Tag: politics

Western Support for Terrorists in Iran

This report provides a structured compilation of documented evidence and credible allegations regarding the involvement of Western intelligence agencies (primarily the CIA and MI6) and Israel’s Mossad in supporting militant, separatist, and terrorist activities within the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As of June 14th, both the US and Iran are talking about signing an agreement which would stop the war against Iran. Current indications are that each side has very different expectations on what that agreement contains and what actions are required. In all likelihood these 47 years of attempts by the West and Israel to destroy the Islamic republic, and ideally Iran as a contiguous state, will continue.

This post outlines the known documented evidence and credible allegations regarding the involvement of Western intelligence agencies (primarily the CIA and MI6) and Israel’s Mossad in supporting militant, separatist, and terrorist activities within the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Western interventions in Iran have a long tradition; first invasions by Russia and Britain in the late 19th century, and then the CIA/MI6 overthrow of the democratically elected prime minister of Iran Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953 after he nationalized Iran’s oil industry; using Iranians thugs to install their Shah proxy (a model they attempted to use once again in the riots of 2025/2026). This historical precedent is often cited as the origin of Western state-sponsored efforts to destabilise the Iranian government [12].

Western media have also conducted a long campaign since the Iranian revolution in 1979 to demean the government (which they call the ‘regime”) and often exaggerate human rights abuses. While it is undeniable that the Iranian government has undertaken a significant number of human rights abuses in the past 47 years, they pale in comparison with the mass-murders by Israel, who is considered a Western ‘democratic’ ally of the West, or the brutality of many of the neighbouring Gulf States who have , until 2026 at least, also been Western allies (or perhaps ‘proxies’ might be a better word).

The much-publicised apparent natural death of an Iranian young woman on 13 September 2022, Mahsa Amini who had been ‘escorted’ to the Social Department and Women’s Training Hall by Iranian law enforcement personnel due to ‘non-compliance with hijab regulations’, was extensively used by Western media to condemn the Iranian government’s hijab laws and the ‘regime’ in general, and their apparent brutality against women who disobeyed the hijab law. The outcry in the Western press about the death and attempts to support women in Iran to violently demonstrate against the hijab laws was a prime example of Western media acting as proxies for Western governments attempting to destabilise the Iranian government.

The key issue for the West; particularly the US, Israel, the UK and Germany, is that Iran is a large sophisticated, well-educated and well-armed West Asian country of 93 million people, and is thus a threat to Israel’s 76 years of attempts to dominate West Asia by force, as well of course of being a potential huge source of cheap oil once again, for the West.

Western intelligence consequently feed Western media every negative trope they can find about Iran, and Western media are only too eager to obey their masters.

However Western governments key role to destabilise Iran has largely been through massive sanctions (along with the ‘freezing’ (‘temporary’ theft) of many billions of dollars of Iranian funds by the US), which have been estimated to have killed thousands of Iranians through inadequate nutrition or lack of medical resources, and plunged millions into poverty, in order to foment internal riots against the government . e.g the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s proud claims of destroying the Iranian rial to create a revolution against the Iranian government in 2025.

In addition threats of force, and resourcing of internal discontent have been a constant theme.

What follows is list of just some of the ongoing attempts by Western governments to destabilise Iran.

1. Direct Support for Militant and Terrorist Groups

Jundallah (Balochistan)

  • Secret War Allegations: In 2007, ABC News reported that the U.S. government had been secretly supporting Jundallah, a Sunni militant group that staged deadly attacks against Iranian officials and civilians. U.S. officials stated the relationship was managed to provide “encouragement” and intelligence without direct funding to bypass legal oversight [1].
  • Mossad “False Flag” Recruitment: A 2012 Foreign Policy investigation revealed CIA memos from 2007-2008 describing how Mossad agents posed as CIA officers to recruit Jundallah members in London. The agents used U.S. passports and currency to gain the group’s trust, an operation that reportedly infuriated the Bush administration [2].

Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/MKO)

  • U.S. Training in Nevada: Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained MEK members at a secret Department of Energy site in Nevada starting in 2005. The training included communications, cryptography, small-unit tactics, and weaponry [3]
  • .
  • Assassination Partnership: Reports from NBC News and other outlets have indicated that Israeli intelligence collaborated with the MEK to carry out the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012. While the U.S. denied direct involvement, former officials suggested the U.S. provided critical intelligence to facilitate these operations [3] [4].

Kurdish Separatist Groups (PJAK/PAK)

  • Uprising Support (2026): Recent reporting from CNN and other sources indicates that the CIA has been working to arm and coordinate with Kurdish separatist forces to spark domestic uprisings inside Iran [5].
  • Israeli Military Support: During the 2026 conflict, reports emerged of Israel conducting airstrikes in western Iran specifically to support Kurdish militias attempting to seize border territory [6].

2. State-Sponsored Sabotage and Cyber-Terrorism

Stuxnet (Operation Olympic Games)

  • The First Cyber-Weapon: Stuxnet was a highly sophisticated computer worm developed jointly by the U.S. and Israel. It specifically targeted Siemens industrial control systems at the Natanz nuclear facility, causing nearly 1,000 centrifuges to physically destroy themselves [7].
  • Broader Malware Campaign: Stuxnet was part of a larger suite of state-sponsored malware including Flame, Duqu, and Gauss, designed for cyber-espionage and infrastructure sabotage against Iranian targets [7].

Physical Infrastructure Sabotage

  • Natanz Facility Attacks: The Natanz nuclear site has been the target of multiple physical sabotage operations attributed to Israel, including a major explosion in 2021 and further damage reported in 2025 [8].
  • Energy Infrastructure: Reports have documented at least 17 gas pipeline explosions in Iran in a single year (2011), which intelligence sources linked to a campaign of sabotage intended to demoralize the Iranian system [3].

3. Institutional Destabilization and “Soft War”

Funding of Opposition and “Democracy Promotion”

  • National Endowment for Democracy (NED): The NED has been documented funding various anti-Iran organizations, such as the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI). While framed as democracy promotion, these funds are viewed by the Iranian government and some international observers as tools for political sabotage and election interference [9].
  • USAID Involvement: USAID has been accused of funding prominent anti-regime figures and civil society groups to foster domestic unrest. In 2026, controversies surfaced regarding millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funding directed toward activists like Masih Alinejad for anti-government campaigns [10].

Media and Information Warfare

  • State-Funded Persian Media: The U.S. government funds Voice of America (VOA) Persian and Radio Farda, while the UK funds BBC Persian. These outlets are categorized by the Iranian government as instruments of “soft war,” used to disseminate anti-government content and coordinate protest activities [11].
  • The apparently largely Saudi resourced anti-Iranian government website ‘Iran International’ has also played a significant role in attempting to support the large Iranian diaspora and ferment anti-Iranian issues and has been described as ‘used by Mossad to launder disinformation’.
  • Iran and Russia accused the US and Elon Musk’s Starlink platform of illegally importing 50,000 Starlink terminals into Iran to be used by rioters to coordinate their violent activities in January 2026.
  • The Role of the Iranian Diaspora and Inside Iran
  • In the diaspora, Reza Pahlavi serves as the most prominent figurehead of the Iranian opposition, actively lobbying policymakers in the US, Canada, and Europe to impose tougher sanctions and support regime change
  • According to a Cambridge University Press Assessment he has mobilized diaspora unity through organisations like the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI)
  • Inside Iran, his role is highly contested; while some protesters chant for the monarchy, he faces deep skepticism from an Iranian public wary of a hereditary ruler whose father was a brutal despot linked to the US and Israel and foreign oil companies, returning after decades in exile
  • Critics inside the country view him as a relic of the past whose monarchical ambitions undermine his claims of advocating for a true democracy
  • 2. Sources of Funding and Financial Networks
  • While Pahlavi’s primary advocacy group, NUFDI, officially claims it does not receive direct government funding (nufdiran.org), the ecosystem supporting his movement has historically been intertwined with Western financial initiatives. In 2006, the Bush administration established the $75 million Iran Democracy Fund specifically to aid Iranian opposition groups
  • In addition, his messaging is heavily amplified by Western state-funded media like VOA Persian and Radio Farda, which are financed by US taxpayer dollars
  • Transition plans supported by Pahlavi, such as the Iran Prosperity Project, also serve as focal points for institutional fundraising and diaspora donations
  • 3. Links to the U.S. State Department and Western Institutions
  • Pahlavi maintains deep institutional ties with Washington’s foreign policy establishment, frequently addressing lobbyists and calling for bipartisan US support to achieve a secular Iran
  • His political objectives align seamlessly with the State Department’s “soft war” and democracy promotion strategies, which utilize institutions like USAID to foster domestic unrest. This symbiotic relationship was highlighted when US and other Western government-funded broadcasters actively amplified Pahlavi’s calls for regime change into Iran
  • 4. Support for and from Israel and Western Governments
  • The Shah movement and the Israeli government share a mutual strategic interest in the destabilization and dismantling of the Islamic Republic. Pahlavi has explicitly called for the dismantling of Iran’s leadership with the direct support of the US and Israel
  • He frequently echoes Israeli talking points, condemning any “appeasement” of Tehran and advocating for maximum pressure
  • In return, Israeli media and Western think tanks consistently amplify his voice, viewing him as a credible Iranian counterpart for a post-Islamic Republic transition
  • 5. The Contradiction: Advocating for Foreign Bombing and Civilian Casualties
  • The most glaring contradiction in Pahlavi’s political strategy is his enthusiastic support for US and Israeli military strikes against Iran, which inevitably result in the deaths of the very Iranians he claims to represent. He has faced intense backlash for appearing to cheer for foreign bombing campaigns.
  • When confronted by journalists about the responsibility of sending Iranian citizens to their deaths through calls for foreign intervention, Pahlavi has struggled to provide coherent answers
  • Recognizing the severe damage to his credibility, he has recently attempted to walk back these statements, urging the US and Israel to spare Iranian civilians during military operations
  • However, this contradiction has alienated many of his former supporters inside Iran, who accuse him of encouraging protesters to risk their lives while remaining supportive when US and Israeli bombs kill Iranian civilians

5. Targeted Killings of Nuclear Scientists by Israeli/Mossad Proxies

  1. The 2010–2012 Wave: The initial wave of assassinations targeted key figures including Massoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, utilizing motorcycle-mounted magnetic bombs to eliminate top physicists.
  2. Assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (2020): The father of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in November 2020 using a satellite-controlled, AI-operated machine gun [[4]].
  3. The 2025 Airstrike Campaign: During the 2025 military confrontation, Israeli media reported that airstrikes specifically targeted and killed up to 17 prominent Iranian nuclear scientists [[5]].

High-Profile Political and Military Assassinations

  1. Ismail Haniyeh (2024): The July 2024 assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh inside a guesthouse in Tehran was widely attributed to Mossad explosives [[10]].
  2. IRGC Commanders: The campaign includes the targeted killing of senior military figures, such as the 2011 death of Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam (the “father of Iran’s missile program”) and the 2024 assassination of Mohammad Reza Zahedi in Damascus.

6. Additional Proxy and Separatist Agencies

Jaish ul-Adl (Army of Justice)

  1. Successor to Jundallah: Jaish ul-Adl has claimed responsibility for numerous deadly attacks on IRGC military posts in the Sistan and Baluchestan province throughout 2024 and 2025 [[15]].
  2. Alleged State Sponsorship: Iranian officials and state media explicitly identify Jaish ul-Adl as a proxy force funded and directed by the CIA and Mossad to destabilize Iran’s borders [[13]].

Tondar (Kingdom Assembly of Iran)

  1. Monarchist Militancy: Tondar was responsible for the deadly 2008 Shiraz mosque bombing, and an Iranian court convicted the group and the US administration, citing American support for their terrorist acts [[26]].
  2. Leadership: The group was led by Jamshid Sharmahd, who was arrested by Iranian intelligence in 2020 after directing operations from abroad.

Kurdish Factions (KDPI and Komala)

  1. Border Offensives: Beyond PJAK, Kurdish factions like the KDPI and Komala were actively encouraged and armed by US and Israeli intelligence to launch armed campaigns and seize border towns during the 2025–2026 conflict [[37]].

7. Further Terror Attacks and Internal Sabotage

The “Dissident” Insider Threat

  1. Internal Recruitment: A 2025 ProPublica investigation revealed that Mossad secretly recruited and armed Iranian dissidents to carry out terror attacks and sabotage from within Iran’s borders [[19]].
  2. Air Defense Sabotage: In June 2025, it was reported that Mossad agents executed covert ground operations to actively sabotage Iranian air defenses and military sites just as Israeli airstrikes began [[23]].

Thwarted Plots and Executions

  1. 2023 Missile Industry Plot: In 2023, Iranian authorities announced they had dismantled a major Mossad spy network of at least 14 agents who were planning to sabotage the country’s missile industry [[22]].
  2. 2024 Executions: Furthermore, in early 2024, Iran executed four individuals convicted of plotting sabotage operations on behalf of Israeli intelligence [[20]].

Other Major Attacks

  1. 2018 Ahvaz Military Parade: A coordinated attack on a military parade in Ahvaz was claimed by both ISIS and the Ahvaz National Resistance, highlighting the convergence of jihadist and separatist tactics against the Iranian state.

References

[4] Iran Primer / USIP. (2020). Part 5: Assassinations of Iran Nuclear Scientists. https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2020/dec/02/part-5-assassinations-iran-nuclear-scientists
[5] Anadolu Agency. (2025). Israeli media claims 17 Iranian nuclear scientists killed in recent strikes. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-media-claims-17-iranian-nuclear-scientists-killed-in-recent-strikes-/3607095
[10] Wikipedia. Assassination of Ismail Haniyeh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Ismail_Haniyeh
[13] Press TV. (2025). ‘Jaish al-Adl’ terrorist group as a proxy of CIA and Mossad. https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/07/30/752136/jaish-al-adl-terrorist-group-as-proxy-cia-mossad-destabilize-iran
[15] The Long War Journal. (2024). Jaish al-Adl claims responsibility for twin attacks in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province. https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2024/10/jaish-al-adl-claims-responsibility-for-twin-attacks-in-irans-sistan-and-baluchistan-province.php
[19] ProPublica. (2025). Israel Secretly Recruited Iranian Dissidents to Attack Iran From Within. https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-iran-war-mossad-iranian-recruits
[20] CBS News. (2024). Iran executes 4 convicted of plotting with Israeli intelligence to attack. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-israel-spying-4-executions-alleged-mossad-sabotage-plot/
[22] i24NEWS. (2023). Iran Claims It Thwarted Israel’s Sabotage Attack On Its Missile Program. https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/iran-eastern-states/1693476612-iran-claims-it-thwarted-israel-s-sabotage-attack-on-its-missile-program
[23] Defense One. (2025). Mossad agents sabotaged Iranian defenses as airstrikes began. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/06/israeli-agents-sabotaged-iranian-defenses-airstrikes-began-official-says/406058/
[26] Mehr News Agency. (2024). Iran court orders US, Tondar terrorist group to pay $2.478bn. https://en.mehrnews.com/news/212904/Iran-court-orders-US-Tondar-terrorist-group-to-pay-2-478bn
[37] The New Arab. (2025). How Kurdish groups in Iran are reacting to Israel’s war. https://www.newarab.com/analysis/how-kurdish-groups-iran-are-reacting-israels-war

[1] ABC News. (2007). The Secret War Against Iran. https://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0405/p99s01-duts.html [2] Foreign Policy. (2012). False Flag: Mossad Posed as CIA. https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/01/13/false-flag/ [3] The New Yorker/PBS Frontline. (2012). Our Men in Iran: MEK Training in Nevada. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2012/04/media-watch-report-mko-members-trained-by-us-special-ops-command.html [4] NBC News. (2012). Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists.
 [5] CNN. (2026).CIA working to arm Kurdish forces to spark uprising in Iran. https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/cia-arming-kurds-iran [6] Reuters. (2026). Israel backing Iranian Kurdish plans to seize border areas. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-backing-iranian-kurdish-plans-seize-iran-border-areas-sources-say-2026-03-06/ [7] Wikipedia. Stuxnet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet [8] The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (2025). Israel claims it damaged Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility significantly. https://thebulletin.org/2025/06/israel-claims-it-damaged-irans-natanz-nuclear-facility-significantly-but-questions-remain/ [9] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. (2024). The National Endowment for Democracy: What It Is and What It Does. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/wjbxw/202408/t20240809_11468618.html [10] Niacouncil.org. (2026). Civil Society Condemns Crackdown and Threat of Intervention.
 [11] VOA News. (2019).Western-Based Persian Media Rebuke Iran. https://www.voanews.com/a/middle-east_voa-news-iran_western-based-persian-media-rebuke-iran-harassing-journalists-covering/6180088.html [12] National Security Archive. The CIA’s 1953 Coup in Iran.5. Expanded Campaign of Israeli Assassinations

The Erasure of Palestine and its Populations

Genetics and history prove Palestinians are indigenous Levantine Semites, not “foreign Arabs.” This analysis examines the ICJ-documented reality of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, driven by maximalist “Greater Israel” ideology.

The narrative surrounding Israel and Palestine is frequently obscured by politicized historical myths and euphemistic language. To understand the current reality, one must separate established genetic and historical science from political ideology, and replace diplomatic euphemisms like “decades of conflict” with the precise legal and historical terms documented by international bodies.

This analysis examines the indigenous Semitic heritage of the Levant’s inhabitants, the ideological drivers of maximalist Zionism, and the documented outcomes of these policies on the ground.

Part I: The Historical and Genetic Reality of the Levant

Modern genomics and historical scholarship dismantle the notion of mutually exclusive, alien populations in the Levant. The reality is one of deep, shared indigenous roots.

1. The Historic Levant: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith

In antiquity, the Levant was a diverse mosaic of peoples and belief systems. The ancient Israelites and Judeans were one of many groups—alongside Canaanites, Philistines, Phoenicians, Arameans, and others—who inhabited the region. Judaism, as a distinct, organized religion, evolved over centuries alongside and in interaction with these neighboring cultures. The idea that the ancient Levant was exclusively or uniformly “Jewish” is a modern retrojection; historically, it was a pluralistic region of evolving polytheistic, henotheistic, and monotheistic traditions.

2. Palestinians: Indigenous Levantine Semites, Not “Foreign Arabs”

A persistent political trope is the framing of Palestinians merely as “Arabs” who migrated from the Arabian Peninsula, implicitly casting them as foreign interlopers. This is historically and genetically false.

  • Semitic Continuity: Palestinians are the direct descendants of the ancient indigenous peoples of the Levant (Canaanites, Judeans, Philistines, and others). They are Semites, sharing the same ancestral roots as Jewish peoples. “Arab” is a linguistic and cultural identifier, not a distinct racial or genetic category.
  • The Adoption of Islam: Following the Islamic expansions beginning in the 7th century, the indigenous Semitic population of the Levant gradually adopted the Arabic language and Islamic faith through a centuries-long process of cultural integration, intermarriage, and conversion. By approximately 1200 AD (the Crusader and Ayyubid periods), Islam had firmly consolidated as the predominant cultural and religious identity of the native Levantine population. They did not replace the indigenous people; they are the indigenous people, culturally and religiously transformed over time, much like populations across the Middle East and North Africa.

3. The Genetic Mirror

Peer-reviewed genomic studies confirm this historical continuity. Both Jewish diaspora populations (including Ashkenazi Jews, who carry a mix of Levantine and Southern European ancestry due to historical migration and founder effects) and modern Palestinians share a profound, dominant genetic clustering with the ancient Bronze Age Levant. Genetically, they are closely related branches of the same indigenous tree.

Part II: The Ideological Engine

While genetics and history point to shared indigenous roots, the modern geopolitical reality is driven by exclusionary political ideologies.

1. Zionism and the Erasure of the Native

While early Zionism was framed as a refuge from European antisemitism, its practical implementation in Palestine required the systematic displacement of the existing indigenous population. The foundational outcome of this ideology was the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, during which over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled or fled from their homes, and hundreds of villages were destroyed to ensure a Jewish demographic majority.

2. “Greater Israel” (Eretz Yisrael HaShlema)

This maximalist, ethno-religious ideology asserts that the State of Israel has a divine or historical right to the entirety of the biblical Land of Israel, encompassing the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Gaza, and at times, parts of Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. While not universally held by all Israelis, this ideology has become the dominant driving force behind the modern Israeli right-wing, the settlement movement, and current government policies, directly shaping the strategy of territorial annexation.

Part III: Impacts and Outcomes: Beyond the “Conflict” Euphemism

Describing the situation in Gaza and the West Bank as a “decades-long conflict” between two equal sides is a profound mischaracterization. It obscures a structural reality of occupation, expansion, and systematic removal.

1. Gaza and the West Bank: Documented Ethnic Cleansing

The devastation in Gaza and the ongoing fragmentation of the West Bank are not the accidental byproducts of a “conflict.” They are the result of deliberate, systemic policies.

  • The ICJ and International Law: The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its landmark 2024 provisional measures, found it plausible that Israel’s acts in Gaza could amount to genocide. Furthermore, leading UN Special Rapporteurs, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, and major human rights organizations (including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) have explicitly documented and characterized Israel’s actions—including mass displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and starvation tactics—as ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
  • The West Bank: A parallel, slower-motion ethnic cleansing is occurring in the West Bank through the expansion of illegal settlements, settler violence, revocation of residencies, and the fragmentation of Palestinian land into disconnected, unviable cantons, all designed to make a future Palestinian state geographically impossible.

2. Impacts on Israel

The pursuit of “Greater Israel” has fundamentally compromised Israel’s own stated democratic ideals. To maintain control over millions of stateless Palestinians while preserving a Jewish majority, the state has had to institute a system of legal apartheid, militarize its society, and empower extremist religious factions. This has led to deep internal societal fractures, international isolation, and a perpetual state of moral and political crisis.

3. Impacts on Wider West Asia

  • The Failure of “Normalization”: While some regional states pursued the Abraham Accords, the visceral, documented reality of the assault on Gaza has shattered the illusion that the Palestinian issue could be sidelined. It has re-centered Palestinian liberation as the paramount moral and political cause across the Global South and the wider West Asian region.
  • Regional Destabilization: The unchecked expansion of maximalist Zionist ideology and the resulting humanitarian catastrophes have fueled justified regional resistance, drawing in state and non-state actors and threatening to ignite a broader regional war. The root cause of this instability is not inherent regional “violence,” but the ongoing, unresolved injustice of Palestinian displacement and occupation.

Conclusion: Dismantling the Myth to Face the Reality

We need to look past ‘curated’ narratives to systemic truths. The genetic and historical record is clear: Jews and Palestinians are both indigenous, Semitic peoples of the Levant, bound by a shared ancient ancestry that was diversified over millennia by culture, language, and faith.

The tragedy of the region is not a “clash of civilizations,” but the violent imposition of a modern, maximalist ethno-nationalist ideology upon an existing indigenous population. The devastation in Gaza and the West Bank is not a vague “conflict”; it is a documented, ongoing process of ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering, as recognized by the highest international legal bodies.

Lasting peace and justice in West Asia will not be achieved by perpetuating the myth of Palestinian “foreignness” or by normalizing occupation. It requires the dismantling of the “Greater Israel” paradigm, accountability for documented international crimes, and the recognition of the equal, indigenous rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people on their ancestral land.

Links

Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences

https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-92971730276-8

Israel must comply with key ICJ ruling ordering it do all in its power to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza

https://amnesty.org.nz/israel-must-comply-with-icj-ruling

Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem

https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176

Disclaimer: This analysis is based on current international legal findings (including the ICJ), peer-reviewed population genetics, and mainstream historical scholarship. It is intended for educational and analytical purposes.

The Echo-Chamber

Analyzing Coordinated Messaging in Western Foreign Policy & Media

The phenomenon of Western political leaders broadcasting near-identical statements on foreign policy is not a coincidence of shared ‘values’, but rather the result of a highly sophisticated and deliberate system of political synchronization. This commentary explores how “scripted policy” functions across various global flashpoints and how Western media outlets serve as a crucial amplification mechanism for these government narratives.

The table below illustrates a remarkable uniformity in response to an incident involving a supposed attempted assassination of Donald Trump in April 2026. Leaders from Germany, Estonia, France, the United Kingdom, and Greece all used the specific phrase “Political violence has no place in a democracy.”

LeaderKey Phrase UsedStrategic Intent
Friedrich Merz (Germany)“Violence has no place in a democracy.”Reaffirming the rule of law and democratic norms.
Kaja Kallas (Estonia)“Political violence has no place in a democracy.”Aligning with the “Free World” consensus.
Emmanuel Macron (France)“Violence has no place in democracy.”Projecting a unified Western front against instability.
Keir Starmer (UK)“Political violence in any form has no place…”Demonstrating continuity in UK-US relations.

This by no means unique linguistic alignment serves several strategic purposes. This synchronisation is not merely about the sentiment; it is about the signalling their total conformity to the agreed policy. By using identical phrasing, these leaders attempts to signal to both domestic and international audiences that the “Western Alliance” speaks with a single, ‘unbreakable’ voice.

The Ukraine: “As Long As It Takes” Mantra

Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the phrase “as long as it takes” has become the official linguistic mantra for NATO affiliated and G7 nations. This script was designed to project strategic patience and deter Russian calculations that Western support would eventually fatigue.

“We will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.” — G7 Leaders’ Communiqué

However, as domestic political pressures mount, particularly in the United States, the script has begun to fracture. President Biden’s shift to “as long as we can“ represents a rare “glitch” in the coordinated messaging, revealing the underlying tensions that the scripts are designed to hide.

In coordination with this Ukraine political message, Western media appear required to state as one that Russia’s attack on Ukraine was not just an invasion, but a ‘full-scale’ invasion.

Israel and Gaza: The “Right to Defend Itself” Premise

In the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the phrase “Israel has the right to defend itself” has served as the foundational premise for almost every official statement from Washington, London, Berlin, and Brussels. This specific wording is used to establish a legal and moral framework before any subsequent concerns about humanitarian issues or civilian casualties are addressed.

This attempt at legitimisation of Western policies by repetition is often managed through G7 Foreign Ministers’ statements, which serve as the “master script” for individual national press releases. This ensures that even when there are internal disagreements about the scale of military operations, the public-facing message remains monolithic.

Venezuela and Iran: The ‘Legitimacy‘ Script

In Venezuela and Iran, the messaging shifts from “defense” to “legitimacy.” The coordinated demand that “Maduro must step down” or the synchronized expressions of “solidarity with the brave people of Iran” are tools of diplomatic pressure.

  1. Venezuela: The recognition of Juan Guaidó in 2019 was a masterclass in scripted diplomacy, with over 50 nations releasing nearly identical statements of recognition within a 48-hour window.
  2. Iran: During the 2022 protests, Western foreign ministers utilized a shared vocabulary of “regime brutality” and “universal rights,” often timed to coincide with the rollout of coordinated sanctions packages.
  3. The Iran wars: Similarly, in the recent war by the US and Israel against Iran we are continually reminded that Iran’s government is a ‘regime’ (implying illegitimacy) whereas Israel (despite its brutal suppression of its Palestinian population) is a legitimate democracy.

The Media as an Echo Chamber: Manufacturing Consent

The effectiveness of these diplomatic scripts relies heavily on the uncritical repetition by major Western media outlets, reminiscent of the age-old dictum of propaganda- repeat the lies frequently enough and people will believe them.

Rather than acting as independent watchdogs providing balanced reporting from both sides so that its readership can fully understand the issues , ‘mainstream’ media organisations often function as “stenographers of state,” a phenomenon famously described by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman as “Manufacturing Consent.”

Mechanisms of Media Amplification

  • Headline Synchronization: Outlets like The New York Times, BBC, CNN, and Reuters frequently adopt the exact terminology used in government press releases. For instance, the phrase “unprovoked and unjustified” became a standard descriptor for the Ukraine invasion across nearly all mainstream Western news reports within hours of the first official statements.
  • Passive Voice and Framing: Media coverage often mirrors the diplomatic framing of allies. In the case of Gaza, reports frequently use passive voice when describing Palestinian casualties (e.g., “Palestinians died”) while using active voice for Israeli deaths, (e.g. Israeli “civilians were killed by the Iran proxy, Hamas’) effectively softening the impact of the government’s military policies.
  • The “Expert” Circuit: News programs often invite former government officials (political or military) or think-tank analysts who are themselves part of the diplomatic synchronization process. These “experts” reinforce the official talking points, creating a closed loop of information that excludes dissenting perspectives.
  • The “Source”: Where exactly do the original mantras for media and politicians come from? Who develops them?-(what agency and what personnel and what location?) How did the process to pre-agree on regurgitating the same phrases come into existence?
  • Nato’s ‘Cognitive Warfare” programme provides some insights into the process of manipulating the minds of the public to support what otherwise might have been a very unpopular war in Ukraine. The very fact that Western politicians and military have felt the need to manipulate Western public opinion in this way makes it clear that they themselves have significant reservations about the legitimacy of NATO’s and their own actions.

The Impact of Repetition

By constantly repeating these phrases, the media helps to normalize them, transforming a specific political position into an “obvious truth.” When the public hears “Israel has the right to defend itself” or “as long as it takes” repeated across every major news channel, it becomes difficult to question the underlying assumptions of those policies. This repetition creates a “truth-by-repetition” effect, where the volume and frequency of the message replace the need for critical analysis.

NATO’s Cognitive Warfare Programme (CWP) is a blueprint for large-scale perception management. Framed as a defense against authoritarian propaganda, the CWP weaponizes the same tools those same ‘authoritarian regime’s’ use: algorithmic amplification, behavioral microtargeting, and narrative laundering.

NATO’s CWP doesn’t just counter lies; it engineers consent by drowning out dissent under the banner of “strategic truth.

NATO condemns Russian/Chinese disinformation while running classified PSYOPS that manipulate global audiences.

Echo-Chamber Escalation NATO’s AI-driven propaganda tools (e.g., deepfake-enabled “fact checks”) may well be being repurposed to silence dissidents as “foreign agents.”

NATO’s CWP therefore isn’t just a foreign problem—it’s a warning. When institutions normalize cognitive manipulation, every power structure follows suit; they’re part of a global infowar arms race where truth is collateral damage.

What Can You Do?

Follow NATO’s critics (not just its PR).

Archive evidence of narrative shifts over time

Demand transparency—from both NATO and others

“The battlefield is your mind, and the war is already live.” —Anonymous CWP whistleblower

Conclusion

The use of identical statements in Western foreign policy, amplified by a compliant media, is thankfully a double-edged sword. Whilst its intention is to project unity and strength, it can also create a perception of insincerity, lack of nuance and manipulation.

These scripts and their media echo chambers are designed as the “glue” of an increasingly fragile and fractured Western alliance.

But when every leader and every news anchor says exactly the same thing, the message begins to sound less like a principled coordinated stand and more like a pre-recorded propaganda broadcast.

Links

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/big-data/articles/10.3389/fdata.2024.1452129/full

Israel’s Murderous Collective Psychosis

Expulsion: How Israel’s Undefined Borders, Messianic Ideology, and Permanent War Economy Manufacture Consent for Genocide

The 82%

In March 2025, a Penn State University survey published in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper delivered the following article: 82% of Israeli Jews support the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, with 47% endorsing the killing of all inhabitants in conquered enemy cities—referencing biblical conquest narratives .

A separate Israel Democracy Institute poll found that over 80% of Israeli Jews believe Israel should consider Palestinian civilian suffering in Gaza only “to a very small extent” when planning military operations .

These figures represent not a spontaneous reaction to October 7, 2023, but the culmination of a 76-year project since the Nakba of 1948 of historical erasure, legalized discrimination, and ideological indoctrination.

Israel’s refusal to define its borders, its dependence on permanent war, the systematic theft of Palestinian land, and the rise of messianic religious extremism have all converged to create what researchers call a “state of permanent potential expansion”—where ethnic cleansing is not an aberration but a structural necessity. A murderous ideology combining white supremacism , ancient Yiddish messianist texts , the collective trauma response to the Holocaust and extreme violence and sadism.

Part I: The Foundation of Erasure—1948 and the Nakba

The Template of Dispossession

The Nakba—the 1948 expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians—established the blueprint for Israeli land acquisition that continues today. Immediately after that expulsion, Israel controlled 20 million dunams (20,000 km²) of Palestinian land—over three-quarters of all land in Palestine . This was not merely military occupation but the beginning of a legalized system of dispossession.

The “Transfer Committee,” headed by Jewish National Fund (JNF) director Yosef Weitz and approved by David Ben-Gurion, implemented a plan to destroy Palestinian villages and prevent refugee return . Between 360-429 villages were destroyed, with 345 new Jewish communities established on refugee land by 1953 .

The 1950 Absentee Property Law transformed de facto seizure into de jure ownership. This law defined “absentees” so broadly that it included Palestinians who were inside Israeli-controlled territory but temporarily away from their homes . The law allowed the Custodian of Absentee Property to sell confiscated land to the Development Authority, which then transferred it to the Jewish National Fund (JNF)—whose charter restricts land to Jewish ownership only .

The Absence of Borders: A Strategic Choice

When David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s establishment on May 14, 1948, he deliberately refused to specify borders . This was not administrative negligence but strategic design. To this day, Israel has never defined its international borders beyond those with Egypt and Jordan, while state maps—including those presented by Prime Minister Netanyahu at the United Nations—show Israel covering the full expanse from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea .

The 1949 Armistice Lines were explicitly designated as “without prejudice to future territorial settlements” , creating legal ambiguity that Israel has exploited for 76 years. This refusal to define borders creates what scholars call a “state of permanent potential expansion”—where territory is never finally acquired, only temporarily held, with further expansion always justified as security necessity.

Part II: The Architecture of Discrimination—Legal Apartheid from 1948 to Present

Phase 1: Military Rule (1948-1966)

Palestinian citizens of Israel were subjected to military government until 1966, living under the same British Mandate Defense Laws that Zionists had previously denounced as “inhuman and unjust” . During this period, Israel stripped Palestinian Arabs of a further estimated one million dunams of land through “security” designations and cultivation laws .

Phase 2: The Dual Legal System (1967-Present)

After 1967, Israel described capturing the West Bank and Gaza as “finishing the job”—the job being the ethnic cleansing begun in 1948 . The same pattern of dispossession was repeated, but without even the pretense of equality:

  • Jewish settlers in the West Bank live under Israeli civil law with full rights and protections
  • Palestinians are governed by over 1,800 military orders enforced through military courts with conviction rates exceeding 99%
  • This meets the legal definition of apartheid: an institutionalized regime of systematic racial oppression

The JNF’s Role in Structural Discrimination

The Jewish National Fund(JNF) owns 13% of Israeli land and manages another 80% through the Israel Land Administration, giving it control over 93% of all land in Israel . Its policies explicitly restrict land to Jews only. A 1961 Covenant between the JNF and Israeli government formalized this apartheid structure . Even when the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that this discrimination was illegal (Katzir-Qaadan case), the state simply offered to compensate the JNF with equal amounts of land to maintain Jewish-only ownership .

The 2018 Nation-State Law: ‘Legalising’ Supremacy

The “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” (2018) constitutionalised the hierarchy established in 1948.

The Basic Law:

  • Declares Jewish settlement a national value that the state must encourage and promote
  • States that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”
  • This makes racially segregated housing official state policy, completing the trajectory from the 1950 Absentee Property Law to constitutional apartheid

Part III: The Permanent War Economy

Israel’s economy is structurally dependent on military conflict.

  • Military spending reached 30.46% of GDP in 1975 and averaged 11.8% from 1960-2024—nearly triple the world average of 2.2%
  • In 2024, military spending hit $46.5 billion (8.78% of GDP), second only to Ukraine globally
  • Defense exports reached $13.1 billion in 2023, representing 2.5% of total GDP and 100% growth since 2018

The Gaza Laboratory

Gaza serves a dual economic function: testing ground and showroom for Israeli military technology. As one analysis notes, “Gaza has become the world’s largest laboratory for drone assassinations and mass killing,” where Palestinians serve as “human test subjects” for commercialized cruelty . Each military offensive—from Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) to Operation Protective Edge (2014) to the current genocide—acts as a product demonstration for international buyers.

Weapon Diplomacy

Arms exports function as foreign policy tools. Between 2014-2018, Israel was the world’s 8th largest weapons exporter (3.1% of global arms exports) . After the 2020 Abraham Accords, military exports to Arab states surged, reaching record highs of $12.5 billion in 2022 . This creates a feedback loop: military operations against Palestinians generate “combat-proven” technologies that are exported globally, with profits funding further military development.

The Constant War Machine

Israel has maintained continuous military operations since 1948, with major invasions and campaigns occurring in every decade:

Lebanon: Six Invasions in 50 Years :

  • 1978: Operation Litani—20,000 troops occupied southern Lebanon
  • 1982: “Peace for Galilee”—full invasion reaching Beirut, 60,000 troops, 800 tanks
  • 1993: Operation Accountability—displacing 500,000 civilians
  • 1996: Operation Grapes of Wrath—Qana massacre killed 106 civilians in UN compound
  • 2006: July War—34-day conflict with Hezbollah
  • 2024: Third Lebanon War—ground invasion following pager attacks
  • 2025/2026 Current ground invasion with recent temporary cease-fire (April 2026)

Gaza: The Never-Ending Campaign:
Since Hamas’s 2006 election, Israel has conducted Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), Operation Protective Edge (2014), Operation Guardian of the Walls (2021), Operation Breaking Dawn (2022), and Operation Swords of Iron (2023-present—ongoing genocide).

Part IV: Paramilitary Settler Violence

Settler violence is not random criminality but systematic, politically-motivated terrorism designed to expand territorial control and increasingly formally supported by Israeli Defence Force personel and weaponry.

Historical Evolution:

  • 1980s: Settler violence emerged as a “key factor undermining Palestinian security and livelihoods”
  • 2005-2008: The “price tag” strategy emerged after Israel’s Gaza disengagement, with settlers exacting “prices” against Palestinians in retaliation for any restrictions on settlement expansion
  • 2023-2024: Massive surge in violence. Since October 2023, The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has documented 1,536 settler attacks resulting in 152 Palestinian casualties and 1,226 property damage incidents

The Pattern of Violence:
Settler attacks follow a clear template: physical assaults, arson of homes and mosques, uprooting olive trees, stealing harvests, and blocking access to land. Between January and October 2024, settlers vandalized over 26,100 Palestinian-owned trees . In March 2024 alone, at least seven Palestinians were shot and killed by settlers—the highest monthly fatality count in a decade .

State Complicity:
Israeli forces are frequently present during attacks but refuse to intervene until Palestinians defend themselves . The Israeli government has accelerated the legalization of outposts that serve as bases for violence—regulating 30 illegal outposts in a single day in March 2025 . Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has explicitly called for annexation and dismantling the Palestinian Authority, which has unsurprisingly emboldened settler groups who view displacement as a religious duty .

Part V: The Rise of Messianic Power—Theological Extremism as State Policy

The Demographic and Political Transformation

Over the past ten years Israel has experienced a profound demographic and political shift driven by the explosive growth of religious populations:

Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Growth:

  • The Haredi community numbers 1,335,000 (13.6% of the population) with a 4% annual growth rate—nearly triple the general Jewish population’s 1.4%
  • Due to a fertility rate of 6.4 children per woman, half of the Haredi sector is under age 16
  • Projections indicate Haredim will constitute 16% of Israel’s population by 2030, and 32% of all Israelis by 2065

Religious Zionist Radicalization:
While Haredim are growing demographically, Religious Zionism has undergone ideological radicalization. The movement that began with Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook’s messianic theology has transformed from a moderate political force into the driver of relentless territorial expansion .

From Fringe to Mainstream: The Messianic Takeover

The January 28, 2024 “Victory Conference” marked a watershed moment. At Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, 10 cabinet ministers and 27 Knesset members (nearly one-quarter of parliament) gathered to call for:

  • The conquest of Gaza
  • Expulsion of its Palestinian population
  • Renewal of Jewish settlement in Gaza and Northern Samaria

Speakers quoted the Book of Numbers: “Then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land”—a Blibical Old Testament ‘commandment’ interpreted literally to justify ethnic cleansing .

Netanyahu’s Transformation of Likud:
Benjamin Netanyahu deliberately transformed Likud from a secular nationalist party into a vehicle for religious extremism. As Hebrew University political scientist Gayil Talshir documents, Netanyahu “took a right-wing, national-oriented, liberal party and pulled it hard to the edge,” introducing “extremist religious and messianic elements into the heart of Likud” .

The Temple Mount Movement: Eschatology as Foreign Policy

The Temple Mount movement exemplifies how messianic ideology has been weaponized for territorial expansion. Once considered radical fringe, it has become mainstream through government support:

Ideological Evolution:

  • Pre-1967: Visiting the Temple Mount was forbidden by all leading rabbis as violating Jewish law
  • 1996: The Committee of Yesha Rabbis ruled that Jews “are permitted and even encouraged to enter the Temple Mount” to prevent territorial compromise
  • 2005: The Gaza disengagement caused “the final breakdown of the Kookist interpretation,” making the Temple a “substitute for the messianic vision”
  • 2020s: Support among Likud MKs grew “from virtually nil to almost half”

Government Funding and Support:

  • The Temple Institute received approximately $361,000 from the Ministry of Education and $210,000 from the Ministry of Culture and Sports between 2010-2015
  • Israeli public schools “indoctrinate children” into the movement, “forcefully exposing students to the Temple movements’ versions of history, ideology and Jewish law regarding the Temple Mount”
  • By 2016, Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau publicly declared he wanted to see a temple built in the Noble Sanctuary

Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Ascent:
The appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir (former disciple of Meir Kahane) as Minister of National Security represents the ultimate fusion of messianic ideology and state power. Ben-Gvir, who was convicted of supporting terrorism and inciting racism, now oversees the police force that once investigated him .

In June 2024, Ben-Gvir declared: “We say in the simplest way, it’s ours” regarding the Temple Mount, adding “We are the masters of Jerusalem and all of the land of Israel” . This is not religious fundamentalism but ultra-nationalism using religion as justification—what scholar Motti Inbari calls “theocratic post-Zionism” .

Part VI: Manufacturing Consent—Education, Media, and the Psychology of Denial

Educational Indoctrination

Israeli education systematically suppresses the Nakba and cultivates militarized nationalism:

  • Military jargon penetration: Classrooms use military terminology that “trivializes military discourse and mode of thinking”
  • Pseudo-military memorial services for fallen soldiers socialize children into militarized nationalism
  • School excursions to military bases and the “Next Generation” (HaDor HaBa) programs cultivate “civilian soft militarism”
  • Textbooks that mention massacres like Deir Yassin justify them because “the slaughter of friendly Palestinians brought about the flight of other Palestinians which enabled the establishment of a coherent Jewish state”
  • The 2011 Nakba Law criminalizes historical truth in educational settings

State-Sponsored Historical Revisionism

Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who documented Nakba atrocities, revealed that Israel’s Defense Ministry operates a secret department (Malmab) that systematically removes historical documents from archives to prevent documentation of 1948 atrocities . Morris himself was denied access to documents he had previously quoted, with archivists stating simply: “now the documents are closed” . This represents what scholars term “memoricide”—the systematic destruction of collective memory .

Media Manufacturing Consent

Research from UCLA’s Study of Hate demonstrates how media framing reinforces educational indoctrination :

  • British media used emotive terms like “atrocities,” “slaughter,” and “massacre” 11 times more frequently for Israeli victims than Palestinian victims, despite disproportionate death tolls
  • 80% of British media articles framed the conflict as “Israel-Hamas war,” aligning with Israeli-preferred narratives that obscure the occupation’s structural violence
  • Israeli attacks were described vaguely while Palestinian actions included weaponry specifications in 99.3% of articles versus 20.5% for IDF attacks

Israeli domestic media has become even more extreme. Channel 14 has been accused by human rights organizations of “incitement to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity” .

The Psychological Mechanism of Selective Trauma

The system operates through what researchers call “competing historical truths” where empathy is systematically directed toward one group and denied to another . By suppressing the Nakba and framing Palestinians as eternal enemies, Israeli society maintains what psychologist Vamik Volkan terms “chosen trauma”—the selection of historical wounds (the Holocaust) that justify present aggression, while denying the other’s trauma (the Nakba) .

The Penn State study found that 65% of Israeli Jews believe in a modern-day “Amalek” (biblical enemy), with 93% believing the commandment to “wipe out the memory of Amalek” applies today . This transforms ethnic cleansing from a historical crime into a divine obligation, with Palestinians cast as successors to biblical enemies.

Part VII: The Self-Perpetuating Cycle—Connecting All Threads

Each element of Israeli/Zionist ‘lore’ reinforces the others:

1. Undefined Borders Enable Constant Expansion

Without defined borders, every military operation can be framed as border security rather than foreign invasion. The messianic belief in “Greater Land of Israel” sanctifies the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean as divine judgement, making border definition not just politically difficult but theologically impossible .

2. Permanent War Requires Permanent Enemies

The military economy requires constant conflict to maintain funding and test technologies. As the Security in Context analysis notes, “Israel has positioned itself as a global exemplar in urban militarism and securitization, leveraging its experience in the Palestinian territories” . This creates an incentive for military escalation rather than diplomatic resolution or de-escalation.

3. Discrimination Legitimizes Dispossession

The 82% support for expelling Palestinians connects directly to the economic system. When Finance Minister Smotrich states that Ben-Gurion’s “mistake” was not “finishing the job” in 1948 , he articulates the logical conclusion of the permanent war economy: complete territorial control requires demographic transformation.

4. Settler Violence as Paramilitary Enforcement

Systematic settler attacks are used as irregular forces for territorial expansion, operating with state complicity. The 1,536 attacks since October 2023 are not aberrations but policy implementation by other means.

5. Messianism Provides Theological Justification

The messianist right has captured the education system, media, and legal structures to produce the 82% consensus. As Gayil Talshir, professor of political science at Hebrew University observes, Netanyahu has become both master and marionette of this system—using messianists for political survival while being forced to conform to their agenda .

6. The Feedback Loop to Maintain the Murderous Onslaught

The feedback loop is complete: military operations generate “combat-proven” technologies for export → export revenues fund further military R&D (4.5% of GDP—highest in OECD) → military service socializes citizens into militarized nationalism → this produces public support (82%) for further military operations → which justify further territorial expansion under “security” pretexts.

The Unbroken Chain from 1948 to 2024

The 82% support for expulsion, the settler violence, the media complicity, and the educational indoctrination are not aberrations but the logical culmination of a system established in 1948. The Nakba was not a historical event but a template for ongoing dispossession—legalized through the Absentee Property Law, normalized through education, justified through religious ideology, and enforced through settler violence.

As the Penn State researchers noted, October 7 “unleashed demons that have been nurtured over decades in the media and in the legal and educational systems” . Those demons were born in 1948, when Israel chose not to define its borders, and have been fed by every military operation, every land confiscation, and every act of discrimination since.

The “Victory Conference” warning was clear: if Netanyahu compromises on territory, he will be replaced by someone who won’t. The messianists have “cracked the genetic code of how to control the political system in Israel,” offering Netanyahu “great respect and the role of leader of the people” while receiving “dramatic control of the deeper structures of society: the education system, the media, the judiciary, the economy and of course the occupied territories” .

The 82% are not naturally evil individuals. They are the product of a system that has, for three generations, taught them that Palestinian suffering is instrumental to Jewish security, that ethnic cleansing is divine commandment, and that permanent war is the only possible condition.

Until this system is dismantled—its borders defined, its military economy transformed, its messianist ideology challenged, and its historical truths acknowledged—the cycle of dispossession will continue, with each generation finding new justifications for the ancient crime of 1948.

While the U.N. and the West push for a ‘two-state solution” and a return to the 1967 borders, the reality is that a new Palestine is no longer a viable economic or security option because of the destruction caused by Israel in the intervening years. Only a single state solution is now possible. A state where Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in peace, and where democratic rights for all citizens are respected and upheld.

That will require a comprehensive re-education programme for the 80% Israelis who currently favour genocide to learn how to respect those who they have been conditioned to consider as ‘other”. It can be done, and post-apartheid South Africa can serve as a somewhat imperfect model for this process.

Sources and Further Reading

Polling Data and Public Opinion:

Historical Documentation:

Economic Analysis:

Messianism and Politics:

Education and Media:

Settler Violence:

Demographic Data:

This article synthesizes peer-reviewed research, UN reports, and investigative journalism to present a comprehensive analysis of the structural factors behind current Israeli public opinion. All statistics and claims are linked to verifiable sources.

How Gulf Oil Disruptions Threaten Australia and New Zealand’s Energy Security

The Global Context: A Crisis Without Precedent

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created what the International Energy Agency calls “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market” . Flows through the Strait—normally carrying 20 million barrels daily—have fallen to “a trickle,” with oil exports from Gulf producers dropping from approximately 20 million barrels per day to just 3.8 mb/d in early April .

This isn’t just about crude oil. The crisis has triggered unprecedented price spikes in refined products, with Singapore middle distillate prices reaching all-time highs above $290/barrel . For Australia and New Zealand—nations at the end of global supply chains—the implications are immediate and severe.

Price Forecasts: What to Expect by June 2026

Given that the war against Iran by Israel and the US is an existential one for Iran- i.e. Israel, and likely the US’s intent, is to destroy Iran as a cohesive state and break it into statelets who can no longer pose a threat to Israel’s Greater Israel project or disrupt future US control over Iranian oil, any peace agreement for Iran must include continued control over the State of Hormuz to ensure the state of Iran’s continued viability. It is unlikely that the US will concede to this in the short to medium term, especially given the control that Israel currently has over US foreign policy.

Additionally, should the US attempt further substantial attacks on Iranian infrastructure after the ceasefire likely ends on May 20th 2026, Iran has promised to destroy other Gulf States energy infrastructure.

If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed or severely constrained through June 2026 or longer, energy markets face a prolonged supply crisis with cascading price effects:

Crude Oil and Refined Product Prices

ProductCurrent/Recent PriceJune 2026 Forecast (Hormuz Closed)Source
Brent Crude~$103/bbl (March avg)$115+/bbl (EIA peak forecast for Q2 2026)
Singapore Gasoil (Diesel)$192/bbl (April)$200-250+/bbl (IEA alternative scenario)
Singapore Jet FuelSurged 114% since Feb 28$250-300+/bbl (record highs sustained)
VLSFO (Bunker Fuel)S$2.30/litre (Singapore)S$2.50-3.00+/litre (competing demand from refiners)
Australian Retail DieselAUD $3.20+/litreAUD $3.50-4.00+/litre (potential doubling if crisis persists)
Australian Retail Petrol~$2.20/litre (post-excise cut)AUD $2.50-3.00/litre
US Retail Diesel~$5.80/gallon (April peak)$6.00-7.00+/gallon

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has presented two scenarios: a base case assuming gradual resumption of Hormuz flows by mid-year, and an alternative “prolonged conflict” case where “energy markets and economies around the world need to brace for significant disruptions in the months to come”. Under the prolonged conflict scenario, physical crude prices could sustain levels near $150/bbl, with refined products trading at unprecedented premiums .

As of mid-April 2026, oil futures traders are maintaining an almost constant West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price per barrel of around $100 US, while real Dated oil prices hover around the $140 mark. Futures traders are for some reason responding to oft repeated wild claims by Trump that victory, a peace agreement or at least an opening of the Straits, is imminent.

The IEA estimates it will take 2 years for global oil supplies to return to their previous levels once the Strait is reopened because of the extensive damage to Gulf refineries, storage facilities and docks.

Key Price Drivers

  • Diesel shortage structural: The IEA estimates 3-4 million barrels per day of diesel supply loss (5-12% of global consumption) directly tied to Hormuz disruptions
  • Refinery capacity offline: Middle East and Asian refineries cut runs by ~6 mb/d in April, tightening global product markets
  • Brent-WTI spread widening: The spread reached $12/bbl in March and is projected to peak at $15/bbl in April, reflecting Asian supply anxiety

Australia: The Diesel Nation at Breaking Point

The Dependency Problem

Australia is perhaps the most vulnerable developed nation to a liquid fuel emergency. In FY2021, 91% of all fuel consumed in Australia was imported—including 68% as refined products and imported crude for our remaining refineries .

Over the past 20 years, Australia like many other Western countries has substantially reduced the number of oil refineries on shore, opting instead for those refineries to become solely storage facilities for distilled oil products; predominantly from Asia. Two active refineries remain in Australia with the smaller one recently impacted by a refinery fire.

Australia sits at the end of a complex supply chain stretching thousands of kilometers from Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, and Japan. While only a small fraction of their diesel imports come directly from the Middle East, almost half of the crude oil for production of that diesel originates in the Middle East when traced back through those Asian refineries.

The Diesel Consumption Profile

Australia’s economy runs on diesel. In 2025, the nation consumed approximately 35 billion litres of diesel—far exceeding the 15 billion litres of petrol and 10 billion litres of aviation fuel . The consumption breakdown reveals critical vulnerabilities:Table

SectorDiesel ShareAnnual ConsumptionVulnerability Level
Mining40% of total diesel~14 billion litresCRITICAL
Road Transport/Trucking24%~8.4 billion litresHIGH
Agriculture8%~2.8 billion litresHIGH
Manufacturing7%~2.5 billion litresMEDIUM
Marine/RailSignificant~3+ billion litresMEDIUM
Passenger Vehicles~25% of remainder~4+ billion litresMEDIUM

Australia has one of the highest per capita diesel demands in the world—7.4 barrels per person annually—far exceeding the US and other major economies .

The Refinery Crisis

Australia’s domestic refining capacity has collapsed. Five refineries closed over the last decade, leaving just two operational: Ampol’s Lytton refinery in Brisbane and Viva’s Geelong refinery in Victoria. These facilities were already struggling before the current crisis—and then came the April 2026 fire at Geelong.

The fire at Viva Energy’s Geelong refinery—built in the 1950s—shut down critical units. As analyst Kevin Morrison noted: “This creates the conditions for higher prices, as it pushes up international demand for refined products when supply is massively constrained. It could not happen at a worse time.” Victoria alone consumes 252,000 barrels of fuel daily—41% diesel, 22% jet fuel—and now faces sourcing these volumes from already-tight Asian markets.

The structural problem? Our remaining refineries are configured to produce mostly petrol rather than aviation fuel and diesel—precisely the fuels most critical for agriculture, road freight, mining, and defense .

Stockholding: The 90-Day Myth

Australia has been in breach of International Energy Agency (IEA) obligations since 2012. The IEA requires 90 days of net import coverage; Australia holds just 68 IEA days, and when measured against actual consumption, this equates to roughly 30-34 days of real fuel security .

The government counts “fuel in transit”—on foreign-flagged tankers in foreign ports—toward reserves. But as the Australia Institute notes: “In the event of a global emergency, there is no guarantee that the oil that Australia has been promised access to… would be practically accessible.” These ships are not Australian vessels; they sail under foreign flags and owe no allegiance to Australian fuel security.

With the Strait closed, Australia is now pulling diesel along some of the longest and most expensive trade routes in the world—13,000-mile journeys from the US Gulf Coast taking up to two months .

Mining Sector: The $4.5 Billion Diesel Addiction

The mining industry is Australia’s most diesel-exposed sector, consuming approximately 9.6 billion litres annually—roughly 40% of national diesel consumption and 10% of total national energy use . The sector operates more than 50,000 large diesel-powered trucks, each consuming approximately 900,000 litres annually .

Cost Impact Calculations:

  • At pre-crisis diesel prices (~AUD $1.75/litre), a large mine’s annual fuel bill for a 200hp tractor running 1,500 hours was ~$74,000
  • At current prices (~AUD $2.25-2.50/litre), that same operation costs $100,000-112,000 annually—a 35-50% increase
  • If prices reach $3.50-4.00/litre by June, costs could double from the original baseline

According to S&P Global and BMO estimates using Wood Mackenzie data, every 10% increase in oil prices drives mining cost increases of:

  • Iron ore: +4.2% mining costs
  • Copper: +3.5% mining costs
  • Gold: +2% mining costs

With crude oil potentially averaging $100+/bbl (47% above 2025 average), mining costs could rise 16-20% for bulk commodities .

Operational Risks: The mining industry faces a shutdown timeline measured in weeks if diesel supplies are interrupted:

  • Best-positioned mines: 4-8 weeks of operational capacity
  • Typical remote diesel-heavy mines: 2-6 weeks before curtailment
  • Weakest operations: Days to 2 weeks

The ASX Materials Index has already plunged 20.3% since the conflict began, with fund managers dumping stocks amid fears of fuel shortages forcing production cuts .

Agriculture: Harvest Season Crisis

Australian agriculture consumes approximately 2.5 billion litres of diesel annually, with diesel accounting for 84% of on-farm energy consumption . The crisis has hit at the worst possible time—during harvest season when fuel demand peaks .

Impact on Farm Economics:

  • A farm using 80,000 litres annually faced fuel costs of ~$140,000 at $1.75/litre pre-crisis
  • At current $2.25+/litre, costs have jumped to $180,000+ annually—a $40,000+ increase per farm
  • If diesel reaches $3.50/litre by June, that same farm faces $280,000 annual fuel costs—double pre-crisis levels

Farmers are already making critical decisions about whether to proceed with crops given uncertainty about diesel allocations later in the year . Adding diesel and freight costs means nearly 60% of farmers’ cost base is increasing rapidly .

The Fuel Tax Credits Scheme (FTCS)—which provides AU$4.5 billion annually to mining and AU$1.3 billion to agriculture—has become a critical but increasingly inadequate buffer .

Food Supply Chain: From Farm to Shelf

Australia’s food supply chain is diesel-dependent at every stage:

  • Production: Tractors, harvesters, irrigation pumps
  • Processing: Generators, machinery
  • Distribution: Road trains, trucking (24% of national diesel consumption)

Higher diesel costs cascade through the food system:

  • Transport costs increase directly with fuel prices
  • Processing costs rise due to diesel-powered equipment
  • Retail prices must absorb these increases or face margin compression

The Australian Industry Group warns that disruption to fuel markets creates cascading supply chain impacts, with businesses already reporting fuel-related operational challenges .

Tourism and Aviation

The tourism sector faces a triple hit:

  1. Jet fuel costs: Singapore jet fuel surged 114% since February 28
  2. Airfare increases: AirAsia X has increased fares by up to 40% due to fuel costs
  3. Ground transport: Higher petrol and diesel costs affect rental cars, tour buses, and visitor travel patterns

Air New Zealand has already canceled 1,100 flights impacting over 44,000 passengers between March and early May due to fuel cost pressures .

The Australian Government Response

On March 30, 2026, the Australian National Cabinet activated the National Fuel Security Plan, currently at Level 2 (“Keeping Australia Moving”) . Measures include:

  • Halving fuel excise from 52.6 cents to 20.6 cents per litre for three months
  • Temporarily reducing minimum stockholding obligations by 20% for diesel and petrol
  • Amending fuel quality standards to allow higher sulfur levels, releasing ~100 million litres/month of additional petrol supply
  • Appointing a Fuel Security Taskforce Coordinator
  • Underwriting additional fuel cargoes and strategic reserves

However, energy analysts question whether the excise cut was optimally targeted. Macquarie University’s Lurion De Mello notes: “Petrol is not the pain point. Diesel is the pain point” . Deakin University’s Samantha Hepburn warns: “Any disruption in diesel supply or sustained high prices… will directly affect production capacity, increase operating costs and ultimately push up food prices” .

The Australia Institute recommends accelerating electric vehicle adoption to reduce petrol demand, thereby freeing refining capacity for diesel and jet fuel security .

New Zealand: The Marsden Point Gamble

The Refinery Closure Decision

New Zealand made a calculated bet in 2022—and now faces the consequences. The Marsden Point refinery, which produced half the country’s petrol, two-thirds of diesel, and most jet fuel, was converted to an import terminal. The rationale was economic: the refinery was inefficient by international standards, and importing refined products from mega-refineries in Asia was cheaper.

The government and industry argued this improved security: “Closing the refinery has actually improved our security of supply, as there is now more than twice as much fuel on the water to replenish domestic stocks than when we produced it locally.”

But this logic contains a fatal flaw. New Zealand no longer imports crude oil—but the Asian refineries we depend on do. In 2024, New Zealand’s top four source countries (Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan) sourced almost 80% of their crude oil imports from Persian Gulf countries .

As MFAT’s July 2025 analysis states: “In the event of disruption of Middle Eastern supply, Asian refineries would be forced to source crude product from elsewhere, pushing up the global price for oil” . New Zealand faces indirect but severe exposure to Gulf disruptions through our refined product suppliers.

Current stock levels provide approximately 47 days of diesel, 51 days of petrol, and 49 days of jet fuel coverage—better than Australia but still precarious if Asian refining capacity falters .

As of mid-April 2026, the New Zealand government’s sole strategy has been to monitor the volume and consequent days left of the various oil substrates in the country. The reality is that the risks to New Zealand’s economy are the combined factors of stocks available and the cost at the pump of those stocks New Zealand may well find that by June there are still tankers available to supply oil substrates to New Zealand but at a price that is unaffordable to the public.

Already truck operators are warning of hugely increased supermarket food prices in the pipeline because of the massively increased transport costs involved in supplying the supermarkets from New Zealand’s highly centralised grocery supply chain. Decentralisation of essential services across new Zealand is thus a very urgent priority.

Economic Impact Forecasts

ASB Bank has downgraded New Zealand’s growth outlook due to the fuel crisis, forecasting:

  • GDP growth slowing through 2026
  • Inflation rising toward 4% before easing in 2027
  • Households facing $4,000-6,000 annual hit if fuel prices stay elevated

Westpac identifies tourism as particularly vulnerable, forecasting that “the most direct impact of the shock on exports will likely show up in falling visitor numbers” due to flight disruptions, higher airfares, and consumer reluctance to travel internationally during heightened tensions .

Tourism Sector Impact

New Zealand’s tourism sector—still recovering from COVID-19—faces severe headwinds:

  • Flight cancellations and route reductions: Air New Zealand has already cut capacity
  • Higher airfares: Jet fuel costs have surged 114%, forcing ticket price increases
  • Reduced international visitor numbers: Westpac expects reversal of recent strong growth in arrivals
  • Domestic tourism pressure: Higher petrol prices reduce Kiwis’ willingness to travel domestically

Regional Variations: Regions dependent on self-drive tourism—West Coast, Tasman, Southland, Gisborne—face particular pressure. These areas already have disproportionate visitor spending on fuel, primarily because of a lack of local international airports, making them vulnerable to petrol price volatility .

Tourism Industry Aotearoa reports businesses are experiencing “sharp increase in business costs as a result of the leap in fuel prices” . The NZX50 fell nearly 6% in March 2026, with travel and tourism stocks—including Serko, Air New Zealand, Tourism Holdings, SkyCity Entertainment, and Auckland International Airport—among the hardest hit .

The Political Reckoning

The Marsden Point closure has become politically contentious. New Zealand First MP Shane Jones, now Associate Energy Minister, has called the previous government’s decision “reckless.” Westpac chief economist Kelly Eckhold has challenged critics: “Would you close it if it was open today?”

Reopening Marsden Point is likely impossible. The refinery was configured to process imported Middle Eastern crude—not New Zealand’s own light, sweet domestic production, which is entirely exported. Even if the infrastructure remained intact (it doesn’t), the facility couldn’t process local oil.

Government Response

New Zealand has activated its Fuel Response Plan 2026, currently in Phase 1: Watchful . The plan outlines four clear phases responding proportionately to fuel security risks, assessed separately for petrol, diesel, and jet fuel. The government is:

  • Monitoring fuel stocks and shipments
  • Publishing twice-weekly stock updates
  • Coordinating with international partners
  • Preparing demand reduction measures if needed

MBIE emphasizes: “There is no need to change how you purchase fuel. Sticking to your usual habits helps keep the system running smoothly” .

However this ‘plan” does not seem to acknowledge the high probability of both lack of, and high prices for diesel, jet fuel and bunker oil in the longer term. Strategies that prioritise and create backup storage now for essential fuel service issues such as food transportation and health and emergency services are sadly lacking.

Its also important to acknowledge that for New Zealand to continue to received international shipping and jet flights it needs to have adequate fuel storage for that transport to return to their original port.

The Bunker Fuel Dimension

Both Australia and New Zealand face parallel challenges with marine fuel. Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil (VLSFO)—the 0.5% sulphur fuel required by IMO 2020 regulations—depends on specific low-sulphur crude grades that are now being competed for by refiners seeking diesel replacements.

Australian and New Zealand ports rely on Singapore and regional refineries for bunker fuel. As Vortexa analysis warns: with Hormuz disruptions, bunkering hubs like Singapore, Malaysia, and the Netherlands could face VLSFO supply shortages as refiners outbid bunker blenders for suitable crude grades .

This threatens not just commercial shipping but coastal trade, fishing fleets, and offshore industries that keep both economies functioning.

Strategic Implications & Recommendations

For Australia:

  1. Diesel is the vital risk: Agriculture, mining, and road freight depend on diesel. The BADSP program addresses storage but not supply diversity .
  2. Refining vulnerability: Two aging refineries cannot meet national demand. The Geelong fire demonstrates how quickly capacity can be lost .
  3. Transit risk: 21+ days of “reserves” exist only on paper—on foreign ships that may never arrive in a crisis .
  4. US Strategic Petroleum Reserve access: The 2020 agreement to access US reserves sounds reassuring, but fuel would take three weeks to reach Australia—and in a global crisis, American domestic needs would take precedence .
  5. Mining sector transition: Rio Tinto’s renewable diesel trials at Boron and Kennecott mines show potential, but these transitions were planned for 2030-2050—not 2026 .

For New Zealand:

  1. Refined product dependency: 100% reliance on Asian refineries creates single-point-of-failure risk .
  2. Indirect Gulf exposure: While NZ doesn’t import Gulf crude directly, our suppliers do—making us hostage to their sourcing challenges .
  3. Storage limitations: Current stock levels are adequate for normal operations but insufficient for prolonged disruption .
  4. No refining fallback: Unlike Australia, New Zealand has zero domestic refining capacity to fall back on .
  5. Tourism vulnerability: The sector’s recovery from COVID-19 faces reversal due to fuel costs and flight disruptions .

And let us also not forget the hugely significant global impacts of the loss of 20% of the world’s synthetic fertilisers, of sulphuric acid, and of LNG because of the Straits’ closure and the partial destruction of refining in the Gulf states.

The Path Forward

Both nations face the same fundamental challenge: they are price-takers in a volatile market, with limited ability to influence supply or substitute fuels in the short term.

Both Australia and New Zealand have optimised for economic efficiency (Just In Time processes) over energy security. In a world of renewed geopolitical conflict and supply chain fragility, that calculation desperately needs revision.

Increasing frequency and intensity of global weather events will undoubtedly and increasingly put severe pressure on global supply chains . Transitioning to a less oil dependant economy and one which is less dependant on global supply chains for all essential services, is vital.

Sources:

  • Australia Institute: “Over a Barrel: Addressing Australia’s Liquid Fuel Security”
  • Australian Government: National Fuel Security Plan
  • Australian Industry Group: “Fuel Supply and Supply Chain Watch”
  • ABC News: “Energy analysts raise concerns on fuel excise cut”
  • Commonwealth Bank: “How Aussie farmers are navigating fuel and fertiliser pressures”
  • Deloitte Access Economics via Financial Post: “Australian Fuel Supply to Get Even Tighter After Refinery Fire”
  • EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, April 2026
  • Fortune: “Oil prices may be falling, but for the wrong reason”
  • IEA Oil Market Report, April 2026
  • IEEFA: “Mining’s costly diesel addiction must be a budget priority”
  • Living More With Less: “Implications of the Iran war on Australia’s Fuel Supplies”
  • MFAT: “NZ economy not immune to conflict in the Middle East”
  • MBIE: “Middle East conflict and New Zealand’s fuel stocks”
  • Newsroom: “Economic growth forecasts downgraded as fuel price rise bites”
  • NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment: “Understanding variability in tourism spend”
  • P2P Agri: “Iran Fuel Crisis and Australian Farm Costs”
  • RenewEconomy: “Diesel replacement: Australia’s billion-dollar opportunity”
  • The Oregon Group: “Strait of Hormuz diesel shock threatens mining industry”
  • Transporting NZ: “Energy security – was closing Marsden Point a mistake?”
  • Vortexa/IEA analysis on VLSFO supply and bunker fuel markets
  • Westpac IQ: “NZ business feedback on recent oil price moves”
  • World Socialist Web Site: “War-driven fuel crisis threatens recession in Australia”
  • https://energyandresilience.substack.com/p/the-limits-to-the-energy-transition

Racism and the Iran War

How White Supremacy Fuels the West’s Assault on Iran

From the 1953 Coup to the 2026 War—A Pattern of Racialized Resource Theft

The bombs falling on Iranian schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods in early 2026 are not merely acts of war. They are the violent expression of a centuries-old ideology: white supremacy. The United States and Israel’s assault on Iran represents the latest chapter in a colonial playbook where non-white nations are systematically dehumanized, their sovereignty violated, and their resources plundered—all under the guise of “democracy,” “security,” or “civilization.”

To understand the current conflict, we must strip away the propaganda and examine the racial and economic architecture that has driven Western policy toward Iran for over seven decades.

The Original Sin: 1953 and the Birth of Modern Iran Policy

The template was set in August 1953, when the CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup against Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. His crime? Nationalizing Iran’s oil industry to free his people from British Petroleum’s colonial extraction. The response from London and Washington was not diplomacy—it was regime change through terror.

Operation Ajax deployed “paid terrorists within Iran to stir up trouble,” as CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt arrived with suitcases of cash to bribe newspaper editors, manufacture protests, and create a sham communist threat . The Shah was restored, Savak (his brutal secret police) was trained by the CIA, and 40% of Iran’s oil fields were signed over to U.S. companies . Some 300 Iranians died in the streets so that white-controlled corporations could maintain their grip on Persian oil.

This was not about communism. It was about race and resources. As the Zinn Education Project notes, American textbooks still sanitize this history, claiming the CIA merely “backed” a coup rather than orchestrating a terrorist campaign against a democratic government .

The “Regime” Label: 47 Years of Racialized Delegitimization

Since the 1979 revolution, Western media has religiously referred to Iran’s government as a “regime”—a term rarely applied to Western allies like Saudi Arabia, despite its absolute monarchy and routine beheadings. This linguistic violence serves a purpose: it transforms a sovereign nation into a rogue entity requiring “management” by civilized (white) powers.

The double standard is stark. The Gulf States are “kingdoms” despite being hereditary dictatorships. Israel is a “democracy” despite maintaining an apartheid system over millions of Palestinians. But Iran—whose people have participated in more genuine electoral contests than most U.S. allies in the region—is perpetually a “regime.”

This vocabulary reflects what scholar Vijay Prashad calls “the darker nations” thesis: the global South exists in the Western imagination only as a problem to be solved, never as equals with legitimate interests.

The 2025-2026 Wars and School Children

The Twelve-Day War of June 2025 and the subsequent 2026 conflict have revealed the true character of Western-Israeli military doctrine. When Israeli and U.S. forces bombed the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ Elementary School in Minab on February 28, 2026, killing at least 168 people including scores of children, they were continuing a tradition of racialized warfare .

Satellite imagery confirmed the strike was likely conducted by a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile. The Pentagon’s response? “We’re investigating.” President Trump suggested Iran bombed its own school. This is the logic of supremacy: brown children’s lives are collateral damage in a game where only white strategic interests matter .

The pattern is deliberate. DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now) documented scores of schools, health facilities, and fuel depots bombed by U.S. and Israeli forces, with white phosphorus dropped on civilian communities . These are not accidents. They are war crimes rooted in the belief that Iranian lives are expendable.

As DAWN’s Omar Shakir stated: “The international community’s failure to act when the most fundamental norms of international law are being challenged risks plunging the world further into a lawless era” . But this “lawlessness” is selective—it applies only when non-white nations assert sovereignty over their resources.

The Chosen People Narrative: Israel’s Racial Theology

Central to this conflict is Israel’s self-conception as “the chosen people”—a theological framework that has been weaponized into a license for ethnic cleansing. The “Greater Israel” project, stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile, requires the removal or subjugation of non-Jewish populations. This is not ancient history; it is current Israeli government policy. Israel is the only country in the world that does not have defined borders; since its inception in 1948, it has constantly expanded its borders in order to fulfil its founders’ messianistic dream of a Greater Israel

The genocidal attacks on Palestinians—documented by the UN Commission of Inquiry as war crimes and crimes against humanity—are the laboratory for techniques now being deployed against Iran . When Israeli forces disguised themselves as medical personnel to kill 41 civilians in Lebanon in March 2026, they were demonstrating that perfidy is permissible against non-white enemies .

The infantile belief in divine selection—used to justify the maiming, murder, and terrorizing of non-Israelis—finds its parallel in American exceptionalism. Both ideologies depend on the fundamental dehumanization of the Other. Both require the constant manufacturing of existential threats to maintain racial hierarchy.

The Real Target: Oil, Hormuz, and the Anxiety of White Decline

Strip away the rhetoric about Iranian nuclear weapons—despite Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against them—and the true object of Western aggression becomes visible: oil and strategic control.

Iran’s insistence on uranium enrichment is not about bombs; it is about energy sovereignty. The West Asian region contains the world’s most critical petroleum reserves, and the Strait of Hormuz is the chokepoint through which global capitalism breathes. When Iran asserts control over its own energy destiny, it threatens the white-dominated global order.

The 1953 coup was about oil. The decades of sanctions are about oil. The current war is about oil. The “white supremacist view that these other non-white people are inferior” serves to legitimize the theft of their resources. As one analyst noted, even “precision warfare” against Iranian targets killed thousands of civilians—a “stark reminder” that technological sophistication does not erase racialized brutality .

The Complicity of the “International Community”

The West’s Gulf allies—Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar—play their assigned roles in this racialized hierarchy. These “kingdoms” (never “regimes”) provide cover for the assault on Iran, their own populations suppressed by the same security apparatuses supplied by Washington and London. They are the house managers of the white supremacist estate in West Asia.

Meanwhile, Western media continues its 47-year project of manufacturing consent. The war is framed as “defensive,” Iranian retaliation as “terrorism,” and civilian casualties as unfortunate necessities. When Iranian missiles strike military targets in Israel, it is an outrage; when U.S. missiles destroy Iranian schools, they are “tragic mistakes” .

Forty-seven years of Western and UN sanctions on Iran have also resulted in many Iranian deaths through loss of access to essential services and increasing poverty. The supposed rationale for the sanctions was that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon- something that Iran has consistently declared it was not going to do. It is abundantly clear that Iran, with its very sophisticated academic and industrial capacity, could have developed nuclear weapons decades ago if it had wished to.

This is the epistemic violence that accompanies physical violence—the systematic erasure of non-white agency, pain, and legitimate grievance.

Breaking the Cycle

The war on Iran is not an aberration. It is the continuation of a colonial modernity that divides the world into civilized (white/aligned) and barbaric (non-white/independent) nations. From the 1953 coup to the 2026 bombing of schoolchildren, the through-line is clear: the West will not tolerate resource sovereignty in the hands of non-white peoples.

To oppose this war requires more than anti-war activism. It requires the dismantling of the ideological architecture that makes such wars thinkable—the racial hierarchies, the exceptionalist theologies, the media frameworks that render some children worthy of mourning and others merely statistics.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz under international law, the breaking of international law by Israel and the U.S., the bombing of universities and hospitals—these are not separate issues. They are facets of a single system of domination that must be named, confronted, and dismantled.

The war is not about nuclear weapons. It is about who has the right to exist, to govern, and to benefit from the planet’s energy source. Until we confront the white supremacy at its core, the bombs will continue to fall.

For the children of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School. For the memory of Mossadegh. For a world where sovereignty is not determined by skin color.

AI generated audio version of this post, below..

Resources

For accurate and largely dispassionate analyses of the Iran war and international affairs generally, try Youtube interviews with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Alastair Crooke, Prof. John Mearscheimer, Prof. Glenn Diesen, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, and Larry Johnson.

False Outrage

Western commentators continue to express outrage about Trump’s latest international adventures: Nigeria, Venezuela and more particularly Ukraine and Greenland ( because they have ‘good white’ populations.

I was struck by an Australian Broadcasting analysis of 11th January 2026 which stated, without a hint of irony, that Trump had assaulted the ‘once enshrined concept of national sovereignty, overthrowing eight decades of rigidly enforced global order.

Obviously the analyst didnt understand the concept of history, or perhaps was born less than decade ago. The United States since its inception has been launching wars of extreme savagery and brutality ( something the Israelis seem to have inherited from them and the UK) . From the extermination of North American Indians, the Phillipines genocide in 1898, the many many wars in South America over the past 200 years to install compliant dictatorships, to the post second world war killing spree, with CIA endless covert murders across the world, the Korean War genocide, then on to the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, there has most certainly not been 8 decades of peace because of the West’s global world order!! (or the ‘International Rule Based Order ‘ if you prefer (i.e. the US rules and you obey)

Trump’s attempts at a land-grab of Greenland, along with trying to plunder Venezuelan oil and supporting Israel’s imminent (second) war against Iran are simply just a continuation of America’s foreign (and internal) policy since its inception in 1792.

U.S. analysts decry Trump and his coterie for undermining democracy and freedom and not wanting to be an empire like the 19th century European powers, frequently quoting statements made by the U.S.’s founding fathers like Jefferson and Washington. Those analysts use the founding fathers statements and quotes from the American Constitution as proof that the US is essentially a ‘good’ nation.

What analysts in the US particularly object to about Trump and his thuggish entourage, is that they are saying the things that they have themselves always really believed in, OUT LOUD.

Perhaps those founding Fathers believed in the things they were saying, but the evidence suggests they were trying to create a country where the wealthy and landowning civilised ‘white’ (really pink) class could live in peace without threats from the uncivilised darker peoples of the world. And naturally, because those peoples were uncivilised it made perfect sense for the US military to treat them as sub-human.’Humanity’ was reserved for the white-skinned folks. Trump and his racist coterie and oligarchs are therefore, the continuation of a long lineage of theft and thuggery.

We should be careful though to emphasise that the other pink ‘ruling classes” of the world also subscribe to this obscene and absurd view. The EU ex head of EU ‘diplomacy’ Josep Borrell’s statement in 2022 that “Europe is a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle. The jungle could invade the garden” is a classic example of this racist ignorant ideology.

Borrell seemed to have forgotten that the only reason Europe had had- up till then at least, been a ‘garden’ is because it had murdered and plundered its way through most of the global south over the past 500 years and used those resources to create Europe’s safe and pretty garden. Ironically, Europe now relies economically on the non-pink migrants it has brutally forced from their homelands for its cheap labour and maintaining its GDP.

Similarly and with great irony, what helped to make “America Great” in previous times was the enormous number of immigrants from ‘pink’ Europe.

Trump and his ‘administration’ are now attempting, with great lawless brutality, to cut off that very lifeblood of immigration to US simply because they are now the wrong colour. In Trump’s desperate attempt to ‘Make America White Again’, that cheap labour, which as of late 2025, made up approximately 19% of the total U.S. labour force, is now under threat, thus undermining the very basis of US agriculture and industry. One is reminded of Australia’s attempts for 50 years to to keep Australia ( besides the ‘sub-human’ indigenous aboriginal population) ‘safe’ for Europeans using their “White Australia” policies.

With the meteoric rise of China as a global economic power and its vastly superior research and industrial base, the West is under massive threat to its global dominance. China expands its opportunities for wealth, not through Western-style theft and subjugation, but through contracts and mutual agreements. The Belt and Road initiative is a classic example of this practice.

In theory the US and the West could realign their foreign policies to work alongside China and the Global South to develop cooperative and mutually beneficial trade, while reducing the threat of war.

This however does not seem to be an option for the US or the rest of the West. 500 years of exploitation and murder have paralysed Western decision-making and innovative thinking.

‘

The Role of Racism in Western Colonialism: A Historical & Contemporary Analysis

Racism was not a side-effect of empire—it was its operating system. From the 15th-century “Age of Discovery” to 21st-century border regimes, racial hierarchies have justified land theft, slavery, resource extraction and permanent war.

We outline how racism powered colonialism—and why it still shapes our world, as we see in the large recent populist responses in Europe and the US to immigration from non-white countries.

I would argue that we are, as human beings, inherently racist. We cherish the human group we belong to; the way we look, the way our group behaves, the things that are important to us. Those that look, and/or behave differently to us are therefore not ‘one of us”- they are outsiders, a threat to us and our group’s safety and wellbeing. Who we are is ‘normal’ – those ‘others’ are not normal.

That defensiveness against ‘others’, I would argue, is the root of racism. While that fear response may be deeply imbedded in our psyche, it can, and must be rooted out with clear rationality and understanding for those ‘others’. If we are to be truly human, we must treat all other living things with the kindness and compassion we expect for ourselves.

Conquest Begins with Name-Calling: “Savage” as a Licence to Kill

Greek and Roman writers already labelled outsiders “barbarians”, but the Atlantic world turned prejudice into policy. English colonisers depicted the Gaelic Irish as dark-skinned degenerates; Spaniards painted Indigenous Americans as cannibals; Dutch and Portuguese traders recast West Africans as “beasts of burden”. Once economic incentives for plantation slavery exploded, stereotypes hardened: Africans were now naturally servile, sexually voracious, mentally inferior—and therefore made for slavery. The perjorative demeaning language used to describe non-whites by ‘white’ people across the world is no accident. Language defines..

In the 21st Century, non-white immigrants to Western countries are seen as a threat to European ‘values’ culture and economic wellbeing. Current immigrant levels to the US and Europe are a direct result of economic and safety destabilisations caused by earlier extractive colonial policies and the West’s immensely destructive wars in those countries. In addition, Western governments, as opposed to their ‘white’ populations, have welcomed these new cheap labour immigrants to bolster their GDPs.

“Scientific” Racism: Empire in a White Lab-Coat

19-century European universities measured skulls, mapped skin tones and coined terms like “Caucasoid” to give racism the veneer of objectivity. The Dawinian science of evolution was used to delineate some human ‘races’ as less genetically evolved, with of course the white races at the top! This absurd and unscientific use of evolution were used by many in the West and exploited in the eugenics movement, and in its extreme form by the Nazis, and latterly the Zionists.

3. Britain’s ‘Liberal’ Empire

“Violence was not a one-off occurrence… it was systemic and part and parcel of Britain’s liberal imperialism.”– ‘Legacy of Violence-
A History of the British Empire’ Caroline Elkins (2023)

In the 19th century, Medical journals warned that “negro lungs” were unfit for cold climates to help justify keeping indentured labourers on Caribbean sugar plantations. Anthropology museums displayed colonised peoples alongside fauna. These ‘scientific’ findings were incorporated into colonial legal codes: the 1885 Berlin Conference carved up Africa on the assumption that Whites could best steward African land and bodies. Britain’s ‘protectorates’ listed below are a ‘sublime’ example of the racist mentality of the British Foreign Office. Why these populations would need ‘protecting’ from themselves was never adequately explained…

TerritoryProtectorate proclaimedToday part of …
Malta1800Malta
Ionian Islands1815Greece
Mosquito Coast1838Nicaragua / Honduras
Aden (W. & E. Protectorates)1872Yemen
Cyprus1878Cyprus
Sultanate of Zanzibar1890Tanzania
Bechuanaland1885Botswana
British Somaliland1884Somalia
North Borneo1888Malaysia (Sabah)
Brunei1888Brunei
Sarawak1888Malaysia
Maldives1887Maldives
Sikkim1861India
Barotseland1900Zambia
East Africa Protectorate1895Kenya
Uganda Protectorate1894Uganda
Nyasaland1893Malawi
Northern Rhodesia1924Zambia
Swaziland1903Eswatini
Basutoland1868Lesotho
Gambia Protectorate1894The Gambia
Sierra Leone Protectorate1896Sierra Leone
Nigeria (N. & S. protectorates)1900Nigeria
Qatar1916Qatar
Bahrain1861Bahrain
Trucial Oman1887UAE
Cook Islands1888New Zealand (self-governing)
Niue1900New Zealand (self-governing)
Tokelau1889New Zealand
British Solomon Is.1893Solomon Islands
Gilbert & Ellice Is.1892Kiribati & Tuvalu
Tonga1879Tonga
Oman (Muscat & Oman)1800Oman
Bhutan1911Bhutan

From Kenya’s “Pipeline” detention camps to Malaya’s New Villages, London cast mass incarceration, forced labour and sexual violence as “rehabilitation” for racially suspect subjects. Files were then sealed for decades under the Colonial Papers Destruction Policy.

Comparative Brutality: France, Belgium, Germany


  • French Algeria: Settler colonialism embedded in the département system; with 1.5 million Algerians killed during the 1954-62 war of independence (Al-Jazeera retrospective).

  • Belgian Congo: Leopold II’s rubber regime caused an estimated 10 million deaths—A BBC investigation calls it “one of the greatest mass murders in history”.

  • German South-West Africa: 1904-08 extermination order against the Herero and Nama is now officially recognised by Germany as genocide.

British India: current scholarship puts the excess-mortality death toll attributable to British colonial policy in India between 1881-1920 alone at roughly 50–165 million people.

Racism after the Empires Recede

Decolonisation brought new flags, but not justice. The UN confirms that “colonialism lives on” in racial profiling, poverty and unequal trade. Former plantation economies still dominate global commodity chains, even while end-use processing for value addition to those raw commodities continues to happen in the Global North. France’s banlieues, Britain’s Windrush deportations, and the U.S. racial wealth gap all map precisely onto old imperial shipping routes.

Environment Impacts of Racism

The climate crisis is driven by the same extractive logic that cleared forests for sugar and cotton. Former colonies already suffer temperature increases twice the global average—a direct legacy of shipping carbon to Europe while deforesting the colonies’ natural environment- that same natural world many indigenous populations relied upon for their survival.

Towards Reparatory Justice

  • Unveiling the Truth: Ensure that all colonial archives are opened to the public and for research (UK still classifies this information under the “migrated archives” rule).
  • Reparations: From debt cancellation to technology transfers—see UN-DESA Policy Brief #96 along with fair funding reparations from ex colonial powers for their brutality and economic extraction.
  • Education: Develop truthful, accurate and non-ideologically driven curricula for each ex-colonial country and its coloniser which explains the rationales and impacts of racism and consequent colonialism from each side.

Palestine 2023-25: A Live-Streamed Genocide Enabled by Racialised Imperial Logic

The same racial logic that once classified Indigenous peoples as “savages” and Africans as “natural slaves” is now redeployed to portray Palestinians—especially in Gaza—as irredeemable terrorists whose lives are expendable. Western diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel’s 2023-25 assault is therefore not an aberration; it is the continuity of a 500-year-old pattern in which white-majority states licence settler violence against racialised “others” while declaring themselves civilised.

Genocide is apparently what “non-white” actors commit; white or white-allied states are presumed incapable of it. Western media highlights Israeli “security” and terrorists’ ‘hostages’ while Palestinian deaths are counted in opaque “casualty” statistics, stripped of names, faces, context, and their 70 + years living under Israeli colonisation completely ignored. Bizarrely, peaceful protesters against Israeli savagery in Gaza in France, Germany, Britain and the US, among many, have themselves been labelled as terrorists and arrested.


France banned pro-Palestine demonstrations within days; police invoked emergency powers against students wearing the keffiyeh. The UK Home Secretary equated Palestinian flags with “support for terrorism”. Germany’s Berlin Senate excluded Palestinian speakers under the IHRA definition. These measures show how racialised imperial violence abroad is coupled with shrinking anti-racist space at home.

Trump’s ‘War’ on Immigration

The role of racism in Donald Trump’s immigration agenda is not incidental—it is the engine. From his 2015 campaign launch to the executive orders signed on Day 1 of his second term, Trump has consistently racialised immigrants, fused white-nationalist grievance with policy, and leveraged state power to punish Black, Brown and Muslim communities. Bizarrely the United States economic growth has historically largely been fuelled by immigration- but only immigration from the ‘right’ places; from Western Europe.

Trump’s language about immigrants betrays the racist underpinnings of his anti-immigration policies -‘“These aren’t people. These are animals” (referring to Central-American migrants), “Shithole countries” (Jan 2018): Trump asked why the US admits people from Haiti, El Salvador or Africa instead of Norway..

Such statements activate what scholars call “demographobia”: the fear among whites that they are being “replaced” by higher-fertility non-white minorities.

The Great Replacement theory—the belief that elites are deliberately replacing whites with non-white immigrants—moved from far-right chatrooms to Trump’s 2025 National Emergency declaration, which frames migration as an “invasion” threatening “national character”.

Further Reading & Tools

All links open in a new tab. Bookmark this list for classroom or activist use.

Feel free to republish under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 with attribution to the author and a live link to this post.

Demonic Israel and the Savage West

Israel has only 3 months till September to launch a new aerial attack on Iran.In September Iraqi airspace will be closed to the US and its allies, as US troops are required to leave Iraq by then. Given that Israel and the US clearly did not achieve it s objectives in this most recent attack on Iran, we can expect further surprise attacks on Iran in the near future.

Will Iran finally go nuclear? will they have learnt their lesson and build a full military alliance with Russia China and North Korea? – we shall have to wait and see…

There is clear evidence of the UK, Germany and France providing the air-refuelling tankers for Israeli F35s to reach the Iranian border, fire their missiles, and return to base. Undoubtedly Five Eyes (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK and US) have also provided the intelligence targeting data for the Israelis both for the Iran war and for the Gaza genocide.

Germany France and UK have thus been intimately involved in supporting this unprovoked war while they and the EU have continued to pretend such an attack is legal in international law.

International law is very clear-Israel had absolutely no legal grounds to attack . Its excuse was that Iran was about to possess nuclear weapons- a claim Netanyahu has been making for 40 years. Alistair Crooke (below) however claims that Palantir’s AI predictive software created a false impression of a sudden surge in Iranian enrichment, which contributed to the urgency to attack by the Americans and Israel.

80% of Israelis support Palestinian genocide- its Jewish citizens have been indoctrinated into a bizarre ideology that says they are the chosen ones and therefore they have the right to act with total impunity- sadistic brutal murder torture and starvation- any thing goes- and the US and the rest of the West have fostered and enabled that savagery to blossom and erupt into its demonic current state. Over $150 billion in mostly military aid from the US alone since 1948, has enabled Israel to continuously expand its territories.

Israel has violated at least 30 UN Security Council resolutions and over 100 resolutions from other UN bodies, totalling more than 130 violations of international consensus.

Nevertheless it is very clear- despite an Israeli security blackout, that Israel’s economy, already fragile, has been significantly impacted by Iranian missile strikes. Bloomberg estimates the economic costs alone to Israel caused by Iran’s missile strikes at $3.5 billion. Although Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a press conference the total cost of war could be as high as $12 billion. The Israeli Haifa oil refinery will take at least a month to repair and its major shipping port, Haifa, significantly damaged and a number of military facilities either destroyed or damaged.

Unlike Israel with its drone terror attacks in Iran, its assassinations of Iranian civilians and terror bombings in Iranian cities, Iran has displayed remarkable circumspection in its attacks-minimal civilian Israeli deaths (despite the repeated images from Israeli propaganda of little Israeli children unscathed and perfectly clean, being held by Israeli soldiers after being ‘rescued” from the rubble) have been very small- indicating Iranian precise targeting of military targets.

Clearly this was a regime change operation. The West expected the Islamic regime in Tehran to fold quickly and rapturous joy would break out in the streets at Iran’s ‘liberation”. In fact, most (but not all) Iranians rallied round the flag and its likely that -despite 40 years of Western sanctions , Iranian infrastructure will be quickly rebuilt -especially with Chinese assistance (Iran is a vital node in China’s Belt and Road transport network to and from the West to China with a major rail network recently completed from China).

Iranian International, with enormous funding from the US and Israel (and likely other funding sources in European governments) had been poised to insert the Shah of Iran’s son Reza Pahlavi as the new “king” of Iran once the regime capitulated. The fact that Reza Pahlavi was heir to his father’s bizarre and corrupt reign (with his brutal SAVAK secret police trained by Mossad, Mi6 and CIA in torture techniques), and is entirely in the pocket of the genocidal Israelis and corrupt Americans and British who would then steal Iranian oil, wasn’t deemed to be a problem somehow. Israel’s title for their war with Iran , ‘Rising Lion’ is both a reference to Talmud texts, but also to the flag of the late Shah.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_Israel

Like everything associated with the state of Palestine and the history of Israel since the Nakba , Zionists have attempted to revise history and pretend that Palestinians never occupied or owned the land that was stolen from them by the Zionists, starting with the Nakba of 1948 and progressing to the present day. aijac.org.au

Thankfully, Trump’s bombasity, lies and stupidity have fed into the perception of many in the South of a steady decline in American power and influence. The recent bizarre events at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands of Trump being called ‘Daddy ‘and all the NATO states kowtowing to Trump in pledging 5% military spending by 2035, a pledge which would undoubtedly bankrupt many of the EU states.

America and Israel and NATO/Five Eyes had expected an easy victory over Iran- decapitate the military leaders through assassinations, disable the Iranian neural networks for their missile defence systems and radars , blitz Tehran and then demand capitulation. The assassinations were largely successful, the hacking of the networks worked- but only for 8 hours-( the West had not anticipated how fast Iranian engineers could get the system back up and running)- and then the Iranian missile response began..

Indisputably Iran has suffered major but not irreparable losses in this war; the assassinations of some key military leadership and nuclear scientists, military facilities and missile systems destroyed.

However the genocide in Gaza by the Israeli “Defence” Forces (IDF) continues at the same brutal pace- with continued support form the US and the West. Every day Palestinians are being shot and killed by snipers , tanks and artillery as they try and negotiate the gate-pens to get some food ‘ provided’ through Israeli and US agencies for their starving families . While condemned by the UN and many in the South, Western nations are silent and complicit in this total inhumanity: a massive indictment of all that the West has pretended to stand for in the last 70 years- freedom, safety, democracy and the rule of law.

And for those who would like to believe this total absence of humanity and human rights for Palestinians is a recent phenomenon, please look at the following data below of the deaths and displacements by Israel since the Nakba of 1948. The state of Israel is an abomination, a pariah state fully supported by the West.

1. Displacement and Refugees

  • 1948 Arab-Israeli War (Nakba) :
    • Approximately 700,000 Palestinians were displaced or became refugees, including many women and children.
    • The UN estimates that 75% of Palestinian refugees today are women and children.
  • 1967 Six-Day War :
    • Another 300,000+ Palestinians fled or were expelled from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
    • Women and children made up a significant portion of these refugees.
  • Total Palestinian Refugees Today :
    • Over 7 million Palestinians are registered as refugees or displaced persons globally (UNRWA and UNHCR data).
    • The majority are women and children due to generational displacement and high birth rates.

2. Casualties in Conflicts

  • Major Conflicts Since 1948 :
    • 1948–1956 : Exact numbers for women and children are unclear but likely high due to mass displacement.
    • 1967 & 1973 Wars : Limited data exists, but civilian casualties included many women and children.
    • First Intifada (1987–1993) : ~1,000 Palestinian children killed; women’s deaths unrecorded.
    • Second Intifada (2000–2005) : Over 3,000 Palestinian children killed; women also died in airstrikes and shootings.
    • Gaza Wars (2008–2009, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023–2024) :
      • 2023–2024 Gaza War : As of April 2024, over 10,000 women and 18,000 children reported killed (Palestinian Health Ministry). Independent experts warn underreporting due to chaos and blocked aid.
      • 2014 Gaza War : ~2,200 Palestinians killed, half of them children (UN OCHA).

3. Incarceration and Detention

  • Since 1967 , Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians, including:
    • Women and Children :
      • Over 10,000 Palestinian women have been imprisoned since 1967 (Addameer, a Palestinian rights group).
      • Children : Thousands detained annually for alleged “security offenses.” In 2023 alone, over 8,000 children were arrested (UNICEF and DCIP reports).

4. Demographic Impact

  • Population Growth : Despite displacement and casualties, Palestinian populations in the West Bank, Gaza, and refugee camps have grown due to high birth rates.
  • Vulnerability : Women and children face disproportionate risks in poverty, restricted movement, and limited access to healthcare/education.

CategoryApproximate Numbers (since 1948)
Refugees/displacedMillions (majority women/children)
Casualties (conflicts)Hundreds of thousands (exact numbers disputed)
IncarceratedTens of thousands of women/children

Resources

  • United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
  • Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
  • Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics
  • Israeli human rights groups (e.g., B’Tselem)
  • Reports from Al Jazeera, BBC, and Reuters

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/06/mark-sleboda-what-the-hell-just-happened-in-the-middle-east-you-may-ask.html#more

The Yemen Tragedy

Now that Trump ( as of May 2025) has made the decision not to continue U.S. air attacks on targets in Yemen (for now), the following semi-legal analysis of the strikes below is perhaps somewhat moot. However it does provide a glimpse into the legalities of the multiple aggressions by Western countries in the past 75 years since World War 2.

After an almost shootdown of an ‘invisible’ US F35 aircraft, and the loss of 2 (possibly 3) F18s (valued at $70 million each) that had ‘fallen off’ US aircraft carriers in the Gulf, along with about 10, 30 million dollar MQ9 drones shot down by Ansar-allah (what the West MSM as one voice like to call “Iran backed rebel Houthis”-all in one breath), it must have been clearly apparent, even to Trump, that the billion dollar US bombing campaign against Yemen was going nowhere.

Additionally, because the US had (and has) very little accurate information on where Ansarallah weapons and military was on the ground they were in fact predominantly (and accidentally?) hitting civilians. In addition the long-standing U.K air support for the Americans on the Arabian peninsula was entirely without targeting or strategy, but largely an attempt to try and demonstrate that Britain was still a force to be reckoned with in the Gulf.

One cannot however be so charitable about Israeli bombings of civilian Yemen targets-(civilian ports and airports), who used their traditional methods of terror and brutality to try and intimidate Ansarallah.

What follows is an analysis of the legalities of this bombing campaign, supposedly initiated by first Biden and then Trump, to stop Ansarallah closing the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea to shipping bound for the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat (top right hand section of map)

Legal Analysis of US/UK Strikes in Yemen and Potential Violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)

The US and UK military interventions in Yemen, particularly against Houthi targets, raise significant legal questions under international humanitarian law (IHL)—also known as the laws of war. Below is a deeper examination of their compliance with key legal principles.

Analysis of the Legal Framework Governing US Strikes against Yemen

A. Applicable Law

  • Geneva Conventions (1949) & Additional Protocol I (1977): Govern the conduct of hostilities, including distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack.
  • UN Charter (Article 2(4) & Article 51): Prohibits the use of force except in self-defense or with UN Security Council authorization.
  • Customary IHL: Binding on all parties, including non-state actors like the Houthis.

B. Justifications for US/UK Strikes

  • Self-Defense Argument (Article 51, UN Charter): The US and UK argue strikes are necessary to protect maritime security (Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping).
  • Legal Debate: Some scholars argue this stretches self-defense doctrine, as Houthi attacks may not constitute an “armed attack” justifying unilateral force.
  • Collective Self-Defense (Supporting Saudi Arabia & UAE): Previously invoked, but less relevant post-2022 since the Saudi-Houthi truce.

2. Key IHL Principles & Potential Violations

A. Principle of Distinction (Civilian vs. Military Targets)

  • Rule: Attacks must only target military objectives, not civilians or civilian infrastructure.
  • Concerns in Yemen:
  • Urban Warfare: Houthis embed military assets in densely populated areas, increasing civilian risk.
  • Reports of Civilian Harm: NGOs (e.g., Mwatana, Amnesty) allege US/UK strikes hit homes, farms, and markets, suggesting possible indiscriminate targeting.

B. Principle of Proportionality

  • Rule: Civilian harm must not be excessive relative to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
  • Challenges:
  • “Double-Tap” Strikes: Some reports suggest follow-up strikes hit first responders, which could be a war crime if deliberate.
  • High Civilian Toll in Past Strikes: Even if targets are legitimate, large-scale civilian casualties (e.g., 2022 Saada prison strike by Saudi coalition) raise proportionality concerns.

C. Precautions in Attack

  • Rule: Parties must take all feasible measures to verify targets and minimize civilian harm.
  • US/UK Practices:
  • Use of precision-guided munitions (reduces but does not eliminate risk).
  • Lack of Transparency: Few public investigations into alleged civilian harm, unlike in Iraq/Syria.

3. Accountability & Legal Consequences

A. Mechanisms for Accountability

  1. Domestic Investigations (US/UK):
  • The US has a Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) but rarely discloses Yemen investigations.
  • The UK has no independent Yemen strike review body, unlike its Iraq/Syria oversight.
  1. International Criminal Court (ICC):
  • Yemen is not an ICC member, but if nationals of member states commit crimes on Yemeni soil, the ICC could theoretically investigate.
  1. Universal Jurisdiction:
  • Third countries could prosecute war crimes under universal jurisdiction (e.g., Germany’s case against Syrian officials).

B. State Responsibility & Reparations

  • Under IHL, states must provide reparations for unlawful strikes, but neither the US nor UK has a compensation program for Yemeni victims.
  • Contrast with US payments for civilian harm in Afghanistan/Iraq.

4. Broader Implications & Legal Precedents

  • Escalation Risks: If strikes are seen as disproportionate, they could fuel further Houthi attacks, creating a cycle of violence.
  • Erosion of IHL Norms: Repeated civilian harm without accountability weakens global adherence to laws of war.
  • Potential for Future Cases: If evidence of systematic violations emerges, legal challenges could arise in international courts or via sanctions.

Conclusion: Are US/UK Strikes Lawful?

  • Legally Defensible? The US/UK can argue self-defense and military necessity, but civilian harm incidents raise serious IHL concerns.
  • Accountability Gap: Lack of transparent investigations and reparations undermines claims of compliance.
  • Future Risks: If civilian casualties continue unchecked, legal challenges (e.g., ICC petitions, universal jurisdiction cases) could follow.