Trump Says Israel Will Hand Gaza to US at the ‘Conclusion of Fighting’

February 7, 2025

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, February 6, 2025

President Trump on Thursday continued to push his idea of a US takeover of Gaza, claiming Israel would hand over the territory to the US at the “conclusion of fighting” and insisting the occupation wouldn’t require US troops.

“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” the president wrote on Truth Social. The president’s comments suggest he expects Israel’s genocidal war to restart, which would be supported with US military aid.

After 15 months of heavy bombing and a ground campaign in Gaza, Israel failed to dismantle Hamas, and US intelligence believes the Palestinian group had even replaced most of the fighters it had lost in that time. That means even though Gaza has been reduced to rubble, Israel would still face stiff resistance if it attempts to conquer and ethnically cleanse the Strip.

In his post, Trump also called for the “resettlement” of Palestinians in Gaza and referred to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as a “Palestinian,” something he first did while on the campaign trail over Schumer’s calls for elections in Israel.

“The Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region. They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe, and free,” the president wrote.

“The US, working with great development teams from all over the World, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth. No soldiers by the US would be needed! Stability for the region would reign!!!”

Trump’s post again suggests that his idea is for the permanent expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, although the White House said the idea was a “temporary” relocation. But even a temporary displacement would be resisted since Palestinians wouldn’t expect Israel to let them return.

Trump’s proposal has been resoundingly rejected by the Arab states in the region and the Palestinians themselves, who don’t want to give up their homes even as they lie in ruin.

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Trump Says the US Will ‘Take Over’ the Gaza Strip

February 5, 2025

The president said the US will ‘own’ Gaza and rebuild it and that Palestinians cannot return

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com. February 4, 2025

President Trump said on Tuesday that the US would “take over” the Gaza Strip, a surprise announcement he made while speaking with reporters at the White House during a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for people of the area,” Trump said.

The president said earlier that the Palestinians must be removed from Gaza “permanently,” making it clear the plan will involve the ethnic cleansing of the territory despite strong resistance from neighboring Arab states. The plan also implies that the US would rebuild Gaza for Jewish settlers.

Trump was asked who would live in Gaza under his plan and replied, “The world’s people,” and suggested some Palestinians may also be allowed.

He said, “I think the entire world, representatives from all over the world, will be there, and they’ll live there. Palestinians, also, … will live there. Many people will live there.”

Trump also said he wouldn’t rule out deploying troops to Gaza. When asked if his plan meant he would send troops, Trump said, “If it’s necessary, we’ll do that. We’re gonna take over that piece and develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs. It will be something the entire Middle East can be very proud of.”

The president suggested he had been considering the plan for a long time. “I see a long-term ownership position and bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East. Everybody I’ve spoken to — this was not a decision made lightly — everybody loves the idea of the US owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a magnificent area nobody would really know. They look, and all they see is death and destruction and rubble,” he said.

Netanyahu also commented on the plan, saying, “President Trump is taking it to a much higher level. He sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism and attacks against us, so many trials and tribulations. He has a different idea and it’s worth paying attention to this. He’s exploring it and it’s something that could change history.”

Later on Tuesday, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, appeared on Fox News and endorsed the president’s plan, saying a better life for the Palestinians is “not necessarily tied to the physical space that you are in today.”

When asked what message Trump was trying to send by calling for a US takeover of Gaza, Witkoff said, “He’s telling the Middle East that the last 50 years of doing things was not the correct way of doing things, and he’s going to change it up.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also endorsed the US takeover and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. “Gaza MUST BE FREE from Hamas. As [Trump] shared today, the United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again. Our pursuit is one of lasting peace in the region for all people,” he wrote on X.

A US takeover of the Gaza Strip would require Israel to restart its genocidal war, and it could potentially involve direct US military action. Since coming into office, Trump has begun advancing billions of dollars worth of new weapons shipments for Israel funded by US military aid.

Hamas would fiercely resist a US takeover, and the group has replaced about all the fighters it has lost, according to US intelligence, despite Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians.

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New President of the ICJ — Plagiarism in Service of Zionism

February 2, 2025

ICJ Judge Sebutinde voted against all emergency measures issued as a result of South Africa’s case of genocide against Israel.

By Zachary FosterJanuary 31, 2025Z ArticleNo Comments8 Mins Read

Photo of Julia Sebutinde

The acting president of the International Court of Justice, Julia Sebutinde, plagiarized large parts of her dissenting opinion on the “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Recall that, in January 2024, Judge Sebutinde was the only judge of the 17 judges on the panel to vote against all six provisional measures in the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel, including the order that Israel needed “to take all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza.

It was in her 36-page opinion on the legal status of Israel’s occupation, however, published in July 2024, where she plagiarized many sentences, including whole paragraphs. The legal opinion also includes lengthy historical discussions, in which she got basic facts wrong and painted a distorted picture of the past. In fact, rather than citing historians, and giving those historians credit for their work in her footnotes, Sebutinde plagiarized propagandists, themselves partisans, interested not in getting history right but in defending the Zionist cause.

In short, Judge Sebutinde has no shame in presenting other people’s work as her own. This makes her a dishonest person, someone who should not be trusted to adjudicate anything at all, let alone international law for the world’s highest court. Here are 9 of the most egregious instances of her plagiarism:

The Jewish Virtual Library

Sebutinde plagiarized many sentences from the “The Jewish Virtual Library” website, run by Mitchell G. Bard and Or Shaked, two individuals who have decades of expertise distorting history to present Israel in a positive light.

1. Sebutinde: “Prior to the establishment of “British Mandatory Palestine”, Palestinian Arabs viewed themselves as having a unified identity with the Arabs in the subregion until the twentieth century.” 

1. Jewish Virtual Library: “Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity.”

2. Sebutinde: “When the distinguished Arab American historian, Professor Philip Hitti, testified against the Partition of Mandatory Palestine before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he remarked: “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history; absolutely not.””

2. Jewish Virtual Library: “When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.”

3. Sebutinde: “In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”

3. Jewish Virtual Library: “In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.””

4. Sebutinde: “The first Palestine-Arab Congress which convened in Jerusalem from 27 January to 10 February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, adopted a resolution in which it, inter alia, considered Palestine as an integral part of Arab Syria.” 

4. Jewish Virtual Library: “When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted: We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time.”

Prager U

She also plagiarized from Prager U, another organization with decades of expertise not in history, but in distorting history to present Israel in a positive light.

5. Sebutinde: “the British Government offered the Palestinian Arabs 80 per cent of Mandatory Palestine (Transjordan), and the Jews the remaining 20 per cent (Palestine) in a suggested split that was heavily in favour of the former. Despite the tiny size of their proposed State, the Jews voted to accept this offer, but the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violent rebellion against the British mandate.”

5. Prager U: “The British offered them 80 percent of the disputed territory; the Jews, the remaining 20 percent. Yet, despite the tiny size of their proposed state, the Jews voted to accept this offer. But the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violent rebellion.”

6. Sebutinde: “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met at Camp David, with Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat in 2000, to conclude a new two-State plan. Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian State in all of Gaza, and 94 per cent of the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Palestinian leader flatly rejected the offer. In the words of President Bill Clinton of the United States, “Arafat was here 14 days and said no to everything.” Instead, the Palestinians launched a bloody wave of suicide bombings that killed over 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more, on buses, in wedding halls, and in pizza parlours.”

6. Prager U: “In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met at Camp David with Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to conclude a new two-state plan. Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 94% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital. But the Palestinian leader rejected the offer. In the words of US President Bill Clinton, Arafat was “Here 14 days and said ‘no’ to everything.” Instead, the Palestinians launched a bloody wave of suicide bombings that killed over 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more – on buses, in wedding halls, and in pizza parlours.”

Douglas J. Feith

Sebutinde also plagiarized from a 2021 blog post by Douglas J. Feith published by the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. Feith is not a historian, but a war monger, serving as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under President George W. Bush administration from 2001-2005 where he helped guide strategy on two of the most disastrous wars in US history, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

7. Sebutinde: ““Palestine” applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman empire.” 

7. Douglas J. Feith: ““Palestine” applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman empire.” 

8. Sebutinde: “In 135 CE, after stamping out the second Jewish insurrection of the province of Judea or Judah, the Romans renamed that province “Syria Palaestina” (or “Palestinian Syria”). The Romans did this as a punishment, to spite the “Y’hudim” (Jewish population) and to obliterate the link between them and their province (known in Hebrew as Y’hudah). The name “Palaestina” was used in relation to the people known as the Philistines and found along the Mediterranean coast.”

8. Douglas J. Feith “In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea’s second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, “Palestinian Syria.” They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y’hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y’hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast.”

9. Sebutinde: “The line in the north emerged from Anglo-French negotiations in 1923. The one in the south was fixed by treaties in the mid-1920s between Britain and the new nation of Saudi Arabia. The border between the Mandate of Palestine and the Mandate of Mesopotamia (Iraq) was of little immediate importance, given that the line was in the middle of an uninhabited desert and Britain controlled both sides. That line was finally fixed through an exchange of letters in 1932.”

9. Douglas J. Feith: “The line in the north emerged from Anglo-French negotiations in 1923. The one in the south was fixed by treaties in the mid-1920s between Britain and the new nation of Saudi Arabia. The border between Mandate Palestine and Mandate Mesopotamia was of little immediate importance, given that it was in the middle of an uninhabited desert and Britain controlled both sides. That line was finally fixed through an exchange of letters in 1932.”

The plagiarism outlined above represents a clear breach of public trust. The ICJ needs honest judges, not judges who lie and present other people’s work as their own, not to mention work that is itself grounded not in historical research but in Zionist mythology and propaganda. Sebutinde is a disgrace to the court and its reputation, and every judge, lawyer and legal expert in the world should call for her immediate resignation.

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Zachary Foster

Zachary J. Foster is a historian of Palestine who received his Ph.D in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 2017. (Newsletter, Academia, Google Scholar)

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Max Blumenthal: The Christian Zionist Leading the ICJ

February 1, 2025
January 29, 2025

The Ugandan judge, Julia Sebutinde, fanatically adheres to the Israeli agenda as she leads the World Court during its adjudication of genocide charges against that country.

By Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone 

With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) threatens to undermine the campaign for legal accountability. 

The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on Jan. 14, to become prime minister of Lebanon, and was succeeded by Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda.

Many observers were stunned when Sebutinde voted “no” on all resolutions introduced by South Africa in January 2024, placing herself in opposition to all ICJ judges, including her Israeli colleague, Aharon Barak. 

Sebutinde swearing in as an ICJ judge in March 2012. (UN Photo/ICJ/ANP-in-Opdracht/Gerald van Daalen)

The Ugandan judge rejected the court’s call for the Israeli military to halt deliberate assaults on civilians, end its policy of forced displacement, and cancel its planned invasion of Rafah. 

In a previous advisory case on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, Sebutinde insisted that Palestinians had not been subjected to any military occupation whatsoever. In fact, she concluded that Israel may have the right to maintain a permanent presence in the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem on the basis of purely biblical claims.

Sebutinde’s opinion opened with a lengthy history of the Israel-Palestine conflict that blended well-worn Zionist propaganda with the Old Testament. In rejecting her colleagues’ ruling declaring Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal, she resorted to accounts of the Jewish presence in the biblical land of Israel, omitting any mention of U.N. resolutions or international law. 

“There is substantial evidence that Jewish people lived in the region of ancient Israel between 1000-586 BCE. This period corresponds to the era of the United Monarchy under Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, and the subsequent divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The evidence includes archaeological findings in the City of David…” Sebutinde insisted. 

“The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) offers detailed accounts of the history, culture, and governance of the Israelites during this period. While these texts are religious in nature, many scholars consider them valuable historical documents.”

Her opinion was so extreme, and so shot through with theological commentary, it prompted Uganda’s ambassador to the United Nations, Adonia Ayebare, to declare her “ruling at the International Court of Justice does not represent the government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine.”

Ayebare on Jan. 13. (UN Photo/Loey Felipe)

After probing deeper into Sebutinde’s bizarre dissent, a Princeton University graduate student named Zachary Foster discovered that large sections of it had been plagiarized from sources including neoconservative operative Douglas Feith and the Jewish Virtual Library.

So what accounted for Sebutinde’s defiance in the face of the entire ICJ panel and her own country’s diplomatic corps? Had she been handled by malign external forces? Or was she driven by deeply held personal passions?

Israel’s history of bribing, threatening and blackmailing officials around the world — and destroying those who forcefully oppose it — is well documented. 

Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, fell under heavy Mossad surveillance after he introduced warrants for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, Yoav Gallant. In October, 2024 when an anonymous accuser brought forward allegations of sexual harassment against Khan, there could be little doubt an Israeli hand had finessed the scandal.

Sebutinde’s fanatical adherence to Israel’s agenda does not appear to be the product of manipulation or enticement, however. The views expressed in her dissent on the South African case were much more likely a reflection of the Christian Zionist belief system she developed as a member of Watoto, a Pentecostal megachurch in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. It was there that Sebutinde says she developed her worldview under the tutelage of a Canadian pastor and End Times aficionado named Gary Skinner. 

“The godly values of integrity, honesty, justice, mercy, empathy, and hard work that the Skinners and Watoto Church instilled and nurtured in me, over the years, account for who I am today and have immensely contributed to my incredible career as a judge in Uganda and a judge at the International Court for Justice,” Sebutinde proclaimed during a June 2024 ceremony for the launch of a new branch of the church in downtown Kampala.

‘End Times Scenario’

Since he founded Watoto in 1984, Skinner has instilled a virulently anti-Arab strain of Christian Zionism in his congregation of 36,000 in Kampala. In a 2021 sermon entitled, “Israel: The Greatest Sign,” Skinner spun together an assortment of cherry-picked biblical verses with potted history to justify Israel’s military control over historic Palestine. He punctuated his jeremiad with an admonition to his parishioners and gentiles everywhere: “If you bless the Jews, you will be blessed. If you curse the Jews, you will be cursed.”

Like all Christian Zionists, Skinner saw Israel’s foundation as the fulfillment of prophecy: “May the 14th, 1948,” the tinny-voiced preacher proclaimed, 

“and on that day, little four or five foot three David Ben Gurion, with his lion like hair, stood up and declared: ‘The Jewish nation reborn,’ to be called Israel. For 2400 years, no Jewish flag had flown over Israel until that day… but God fulfilled his prophecy by bringing them back the greatest sign of the any moment return of Jesus.” 

Minutes later, Skinner emphasized that Israel’s existence as a self-proclaimed Jewish state 

“is the most dramatic sign that Jesus is about to return. What’s going to happen ahead of us — Israel is that barometer,” the preacher continued. “What happens to Israel is a sign of the End Time scenario. The national rebirth of Israel is the greatest End Time sign we have.”

In his sermon, Skinner also boasted of Watoto’s donations to an array of evangelical charities inside Israel through the church’s FIRM Israel initiative, including some that promote religious conversion. “We, as a church, give a lot of money every year to support God’s work in Israel,” he stated, beaming with pride, “because we know that God has a plan for the nation, and it’s the greatest sign of His return.”

Skinner’s eschatological view of history clearly informed Sebutinde’s dissent against the ICJ ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Though Uganda’s Foreign Ministry condemned her radical opinion, powerful evangelical figures inside the country with close ties to the presidency hailed her as a heroine. 

“Not all heroes wear capes,” declared Patience Rwabwogo, an influential Pentecostal preacher in Kampala. “Julia Sebutinde has made a historic stand at the ICJ. May God always remember her for mercy and may Uganda as a nation always be found on the Lord’s side.”

Rwabwogo happens to be the daughter of Yoweri Museveni, the flamboyantly evangelical president of Uganda, whose wife Janet – a close ally of Watoto Church – is known for her biblical interpretations of history. 

Museveni at an investment conference in London in January 2020. (Graham Carlow, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)

Frank Kisakye, a Ugandan constitutional scholar, argued that the endorsement of Sebutinde’s ICJ dissent by Museveni’s daughter demonstrates the judge’s opinion was “almost certainly informed by the terms of Genesis 12:1-3,” the verse interpreted by Christian Zionists to mean that anyone who blesses the Jews will be blessed, and was therefore “wholeheartedly sanctioned by the Ugandan Pentecostal movement.”

Now at the helm of the ICJ, Sebutinde gains the power to break a deadlocked vote, and may be able to undermine the South African case in a more substantive way than before. With Israel likely to shatter the Gaza ceasefire, time is running out for war crimes investigators. But the Ugandan judge appears to be operating on a schedule free from earthly concerns, dictated instead by the End Times.

The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

This article is from The Grayzone.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Tags: Adonia Ayebare Christian Zionists Douglas Feith End Times Gary Skinner ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan International Court of Justice (ICJ) Jewish Virtual Library Julia Sebutinde Max Blumenthal Uganda Watoto Yoweri Museveni Zachary Foster

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𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑, a poem

January 31, 2025

—by Badri Raina

With the strewn blood and bones
Of thousands born but yesteryear
For slaughter at the Zionist altar
Lies bespattered the politic
Conscience of a world
Bought and sold by Wall Street.
Oh, the evil, unspeakable evil of it.

Those that do not capitulate
To the brute usurper,
With Sam’s licence to kill,
Face a holocaust fate.
Those that were persecuted
Persecute with redoubled hate.

Honour to the hoi polloi of the world
Who come out in masses
Even in Tel Aviv,
To protest and to grieve.

Woe to governments
Who count their gain
And loss were they
To stand on two legs
Or crawl beneath Biden.

But, O Palestine,
Yet again I salute your spine,
Bolstered by unbending intellect,
That you die in droves for justice
But never whine.

How many are the nations now
Oppressed who could take
A leaf from your book,
And to their tormentors say,
“We will stand too, not bow.”
***
Indian poet, political commentator and social critic Badri Raina, 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟, A Collection of Poems

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Israel Expects Trump To Restart Supplying 2,000-Pound Bombs

January 21, 2025

Biden paused one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs as part of a PR stunt to make it seem like he was putting pressure on Israel

by Dave DeCamp January 20, 2025 at 6:33 pm ET Categories NewsTags Gaza, Israel

Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the US expects President Trump to supply Israel with a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs that President Biden paused, Axios reported on Monday.

Biden put a hold on a 2,000-pound bomb shipment and a 500-pound bomb shipment back in April as part of a public relations stunt to make it seem like he was putting pressure on Israel over its plans to invade the southern city of Rafah.

Israel ended up invading Rafah, capturing its border crossing with Egypt, and now the city lies in ruin. Other US weapons continued to flow to Israel, and the pause on the 500-pound bombs was lifted in July, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the pause on the 2,000-pound bombs to complain that Biden was restricting military aid.

Republicans in the US also claimed Biden was restricting military aid to Israel even though he supplied more weapons to Israel in a single year than any other president in history.

“We believe that Trump is going to release, at the beginning of his term, the munitions that haven’t been released until now by the Biden administration,” Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog told Axios.

The release of the bombs is part of a series of agreements the Trump administration reached with Israel to get Netanyahu to agree to the hostage ceasefire deal.

“The Trump team played a major role. They were resolved to get a deal but were very cognizant of our security concerns,” Herzog said. “They got some things from the Israeli side that allowed the deal to go through, and they gave us some things and will give more going forward.”

Netanyahu has said he received assurances from Trump that he could resume military operations in Gaza if he chooses to do so, something Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has confirmed. But there are signs the Trump administration will push for the deal to stick.

Herzog also said he expects Trump to take action against the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

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𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐬

January 19, 2025

— Nasir Khan

The only reasonable way to get out of the mindset of religious fanaticism is to turn to humanism and humane values that fanatics oppose. The road is indeed long and hazardous, but it is worth exploring. If rational people start thinking on these lines, they will also be walking along these lines. Accordingly, they will influence others. Otherwise, we will remain mired in the mud of religious fanaticism and barbarism.

Many people are justifiably afraid of the enormous influence the right-wing forces wield and exploit religions for their nefarious political agendas, communalism, hatred against other religious communities, creeds, oppose social justice and equal sociopolitical rights for all. These forces are a danger to all and are very active. They are a big danger to all human values, which are the foundation stones of modern democratic societies, their organization and functioning.

But we should keep in mind that many people are actively involved in combating and fighting against these forces of darkness and inhumanity. What our friends and sympathizers can do in this struggle is not to become only silent spectators and leave the field open to the fanatics, but to side with those who are involved in political struggles against the reactionary forces.

This work involves, among other activities, using the media for highlighting the harm the fanatics have caused by their indoctrination and falsehoods. This process strengthens the struggle of creating common bonds of humanity and respect for all members of society, where the development of all fairly and democratically is possible. That means rejecting religious fanaticism in all forms and advancing the cause of socialist democratic values and humanism.

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𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚

January 16, 2025

–Nasir Khan

The Israeli rulers had many objectives to pursue in their genocidal war against Gaza. They declared openly some, but they didn’t disclose all in this way. Despite the 15-month duration of one of the most devastating bombing campaigns of the twenty-first century they launched on the besieged Palestine of Gaza, they were unable to eradicate Hamas, despite killing some of their prominent leaders and members.

Among the undisclosed objectives was to cause maximum damage to the infrastructure, such as buildings, houses, factories, shops, towns, shopping malls, mosques, hospitals, schools, universities, colleges and other civic amenities of the people in Gaza and kill as many civilians as they wanted. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced and tormented by constant violence and destruction. Indeed, they have done this with the full support of America, Britain, Germany, and others. Israel has succeeded in all these infamies, barbarian acts and crimes against humanity.

They hope to carry on with the policy of annihilation of Palestinians after the negotiated ceasefire is over, if it is ever allowed to work. However, they are certain to cause as many difficulties and ambiguities as they desire during the implementation of the ceasefire agreement. Their ability to accomplish this task is not a secret. They’re masters of trickery, manipulation, and propaganda.

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𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥

January 16, 2025

–Nasir Khan, 16 Jan 2025

Mr. Dave Sheldon, I’m sorry to have missed replying to your first comment, which you mentioned. The MSM usually doesn’t give much or no information about the situation in the Gaza Strip (and also in the West Bank) where Israel is killing innocent civilians, including patients in hospitals, by indiscriminate aerial bombardments, missiles, and a marauding army.

But luckily, there are some people in the alternative media doing what the MSM, should also have paid due attention to. We know how the BBC under a Zionist has suppressed news and hid the facts as much as he could. The Zionist-dominated media and political establishment in Britain and other powerful Western nations operate this way.

This hapless situation forces me to share these facts with people. I believe, no person with human conscience and humane feelings can ignore what the Western-backed colonial-settler state has been doing, not only from September 2023, but for decades, starting from 1948.

I know, many people are indifferent to what has been happening in Gaza. There is also open support for Zionist ethnic cleansing in Palestine by some people; the process of ethnic cleansing is systematic to advance a long-term strategy of the Zionists. However, I concur with you that the Sudan war needs more attention. I will be pleased to see if people in this group start highlighting and finding the causes of the tragic civil war and the suffering of people there.

The problems of Zionist ideology and its ramifications are because of its political goals. It has nothing to do with religion, even though Israeli leaders have fully exploited the religious identities of Jews for their political ends.

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Genocidal President, Genocidal Politics

January 14, 2025

avatarBy Norman SolomonJanuary 6, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

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Photo of Joe Biden at AIPAC

When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.

It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions has collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction.

While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”

The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.

For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.”

Content analysis of the war’s first six weeks found that coverage by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had a steeply dehumanizing slant toward Palestinians. The three papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians,” a study by The Intercept showed. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

After a year of the Gaza war, Arab-American historian Rashid Khalidi said: “My objection to organs of opinion like the New York Times is that they see absolutely everything from an Israeli perspective. ‘How does it affect Israel, how do the Israelis see it?’ Israel is at the center of their worldview, and that’s true of our elites generally, all over the West. The Israelis have very shrewdly, by preventing direct reportage from Gaza, further enabled that Israelocentric perspective.”

Khalidi summed up: “The mainstream media is as blind as it ever was, as willing to shill for any monstrous Israeli lie, to act as stenographers for power, repeating what is said in Washington.”

The conformist media climate smoothed the way for Biden and his prominent rationalizers to slide off the hook and shape the narrative, disguising complicity as evenhanded policy. Meanwhile, mighty boosts of Israel’s weapons and ammunition were coming from the United States. Nearly half of the Palestinians they killed were children.

For those children and their families, the road to hell was paved with good doublethink. So, for instance, while the Gaza horrors went on, no journalist would confront Biden with what he’d said at the time of the widely decried school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when the president had quickly gone on live television. “There are parents who will never see their child again,” he said, adding: “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. . . . It’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.” And he asked plaintively, “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”

The massacre in Uvalde killed 19 children. The daily massacre in Gaza has taken the lives of that many Palestinian kids in a matter of hours.

While Biden refused to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing and mass murder that he kept making possible, Democrats in his orbit cooperated with silence or other types of evasion. A longstanding maneuver amounts to checking the box for a requisite platitude by affirming support for a “two-state solution.”

Dominating Capitol Hill, an unspoken precept has held that Palestinian people are expendable as a practical political matter. Party leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries did virtually nothing to indicate otherwise. Nor did they exert themselves to defend incumbent House Democrats Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, defeated in summer primaries with an unprecedented deluge of multimillion-dollar ad campaigns funded by AIPAC and Republican donors.

The overall media environment was a bit more varied but no less lethal for Palestinian civilians. During its first several months, the Gaza war received huge quantities of mainstream media coverage, which thinned over time; the effects were largely to normalize the continual slaughter. Some exceptional reporting existed about the suffering, but the journalism gradually took on a media ambience akin to background noise, while credulously hyping Biden’s weak ceasefire efforts as determined quests.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came in for increasing amounts of criticism. But the prevalent U.S. media coverage and political rhetoric — unwilling to expose the Israeli mission to destroy Palestinians en masse — rarely went beyond portraying Israel’s leaders as insufficiently concerned with protecting Palestinian civilians.

Instead of candor about horrific truths, the usual tales of U.S. media and politics have offered euphemisms and evasions.

When she resigned as the New York Times Magazine poetry editor in mid-November 2023, Anne Boyer condemned what she called “an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.” Another poet, William Stafford, wrote decades ago:

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

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