ryiahd has been acting as a backchannel between Washington and Tehran. Iran has threatened to retaliate against any attack by striking US bases across the Middle East.
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Firefighters extinguish a fire at a destroyed building that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Ain Qana village, south Lebanon, February 2, 2026
Peace and Justice Post 
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