As Russian army inches closer, Ukrainians must decide to stay or go

Quentin Sommerville - BBC News,

 reporting from Bilozerske in eastern Ukraine
Fri, September 12, 2025 

The white armoured police van speeds into the eastern Ukrainian town of Bilozerske, a steel cage mounted across its body to protect it from Russian drones.

They'd already lost one van, a direct hit from a drone to the front of the vehicle; the cage, and powerful rooftop drone jamming equipment, offer extra protection. But still, it's dangerous being here: the police, known as the White Angels, want to spend as little time in Bilozerske as possible.

The small, pretty mining town, just nine miles (14km) from the front line, is slowly being destroyed by Russia's summer offensive. The local hospital and banks have long since closed. The stucco buildings in the town square are shattered from drone attacks, the trees along its avenues are broken and splintered. Neat rows of cottages with corrugated roofs and well-tended gardens stream past the car windows. Some are untouched, others burned-out shells.

A rough estimate is that 700 inhabitants remain in Bilozerske from a pre-war population of 16,000. But there is little evidence of them - the town already looks abandoned.

An estimated 218,000 people need evacuation from the Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine, including 16,500 children. The area, which is crucial to the country's defence, is bearing the brunt of Russia's invasion, including daily attacks from drones and missiles. Some are unable to leave, others unwilling. Authorities will help evacuate those in front-line areas, but they can't rehouse them once they're out of danger. And despite the growing threat from Russian drones there are those who would rather take their chances than leave their homes.

The police are looking for the house of one woman who does want to leave. Their van can't make it down one of the roads. So, on foot, a policeman goes searching, the hum of the drone jammer and its invisible protection receding as he heads down a lane.

[BBC]

Eventually he finds the woman under the eaves of her cottage, a sign on her door reading "People Live Here". She has dozens of bags and two dogs. It's too much for the police to carry: they already have evacuees and their belongings crammed inside the white van.

The woman faces a choice - leave behind her belongings, or stay. She decides to wait. There will be another evacuation team here soon and they will take her belongings too.

To stay or go is a life-or-death calculation. Civilian casualties in Ukraine reached a three-year high in July of this year, according to the latest available figures from the United Nations, with 1,674 people killed or injured. Most occur in front-line towns. The same month saw the highest number killed and injured by short-range drones since the start of the full-scale invasion, the UN said.

The nature of the threat to civilians in war has changed. Where once artillery and rocket strikes were the main threat, now they face being chased down by Russian first person view (FPV) drones, that follow and then strike.

As the police leave town, an old man pushing a bicycle appears. He's the only soul I see on the streets that day.

Most of those remaining in front-line towns are older people, who make up a disproportionate number of civilian casualties, according to the UN.

He tells me to move to the side of the road, out of the way of non-existent traffic. Volodymyr Romaniuk is 73 years old and is risking his life for the two cooking pots he's collected on the back of his bike. His sister-in-law's house was destroyed in a Russian attack, so he came today to salvage the pots.

Isn't he afraid of the drones, I ask. "What will be, will be. You know, at 73 years old, I'm not afraid anymore. I've already lived my life," he says.

Volodymyr Romaniuk braved the empty streets for some cooking pots [Darren Conway/BBC]

He's in no rush to get off the streets. A former football referee, he slowly removes a folded card from his jacket pocket and shows me his official Collegium of Football Referees card. It's dated April 1986 – the month of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

He's from the west of Ukraine and could return there out of harm's way. "I stayed here for my wife," he tells me. She's had multiple surgeries and wouldn't be able to make the journey. And with that, he leaves, and heads home to care for his wife, the two metal pots on the back of his bike rattling as he moves along the empty street.

Slovyansk is further back from the front, 25km away, and faces a different drone threat. Shahed drones have been dubbed "flying mopeds" by Ukrainians because of their puttering engines. Swarms of them attack Slovyansk often. There is a change in the drone's hum before it dives and then explodes.

At night, Nadiia and Oleh Moroz hear them but still they won't leave Slovyansk. They have poured blood and sweat into this land - and at their son's graveside, tears too.

Serhii was 29, a lieutenant in the army killed by a cluster bomb near Svatove in November 2022. He and his father, Oleh, first fought together in 2015 against the Russians in Donbas. They worked side by side, as sappers.

Serhii's trident-shaped grave sits on a hillside overlooking Slovyansk, his portrait and a map of Ukraine on the polished black stone.

Serhii was just 29 years old when a Russian cluster bomb killed him in November 2022 [Darren Conway/BBC]

Nadiia, 53, visits often. On the afternoon I meet her, Russian artillery is landing on a nearby hillside. But she pays little attention as she fusses around the grave and whispers sweet nothings to her dead son.

"How can you lose the place where you were born, where you grew up, where your child grew up, where he found his final rest?" she tells me through tears. "And then to live your whole life with the feeling that you will never again visit this place - I cannot even imagine that right now."

But her husband Oleh, 55, admits they will have to leave when the fighting comes closer. "I won't stay here, the Russians would put a target on me straight away," he says. Until then they will stay under the nightly terror of drones so that they can remain close to their son's final resting place.

Life's challenges don't stop when war arrives. All Olha Zaiets wants is time to recover from her cancer surgery. Instead, the 53-year-old and her husband Oleksander Ponomarenko, 59, had to flee their home in Oleksandrivka. The Russians were only 7.5km away and the shelling became intense. Their postwoman was killed in a Russian bombardment, and the school principal too.

"There was a strike - a missile hit the neighbouring house. And the blast wave smashed our roof tiles, blew out the doors, the windows, the gates, the fence. We had just left, and two days later it hit. If we had been there, we would have died," she explains.

Olha and her husband are staying in a borrowed house in Sviatohirsk - they have nowhere else to go [Darren Conway/BBC]

Now they are living, temporarily, in a borrowed house in Sviatohirsk. It isn't much better. We can hear shelling outside, the front line edges closer every day. But it will have to do. They have nowhere else to go.

"Yes, we will have to move farther away somewhere, but we don't know how or where," she says in a room crowded with their belongings, still waiting to be unpacked. Their life savings have gone on her hospital bills and now they are out of options.

On Tuesday they left the town to collect Olha's test results. The news was good and she won't have to undergo chemotherapy. "We were happy, we felt like we were flying on wings," she said.

But while they were gone, Russia bombed the nearby town of Yarova, 4km away. It was just before 11am and older people had left their homes and gathered to collect their pensions. Some 24 were killed and 19 wounded in one of the deadliest strikes on civilians in the war so far.

On Telegram, the head of the Donetsk administration, Vadym Filashkin, decried the attack. "This is not warfare – this is pure terrorism."

"I urge everyone," he said, "take care of yourselves. Evacuate to safer regions of Ukraine!"

Additional reporting by Liubov Sholudko

 

America Meets Its Hidden Destiny

by Michael Brenner / August 18th, 2025

Healthy societies revel in who they are. Unhealthy societies view themselves in terms of either an ignominious past, current enemies who endanger them, or internal elements degrading the true, virtuous nature of the commune and sapping its strength. The United States through most of its history was in the first category. Today, it is clearly in the second. Therein lies our national tragedy – and our precipitous slide into Fascism American style.

This historic shift – with profound implications – has not been driven by tangible factors, originating within itself or externally, but strikingly by intangibles. The country has not experienced any traumatic shocks. No ruinous, humiliating wartime defeat and occupation. No economic crash. No civil war. No deeply rooted conflicts between Church and secular forces. Think of inter-war Europe: by comparison, the United States has been living in a benign environment. American exceptionalism.  Stresses and strains, yes – nothing, though, of the magnitude that could explain so drastic a transformation.

YET, there is a pervasive feeling that things are not quite right, vague feelings of dread hover, that something awful may happen that we can neither anticipate, avert nor cope with, that America is ‘losing it.’ Free floating unease and apprehension. A United States that senses it is losing control, losing mastery of its environment and of itself, naturally will look for scapegoats. Why? Corrective action to straighten out what’s gone wrong requires constructive ideas, rigorous thinking, self-confidence. They don’t exist. Little is positive or constructive. Tearing down, destruction, perverting, corrupting predominate instead.¹ The negative prevails. Let’s look at current scene – at public discourse, politics, the dominant themes, the level and type of citizen engagement.

What marks the landscape are: emotions eclipsing thought, intellectual aridity, the erasure of all boundaries to words or actions, the triumph of crude willpower. The rapid success of the Trump-led MAGA movement in putting in place the building blocks for a quasi-fascist regime is stunning testimony to how potent are the forces of negativity, to how pathetically weak the resistance of institutions, of organized political opposition, of civil society.

Instead of deliberate reflection, we round on “enemies” – abroad and at home.

Abroad

Today, there is near unanimity in the vilification of Russia cast as a reincarnate Soviet Union, in portraying China as a menace bent on supplanting the U.S. as a global hegemon by foul and illicit means, in denouncing Iran as fanatically dedicated in its attacks on American interests. Then, there are the Arab terrorists – an all-purpose label to be stuck on whichever groups in the Greater Middle East fight against American/Israeli domination and defy American dictation: inter alia Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS, the Houthis, al-Shabab. Al-Qaeda, which authored the trauma and humiliation of 9/11, has lost its pride of place on the enemies list now that Washington has joined with its Syrian branch to topple Assad, head of Syria’s anti-Israel Arab nationalist government.

They are the hostiles who we say are conniving to bring America low. They represent an unprecedentedly multi-pronged threat to the national interest, to American self-esteem. They are assailing us ruthlessly in ever domain – military security, commerce and finance, our moral authority, even the political integrity of our impeccably democratic system by campaigns to disrupt and manipulate its workings.

These propositions enjoy the allegiance of almost the entire American political class. Nary a single influential member of the Congress (Sanders, Yes; AOC, No) disputes them – as evinced by endorsement of Trump’s arbitrary sanctions warfare despite a Constitutional stipulation that only Congress has the authority to impose sanctions, by drastic boosts in the Pentagon/Intelligence budgets, by sustained applause for the homicidal fanatic who has lured us into a genocidal campaign against Palestine’s Muslim Arabs, and by blanket support for war preparations against the PRC. Not a single MSM outlet submits this hard core of the nation’s foreign policy precepts to skeptical examination. The major think tanks supply endless justifications. The only debates focus on tactics and priorities. Moral considerations are banned by common – silent – consent.

[Stroll along Washington’s think tank rows of Massachusetts Avenue and ‘K’ Street and an attentive ear hears one uninterrupted declamation issuing from the minds that shape and propel American thinking about the world.]

Noticeably absent is the ideological component. In the Cold War, the historic contest between democratic capitalism and Communism overshadowed all else. In its place, we have the contrived effort to promote a specious – and mortal – combat between Democracy vs Autocracy. In the American camp are such paragons of democracy as Netanyahu, Bolsonaro, Zelensky, Bukele (el Salvador), Mohammed bin-Salman, the Gulf sheikhs, and Abu Mohammad al-Jalani – ex-al-Qaeda emir installed as President of Syria. Democrat Netanyahu bombed Democrat Jalani’s capital Damascus a week ago. If Washington does anything to calm that intramural ruckus, Trump no doubt would cite it as the capstone to his fabulous record as peacemaker to claim the Nobel Prize. Donald Trump is the lodestar for all of these faux democrats, the cynosure of Democratic values.

American elites and the citizenry overall seem to have no inkling as how far the country’s standing in the world has fallen – that we are seen as moral hypocrites and bullies everywhere outside the Collective West (its political class, anyway). That our reputation as a model of enlightened government and generator of public goods is shattered beyond restoration.

We are living in a fantasy world of our own imaginings that is only tenuously connected to reality. In that fictitious domain, fixed consensus exists in believing the most outlandish – and reckless – notions. So, we are mistreated to an extraordinary array of misconceptions about declared foes and what we can do to subdue them. Most dangerous of these unsupportable propositions are those that vastly exaggerate – indeed, misrepresent – the threat that they pose. Those articles of faith, in turn, evoke extraordinarily extreme actions and plans for war. In the former category, we find these gems: Putin’s ambition is to wash his boots in the English Channel; Russia will crumble under the stress of sanctions and defeat by Ukraine’s ‘liberation’ forces; Putin’s regime will be replaced by a West-friendly, oligarch-led sober version of the Yeltsin-era set-up; Russian weaponry is significantly inferior to American weaponry; Russia can be split away from China and/or China split away from Russia. China is weaker than it looks; Beijing can be coerced into yielding its claim to Taiwan as an integral part of China – an agreed principle dating back 50 years, abrogated unilaterally by Washington; the U.S. has the upper hand in any economic duel with the PRC; therefore, we can impose a Maginot line of technological deprivation that will put an end to China’s challenge to American global dominance. A prideful India will hamstring its growing economy by boycotting Russian energy supplies at Washington’s command; prideful Indians eagerly will sign up as Sepoy auxiliaries in the American campaign to yolk China. Unlimited, unqualified backing for Israel’s imperial ambitions serves American national interests; there is no reason to modify that judgment in the face of its genocide of the Palestinians – nor should it be modified in the face of its military aggressions in Lebanon, Syria and its unrelenting (successful) attempt to embroil the U.S. in an all-out war with Iran. The answer to Iran’s resistance to Israeli-American hegemony in the Middle East is regime change in Tehran. Airborne attacks will trigger a popular uprising. American precision weapons can destroy Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles, its centrifuges and related nuclear facilities. {They have not. They never reached the inner chamber where the centrifuges were located – according to the most astute, neutral scientific assessment. Anyway, the High Enriched Uranium (HEU) and most of the centrifuges probably had been removed beforehand. Claims to the contrary emanating from the White House, the National Intelligence Agency (Tulsi Gabbard) and the Pentagon (Pete Hegseth) are outright lies referencing no pertinent data. Closer to home, there is the convenient belief that America’s drug addiction problem will disappear if we could dam the flow of narcotics from Mexico.

Our faith-based supposition is that the outcome of these intertwined projects will be a stronger, more secure United States; elimination or grave weakening of our enemies; and enhanced respect/influence round the world. The exact opposite has occurred.

Actions to achieve that outcome match the extremity of ambition. Policy elites are monolingual – they know only the lexicon of coercion, especially military coercion. Diplomacy is a dirty word, negotiations abhorrent.  We dictate, we make demands, we intimidate, we set deadlines – we don’t discuss. We envision the outcome of a successful negotiation as resembling the Japanese surrender on the deck of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay. An unwitting parody of Tom Lehrer’s “Send In The Marines.” Failure – repeated, ignominious failure – is filtered out.

The consequences have been dire: costly for American well-being, murderously destructive out there, disintegrating of those international institutions and accords, arduously accomplished, that have lent a modicum of order and stability to inter-state dealings, and portents of nuclear war.

Let’s turn our attention to the last mentioned. Over the post-war years, the great powers came to the common conclusion that there was no such thing as victory in a nuclear war. Therefore, they bent to the task of controlling “The Bomb,” i.e. taking concrete measures to ensure that there could be no activation of nuclear weapons by miscalculation, technical error, or accident. Stability and control were the aims codified in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTB), the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) and the follow-on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty – all now abandoned or ignored by Washington.

They were complemented by clear understanding that the ‘rules of the road” governing their rivalry called for extreme caution in avoiding conflictual situations involving the U.S., the USSR or – later – China. Proxy wars, yes, but with restrictions. There was only one episode of Russian and American forces exchanging fire. That occurred in occasional dog fights between jets over the Yalu River separating Korea and the PRC. (A famous participant was Ted Williams of baseball legend).

Today, Washington leaders – civilian and military – have deviated from the path of prudence. Senior officials speak openly about the inevitability of a Sino-American war over a Taiwan Straits crisis. That scenario tops the list of the Pentagon’s strategic planning aims and purposes. Military budgets and force structures reflect it. A slew of articles and documents are emerging from government security bodies, affiliated think tanks (e.g. the Hudson Institute), institutes and Establishment journals like Foreign Affairs that analyze in minute details how that war could be conducted under diverse circumstances. Most often, the prospect of it escalating to the level of strategic nuclear exchanges is minimized. Some even talk about which side would have an advantage in the event.

The hard truth is that any conflict that entails American munitions hitting China proper has something like a 90% chance of escalating to nuclear war; 95% if the scatterbrained psychopath is in the Oval Office.² That should be the premise incorporated in any plan for war against China. The casual way that these ‘strategists’ contemplate great power combat testifies to the fact that once minds, and emotions, take up residence in a fanciful universe of their imagining the prospect grows of their divorcing totally from reality.

[“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; if the bomb blast don’t get you, the fallout must” – pithy words of a renowned nuclear strategist]

In regard to Iran, the United States has markedly increased the likelihood of its building a nuclear capability by giving up the international controls incorporated in the JPOA, by our implacable hostility and sanctions, and now by the heavy attack on Iran itself, an attack that has done little damage to Tehran’s nuclear capabilities while vastly strengthening incentives for it to go nuclear.

Most alarming are the unprecedented American strikes against Russia proper. At this moment, and as has been the case for two years at least, serving officers physically in Ukraine play the critical role in the launching of a variety of missiles supplied by the U.S.: HIMARs, (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) and ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System). They provide the critical targeting Intelligence, they insert the codes that activate the weapons, and initiate the firing. Ukrainian military men do nothing more than “press the button.” In short, we are waging war against Russia – carrying out direct attacks. on Russian soil. Moreover, we have encouraged the British, the French and the Germans to do exactly the same – some employing American provided weapons whose use requires explicit approval from Washington. It is the Kremlin’s restraint that has prevented this provocation from leading to dangerous escalation – up until now.

Set in this context, it should have been apparent that the Trump administration could not accept the humiliating defeat represented by a Ukraine settlement on any terms that met Russia’s core demands; nor could it engage seriously with Iran; nor could it consider reining in Israel; nor could it address China as an equal. No more than Biden or Trump in his first term.

At Home

The domestic scene offers a variation of this dismal reality. The Trump-led corps of suited militants and disciples are using coercive force of various kinds in random acts of destruction propelled by emotional drives for unfettered power, control and domination. The United States is being pushed down the path of Fascism American-style with stunning rapidity. Already, in critical respects we have ceased to be a Constitutional democracy.

Daily, the Trump Falange takes truthless, arbitrary actions that defy the law and the Constitution, that shut down entire departments of government duly established by Congress, that suppress programs dedicated to preserve public health and other citizens’ services, that reject guarantees of due process at every level of government. The Bill of Rights is being gutted – the 1st and 4th Amendments already are null and void.  Trump cavalierly uses the Department of Justice as a weapon in vendettas against whomever he dislikes.

These literally mindless assaults on state infrastructure put in place over more than a century are accompanied by attacks on scientific knowledge, on our most notable research institutions, on our universities. Trump and his henchman are literal “know-nothings” who indeed know nothing, and don’t want to know since knowledge is a constraint on the destructive impulse and the lust for absolute ‘freedom’ to do as they please. It follows that there is no tolerance for an official who speaks factual truth without first checking that it conforms to whatever wavelength the boss is on that day. Thus, Tulsi Gabbard is admonished that she will walk the plank unless she immediately contradicts herself on the “obliteration” of Iranian nuclear facilities. She, another D.C. careerist, obliges without hesitation. Both parties are pleased by the outcome. Thus, Erika McEntarfer – the poor woman who directed the Bureau of Labor Statistics – is kicked out unceremoniously because she innocently believed that arithmetic is politically uncontroversial. One party is pleased by the outcome.

This rampage subjugates one institution after another like the German blitzkrieg overrunning hapless cities. In Congress, the Republicans are cowed into regimented automatons who resemble Prussian infantry or deputies to the old Supreme Soviet; the Democrats have reached the terminal point of their passive political suicide – comatose for so long that one barely notices their vanishing act; Barack Obama, who was the nation’s leader for 8 years, amuses himself  producing documentaries for Netflix while the country descends into perdition; the Supreme Court majority under John Roberts are a tacit, yet vital accomplice – rewriting the Constitution as suits them; the economic powerhouses – financial barons, business moguls, Silicon Valley buccaneers – are licking their chops at the feast spread before them by the Trump-Musk-Bessent pillage of the national economy; the MSM are shills or neutered; church denominations and civic society play mute or mumble sotto voce; Trump’s lucrative extortion-protection racket targeting blue chip law firms and Ivy League schools would make Vito Genovese blush; universities in particular are disgracing themselves in their abject surrender. The great debates at the highest reaches of our elite universities appear to be on whether to deal with Trump from a kneeling position or a supine position.

A striking feature of this descent into unbridled autocracy, is that there is no ideological passion fueling it, no doctrine, no philosophy, no religious zeal. It is all about discharging emotions spawned in the depths of their roiled psyches. Just raw, crude tantrums committing flagrant acts of destruction and hurt. We must keep in mind that it is not only Trump. He has ignited and assembled a crew of wackos and misfits such a Robert Kennedy jr. who seemingly spends his waking hours devising ways to impair the health of Americans: cannibalizing the Center for Disease Control, slashing the National Institute of Health, restricting development and distribution of vaccines, suppressing scientific research at universities, demeaning those who actually know what they are talking about. Not surprisingly, this is someone who was diagnosed with worms in his brain and whose previous acts of civic behavior include strewing parts of a dismembered bear around Central Park in NYC Civilization has experienced nothing like this since the Dark Ages dropped the curtain on classical learning in the 6th and 7th centuries.

[The Democrats, for their part, are equally non-ideological. They offer no coherent refutation of Trump’s amputations of the national government or his recission of every enlightened federal program initiated over the past 90 years. This tragic turn was foreshadowed by Bill Clinton’s public declaration in 1997 that “the era of big government is over,” and his promotion of the Bowles-Simpson Commission’s plan to cut deeply into Social Security and Medicare in his 2012 speech at the Democratic Convention renominating Barack Obama. Today, their message in opposition is nothing more than an anti-Trump screed.]

Instead of ideology or doctrine we have a perverted Americanism. An artless blend of myth, doctored history and chauvinism, it has been inflated into an encompassing revelation that explains all, inspires all, justifies all. A one-size-fits-all creed cum faith that embraces every person, every circumstance, every act. Americanism acts as a Unified Field Theory of self-identity, collective enterprise, and the Republic’s enduring meaning. When one element is felt to be jeopardy, the integrity of the whole edifice becomes vulnerable. The drama of the American experience, our collective pageant of progress, used to be the great booster of morale and imparter of meaning. That tonic has lost much of its potency- in good part because it’s not the same country, and we no longer reign supreme in the world. So, crude attempts at restoration become the imperative for a shaky collective identity and impoverished individual self-esteem.  In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive.  Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality.

[At the psychological level, this approach is understandable since it plays to the United States’ strength: overweening self-confidence coupled to military power – thereby perpetuating the national myths of being destined to remain the world’s No. 1 forever, and of being in a position to shape the world system according to American principles and interests. The tension for a nation so constituted encountering objective reality does not favor heightened self-awareness or a change in behavior. Today, there is no foreign policy debate whatsoever. In addition, our vassal governments in Europe and elsewhere either have a national interest in preserving the warped American view of the world (Israel, Poland) or have been so denatured over the decades that they are incapable 0f doing other than to follow Washington obediently – despite already having tumbled over a number of cliffs and staring at a potentially fatal abyss re. China and Russia]

MAGA Dynamics

To understand what forces are turbocharging the MAGA war on pre-Trump America, one must face squarely the abnormal elements in the movement’s make-up.

A.      A cult-like movement such as MAGA can do without a god “but never without a devil.”³ For the neo-Fascist, the devil(s) on whom you focus your wrath is far more important than a prophet who offers a vision of a New Jerusalem or some other utopia. Just as the gratification of destruction eclipses any impulse to construct – other than restoration of some starry-eyed vision of an America that never existed.

B.      There are Devils galore. Enemy states, clandestine networks of evil-doers at home and abroad, the racial “them,” and all who manipulate or facilitate them by not joining the paranoid crusade to purge those malignant forces. In a bizarre way so it is with the Palestinians whose tragic fate is to become the surrogate for all the above objects of scorn – permitting our complicity in their inhumane treatment. They are stand-ins for every social grouping that we – or some segment of us – hate, fear, despise, scapegoat. At once Islamo-terrorists, the Iranian mullahs, Russian saboteurs, Commies, drug cartels, illegal immigrants from inter alia Mexico, South America, Haiti, Afghanistan, Somalia, blacks, gays & transgenders, liberal elitists, abrasive feminists etc. etc. etc. All loom behind the Palestinian face in the mind’s eye of those in thrall to the demons of violent prejudice. When the mix of inchoate emotions reaches a critical mass, and demands discharge, they find a substitute for whatever fixates them. The unrecognized Palestinian becomes a blank canvas on which to paint the bête noir that obsesses you. In a bitter coda to this tale of depraved humanity, might there be vestigial bigots – in Europe and America – who in their twisted psyche project onto the anonymous Palestinian an image of “The Jew” – getting his comeuppance? For most, it is remarkable good fortune that the murderers and torturers are Jews – thus shielding them from stray pangs of conscience since we can congratulate ourselves on making up for the 2,000-years persecution of them.

C. Displays of belligerence in word and deed tug on the emotional strings of those in the movement – even those who themselves lack the courage to act. Hence, the heroic savior is encouraged to raise the level of hostility and castigation of enemies in the rhetoric. He knows that “violence breeds fanaticism begets violence.”⁴

D. The unspeakable has become the vernacular for Trump, his henchmen, his shock troops. Aggressive, hostile words – like violent deeds – nourish the lusts of the initiates while emboldening their prophet. Blind trust in the demagogic leader requires no collateral.

E. In the light of the above, a fanatical mass movement can only intensify and reach new heights of extremity. It can be suppressed – but it cannot moderate. Once it reaches a certain threshold its own momentum will propel it to a climax of one sort or another – invariably a destructive climax.

Conclusion

Fascism or neo-Fascism does not emerge spontaneously from the depths like The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Conditions must be ripe, the ground prepared: combustible militants nursing their resentments must reach a critical mass, an inert populace must be numbed, a political class turned in on themselves, innate moral instincts sublimated, conventional norms of decency discredited. In this sense, Trump’s MAGA is the culmination of a degenerative process – not its cause.⁵

We seem to have experienced a unique case of an auto-immune political cataclysm. The body politics’s instinctive mechanisms for reacting against (false) signs of a (fictitious) threatening invader become disoriented and begin to attack the host itself. A case of self-generated – if unintended – iatrogenic suicide. What was the perceived/felt threat catalyzing this process? 9/11 twenty-four years ago? There’s the puzzle.

In truth, there are no tangible, overt threats to the American body politic which, by any reasonable measure, should cause such an extreme reaction. We must look elsewhere – into the minds and emotions of a disturbed society. One with a defective gyroscope. One where nihilism has blurred cultural and social reference marks, fostering a cult of selfishness – one of whose manifestations is the fashioning of fantasy worlds wherein delusional imaginings have no consequences – backing Trump as a sort of projected wish fulfillment – just as millions embark on a project of self -reinvention or play games of make-believe like ‘Fantasy Football.’ Those are the conditions that have generated the perversions, and the infirmities, that have led to the present perilous state-of-affairs.

To be clear, we are not dealing with flaws of structure or procedure that could be remedied, mistaken policies that could be corrected, or sins that could be atoned. Rather, it is a pervasive corruption of our country’s societal software.

If this interpretation is correct, there is little chance of a reversal or of rectifying the situation. Societies are incapable of close critical self-examination except, with great rarity, under the most extreme circumstances. A complete breakdown as Germany and Japan experienced in WW II. In those cases, it was made possible by the guiding hand of a relatively benevolent external party. We Americans are on our own – tragically, we are lacking the self-awareness to ward off disaster and to regenerate a measure of collective construction.

Endnotes:

• 1
  Nazism was a death cult. A very peculiar kind of death cult. For it reversed a Phoenix-like sequence by first announcing itself in grandiose construction projects, building autobahns, designing Albert Speer’s monumental public buildings as well as putting the Wehrmacht on steroids. Only then did it launch itself on the path of total destruction. First, the destruction of others; then the destruction of themselves and Germany. Throughout, its signature was the death head – Totenkopf – still seen as the emblem of Ukraine’s Azov units and among some Trumpite militants. Hitler’s own psyche entwined the drive for grandiose totems of power with intimations of self-annihilation. So, too, for many of his closest confidantes and fanatical followers. The Nazis are an extreme case both in the strength of their murderous impulses and in their readiness to enter into a danse macabre with Death.
  
  Aggressive cults dedicated to destruction without the suicidal element are more common.
• 2
  The other idea that has surfaced in academic strategic writing concerns nuclear warfighting. This hardy perennial has risen Phoenix-like from the critical dust several times. The latest iteration is set in the context of a conventional war between China and the United States. The analyst postulates that a “losing” China could revert to the use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons (TNWs). This scenario defies credibility on multiple counts.
  
  Above all, the idea that nuclear exchanges could be constrained below a certain (undefined) threshold is unrealistic in the light of what we know about human behavior. The absence of any rules means that confidence margins in the assessment of escalation probabilities are extremely wide. In addition, it is nearly impossible to imagine a situation whereby the United States military defeats Chinese forces to the point of making the country vulnerable to American occupation or dictation of terms (whatever they may be). A credible enforcement of submission to any specific diktat from Washington would have to entail either occupation or threat to strike cities. The Army that had its hands full pacifying Baghdad is in no position to rule 1.5 billion Chinese. As to the possible attack on high value targets, it could be deterred by the strategic nuclear capabilities that China would retain.
  
  Nuclear strategy is a bit like Marxism or Freudian analysis or market fundamentalist economics. A lot of superior minds deploy their talents to concoct ingenious elaborations of received Truth that spin exercises in impressive abstract logic – but their conclusions are only tangentially related to reality. Thus, reputations and careers can be made – and much mischief done.
• 3
  Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951, p. 85.
• 4
  Hoffer, p. 99.
• 5
  In 1968, Governor Ed Muskie, who was the frontrunner for the Democrats presidential nomination, saw his campaign collapse when he shed a tear in public in response to reports of how a critic had made slurs against his wife’s ethnicity. Similarly, Governor George Romney saw his candidacy for the Republican nomination falter after a remark that his earlier support for the Vietnam war had been due to a “brainwashing” by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Saigon. Nowadays, the country elects – for the second time – a clownish Fascist psychopath who instigated, and pardoned, a violent assault on the Capitol. The United States manifestly is a degraded polity.
  
  [In Romney’s case, as Gene McCarthy quipped, a quick rinse would have sufficed]

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Michael Brenner is Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins. He was the Director of the International Relations & Global Studies Program at the University of Texas. Brenner is the author of numerous books, and over 80 articles and published papers. His most recent works are: Democracy Promotion and Islam; Fear and Dread in the Middle East; Toward a More Independent Europe; Narcissistic Public Personalities & Our Times. Read other articles by Michael.

Op-Ed: Beginning of the end in Ukraine? Russian rock throwing backfires badly.


By Paul Wallis
DIGITAL JOURNAL
May 28, 2025


Ukraine has been battling Russia's invasion for more than three years - Copyright 65th Mechanized Brigade of Ukrainian Armed Forces/AFP Andriy Andriyenko

The end is coming. Not due to politics, not due to vapid, superficial headlines and infantile disinformation, not due to tantrums, but because it must.

The headlines squeak for themselves. Russia, true to form, is flailing away at Ukraine with whatever it has to hand. They might as well be throwing rocks. At themselves.

The most recent attacks are indicative of the utter futility of Russia’s position:

Some minor damage to Ukrainian cities from three major attacks.

Some deaths.

No noticeable effect of any kind, even theoretical, on the military situation.

Instant response from Europe allows Ukraine to fire into Russian territory.

Digressions including various political bleatings from moronic third parties and yet more threats of the Third World War based on the response to those attacks.

Trump is distancing himself from Putin at full speed.

So what, you may well ask. The sheer futility of the Russian actions is obvious. These attacks have been totally counterproductive.

Add to this rhapsody of regression a few other points:

The peace process hasn’t moved at all. Russia is insisting on terms that Ukraine unequivocally ruled out three years ago.

Europe is rearming. That means support for Ukraine will increase, not decrease. Another strategic disaster for Russia.

America’s input has been a total of 5 pitiful months of farcical bluster and blundering with absolutely no effect. This may well be the most unimpressive American diplomatic effort in history.

Unrealism isn’t a great way to fight a war. It’s certainly no way to win a war. For all the talk of millions of drones and new weapons, the situation on the ground simply gets worse for the Russians. There are no dramatic advances, just lots of firefights, which they usually lose.

The great Russian tank armies are extinct and their best combat forces frittered away years ago. Russian air defenses seem haphazard at best with even Moscow and beyond getting hit for years. The Russian air force is largely gone over Ukraine. The Russian navy is in hiding.

Russian logistics are still appalling. They’re now using donkeys due to lack of surviving military transport. It’s very much a matter of opinion how far the Russian army is capable of moving in any direction. It’s also a very moot point whether they can hold Crimea.

It’s time to talk about the quality of information available. Do you base your decisions on good information or babble?

Where the ghosts of Western journalism whisper sweet nothings to the current plague of incompetent transient political nobodies, the Ukrainians are producing vast amounts of “collateral” information from ground level. That’s not getting much of a mention.

The Kyiv Independent is far less ambiguous and far more objective. This is where hard information makes more sense than politicized babble.

Did you know, for example, that the Russians are building 250km power lines to the Zaphorizia nuclear reactor?

Why? Do they have no other source of power? Why not? What does it tell you about the Russian situation?

That reactor is also right on the front line. What’s the likely future of those power lines? What use can they be? Russian troops can’t have trucks and have to use donkeys and civilian vehicles. The really important thing is that someone in the rear would like to plug in their toaster? Idiocy is as idiocy does.

This war must end because total failure is where all wars end.

__________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

 

Israeli Jews’ Love of Genocide

Review of Peter Beinhart's Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

by Eric Walberg / May 17th, 2025

The Golden Calf – Jewish Achilles Heel

My first thought on seeing Peter Beinhart’s title — Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (2025) — was: Argh. More Jewish angst, holier-than-thou hand-wringing, but leading nowhere. Half-way through I had completely changing my mind. Angst, yes. But lots of meat to chew on, ok, spitting out some grissle, but it was mostly intelligent, informative, and even inspiring (for a goy no less). Beinhart marshalls statistics that confirm my own extreme anger at not just Jews but anyone who does not mobilize themselves to fight this ongoing, LIVE, genocide.

The West’s indifference to an ongoing genocide is more than shameful. Israel participates in Eurovision, its sports teams compete with only the occasional MUSLIM refusing to spar with his/her competitor from the genocidal state. Almost no one besides Muslims is concerned, donating charity, actively opposing Israel.

None of my five siblings can be bothered, unless buying Palestinian olive oil counts. All of us are ‘rich’. I’m rich, even if I go to a food bank. It’s all in your mind. The poor are always more generous than the rich. Shame on anyone who ignores genocide just because they feel helpless to stop it. Beinhart’s ashamed to be Jewish. I’m just as ashamed as a non-Jew. One of my favourite Muslim hadiths (in my free-verse version): Speak truth to an unjust ruler; if that’s impossible, then talk about it with others; if that’s impossible, then at least think about it, write about it, use any chance to protest.

The whole world is reliving 1930s-40s Germany, 1960s US deep south and Vietnam, though it probably feels even worse now to anyone who cares, as we watch live, day after day, already two years, the IDF deliberately slaughtering civilans (even beheading babies while falsely claiming it is Hamas doing this). How can Israelis, Jews, being so consciously, conscientiously EVIL?

And guess what? Anti-Jewish feelings, acts have gone through the roof. Nice educated college students angrily call out kippa-wearing Jewish classmates as supporters of genocide. Which they are. I’m too polite to ‘speak truth’ there (there is a 0.1% chance the kippa-wearer doesn’t actually like the horrors being perpetrated IN HIS NAME). The Zionist lobby has locked up free speech in the interests of genocide. If you criticize Israel, you are ANTI-SEMITIC, so kippa-wearers are walking targets. Beware. Take it off till the genocide stops or you are fair victim. Better yet, join an encampment, a demo.

Beinhart would be shocked at my savagery. Tsk, tsk. He protests this conflation, but, sorry, the tyrants in power aren’t listening to your sweet nothings. But my bitching and anger will turn to love if Israel stops acting like Nazi Germany. So don’t blame angry goys for not dotting your ‘i’s.

That is one of his weaknesses as a fervent, practicing Jew. Haven’t you figured out yet, Peter, that Judaism is dead? Israel killed it, along with (still counting) millions of dead, millions crippled and millions more displaced Palestinians, not to mention Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. Neturei karta and Satmar are nice but have no effect. They are the token anit-Zionists to prove that all Jews aren’t evil, but what good does that do except hobble what should be fierce pressure on all Jews to do something to stop the madness?

Silver bullet for peace

Beinhart grew up in South Africa under apartheid so he doesn’t need the Israeli version to understand the evil at play. Afrikaners saw black Africa as barbarism and dysfunction, and justified themselves, their violent repression of blacks as second class drudges(not citizens), by arguing the blacks would kill the whites otherwise.

Now, looking back, he sees the same false story in northern Ireland and in the US south. And the proof that this story is false is that in each case, when the oppression ends with liberation, the armed resistance movements of the blacks in Africa and the US, the Catholics in northern Ireland melted away. That’s what even our pathetic Conciliation Commission in Canada with our genocided natives was all about. We Canadians have done a half-assed job of reconciliation, but still the natives don’t slit our throats.

He sees the proof in Israeli Palestinians, who are still second class drudges but CITIZEN drudges. That’s the key. They have a vote, political parties, even representation in the government on rare occasions. That’s all the Gazans and West Bankers want. To be treated like human beings, citizens, even if still second class. That is still wrong, but is a huge step forward. Imagine if Israel made everyone citizens. The thought of a liberated Middle East (NOT Trump’s Club Med) is exhilarating. Do Israelis need reeducation camps, like in Vietnam after the liberation in 1975? Maybe. Certainly new history books. Not their perverse history of victimhood, as Beinhart jokingly summarized in his chapter one title: They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.

Beinhart was/is himself a Zionist, though now recondite. He loves Buber and others who promoted a caring Zionism. Sorry, Peter. That gentle version never had a chance before Israel was declared the Jewish State, and certainly has no chance now. There were similarly National Socialists who promoted a less toxic Nazism, Strasserism, but they were purged by Netanyahu (sorry, Hitler) or fled abroad. Speaking of which, Toronto has the largest Israeli population outside the ‘fatherland’. Now hundred(s) of thousands of Israelis are abandoning ship, the nicer ones, who, if they had stayed, might have tried stopping the madness. Instead they leave behind the bloodthirsty, murderous settlers, toxic American, British and Russian fanatics, not taking any responsibility themselves as Jews for their Jewish tribe’s crimes.

You can’t have your Purim cookie and eat it

Purim celebrations: Israelis’ love of genocide derives from the Purim story of the slaughter of 75,000 Persians ‘in self-defense’, using Esther (concubine/ prostitute) as a honey-trap. The cookies represent tyrant Haman and his sons’ ears.

Judaism used to be the exalted granddaddy of monotheism. Christians took the Old Testament (OT) with all its Jewish supremacism as the truth. Though Jews were feared and reviled as outsiders, usurers, schemers, the religion was always respected, along with the prophecy that Jews will ‘go back’ in the endtimes.

This vague notion became a fact in the 1820s, a British imperial project, a 9th Crusade, a proto-Israel in the minds of British Christian Zionists, whose love-hate for Judaism-Jews convinced them to export all Jews to the Holy Land. Israel was conceived as the pet project of (very anti-Jewish) Christian-Zionist Lord Palmerston, which came to life with the invention of the steamship, the leading-edge tech. Palmerston immediately used it to — guess what? — wage war, obliterating Akka (Crusader Acre, Hebrew Akko) in 1840 with British cannons and this new fangled hot air machine (the Brits needed Mount Lebanon’s high-grade coal to fuel their steamships). ‘Not a sign of endtimes but as a new era of prosperity.’¹

The new war-tech allowed Britain to seize control of Egypt (the Suez Canal) by the 1870s. Capitulations to French, British, Russian and US trade and Christian agents in the Levant under the Ottomans prepared the way for divvying up the Ottoman spoils when the time was ripe (1918). So when wealthy Rothschilds-type Jews decided they would like to dabble in creating their own nation, it was readily accepted by imperial Britain. From the first Zionist conference in 1897 to the Balfour declaration in 1917, Israel became the key actor in a new Crusade to ‘free’ the Holy Land (and its oil riches).

The Brits could get rid of their Jews, and those rich Jews could have their very own Jewish state. Win-win. WWII was the final touch, the get-out-of-jail card, a passport to a racial state for the Chosen People, a state without morals, i.e., f*#k the world, international law, kill, kill, steal, steal, dispossess, trick, torture until – poof! – no more natives standing in your way. That was more or less British colonial policy anyway. There were no ‘nays’, or at least none that got any traction in Westminster or the mainstream press.

In the process, Judaism has been reduced to just an old boy’s club, a way to get the edge over goys, who have no rich, influential tribe to help them move up the greasy pole. Hillel House won’t have a speaker who criticizes Israel, Zionism, but undermining belief, promotion of atheism? No problemo.

Wake up Peter! You admit that even US Jews, the heretics, are arrested now, deplatformed, kicked out of university for protesting Israel, excommunicated from the tribe, but still argue that there is no justification for targeting Jews as A TRIBE. But Israel preempted you. Israel wants kippa-wearers to be targetted. Which means that kippa-wearing Jews who parade their Jewishness (Israel-lovers) are by default part of the problem – unless they are vocal opponents of Israeli war crimes and their kippa is to defy the craven kippa-wearing Zios. You can’t eat your blood-soaked Purim cookies, shaped as heads of the decapitated Palestinians (sorry, Persians) and have them too.

Beinhart argues eloquently in his dynamite last chapter, Korach’s children, that Moses’s opponent, Korach (All the community are holy, all of them, and God is in their midst.), was indeed wrong for claiming that the tribe’s chosenness meant a ‘free pass’. That they didn’t need Moses and his tiresome commandments demanding that they be good Jews. For Moses, chosenness meant responsibility for your own sins. Korach is identical to the Zionists today. Your genes (or very rigorous conversion, including Zionism) give you a ‘free pass’. Your only ‘responsibility’ is to defend the state of Israel, which can do no wrong as it’s, well, ISRAEL. So just shut up and let’s eat our bloody cookies!

This is idol worship. The Jewish state replaces God in a secular Israel. This isn’t the first time Jews have been called on the carpet for worshipping idols. The Golden Calf is just the most colourful biblical story, and the consequences are always dire. Lots of exile as punishment. In fact, Jewish ‘history’ is one long litany of Jews screwing up and God getting very angry and punishing them. So stop playing victim. Own up to your sins. Stop worshipping idols.

The other jewcy bits are the OT genocides. The Zionist Mephistopheles Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Israel’s first Prime Minister Ben Gurion, both atheists, both loved the story of Joshua, who delivered the ‘promised land’ by wiping out all the Palestinians of the day, the Amalek.² The Zionists celebrate this original sin/theft and use it to justify their present-day genocide. Purim is the icing on the cake.

Beinhart mentions Jewish supremacists of the past – 11th century Spanish poet Yehuda Halevi (living happily under Islamic rule in Andalou), the 16th century rabbi Maharal of Prague, 18thc Hasids in Poland, the list goes on. Idols are the Jews’ downfall. Hello, Israel. And hello, anti-Jewish prejudice. When you see yourself as superior to the goys around you, you invite resentment. Beinhart doesn’t go the extra mile here, dismissing a few dreamers in Moorish Spain or the Silesian shtetl. They didn’t have the power to do anything about it. Sure, but their supremacist behaviour continually bred resentment. Pogroms against Jews? Yes, but by isolating your tribe, insisting on being superior, when things go wrong, Jews make great scapegoats. Surprise, surprise.

Enter, stage right

Jews live in a different world now, where they are the richest and most powerful tribe around, with steel-plated armour against criticism, and where you can’t say any of this in mainstream media without being roasted, sliced and eaten like a Purim cookie. So Beinhart’s soul-searching and his new-found Palestinian friends is all very well, but not enough. He just can’t give up his youthful devotion to Israel as the Jewish state. Pigs really can fly.

*He quotes IF Stone: Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry, depending on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies but championing a Jewish state in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist.³

*bemoans Brandeis University for banning a pro-Palestine group, so students could ‘feel safe in their Jewish identity.’

*is appalled at how Israel is cozying up to neo-fascists in Europe and America, abandoning Jewish progressives.

And still doesn’t see that an ethnic state is exactly what Hitler created, that the problem is with Zionism. An ethnic state stinks of colonialism or worse. That era ended in the 1960s-1980s with the liberation of Africa. Israel is dragging the whole world back into the worst form of that nightmare world, Hitler’s Germany, bent on wiping out Amalek/Untermenschen and colonizing the world. But then Beinhart is already pilloried and denied his soapbox in Hillel House and other Jewish-controlled places, so thank you Peter for going as far as you go.

As I read, I couldn’t help comparing Judaism and Islam. While Judaism is a closed religion, not seeking converts, Islam actively promotes conversion. When you become a Muslim (born or converted, it’s the fastest growing religion), you become part of the ‘chosen’. But Islam means ‘submission’. And all colours are welcome. O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you.(49.13). Of course there are bigoted Muslims, tribal Muslims, oily Muslims, but arrogance and racism are universally frowned on. There is no celebration in the Quran or Hadith of massacring Amalek as a template for committing genocide. It’s the OT that is genocidal, jingoistic.

There are ‘Islamic states’, which are riddled with problems, but unlike in Israel, there are no Untermenschen. All states are suspect in both Judaism and Islam, especially monarchies, which were the normal state structure of two millennia ago, and which often ended up with ‘divine right’ kings who acted like God, idols, and brought about their own demise. The Prophet Muhammad presciently warned against kings, not anointing his blood relative Ali as his inheritor, calling on his followers to elect their own ‘caliph’. Islam was almost destroyed when a later caliph Muawiya appointed his incompetent son Yazid to succeed him. As for Muslim rule, Jews have always lived well under Islamic rule, from Spain to Afghanistan.

Until Israel reared its ugly head. That angered all Muslims, which delighted Zionists, whose plan was to scare all diaspora Jews into coming to Israel. We killed them, let’s eat. It didn’t work, but it did destroy precious ancient Jewish cultures throughout the Middle East, and brought suddenly unhappy Mizrahi Jews to live as second class Jewish citizens, learn an artificial Hebrew, under ‘white’ European Jews as masters.

So, for all the backsliding of Muslims over the past millennium and a half, idol worship was never one of its failings. Muslims know that being ‘chosen’ means hard work. Fasting, praying, charity, pilgrimage, study. Lazy Muslims don’t brag about their failings. An atheist Muslim is an oxymoron. This contrasts sharply with not only Jewish centres like Hillel, but even Christian churches, some of which preach atheism.

2025 – Palestine’s year

Palestine has finally made the bestseller list. Another fine book, Andreas Malm’s The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth, relates the origins of Israel, how the British invention of the steamship was the technological breakthrough of the day, giving British a few decades of ocean supremacy, feeding the new racial supremacism that saw European smarts capturing (literally) the entire world, to colonize, exploit, destroy cultures, peoples, genocide, all the great things that made us westerners the new ‘chosen race’. Israel should be celebrating its bicentennial, with Akko the capital.

Malm poignantly goes the extra miles on the environmental destruction that Israel is responsible for. Nice irony: Israel is poisoning itself by dropping toxic bombs just a few miles from Tel Aviv. Nature knows no bounds. It also is the incentive for all the Arab oil sheikhs to blow $100s of billions on weapons of mass destruction — which all our high-faluting hypersonic things are in fact. US-Israel is the world’s incentive to arm yourself to the teeth, ironically, with US-Israeli weapons intended to protect them from US-Israel. Imagine a world with no Israel, or rather with Palestine-Israel. No need for the military industrial complex. We might actually save planet Earth.

And Egyptian emigre Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. A tweet by El Akkad, a slightly longer version of his catchy title, got 10m hits, so Omar understandably whipped off a book. Cool. He came to the West like all immigrants, thinking it would be heaven, but found it was a big pile of you-know-what. You don’t have to be Palestinian, Arab, Muslim to be the brunt of the lies and bigotry.

Beinhart is still naval-gazing, the nice little Jewish boy, top marks, loved granny (who loathed what he wrote to the bitter end). Has he bothered reading up on Islam? He never considers the possibility that the real reason Israel MUST be Jews-only is because Islam is a far better version of monotheism, alive and well despite two centuries of imperialist occupation and, now, genocide. No racism, no idols, real chosenness a la original Judaism, where it means responsibility, humility before God, genuine service to ‘the nations’. He finally started making Palestinian Muslim friends and was delighted to find them warm, generous, and spiritual. He was recently on a panel with UCLA law prof Khaled Abou El Fadl. I felt I was in the presence of a profound religious voice. I think, hope Beinhart is still a work in progress.

ENDNOTES:

1 Andreas Malm, The destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth, 2025.

2 Possibly derived from the Egyptian term *ꜥꜣm rqj “hostile Asiatic”, possibly referring to Bronze Age semitic Shasu tribesmen from around Edom.

3 Peter Beinhart, Being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza, 104.

Eric Walberg is a journalist who worked in Uzbekistan and is now writing for Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo. He is the author of From Postmodernism to Postsecularism and Postmodern Imperialism. His most recent book is Islamic Resistance to Imperialism. Read other articles by Eric, or visit Eric's website

Why the Wall of Silence on the Genocide of Gazans is Finally
Starting to Crack

by Jonathan Cook / May 17th, 2025

As Israel unveils its final genocide push, and mass death from starvation looms in Gaza, western media and politicians are tentatively starting to speak up.

Who could have imagined 19 months ago that it would take more than a year and a half of Israel slaughtering and starving Gaza’s children for the first cracks to appear in what has been a rock-solid wall of support for Israel from western establishments.

Finally, something looks like it may be about to give.

The British establishment’s financial daily, the Financial Times, was first to break ranks last week to condemn “the West’s shameful silence” in the face of Israel’s murderous assault on the tiny enclave.

In an editorial – effectively the paper’s voice – the FT accused the United States and Europe of being increasingly “complicit” as Israel made Gaza “uninhabitable”, an allusion to genocide, and noted that the goal was to “drive Palestinians from their land”, an allusion to ethnic cleansing.

Of course, both of these grave crimes by Israel have been evidently true not only since Hamas’ violent, single-day breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023, but for decades.

So parlous is the state of western reporting, from a media no less complicit than the governments berated by the FT, that we need to seize on any small signs of progress.

Next, the Economist chimed in, warning that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers were driven by a “dream of emptying Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there”.

At the weekend, the Independent decided the “deafening silence on Gaza” had to end. It was “time for the world to wake up to what is happening and to demand an end to the suffering of the Palestinians trapped in the enclave.”

Actually much of the world woke up many, many months ago. It has been the western press corps and western politicians slumbering through the past 19 months of genocide.

Then on Monday, the supposedly liberal Guardian voiced in its own editorial a fear that Israel is committing “genocide”, though it only dared do so by framing the accusation as a question.

It wrote of Israel: “Now it plans a Gaza without Palestinians. What is this, if not genocidal? When will the US and its allies act to stop the horror, if not now?”

The paper could more properly have asked a different question: Why have Israel’s western allies – as well as media like the Guardian and FT – waited 19 months to speak up against the horror?

And, predictably bringing up the rear, was the BBC. On Wednesday, the BBC Radio’s PM programme chose to give top billing to testimony from Tom Fletcher, the United Nation’s humanitarian affairs chief, to the Security Council. Presenter Evan Davis said the BBC had decided to “do something a little unusual”.

Unusual indeed. It played Fletcher’s speech in full – all 12 and a half minutes of it. That included Fletcher’s comment: “For those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now? Will you act – decisively – to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?”

We had gone in less than a week from the word “genocide” being taboo in relation to Gaza to it becoming almost mainstream.

Growing cracks

Cracks are evident in the British parliament too. Mark Pritchard, a Conservative MP and life-long Israel supporter, stood up from the back benches to admit he had been wrong about Israel, and condemned it “for what it is doing to the Palestinian people”.

He was one of more than a dozen Tory MPs and peers in the House of Lords, all formerly staunch defenders of Israel, who urged British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to immediately recognise a Palestinian state.

Their move followed an open letter published by 36 members of the Board of Deputies, a 300-member body that claims to represent British Jews, dissenting from its continuing support for the slaughter. The letter warned: “Israel’s soul is being ripped out.”

Pritchard told fellow MPs it was time to “stand up for humanity, for us being on the right side of history, for having the moral courage to lead.”

Sadly, there is no sign of that yet. Research published last week, based on Israeli tax authority data, showed Starmer’s government has been lying even about the highly limited restrictions on arms sales to Israel it claimed to have imposed last year.

Despite an ostensible ban on shipments of weapons that could be used in Gaza, Britain has covertly exported more than 8,500 separate munitions to Israel since the ban.

This week more details emerged. According to figures published by The National, the current government exported more weapons to Israel in the final three months of last year, after the ban came into effect, than the previous Conservative government did through the whole of 2020 to 2023.

So shameful is the UK’s support for Israel in the midst of what the International Court of Justice – the World Court – has described as a “plausible genocide” that Starmer’s government needs to pretend it is doing something, even as it actually continues to arm that genocide.

More than 40 MPs wrote to Foreign Secretary David Lammy last week calling for him to respond to allegations that he had misled the public and parliament. “The public deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity,” they wrote.

There are growing rumblings elsewhere. This week France’s President Emmanuel Macron called Israel’s complete blockade on aid into Gaza “shameful and unacceptable”. He added: “My job is to do everything I can to make it stop.”

“Everything” seemed to amount to nothing more than mooting possible economic sanctions.

Still, the rhetorical shift was striking. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, similarly denounced the blockade, calling it “unjustifiable”. She added: “I have always recalled the urgency of finding a way to end the hostilities and respect international law and international humanitarian law.”

“International law”? Where has that been for the past 19 months?

There was a similar change of priorities across the Atlantic. Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen, for example, recently dared to call Israel’s actions in Gaza “ethnic cleansing”.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, a bellwether of the Beltway consensus, gave Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel, an unusually tough grilling. Amanpour all but accused her of lying about Israel starving children.

Meanwhile, Josep Borrell, the recently departed head of European Union foreign policy, broke another taboo last week by directly accusing Israel of preparing a genocide in Gaza.

“Seldom have I heard the leader of a state so clearly outline a plan that fits the legal definition of genocide,” he said, adding: “We’re facing the largest ethnic cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”

Borrell, of course, has no influence over EU policy at this point.

A death camp

This is all painfully slow progress, but it does suggest that a tipping point may be near.

If so, there are several reasons. One – the most evident in the mix – is US President Donald Trump.

It was easier for the Guardian, the FT and old-school Tory MPs to watch the extermination of Gaza’s Palestinians in silence when it was kindly Uncle Joe Biden and the US military industrial complex behind it.

Unlike his predecessor, Trump too often forgets the bit where he is supposed to put a gloss on Israeli crimes, or distance the US from them, even as Washington ships the weapons to carry out those crimes.

But also, there are plenty of indications that Trump – with his constant craving to be seen as the top dog – is increasingly annoyed at being publicly outfoxed by Netanyahu.

This week, as Trump headed to the Middle East, his administration secured the release of Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the last living US citizen in captivity in Gaza, by bypassing Israel and negotiating directly with Hamas.

In his comments on the release, Trump insisted it was time to “put an end to this very brutal war” – a remark he had very obviously not coordinated with Netanyahu.

Notably, Israel is not on Trump’s Middle East schedule.

Right now seems a relatively safe moment to adopt a more critical stance towards Israel, as presumably the FT and Guardian appreciate.

Then there is the fact that Israel’s genocide is reaching its endpoint. No food, water or medicines have entered Gaza for more than two months. Everyone is malnourished. It is unclear, given Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health system, how many have already died from hunger.

But the pictures of skin-and-bones children emerging from Gaza are uncomfortably reminiscent of 80-year-old images of skeletal Jewish children imprisoned in Nazi camps.

It is a reminder that Gaza – strictly blockaded by Israel for 16 years before Hamas’ 7 October 2023 breakout – has been transformed over the past 19 months from a concentration camp into a death camp.

Parts of the media and political class know mass death in Gaza cannot be obscured for much longer, not even after Israel has barred foreign journalists from the enclave and murdered most of the Palestinian journalists trying to record the genocide.

Cynical political and media actors are trying to get in their excuses before it is too late to show remorse.

The ‘Gaza war’ myth

And finally there is the fact that Israel has declared its readiness to take hands-on responsibility for the extermination in Gaza by, in its words, “capturing” the tiny territory.

The long-anticipated “day after” looks like it is about to arrive.

For 20 years, Israel and western capitals have conspired in the lie that Gaza’s occupation ended in 2005, when Israel’s then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, pulled out a few thousand Jewish settlers and withdrew Israeli soldiers to a highly fortified perimeter encaging the enclave.

In a ruling last year, the World Court gave this claim short shrift, emphasising that Gaza, as well as the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, had never stopped being under Israeli occupation, and that the occupation must end immediately.

The truth is that, even before the 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel had been besieging Gaza by land, sea and air for many, many years. Nothing – people or trade – went in or out without the Israeli military’s say-so.

Israeli officials instituted a secret policy of putting the population there on a strict “diet” – a war crime then as now – one that ensured most of Gaza’s young became progressively more malnourished.

Drones whined constantly overhead, as they do now, watching the population from the skies 24 hours a day and occasionally raining down death. Fishermen were shot and their boats sunk for trying to fish their own waters. Farmers’ crops were destroyed by herbicides sprayed from Israeli planes.

And when the mood took it, Israel sent in fighter jets to bomb the enclave or sent soldiers in on military operations, killing hundreds of civilians at a time.

When Palestinians in Gaza went out week after week to stage protests close to the perimeter fence of their concentration camp, Israeli snipers shot them, killing some 200 and crippling many thousands more.

Yet, despite all this, Israel and western capitals insisted on the story that Hamas “ruled” Gaza, and that it alone was responsible for what went on there.

That fiction was very important to the western powers. It allowed Israel to evade accountability for the crimes against humanity committed in Gaza over the past two decades – and it allowed the West to avoid complicity charges for arming the criminals.

Instead, the political and media class perpetuated the myth that Israel was engaged in a “conflict” with Hamas – as well as intermittent “wars” in Gaza – even as Israel’s own military termed its operations to destroy whole neighbourhoods and kill their residents “mowing the lawn”.

Israel, of course, viewed Gaza as its lawn to mow. And that is precisely because it never stopped occupying the enclave.

Even today western media outlets collude in the fiction that Gaza is free from Israeli occupation by casting the slaughter there – and the starvation of the population – as a “war”.

Loss of cover story

But the “day after” – signalled by Israel’s promised “capture” and “reoccupation” of Gaza – brings a conundrum for Israel and its western sponsors.

Till now Israel’s every atrocity has been justified by Hamas’ violent breakout on 7 October 2023.

Israel and its supporters have insisted that Hamas must return the Israelis it took captive before there can be some undefined “peace”. At the same time, Israel has also maintained that Gaza must be destroyed at all costs to root out Hamas and eliminate it.

These two goals never looked consistent – not least because the more Palestinian civilians Israel killed “rooting out” Hamas, the more young men Hamas recruited seeking vengeance.

The constant stream of genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leaders made clear that they believed there were no civilians in Gaza – no “uninvolved” – and that the enclave should be levelled and the population treated like “human animals”, punished with “no food, water or fuel”.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reiterated that approach last week, vowing that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” and that its people would be ethnically cleansed – or, as he put it, forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”.

Israeli officials have echoed him, threatening to “flatten” Gaza if the hostages are not released. But in truth, the captives held by Hamas are just a convenient pretext.

Smotrich was more honest in observing that the hostages’ release was “not the most important thing”. His view is apparently shared by the Israeli military, which has reportedly put that aim last in a list of six “war” objectives.

More important to the military are “operational control” of Gaza, “demilitarization of the territory” and “concentration and movement of the population”.

With Israel about to be indisputably, visibly in direct charge of Gaza again – with the cover stories stripped away of a “war”, of the need to eliminate of Hamas, of civilian casualties as “collateral damage” – Israel’s responsibility for the genocide will be incontestable too, as will the West’s active collusion.

That was why more than 250 former officials with Mossad, Israel’s spy agency – including three of its former heads – signed a letter this week decrying Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire in early March and its return to “war”.

The letter called Israel’s official objectives “unattainable”.

Similarly, the Israeli media reports large numbers of Israel’s military reservists are no longer showing up when called for a return to duty in Gaza.

Ethnic cleansing

Israel’s western patrons must now grapple with Israel’s “plan” for the ruined territory. Its outline has been coming more sharply into focus in recent days.

In January Israel formally outlawed the United Nations refugee agency UNRWA that feeds and cares for the large proportion of the Palestinian population driven off their historic lands by Israel in earlier phases of its decades-long colonisation of historic Palestine.

Gaza is packed with such refugees – the outcome of Israel’s biggest ethnic cleansing programme in 1948, at its creation as a “Jewish state”.

Removing UNRWA had been a long-held ambition, a move by Israel designed to help rid it of the yoke of aid agencies that have been caring for Palestinians – and thereby helping them to resist Israel’s efforts at ethnic cleansing – as well as monitoring Israel’s adherence, or rather lack of it, to international law.

For the ethnic cleansing and genocide programmes in Gaza to be completed, Israel has needed to produce an alternative system to UNRWA’s.

Last week, it approved a scheme in which it intends to use private contractors, not the UN, to deliver small quantities of food and water to Palestinians. Israel will allow in 60 trucks a day – barely a tenth of the absolute minimum required, according to the UN.

There are several catches. To stand any hope of qualifying for this very limited aid, Palestinians will need to collect it from military distribution points located in a small area at the southern tip of the Gaza strip.

In other words, some two million Palestinians will have to crowd into a location that has no chance of accommodating them all, and even then will have only a tenth of the aid they need.

They will have to relocate too without any guarantee from Israel that it won’t continue bombing the “humanitarian zones” they have been herded into.

These military distribution zones just so happen to be right next to Gaza’s sole, short border with Egypt – exactly where Israel has been seeking to drive the Palestinians over the past 19 months in the hope of forcing Egypt to open the border so the people of Gaza can be ethnically cleansed into Sinai.

Under Israel’s scheme, Palestinians will be screened in these military hubs using biometric data before they stand any hope of receiving minimum calorie-controlled handouts of food.

Once inside the hubs, they can be arrested and shipped off to one of Israel’s torture camps.

Just last week Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published testimony from an Israeli soldier turned whistleblower – confirming accounts from doctors and other guards – that torture and abuse are rife against Palestinians, including civilians, at Sde Teiman, the most notorious of the camps.

War on aid

Last Friday, shortly after Israel announced its “aid” plan, it fired a missile into an UNRWA centre in Jabaliya camp, destroying its food distribution centre and warehouse.

Then on Saturday, Israel bombed tents used for preparing food in Khan Younis and Gaza City. It has been targeting charity kitchens and bakeries to close them down, in an echo of its campaign of destruction against Gaza’s hospitals and health system.

In recent days, a third of UN-supported community kitchens – the population’s last life line – have closed because their stores of food are depleted, as is their access to fuel.

According to the UN agency OCHA, that number is rising “by the day”, leading to “widespread” hunger.

The UN reported this week that nearly half a million people in Gaza – a fifth of the population – faced “catastrophic hunger”.

Predictably, Israel and its ghoulish apologists are making light of this sea of immense suffering. Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, argued that critics were unfairly condemning Israel for starving Gaza’s population, and ignoring the health benefits of reducing “obesity” among Palestinians.

In a joint statement last week, 15 UN agencies and more than 200 charities and humanitarian groups denounced Israel’s “aid” plan. The UN children’s fund UNICEF warned that Israel was forcing Palestinians to choose between “displacement and death”.

But worse, Israel is setting up its stall once again to turn reality on its head.

Those Palestinians who refuse to cooperate with its “aid” plan will be blamed for their own starvation. And international agencies who refuse to go along with Israeli criminality will be smeared both as “antisemitic” and as responsible for the mounting toll of starvation on Gaza’s population.

There is a way to stop these crimes degenerating further. But it will require western politicians and journalists to find far more courage than they have dared muster so far. It will need more than rhetorical flourishes. It will need more than public handwringing.

Are they capable of more? Don’t hold your breath.

Middle East Eye

Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.

Committees of Correspondence

Lifeline to the Palestinians

by Dan Lieberman / May 16th, 2025

Early in life, I learned of the deliberate manner by which Zionists confuse the public and frame the Middle East conflicts to favor them. Commentators have gone to great length to explain the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States, treating it as a unique affair, in which both benefit. This slogan is a hoax, which originated during World War II as a description of the relationship between embattled Great Britain and a still neutral United States. Somehow and somewhere, a clever someone adapted the World War II slogan to Israel and managed to insert the relationship into the everyday activities of several western nations.

I witnessed Israeli immigrants inviting fellow workers to their homes and lecturing them on why they should support Israel. I know of them going to synagogues and urging the Rabbis to place the Israeli flag next to the American flag, which is now de rigeur. Contracts are given to Israeli organizations and company secrets are funneled to Israeli organizations.

In public schools, efforts are made to gain support for Israel by emphasis on the World War II Holocaust (nothing on the Nakba), and with events organized to attack Israel’s adversaries. I saw students brought to a school library for them to choose general biographies to read, seven out of ten were of personalities from the World War II Holocaust. One librarian, and behaving nervously, showed her ignorance of the topic by referring to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg as a Nazi officer who helped the Jews. The World War II Holocaust has a vital place in history, but treating it as a purposeful commodity demeans the lost lives. The Free Darfur movement, accused of alliance with Israeli interests due to Israel’s enmity toward Sudan at that time, organized public school demonstrations against Sudan for purported genocide. Local synagogues advertised the action.

I knew of everyday U.S. citizens acting as research centers for Israel, accumulating social, political and economic statistics on American industrial and commercial life and sending it to Israel ─ unregistered foreign agents whose activities are illegal. Students and visiting professors from Israel arrive with more concerns than learning. I have noticed them at university conferences countering Palestinian expressions of grievances with statements such as, “The West Bank roads that Israel is building are meant to serve Palestinians one day,” and then congregate after the meeting to discuss what they can do to counter the remarks made at the meeting. A visiting professor to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, who was denied using his grant to teach Holocaust studies, sued the university for anti-Semitism and won his case. St. Cloud now has a Jewish Studies and Resources Center but no courses, only a document center.

Georgetown, and many other universities, has a Center for Jewish Civilization (what is Jewish civilization?) that has one principal core course: INAF-1990: Introduction to Jewish Civilization. “This course provides a foundation for the study of Jewish civilization,” which can be taught in five seconds — no known unique contributions to civilization by a Jewish community, maybe by individuals, but not as a community. This Center for Jewish Civilization has periodic meetings, open to the public whose topics have nothing to do with any Jewish civilization and have much to do with Israel ─ real reason for its existence. Most talks are on the World War II Holocaust, Jewish Israel, and the almost non-existent anti-Semitism. No talks on Maimonides and other Jewish philosophers. No talks on past Jewish life in Spain, Tunisia, Iraq, and Europe.

Political, “think tank,” peace, and cultural organizations in Washington, D.C. are unusually populated with Israelis and Israel supporters. One route that I have noticed is where a person obtains credentials from an Israeli institute, is awarded a grant to visit the United states by a sketchy organization, eventually receives an invitation (by a friend) to lecture at a university and becomes recognized as an expert on the Middle East. This leads to a recommendation for a fellowship at a Middle East “think tank,” more recognition, and soon we have an artificially prepared “Middle East expert” who ingratiates with peace groups and tries to steer everyone, including those at the institutions and universities, to lessen aggressive attitudes toward Israel. Nothing too extreme, only a neutralization of activity.

Repetitions of the biblical David and Goliath story, the mythical Exodus, the fictional novel and Hollywood fabricated film called Exodus, and the moribund Kibbutzim presentations, with their Airbnb rental agents posing as sturdy farmers, make it difficult to ascertain if Israel is a country or a public relations stunt. The many organizations that perpetuate the myths and influence parliamentary bodies to favor Israel have no equivalents in the international scene. They have enabled Israel’s oppression and diabolical nature ─ the daily killings of Palestinians, land seizures, and heartless evictions. Number one on the agenda of those who recognize and oppose Israel’s nefarious activities is combating the deception, infiltration, and the global army of pro-Israel groups. This has gained momentum but has not changed the trajectory ─ extermination of the Palestinian people.

Too few know much; too many know little. A coordinated and bludgeoning effort, which shoves the truth into the corner pocket of each person’s billiard mind, which rouses the intellect against those who promote the genocide, and provokes people to act, is a beckoning enterprise. A central source that disburses “talking points,” that distributes knowledge, that provides access to information and rebuttals to disinformation will fill a gap. Knowing where to go and learning what to say are vital factors for combatting the deceptions that Israel’s supporters offer. The Palestinian movement needs committees of correspondence.

The original committees of correspondence “were a collection of American political organizations that sought to coordinate opposition to British Parliament and, later, support for American independence during the American Revolution. The brainchild of Samuel Adams, the committees sought to establish, through the writing of letters, an underground network of communication among Patriot leaders in the Thirteen Colonies.”

Working above ground, in every available space of planet Earth, in every hallway of parliamentary governments, and in every airspace that allows breaths and sounds, a new network of committees of correspondence will distribute reliable and decisive information that answers questions and proves Israel is a criminal activity, is engaged in the genocide of the Palestinian people, engages supporters who are partners to crimes, and bribes legislative supporters who are traitors to their peoples. The organizations will convey specific information and provoke constant talks — in homes, at scheduled meetings, at online forums, in schools, churches, libraries, in every inch of public space. Daily demonstrations and protests throughout the universe will accompany the mass distribution of information.

Too much to chew on for the moment. Part II of this excursion into freeing the world of the Zionist menace will detail the method of organization and the contents of the information. Details will shortly appear.

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Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.