Thursday, July 10, 2025

 

Fueling Genocide: Inside the Global Supply Chain that Delivers Jet Fuel to Israel’s Military


Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza has been fueled by a surge in deliveries of military-grade jet fuel from U.S. providers. In this visual, we expose the companies and governments complicit in this supply chain, while highlighting grassroots efforts to track and disrupt this deadly cargo through direct action, boycott campaigns, and community resistance.


Visualizing Palestine is the intersection of communication, social sciences, technology, design and urban studies for social justice. Visualizing Palestine uses creative visuals to describe a factual rights-based narrative of Palestine/Israel. Read other articles by Visualizing Palestine, or visit Visualizing Palestine's website.

 Gunfire Communication with “Zombie Hordes”: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the IDF


It’s made to order. First, eliminate the aid system after creating circumstances of enormous suffering. Then, kill, starve, vanquish, and displace those in need of that aid.  Finally, give the pretence of humanity by ensuring some aid to those whose suffering you created in the first place.

As things stand, the system of aid distribution in the Gaza Strip is intended to cause suffering and destruction to recipients. Since May 26, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an opaque entity with Israeli and US backing, has run the distribution of parcels from a mere four points, a grim joke given the four hundred or so outlets previously operated by the United Nations Palestinian relief agency. The entire process of seeking aid has been heavily rationed and militarized, with Israeli troops and private contractors exercising murderous force with impunity. Opening times are not set, rendering the journey to the distribution points even more precarious. When they do open, they do so for short spells.

Haaretz has run reports quoting soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces claiming to have orders to deliberately fire upon unarmed crowds on their perilous journey to the food sites. In a June 27 piece, the paper quotes a soldier describing the distribution sites as “a killing field.”  Where he was stationed, “between one and five people were killed every day.” Those seeking aid were “treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

The interviewed soldier could recall no instance of return fire. “There’s no enemy, no weapons.” IDF officers also told the paper that the GHF’s operations had provided a convenient distraction for continuing operations in Gaza, which had been turned into a “backyard”, notably during Israel’s war with Iran. In the words of a reservist, the Strip had “become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing. It’s not even an ‘unfortunate incident’ like they used to say.”

An IDF officer involved in overseeing security at one of the distribution centers was full of understatement. “Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that’s highly problematic, to say the least.” It was “neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells.”

Much the same story can be found with the security contractors, those enthusiastic killers following in the footsteps of predecessors who treat international humanitarian law as inconvenient if not altogether irrelevant. Countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to the blood-soiled record of private military contractors, with the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad city’s Nisour Square by Blackwater USA employees in September 2007 being but one spectacular example. While those employees faced trial and conviction in a US federal court in 2014 on an assortment of charges – among them murder, manslaughter, and attempted manslaughter – such a fate is unlikely for any of those working for the GHF.

On July 4, the BBC published the observations of a former contractor on the trigger-happy conduct of his colleagues around the food centers. In one instance, a guard opened fire on women, children, and elderly people “moving too slowly away from the site.” Another contractor, also on location, stood on the berm overlooking the exit to one of the GHF sites, firing 15 to 20 bursts of repetitive fire at the crowd. “A Palestinian man dropped to the ground motionless. And then, the other contractor who was standing there was like, ‘damn, I think you got one’. And then they laughed about it.”

The company had also failed to issue contractors any operating procedures or rules of engagement, except one: “If you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later.” No reference is made to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers. To journey to Gaza was to go to a land unencumbered by laws and rules. “Do what you want” is the cultural norm of GHF operatives. And this stands to reason, given the reference of “team leaders” to Gazans seeking aid as “zombie hordes”.

The GHF, in time-honored fashion, has denied these allegations. Ditto the IDF, that great self-proclaimed stalwart of international law. It is, therefore, left to such contributors as Anas Baba, NPR’s producer in the Gaza Strip, to enlighten those who care to read and listen. As one of the few Palestinian journalists working for a US news outlet in the strip, his observations carry singular weight. In a recent report, Baba neatly summarised the manufactured brutality behind the seeking of aid in an enclave strangled and suffering gradual extinction. “I faced Israeli military fire, private US contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations, and masked thieves – to get food from a group supported by the US and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”.

If nothing else, it is high time that the GHF scraps any pretense of being humanitarian in its title and admits to its true role: an adjutant to Israel’s program of extirpating Gaza’s Palestinian population.


“Thou Shalt Not Kill”: The World’s Silence Is  Complicity


I do not write from comfort. I write from the salt of grief. From the agony of watching the world orchestrate its distractions while an entire people are burned, buried, and erased.

The world has failed the Palestinian people. Utterly and entirely.

This is not a political crisis—it is a moral apocalypse.

Since October 2023, more than 64,000 Palestinians—the vast majority women and children—have been killed in Gaza. That figure, cited by the Watson Institute, only scratches the surface. A 2024 Lancet study estimated that up to 186,000 deaths may be attributable to the ongoing conflict—caused not only by direct violence but by famine, trauma, disease, and a shattered healthcare system. At that time, Ralph Nader placed the number closer to 200,000.

These are not numbers. These are obliterated lineages. Neighborhoods razed. Babies recovered from beneath rubble in what were meant to be shelters—not graves. Hospitals bombed. Schools incinerated. Families starved. Children turned to ash inside classrooms. Elders murdered in wards they once trusted as safe.

And how has the world responded? With silence. With vague “regrets.” With weapons shipments.

Where is the United Nations and its so-called peacekeeping mandate? Where is the Arab League? Where are the global faith leaders who quote “Thou shalt not kill” from the pulpit—but seem deaf to the cries from Gaza?

“Thou shalt not kill.” Inscribed in the BibleQur’anTorahGita—yes. But also enshrined in international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the charters of the United Nations. It is sacred. It is legal. It is universal. And it has been violated. Repeatedly. Brazenly. Unforgivably.

Those who sponsor this genocide sleep beside holy texts while investing in weapons and war stocks. They pray with one hand and push missile buttons with the other.

Yet those sponsoring this genocide sleep beside these holy texts while investing in war stocks and boasting defense profits. They pray with one hand and press missile buttons with the other.

This is not just genocide—it is infanticide, ecocide, scholacide, culturecide, and medicide.

Let us name it fully:

  • Infanticide: Babies buried under bombed maternity wards.
  • Scholacide: Teachers and students turned to ash inside classrooms.
  • Ecocide: Farmland poisoned, aquifers drained, trees reduced to cinders.
  • Medicide: The annihilation of healthcare, as ambulances are shelled and doctors are slaughtered in their scrubs.

These are not metaphors. They are facts. And the so-called international community is not watching helplessly—it is watching profitably.

Let us not be deceived: silence is not neutrality. Silence is a moral alignment with power.

A carpenter does not build chairs to store under the bed. A tailor does not sew garments just to hide them away. And the arms industry does not make weapons for decoration. These machines of death must be sold. And sold they are—through wars.

The children of Gaza were not accidental casualties. They were sacrificed at the altar of empire, profit, and political cowardice.

So I ask:

To the architects of this violence: What crime did the Palestinian children commit? What sin warranted this obliteration?

To the silent majority: When does neutrality become complicity? What will you tell your children when they read of this— —or will even that history be erased?

This is not only about Gaza. It is about all of us. About what we become when we no longer act. About the future we construct through our indifference.

I offer this piece not just as protest, but as lament. Not just as lament, but as sacred indictment.

In the name of every holy book used to bless bombs, In memory of every mother whose child was stolen by missiles, In the name of all prophets who warned us against such evil: Let it be known— The world has failed the Palestinians.

We are called not only to pray but to protest. Not only to mourn but to move. Not only to witness, but to refuse— Refuse to accept that this is the world we inherit or pass down.

But we, the people of conscience, will not be silent.

And to my fellow activists, faith leaders, citizens of truth and resistance, I say this:

The silence of the world is not passive. It is participation. And it will be remembered that the entire world stood by while Palestinians were genocided—generation after generation.

Sammy Attoh is a Human Rights Coordinator, poet, and public writer. A member of The Riverside Church in New York City and The New York State Chaplains Group, he advocates for spiritual renewal and systemic justice. Originally from Ghana, his work draws from ancestral wisdom to explore the sacred ties between people, planet, and posterity. Read other articles by Sammy.

Blood and Ashes: Genocidal


Deathscapes from Treblinka to Gaza


“He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” Isaiah 44:20”

My maternal family, being Jews in 1930s Germany, were forced to affix yellow stars upon their clothing and were subject to daily public harassment. Finally, my mother and her sister, a few small family valuables sown by their mother into the lining of their clothes, escaped the madness on a Kindertransport, their father arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

At present, and since the inception of the Zionist state, in the name of those who survived Nazi inflicted brutality and blood lust, Palestinians suffer the Zionist’s version of crimes against humanity — that includes a type of Final Solution being enacted upon the inhabitants of Gaza.

War, in general, should be as outmoded among people possessed of heart, mind, and soul as is cannibalism, incest, and public lynching. Yet the political elite of the West not only permit Israel to perpetrate genocide but supply the weaponry that enable mass slaughter.

While, in the US, ICE thugs, with jackboots for minds, come for blameless human beings, as the Gestapo did my grandfather, as the worst among us cheer them on. The concept of Alligator Alcatraz (and the fact MAGA miscreants find it all so amusing) seems like a comic book version of Nazi evil. Himmel might have averred, “Das ist ein bisschen stark! Ist das eine Art Witz”! (“That’s a bit much! Is this some kind of a joke?”). The joke would have gone over like a flaming zeppelin at a Berghof dinner party.

Treblinka, Hiroshima, Wounded Knee and the US government-planned mass starvation of people of the American Great Plains, and Gaza are regarded as aberrations in human events. Yet, on closer examination, the demarcation point between civilization and human barbarity is nebulous at best.

Which side, one should ask oneself, again and again, of the tattered and torn divide are you on?


(Pictured: My son and I, in Berlin, in 2019, standing in front of the house stolen from our family by the Nazis. Palestinians, throughout Israel, could stage their version of the scene.)

Every action nations commit in war would be a crime in times of peace in a just society. Israeli actions, committed, by the IDF and the Zionist settler class, even before the Gaza genocide campaign, transgressed the boundaries of human decency. It is known, abused people, long after their horrible experiences, can become abusers. But whole societies? A cultural mythos of perpetual victimhood, it seems, can lead a people, once wronged, to become convinced they can do no wrong. Hence, the tragedy of a culture of grievance creates a compassion-bereft position towards outsiders.

A late uncle of mine, when a Jewish boy growing up in The Bronx in the 1920s, he and his brothers had to cross through treacherous-to-outsiders Irish, Black, and Italian city blocks when returning from school and other daily rounds. Often, they had to dodge barrages of thrown rocks and other threats to bodily safety. In adulthood, the European Holocaust re-enforced his animus toward the other and he conflated the survival of global Jewry with the existence of Israel.

Uncle Sol would pace the house and he was given to fulminate, even sans context, “an Arab is a Jew with his brains knocked out. Bomb them, that is all they understand.”

As a middle aged and elderly man, he was still dodging stones. His younger brother’s, an orthodox Jew by conviction, children became Israeli citizens and joined the ethnocentric ranks of the Zionist settler class. From the Bronx to Ramallah, through the generations, the madness perpetuates.

Uncle Sol, in his last years, as he descended into Alzheimer’s related dementia, hallucinated Palestinians marauders moved in stealth through his house; a stone-throwing Intifada of the mind shook the old man to his very core. There were peaceful days when he minded an imaginary nursery (he had attended to the care of his younger brother). He was prone to shouting, “Leave the children alone! Let them play!” How is it possible, by his bunker mentality worldview, that Palestinian children could not be viewed as human and that they were deserving of a homeland and a childhood?

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me…” — Exodus 20:5.

Problematic passage, to say the least. How does one transform the rage and concomitant tragedy that seems to be passed forward by consanguinity. Furies rule the blood. Is there anything under heaven that will end the blood-drenched madness inherent to generational trauma turned by-reflex into animus?

My DNA reveals, my ancestors were European e.g., Spanish, French, Germanic, with four percent coming from Northern Iraq and Iran. This is crucial: nada from ancient Israel. How is it I have a “right to return” to a land where my ancestors never dwelled but Palestinians, whose blood states that they are descendants of the original Jews of the Old Testament are forbidden to return to the land stolen from them?

Whenever the concept of a One State Solution is suggested to Zionists, they are stricken by the thought that Palestinians, now a majority of the population, would inflict the same brutal, dehumanizing treatment on Jewish citizens that they suffered during Zionist rule. In the childhood city of my birth, Birmingham, Alabama, the White overclass, during the civil rights era, expressed similar trepidation thus resisted granting African-Americans equal rights and protection under the law. The same mindset ruled Apartheid South Africa. The psychological projection is a de facto admission of guilt.

Israel is bleeding population. A new Exodus is extant. Jews, in large numbers, are leaving the Zionist state. Perpetrating Genocide and other acts of perpetual aggression have bankrupted Israeli society, both economically and morally. As the Ashkenazi elite exit the country, the zealots remain, and like my Uncle Sol, in his decline, they are dwelling in an hallucinated, and, in steep decline, version of the world.

Regarding a related false and death-besotted cultural mythos:

May be an image of map

It is all over but Trump’s et al. palaver in public declaration and SHOUTING in pixel

Independence Day in the US… the lie of the mind of it all. More than two and a half centuries of the lie. Independence from the crown; then subservience to the moneyed class. Life (taking the lives of the original people of the land). Liberty (being at liberty to be exploited by those whose idea of liberty is enslavement and land theft). The pursuit of happiness (perhaps the most profound delusion promulgated there is manic pursuit – but scant happiness is on display. Only the micro frauds that maintain the macro fraud).

An imposter culture instructs – coerces the individual – to manufacture an imposter self – a social mask so that the culture itself does not destroy you.

Result: The grifter, the predator capitalist, the hollow to the core politician, and the anxious and depressed. Do you want to drive yourself even crazier and make the world even worse in its madness. Refuse to admit your own madness and the madness of simply being human unlooses upon the world.

When you face the abyss – that is, the realization we, all of us, are alone. When you are devoured by it – that is where and when you gain the company of others who feel and grieve for the sadness of the earth; of those who transform mortification witnessing human folly into humor and poetry. Then welcome home, lost and weary traveler. You have gained independence. You have shaken off dependence on the American lie.

In the macro sense; The lies promote nationalism in general; of Zionism; of militarism; of earth decimating, soul-defying cultures of greed and exploitation.

Once, the rancid lies have gone to compost, the green of the novel can rise and bloom. A dreams, yes. But so are the nightmares that are self-resonate feedback loops of past and ongoing tragedy. The legacy of violence begetting violent reprisal is as human and tragic as human and tragic can be. Moving forward, we have a choice: implement a just peace or else be plagued, in perpetuity, by endless torment inflicted by grievance-maddened furies.

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10

geopoliticus

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man by Salvador DalĂ­

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist, and essayist. His poems, short fiction, poetry and essays have been published in numerous print publications and anthologies; his political essays have been widely posted on the progressive/left side of the internet.  Read other articles by Phil, or visit Phil's website

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