The Guardian

The rules of the institutions that define our lives bend like reeds when it comes to Israel – so much that the whole global order is on the verge of collapse. (...)

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People make their way past the rubble of houses in Rafah on 20 January 2025, a day after a ceasefire deal in the war between Israel and Hamas came into effect. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images.

Israel’s war in Gaza is chipping away at so much of what we – in the United States but also internationally – had agreed upon as acceptable, from the rules governing our freedom of speech to the very laws of armed conflict. It seems no exaggeration to say that the foundation of the international order of the last 77 years is threatened by this change in the obligations governing our legal and political responsibilities to each other.

This collapse began with the liberal world’s lack of resolve to rein in Israel’s war in Gaza. It escalated when no one lifted a finger to stop hospitals being bombed. It expanded when mass starvation became a weapon of war. And it is peaking at a time when total war is no longer viewed as a human abhorrence but is instead the deliberate policy of the state of Israel.

The implications of this collapse are profound for international, regional and even domestic politics. Political dissent is repressed, political language is policed, and traditionally liberal societies are increasingly militarized against their own citizens.

Many of us disregard how much has shifted in the last 20 months. But we are ignoring the collapse of the international system that has defined our lives for generations at our own collective peril. (...)

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Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj #icc #international criminal court

The Guardian

Israel is the main source of terror and instability in the Middle East. But the west continually turns away from this reality

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A man is helped after an explosion in Tehran, amid Israel's airstrikes against Iran, 15 June 2025. Photograph: Amir Kholousi/AP.

As the G7 issues a statement declaring that Israel has a “right to defend itself”, you have a right to ask if you are losing your mind. Israel launched an unprovoked onslaught on Iran. Its excuse – that Tehran may acquire a nuclear weapon – renders its attack illegal under the UN charter, which forbids wars justified by the claim of a future threat.

“Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” declares the G7 statement. Even though Donald Trump’s intelligence chief testified three months ago that the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. Even though it’s Israel that actually possesses nuclear weapons, while refusing to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and refusing International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. Even though, as progress was being made in nuclear talks between Iran and the US, Israel targeted Iran’s chief negotiator and proceeded to exterminate scientists, including their families, alongside countless other civilians, including children, an athlete, a teacher, a pilates instructor. Even though Israel’s leader is subject to an arrest warrant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. And even though Israel has erased Gaza in a genocidal frenzy, and subjected the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank to an escalating pogrom, attacked southern Lebanon and Beirut, and invaded and occupied Syria. No country in the Middle East is as great a source of regional instability and terror as Israel: it’s not even close. (...)

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Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #iran #nuclear arms #non-proliferation treaty #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #Iinternational criminal court #icc

Media Lens

Noam Chomsky offered a rule of thumb for predicting the ‘mainstream’ response to crimes against humanity:

‘There is a way to calibrate reaction. If it’s a crime of somebody else, particularly an enemy, then we’re utterly outraged. If it’s our own crime, either comparable or worse, either it’s suppressed or denied. That works with almost 100 percent precision.’ (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, ‘The Politics of Genocide’, Monthly Review Press, 2010, p.27)

Now is an excellent time to put Chomsky’s claim to the test.

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A BBC headline over a photograph of an emaciated Palestinian baby read:

‘“Situation is dire” – BBC returns to Gaza baby left hungry by Israeli blockade’

‘Left hungry’? Was she peckish? Was her stomach rumbling? The headline led readers far from the reality of the cataclysm described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 12 May:

‘The entire 2.1 million population of Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death.’

Another BBC headline read:

‘Red Cross says at least 21 killed and dozens shot in Gaza aid incident’

Given everything we have seen over the last 20 months, it was obvious that the mysterious ‘incident’ had been yet another Israeli massacre. Blame had indeed been pinned on ‘Israeli gunfire’ by Palestinian sources, the BBC noted, cautioning:

‘But the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said findings from an initial inquiry showed its forces had not fired at people while they were near or within the aid centre.’

Again, after 20 months, we know such Israeli denials are automatic, reflexive, signifying nothing. More deflection and denial followed from the BBC. We had to keep reading to the end of the article to find a comment that rang true:

‘Mohammed Ghareeb, a journalist in Rafah, told the BBC that Palestinians had gathered near the aid centre run by the GHF when Israeli tanks approached and opened fire on the crowd.
‘Mr Ghareeb said the crowd of Palestinians were near Al-Alam roundabout around 04:30 local time (02:30 BST), close to the aid centre run by GHF, shortly before Israeli tanks appeared and opened fire.’

A surreal piece in the Guardian by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett clearly meant well:

‘I have seen images on my phone screen these past months that will haunt me as long as I live. Dead, injured, starving children and babies. Children crying in pain and in fear for their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. A small boy shaking in terror from the trauma of an airstrike. Scenes of unspeakable horror and violence that have left me feeling sick.’

Such honest expressions of personal anguish are welcome, of course, but the fact is that the word ‘Israel’ appeared nowhere in Cosslett’s article. How is that possible? Of the mass slaughter, Cosslett asked: ‘What is it doing to us as a society?’ Her own failure to shame the Israeli genocidaires, or even to name them, gives an idea. (...)

Last month, WHO reported 697 attacks on health facilities in Gaza since October 2023. As a result, at least 94% of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. In March 2025, a United Nations investigation concluded that Israel had committed ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza by systematically destroying its reproductive healthcare facilities. (...)

Last month, the UN reported that fully 95 per cent of Gaza’s agricultural land has been rendered unusable by Israeli attacks, with 80 per cent of crop land damaged. According to the report, only 4.6 per cent of it can be cultivated, while 71.2 per cent of Gaza’s greenhouses and 82.8 per cent of its agricultural wells have been destroyed by Israeli attacks. (...)

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Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #media #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj

Media Lens

BBC News regularly proclaims its supposed editorial principles of fearless, independent, impartial, fair and accurate journalism. (...)

When it comes to the broadcaster’s coverage of Gaza since October 2023, and long before, BBC audiences have seen for themselves the hollowness of such BBC rhetoric.

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This, of course, is all part of an endemic pattern of BBC bias towards Israel under the guise of ‘impartiality’; a façade that has now been obliterated. The corporation’s longstanding, blatant protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government ordered genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023. (...)

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Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #media #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj #propaganda

The Guardian

Around the globe, conflict is spreading – but it’s too often going ignored. Are we simply overwhelmed by the scale of it?

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A funeral ceremony for people killed in a US airstrike on a marketplace in Sanaa, Yemen, 23 April 2025. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Victims of Nazi atrocities will be remembered at ceremonies next week marking the end of the second world war in Europe. (...)

The dead of 1939-45 should never be forgotten. But we should also be mindful to count the dead of 2025. To know that in years to come, we will remember, record and honour victims of today’s recurring atrocities. (...)

When confronted by such horrors, silence is unacceptable. Silence is complicity. To remain silent is to suggest nothing has been learned from the past. (...)

Why is this carnage tolerated, even normalised? One proffered reason is the complexity and number of conflicts – the most since 1945. The total has doubled in the past five years. More than 300 million people need humanitarian aid and protection. Yet the UN system, frequently paralysed by major power rivalries, is failing. Its authority is scorned, its envoys sidelined, its peacekeepers attacked, in Lebanon and elsewhere. It is critically under resourced. (...)

People in wealthier, more stable countries appear overwhelmed by the vast extent and sheer awfulness of global breakdown. Anecdotally, many say that faced by relentless tsunamis of upsetting news they simply “switch off”. It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they feel powerless. Natural disasters still prompt generous responses. (...)

But man-made “forever wars”, and complicated ethnic and religious conflicts in, say, Afghanistan, Syria or Somalia are harder to engage with. (...)

War and conflict are products, not causes, of current world disorder, which is primarily political in origin. Spreading instability stems, partly at least, from political fragmentation, from the ongoing rejection of globalisation and an agreed international rulebook. A rising tide of authoritarian rightwing populism, ultra-nationalism, me-first economics, xenophobic prejudice and fear of difference – as well as an enervating loss of faith, trust and moral purpose – contribute to this depleted sense of connection. (...)

Politically, militarily and morally atrocious behaviour is spreading like a virus, and draws ever closer to home.

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Tags: #english #second world war #wwII #holocaust #yemen #gaza #israel #palestine #palestinians #genicide #war crimes #torture #haiti #Democratic Republic of the Congo #DRC #congo #myanmar #afghanistan, #syria #somalia #sudan

Media Lens

The post-WW2 ‘international rules-based order’ that supposedly underpins global affairs in the interests of peace, democracy and prosperity has always been largely a charade. But Israel’s continuing Gaza genocide, carried out with seeming impunity and with the complicity and even active participation of the US and its allies, has exposed the charade like never before.

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Israeli soldiers celebrate in front of a home they destroyed in Gaza (via Maha Hussaini).

Twenty years ago, at the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the doctrine of the ‘responsibility to protect’ or ‘R2P’. The key concerns were to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Whenever populations are at risk of such crimes, the international community is supposed to take collective action ‘in a timely and decisive manner’ to prevent mass atrocities from taking place. (...)

If the doctrine of ‘R2P’ was authentic, then there would have been massive international action to prevent Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as Israeli terror acts committed in the occupied West Bank, including the routine killing of Palestinian children. (...)

The killing of 15 medics and emergency workers last month by Israeli soldiers, and the attempted Israeli cover-up, with bodies and vehicles buried in a shallow mass grave, provoked not a single public condemnation of Israel from Western leaders, as far as we are aware. (...)

Historian and political commentator Assal Rad observed via X that Western media have no compunction giving headline coverage whenever ‘Russia lies’. But, in the case of Israel, the headlines use the weasel phrase: ‘Israel changes account’. (...)

Last November, perhaps seeking a viral ‘gotcha’ moment, a journalist challenged Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, with the clichéd question, ‘Does Israel have a right to exist?’

Albanese’s cogent response is worth contemplating:

‘Israel does exist. Israel is a recognised member of the United Nations. Besides this, there is not such a thing in international law like a right of a state to exist. Does Italy have a right to exist? Italy exists. Now, if tomorrow, Italy and France want to merge and become Ita-France, fine, this is not up to us. What is enshrined in international law is the right of a people to exist. So, the state is there. The state of Israel is there. It’s protected as a member of the United Nations. Does this justify the erasure of another people? Hell, no. Not 75 years ago. Not 57 years ago. Surely not today. Where is the protection of the Palestinian people from erasure, from annexation, from illegal occupation and apartheid? This is what we need to discuss.’

A powerful reply indeed. Where is the much-vaunted ‘R2P’ when it comes to Palestine?

Last Friday, Mirjana Spoljaric, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that Gaza has become ‘hell on earth’. Israel was ‘threatening the viability of Palestinians continuing to live in Gaza at all’. What is happening in Gaza is, she said, an ‘extreme hollowing out’ of international law.

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Tags: #english #world order #rule of law #international law #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #west bank #occupied territories #un #united nations #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #crimes against humanity #nato #libya #iraq #media #news #journalism #journalist #bbc #genocide #International Court of Justice #icj

The Guardian

After 15 Palestinian medics and civil defence workers were killed by Israeli forces late last month, Israel began a familiar pattern of denial. (...)

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A mural of slain of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead during an Israeli military raid in Jenin in 2022. Photograph: Adel Hana/AP.

Often, at first, the IDF denies involvement. Sometimes – in the context of Gaza – it suggests one of Hamas’s own rockets fell short, causing the casualties.

Otherwise, it might allege that those killed were either combatants themselves, or collateral damage from the targeting of combatants.

And the case of the Gaza medics is only the latest incident when Israel has altered its account of a high profile killing. (...)

According to analysis conducted by Israeli human rights organisation, Yesh Din, published last year, the mechanism set up by the IDF’s general staff to investigate potential war crimes is designed to avoid responsibility while giving the impression that a process is taking place. (...)

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> See also: Israel resumes genocide in Gaza. Yet the Western media is suppressing the truth.

Tags: #english #israel #palestine #palestinians #gaza #WestBank #genocide #hamas #icc #war crimes #civilian deaths #medics

The Guardian

The country’s so-called political centre has licensed a new era of authoritarianism – to the AfD’s delight.

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Police officers in front of a protest in solidarity with Palestinians, Berlin, 4 November 2023. Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA.

A crackdown on political dissent is well under way in Germany. Over the past two years, institutions and authorities have cancelled events, exhibitions and awards over statements about Palestine or Israel. There are many examples: the Frankfurt book fair indefinitely postponing an award ceremony for Adania Shibli; the Heinrich Böll Foundation withdrawing the Hannah Arendt prize from Masha Gessen; the University of Cologne rescinding a professorship for Nancy Fraser; the No Other Land directors Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham being defamed by German ministers. And, most recently, the philosopher Omri Boehm being disinvited from speaking at this month’s anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald.

In nearly all of these cases, accusations of antisemitism loom large – even though Jews are often among those being targeted. More often than not, it is liberals driving or tacitly accepting these cancellations, while conservatives and the far right lean back and cheer them on. While vigilance against rising antisemitism is no doubt warranted – especially in Germany – that concern is increasingly weaponised as a political tool to silence the left.

Germany has recently taken a chilling new step, signalling its willingness to use political views as grounds to curb migration. Authorities are now moving to deport foreign nationals for participating in pro-Palestine actions. (...)

With a new conservative government in power, the crackdown on Palestinians and migrants – already well under way with the so-called traffic-light coalition – is set to escalate even further. Germany is at a crossroads: it can choose to uphold the principles it claims to stand for, or continue down a path of authoritarianism. For now, the direction seems unmistakably clear.

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Tags: #english #germany #far right #afd #protest #freedom of expression #democracy #gaza #palestine #palestinians #israel #antisemitism #migration #immigrants

Media Lens

The BBC’s withdrawal of the powerful documentary, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’, epitomises how much the UK’s national broadcaster is beholden to the Israel lobby.

The corporation’s longstanding systematic protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since the country launched its genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023. We have all seen the repetition and amplification of the Israeli narrative above the Palestinian perspective, omission of ‘Israel’ from headlines about its latest war crimes committed in Gaza, and even the dismissive treatment by senior BBC management of serious concerns about bias raised by their own journalists. (...)

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Note. At the time of writing, ‘Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone’, can be viewed here on Rumble.

Tags: #english #media #news #journalism #journalist #censorship #propaganda #bbc #gaza #palestine #palestinians #occupied territories #documentary #israel lobby #genocide #war crimes #human rights