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The West Bank is on the verge of catastrophe

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | September 9, 2025

The Israeli regime seeks to collapse the notion of the so-called “two-state solution” once and for all, as part of its broader final solution to the Palestinian question. In order to do this, even the Palestinian Authority will have to fall, and with it will come a new series of horrors for the occupied West Bank.

Since October 7, 2023, the Zionist entity has waged a regional campaign that its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has branded the “seven-front war”. The publicly stated goal of this regional war is to achieve “total victory”. While many analysts continue to cover the Gaza war as a separate issue from the other fronts, this is a misreading of the realities we are seeing on the ground.

When looking at how the West Bank factors into the ongoing regional war, it would make no sense to view it outside of its proper context. To begin with, the October 7 operation was used as a pretext for the acceleration of the most extreme goals sought after by the Zionist entity.

The Israelis had suffered their greatest ever military blow, shattering their power projection model and shaking the very foundations of Zionism’s core pillars. In reaction to this, the supremacist entity decided to go all out in every conceivable way, although this came quicker on some fronts than others.

Specifically looking at the occupied West Bank, the Israelis did not waste any time in deploying a large number of soldiers to the territory and began immediately placing countless new movable checkpoints, dirt mounds, cement barriers, and gates to isolate villages from one another, ensuring the further fragmentation of an already divided territory.

In conjunction with this, Israeli settlers were armed with a seemingly unlimited supply of light weapons and encouraged to begin carrying out pogroms against villages and collections of communities, with the aim of ethnic cleansing. This was fully backed by the Israeli military, which had even begun creating settler-controlled units the year prior, including the infamous “Desert Frontier”, which sought to legitimize settler extremist militias that had once been deemed terrorists by the Zionist entity itself.

Then came the imposition of curfews, lockdowns targeting specific areas, and road closures that would leave West Bank Palestinians stranded. Military raids also increased, as did the murder rate against Palestinian civilians, which reached levels not witnessed since the Second Intifada.

The Israelis committed countless on-the-ground raids and airstrikes, focused primarily in the northern West Bank, where young Palestinian fighters had formed groups since 2021 to confront the occupying entity’s raids on their refugee camps and villages.

Following these frequent attacks, which often resulted in civilian massacres along with the killing of fighters, in August of 2024, the Zionist regime announced “Operation Summer Camps”, aimed at destroying the armed resistance in the northern West Bank. The operation ultimately failed to inflict a defeat on the resistance groups, taking its largest toll on the civilian populations living in the Nur al-Shams and Jenin refugee camps.

By September 9, 2024, the Palestinian Authority (PA) had reached a deal with the Israeli military that would see its forces work alongside the occupying army to root out the Palestinian resistance forces. In early December, the PA’s security forces then launched their “Operation Protect The Homeland”, where they arrested Palestinian Resistance fighters, killed civilians, and removed IEDs planted in Jenin that were set to target Israeli military jeeps.

By January, amid a failure of the PA to uproot the resistance from Jenin alone, the Israeli military launched a renewed military effort alongside the PA that would lead to the mass displacement of tens of thousands of civilians. The Israeli forces launched airstrikes, carried out assassinations, desecrated mosques, blew up homes, and imposed siege warfare on both the Jenin and Nur al-Shams refugee camps.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority was further demonized and delegitimized by the incoming Trump administration in the United States, after failing to prove its effectiveness at combating the Palestinian resistance alone.

A steep economic decline has also plagued the West Bank since October 7, 2023, plunging hundreds of thousands into poverty, as the Israeli settlers and military continue to construct new settlements and uproot olive trees and have ethnically cleansed over 30 communities and villages, while imposing a regime of all-out intimidation across the territory.

The results have proven catastrophic; the Zionist regime is taking over more of the Ibrahimi Mosque in al-Khalil, entering Area A of the West Bank at will despite it being technically under PA control, while refusing to release tax revenue back to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

Although the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly sought to combat resistance, runs security coordination for the Israeli occupying entity, frequently blames the genocide in Gaza on Hamas, and attempts to follow the rules laid out by its US, EU, and UK sponsors, it is now being totally delegitimized and pushed to the brink of collapse.

The PA is the perfect example of what happens when you lay down your arms, denounce resistance, and cooperate with the Israelis in search of a so-called “peace agreement”. The Zionists only take this as a weakness and continue to pursue their agendas, except that there is no substantial resistance now to protect the people.

With Western nations like Canada, France, Belgium, Australia, and the UK all declaring they will recognize the State of Palestine, the Israelis have reacted by pursuing a policy that completely eliminates the Palestinian Authority and its global standing. The E1 settlement project is one step; imposing annexation is another, yet perhaps the biggest factor here may be the Israeli refusal to release the necessary funds that the PA needs to keep afloat.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump notably banned the Palestinian Authority’s officials from travelling to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York this month, while his own officials openly talk about the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria”; the Israeli settler name for the occupied territory.

Another major issue is the ongoing Israeli-manufactured water crisis in the occupied West Bank, making it so that some residents of Ramallah only get water access at home twice per week, causing them to go to public areas to fill up on supplies.

The Israeli settlers have exacerbated this crisis by destroying and poisoning water wells and pipes. It is of note that Palestinians are not permitted to drill for water without specific permits, and the West Bank’s natural basin has long been hijacked by the Israelis, who supply their West Bank settlements with all the water they need.

So far, the population of the West Bank has not risen up into an Intifada either, so the Israelis get away with whatever they choose. In addition to this, the armed resistance that was in its early phases in the north of the territory has been forced into hiding and is no longer active.

Unlike the Gaza Strip, which had built a sophisticated underground tunnel network and armed itself with every weapon it could create or smuggle in, the West Bank is all but defenseless. However, the West Bank does have one advantage over Gaza: there are settlements littered throughout it, and the population there is very close to the occupiers physically.

Whether the Israelis choose to suddenly collapse the Palestinian Authority, annex portions of the territory, and begin a mass ethnic cleansing campaign, or they simply seek to slowly achieve this goal over time, the people of the West Bank have one way to combat it: a mass popular uprising. This uprising also must involve frequent violent assaults on Israeli settlements and operations that cross over into the territories occupied in 1948.

Currently, many people in the West Bank, particularly those living in the major cities, have not shown such resolve and determination. Instead, they have been slowly ground down into the material distractions that the Israelis intended for them to occupy themselves with, using their loans and credit cards to purchase cars and handbags or live cafe lifestyles they cannot afford.

The biggest employers in the West Bank are the Palestinian Authority, Israeli businesses, and Western NGOs, while the loans that people take are often impossible for people to pay back. Therefore, they have become enslaved to the material system of occupation. This is why you only really see armed resistance coming from a handful of villages and refugee camps, where the people have nothing to distract themselves from the occupation they live under.

The West Bank is perhaps one of the most sophisticated and ruthless social engineering testing grounds in modern history. In order for the people to break free, they will have to fight. This uprising will bring about countless horrors, some similar to what we have seen in Gaza, but the alternative is simply losing everything without a fight. Perhaps fewer people will die in such a short period, but the result of doing nothing will unfortunately be the loss of their homeland. The path of resistance is the only way that victory and liberation are even possible.

The Israelis will not allow for 3.3 million Palestinians to live in what the regime considers “Israel’s biblical heartlands”; they seek “Greater Israel” with as few Palestinians there as possible. There is no “two-state solution”, no “peace deals”, no “security agreements”, only an agenda to completely destroy the Palestinian people and implement the genocidal regime’s final Solution. Although the situation appears bleak, the people are still strong and will undoubtedly resist.

September 9, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

PCHR Report Exposes Israel’s War on Journalists and Media Institutions in Gaza

21st Century Wire | September 9, 2025

Yesterday marked a devastating event for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) as their headquarters in Al-Roya Tower, Gaza City, was obliterated by an airstrike from the Israeli Occupation Force. This attack is part of a disturbing pattern of systematic assaults on high-rise buildings throughout the city. Just following PCHR’s announcement of their new report, “Assassination of Truth: Killing of Journalists amid Genocide in Gaza,” Avichay Adraee, spokesman for the Israeli Occupation Forces, casually declared the intention to target and demolish Al-Roya Tower, home to PCHR’s vital work. The timing and intent behind these actions raise serious questions about the protection of human rights and freedom of expression in these turbulent times.

The PCHR office, perched on the 12th floor of the Al-Roya Tower, has unfortunately faced relentless bombardment and significant damage since the onset of the conflict. In addition, the Israeli Occupation Forces raided the premises, even converting it into a military base during their previous ground operations in Gaza City. As a result, the office has been rendered inoperable, highlighting the heavy toll on journalists working in Gaza. It is also important to mention that the PCHR offices located in Khan Younis and Jabalia were demolished last year.

PCHR’s new report paints a vivid and harrowing picture of the crimes committed, backed by compelling firsthand accounts from victims, witnesses, and their families, along with insights from legal experts and international sources. It shines a light on the shocking obliteration of 112 media institutions—ranging from TV and radio stations to newspaper headquarters—forcing journalists in Gaza to operate under extreme peril, often from makeshift tents, all while living with the constant threat of assassination.

The report reveals a troubling pattern: since October 7, Israel has actively targeted individuals who are brave enough to document the crisis in Gaza, effectively trying to suppress the truth and documented evidence of the Gaza genocide. Shockingly, during this period, Israeli Occupation Forces have killed 221 journalists, injured 415 more, and have arbitrarily detained at least 86 individuals. Many have faced torture and inhumane conditions, with 16 still in detention and 4 having mysteriously disappeared, according to PCHR. It’s a stark reminder of the dangers faced by those committed to reporting the realities on the ground.

The report calls on the global community to urge the Israeli authorities to promptly permit foreign journalists and international media representatives to access the Gaza Strip.

September 9, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Hamas: US proposal does not aim to end Gaza war

MEMO | September 9, 2025

A senior official in the Hamas movement, Bassem Naim, said on Monday evening that the initial ideas presented by the United States are “clearly intended to be rejected, rather than to reach an agreement that ends the war, ensures a full withdrawal of the occupation forces, and secures a prisoner exchange.”

In a statement sent to Quds Press, Naim explained that the American proposal suggests receiving all prisoners on the first day, linking withdrawal to the formation of a government acceptable to Israel and tasked with security duties. It also includes defining Hamas, considering pardons for its members, and disarming the resistance, “without any mention of reconstruction.”

The Hamas official stressed that the movement and other resistance factions seek “an agreement that stops the war and genocide, and opens the way for a political solution that fulfils legitimate national goals.”

Earlier on Monday, US President Donald Trump said that “the Israelis have accepted the terms of his proposal for a possible prisoner exchange and ceasefire in Gaza, and now it is Hamas’s turn to agree.”

Trump also spoke of the possibility of “reaching a deal soon to end the war on Gaza based on one of the proposals,” issuing what he described as “a final warning” to Hamas about the consequences of rejecting the new offer.

September 9, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Suspected drone attack hits Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla in Tunis

Al Mayadeen | September 9, 2025

The Global Sumud Flotilla announced it will hold a press conference today to update the media and the public on the drone attack sustained by one of its boats, the Family Boat. While all participants are safe, details about the attack remain limited, it said.

The conference will include remarks from Francesca Albanese, members of the steering committee, and civil society leaders, as well as direct testimonies from those who were aboard the Family Boat during the attack, in addition to updates on the flotilla’s ongoing mission to break “Israel’s” illegal blockade of Gaza.

The Global Sumud Flotilla, the largest civilian effort to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza, suffered an alleged attack when one of its leading vessels was struck while anchored in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia.

According to Wael Nawar, a member of the flotilla, the attack was carried out by an Israeli drone and targeted the fleet’s largest ship, which sails under the Portuguese flag. He confirmed that all crew and passengers aboard the vessel were unharmed.

Egyptian committee: Cowardly escalation

The Egyptian committee of the flotilla condemned the incident as “a criminal aggression by a Zionist war drone and a cowardly escalation.” It described the strike on Tunisian territory as a military violation against an Arab state, reaffirming that Egyptian participation in the international fleet would continue despite the threats.

UN expert raises alarm

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese confirmed reports that the flotilla’s main vessel was hit and said she is working to verify the facts. She further warned that two additional boats en route to Tunisia are “in urgent need of protection.”’

Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that strict security measures were imposed at the port following the attack, adding that the ship was apparently hit with an incendiary device.

Tunisian authorities cite technical malfunction

In contrast, the spokesperson for Tunisia’s National Guard denied that local security or military units had detected any aerial activity over the port. Preliminary investigations, he noted, suggest the incident may have resulted from an internal malfunction aboard the vessel rather than an external strike.

The Tunisian Interior Ministry later released a statement saying that “reports circulating about a drone crashing onto a ship docked at Sidi Bou Said port are baseless.”

Earlier in May, a drone strike targeted a vessel of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla team in international waters off the coast of Malta, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported. Israeli authorities were widely condemned by activists for executing the attack; however, Tel Aviv never claimed responsibility.

In that earlier incident, Yasemin Acar, press officer for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, confirmed to CNN that armed drones hit the ship twice, targeting the front of the vessel and causing a substantial breach in the hull. A fire erupted on board, and the ship began to sink. “There is a hole in the vessel right now, and the ship is sinking,” Acar said.

Largest flotilla yet to break the siege

The Global Sumud Flotilla includes hundreds of international activists from 44 countries, among them Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Portuguese politician Mariana Mortágua. The mission, comprised of dozens of aid-laden boats, seeks to break “Israel’s” years-long naval blockade of Gaza by delivering humanitarian supplies and asserting international solidarity.

Despite the attack and mounting threats, organizers insist the mission will proceed, describing it as a historic show of defiance against the ongoing siege.

September 9, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation attacks Hamas negotiators in Qatar, bombs Doha

Al Mayadeen | September 9, 2025

In a statement, the Israeli occupation military, in coordination with its internal security agency, Shin Bet, claimed to have carried out an airstrike on the Qatari capital, Doha, claiming to target the senior leadership of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.

Israeli Channel 12, citing military sources, reported that the strikes targeted members of the Hamas negotiating delegation while they were discussing the latest US-mediated proposal in Doha.

Reuters correspondents confirmed hearing loud explosions in the Qatari capital, noting plumes of smoke rising over the Katara district.

This brazen Israeli strike on Hamas’ negotiating delegation in Doha exposes once again the pattern of aggression that has defined Israeli and American conduct, using violence at the very moment when talks for peace are on the table. Just as Washington and Tel Aviv undermined dialogue before they attacked Iran in June, they now repeat the same tactic against the Palestinian resistance, targeting representatives engaged in negotiations.

Far from seeking peace, such actions demonstrate a deliberate sabotage of negotiations and reveal that only Palestinians show a genuine commitment to ending the war, while the Israeli occupation regime and the US weaponize diplomacy as cover for escalation.

Hamas reaffirms commitment to ceasefire proposals

The development comes as Hamas reiterated its commitment, alongside other Palestinian factions, to the ceasefire framework put forward by mediators on August 18.

In a statement, Hamas emphasized its openness to “any ideas or proposals” that would secure a permanent ceasefire, guarantee the full withdrawal of occupation forces from Gaza, ensure the unconditional entry of humanitarian aid, and achieve a genuine prisoner exchange through serious negotiations brokered by mediators.

US President Donald Trump announced Sunday evening on his Truth Social account that “the Israelis have accepted my terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well.”

In his post, Trump wrote: “Everyone wants the hostages home. Everyone wants this war to end! The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well. I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!”

According to Israeli Channel 12, Trump conveyed a new proposal through his envoy Steve Witkoff, bypassing the usual mediators Qatar and Egypt. The reported plan includes the release of all Israeli captives, both living and deceased, on the first day of the deal in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners serving long sentences.

Hamas says received US proposal

The Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, Hamas, confirmed Sunday evening that it has received new American ideas through mediators aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

In a statement, Hamas said it welcomes any real initiative that contributes to ending the ongoing aggression against the Palestinian people.

Hamas expressed its readiness to immediately join negotiations to reach a comprehensive deal that would include:

  1. The release of all prisoners on both sides
  2. A clear declaration of an end to the war
  3. A complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip
  4. The creation of a Palestinian independent committee to administer Gaza, to begin work immediately

The movement also demanded clear guarantees to ensure that “Israel” abides by any commitments, citing past agreements that were repudiated.

Hamas noted that it had already approved a mediator-brokered US proposal in Cairo on August 18, 2025, but “Israel” failed to respond and instead escalated its massacres and ethnic cleansing policy.

September 9, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Christian Holy Places and the Jewish State

By Israel Shamir • Unz Review • September 9, 2025

Recently Israel bombed two old venerable churches of Gaza: the Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyrios and the Catholic Holy Family Church. Thus, we were reminded that the Holy Land is called the Holy Land because it is the cradle of Christianity; this is the land where Jesus Christ was born and lived and died on the Cross, and was Resurrected. Where the Church was formed, where the Empty Tomb of Christ is located. This land was fought for in numerous Crusades, the flower of European chivalry died on its fields and hills fighting Muslim warriors. After the Crusades, for the last thousand years, her churches, shrines and relics remained safe and accessible for Christian pilgrims. And they are not museum pieces: every day there are many thousands of Christian Palestinians who worship in the churches and venerate its relics. Things began to change with the advent of the Jewish State.

Without going into deep theology, let us sum it up: historically the Jews are, and always were hostile to Christ and Christians. You can learn that from the New Testament, or from the Talmud, Jewish holy text, or from the news, where you can see Jews daily spit on Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem.

Rami Rozen expressed the Jewish tradition in a long feature in a major Israeli newspaper Haaretz :[1] “Jews feel towards Jesus today what they felt in 4 CE or in the Middle Ages… It is not fear, it is hatred and contempt. For centuries, Jews concealed from Christians their hate for Jesus, and this tradition continues even now.”

“He [Jesus Christ] is revolting and repulsive,” intervened an important modern religious Jewish thinker. This “repulsion passed from the observant Jews to the general Israeli public,” Rozen replied.

On Christmas Eve, according to a feature in the Jerusalem local paper, Kol Ha-Ir.,[2] Hassids customarily do not read holy books because this might save Jesus from eternal punishment (the Talmud teaches that Jesus boils in hell).[3] This custom had been dying out, but Hassids of Chabad, fervent nationalists, have brought it back to life. I still remember old Jews spitting while passing by a church and cursing the dead while passing by a Christian cemetery. Last year in Jerusalem a Jew decided to refresh the tradition. He spat at a Holy Cross being carried in procession in a city street. Police saved him from consequent trouble, but the court fined him $50, despite his claim that he had been fulfilling his religious duty.

A few years ago, the biggest Israeli tabloid, Yedioth Aharonoth, re-printed in its library the Jewish anti-Gospel, Toledoth Eshu, compiled in the Middle Ages. It is the third recent reprint, including one in a newspaper. If the Gospel is the book of love, Toledoth is the book of hate for Christ. The hero of the book is Judas. He captures Jesus by polluting his purity. According to Toledoth, the conception of Christ was in sin, the miracles of Jesus were witchcraft, his resurrection but a trick.

Writing on the Passion of Jesus, Joseph Dan, Professor of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, stated:

The modern Jewish apologists, hesitantly adopted by the church, preferred to put the blame on the Romans. But the medieval Jew did not wish to pass the buck. He tried to prove that Jesus had to be killed, and he was proud of killing Him. The Jews hated and despised Christ and Christians.

Prof. Dan added that there is little place to doubt that the Jewish enemies of Jesus caused his execution. Even today, Jews in Israel refer to Jesus by the demeaning word ‘Yeshu’ (instead of ‘Yeshua’) meaning ‘perish his name’. In a similar pun, the Gospel is called ‘Avon Gilaion’, the booklet of Sin. These are the endearing feelings towards Christ of the friends of Christian Zionists.

If there was raison d’etre of the Jewish existence, it was to fight Christ and to eliminate Christianity. That is the very reason why Jews wanted Palestine – because it facilitates their war against Christ. It’s hard to say whether Christianity will survive the total Jewish takeover of Palestine. Jewish faith is not just another faith, like say Buddhism. It is a fighting doctrine, an anti-Christianity.

In 1920s and 1930s, to solve The Jewish Problem, the Jews were offered many places for living: The Argentine, Kenya (then it was called Uganda), Dominican Republic, Birobijan in the Soviet Far East, but they insisted on Palestine. It’s not strange: Palestine is the centre of the world, the most important place of all. Not in vain, people fought and died for it for centuries. The followers of Mackinder, geopolitics, considered the ancient holy places of the world being the strategic points. Amazing that England gave away this most cherished possession to the Jews. And the Jews immediately began their work of expelling the Divine Presence from our midst.

Wait, you will say, Jews also believe in God! Yes, but a different one. To Gentiles – that’s you and other non-Jews – there is no access to the Jewish god. You must live forever without God, or you may worship the Jews, as God’s intermediary. It just so happens that the elimination of God’s Presence on earth is Satan’s main desire, too. So he has become a powerful Jewish ally; he helps them to destroy everything beautiful and spiritual on Earth.

Israel is the Jewish state, but not the only one: there is a bigger Jewish state, the USA. It’s not only the mighty supporter of its smaller brother. The USA nowadays has up to 80 percent Jews in the administration of its government, but this began a long time ago. Karl Marx and Werner Sombart wrote that the US could become a Jewish state even without Jews. (More precisely, Marx said that it was the Jewish state without Jews, and Sombart corrected him, saying the Jews were there from the beginning.) In the USA, this great heresy of Christian Zionism was formed, the parody of Christianity. Likewise, in the US blossomed homosexuality, a parody of the sacred union of Man and Woman, as it was viewed in ancient Egypt, and in Japanese mythology, and in the book of Genesis. The Devil is a great mocker!

Jews are much more comfortable with Islam: a Jew can join Muslims in prayers, as the great luminary Rambam once ruled, and historically Jews escaped to Muslim states from Europe when they were ordered to baptise or else. Amazingly, Jews do not hate Islam and Muslims with the same fervour they hate Christians.

How do Muslims feel about Christianity? Muslims venerate Christ. He is called ‘The Word of God’, ‘Logos”, ‘Messiah’, ‘Christ’, ‘the Prophet’ and is considered a Messenger of God, along with Abraham, Moses and Muhammad. Many chapters of the Koran tell the story of Christ, his virgin birth and his persecution by Jews. His saintly mother is admired, and the Immaculate Conception is one of the tenets of Islam. The name of Christ glorifies the golden edifice of Haram al-Sharif. According to the Moslem faith, it was there that the founder of Islam met Jesus, and they prayed together. The Hadith, the Moslem tradition, says in the name of the prophet: “We do not forbid you to believe in Christ; we order you to.” Muslims identify their prophet Muhammad with Paracletes the Helper (Jn 14:16) whose coming was predicted by Jesus. They venerate places associated with the life of Jesus: the place of Ascension, the Tomb of Lazarus and the Nativity are adjacent to a mosque and perfectly accessible by Christians.

Although Muslims (and many Protestants) do not consider that Jesus is God, they do proclaim Him to be the Messiah, the Anointed one, the Paradise Dweller. This religious idea, familiar to Nestorians and other early churches but rejected by mainstream Christianity, opened the gates for those Jews who could not part with the notion of Unitarianism. That is why many Palestinian Jews and Christians of the Seventh Century accepted Islam and became Palestinian Muslims. They remained in their villages; they did not depart for Poland or England; they did not learn Yiddish; they did not study the Talmud, but they continued to shepherd their flocks and plant almond trees. They remained faithful to their land and to the great idea of the fraternity of mankind.

Paradoxically, nowadays in the US with its spiritual debt to Jews, a new term was coined: Judeo-Christian values, traditions, faith. This is sheer nonsense, it is a catachresis like cold-hot. And indeed, it works by submitting Christians to the Jews in the US, while in Palestine, it leads to destruction of the remains of all Christian life. Let us consider Bethlehem; before 1967 it was predominantly a Christian city. When the Jews captured Bethlehem, they ran a census, just like King Herod, and everybody absent from his home was stricken out. Students abroad, family visitors, war refugees, whoever was not in the house was deleted from the roll. By this first step Jews got rid of a third of the Christian population.

But before that, you can consider the pretty Christian village of Birim in Upper Galilee. The village of Birim has been dead for fifty years now. It is beautiful even in death, like Ophelia floating down the stream in the pre-Raphaelite painting of Millais. It was not ruined by war. Its Christian inhabitants were expelled from their houses well after the 1948 war. They were told to leave for a week or two, for ‘security’ reasons. They had no option but to obey the Israeli soldiers and move out. Their village was dynamited, their church surrounded by barbed wire. The people went to the Israeli Supreme Court, they went to the government, commissions were appointed and petitions signed. Nothing helped. For fifty years since then, they have lived in the nearby villages, and on Sundays they return to worship in their church. Their lands were seized by their Jewish neighbours, but they still bring their dead to be buried in the church graveyard, under the sign of the cross.

Until the arrival of the Israeli army, this ruined village with its orphaned church was the home of the rural Christians of Birim who for centuries of Moslem rule lived in peace with their Moslem neighbours of Nebi Yosha and with the old Sephardi Jewish community of nearby Safed. This Guernica of Galilee undermines the “Clash of Civilizations” myth of a “Judeo-Christian” civilization opposing a “monstrous” Islam.

Coming back to Bethlehem, we happen to see the beautiful image of Our Lady. She appeared to a Mexican peasant, and her flower-covered image arrested the strife and united Native Americans and Spaniards into one nation. She gave her rosary to Saint Dominic and a letter to Portuguese kids in Fatima. The Prophet Muhammad saved and cherished her icon found in a Mecca shrine, writes Maxim Rodinson. She appeared to the wealthy Jewish banker Alphonse Ratisbonne, and he took orders and built the convent of the Sisters of Zion in En Karim. A Palestinian Muslim in a refugee camp of Lebanon preserved the image he took from his native Galilee, tells Elias Khoury in his novel Bab Al-Shams. Syrian astronauts asked for her protection in the shrine of Seidnaya before their flight on the Soviet space shuttle.

In medieval legends, the Jews were often perceived as enemies of the Virgin. The Talmud refers to her in the most blasphemous and hostile way. A certain column-stump on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa marks the place of a legendary attack of Jews on her person, while in Antioch in 592, Jews were found despoiling her image. These are old tales. And now some newer facts. Twenty-two years before 6.10.23 (that is the event and date that Jews want to count from) in Bethlehem, a Jew shelled the Virgin. A Jewish soldier in the formidable tank Merkava-3, constructed according to US technology at US taxpayer’s expense, fired a shell from a distance of fifty yards at the statue of the Madonna atop the Holy Family church in the town of the Nativity. The Virgin lost an arm, and her pretty face was disfigured. She became one of a hundred Palestinian women shot by the Jews in that outburst of war. This seemingly unnecessary act of vandalism could not have been an accidental shot. No terrorist hid behind her gentle figure on the pinnacle of the hospital church. At fifty yards, you make no mistake. It could have been orders; it could have been a spontaneous expression of feelings by a Jewish fanatic. Our world rewinds full speed back into the Dark Ages, and as Israel rekindles traditional Jewish hostile rejection of Christianity, we cannot indulge in Judaeo-Christian fantasy.

I also must mention the beautiful old Byzantine church of St Barbara, a local girl and the village patron saint. It is one of these bitter-sweet semi-ruined churches that still attract worshippers, along with St Anne of Safurie and Emmaus of Latrun, and it stands on a hill a mile away from the village. It would be called St Barbara-without-the-walls if it were in England.

On the thirty-first of May 2002, the Israeli army dynamited St Barbara, the living relic of the Christian past of the Holy Land. I do not know whether the sappers said the benediction prescribed for such occasions by the Jewish religious codex, Shulkhan Aruch: “Blessed you are, Our Lord, who destroys the Assemblies of Proud.” This destruction followed the Bethlehem siege; when, for the proverbial forty days and forty nights, from the Catholic Good Friday to the Orthodox Easter Sunday, the Jews besieged the Church of Nativity.

To conclude, it is only by a miracle Christianity may survive Jewish rule in Palestine, or indeed wherever anti-Christians rule. Historically, the Palestinian Church has served as a bellwether for the health of the Church everywhere else. It is the touchstone of our faith. Without the earthly testimony of Christians living in and working on the same lands walked by Christ and His apostles, Christians quickly fall victim to science-fiction fancies like Christian Zionism. The Holy Land is a living history that naturally refutes anti-Christian narratives that rely upon the ignorance of historical facts. It is the last relic of Christendom. And if it dies, Christendom is doomed to the same rootless, wandering extinction that plagues the Jews.

The collapse does not stop in Gaza: in France, once the beloved daughter of the Church, ruled by ex-Rothschild clerk Macron, in La Baconnière, the Church of Saint Cornelius and Saint Cyprian was demolished: the 12th-century building with stained glass by Auguste Allo and a bell from 1584 was declared unsafe and demolished due to the lack of 7 million euros for restoration. But in order to conclude with good news, I’ll say: last Sunday, Moscow witnessed a huge Crucession of hundreds of thousands of worshippers, for the first time since 1918. It happened soon after the ardent local Jews moved away to Israel. Christianity still has the potential for Resurrection.

Edited by Paul Bennett

Notes

[1] 28.1.94.

[2] 14.12.93.

[3] Gittin, 56b-57a.

September 9, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Spanish PM reveals 9 measures to halt genocide in Gaza

Al Mayadeen | September 8, 2025

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday announced nine new measures aimed at stopping the “genocide in Gaza,” stating, in a televised address, “What Israel is doing is not defending itself, it is exterminating a defenseless population.”

He said that although Spain has de facto been applying an export ban on weapons to “Israel” since 2023, the government will now urgently legislate a “permanent” ban, a measure that will be joined by prohibiting ships transporting fuel to Israeli forces from using Spanish ports and banning aircraft carrying defense material from Spanish airspace.

The Spanish Premier added that individuals “directly involved in the genocide, violating human rights and war crimes in Gaza” will be prohibited from entering Spain.

Other measures include banning imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, limiting Spanish consular services to Spanish citizens living in the occupied territories to the bare minimum, and increasing Spain’s presence in Rafah with additional troops and new joint projects with the Palestinian Authority to provide food and medicine.

Spain will also increase its contribution to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) by €10 million ($11.7 million) and commit €150 million in additional humanitarian aid for Gaza in 2026.

“We know these measures will not be enough to put an end to the war crimes, but we hope they serve to apply pressure to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Sanchez stated, adding that “Spain alone cannot stop the war, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

September 8, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Assassination of Yemeni Ministers: How the Media Normalizes Israel’s Crimes

Israel carried out the unprecedented act of assassinating the head of the Sanaa government and 11 of his ministers to punish Yemen for its unwavering solidarity with Gaza, making it one of the few countries in the world to take seriously the obligation to prevent the crime of genocide. The media, complacent or even complicit, never deem it necessary to point out that targeting a civilian administration constitutes a blatant war crime. This silence only encourages Israel to push ever further the limits of its monstrosity.

By Alain Marshal | September 6, 2025

On August 28, a massive Israeli strike on Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, targeted a council of ministers of the de facto authority in Yemen, assassinating Prime Minister Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser al-Rahawi and 11 members of his government: Secretary of the Council of Ministers Zahid Mohammed Al-Amdi, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Mohammed Qasim Al-Kabsi, as well as the Ministers of Foreign Affairs (Jamal Ahmed Ali Amer), Economy (Moeen Hashim Ahmed al-Mahaqri), Justice (Ahmed Abdullah Ali), Energy (Dr. Ali Saif Mohammed Hassan), Information (Hashim Ahmed Abdulrahman Sharaf Al-Din), Agriculture (Dr. Radwan Ali Ali Al-Rubai’i), Social Affairs and Labor (Samir Mohammed Ahmed Baja’ala), Tourism and Culture (Dr. Ali Qasim Hussein Al-Yafei), and Youth and Sports (Dr. Mohammed Ali Ahmed Al-Mawlid).

Yemen’s Martyrs

Israel, which has been perpetrating an openly acknowledged genocide in Gaza and the West Bank — broadcast live for nearly two years — and which has attacked no fewer than five other countries during this period (Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, not to mention all the countries whose airspace it has violated), has clearly claimed responsibility for this attack. War Minister Israel Katz declared that Israel had delivered “an unprecedented knockout blow against the senior-most figures of the Houthi security-political leadership in Yemen, in a daring and brilliant operation […]. The fate of Yemen is the fate of Tehran — and this is only the beginning.” There is therefore little doubt about Israel’s intentions.

Despite this deliberate and acknowledged attack, the word “assassination” was nowhere to be found in the Western media: the AFP dispatch, reprinted by Mediapart (allegedly the most prominent French media outlet supporting Palestine) and many other newspapers, refers only to the “death” of the head of government and members of his cabinet, “killed” in Israeli raids, as if the causal link between the bombings and the deaths were indirect. AFP adopts the terms “Houthis,” “rebels,” and “Iranian-backed,” noting that “the internationally recognized Yemeni government, driven out of Sanaa, has its headquarters in Aden, the major city in the south.” Without specifying that the Aden regime, supported by Saudi Arabia (which itself has been waging a genocidal war against Yemen since 2015, with Western backing), has no more legitimacy to represent Yemen and its people than the Taiwan-based Kuomintang had to occupy China’s seat at the UN (which it did from 1945 to 1971).

Moreover, Israel’s action was rationalized, even legitimized, with AFP categorically stating that the strikes against Yemen were “in response to missile and drone attacks by rebels against Israeli territory.” As for Yemen’s own position — that its attacks are nothing more than a response aimed at ending the genocide in Gaza and the blockade starving its two million inhabitants — the article distances itself and places full responsibility on the Houthis: “The houthis claim to be launching these attacks in ‘solidarity’ with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who are caught up in the war triggered by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.”

The pattern is recurring: whatever Israel says, however grotesque, is taken at face value (Israel is only defending itself, retaliating against Hamas, against Yemen, and against all of humanity if need be), while whatever its adversaries say — even when it is self-evident — is treated with suspicion and put in quotation marks to signal distance. The underlying suggestion is that Israelis are not being targeted as occupiers who dispossess Palestinians of their rights and subject them to systematic extermination, but as Jews, out of pure anti-Semitism or out of hatred for “freedom” and “Western values,” a recurring discourse from Reagan, Bush, Netanyahu, and others. In the media and civil society, so-called “reactionary” voices openly adopt this vocabulary, while so-called “progressive” voices generally do so implicitly — even though the French CGT union spelled it out in its magazine Ensemble, La Vie Ouvrière №19 (November 2023), which described Hamas’ action of October 7 as “ignoble,” denouncing, with regard to the Nova rave party held at the gates of the Gaza concentration camp, a targeting “by religious fanaticism [of] youth and [of] the expression of freedom […] At least 260 people were killed, by gunfire or explosives, because they were Jewish.”

In a recent article, Mediapart’s founder Edwy Plenel himself described Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza as “Israel’s war in retaliation for October 7,” a blatantly negationist statement that obscures more than a hundred years of Zionist history — a colonial movement explicitly aimed at the expulsion, even the annihilation, of the indigenous people, a sine qua non condition for its success. The total destruction of the Gaza Strip and the will to empty it of its population are clearly in continuity with the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba (1948) and the Naksa (1967), October 7 having been nothing more than a catalyst, a pretext seized Machiavellianly by Netanyahu’s fanatical government to liquidate the Palestinian cause once and for all and to work openly towards “Greater Israel.” Until then, the sham “peace process” had allowed colonization to progress slowly but surely, but now the time has come for the “final solution.” The media’s complicity in the liquidation of the Palestinian cause did not begin on October 7, and rather than acknowledging their errors, they persist in denial — even as the Israelis have dropped the mask and are stating more clearly than ever that they will never tolerate a Palestinian state or Palestinian sovereignty, even symbolic.

Just as they flout history to pander to Zionist propaganda, our journalists have no regard for international law — otherwise they would point out that targeting a political leadership, even one not recognized by the international community, even in wartime, is an egregious crime. Israel Katz proudly underscores the “unprecedented” nature of these assassinations and fully assumes the targeting of civilians, but our “journalists” do not care. They have thoroughly internalized their duty of loyalty to Israeli talking points, even going so far as to condone the systematic targeting of hospitals (by taking seriously the alleged existence of Hamas command centers beneath them), medical personnel, and even journalists (by crediting their supposed links to the Palestinian Resistance). Corporatism no longer applies when it comes to covering the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the occupying army, the armed wing of Western imperialism. Let us recall that the attack on Hezbollah’s pagers was praised by our media — including Mediapart, which described it as “a stroke of tactical genius by the Israeli military and spies” (before discreetly retracting this statement, calling it a mere “strategic success”). Yet, with its implications — potentially turning any everyday object into a bomb — this terrorist attack is even more dangerous than 9/11, threatening to transform the entire world into a dystopia.

To grasp how utterly unacceptable the absence of political reaction (with the exception of the Axis of Resistance) and the complacent media coverage following the decapitation of the Yemeni government — whose role is purely administrative — really are, let us imagine for a moment that a Western head of government and his cabinet were targeted by a foreign power: François Bayrou in France, Friedrich Merz in Germany, Keir Starmer in the United Kingdom, for example. Let us even imagine that Zelensky, whose country is at war (NATO and the EU are regarded as co-belligerents), were killed in a Russian strike. Who would dare doubt the international outrage that this would provoke? Who could ignore the ensuing diplomatic, economic, or even military apocalypse? Who would not be moved to tears at the mere thought of the mournful hagiographies that would flood editorial columns?

A simple alleged GPS jamming of the plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen to Bulgaria (to visit a munitions factory — an act of the highest neutrality), without any evidence (Flight Radar denied any interference with the GPS signal from takeoff to landing), provoked indignation among our politicians and media, who set aside fact-checking and exhausted the vocabulary of outrage: “victim,” “blatant Russian interference,” “We are of course aware of, and in a sense accustomed to, the threats and intimidation that form an integral part of Russia’s hostile behavior,” “The head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, announced that she would summon the Russian ambassador in the wake of the incident.”

But when it comes to Yemeni leaders, the structural racism of our societies — especially entrenched among our journalists and editorialists — combined with the abject submission of our capitals and their media echo chambers to Israeli and American interests, suffices to relegate this flagrant war crime to a mere footnote, a veritable carte blanche granted to Israel, encouraging it to continually push back the red line of its crimes and atrocities. Israel’s impunity is guaranteed unconditionally.

Bound only by the demands of our conscience, and not by the fear of losing our job for failing to comply with a tacit or assumed pro-Israeli editorial line, we take the liberty of forcefully reminding everyone that international humanitarian law prohibits the targeting of civilian leaders, by virtue of the fundamental principle of distinction between civilians and combatants:

1949 Geneva Conventions (1977 for the Additional Protocols):

  • “Persons taking no active part in the hostilities […] shall in all circumstances be treated humanely […]. To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds […].” (Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 3)
  • “In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” (Additional Protocol I, Article 48)
  • “A civilian is any person who does not belong to [the Armed forces]. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.” (Additional Protocol I, Article 50)
  • “The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. […] Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.” (Additional Protocol I, Article 51)

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, 1993:

  • “If essentially the total leadership of a group is targeted, it could also amount to genocide. Such leadership includes political and administrative leaders, religious leaders, academics and intellectuals, business leaders and others — the totality per se may be a strong indication of genocide regardless of the actual numbers killed. […] Thus, the intent to destroy the fabric of a society through the extermination of its leadership, when accompanied by other acts of elimination of a segment of society, can also be deemed genocide.” (Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992), Annex to the Letter dated 24 May 1994 from the Secretary-General to the President of the Security Council, S/1994/674)

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998:

  • “The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes. For the purpose of this Statute, ‘war crimes’ means: […] Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities.” (Rome Statute, Article 8, “War Crimes”)

It therefore appears that, even in times of war, a Minister of Defense or a President of the Republic, as head of the armed forces, only loses civilian status if they take a direct part in hostilities — something that remains extremely rare, since operational command lies with military officers. What then can be said of a Prime Minister, a Minister of Justice, or a Minister of Culture? These are purely and simply extrajudicial killings, which by definition have no legal basis.

Furthermore, a “combatant” is only recognized as such on the battlefield or in barracks, and regains civilian status as soon as he is at home. If, as Israel does, we consider that members of Lebanese Hezbollah, Ansar Allah in Yemen, the Palestinian resistance, or Iranian commanders remain combatants even while asleep in their family homes, it would logically follow that targeting soldiers and reservists of regular armies would also be legitimate wherever they are found — even when on leave with their families — even if it means killing, injuring, or maiming their wives and children along with them.

Similarly, Israel’s declared intention to “eliminate” — a term used by certain “journalists,” such as in this article in Le Figaro — the entire Ansar Allah command structure, because of its unwavering support for Gaza, combined with its repeated strikes against the country’s civilian infrastructure (ports, airports, power grids, fuel depots, the presidential palace, industry, residential neighborhoods, etc.), clearly amounts to a war crime or even an intent to commit genocide, as defined by the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for Time (1976–1988) and later for The Independent (1989–2020), held, like Amira Hass (Haaretz), that the role of journalists is to challenge established authority and centers of power, particularly in the context of war. Yet the overwhelming majority of the media does precisely the opposite, working to rationalize, legitimize, and even normalize the unacceptable — from the assassination of political leaders (see this Mediapart article entitled In Iran, the Twilight of the Supreme Leader, a textbook case of incitement to murder), to the mass murder of starving women and children as they try to find food, to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

In conclusion, let us recall that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) establishes in its first article that: “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”

Faced with the inaction of the international community, is it not Yemen, through its naval blockade of Israel and its active support for the Palestinian cause, that takes the obligation to prevent the crime of genocide most seriously? By contrast, the “civilized West” not only fails to impose sanctions on Israel, but refuses to stop providing it with military, economic, and diplomatic support, thereby becoming complicit in the extermination of the Palestinians.

As Israel’s frenzy of bloodshed and destruction continues daily, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and of course Yemen, it is difficult not to recall the lessons of history: any regime founded on barbarism and hubris is doomed to an ignominious end — and its sycophants and apologists to an equally humiliating fate.

Contact: alainmarshal2@gmail.com

September 8, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Political Scene in Lebanon: Meetings Confirm Failure of Anti-Resistance Scheme

Al-Manar | September 8, 2025

Since the council of ministers convened at Baabda Palace on September 5 and decided to curb the process of targeting the resistance arms, political tensions in Lebanon started to slide.

The regular meetings between the senior officials in Lebanon was resumed with the House Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri’s visit to Baabda Palace on Monday

Speaker Berri reviewed the general situation with President Joseph Aoun, affirming that everything is fine.

“With the blessings of Our Lady Mary, everything is fine.”

The House Speaker on Monday also met in Ain el-Tineh with Lebanese Army Commander, General Rudolf Haykal, who presented the military plan to confine weapons under the condition of the Israeli commitment to the ceasefire,

Commenting on the recent parliamentary session, Head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc leader Mohammad Raad said the September 5 outcome signaled a retreat by many in government who realized the earlier arms decision had reached a dead end.

“They found a formula to delay implementation without fully withdrawing from their decision. It’s not a solution—it’s simply a pause,” Hezbollah’s MP asserted.

Raad asserted that Hezbollah’s weapons are “more legitimate than the government itself,” citing the group’s right to defend Lebanese land under national and international law.

September 8, 2025 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

On your knees: This EU move has just revealed the scale of their insignificance

In 2018, Europe swore it would shield the Iran deal from Trump. In 2025, it brought Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ back under their own banner.

By Farhad Ibragimov | RT | September 8, 2025

Back in 2018, Europe blasted Donald Trump for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. Paris, Berlin, and London warned of a looming crisis in the Middle East and insisted the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was the only safeguard against another regional war. They even rolled out a special financial vehicle, Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), to shield trade with Tehran from US sanctions. For a moment, it looked as if Europe was finally ready to assert its own strategic autonomy.

Seven years later, the picture couldn’t be more different. Britain, France, and Germany have triggered the snapback mechanism – a procedure written into UN Security Council Resolution 2231 back in 2015. On paper, snapback is a technical clause: if one of the deal’s signatories claims Iran is in breach, all the pre-2015 UN sanctions come rushing back. In practice, it’s a political bombshell. The very governments that once positioned themselves as defenders of the deal are now taking the first steps to dismantle it.

How snapback works

Snapback is a built-in device of Resolution 2231: once a party to the deal files a complaint, a thirty-day clock starts ticking. If the Security Council can’t agree to keep the sanctions lifted, the old restrictions automatically spring back into place – no new vote, no vetoes, just the force of the mechanism itself snapping shut.

And those sanctions aren’t symbolic. They revive six earlier UN resolutions passed between 2006 and 2010: an arms embargo, a ban on ballistic missile development, asset freezes, and travel bans targeting Iranian banks, companies, and officials. In other words, a full reset to the era of maximum pressure that Tehran endured more than a decade ago.

On paper, it reads like legalese. In practice, it carries weighty consequences. For Europe, it means slamming shut whatever limited doors were still open for trade and diplomacy with Tehran. For Iran, it’s a return to a familiar landscape of international isolation – one it has increasingly learned to navigate through ties with Russia, China, and regional partners.

Europe’s brief rebellion

When Donald Trump tore up the nuclear deal in 2018, Europe seemed almost defiant. Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, and Theresa May openly criticized Washington’s unilateral move, warning it could ignite a new crisis in the Middle East and weaken the global nonproliferation regime. For a moment, it looked as if Europe was ready to chart its own course.

To prove it, Paris, Berlin, and London announced a special financial vehicle called INSTEX. On paper, it was meant to let European companies keep trading with Iran while bypassing US sanctions. In speeches, leaders cast it as a bold example of strategic autonomy – Europe standing by international law against American pressure.

In practice, it never delivered. Transactions were scarce, businesses stayed away, and INSTEX turned into little more than a symbol. What was meant to showcase Europe’s independence exposed instead its limits. Behind the rhetoric, the continent still lacked the muscle to stand up to Washington.

Even after the deal began to unravel, Tehran held on longer than many expected. For a time, Iran continued to observe key limits, signaling that it still wanted the agreement to survive. The steps it did take after 2019 – enriching uranium beyond agreed levels, reducing access for inspectors – were limited and largely declarative. They were less about racing toward a bomb than about sending a message: if Europe and the United States failed to keep their end of the bargain, Iran would not keep waiting forever.

Europe could have treated those moves as a call for dialogue. Instead, it chose to treat them as violations to be punished – leaning on legal mechanisms and pressure rather than genuine diplomacy. In practice, this meant not saving the deal but accelerating its collapse.

When Joe Biden took office in 2021, many in Europe breathed a sigh of relief. After four years of Trump’s “maximum pressure,” there was hope the US would return to the nuclear deal or at least give Europe more room to re-engage with Tehran. European diplomats saw Biden’s presidency as a reset button, a chance to salvage what was left of the JCPOA.

Talks resumed in 2022, bringing negotiators from Washington, the E3, and Tehran back to the table. But the optimism didn’t last. The West’s conditions went far beyond nuclear conditions: Iran was pressed to scale back its ties with Russia and cut off growing cooperation with China. To Tehran, those demands amounted to political disarmament – a direct threat to its sovereignty and security.

The negotiations collapsed. For Europe, it was a sobering moment: the Democratic administration they had counted on offered no breakthrough. For Iran, it confirmed what many suspected – that Washington’s return to the deal would come with strings too heavy to accept.

The US get what they want

The word snapback has already made waves in the halls of the UN back in August 2020. That summer, the Trump administration formally notified the Security Council that Iran was in breach of the nuclear deal and demanded that the old UN sanctions be reinstated. US lawyers pointed to Resolution 2231, which still listed Washington as a “participant” in the agreement – even though Trump had withdrawn the US two years earlier.

The reaction was swift and humiliating. Russia and China dismissed the move outright, and so did America’s closest allies in Europe. London, Paris, and Berlin all publicly declared that Washington had no standing to use the mechanism after quitting the deal. The snapback effort fizzled, and the sanctions remained suspended.

The irony is hard to miss. In 2020, Europe stood shoulder to shoulder with Moscow and Beijing to block Washington’s attempt. Five years later, the very same European capitals are the ones pulling the trigger.

When London, Paris, and Berlin announced they were triggering snapback, they wrapped the move in the language of diplomacy. In Paris, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot stressed that France was still “open to a political solution.” In Berlin, Johann Wadephul urged Tehran to re-engage with the IAEA. Britain’s David Lammy said Iran had provided “no credible guarantees” about the peaceful nature of its program.

On the surface, it sounded like a routine chorus of diplomatic talking points. But behind the careful wording was a clear message: Europe was abandoning the posture of dialogue and embracing pressure. What the E3 once condemned in Washington, they were now carrying out themselves – only this time under their own flag.

In Tehran, the language was restrained but pointed. Officials called the European move “illegal and regrettable,” a formula that barely concealed deep frustration. For Iran, Europe’s decision confirmed once again that Brussels talks about strategic autonomy but falls in line the moment Washington sets the course.

Across the Atlantic, the response was the opposite: warm approval. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “welcomed” the step and claimed that snapback only strengthened America’s willingness to negotiate. Formally it sounded like an invitation to dialogue. But the memory of the spring talks – which ended not with compromise but with Israeli sabotage and US strikes on Iranian facilities – made the words ring hollow.

A world that has moved on

Europe’s wager on sanctions is a throwback to the early 2010s, when Tehran was isolated and the West could dictate terms. But that era is gone. Today Iran is not only a strategic partner for Moscow and Beijing but also a full member of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – platforms that carve out alternatives to the Western order.

In this new landscape, snapback may sting in Tehran, but it hits Europe too. Brussels loses credibility as a negotiator and opportunities as a trading partner. Each step in Washington’s shadow makes the European claim to “strategic autonomy” sound thinner.

The paradox is striking. On paper, Europe insists on its independence. In reality, its voice is fading in a multipolar world. While Brussels signs off on sanctions, Beijing and Moscow are busy sketching the architecture of a new order – one where Europe is no longer at the center.

Farhad Ibragimov – lecturer at the Faculty of Economics at RUDN University, visiting lecturer at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

@farhadibragim

September 8, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

When does murder get ignored? When the victim is white and the killer black

A black man kills a white woman in an American city, and the mainstream media gives it zero coverage. Imagine if the races were reversed.

By Henry Johnston | RT | September 8, 2025

The US mainstream media tends to operate by encouraging a certain prefabricated outrage. Sensationalized narratives are cultivated along predictable tracks. But no less egregious is what the media chooses to ignore. Few events of late have better exposed the ideological underpinnings of the media – and of the elite whose narratives it plugs – than the recent brutal and shocking murder of a young Ukrainian woman on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

On August 22, a career criminal, Decarlos Brown Jr., casually walked up behind 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was seated on a train minding her own business, and stabbed her three times in the neck in cold blood, killing her. He sauntered away, still clutching the knife dripping blood.

The mindless and savage attack was captured on surveillance footage, but Charlotte’s Democratic Mayor Vi Lyles pushed for it not to be released, ostensibly out of respect for the victim’s family. But the footage did eventually surface, and the story spread like wildfire. But this was a wildfire that couldn’t reach the impervious redoubt of the mainstream media – even after Elon Musk gave it the push into viral territory by chiming in on an End Wokeness thread pointing out the stunning media silence.

In fact, not a single major legacy outlet – the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Reuters, CNN, Wall Street Journal, and others – picked it up. One would think that, by sheer chance, one of these esteemed outlets would have bucked the trend. But that didn’t happen because, as Matt Taibbi once brilliantly pointed out,

“Reporting is done in herds, no one wildebeest can break formation without screwing things up for the others. So, they’ll all hold the line, until they all stop holding the line.”

As of this writing, it seems the media herd is starting to reluctantly skate to where the puck is going. And that means that some version of the story, however sanitized, will soon appear everywhere.

So what exactly has given this story its irresistible momentum? Let’s start with the blatant double standard about reporting interracial crime. A white victim and a black perpetrator, as was the case in this instance, is usually a circumstance that tips the scales in favor of silence. When an instance of black-on-white crime cannot be avoided, the respective races of the individuals involved are not mentioned, and the tone is more along the lines of “aww shucks, what a tragedy.” When the racial roles are reversed, the media coverage is extensive and sensational, and the race angle is established immediately and runs throughout the ensuing coverage like an electric wire.

Given such highly distorted media coverage of interracial crime, one would be forgiven for assuming that it is blacks who are perpetually in mortal danger of racist attack by whites in the US. This view was a large part of the impetus behind the Black Lives Matter movement. However, the actual statistics on interracial crime, which are not easy to find, show otherwise. Buried inside this Department of Justice (DOJ) report from 2020 is a rather remarkable admission: “[In 2019], there were 5.3 times as many violent incidents committed by black offenders against white victims (472,570) as were committed by white offenders against black victims (89,980).” Such stark wording was not repeated in subsequent reports under the Biden DOJ, but there is no reason to believe anything has changed in the streets.

Zarutska’s murder certainly comes at a time of record-low American trust in the mainstream media. Instances of misreporting and factual disasters have become such a recurrent theme as to not require individual examples. The media’s efforts at narrative formation have also become so heavy-handed that identifying the establishment cause being promoted in almost any piece of reporting is now a parlor game.

But – and I venture into very risky terrain here – the uproar over this senseless killing also points to a deeply ensconced taboo slowly starting to unravel: Many white Americans are tired of being denied the right to display even the slightest and most tentative hint of the type of racial solidarity that other groups are extended so liberally. It is a story being played out on a different stage with different actors in Great Britain.

There’s another angle here, and it is one that has already been remarked upon in numerous places. The victim was a citizen of a country that the US has spent enormous treasure and effort ostensibly defending since 2022. The roughly $130 billion in aid that Washington has coughed up for Kiev comes out to some $3,500 per Ukrainian citizen. Certainly enough for a bodyguard on train rides.

And yet the silence from the pro-Ukraine crowd has mirrored that of the media at large. This certainly confirms what has been abundantly clear throughout the war and remains so today: Ukrainian deaths that don’t advance a Western elite media narrative are dismissed and ignored. But this lack of reaction also casts in sharp relief the reality that pro-Ukraine sentiment in the US is largely a cause bundled in with the rest of the progressive agenda, underpinned by the uniform mouthpiece of a jaded media. The Ukrainian flags one sees out and about rarely reflect a principled stance but rather deference to elite cues.

It will be said that all sides have merely assumed their positions on the barricades to score political points on this deeply human tragedy. We will all be accused of coming to praise Caesar rather than to bury him. This young woman’s death is indeed a human tragedy and a particularly painful one. But to see it as only a tragedy is to dismiss its larger context and to refuse to draw any conclusions. That is willful ignorance.

When a tragedy unveils such a confluence of two deep ideological biases, what it does is reveal the contours of the magnet moving underneath the pattern of American life.

Henry Johnston is a Moscow-based editor who worked in finance for over a decade.

September 8, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

French government collapses

Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has been ousted by the National Assembly in a no-confidence vote

French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou © Getty Images / Ameer Alhalbi / Contributor
RT | September 8, 2025

The French government has fallen after Prime Minister Francois Bayrou lost a crucial confidence vote in parliament on Monday. Bayrou is the second consecutive prime minister under President Emmanuel Macron to be ousted, throwing the nation into political and economic turmoil.

A no-confidence motion in the National Assembly requires at least 288 votes to pass. Monday’s motion received 364 votes, with the left-wing New Popular Front and the right-wing National Rally uniting in opposition to end a months-long standoff over Bayrou’s austerity budget.

Having previously survived eight no-confidence motions, Bayrou called this vote himself, in a bid to secure backing for proposals that forecast almost €44 billion ($52 billion) of savings to ease France’s debt burden before the budget is presented in October.

The prime minister, who has repeatedly warned that France’s national debt poses a “mortal danger” to the country, appeared to acknowledge his fate. In a bitter remark on Sunday, Bayrou lashed out at rival parties that he said “hate each other” yet joined forces “to bring down the government.”

Bayrou is the second French prime minister in succession to be brought down following Michel Barnier’s ejection last December after just three months in office – and the sixth to serve under Macron since he was first elected in 2017.

Bayrou’s ouster reportedly leaves the French president to choose between appointing a Socialist prime minister to steer a budget through parliament, effectively ceding control of domestic policy, or call snap elections that polls suggest favour Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. With Macron’s approval ratings already hitting historic lows, either choice risks further weakening his presidency. Analysts warn that if markets lose confidence in France’s ability to rein in its deficit and mounting debt, the country could face turmoil reminiscent of the UK during the brief Liz Truss premiership.

Public discontent with Macron’s leadership has deepened, with the latest Le Figaro poll showing nearly 80% of French no longer trust the president. Thousands marched through Paris at the weekend demanding Macron’s resignation and carrying placards reading ‘Let’s stop Macron’ and ‘Frexit.’

September 8, 2025 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

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