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Orrore senza fine

Centosessantacinque. Questo è il numero delle bambine fra i 7 e i 12 anni che sono rimaste uccise dal bombardamento israeliano su Teheran di domenica 1° marzo 2026.

Genitori che corrono tra le macerie di una scuola, che guardano dentro sacchi neri allineati, temendo di riconoscere il volto della propria figlia. È un’immagine potente, quasi insostenibile: il dolore che supera la ragione, la perdita che spezza ogni equilibrio.

Sui profili social israeliani circolavano i festeggiamenti, con frasi ciniche, sprezzanti. «Finalmente è crepato!» E sapete come scherzano laggiù?  «Ecco che le vergini sono arrivate in paradiso per loro!» Si fa riferimento alla credenza islamica secondo cui ai martiri, dopo la morte, vengono riservate vergini in paradiso. Ieri non sono morte solo bambine, ma anche membri del governo iraniano, considerati nel Paese martiri.

Esiste un umorismo cinico, esiste un umorismo nero, ma esiste anche un umorismo disumano. Questo è proprio tale — senza neppure un accenno di umanità. Del resto, non è stato certo l’Ayatollah Khamenei a essere coinvolto in scandali pedofili al punto da meritarsi vergini in paradiso, bensì l’élite americana. Dai file di Epstein, del resto, abbiamo capito benissimo come questa élite tratta i bambini. Ma ormai, con ogni probabilità, si parlerà sempre meno di quei file poiché sono stati oscurati dall’attacco all’Iran e dalla morte di quelle bambine, che tutti vedono perfettamente.

Sanno tutto, e di sicuro hanno guardato i video provenienti dalla scuola, in cui madri e padri corrono disperati tra le macerie, urlando, sbirciando dentro sacchi neri allineati, nella speranza di non trovare il volto della propria figlia. Un inferno, un inferno che viene organizzato a tavolino e gestito mediaticamente secondo doppi standard, perché ci sono morti di serie A e morti di serie B. La percezione di un doppio standard occidentale nasce anche da qui: quando i diritti umani vengono invocati contro alcuni governi, ma sembrano passare in secondo piano quando coinvolgono alleati strategici o figure interne al sistema di potere occidentale, la credibilità morale si incrina.

Non tutti i bambini sono uguali

Dispiace dirlo, ma l’Occidente collettivo sa bene come si gestiscono i bambini nel contesto della guerra dell’informazione, applicando come metodo l’ipocrisia dell’indignazione selettiva.

Quante volte in passato abbiamo visto muovere intere campagne mediatiche per dei poveri bambini, vittime di conflitti, tragici eventi, o addirittura intere costruzioni narrative mai verificate, ma utili per la propaganda, e che poi si sono rivelate delle fake news? Vogliamo, per esempio, citare i bambini di Bucha, che sono divenuti un capo di accusa mediatico internazionale, puntando il dito contro la Russia e gridando ai crimini contro l’umanità, con settimane di talk show, telegiornali, pagine stampate, contenuti sui social. Poi, ad indagini compiute, si scopre che niente era andato come l’Occidente raccontava. Ma nessuno, proprio nessuno di quei megafoni della menzogna ha rilanciato la verità. L’importante era aver screditato la Russia e fatto passare il presidente Vladimir Putin come un criminale mostruoso.

Non si sente mai parlare, invece, dei bambini ucraini, della loro condizione, di cosa succede quando i padri e i fratelli maggiorenni vengono strappati dalle forze armate per essere arruolati a forza e finire nel tritacarne del fronte. Non si parla più dell’enorme traffico di bambini, di cui l’Ucraina si è macchiata per anni e che era oggetto, fino a prima del 2014, di inchieste internazionali, mai concluse, ora oscurate e cancellate dai registri perché non fa più comodo a nessuno.

O vogliamo parlare dei più di 20.000 bambini uccisi nella striscia di Gaza nei 23 mesi del più recente conflitto, che sono stati prima negati, poi usati per alimentare una certa narrativa fin tanto che faceva comodo per aumentare lo share e fare visualizzazioni, spersonalizzando i bambini dalla loro etnia e dalla loro condizione sociale per usarli, invero, come strumenti di cattura dell’attenzione del pubblico, e poi dimenticati alla fine del conflitto, ignorando che nessun conflitto lì è finito e anche ancora, come da decenni, continuano ad essere incarcerati, torturati, uccisi bambini palestinesi.

Le bambine di Teheran, invece, non sono comode per la narrativa occidentale. Sono morti di serie B, non si possono spendere comodamente dagli uffici delle redazioni giornalistiche, non hanno peso sulla bilancia dei cosiddetti diritti umani, perché sono bambine “nate sbagliate”, dalla parte del nemico, per loro non c’è nessun movimento femminista, nessuna indignazione popolare, nessun hashtag sui social, nessun video trend da replicare. Sono “morti”, numeri asettici in un conteggio di cui a nessuno importa, non sono considerate come esseri umani. Del loro futuro stroncato dalla follia sionista, della loro innocenza calpestata per gli interessi delle tasche dei signori della guerra, non importa niente, e dovranno essere dimenticate, mettendo addirittura in dubbio che siano esistite, che non si sia magari trattato di un false flag, come alcuni canali israeliani hanno diffuso nelle ore successive alla tragedia.

Doppi standard, doppia moralità, che sono la cifra dell’Occidente collettivo che non ha pietà di niente e di nessuno, che guarda solo all’interesse, al profitto e al successo, non importa a quale prezzo.

E di questo prezzo l’Occidente rischia di pagare con la propria vita. Anzi, già è così, nel declino inesorabile di questo ammasso di civiltà putrefatte, corrotte, che dei bambini ha fatto un culto di morte, divorandoli come gli ordina di fare Moloch, il dio a cui hanno votato la loro fede e la loro obbedienza, o Baal, ansioso di sangue sacrificale.

Lungi da me il voler usare l’emotività come una fallacia argomentativa, desidero però proporre un esercizio di umanità: chi è padre o madre, provi ora a immaginare cosa voglia dire vivere questo dolore.

Ecco, questa è la guerra, la loro guerra, quella che non vogliono i popoli ma viene imposta dalle élite.

Questo è l’imperliamo, questo il sionismo.

Ed ha un nome, un volto, una bandiera.

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L’attacco militare lanciato da Stati Uniti e Israele contro la Repubblica Islamica dell’Iran segna uno dei momenti più gravi e destabilizzanti della politica internazionale contemporanea. I bombardamenti congiunti del 28 febbraio e 1° marzo 2026 hanno colpito il territorio iraniano su larga scala e hanno portato, come confermato anche dai media statali iraniani, persino alla morte della Guida suprema ʿAlī Khāmeneī. All’ONU, l’ambasciatore iraniano Amir-Saeid Iravani ha denunciato che centinaia di civili sono stati uccisi o feriti nelle incursioni, mentre il Segretario generale António Guterres ha affermato che i raid statunitensi e israeliani hanno violato il diritto internazionale, inclusa la Carta delle Nazioni Unite.

Non si tratta di una “operazione preventiva”, né di una “azione di contenimento”, né tantomeno di una missione al servizio della sicurezza collettiva. Si tratta di un uso della forza contro uno Stato sovrano, nel cuore di una regione già devastata da anni di guerre, sanzioni, occupazioni e aggressioni selettive. Il principio di base del sistema nato dopo il 1945 è chiarissimo: l’articolo 2(4) della Carta dell’ONU proibisce la minaccia o l’uso della forza contro l’integrità territoriale e l’indipendenza politica di un altro Stato. Questo è il fondamento minimo del diritto internazionale contemporaneo, e proprio questo fondamento è stato travolto dall’azione congiunta di Washington e Tel Aviv.

La gravità dell’atto appare ancora più evidente se si osserva il modo in cui è stato concepito. L’attacco, infatti, è stato deliberatamente sincronizzato con una riunione di ʿAlī Khāmeneī con i suoi principali collaboratori, dunque con la chiara intenzione di colpire il vertice politico-militare della Repubblica Islamica in un’operazione di “decapitazione” dello Stato. Non siamo di fronte a uno scontro di frontiera o a una risposta tattica immediata, ma a una pianificazione offensiva mirata a ridefinire con la forza il futuro politico dell’Iran. È esattamente il punto che l’ambasciatore iraniano ha sollevato al Consiglio di Sicurezza: può uno Stato, addirittura un membro permanente del Consiglio, “determinare il futuro politico o il sistema di un altro Stato attraverso la forza, la coercizione o l’aggressione”? La risposta, dal punto di vista del diritto, dovrebbe essere negativa. Dal punto di vista della prassi imperiale statunitense e israeliana, purtroppo, la risposta è da anni “sì”.

Il brutale assassinio di ʿAlī Khāmeneī dentro questa cornice rappresenta il simbolo flagrante della deriva che le relazioni internazionali stanno prendendo sotto i colpi dell’asse imperialista-sionista, che va persino oltre il rapimento di Maduro in Venezuela di un paio di mesi fa. Colpire e uccidere il massimo leader politico e religioso di uno Stato membro delle Nazioni Unite nel corso di un’offensiva militare non rappresenta soltanto un’escalation, ma significa affermare apertamente il principio secondo cui i governi sgraditi all’Occidente possono essere eliminati fisicamente e i loro sistemi politici distrutti con le bombe. Se questa logica venisse normalizzata, il diritto internazionale cesserebbe definitivamente di essere un limite all’uso della forza e diventerebbe una semplice retorica per i deboli, mentre i forti si riserverebbero il diritto di decidere chi può governare e chi deve morire.

Il carattere illegale dell’azione è aggravato dal suo costo umano. All’ONU, come anticipato, l’Iran ha denunciato “centinaia” di civili uccisi e feriti. Anche i media internazionali hanno raccolto reazioni allarmate per le conseguenze umanitarie e per il rischio di un disastro più ampio nella regione. Volker Türk, Alto Commissario ONU per i diritti umani, ha deplorato i bombardamenti sull’Iran e le conseguenze per i civili, ricordando che “sono sempre i civili a pagare il prezzo ultimo” e che bombe e missili non sono strumenti per risolvere controversie internazionali. Chi bombarda centri politici e infrastrutture in un Paese densamente popolato sa perfettamente che i cosiddetti “danni collaterali” non sono accidenti marginali, ma l’esito prevedibile della guerra moderna.

Washington prova a giustificare l’operazione con il solito arsenale di formule astratte: la (falsa) minaccia nucleare, la sicurezza globale, l’urgenza di fermare un pericolo irreversibile. Ma lo stesso Segretario generale dell’ONU ha detto esplicitamente che questi raid hanno violato il diritto internazionale e la Carta delle Nazioni Unite. Gli Stati Uniti, tramite il loro ambasciatore Mike Waltz, hanno sostenuto invece che l’azione fosse “lawful”, cioè legale. Tuttavia, non siamo davanti a un contenzioso tecnico, ma allo scontro tra due concezioni opposte dell’ordine mondiale. Da una parte il diritto come limite comune; dall’altra la pretesa della superpotenza di attribuire a sé stessa il monopolio dell’interpretazione, decidendo unilateralmente quando una guerra sia “legale” perché utile ai propri interessi.

C’è poi un altro elemento che rende l’aggressione ancora più cinica, ovvero il fatto che sia avvenuta mentre esistevano ancora canali diplomatici aperti. Stati Uniti e Iran avevano infatti rinnovato i negoziati nel corso di febbraio nel tentativo di trovare una soluzione alla controversia sul nucleare e scongiurare proprio il rischio di un confronto militare. Non a caso, l’Oman, mediatore di quei colloqui, ha protestato affermando che negoziati “attivi e seri” erano stati “ancora una volta compromessi” e ha invitato gli Stati Uniti a non lasciarsi trascinare oltre, dicendo senza ambiguità: “Questa non è la vostra guerra”. Anche questo dimostra che non siamo davanti a una guerra imposta dal fallimento inevitabile della diplomazia, ma a una guerra che ha volontariamente colpito la diplomazia mentre era ancora viva.

Questo attacco criminale da parte delle forze sioniste e imperialiste, dunque, non appare come un’extrema ratio, ma come l’espressione di una volontà politica precisa: riaffermare con la forza l’egemonia statunitense nella regione e blindare il primato strategico di Israele. In sede ONU, il rappresentante della Lega Araba ha fatto notare l’ipocrisia di Israele, che giustifica il proprio attacco dicendo di voler impedire all’Iran di acquisire armi nucleari mentre continua a rifiutare di sottoporre i propri impianti al controllo dell’Agenzia internazionale per l’energia atomica. È una doppia morale strutturale: per alcuni Stati il nucleare è un “pericolo esistenziale”; per altri è un tabù intoccabile, coperto da silenzi e complicità. È lo stesso meccanismo con cui Washington e Tel Aviv cercano di presentare l’aggressione come ordine, la violenza come stabilità, la guerra come prudenza.

La continuità con altri precedenti recenti è evidente. Come abbiamo accennato in precedenza, il 3 gennaio gli Stati Uniti hanno condotto un’operazione militare in Venezuela culminata con la cattura di Nicolás Maduro, un episodio che noi stessi abbiamo analizzato dal punto di vista legale notando che il diritto internazionale proibisce l’uso della forza salvo eccezioni ristrette come l’autorizzazione del Consiglio di Sicurezza o la legittima difesa. Quell’azione ha rappresentato l’intervento più diretto di Washington in America Latina dai tempi dell’invasione di Panama del 1989. Il metodo è lo stesso: trasformare la propria volontà geopolitica in norma, usare la forza contro Stati sovrani e poi costruire una giustificazione ex post. Caracas ieri, Teheran oggi; a chi toccherà domani?

Le reazioni internazionali mostrano che il fronte della condanna non è marginale. Guterres ha chiesto la cessazione immediata delle ostilità e il ritorno al tavolo negoziale. La Russia ha chiesto che Stati Uniti e Israele cessino immediatamente le loro “azioni aggressive”, mentre la Cina ha espresso forte preoccupazione per l’escalation e ha sostenuto il ritorno alla diplomazia. Anche il ministro degli Esteri norvegese ha affermato che l’attacco preventivo descritto da Israele “non è in linea con il diritto internazionale”, ricordando che una guerra preventiva richiede una minaccia immediatamente imminente. Persino in un quadro internazionale profondamente segnato dai doppi standard, l’idea che Washington e Tel Aviv potessero colpire l’Iran senza aprire una crisi di legalità su scala globale si è rivelata illusoria.

Eppure, la condanna verbale non basta. Il problema non è solo l’attacco di queste ore, ma il precedente che si cerca di consolidare. Se gli Stati Uniti e Israele possono bombardare l’Iran, ucciderne il capo politico-religioso, provocare centinaia di vittime civili, interrompere negoziati in corso e poi difendere tutto ciò come azione “legale”, allora il sistema internazionale entra in una fase ancora più apertamente neo-imperiale. La guerra non sarebbe più l’eccezione disciplinata dal diritto, ma il linguaggio ordinario attraverso cui l’Occidente armato ridisegna gerarchie, punisce gli avversari e protegge i propri protetti. Questo è il vero pericolo storico dell’operazione contro Teheran: non solo ciò che distrugge oggi, ma ciò che pretende di autorizzare domani.

Per questo la condanna deve essere dura, esplicita e senza ambiguità. L’azione militare di Washington e Tel Aviv contro l’Iran non è difesa dell’ordine internazionale: è un colpo inferto all’ordine internazionale. Non è tutela della pace: è la sua demolizione. Non è una guerra “necessaria”: è una guerra illegale, intrisa di arroganza imperiale, che mostra ancora una volta come gli Stati Uniti e il governo nazisionista israeliano pretendano per sé un diritto speciale alla violenza, alla punizione e all’impunità. Se il diritto internazionale deve significare ancora qualcosa, questa aggressione va chiamata con il suo nome: un atto di forza contro uno Stato sovrano, compiuto in violazione della Carta dell’ONU, con conseguenze letali per i civili e con un intento politico di ridefinizione coercitiva del futuro dell’Iran. Su questo punto, il mondo non può più permettersi né neutralità né ipocrisia.

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Endless horror

One hundred and sixty-five. That is the number of girls between the ages of 7 and 12 who were killed by the Israeli bombing of Tehran on Sunday, March 1, 2026.

Parents running through the rubble of a school, looking into rows of black bags, fearing they will recognize the face of their daughter. It is a powerful, almost unbearable image: pain that transcends reason, loss that shatters all balance.

Celebrations circulated on Israeli social media profiles, with cynical, contemptuous comments. “He’s finally croaked!” And do you know how they joke over there? “Now the virgins have arrived in paradise for them!” This refers to the Islamic belief that martyrs are reserved virgins in paradise after death. Yesterday, it was not only girls who died, but also members of the Iranian government, considered martyrs in the country.

There is cynical humor, there is black humor, but there is also inhuman humor. This is precisely that — without even a hint of humanity. After all, it was certainly not Ayatollah Khamenei who was involved in pedophile scandals to the point of deserving virgins in paradise, but rather the American elite. From Epstein’s files, we have understood very well how this elite treats children. But now, in all likelihood, there will be less and less talk about those files because they have been overshadowed by the attack on Iran and the death of those girls, which everyone can see perfectly well.

They know everything, and they have certainly watched the videos from the school, in which mothers and fathers run desperately through the rubble, screaming, peering into rows of black bags, hoping not to find the face of their daughter. It is hell, a hell that is organized at the table and managed by the media according to double standards, because there are first-class deaths and second-class deaths. The perception of a Western double standard also stems from this: when human rights are invoked against certain governments, but seem to take a back seat when they involve strategic allies or figures within the Western power system, moral credibility is undermined.

Not all children are equal

It is sad to say, but the West as a whole knows very well how to use children in the context of information warfare, applying the hypocrisy of selective indignation as a method.

How many times in the past have we seen entire media campaigns launched for poor children, victims of conflicts, tragic events, or even entire narratives that were never verified but useful for propaganda, and which later turned out to be fake news? We would like to mention, for example, the children of Bucha, who became the subject of international media accusations, pointing the finger at Russia and crying out about crimes against humanity, with weeks of talk shows, news programs, print media, and social media content. Then, once the investigations were completed, it turned out that nothing had happened as the West had reported. But none, absolutely none, of those megaphones of lies relaunched the truth. The important thing was to have discredited Russia and portrayed President Vladimir Putin as a monstrous criminal.

On the other hand, we never hear about Ukrainian children, their condition, what happens when their fathers and older brothers are torn from their families by the armed forces to be forcibly enlisted and end up in the meat grinder of the front line. There is no longer any mention of the enormous child trafficking trade, which Ukraine has been involved in for years and which, until 2014, was the subject of international investigations that were never concluded and have now been obscured and deleted from the records because they no longer suit anyone.

Or shall we talk about the more than 20,000 children killed in the Gaza Strip in the 23 months of the most recent conflict, which were first denied, then used to fuel a certain narrative as long as it was convenient to increase ratings and views, depersonalizing the children from their ethnicity and social status in order to use them, in fact, as tools to capture the public’s attention, and then forgotten at the end of the conflict, ignoring that no conflict there has ended and even now, as for decades, Palestinian children continue to be imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

The girls of Tehran, on the other hand, do not fit into the Western narrative. They are second-class deaths, they cannot be conveniently exploited by newsrooms, they have no weight on the scales of so-called human rights, because they are girls ‘born wrong’, on the enemy’s side. For them, there is no feminist movement, no popular outrage, no hashtags on social media, no trending videos to replicate. They are ‘dead’, sterile numbers in a count that no one cares about, they are not considered human beings. No one cares about their future, cut short by Zionist madness, or their innocence trampled on for the sake of the warlords’ pockets. They must be forgotten, even casting doubt on whether they ever existed, whether it was perhaps a false flag, as some Israeli channels reported in the hours following the tragedy.

Double standards, double morality, which are the hallmark of the collective West that has no mercy on anything or anyone, that looks only to interest, profit, and success, no matter what the cost.

And the West risks paying for this price with its own life. Indeed, this is already the case, in the inexorable decline of this mass of rotten, corrupt civilizations, which have turned children into a cult of death, devouring them as commanded by Moloch, the god to whom they have pledged their faith and obedience, or Baal, eager for sacrificial blood.

Far be it from me to use emotion as a fallacious argument, but I would like to propose an exercise in humanity: if you are a father or mother, try to imagine what it means to live with this pain.

This is war, their war, the one that the people do not want but is imposed on them by the elites.

This is imperialism, this is Zionism.

And it has a name, a face, a flag.

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Amid the largest genocide of this century in Gaza and the violent ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, two prominent Jewish historians believe that one democratic secular state in Palestine is not only achievable but inevitable, writes Stefan Moore.

Two prominent Jewish historians have recently written from different perspectives — one economic and political; one largely theological and moral — that the state of Israel is doomed and living on borrowed time.

Despite coming in the midst of the largest genocide of this century in Gaza and the violent ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, they believe that one democratic secular state in Palestine is not only achievable but inevitable.

In his latest book, Israel on the Brink: Eight Steps for a Better Future, llan Pappé writes that Israel is self-destructing economically, militarily and politically as it finds itself abandoned internationally.

According to Pappé, the farcical two-state solution is “a rotting corpse” and the only way forward is decolonisation, the return of Palestinian refugees to their land, accountability for those who have committed crimes and a new model of statehood for Palestine and the region.

A corollary to Pappé is the moral and religious critique of Zionism by Canadian Jewish historian and biblical scholar Yakov Rabkin who holds that the Zionist movement is a death trap for Jews, the region and the world.

In his recent book, Israel in Palestine: Jewish Rejection of Zionism and his earlier work, What is Modern Israel, Rabkin relates how the Jewish state represents a complete repudiation of the most fundamental values of Judaism.

In Israel, he says, values such as tolerance, morality and humility have been replaced with a new muscular Jewish identity that extols nationalism, aggression, violence and conquest. Traditional Jewish culture is looked upon with contempt.

Rabkin recounts how Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the terrorist Jewish militia Irgun, described transforming the “Yid” from the shtetels of Eastern Europe into the New Hebrew:

“Our starting point is to take the typical Yid of today and to imagine a diametrical opposite…because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty. The Yid is trodden upon and easily frightened and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent. … The Yid has accepted submission and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to learn how to command.”

If you hear echoes of Nazi master race philosophy, it’s no accident. Jabotinsky is channeling the views of early Zionist eugenicists such as Arthur Ruppin who sought “the purification of the [Jewish] race” and “maintained his ties with the German theoreticians of racial science even after the National Socialist regime took power.”

As for the Jewish religion, Rabkin dismantles the Zionist myth that the land of Israel was a God-given promise to the Jews – a claim “based on a literal interpretation of the bible that diverged drastically from the teachings of Rabbinical Judaism.”

Yakov M. Rabkin, 2017. (Alexandr Shcherba /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

To begin with, he explains, Palestine was never a homeland for Jews who, in fact, came from Mesopotamia and Egypt and migrated to Canaan (Palestine).  There, according to the Talmud (the foundational source of Jewish theology) Abraham and his descendants were instructed by God to disperse to the four corners of the earth and never to return “en masse and in force” to the land of Israel until they had become spiritually purified.

In other words, until the coming of the messiah, Jews should stay where they are, which, in fact, is exactly where they have been.

Ashkenazi Jews have lived in Europe since Roman times and had been thoroughly assimilated into European culture.  In the 19th century, many were socialists, communists and members of the Jewish Labour Bund which emphasized the right to thrive in their own culture, speak their own language (Yiddish) and fight for justice in the countries they inhabited, Rabkin says.

As a result, when Zionism emerged as a movement at the end of the 19th century, most Jews viewed it as a reactionary cult and a bourgeois adventure opposed to the interest of the Jewish working class, the author argues.

But some of the strongest opposition, Rabkin writes, came from religious Jews who believed Zionism is in direct conflict with the values of Judaism, which teaches that the Torah (the Jewish bible), and not a nation, is what binds Jews together. In the words of one Orthodox Jewish scholar, Zionism was “a spiritual corruption…that borders on blasphemy,” Rabkin says.

The opposition to Zionism, of course, was muted with the Holocaust — a genocide that Zionists immediately seized upon as an opportunity for nation building in Israel.  Not only did Zionists actively thwart Jews from emigrating to other countries during and after the war, they used the Holocaust as a lever to bolster the Jewish population in Palestine, argues Rabkin.

In fact, Nazi anti-Semites and Zionists became joined at the hip. “The anti-Semites wished to be rid of the Jews, the Zionists sought to gather the Jews in the Holy Land,” writes Rabkin.

Leopold von Mildenstein in Palestine in 1933. (Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)

In 1933, Rabkin recounts, the high-ranking Nazi SS officer Baron Leopold Elder von Mildenstein travelled to Palestine with his good friend German Zionist Federation leader Kurt Tuchler. After his return, Mildenstein wrote laudatory articles about the Zionist enterprise and a special medal was coined to commemorate his visit.  On one side was a Swastika, on the other, The Star of David.

Today, the Zionist ideology first espoused by Theodore Herzl in 1896 and transmitted through every Israeli leader from David Ben-Gurion, Menahem Begin, Ariel Sharon and onward has morphed into the most right-wing, militant and genocidal government in Israel to date.

The rabidly racist cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir are now followers of a new messianic movement called National Judaism – what Rabkin describes as “the dominant ideology of vigilante settlers who have harassed, dispossessed and murdered Palestinians in the West Bank and encourage the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”

“Since its inception in the late 19th century, critics of Zionism warned that the Zionist state would become a death trap, endangering both the colonisers and the colonised alike,” writes Rabkin. “For those voices…the Zionist experiment was seen as a tragic mistake [and] the sooner it ended … the better for humanity as a whole.”

Concluding with his own reflection as an observant Jew he writes:

“Jewish teachings frequently attribute the root causes of communal suffering to internal moral failings. In this light, Israel’s current trajectory –- marked by impunity, hubris and cruelty, all of which contradict Jewish values –- appears destined for moral and political ruin.”

One Democratic, Multiethnic State

Ilan Pappe at the University of Exeter, April 2023. (Fjmustak/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pappé shares Rabkin’s view that Israel is in a suicidal spiral that will ultimately lead to its collapse. But, then, he takes a giant leap into the future to look at what he envisions emerging from the ruins – one democratic, multiethnic state in Palestine.

Israel on the Brink starts with the disastrous events from the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 to the rise of the religious right settler movement in recent years.

Like a building engineer surveying a crumbling structure, Pappé points out the fatal cracks in the foundations of the Israeli state that will ultimately widen and lead to the collapse of the Zionist project – an event that he believes “could well change the course of world history in this century.”

Crack No. 1 — a very big one, according to Pappé — is the rise of messianic Zionism — the belief the Holy Land was given to the Jewish people by God to hasten redemption. Pioneered by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook (1865-1935) it was

“the most extreme form of Zionism: a fusion of messianic ideas with unashamed racism towards the Palestinians and contempt for secular and Reform Judaism.”

Kook’s disciples form a direct line from his son, Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook to today’s far-right West Bank settlers and the dominant political coalition including ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

This movement, writes Pappé, represents one of the most serious cracks in Israel’s unstable political foundations –- a schism between religious right and political Zionists that, ironically, despite their differences, shares the same goal of maintaining Jewish supremacy in Palestine.

Other foundational cracks exposed by Pappé are: the “unprecedented support for the Palestinian cause around the world,” deepening economic troubles as the wealth gap widens, investment dries up and the most affluent professionals flee the country (estimated to be over half a million since 2023).

Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook with Israeli forces at the Western Wall shortly after Israeli forces captured it in 1967. (Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

Added to the list are the “glaring inadequacy” of the Israeli military that, while capable of bombing Gaza to rubble, is not trained for real combat and unable to defeat Hamas; and the crumbling civilian apparatus that is incapable of adequately housing the thousands of Israelis displaced by the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Finally, there’s the biggest crack of all – the rise of a new Palestinian Liberation Movement at the same time that the Zionist project “is careening towards a cliff edge.” This is a movement of energised young Palestinians who, “instead of pursuing a two-state solution, as the Palestinian Authority has done fruitlessly for several decades, … are seeking a genuine one-state solution.”

The challenge, according to Pappé, will be to meld youthful fervour with a clear political agenda. “Every successful revolution in history arrived when the creative energy of the masses met the programmatic vision of a confident organisation that could voice their demands,” he writes, “what Leon Trotsky described as ‘the inspired frenzy of history.’”

The guiding principle at the centre of this revolution is justice —transitional justice which involves legally addressing systemic human rights violations and holding the guilty accountable and restorative justice to provide restitution to their victims, Pappé says .

First and foremost, this means giving the 6 million Palestinian refugees who were driven off their land since 1948 the right of return to their towns and villages.

Next, is the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Isolated outposts occupied by fanatical settlers will require total demolition but the sprawling urban settlements built since 1967 will present bigger challenges.

In any case,

“transitional justice will involve deconstructing the legal framework of the apartheid state and supplanting it with one that does not discriminate between Jews and non-Jews in property ownership, urban planning and land use.”

But perhaps Pappé’s most sweeping vision of all is reconnecting Palestine with the entire Eastern Mediterranean, the Mashreq, “which were organically linked to each other by cultural, social, economic, historical and ideological ties dating back centuries.”

This entire region, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in relative harmony for thousands of years before the European colonial powers carved it up with artificial boundaries, could be reconnected with Palestine inspiring “a wider revolution in all the Mashreq.”

In regard to the millions of Jews who will remain living in post-Israel Palestine, Pappé believes they will be willing to contribute to the building of this new future: “The way other Jewish communities elsewhere in the world view themselves as part of their respective countries can be replicated in post-Israel Palestine.”

Envisioning a Future

Gaza solidarity demonstration in Berlin on Nov. 4, 2023, organized by Palestinian and Jewish groups. (Streets of Berlin – Free Palestine will not be cancelled/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 2.0)

Israel on the Brink concludes by conjuring up a post-Israel Palestine in the form of a fictional diary where Pappé is both observer and participant in the building of a future society — beginning in 2027 and culminating in 2048, 100 years after the founding of the Israeli State.

Over this time, he witnesses Israel becoming increasing isolated internationally; the nations of the world imposing crippling sanctions and cutting off diplomatic relations; the mass exodus of Israeli citizens; towns and streets being given back their Arab names; new political coalitions being formed between Palestinian and Jewish parties; fears that the capitalist model will leave power in the hands of an affluent Jewish and Palestinian elite creating a new form of apartheid; the creation of a new educational system and the recognition of returning Palestinian refugees as full citizens.

Is this just wishful thinking to imagine the brutal, racist stain of Zionism will be washed away in the foreseeable future and a new democratic state emerge in its place?

The roadblocks are formidable  –-  from the continued military occupation of Gaza under Trump’s Orwellian Board of Peace to the massive 82 percent support among Jewish Israelis for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, making Israel what American political scientist Norman Finklestein calls “a whole society that has been effectively Nazified.”

Neither Ilan Pappé nor Yakov Rabkin are under illusions about the obstacles; they only believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a tragic historical mistake and, in the interest of the Palestinian people and all humanity, it must come to an end.

One way, as Palestinian author Ghada Kharmi has written is that, “The U.N. that made Israel must now unmake it, not by expulsion and displacement as in 1948, but by converting its bleak legacy into a future of hope for both peoples in one state.”

This would certainly be a first step on the road to the one-state solution that Pappé and Rabkin envision – one that we can only hope to see the beginnings of in our lifetime.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

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“We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”

An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera based on evidence collected by the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip has concluded that nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been “evaporated” by Israel through the use of thermal weapons—some of them supplied by the US.

As reported by Al Jazeera on Tuesday, the investigation found that 2,842 Palestinians were killed due to Israel’s “systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].”

The heat generated by these weapons is so intense, investigators noted, that they leave behind almost no detectable human remains other than blood stains or pieces of flesh.

Israel’s use of such weapons was flagged last year in a social media post by Omar Hamad, a Gaza pharmacist who posted a video purportedly showing a thermobaric bomb being detonated in Beit Hanoun.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Gaza Civil Defense, said hat the investigation was not a mere estimate of Palestinians incinerated by thermal and thermobaric weapons, but the result of painstaking forensic work.

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Israel’s government is completely evil

It is not for nothing that most of the world both abhors and condemns Israeli behavior, whether it be measured by the never-ending genocide in Gaza or the similarly driven terrorizing and deportation of the Palestinian population on the West Bank. Israel is intent on taking full control of historic Palestine and is willing to do whatever it takes to bring that about and unfortunately the United States has been its all too often enthusiastic accomplice in that effort. Beyond that, Israel has bombed and otherwise killed its neighbors in Lebanon and Syria while also enticing Washington to join in the effort to attack Iran and bring about regime change in Tehran. Apartheid Israel, which has declared itself legally and ethnically a Jewish state, intends to become that in reality by eliminating all non-Jews from its ever expanding territory and it is willing to do whatever it takes to bring that about.

There is something that is a tad peculiar about the Jewish state’s sense of identity in that it does not regard killing those who are non-Jews by any means possible as either a crime, or, more to the point, as a sin in spite of the prohibition included in its own Ten Commandments. Nor does Israel consider any agreements it enters into with other countries to be in any way binding on it and its leaders, witness the regular violation of the two ceasefires that Tel Aviv has entered into over Gaza, or its behavior regarding similar arrangements with neighbors Lebanon and Syria. In Lebanon and Syria, Israel is currently spraying “unidentified” though apparently toxic chemicals on farmland near the border to drive away local residents through destruction of their livelihoods. Israel does what Israel does and the United States, which was a guarantor of all the ceasefires as well as of the ongoing peace process, never says a word when Israel breaks the agreements and goes about killing more local inhabitants.

Israel’s latest ploy is to bring about a United States attack on Iran to destroy that country’s ability to strike Israel, making the Jewish state by default the regional dominant military and political power. Israel reportedly convinced Donald Trump not to attack Iran several weeks ago because there was concern that Iran would, as part of its defense, attack targets inside Israel that had the ability to support the American effort. In other words, Israel was seeking a solution to Iran that would not put itself at risk and would instead put the onus on the United States. One might point out that this is hardly the appropriate behavior for a country that is repeatedly praised as Washington’s “best friend and closest ally.” It is anything but that while Trump and the politicians are either too stupid or corrupted to realize that, or too intimidated by the Lobby, to respond as they should if the US interest were truly their priority in relationship to an Iran which does not threaten America in any way.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now called for a meeting with Donald Trump for later this week, which would be the ninth meeting between the two since Trump’s inauguration, far more than with any other foreign politician. Netanyahu has asked to meet with Trump to discuss options for the ongoing indirect discussions with the Iranians. Netanyahu’s office released a statement that “The prime minister believes that all negotiations must include limiting the Iranian ballistic missiles, and ending support for the Iranian axis” of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, which Israel perceives at the principal threats against it.

In any event, it is generally conceded that Trump will do what Israel wants. Netanyahu will also be seeking a plan of action whereby the US will attack and bring about regime change in Iran while also neutralizing its offensive capabilities. Israel meanwhile will stay out of the fight to avoid any damage from the Iranian arsenal. Neat, and any dead Americans resulting from that formula, most probably on US bases in the Persian Gulf region, will just be the cost of doing business with Netanyahu who will be leaving from his sessions with Trump with a smile.

Netanyahu is smiling because he always wins when dealing with American presidents while simultaneously treating the United States like a bit of dirty laundry that can easily be discarded or ignored whenever it is is not useful as a source of money, weapons and protection. Note the disregard for the damage done to the United States by the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy which was without question a major blackmail operation up to the US presidential level run by Mossad to favorably influence policies towards the Jewish state. Even now with many incriminating documents revealed there is total resistance on the part of the Trump regime and the opposition Democrats to honestly expose what was done by our “good friends” in Israel.

But I have described Israel as uniquely evil and there is plenty of evidence for that outside of its treatment of the United States of America as some kind of vassal state that is a source of money and political and military support. As observed above, Israel has never complied with any agreement that it makes with foreign countries. During the course of the current ceasefire it has blocked the entry of food or medicines while also continuing to bomb and shoot Gazans, killing close of 600, including many children. Meanwhile, far from withdrawing its army from Gaza it has increased its foothold in the Strip, occupying close to 60% of the total area as a “Yellow” security zone, presumably leaving the rest as eventually intended for the Trump Gaza Resort or for Israeli settlers who have been appearing in the area in increasing numbers and even staking out new settlements.

As a gesture to indicate some measure of compliance with the ceasefire, last week Israel agree to partially open the Rafah Crossing from Gaza to Egypt which it controls, and the first to pass through were supposed to be those Gazans suffering from injuries and wounds requiring advanced medical treatment. Something like 22,000 Gazans were registered or lined up seeking passage and a long line of ambulances from the Egyptian side were waiting to help. Israel then closed the Crossing in spite of its commitment to open it and reportedly only let 150 injured Gazans pass through it with 50 Gazans who were already in Egypt allowed to return home from the other side.

Another story making the rounds is how the Israeli military has now conceded that its multi year offensive in Gaza has killed approximately 70,000 Gazans, a number that is being praised in some circles because it is considered an honest, though unfortunately brutal, appraisal. Some believe, however, it is meant to throw out a lower number so the real number will never be revealed. The 70,000 number is much higher than what has appeared in the Zionist controlled western media up until now but it is far below other estimates from reliable sources like the British medical journal The Lancet that place the deaths at 186,000, with most of the bodies still buried under the rubble. Some other conservative estimates believe that fully 12% of the original 2 million Gazan population has been killed, meaning close to 240,000.

And when one speaks of how evil Israel is, there is another issue which might be considered. Israel is sometimes described as the leading country in providing resources for organ replacements, a procedure sometimes euphemized as “organ harvesting.” That appears to be true because the thousands of Palestinians who are held without charges in Israeli prisons are treated abominably, to include having their organs removed for marketing purposes if they die and even when they are still living. The evidence for that horrific behavior consists of the bodies of Palestinians that are released from prisons and given to their families for burial. Those bodies frequently have what are presumed to be their viable body organs as well as corneas or even skin removed prior to being returned. The organs are then marketed worldwide. The result is that organ donation in “Israel” is among the highest in the world, despite some religious restrictions and a relatively small population.

So I rest my case. These are not the sorts of things that countries with any sense of morality or respectability embrace. And unfortunately Israel is able to drag Donald Trump and the US Congress along with it, even making Washington do the real dirty work when it comes to confronting nations like Iran. But there are signs that the American public has become tired of the whole charade and Israel’s role in it. The litmus test will come with the handling of the situation with Iran and we should be seeing what will happen there in the next week or two.

Original article:  www.unz.com

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In recent weeks, we have seen how Caliph al-Julani – known globally as Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa – struggles to maintain control over his caliphate, formerly known as Syria. He is slowly losing his command over the territory and his grip on the Syrian people. Under his one-year rule, numerous massacres have been committed against Alawites, Christians, Druze, and, most recently, the Kurds.

The first major massacre targeted the Alawites. The most intense violence occurred between March 6 and 9, 2025, concentrated in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus – home to most of Syria’s Alawites and Christians, including those in Safita and the Valley of the Christians (Wadi al-Nasara).

The massacre erupted on March 6, 2025, when remnants of Assad’s legitimate army launched coordinated attacks on the caliphate’s new security forces in cities like Jableh and Baniyas. These so-called security forces consist largely of foreign fighters who joined al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups to sow terror in Syria and Iraq – a conflict the West labeled a civil war. The trigger was U.S. inaction and illegal wars in Iraq, which created ISIS in Camp Bucca, unleashing a monster that remains untamed to this day.

In the West, the group was known as ISIS in 2014; in the Arab world, as Daesh. Sunni Bedouin tribes, still traveling between Syria and Iraq, also joined ISIS in 2014 and have since been incorporated into the caliphate’s security forces. In collaboration with other jihadists, they carried out the recent attacks.

The so-called Syrian army is no longer a unified force like under the Assad government but a patchwork of hundreds of militias – jihadists, pro-Turkish factions, Arab tribes, al-Qaeda affiliates, and foreign fighters, primarily from Central Asia.

Under the Assad government, attempts were made to educate the Bedouin of Deir ez-Zor and elsewhere, but these efforts failed. The Bedouin communities of Deir ez-Zor traditionally inhabit the Euphrates region and the al-Badia desert, with major tribes including the al-Ogaydat, Baggara, and Bani Khalid. The Bani Khalid tribe was responsible for the Druze massacres. They still live as they did centuries ago – with multiple wives, many children, and a brutal adherence to Sharia law, much like al-Julani and his caliphate.

Back to the Alawite massacre: in response to the March 6 attacks, forces affiliated with the new caliphate – including the so-called Ministry of Defense and various Sunni militias, including the aforementioned Bedouin – launched a counteroffensive.

These jihadists and Bedouin-jihadists went door to door, asking residents if they were Sunni or Alawite. Those identified as Alawite – men, women, and children – were often executed without trial. In Baniyas alone, more than 300 people were killed during a three-day terror campaign that included the execution of women, men, children, the elderly, and the sick.

Next came the massacre of the Druze, whom the Damascus caliphate views as apostates, along with the Alawites and Kurds.

The violence against the Druze began in April 2025 in Jaramana and Sahnaya, towns in the Rif Dimashq Governorate, after a falsified audio recording – falsely attributed to a Druze leader and promoted by the caliphate – insulted the Prophet Muhammad. More than 100 Druze fighters and civilians were killed, including at least 43 in an ambush on a relief convoy by caliphate-allied forces.

The massacres continued in Suwayda, southern Syria, where the U.S.-led uprising for regime change began in 2011 with the arming of Iraqi jihadists – remnants and paid mercenaries of the former Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein. Iraq, where the U.S. launched a bloody war under false pretenses in 2003, is the cradle of all modern Middle Eastern wars.

Violence against the Druze in Suwayda flared in July 2025, with the worst outbreaks beginning on July 13 after renewed conflict between Druze and Bedouin-jihadists. UN experts and human rights groups reported systematic atrocities committed by caliphate-affiliated forces and local militias. By the end of July, the death toll was estimated between 600 and 2,000, including at least 1,000 Druze civilians.

This was followed by a horrific attack on the national hospital in Suwayda, where witnesses reported patients executed in their beds or thrown from rooftops. Doctors and medical staff were also killed on the spot. Reported violations included summary executions, public beheadings, forced suicides, and sexual violence.

The caliphate’s most recent massacre targeted the Kurds, beginning in late December 2025 and early January 2026. Heavy fighting broke out in the Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh in Aleppo between Kurdish Democratic Forces (SDF) – formerly supported by the U.S. and Western proxies – and caliphate forces.

The Kurds, who have fought fiercely against jihadists since 2012 in places like Afrin and Kobane, now face many of those same jihadists in ministerial positions within the al-Julani caliphate. Violent clashes erupted on December 22–23, 2025. The caliphate claimed the SDF attacked its checkpoints; the SDF accused the caliphate of initiating the assault.

On December 23, the caliphate cut off electricity to the affected neighborhoods and imposed a blockade, restricting food and medical supplies. The Kurds faced starvation, and their hospital was bombed – a familiar tactic of the al-Julani caliphate, previously used against the Druze. Hundreds were killed. Female Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers were reportedly sexually assaulted, mutilated, and thrown from rooftops – horrors perpetrated by the barbarians the world now calls Syria’s new government.

Heavy weapons and shelling continued despite temporary ceasefires. The Kurds were eventually driven out during the cold winter, fleeing advancing caliphate forces.

The caliphate spins lie after lie for its naive Western allies, including the EU. But America, too, has shot itself in the foot with its appalling policies in Syria and the Middle East. By helping this puppet caliph to power, it fueled violence with now-immeasurable consequences. The caliph has opened the gates of hell: the the al-Hawl camp, where thousands of ISIS terrorists are held, has seen mass escapes after the gates were flung open.

According to an SDF commander: “Attacks on detention centers for ISIS fighters and their families in al-Shaddadi and al-Hol camps are escalating dangerously. Al-Hol Camp has been targeted by heavy attacks and attempts to storm it. Guards were attacked by military convoys, armored vehicles, and tanks, forcing them to withdraw. We have now withdrawn to predominantly Kurdish areas – protecting them is a red line. We don’t know what will happen to the camps; they are no longer under our control. Reports indicate many ISIS terrorists have escaped and joined the new so-called Syrian government forces.”

Even the belligerent Lindsay Graham, a staunch Christian Zionist, is now involved – but far too late. The massacres have already happened; these are the so-called peace interventions of the U.S. Now there is also a “Gaza peace board,” which has nothing to do with money, because violence in the new caliphate continues unabated for Palestinians, just as it did in former Syria and, to a lesser extent, Lebanon.

Due to the incompetent foreign policy of American and European governments, the Middle East is back to square one – back to 2011 and a new war on terror. Groups are being pitted against each other, and many illiterate factions, such as the Bedouin and the group to which al-Sharaa belongs, have not adapted to the modern era. They live as if in the Middle Ages, under Sharia law.

The West, including America and Europe, condemned the Assad government – yet under it, there was modernity, institutions, free education, and healthcare. These underdeveloped groups reject that progress and are supported by America and Europe, who seek to realize their colonial aspirations. The Middle East has been robbed of its oil by criminals. It is time for the region to develop and become great again, like during the Golden Age of Islam (8th–13th centuries), which contributed profoundly to science, culture, and philosophy – the very foundations of modern European civilization. Instead of gratitude, the West has exploited Arab countries to this day, fostering immense and lasting hatred among Arabs toward the U.S. and Europe – a dangerous sign the West would be wise to heed.

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In recent days, the Ukrainian regime has carried out two key drone strikes: the first aimed at attacking Putin or his family deep within Russia, and the second in the Kherson region. Given that Zelensky’s Christmas broadcast hinted at the demise of the Russian president, one has to wonder how desperate he has become, especially as Russia prepares to capture a number of key towns along the front line. Was Zelensky sending a cryptic message?

While the first attack made headlines worldwide – coinciding with talks between Zelensky and Trump, and perhaps designed to underline a point by the Ukrainian caretaker president – the second attack, which claimed many lives, received hardly any coverage from Western journalists.

This media blackout is consistent with how the West has reported on the war. Omission is the favoured tactic of Western journalists. It’s not what they write – it’s what they leave out.

According to Russian authorities, the strike occurred shortly before midnight on December 31 in the Black Sea coastal village of Khorly. Multiple drones struck a crowded café and a hotel, creating a fireball; at least one UAV was carrying an incendiary mixture – particularly barbaric given that the victims were civilians.

The Kherson region, along with the Zaporizhzhia region and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, joined Russia in the autumn of 2022 following local referendums that the West routinely dismisses as lacking credibility. These territories have been frequent targets of indiscriminate Ukrainian attacks throughout the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

Two children were killed in the attack, while the civilian death toll from the New Year’s Eve strike in the Kherson region has risen to 27, with another 31 wounded, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee.

At least 100 civilians, including guests and staff, were inside the venue when what Russian authorities termed a “terrorist act” occurred.

If there was a message, Zelensky seemed to be saying, “I’m not interested in any peace deal.” Few could argue that ordering strikes on civilians makes any kind of peace agreement more difficult to reach – especially agreements currently under review, such as the Ukrainian proposal following Trump’s, which bore little resemblance to Russia’s stated non-negotiable points.

As for Western media, the message may be even clearer. When Zelensky is clearly guilty of violating international law and has the blood of children on his hands following drone strikes, Western journalists willingly whitewash him and his crimes. No doubt they are encouraged by their own elites, who have gone to extraordinary lengths to ignore the staggering levels of corruption in Kiev under his watch.

A similar pattern emerges when we examine the events leading up to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine – details Western journalists typically omit, even if they know them. Social media overflows with video evidence that leaves no doubt about U.S. meddling in Ukraine’s 2014 elections, with figures like Lindsey Graham and Victoria Nuland hardly hiding their objective: to install a Western puppet and push through massive arms deals tied to NATO/EU membership for Ukraine. Even Nuland’s private phone calls were leaked to the press, so the real story behind Russia’s “invasion” is hardly a secret anymore.

The Western press’s omission of recent drone attacks from regular reporting only underscores its tawdry complicity in advancing Western objectives. It suggests that manipulating daily facts to serve a narrative may itself amount to a war crime.

The drone attack against Putin’s residence was deemed worthy of coverage – yet we should be sceptical of Trump’s claims that he knew nothing about it and is shocked. Equally, we should question Western media’s stoic refusal to report the gruesome details of drone strikes when images of dead children might shift public opinion in gullible EU countries, where people have been primed to see the war in absurdly simple terms: a clear case of good versus evil, with Moscow wearing the black Stetson.

For the Ukrainian regime to lob missiles into Russian-speaking regions feels like déjà vu to many. Shelling civilians in those areas was the main impetus behind Zelensky’s election – he promised to stop the practice. Perhaps it is this irony that Western media will not write about or contextualize, denying readers crucial insight.

Perish the thought.

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The Online Safety Act, sold as child protection, now hides Gaza’s suffering, silences dissent and exports censorship to the world.

The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act was meant to keep children safe. Instead, it is keeping the public uninformed. Within days of the law taking effect in late July 2025, X (formerly Twitter) started hiding videos of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza from UK timelines behind content warnings and age barriers. A law sold as safeguarding has become one of the most effective censorship tools Britain has ever built. What is unfolding is no accident. It is the result of legislation that weaponises child-protection rhetoric to normalise censorship, identity verification and online surveillance.

The roots of Britain’s online censorship crisis go back almost a decade, to MindGeek, now rebranded as Aylo, the scandal-ridden company behind Pornhub. This tax-dodging, exploitative porn empire worked closely with the UK government to develop an age-verification system called AgeID, a plan that would have effectively handed Aylo a monopoly over legal adult content by making smaller competitors pay or perish. Public backlash killed AgeID in 2019, but the idea survived. Once one democracy entertained the notion that access to online content should be gated by identity checks, the precedent was set. The Digital Economy Act 2017 laid the groundwork, and the Online Safety Act 2023 made it law. Today, several European Union states, including France and Germany, are exploring similar legislation, each cloaked in the same rhetoric of “protecting children”. This is not conspiracy; it is the natural convergence of corporate capture and state control, wrapped in the moral language of child safety.

The Online Safety Act empowers Ofcom to police almost every corner of the internet, from social media and search engines to adult content platforms, under threat of fines of up to 18 million pounds ($24m) or 10 percent of global revenue. Platforms can be designated as “Category 1” services, triggering the harshest rules, including mandatory age verification, identity checks for contributors and the removal of vaguely defined “harmful” material. Wikipedia now faces this exact threat. In August 2025, the High Court dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation’s challenge to the categorisation rules, clearing the way for Ofcom to treat it as a high-risk platform. The foundation has warned that compliance would force it to censor vital information and endanger volunteer editors by linking their real identities to their writing. If it refuses, the UK could, in theory, be legally empowered to block access altogether, a breathtaking example of how “child protection” becomes a tool for information control. Already, Ofcom has opened multiple investigations into major porn sites and social networks over alleged non-compliance. The law’s chilling effect is no longer hypothetical; it is operational.

Age-verification systems are fundamentally incompatible with privacy and security, in fact, any id-verification system should immediately raise suspicion. The July 25 breach of the Tea dating app, with thousands of photos and over 13,000 sensitive ID documents leaked and circulated on 4chan, or the even more recent Discord data breach exposing over 70 thousand government ID documents after a third-part service was hacked, proved the point.

When systems store verification data that link real identities to online activity, they create a treasure trove for hackers, blackmailers and states. History already offers warnings, from the 2013 Brazzers leak of nearly 800,000 accounts to the FBI’s finding that pornography-related exposure scams remain one of the leading categories of online extortion. Now imagine this infrastructure applied not just to adult content, but to political speech, journalism and activism. The same tools being built for “child safety” enable unprecedented blackmail and political manipulation. A single breach could expose journalists, whistleblowers or public officials. And in a world where data often cross borders, there is no guarantee that verification databases in democracies will stay out of the hands of authoritarians. The more we digitise “trust”, the more we endanger it.

The most insidious feature of this legislative trend is how it absolves parents while empowering the state. Existing parental control tools are sophisticated: parents can already monitor and restrict children’s internet use through devices, routers and apps. The push for government-mandated age verification is not about those tools failing; it is about some parents choosing not to use them and governments seizing that negligence as a pretext for surveillance. Rather than investing in education and digital literacy, authorities are expanding their power to decide what everyone can see. The state should not be parenting the public. Yet under the Online Safety Act, every citizen becomes a suspect who must prove innocence before speaking or viewing online. What is framed as “protecting children” is, in practice, the construction of a population-wide compliance system.

Britain’s disastrous experiment is already spreading. France and Germany have advanced parallel drafts of age verification and online safety legislation, while the European Union’s age-verification blueprint would link adult content access and “high-risk” platforms to interoperable digital IDs. The EU insists the system will be privacy-preserving, but its architecture is identical to the UK model, comprehensive identity verification disguised as safeguarding. The logic repeats itself everywhere. Laws begin with the narrow goal of shielding minors from pornography, but their powers quickly expand, first to protests, then to politics. Today, it is Gaza videos and sexual content; tomorrow, it is journalism or dissent. The UK is not an outlier but a template for digital authoritarianism, exported under the banner of safety.

Supporters of these laws insist we face a binary: either adopt universal age verification or abandon children to the internet’s dangers. But this framing is dishonest. No technical system can replace engaged parenting or digital-literacy education. Determined teenagers will still find ways to access adult content, they will just be driven towards the darker corners of the web. Meanwhile, the laws do little to stop the real threat: child sexual abuse material that circulates on encrypted or hidden networks that will never comply with regulation. In reality, the only sites that follow the rules are those already capable of policing themselves, and those are precisely the ones the state is now undermining. By pushing young people towards VPNs and unregulated platforms, lawmakers risk exposing them to far greater harm. The result is not safety, but greater exposure to danger.

Strip away the child-protection rhetoric, and the Online Safety Act’s true function becomes clear: it builds the infrastructure for mass content control and population surveillance. Once these systems exist, expanding them is easy. We have seen this logic before. Anti-terror laws morphed into instruments for policing dissent; now “child safety” provides cover for the same authoritarian creep. The EU is already entertaining proposals that would mandate chat-scanning and weaken encryption, promising such measures will be used only against abusers, until, inevitably, they are not. The immediate consequences in the UK – restricted Gaza footage, threatened access to Wikipedia, censored protest videos- are not glitches. They are previews of a digital order built on control. What is at stake is not just privacy but democracy itself, the right to speak, to know and to dissent without being verified first.

Protecting children online does not require building a surveillance state. It requires education, accountability and support for parents, teachers and platforms alike. Governments should invest in digital literacy, prosecute genuine online exploitation and give parents better tools to manage access. Platforms should be held to clear standards of transparency and algorithmic responsibility, not forced into policing adults. Where self-regulation fails, targeted oversight can work, but universal verification cannot.

The UK’s Online Safety Act and similar legislation worldwide represent a fundamental choice about the kind of digital future we want. We can accept the false promise of safety through surveillance and control, or we can insist on solutions that protect children without sacrificing the privacy, freedom, and democratic values that make protection worthwhile in the first place. The early results from the UK should serve as a warning, not a model. Before this authoritarian creep becomes irreversible, citizens and lawmakers must recognise that when governments claim they’re protecting children by controlling information, they’re usually protecting something else entirely: their own power to determine what we can see, say, and know.

Original article:  www.aljazeera.com

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I take the 15 victims at Bondi Beach and divide them by the 71,000 deaths in Gaza as of this writing. I get a fraction of 0.0002143.

I read in a BBC report that the victims of the Dec. 14 shooting at Bondi Beach, along the coast a few miles from central Sydney, were “generous, joyful and talented.”

These were Jews who had gathered, a sizable group, to celebrate Hanukkah under Australia’s summer sun. Immediately this is cast across the West as a case of out-of-control, come-from-nowhere anti–Semitism having nothing to do with the conduct of “the Jewish state.”

Two of the victims, Sofia and Boris Gurman, “were people of deep kindness, quiet strength and unwavering care for others,” the family said in a statement the Australian Broadcasting Corporation published Tuesday.

I read that Reuven Morrison, another of the 15 victims, was “the most beautiful, generous man who had a gorgeous smile that would light up the room.” I read that the friends of Dan Elkayam, a French Jew marking the holiday in Australia, “described him as a down-to-earth, happy-to-lucky individual who was warmly embraced by those he met.”

You can read about these victims of the Bondi Beach shooting, too. The ABC published commemorations of 12 of the 15. There are photographs, the intimate remembrances of those who knew the deceased, some boilerplate describing how Australia’s state broadcaster is reporting the story. The New York Times published similar items on 13 of the victims under the headline, “What to Know About the Victims of the Bondi Beach Shooting.”

The ABC report is here, and The New York Times’s is here. If you study them briefly you find the themes common to both. Individuation is the essential point. We must know the names and see the faces of all of those killed. Innocence and virtue are the other running themes.

The Times ran a similar feature after Sept. 11, 2001. Under the headline, “Profiles in Grief,” it published thumbnail biographies of the 2,977 victims of the World Trade Center attacks, a half-dozen or so a day all through that strange autumn. I studied those short pieces carefully, and it is the same now as then: Everyone is uniquely himself or herself, everyone innocent, everyone generous, everyone happy and caring. Every life precious, in a word.

I do not know how to continue writing this commentary other than bluntly and honestly. The Bondi Beach killings bring us to a transformative moment and warrant no less.

The 15 people who perished at Bondi last Sunday — and there may be more casualties to come among those hospitalized with wounds — did not deserve to die at the hands of a father-and-son act reportedly inspired by the remnants of the Islamic State. These were senseless murders by any conceivable judgment — so senseless I am stating the obvious by saying so.

The Dishonesty of Official Grief

Palestinians mourning relatives killed by an Israeli airstrike of Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip, Jan. 12, 2024. (UNRWA /Ashraf Amra/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0)

But I cannot enter into the responses officials and the media serving them have urged incessantly since last weekend. Out of the question for any number of reasons, chief among them the dishonesty at the core of what I may as well call “official grief.”

Read in the larger context of these awful events, the obsessive humanization of the Bondi Beach victims is an upside-down exercise in dehumanization. This is first, straight off the top. Jewish lives count, white lives count, names, faces, generous smiles — all this counts.

But the names, faces and lives of those the Zionist regime has terrorized and brutalized for the past two years or eight decades, depending on how you reckon history:  No, no need for any of this because they do not count.

This is an obscenity, in my view — obscene for what it is and because it has a 500-year history. Since the opening of the imperial era in the late 15th century, the West has aggrandized itself with its never-to-be-questioned claims to civilization, decency, law and moral superiority, while the rest of the world consists of unruly, racially inferior, not-quite-human barbarians. The horrors of the mission civilisatrice — inhumanity in the name of humanity — were the inevitable outcome and so they remain.

Indulge in official grief as it is now more or less forced upon us and you are a 21st century participant in this self-serving… as I say, this obscenity. I do not see that it is any more complicated.

The New York Times published an especially egregious case in point a day after the attacks. “I no longer want to hear, after a mass shooting, of the remarkable ways a community came together,” Sharon Brous, a rabbi in Los Angeles, wrote in the paper’s opinion section. “I don’t want platitudes and pieties. I want justice…. I don’t want to celebrate resiliency. I want reform” — reform, that is, to combat the anti–semitism she understands to be the beginning and the end of the Bondi Beach story.

Rabbi Brous went on to explain that, post–Bondi, she struggles against despair. But she found great humanity, on the other hand, in “the vibrancy of the worldwide Jewish community that immediately rallied in solidarity, reminding us that when one limb is struck the whole body is unwell.”

Simply typing these brief passages leaves me incredulous. Justice, reform, rallies in solidarity with the 15, nothing for the 71,000 (the Gaza Health Ministry’s count at this writing), who evidently do not even enter Rabbi Brous’s head. And the Zionist terror machine’s daily strikes in Gaza and the West Bank as we speak? No, nothing, for they are not part of any “whole body,” however this is conceived.

Yes, I can grieve for those who died last Sunday, but it is a question of recognition, of keeping things in proportion. Here is my admittedly simplified formula: I take the 15 victims at Bondi Beach and divide them by the 71,000 deaths in Gaza as of this writing. I get a fraction of 0.0002143 and this is the extent of my grief for the 15.

Victims of Israeli massacre of Al-Tabieen school where Palestinian refugees had come to seek refuge, Aug. 10, 2024. (Hussam Shabat/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0)

I have called the Bondi Beach attack transformative. Two reasons.

One, these awful events mark a major step in the erasure not only of history and memory but of sheer cognition. I have heard or read no mention from any mainstream quarter of the campaign of terror and dehumanization the Zionist state now wages not just in Gaza and in the West Bank but against Muslim populations across much of West Asia.

This is hardly new. Apartheid Israel and its too-numerous, too-powerful enablers   have sought to erase and otherwise obscure the truth of the Zionist project since there was a Zionist project to speak of. But Bondi Beach looks set not merely to normalize the human mind’s incapacity to see, think and judge but to enforce this damage to the collective consciousness by means of those “reforms” Rabbi Brous proposes.

Two, Zionists and their fellow travelers instantly began to use the events of last Sunday to condemn the Palestinian cause altogether. This is again nothing new.

Utter “From the river to the sea…” or “Globalize the intifada,” and you risk your job, your professorship, your visa; arrest in Britain; profess support for Palestine Action, the British protest group, and you will be arrested and tried under the U.K.’s draconian terrorism laws.

But Bondi Beach already serves to license Zionists to advance a blanket condemnation of the Palestinian cause. Predictably enough, the Zionist-supervised New York Times gives us another case in point.

Immediately after last Sunday’s attack the inimitable (thank goodness) Bret Stephens published “Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like.” In the preposterous but predictable piece that follows Stephens finds peril and fear in the prospect that the father-and-son shooters took seriously such thoughts as “resistance is justified” and “by any means necessary.”

I read Stephens as stating aloud what is otherwise implicit in an emergent orthodoxy on the Palestine question. In his denunciations, Stephens is no better than Itamar Ben–Givr, Bezalel Smotrich and all those other Israeli monsters calling for the extermination of the Palestinian people — the “sub-human animals,” in the words of Yoav Gallant, defense minister at the time of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

Stephens puts their shockingly bald racism on the Times’s opinion page: This is all that makes his copy important. To condemn the Palestinians’ cause in this manner, including their legally recognized right to armed resistance against an occupying power, is to condemn the Palestinian people to genocide, ethnic-cleansing or some combination of both.

Judaism Versus  Zionism 

Yakov M. Rabkin, 2017. (Alexandr Shcherba /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

Just as I was thinking through the events at Bondi Beach and wondering why my sympathies came to 0.0002143 percent of what they were officially supposed to be, I began reading the book Yakov Rabkin, the distinguished professor of history at the University of Montreal, just published.

Israel in Palestine: Jewish Rejection of Palestine (Aspect Editions), is a brief, superbly lucid essay on the difference between Judaism and Zionism — the former embodying an excellently humanist tradition and the latter its violent perversion into a limitlessly vicious ethno-nationalist ideology.

Some pages in I came to this sentence:

“Across Israel and worldwide, Jews grapple with contradictions between the Judaism they profess and the Zionist ideology that has in fact taken hold of them.”

This simply stated reality landed squarely. I immediately went back to those brief biographies the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and The New York Times just published. Yes, I thought.  Generous, kind toward others, compassionate: They put the victims exactly in the Judaic tradition as Rabkin described it.

Rabkin gives an excellent précis of the long history of animosity most Jews felt toward Zionism during its emergent phase in the late 19th and early 20th century. They, especially Jews residing in Palestine prior to the arrival of the first Zionist settlers, who lived peaceably side-by side with indigenous Arabs, wanted nothing to do with it.

Then came some questions.

Did the Jews killed at Bondi Beach grapple with the sharp contradictions between Judaism and Zionism, as Rabkin asserts? Did they stand with the majority in history and reject Zionism’s perversions of Judaism’s honorable tradition? Did they profess their Judaism but in fact support the Zionist project?

There is no indication — none made public, in any case — that the Bondi Beach victims had denounced Zionism in the name of Judaism. I count this a very key point. It is another way last Sunday’s events are transformative.

We do not know with certainty the motivations of the shooters. John Whitbeck, the international lawyer with long experience in the Israel-Palestine crisis, pointed out:

“Islamic State ideology has always been focused on intra–Muslim issues and particularly on establishing its ‘caliphate’ in the portions of Iraq and Syria under its control. Islamic State has never shown any significant interest in the Palestinian cause and its leaders have even attacked Hamas and other Palestinian factions as ‘apostate’ groups because they operate within national boundaries and engage in political and diplomatic activities.”

Various accusations of culpability have been floated these past few days. While the Australian government assigns guilt and motivation to followers of the Islamic State, the Netanyahu regime instantly blamed Iran. Again, there is little sense here: The Islamic State was comprised of Sunni Salafists, ideological enemies of the Islamic Republic, which is Shi`a.

Now I read suggestions that the Bondi attack was another of the merciless false flags for which the Zionists are infamous. In the cause of blunt honesty I confess this was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind on hearing news of the shootings.

There is absolutely no certainty on this point, of course, and it is unlikely there ever will be. But the possibility of a Mossad provocation cannot be dismissed. The historical record suggests this. (Mossad is now assisting Australian investigators into the attack). And given the use Zionists make of the Bondi Beach events, the cui bono argument cannot be thrown out of court. .

Already there are Zionists in Australia and elsewhere asserting that anyone who has until now stood for the Palestinian cause bears responsible for the gruesome events at an Australian beach last Sunday. Reflecting this sentiment—and the political influence of militant Zionism in Australia—federal and state governments are now considering legislation that would, among much else, allow authorities to ban demonstrations and even speech in support of a free Palestine.

I take the opposite view as to where responsibility lies: Mossad op or no Mossad op, it is fairer to say it is Zionists who are responsible, directly or by way of the war they wage against Palestinians — and against morality and ordinary decency, against our public discourse, our laws and civil liberties, our consciences, our faculties of reason — for the deaths at Bondi Beach.

Post–Bondi, it follows immediately, it is ever more imperative that Jews the world over declare themselves either as Jews in the Judaic tradition or as Zionists. The urgency of mass denunciations of Zionism could hardly be more evident.

The precise count of the dead in Gaza as I write this is 70,669. As I type this number my mind goes to Dylan Thomas’ famous poem, A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London, written after a bombing raid shortly before World War II ended. What the lyrical Welshman refused was cheap sentiment and condolence-card clichés in favor of the larger truths inherent in any death:

I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further

Elegy of innocence and youth.

“After the first death, there is no other,” is the poem’s celebrated concluding line. Yes, altogether so. After the first 70,669, there is no other.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com