Published date: 15 April 2026 09:04 BST | Last update:2 hours 10 mins ago
Israeli prison guards have violently assaulted Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti three times over the past month, according to his lawyer.
A campaign calling for Barghouti’s release on Tuesday described the incidents as “brutal attacks”. It said they took place while he was in solitary confinement in Megiddo and Ramon prisons, in northern and southern Israel respectively.
Barghouti was tortured “using various tools of repression and beatings, causing multiple injuries and bleeding across his body without medical treatment,” the campaign said.
It added that the prominent political figure has faced a “systematic series” of attacks that have continued since the start of Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
Israeli human rights lawyer Ben Marmarelli, who said he visited Barghouti on Sunday, detailed the alleged abuse in a post on X, describing the situation as “deeply alarming”.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
He said that on 24 March, prison guards entered Barghouti’s cell with a dog, forced him to the ground, and set the dog on him repeatedly.
Barghouti was also assaulted during his transfer from Megiddo to Ganot prison the following day.
‘These are not isolated incidents. They form a clear pattern of escalating abuse’
– Ben Marmarelli, Human rights lawyer
On 8 April, he was severely beaten in Ganot and left bleeding for more than two hours. A subsequent request for medical treatment was denied.
“These are not isolated incidents. They form a clear pattern of escalating abuse: violence, medical neglect, and treatment that places him at immediate risk,” Marmarelli said.
He added that his most recent legal visit took place “under absurd conditions”, with the two forced to shout through glass to hear each other because prison phones were not working.
“This is what a legal visit looks like today: basic conditions denied, communication obstructed, and even the most elementary human and professional standards ignored.”
According to Marmarelli, despite the conditions, Barghouti remained mentally sharp and engaged with events outside prison.
“He had a great deal to say. Above all, he wanted to know more about his family and the Palestinian people, What is happening in Palestinian and Israeli scene I tried to tell him everything I know.”
Prominent figure
Barghouti, a senior figure in Fatah, has been imprisoned since 2004.
Israel targeted him for his leading role in the 2000–2005 Second Intifada.
He is serving five life sentences plus 40 years after being convicted over attacks that killed five Israelis. Barghouti refused to mount a defence during his trial, saying he did not recognise the court’s legitimacy.
Opinion polls have consistently suggested that Barghouti would win the Palestinian presidency if elections were held and he were permitted to run.
He is widely viewed as one of the few remaining unifying Palestinian leaders, despite Fatah’s deep association with the unpopular Palestinian Authority.
The 66-year-old has long been held in solitary confinement and has faced intensified assaults alongside other prominent Palestinian detainees since October 2023.
Palestinian testimonies reveal how sexual violence, including rape using objects and dogs, is approved by ‘highest levels’ of Israeli leadership
Soldiers lock a gate at Sde Teiman detention facility after Israeli military police arrived as part of an investigation into the suspected abuse of a Palestinian detainee on 29 July 2025 (Reuters)
Published date: 11 April 2026 11:53 BST | Last update:1 day 21 hours ago
Sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza in Israeli prisons is an “organised state policy”, endorsed by the “highest, political, military, and judicial authorities”, a new report has revealed.
The report, seen exclusively by Middle East Eye, is based on testimonies from Palestinian former prisoners gathered by the rights watchdog Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
It reveals how the scope of sexual violence of Palestinian prisoners, including rape using objects and trained military dogs, constitutes an “organised state policy”, aided and abetted by Israeli institutions and leadership.
One former detainee, a 42-year-old woman from north Gaza who was held in the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre, said she was bound naked to a metal table and repeatedly raped by two masked soldiers over the course of two days.
She recalled that she was left shackled, naked and bleeding throughout the night before the soldiers returned the next day to continue raping her.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
She said she wished for death and likened her experience to “another genocide behind walls”.
Throughout her ordeal, she was filmed. Soldiers later showed her the footage while she was hung by her wrists under interrogation, threatening to publish the videos if she did not “cooperate”.
Amir, a 35-year-old Palestinian man also held at Sde Teiman, recounted how soldiers forced him to strip naked, before their dogs urinated on him and raped him.
He described how the dog “penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten”.
“This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.”
Khaled Mahajna, an attorney with the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, described how a soldier in Sde Teiman inserted a fire extinguisher nozzle into a Palestinian prisoner’s anus and then discharged its contents into his body, resulting in severe internal injuries and intense pain.
‘Etched into their memory’
Another former prisoner, 43-year-old Wajdi, recounted being shackled to a metal bed and repeatedly raped by soldiers and a trained dog.
“I felt severe pain in my anus and screamed, but every time I screamed, I was beaten. This continued for several minutes, while soldiers filmed and mocked me, Wajdi said.
“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding.”
He said he was then untied and raped by the dog. Later, another soldier forced his penis into the victim’s mouth and urinated on him. Over the following days, the abuse continued, with repeated rapes carried out by multiple soldiers.
“This case is particularly devastating because it reflects an accumulation of almost every form of torture, physical, psychological, and moral, layered with systematic humiliation,” Khaled Ahmed, a Euro-Med field researcher, told MEE.
“It also includes the deliberate use of multiple perpetrators and trained dogs as instruments of sexual violence. The result is not a single act of abuse, but an extended pattern of cruelty designed to destroy dignity, bodily integrity, and any sense of safety. These are acts that defy comprehension.”
Victims said the attacks were filmed and often conducted in “well-equipped institutional logistical settings… intentionally designed to enable torture and sexual violence”. The report said this evidenced the institutionalised nature of the violence.
Ahmed, who conducted some of the interviews with the victims, said the process was “by no means an easy task”.
“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding”
-Wajdi, former prisoner
“The details the survivors described and the way they relived the emotions and events were overwhelming,” Ahmed told MEE.
He described how some interviewees broke down in crying fits while recounting their stories, noting that the participants’ fear of reprisals and social stigmas around sexual abuse stopped some of them from speaking altogether.
“But what we noticed was that all of them spoke about what happened as if they were seeing it in front of them,” Ahmed told MEE.
“They remembered every detail, as though the scene had been etched into their memory and could never leave it.”
Ahmed said that most of the victims he spoke to were men, as women who experience sexual violence face a much deeper and more complex stigma in Palestinian society, “making it nearly impossible for a woman or her family to disclose that she has been assaulted”.
He noted that, while the sexual violence used against men and women is largely similar, women’s bodies in particular were used as a means to blackmail men.
“We documented several cases of sexual assault against women due to their familial ties to wanted individuals,” Ahmed said.
‘A complex crime’
Euro-Med monitor concluded that the testimonies are not isolated incidents but stand as evidence “of a policy supported by senior civilian and military leaders, either through direct orders or by tacit approval and a climate of impunity”.
It said that the scale of the abuse was made possible by legislation, military directives and emergency regulations, such as the “Unlawful Combatants Law”, which vastly expanded detention powers without judicial oversight and stripped detainees of any legal protections.
These legal mechanisms turbocharged enforced disappearances of Palestinian detainees and transformed Israeli detention centres into unaccountable “black holes” in the aftermath of 7 October 2023. Notable among them is Sde Teiman prison, where multiple reports have found torture, rape and murder to be rife, while the Red Cross and lawyers are denied access.
The report insists that responsibility for the abuse does not stop with its perpetrators; it is facilitated by the collusion of medical and legal personnel and the Israeli judicial system.
Euro-Med reported that doctors have helped to obscure incidents of torture by hiding the perpetrators’ identities, burying the victims’ injuries in medical records and issuing them “fit for interrogation” certificates.
Meanwhile, the Israeli justice system has shielded perpetrators by restricting evidence given by victims and witnesses, and reclassifying serious incidents as minor offences, resulting in the dismissal of charges.
In Israel, raping Palestinian prisoners is justified. Leaking the footage is betrayal
In March, the Israeli military announced it was dropping charges against five soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman, despite leaked CCTV footage showing soldiers surrounding the detainee as he was pinned against a wall.
The report said that these abuses breach the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as they have caused serious harm to group members and are aimed at preventing births within the group – “all within a larger objective of partially or fully destroying the Palestinian community in the Gaza Strip”.
It emphasised that responsibility for these crimes extends “beyond the direct perpetrators, encompassing leadership and institutions that shelter them”.
Numerous reports by rights groups and investigations by news sites, including MEE, have extensively documented the widespread use of sexual violence and rape of Palestinian detainees across the Israeli prison system.
A United Nations inquiry accused Israel of using sexualised torture and rape as “a method of war… to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people”.
Ahmed emphasised that the proliferation of sexual violence in Israeli prisons serves a specific purpose, “because it encompasses almost all types of torture”.
“It keeps the victim trapped in a cycle of violence, unable to escape it, even after the violence has practically stopped,” Ahmed said.
“It continues to accompany the victim throughout their life. The survivor keeps experiencing both physical and psychological pain, and in many cases feelings of shame, humiliation, self-blame, inferiority, loss of dignity, and a lack of safety.”
He noted that the trauma does not stop with the victim, but spreads to their family and community.
“Especially in a conservative society where anything related to sexual assault is seen as an attack on the dignity of the entire family. It is a complex crime that deeply impacts and fractures the very fabric of society.”
Israel denies withholding supplies for Gaza’s more than 2 million residents
MADRID, April 12 (Reuters) – A second flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza was due to set sail on Sunday from the Spanish port of Barcelona to try to break the Israeli blockade.
About 30 boats planned to leave the Mediterranean port city laden with medical aid and other supplies on the Global Sumud Flotilla, and more vessels are expected to join along the route towards Palestine.
The Reuters Iran Briefing newsletter keeps you informed with the latest developments and analysis of the Iran war. Sign up here.
The Israeli military halted the roughly 40 boats assembled by the same organisation last October as they attempted to reach blockaded Gaza, arresting Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and more than 450 other participants.
MISSION TO ‘OPEN HUMANITARIAN CORRIDOR’
Israel, which controls all access to the Gaza Strip, denies withholding supplies for its more than 2 million residents. Yet Palestinians and international aid bodies say supplies reaching the territory are still insufficient, despite a ceasefire reached in October which included guarantees of increased aid.
Liam Cunningham, an actor who starred in the Game of Thrones television series who is supporting the flotilla but not taking part, told Reuters: “Every kilogram of aid that is on these ships is a failure because all these people on these ships giving up their time to help their fellow human beings are doing what their governments are legally obliged to do.”
The World Health Organization has said that even during armed conflicts, states are obligated under international humanitarian law to ensure that people are able to reach medical care in safety.
“This is a mission that aims to open a humanitarian corridor so the aid delivery organisations can arrive,” Saif Abukeshak, a Palestinian activist and member of the flotilla’s organising committee, told Reuters.
Swiss and Spanish activists on last year’s flotilla said they were subjected to inhumane conditions during their detention by Israeli forces – an allegation that was rejected by an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson.
Reporting by Graham Keeley; Additional reporting by Silvio Castellanos, Horaci Garcia, Nacho Doce, Albert Gea, Michele Spatari and Amy McConaghy; Editing by David Holmes
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk is seen at the UN Office in Geneva on September 16, 2025.
(Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the new law “raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”
The top United Nationshuman rights official was among those who on Tuesday urged Israel to repeal legislation it passed the previous day legalizing the hanging of Palestinians convicted of terrorism-related killing of Israelis—a law critics contend will not apply to Israelis who commit similar crimes.
The law passed by the Israeli Knesset states that Palestinians must be hanged within 90 days if convicted of nationalistic killings in a military court. While the legislation does not allow pardons, it gives judges discretionary power when it comes to sentencing Israeli citizens convicted of similar crimes, and observers say it’s highly unlikely that any jIsraeli would ever be hanged under the law.
Experts argue the 90-day provision and lack of appellate process are violations of international humanitarian law.
“It is deeply disappointing that this bill has been approved by the Knesset,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Tuesday. “It is patently inconsistent with Israel’s international law obligations, including in relation to the right to life. It raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”
“The death penalty is profoundly difficult to reconcile with human dignity, and it raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,” he added. “Its application in a discriminatory manner would constitute an additional, particularly egregious violation of international law. Its application to residents of the occupied Palestinian territory would constitute a war crime.”
While proponents of the law—some of whom, like Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, celebrated its passage—say they believe it will deter Palestinians from killing Israelis, studies in the United States, the only Western democracy that actively executes people, have repeatedly shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.
Palestinians and their defenders have also warned that the law could open the door to mass executions, including of anyone found to have killed Israelis during the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, for which Israel retaliated with an ongoing assault and siege that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.
“Trials for crimes related to October 7 are supremely important, but they must not be anchored in discrimination,” said Türk. “All victims are entitled to equal protection of the law, and all perpetrators must be held accountable without discrimination.”
Other human rights defenders also condemned the new Israeli law and called for its repeal.
“The Israeli parliament’s adoption of a racist law authorizing the hanging of Palestinian prisoners is the very definition of apartheid,” the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement Tuesday. “Even the South African apartheid government never adopted a death penalty law so explicitly racist.”
Taking aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—CAIR continued, “The Netanyahu regime is completely out of control because our nation continues to bankroll its crimes, from the de facto annexation of the West Bank to the genocide in Gaza, to the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, to the occupation of Syria, to the illegal war with Iran that it triggered, to the closure of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.”
“Congress is not just failing to act, it is actively advancing more military support while treating that US taxpayer funding as automatic, even as these abuses escalate,” the group added. “Every member of Congress—especially Democratic leaders of the House and Senate—must condemn these crimes, including the racist execution law, and announce their opposition to any further military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime.”
More than 9,500 Palestinians are currently locked up in Israeli prisons, including 350 children and 73 women, according to advocacy groups. Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders say detainees face torture, starvation, and medical neglect behind bars, causing many deaths.
Former prisoners as well as Israeli staff and medical personnel say they have witnessed torture at prisons including Sde Teiman, the most infamous of Israel’s lockups, with victims ranging from children to the elderly.
Israeli physicians who worked at Sde Teiman described widespread serious injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations. Palestinians taken by Israeli forces recounted rapes and sexually assaults by male and female soldiers, electrocution, maulings by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture.
A former Palestine Action-linked prisoner has been arrested under the Terrorism Act by masked police in a dawn raid on her home, weeks after she was released on bail.
Footage circulated online appeared to show 21-year-old Qesser Zuhrah, who had recently been granted bail after spending 15 months on remand, being arrested at her home by police officers at around 6:30am on Monday morning.
In the footage, a masked officer informs her that she is being arrested under Section 44 of the Serious Crimes Act, the offence of encouraging others to commit crimes, and Section 1 of the Terrorism Act, encouraging others to commit an act of terrorism.
In the video footage, officers inform her that she is being taken to Hatfield police station.
Zuhrah can be heard asking why the police officers are masked.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Counter Terrorism Policing told Middle East Eye: “Officers from Counter Terrorism Policing South East arrested a woman at her home address in Watford this morning.”
It said it was looking into why the arresting officers were wearing masks.
Zuhrah was already facing charges in connection with a raid on Israeli-owned arms factory in August 2024. She is part of a group of two dozen activists arrested over the incident known as the Filton 24.
Free the Filton 24, a campaign group supporting the defendants, reported that the arrest came after she allegedly posted an Instagram story calling for people to take “direct action”.
Met Police accused of reversing Palestine Action policy to fit previous arrests
Palestine Action, a direct-action group protesting against Israeli war crimes, was proscribed by the British government in July 2025, months after Zuhrah’s first arrest. The government is appealing a Hugh Court ruling that the ban was unlawful.
Zuhrah was one of eight Palestine Action-linked prisoners who launched a 73-day hunger strike over their detention conditions. Zuhrah went 46 days without food and was hospitalised multiple times.
Last week, she spoke at a news conference with three other hunger strikers, alleging mistreatment in prison.
Zuhrah, who was also held HMP Bronzefield, said she was left immobile on her cell floor for 22 hours with worsening chest pains, 40 days into her hunger strike.
She also reported that throughout her imprisonment, she was subjected to prolonged periods of solitary confinement and segregated from other prisoners.
Zuhrah was released in February along with 22 co-defendants after charges of aggravated burglary in connection with the break-in at the Elbit Systems plant were dropped
The Israel-US war on Iran is engulfing the entire Middle East and could escalate to global war. The economic consequences are already severe and could become catastrophic. The Strait of Hormuz carries approximately one-fifth of all oil traded globally, and 30 percent of the world’s LNG. A sustained closure of the Strait would trigger an energy shock without modern precedent.
The conflict is likely to spiral out of control because the US and Israel are dead set on hegemony in the Arab world and West Asia – one that combines Israeli territorial expansion with American-backed regime control across the region. The ultimate goal is a Greater Israel that absorbs all historic Palestine, combined with compliant Arab and Islamic governments stripped of genuine sovereignty, including on choices as to how and where they export their oil and gas.
This is delusional. No country across the region wants Israel to run wild as it is doing, murdering civilians across the entire region, destroying Gaza and the West Bank, invading Lebanon, striking Iraq and Yemen, and carpet-bombing Tehran. No country wants its hydrocarbon exports under effective US control. The war will end if and only if global revulsion at US and Israeli aggression force these countries to stop. Short of that, we are likely to see the Middle East in flames and the world in an energy and economic crisis unprecedented in modern history. The war could easily turn into a global conflagration, effectively into World War III.
Yet, there exists an alternative. The war could stop on rational grounds if Israel and the US are decisively called to account by the rest of the world. Ending the war requires a set of interlinked steps to provide basic security for all parties, and indeed for the world. Iran needs a permanent end to the US-Israel aggression. The Gulf countries need an end to Iran’s retaliatory strikes. The Palestinians need an independent state. Israel needs lasting security and the disarmament of Hamas and Hezbollah. The whole world needs the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and international monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program to ensure it abides by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as Iran says it wants to do. And all countries want, or should want, real sovereignty for themselves and their region.
Collective security could be achieved in five interconnected measures. First, the US and Israel would immediately end their armed aggression across the entire region and withdraw their forces. Second, Iran would stop its retaliatory strikes across the GCC and resubmit to monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency under a revised Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which President Trump recklessly abandoned in 2018. Third, the Strait of Hormuz would reopen with mutual agreement of Iran and the GCC. Fourth, the two-state solution would be immediately implemented by admitting Palestine as a full member state of the UN. Israel would be required to end its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and Syria. Fifth, the UN recognition of the State of Palestine would form the basis for a comprehensive regional disarmament of all non-state actors, verified under international monitoring. The end result would be a return to international law and the UN Charter.
Who would win in this plan? The people of the region, of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the rest of the world. Who would lose? Only the backers of Greater Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and Mike Huckabee, who have brought the world to the brink of destruction.
Here are the five steps in more detail.
First: End the US-Israeli Armed Aggression.
Israel and the US would stop their aggression and withdraw their forces. In turn, Iran would cease its retaliatory strikes. This would not be a mere ceasefire. Rather, it would be the first step of an overall peace agreement and collective security arrangement.
Second: Return to the JCPOA.
The nuclear question would be resolved through strict monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, not through bombing campaigns that merely put Iran’s enriched uranium beyond international monitoring. The UN Security Council would immediately reinstate the basic framework of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which Iran must strictly comply with IAEA monitoring and agreed limits on its nuclear program, while economic sanctions on Iran would be lifted.
Third: Reopen the Strait of Hormuz in an Iran-GCC Framework
The Strait of Hormuz would be quickly reopened, with safe passage jointly guaranteed by Iran and the GCC. The GCC countries would assert sovereignty over the military bases in their countries to ensure that the bases would not be used as launchpads for renewed offensive strikes against Iran.
Fourth: The Two-State Solution.
The two-state solution would be implemented, by admitting Palestine into the UN as the 194th permanent member state. This requires nothing more than the US lifting its veto. Palestinian statehood is in accord with international law and with the Arab Peace Initiative, which has been on the table since 2002. In turn, the countries in the region would establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and the UN Security Council would introduce peacekeepers to ensure the security of both Palestine and Israel.
Fifth: An End to Armed Belligerency.
In conjunction with the two-state solution, all armed belligerency in the region would end forthwith, including the disarmament of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other armed non-state actors. In the case of Palestine, the disarmament of Hamas would underpin the authority of the Palestinian state. In the case of Lebanon, the disarmament of Hezbollah would restore Lebanon’s full sovereignty, with the Lebanese Armed Forces as the sole military authority in the country.
The disarmament would be verified by international monitors and guaranteed by the UN Security Council.
The key point is that the Israel-US war on Iran has not occurred in a vacuum. The Clean Break strategy, developed by Netanyahu and his American neocon backers in 1996, and implemented since then, calls for Israel to establish hegemony in the region through wars of regime change, with the US as the implementing partner. As NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark revealed after 9/11, the US drew up plans a quarter century ago to overthrow governments in seven countries: “starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” We are therefore living through the culmination of a long-standing plan by Israel and the US to dominate the Arab world and West Asia, create a Greater Israel, and permanently block Palestinian statehood.
We are not optimistic about the likelihood of our plan. The Israeli government is murderous and Trump is delusional about US power. We are perhaps already in the early days of WWIII. Yet because the stakes are so high, it’s worth laying out real solutions even if they are long shots. We do believe, however, that the non-Western world – the part that is not vassal states to US power – understands the urgency of peace and security.
Who, then, could champion a peace plan that the US and Israel will resist with every means at their disposal, until the weight of global opposition and economic catastrophe leaves them no choice but to accept it?
There is one main group, and that is the BRICS nations.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and the bloc’s expanded membership, which now includes the UAE, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia, represent approximately half of the world’s population and more than 40 percent of global GDP (compared to 28 percent for the vaunted but overblown G7 countries). The BRICS have the credibility, the economic weight, and the absence of the historical complicity in Middle East imperialism to bring the world to its senses. The BRICS should convene an emergency summit and present a unified framework incorporating the conditions for peace and security, which in turn would be pressed at the UN Security Council. There, world opinion would tell the US and Israel to stop pushing the world towards catastrophe, and would remind all countries to adhere to the UN Charter.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). Other books include: Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017), and The Age of Sustainable Development, (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
Sybil Fares is a specialist and advisor in Middle East policy and sustainable development at SDSN.
In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
Chris Hedges
Gaza is only the start. The new world order is one where the weak are obliterated by the strong, the rule of law does not exist, genocide is an instrument of control and barbarism is triumphant.
The war on Iran and the obliteration of Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong, only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.
Resources – as the Venezuelans know – are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponized.
Let them eat dirt.
International bodies such as the United Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished. The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a vengeance.
They spew the same hypermasculine tropes. They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile language of total dominance and unrestrained violence.
Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.
“After witnessing savage mass murder over several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in “The World After Gaza.” “The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil – the evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and supposedly civilized societies – cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral abyss we confront.”
The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals. Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.
They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers, lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and personal trainers. They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts. They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank dubs the world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they are refuse. No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for personal profit. They terrorize the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in “1984.” “All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”Subscribe
The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a handful of judges — who will soon be purged — is an instrument of repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.
Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes. In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.
These concentration camps, where there is no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied, disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement.
It won’t be long.
The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people dismantling our democratic institutions.
The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”
Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad.
If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state.
Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.
True despair is not a result of accurately reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.
The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing. They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. They disdain as weakness the virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by the creed of Me. Me. Me.
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in “The Sane Society.”
We have witnessed evil for nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media.
The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza. Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting license revoked, as the Chair of the F.C.C. Brendan Carr has proposed.
We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country. They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform. We can obstruct or surrender.
The World Council of Churches’ new campaign called “From Condemnation to Consequences” aims to pressure governments to hold Israel accountable for its deepening occupation of the West Bank and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Scenes showing the widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure caused by Israeli attacks during the Gaza genocide in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. February 22, 2026. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
Last week, the World Council of Churches (WCC), headquartered in Geneva, launched a month-long campaign titled “From Condemnation to Consequences.” The program calls its member churches—clergy leaders and lay alike—to hold Israel accountable for its failure to fulfill its obligations under international law.
George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches, tells Mondoweiss. “When attention is focused on the war in the Middle East, we want the world to see that human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians continue, and that annexation is ongoing and deepened.”
During a webinar introducing the March 4-31 campaign, Kenneth Mtata, WCC Program Director for Life, Justice and Peace, said, “[O]ur campaign needs to remain focused on the commitments that the churches have made together, with all their partners, to see how we move from the statements and condemnation of the occupation and annexation of Palestine, and to try to translate this into concrete changes and transformation.”
“When attention is focused on the war in the Middle East, we want the world to see that human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians continue, and that annexation is ongoing and deepened.” George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches
In short, the World Council of Churches, comprised of 356 member churches representing more than half a billion Christians around the globe, has acknowledged that offering “thoughts and prayers” alone is not enough to address Israel’s decades-long occupation and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In an alert to be published by Kairos Palestine later this month, Dalia Qumsieh, human rights lawyer and Founder/Director of Balasan Initiative for Human Rights, insists, “Churches are called to realize their power and leverage in action, with a full understanding that statements don’t stop bulldozers, condemnations don’t restore stolen lands and resources, and prayers alone cannot restore families who were uprooted from their ancestral lands. Only solid action will.”
The WCC’s appeal to members in the pews—“reach out to your elected officials [and] your faith leaders to call for renewed efforts for a just and sustainable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict”—is an implied acknowledgement that with few exceptions heads of church around the globe have not yet responded to the pleas of Palestinian Christians to stand with them in solidarity, to act with courage and conviction in naming the realities that Palestinians are suffering: genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler violence.
The campaign, organized by the WCC’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), grounds its advocacy in decisive finding by the WCC (such as this) and the International Court of Justice’s provisional findings regarding Israel’s violations of international law and the responsibility of states to prevent genocide and to punish states committing genocide.
“We call on states, churches, and international institutions,” campaign material reads, “to impose consequences for violations of international law, including targeted sanctions, divestment, and arms embargoes. Full support must be given to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and UN mechanisms both regarding investigations of crimes on all sides as well as initiatives towards a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis.”
Campaign resources include stories from the field, factsheets, and talking points to prepare people to approach decision- and policy-makers with a clear explanation of the legal framework and explicit asks.
Peter Makari, Global Relations Minister related to the Middle East and Europe for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, tells Mondoweiss, “After over two years of genocide, renewed U.S. and global efforts are needed to press our elected officials who support and enable Israel’s many years of denial of Palestinian rights. The consequence of a lack of accountability has resulted in devastating consequences for Palestinian lives and rights.”
In a further move, the World Council of Churches sent a delegate to the People’s Congress for The Hague Group meeting in Amsterdam last week. The group focused on widening the work of civil society to insist that states meet their legal obligation to end Israel’s program of genocide: instituting sanctions, closing ports to weapons, ending corporate and institutional complicity, and furthering accountability across courts, contracts, campuses and communities.
“The People’s Congress is an important space for civil society to collectively design its defense of international law and human dignity,” said WCC’s Mtata. “Churches and people of faith have an obligation to stand in solidarity with the suffering and resist impunity. Our presence here is part of a broader commitment to justice, accountability and, hopefully, to a just and peaceful coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis.”
While civil society organizations in the U.S. are bringing people out into the streets in the tens of thousands to resist the current administration, to advocate for Palestinians and, now, to end the U.S./Israeli war on Iran, it remains to be seen if this nascent program of the WCC moves an increasing number of church leaders and grassroots Christians to name the realities Palestinians are suffering and to make their voices heard.
Israel’s new war with Iran coupled with slaughter in the Gaza Strip — where Israeli military operations have killed more than 600 Palestinians since a “ceasefire” supposedly went into effect last October, adding to the tens of thousands killed during the previous two years — has diverted attention from events in the West Bank.
That diversion is fine with those intent on cementing Israeli control there and continuing the subjugation or displacement of the 3.8 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Among the measures that Israel has taken toward that objective during the past few months is legislation in the Knesset making it easier for Israelis to purchase land in the West Bank. More recent actions by the Israeli cabinet have furthered that same goal as well as extending Israeli control over certain holy sites and portions of the West Bank that, according to the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to administer.
At least as significant in creating facts on the ground has been violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents. That violence has surged since the beginning of the assault on the Gaza Strip, with the perpetrators evidently taking advantage of the diversion of international attention to Gaza and now Iran. The increase in violence continues. Nearly 700 Palestinians were displaced by settler violence and intimidation this past January — the highest monthly figure since the Gaza offensive began in October 2023.
The Israeli government is an accessory to the settler violence. It has done little to discourage it and more often condones it. Units of the Israeli Defense Forces have even participated in it.
The Israeli activity in the West Bank is illegal and recognized as such by most of the international community. It is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilian populations. By settling its own citizens in Palestinian territory that Israel conquered in a war that it initiated in 1967, it is especially violating Article 49 of that convention, which expressly prohibits the transfer of any of the conquering nation’s civilian population to the territory it occupies.
The United States, through multiple administrations of both parties, has paid lip service to the concept of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while doing little to impede Israeli actions in the West Bank that have been putting that solution out of reach. The Trump administration has carried these tendencies even farther. The administration’s posture is personified by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an outspoken Christian Zionist whose statements appear designed less to uphold U.S. interests in the face of Israeli actions than to support religious rationales for Israeli expansionism.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don’t miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.
Invalid emailEnter your email
In a further move along this line, the embassy that Huckabee heads announced last week that it will start opening “pop-up” consular offices in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This move can be seen as part of the same policy that during Trump’s first term saw the closing of a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that had long been one of the chief channels for U.S. relations with the Palestinians.
Notwithstanding the administration’s assertion that last week’s announcement does not represent a policy change, delighted Israeli officials and dismayed Palestinians each saw it as a significant statement that bestows a U.S. stamp of legitimacy on the settlements. It would be difficult to justify the move as merely a matter of administrative convenience. The first settlement to receive one of the pop-up consulates is only eight miles from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, where consular services already are available.
The administration says it opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The White House said so just last month. But that opposition refers only to formal, openly declared annexation. What matters more is the de facto annexation that has been going on for years. The administration policy toward that is not opposition but instead a condoning of it and, as the move regarding the consulates illustrates, active support for it.
Although some of the most extreme Israeli figures, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have called for formal annexation of most of the West Bank, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in no hurry to make such a declaration because it is getting almost everything it wants from the de facto annexation. A formal declaration would make it more difficult for that government to deflect international criticism of its actions in the West Bank. It would no longer be able to string along the international community with the fiction of a possible two-state solution and instead would have to defend its apartheid policies within what it says itself are its national boundaries.
With moves such as the opening of consulates in the settlements, the United States is associating itself ever more closely with the Israeli expansionist project and its inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. This is contrary to U.S interests, partly because it puts the United States ever more conspicuously on the wrong side of legality, morality, and international opinion.
Moreover, oppressed Palestinians will not forever be submissive. The long history of this conflict has already seen two intifadas, which have taken violent as well as nonviolent forms, and there could be more. The conflict will continue to be a prime source of instability in the Middle East. Besides inhibiting any U.S. effort to “pivot” away from the region, the close association of the United States with the oppressive policies of Israel makes the United States more of a target for terrorism or other reprisals.
Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy.
An Irgun poster from 1931 showing a map labelled “Land of Israel” covering the borders of both Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan, which the Irgun claimed in their entirety for a future Jewish state – Public Domain
Israel and the United States have launched a war of aggression against Iran that has spread across the Persian Gulf and beyond, with Israel also attacking Lebanon and invading with ground troops. The brutal assassination of Iran’s supreme Shia religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, along with his wife, daughter and granddaughter set the stage for the unfolding zealotry. A coordinated assault that combines airstrikes on so-called military targets, though civilian targets have been hit causing widespread casualties.
The war has been framed by its architects as a defensive necessity, but the rhetoric reveals a deeper truth: this is biblical bloodlust dressed as geopolitics, with Zionist expansionism and Christian Zionist end-times zealotry driving the aggression toward the dream of Greater Israel. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee set the tone in a February podcast with Tucker Carlson, declaring that Israel has a “biblical right” to vast swaths of the Middle East—from the Nile to the Euphrates—and adding, “It would be fine if they took it all.” This is not fringe rhetoric; it is the ideological engine of a fascist international that sees the Iran war as Armageddon’s prelude, with Trump cast as a modern Cyrus the Great anointed to usher in the apocalypse.
The vision of Greater Israel has deep roots in Zionist thought, evolving from early nationalist aspirations into a militant territorial program. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, sketched expansive territorial ambitions in his private diaries of the 1890s, envisioning a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine that could stretch from the “Brook of Egypt” to the Euphrates, encompassing parts of modern Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. While Herzl’s public focus in “Der Judenstaat” (1896) was pragmatic—securing any viable territory as a refuge from European antisemitism—his private notes reveal a broader imperial dream shaped by the colonial spirit of the era.
Map of Greater Israel
Ze’ev Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism in the 1920s, radicalized this vision. His “Iron Wall” doctrine called for a fortified Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River, including Transjordan, rejecting partition and insisting on military strength to “colonize” the land. Jabotinsky’s followers, including Menachem Begin, laid the foundation for Israel’s Likud party, whose 1977 platform declared: “Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” The 1967 Six-Day War transformed this ideology into reality, with the conquest of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and Golan Heights hailed by Religious Zionists as divine redemption.
Today, ultranationalists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich openly advocate full annexation and Palestinian expulsion, while Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly framed his political mission as “historic and spiritual,” declaring in multiple speeches that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people by divine right and that settling “Judea and Samaria” is a sacred duty to fulfill biblical promises. This is no mere political posture; it is a messianic commitment that drives the current war of aggression on Iran and the relentless push for territorial expansion.
Christian Zionism provides the theological rocket fuel for this expansionist project. Rooted in 19th-century dispensationalism—popularized by John Nelson Darby and later the Scofield Reference Bible—Christian Zionists believe the return of Jews to Palestine fulfills Old Testament prophecies that must precede the Rapture, Tribulation, Armageddon, and Christ’s return. The 1948 establishment of Israel was celebrated as the “super-sign” of prophecy; the 1967 capture of Jerusalem and the West Bank was seen as divine restoration of “Judea and Samaria.” Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, embodies this fervor. His Carlson interview framed Israel’s claim to biblical lands as God-given, dismissing Arab objections as irrelevant. He and other evangelical leaders hail Trump as a modern Cyrus—the Persian king who freed Jews from Babylonian exile in 539 BCE, enabling temple rebuilding. Banners in Israel proclaim “Cyrus the Great is alive!” for Trump’s embassy move, Golan recognition, Gaza genocide, and Iran aggression. Netanyahu compared Trump to Cyrus in 2018; Huckabee echoes it today. For evangelicals, Cyrus-Trump fulfills prophecy: empowering Israel hastens Armageddon, where Jews convert or perish. This theology ignores Cyrus’ historical tolerance—his cylinder is hailed as the first human rights charter—twisting it into justification for conquest. Iran’s ambassador dismissed it: “Trump is no Cyrus,” but the fantasy drives policy, casting Iran as biblical foe.
This religious zeal infects the US military command. Over 200 complaints to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation reveal commanders telling troops the Iran war is “God’s divine plan” to trigger Armageddon and Jesus’ return. One NCO reported a briefing where the commander urged, “Tell your troops this is all part of God’s divine plan,” citing Revelation and proclaiming Trump “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran.” Christian nationalists in uniform see the war as fulfilling end-times prophecy: Iran as biblical “Persia” in the final battle. With US forces now directly engaged, this zealotry risks turning tactical strikes into an apocalyptic holy war.
This all serves the warped Zionist concept of Greater Israel: biblical borders from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing “Judea and Samaria” and beyond. Huckabee’s “take it all” is no slip—it’s the dream of expansionists who reject Palestinian statehood as unbiblical and the existence of Palestinians outright. Greater Israel means ethnic cleansing, as seen in Gaza’s 75,000 dead and West Bank land grabs. The “ceasefire” is a farce: over 600 Palestinians killed since October 2025, famine weaponized. Israel’s aid ban on 37 groups (Oxfam, MSF, UNRWA) threatening no witnesses as further strangulation completes the genocide.
Europe’s complicity is sycophantic. In Munich, leaders gave Rubio a standing ovation for his “Western civilization” screed—ethnocentric drivel exalting whiteness while vowing no “moral equivalence” with the colonized. One by one EU governments are jumping the hurdles of international law to somehow hold Iran responsible for the lunatic aggression of Israel and the United States. EU governments are joining with Zionist zealots to codify IHRA laws criminalizing criticism of Israel. This is the fascist international: racism, crusader zeal, Zionist supremacy fused into one.
The Fourth Reich is here—in pulpits, Pentagon briefings, and boardrooms—wrapping aggression in scripture, conquest in prophecy, and genocide in “civilization.” Christian Zionism is its theological engine; Greater Israel its territorial goal. The zealots may pray for Armageddon, but the oppressed will outlast their prophecies. Empires fall. The people rise. United we can overcome.
Scenes showing the widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure caused by Israeli attacks during the Gaza genocide in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. February 22, 2026. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
Peace and Justice Post 
You must be logged in to post a comment.