Tag: Gaza Genocide

The Moral Compass Begins To Point

By Amit Sengupta

As Trump’s 20-point peace plan on Gaza unfolds, the sinister shadow of Tony Blair has suddenly come to loom large on the ravaged landscape. Meanwhile, the Israelis shot a nurse on the forehead, according to reports.

Doctors, nurses and para-medics, apart from journalists, have been IDF’s chosen objects for target practice. Several doctors have been kidnapped, and while the Israeli hostages must be freed, does Trump’s peace plan include the 10,000 plus Palestinian prisoners rotting in Israeli torture chambers, including women and kids?

So why is Trump in such a hurry? Why has he declared that the occupied West Bank, will not be allowed to be annexed?

And why is Belligerent Bibi so suddenly gracious and magnanimous, when he has loved every bit of it?

On November 21, 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant, charging them with the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity. For a leader of a western-backed nation, especially the US, this is a rare first case. Considering the fact that the US and UK, especially, have wrecked bloody mayhem on several human civilisations, from Vietnam to Chile to Iraq, Bibi is the unlucky one.

France and UK are among the 125 ICC member states, who, theoretically, should arrest these two Israelis if they enter their territory. Country after country is moving to use sanctions, ban, or boycott Israel, starting with Ireland and Spain. And Bibi seems to be in a quagmire of his own making.

So what happened?

It’s mass pressure from the ground, from inside homes and hearts, every heart that beats. Relentless, ceaseless, endless people’s collective outrage and mass movements – on campuses, schools, cafés, local trains, subways, packed rock and solo shows, packed open-air music shows, packed football stadiums, international film festivals, classical music concerts, pavements and public squares, during lightening protests in conferences and award-ceremonies, in songs and soliloquies, on social media, with paintings, drawings, cartoons, animations, masks, drums, violins, guitars, posters and placards.

The answer, literally, is blowin’ in the air.

In Bavaria, Germany, a global slogan was banned: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. Cops have been exceptionally brutal, especially in Berlin. (This is where the victorious Red Army entered, the fascists were defeated, and Hitler committed suicide, in a bunker.)

But the people kept coming back.

One persistent schoolgirl has become a household name. Her videos have gone viral. She has been dragged by the cops and arrested umpteen times; but in typical satyagraha mode, she comes back, to be dragged and detained again, while she shouts: Stop the genocide!

Old people, some in their 90s, some on wheelchairs, defied the British government, which banned Palestine Action, a solidarity direct action group. So, they all came out, old and young, holding placards, saying, yes, we support Palestine Action. They were arrested by the London police. Reports say that some cops seem to be suffering from guilt and remorse.

British PM Keir Startmer’s government, while backing Israel, refused to call it genocide. He hosted the Israeli president in early September despite protests. His public image has taken a real beating.

The Guardian reported (September 9, 2025): As many as 61 parliamentarians wrote to Keir Starmer expressing concerns over Herzog’s visit. “At a time when more than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, the overwhelming majority women and children, such a visit risks suggesting that the UK is indifferent to its international legal responsibilities,” the letter said.

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Finally, the Labour Party Conference held in Liverpool, backed by the biggest trade unions in UK, declared that it is indeed genocide, and that a full arms embargo should be declared. Earlier, the UN Commission of Enquiry had called it genocide – which it is – and not a war.

Besides, Berlin, which has faced brutal police repression, said enough is enough: more than 100,000 marched this week.

Sydney, London, New York, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Barcelona, Scandinavian countries, city after cities have exploded across the West. Entire Italy came to a standstill with a nation-wide strike. Dock workers in Italy blocked all ships loaded with arms to Israel. The Italian Right-wing regime, has been compelled to send a Navy squad along with the Sumud Freedom Flotilla carrying baby formula and humanitarian aid.

Spain has joined, and so has, reportedly, Greece and Turkey, even while the 44-nation Flotilla with over 50 ships have entered the Gaza waters. Several celebrities, doctors, lawyers, including Nelson Mandela’s son, are on board.

Many big brands, including in food and cosmetics, doing business with Israel, have been boycotted, their fancy stores raided, their losses running into millions; many shut down their outlets. US campuses rose in protest — no alliance with the Israeli murder machine.

Students wore the Palestine keffiyeh in convocations across the country, some of them were expelled and jailed – they refused to succumb.

At the UN General Assembly, speech after speech, especially by the president of Columbia, called Israel out. He said he is ready to send troops to Gaza. The Indonesian president said, “If and when the UN Security Council and this great assembly decide, Indonesia is prepared to deploy 20,000 or even more of our sons and daughters to help secure peace in Gaza.” Other countries like Canada have started to speak of a peace-keeping force.

Despite strong opposition by the US, France, Andorra, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Great Britain, Luxembourg, Portugal, Malta and San Marino have recognized Palestine. That is, a majority of nations now recognize Palestine – barring the US, Germany and Italy.

Bibi had to criss-cross across the globe to avoid ‘unfriendly’ international air space. His speech in the UN General Assembly, New York, witnessed an empty hall. Majority of the countries walked out. Zohran Mamdani has said, he will follow the ICC orders, if he becomes the Mayor of New York.

Ireland and Spain have led from the front, along with South Africa and others. Both Ireland and South Africa trace their freedom struggle in synthesis with the liberation movement of Palestine. Ireland has imposed a ban on certain Israeli ministers. It will not participate in Eurovision 2026 if Israel joins. A global boycott campaign is on.

There is a huge campaign to ban Israel from all international sports competitions, including football, as it was done during apartheid in South Africa. Football stadiums are erupting with Palestine flags.

Thousands of actors, directors and others in Hollywood have pledged to not work with anyone or anything linked to Israel. Brad Pitt and Jaoquin Phoenix, among other big shots, have produced The Voice of Hind Rajab, about a little girl in Gaza, crying for help, trapped in a car with her dead relatives, while the car was riddled with 335 bullets. The paramedics who reached her were killed. So was she.

Indeed, it was little Hind Rajab, just about 5, who became a symbol in the first campus protests in the US, starting from Columbia University. “I am so scared, please come, get me,” she pleaded to the helpless woman on the helpline, surrounded by tanks, with bullets flying all around her.

Her voice will haunt the world for all time to come.

Spain has locked its bases, Rota in Cadiz and Moron de la Grontera in Seville –American planes and ships are forbidden to transit to Israel.

The spineless dictators and monarchs in the Middle-East seem to have woken up after the Israelis bombed Qatar. Now, led by Qatar, trade deals with Israel worth billions, are being cancelled – including bilateral relations. Sanctions, arms embargoes, trade deals, total boycott of Israel, the isolation of this Rogue State might be marking a changed global strategy.

Majority global opinion would want this genocide to stop, the release of hostages (and Palestinian prisoners), and a two-state solution. The irony is that between the US-Israel-Hamas, who is speaking for the people of Palestine?

And if Tony Blair comes to call the shots in Gaza, it might become even worse. Dissident labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has tweeted: “Blair’s catastrophic decision to invade Iraq cost thousands upon thousands of lives. He shouldn’t be anywhere near the Middle East, let alone Gaza. It is not up to Blair, Trump or Netanyahu to decide the future of Gaza. That is up to the people of Palestine.”

Corbyn is right. Blair is bad news. It’s like getting another Bibi in disguise. He should be rejected lock, stock and barrel. Period. Predictably, the Middle East countries, including muscle-flexing Turkey, rushed to toe the Trump line.

You Can’t Bomb The Truth, Bibi!

By Amit Sengupta

The Israeli court psychiatrist who examined Eichmann found him a ‘completely normal man, more normal, at any rate, than I am after examining him,’ the implication being that the coexistence of normality and bottomless cruelty explodes our ordinary conceptions and present the true enigma of the trial.
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Another Nakba seems to be unfolding, now in Gaza city. Do the people of Israel suffer a pinch of guilt, or trauma, at what their nation is so relentlessly doing to the unarmed, innocent people of Gaza, and also in the armed, forcible settlements in the West Bank? Is there a slow and silent paradigm shift happening in the pathologically sick society that is Israel?

It seems so. Just on the margins, perhaps. Some youngsters are refusing to join the IDF. Others are protesting in small numbers, facing police repression. While the last mass protest in Tel Aviv had demanded: the release of hostages and that Benjamin Netanyahu must go. Genocide? Well, that has never been on their mind.

Indeed, Bibi cares a damn for the hostages – he never had. Now, he has bombed Qatar – the principle facilitator for ceasefire and hostage-release. QED.

Majority of them in Israel, since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have whole-heartedly backed the mass murder in the Gaza Strip, especially that of children and women, especially that of young mothers and pregnant women, and premature children, dying in the incubators. Or bombed, droned, with their first breath on earth.

These just born – were they all supporters of Hamas?

Did the Israelis enjoy this grotesque spectacle? Yes, most of them did. They still seem to do.

If Israel is a mentally sick society, and if the US, Germany, UK, France, are allies, let’s enter this abyss once again in this daily hell that is the world.

People say, how can they sleep, after doing all this?

This is a question of morality. How can they sleep after doing all that they are doing: the cold-blooded murders of journalists, doctors, paramedics, pregnant women? How can they shoot kids between the eyes? Or, starving kids asking for a loaf of bread?

And, yet, they sleep. Bibi and his men and women. They sleep well. Because, the next morning, they will do the same. Like what Nazi officers like Adolf Eichmann did to 6 million Jews at the gas chambers and concentration camps.

And if, “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism,” as philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote – not much has changed in the world. Barbarism continues to be normal.

ALSO READ: Dust On Their Tongues…

It has taken two years for many to call it genocide. Others, including in the big media, still refuse to call it genocide. The latest is that the US, for the sixth time, has vetoed an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza in the Security Council. It is the only nation.

Does Morgan Ortagus, who raised her hand against it, sleep well?

Speaking prior to the vote, she said that Washington’s opposition “will come as no surprise” – as it fails to condemn Hamas or recognize Israel’s right to defend itself, UN News reported. The whole world knows that this is a fake claim, now a morbid cliché, repeated ad infinitum by the Trump administration, as it was by the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris regime led by Democrats.

The majority resolution demanded the release of all hostages held by Hamas, and for Israel to lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid. It sought to ensure that this aid is safely distributed to the population – in particular by UN agencies and partners.

The draft was put forward by the Council’s 10 non-permanent members: Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Somalia. “Even though this resolution was not adopted today at this 10,000th meeting of the Council, 14 members of this Council have sent a clear message,” said Danish Ambassador Christina Markus Lassen.

Algerian Ambassador Amar Bendjama said: “Palestinian brothers, Palestinian sisters, forgive us.”

Olga Cherevko, UN spokeswoman, speaking to the BBC, said the situation in Gaza City is “nothing short of cataclysmic”.

The US veto has come days before the UN General Assembly, where the majority of nations recognize Palestinian sovereignty, and it might finally have France and UK recognize it as well – that is after backing the genocide to the hilt. As I write this, thousands are out on the streets in London protesting against Trump’s visit.

Surely, as the main ally of Bibi’s murder machine, he too sleeps well.

And yet, despite the everyday gloom, there are strong signs of hope. The non-stop, ad infinitum, breathless protests across the world, especially in the West.

Celebrities in Hollywood, 3000-plus, are refusing to do anything with Israelis in the film industry. Inside campuses, football stadiums, boulevards, homes and balconies, open-air cafes and auditoriums, international film festivals and concert halls, on sea beaches and parks, outside the Israeli embassy, factories, ports and docks, inside restaurants (while Trump goes for dinner) – some are 500,000 strong – and relentless.

These protests have stormed the world. Ceaseless. Endless.

Dead children are being displayed in bundles everywhere – women and men are crying. Holocaust survivors and orthodox Jews are opposing the killings, prime ministers like that of Spain, are seeking a total boycott of Israel, even in the complicit EU, its president has promised sanctions against Israeli cabinet members, settlers in the West Bank, (and Hamas).

Other countries are declaring sanctions, Zohrab Mamdani has said that if elected Mayor, he will arrest Netanyahu if he comes to New York, even the Right-wing Italian PM has promised to do the same. The spineless Arab conglomerate of American stooges in the Middle East seem to have half-woken up finally – that as and when the Israeli militarily subjugates them – which it will eventually – the US will leave to them to the sharks.

And the Freedom Flottila of 50 ships, with celebrities and freedom fighters, including the son of Nelson Mandela, is almost near Gaza. One of them has been bombed.

Truly, enlightenment, like humanity, is not dead. Bibi might want to become another Adolf Hitler, but he too must meet his fate. While Israel stands isolated, as a Rogue State, hated across the world.

Barbarism will stay, of course, but so will the resistance. And there will always be women and men who shall refuse to succumb, or compromise. The brave too must have their day.

At the sold-out Wembley Arena in London, with the who’s who of global celebrities attending, English actress Florence Pugh said: “Silence in the face of such suffering is not neutrality. It is complicity. And empathy should not be this hard, and it should’ve never been this hard,” said Pugh.

As journalist Mehdi Hasan said in Wembley, in his tribute to the murdered Palestinian journalists in Gaza: “We have been lied to, manipulated, misled, gaslit… Shame on those Western journalists who have said not a word about the mass killing of their Palestinian counterparts. Shame on them.” (Since October 7, 2023, 270 journalists have been murdered in Gaza.)

He said: “As a Western journalist myself, I can tell you all this, the Palestinian journalists, they are the best of us. They are the best of us because they are not just documenting a war, or genocide, they are documenting their own annihilation, their own starvation. In real time… They have shown the world that you can’t bomb the truth away.”

How Dare You?

By Amit Sengupta

You – have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?
– Greta Thunberg, UN Climage Action Speech, September 23, 2019

The first sailing ship to Gaza recently, ‘Conscience’, was bombed by Israel. It could not thereby sail with food and aid. In 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 people on a Turkish ship, the ‘Mavi Marmara’; it was leading a small flotilla towards Gaza.

So where are they, 12 of them, bravehearts, Greta and her comrades?

Madleen, the Freedom Flotila, has been kidnapped by the killing machine of Israel. A picture shows an armed soldier with bread and water, with a defiant Greta, half-smiling, facing him.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said via a spokesperson that footage of the October 7, 2023  Hamas attacks will be screened for the Madleen crew after they reach Ashdod Port.

“Antisemitic Greta and her Hamas-supporting friends should see exactly what the Hamas terrorist organisation — which they came to support and act on behalf of — truly is,” he said. “They should see the atrocities committed against women, the elderly, and children, and understand whom Israel is fighting to defend itself.”

Born in Stockholm, she was first sensitized about global warming when she was just about eight. Reports say that she had bouts of depression when she was 11. Her father, Svante Thunberg, an actor, said:  “She stopped talking… she stopped going to school.” (BBC, May 9, 2024).

She was soon after diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Her mother, Malena Ernman, an opera singer, said she became “much happier” once she decided to engage with the issue. She said that she became a kind of “superpower” once she was diagnosed with autism. Being ‘different’ became a ‘gift’.

In August 2018, when she was 15, Greta skipped school and began a solitary protest outside the Swedish Parliament.  She held a placard which said, ‘Skolstrejk för klimatet’ (School Strike for Climate).

Her solo protest sparked a spontaneous movement — a global campaign on climate change — ‘Fridays for Future’. And who were her first supporters?

Enlightened students, including from schools, from across the world. Many of them decided to skip school on Fridays, in solidarity with the campaign.

In April 2019, she told the European Parliament, “Our house is falling apart and our leaders need to start acting accordingly, because at the moment they are not.”

A few months later, she went on a two-week trip across the Atlantic Ocean, campaigning for her cause. Time magazine reported that she was given a warm welcome when she arrived in New York. There were high school students with hand-made signs. “The students broke into chants as the sailboat slowly pulled into the marina in Lower Manhattan: ‘Sea levels are rising and so are we!‘There is no Planet B!’”

ALSO READ: God! Don’t Break Our Hearts

“It is insane that a 16-year-old would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean to make a stand,” Greta said in a press conference.

At the UN Climate Action Meet, she said: “I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”

“World leaders have held 26 COPs. They have had decades of blah, blah, blah — and where has that got us?” This was again Greta speaking in Glasgow, in a youth protest, in 2021.

Nominated every year for the Noble Peace Prize from 2019 to 2023, clearly, the  young had found an inspirational icon, an indefatigable, dogged and visionary role model.

Then she was 16. Now she is 22. Small, stoic, frail, gutsy, resilient, determined, with a ready smile. Her strength of character is transparent. She smiles easily, even as she risks her life. Her comrades in Madleen, from different countries, also smile easily. They are not afraid. No, not at all.

She stands on the edge of the deck, holding the sail, inhaling the sea wind. Her images, her quotes, her dogged resistance, her clarity of vision, her compassion for the people of Gaza, her anger and angst at the non-stop mass killings, and systematic starvation of the people, bombed and shot dead while standing in queue for food, her disgust at the world leaders, especially in the West, for being complicit in this genocide — Greta has spoken her heart out, and the world has listened — in rapt attention.

Madleen, sailing towards Gaza via the great ancient city of Alexandria, became a floating platform of resistance and hope. A symbol of defiance and justice.

Now, in a pre-recorded message, she has  said that they have been abducted by the notorious Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Reports indicate that before the ‘abduction’ a chemical substance was thrown on the ship – which created itchiness in the eyes.

The Israeli foreign ministry has tried sarcasm: “The ‘selfie yacht’ of the ‘celebrities’ is safely making its way to the shores of Israel. The passengers are expected to return to their home countries. They were provided with sandwiches and water. The show is over.”

The show, indeed, is not over. It has just begun.

Rima Hassan, member of the European Parliament, on board Madleen, had a message, and it is all over social media: “If our boat is intercepted and stopped, I don’t want to hear excuses, everyone to the streets! We  will not turn back! We are continuing on our path.”

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was on the phone with the crew during their detention. “Madleen must be released immediately,” she said in a post on X. “Breaking the siege is a legal duty for states, and a moral imperative for all of us… Every Mediterranean port should send boats with aid, solidarity, and humanity to Gaza. They shall sail together—united, they will be unstoppable.”

All over the world (barring India, of course) mass protests have erupted, including in Tel Aviv. Hundreds have marched in Tel Aviv, Al Jazeera reported, holding candles, with pictures of the dead children of Gaza.

Stockholm, London, Holland and elsewhere, people are on the streets. In thousands. In Geneva, they have made a huge water fountain with the colours of the Palestinian flag. Inside football stadiums, Palestinian flags are fluttering with chants of ‘Stop the starvation, stop the genocide’.

On campus after campus in the US, students are denouncing the Israeli regime at their graduation ceremonies. Those who are arrested, are refusing to succumb — many more are joining in protest, unafraid of the notorious ICE, the latest Repressive State Apparatus of Donald Trump.

Spain, Columbia, Ireland, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, nation after nation is asking for a total boycott of Israel (not India, surely). As many as 14 nations in the UN Security Council have sought a ceasefire, with a lone America vetoing it. France, Germany, UK — their governments there are under intense pressure.

Dock workers in the West have refused to load deadly weapons bound for Israel. Jews across the world, including Orthodox Jews in Israel, are standing up against the relentless killings. Hollywood actors have signed statements in support (Bollywood etc, well…).

Doctors in the US have protested inside the hospital, despite warnings by the police that they will be arrested. One female doctor shouted, “If you starve children, they just die.” Doctors are risking their lives and reaching Gaza, despite most hospitals having been bombed, especially targeting pregnant women, mothers, and just-born children. 

Greta and her comrades have resurrected infinite optimism. And the will to fight back! Their message has reached the nooks and corners of the world. This grotesque dance of death and enforced starvation must end. Now!

Many more Madleens must now sail for the Mediterranean shores of Gaza. And many more Gretas will now be holding placards, in angst and anger, asking: How Dare You?

Donald’s Trumpet Plays Songs of Death

By Amit Sengupta

War is Peace.
– 1984, George Orwell

Trump’s trumpet, always cacophonic, unpleasant and jarring, is now turning bloody red. Unpredictably so.

An extreme Right-wing, racist, white supremacist, real-estate capitalist fanatic, he inflicted no war on the world, unlike almost all the presidents of the United States, backed by the arms industry, and their insatiable blood lust, including Barack Obama. Surprisingly, and ironically, he was bestowed the Noble Prize for Peace much too early in  his tenure — and one which he never really deserved. As was proved later.

Now Trump is celebrating the dead in far-away Yemen, a tiny and defiant country, unlike the American stooges spread all over in the Middle East. Women and children, scores of them are dead, and injured. Predictably, they always end up killing innocent, unarmed, defenseless citizens, as Benjamin Netanyahu has done  yet again in Gaza, killing 400 people in one go, yet again claiming that it was Hamas he was targeting with “full force”.

Indeed, as BBC and other media reports have categorically stated, Israel has said multiple times that the Americans were duly informed about the latest bloodbath, following obviously the typical Trumpist declaration that “all hell will break lose”. “We have made incredible achievements up until today,” said a proud Netanyahu. “Together we are changing the face of the Middle East.”

Indeed, they are. A face soaked with human blood.

Since a long time now, it has been transparent like hell that Netanyahu, on a weak wicket inside Israel, and disliked by a huge chunk of people who are not orthodox, blood-thirsty, retrograde fanatics, that he never really wanted a deal on the release of the Israeli hostages in custody of the Hamas. He dilly-dallied, did U-turns, turned his back, promised but retracted, played footsie, but he never really cared a damn for his own people. He knew, that as long as they are trapped somewhere in those dingy and dark tunnels in the ravaged landscape which the Israelis could not enter despite one year of relentless bombing, he can continue to satisfy his blood lust and kill thousands of Palestinians. This was his ‘Mission Ethnic Cleansing’ — so as to finally capture and conquer the mythical holy land — which never really belonged to them, not before the two world wars, and never ever after 1945.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel have condemned the bombing by air: “The Israeli government chose to give up the hostages.” Israel has violated the ceasefire which was  patronised by the US, post-Trump. Around 59  hostages still remain out there, waiting for freedom. Now, their fate seems to have been sealed.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Kalil, a pro-Palestine activist from the prestigious Columbia University in the US has been detained only because he was campaigning against the genocide in Gaza. In a viral video, he was handcuffed and taken away, even while his wife, an American citizen, ran after the officers, pleading again and again that at least tell me, where are you taking him, really, you don’t have to do it this way. His detention, apparently with no legal validity, is a clear indication, that the witch-hunt in the new Trump era has finally begun, perhaps this time more brutal and nasty than the witch-hunt during the Cold War against dissenters, peaceful rebels, Leftists, artists, filmmakers and writers.

Something, which is a staple of most dictators, almost of them buddies of Trump — from Vladimir Putin to Victor Orban. A reminder of the relentless narrative ongoing in India since the summer of 2014.

ALSO READ: Trump And The New World Order

Playright Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, written in 1953, uses the historical similarity of the ‘Salem witch-hunts’ in 1692, in the backdrop of alleged witchcraft, to make a sharp comment on the Cold War witch-hunts in the US. Trump, with Elon Musk of the Nazi salute fame, and a dubious past record of inherited fascist ideology in South Africa, is now leading the witch-hunts upfront. Writes Miller in the thin book: “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, writes counterpunch in a recent article (Operation Newspeak, March 18, 2025), is a warning about political repression, historical revisionism, mass surveillance, propaganda, censorship, and the State’s total control over truth. In the novel, which is set in an imagined future where war is perpetual, the dictator, Big Brother, and his government, ruled by the Party, dominate the superstate, Oceania…

“Newspeak is the Party’s official language, designed to prevent dissent, obstruct critical thinking, suppress rebellion, and control the perception of reality, which is achieved by eliminating words and manipulating language. “We’re destroying words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone,” says Syme, a character who works in the Ministry of Truth and oversees the compilation of the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary… “Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.”

Published in 1949, the book expresses a similar narrative as in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, released in February 1936.  The tragic story is that of an industrial worker trapped in the relentless, mechanical motions of a ruthless machine age in an oppressive factory always under surveillance, and who finds solace and hope with a homeless young woman.

Counterpunch says that the New York Times ran an article about words that are discouraged at Federal Agencies under the new Trumpist administration. A total of 172 words appeared printed in red: Native American. Women. Black. Immigrants. Disability. Gender. Advocacy. Mental health. And, of course, any phrases or expressions having to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion: diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, enhancing diversity, increasing diversity, inclusiveness, inclusive leadership… These words are all to be purged from websites, grant proposals, class curricula, without delay.

Undoubtedly, Trump’s Make America Great Again in in full play in fast forward. An America which perhaps wants the slave trade back, where all Afro-Americans must be shackled and turned into slaves, sold like cattle in open markets, and their women turned into sex slaves. An America where gender justice is abolished, so is women’s rights, the rights of immigrants, now shackled and chained and forcibly deported, students, dissenters, artists, writers and filmmakers, and those of the LGBTQ communities.

A 1984 dystopia stalks America, originally a land of immigrants, while the first white settlers conquered native land by enacting a million genocides of the indigenous communities who lived in their homeland since centuries. A Make America Great Again born in the quagmire of massacres and blood lust, constantly resurrecting its vicious past, here, there and everywhere, now in Yemen and Gaza.

And, yet, we need to hold on, dig in, write graffiti on the walls and inside our soul, notes of dissent, make meaningful films against all odds, like No Other Land, refuse to succumb or compromise, and peacefully continue an infinite struggle, with a thirst which can never be quenched — like the brave people of Palestine.

As Toni Morrison wrote: “There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

God, Don’t Break Our Hearts…

By Amit Sengupta

So what is happening in Gaza right now? Is there optimism in the air? Is that woman on the street smiling? Or, is it a half-smile, hiding a deeper reality? Will this sudden, infectious joy spread across the vast graveyards of solitude?

It’s ceasefire now after 13 months of Genocide in Gaza. A totally discredited Joe Biden (after pumping $23 billion worth of deadly weapons, bombs and arms to Israel since it all started), still wants to take credit. Earlier, Donald Trump had threatened that “all hell will break lose in the Middle East” if Hamas does not release the captured Israeli hostages before he enters the White House.

There is a wave of ‘great expectations’ floating in the dilapidated refugee camps and open-air shelters in Gaza, where the war-smoked air is heavy with dying and death, hunger and epidemics, mourning, and mass psychological trauma.

The bombing has been relentless, while the talks were on. Yesterday, 60-plus dead, or more. How many today? Reports say that 15 children were killed every day in the recent past.

Most of them innocent civilians, of course. Because Hamas fighters are underground, in the tunnels. So, as usual, they choose to kill ordinary folks, disarmed, helpless, out in the open.

It is well-known that Israel targets women and children especially, often through surveillance, and kills them, because they don’t want either women or children to resurrect the ‘tree of life’ in Palestine. The orthodox hardliners have always wanted what was the original Nazi project: ‘The Final Solution!’

That is, total elimination of the Palestinian people and total occupation of their ancient homeland. So that the fraudulent and mythical Jewish ‘holy land’ can be finally achieved. Mass slaughter thereby becomes a ‘sacred act’. A divine project.

Yesterday, I saw an Al Jazeera video report — ‘on the spot’ — from inside Gaza. In a context whereby almost 200 journalists have been killed, often as targeted assassinations by snipers, drones and bombing of marked buildings, this is good news for the people out there. And journalists desperate to enter Gaza and report from the ground.

Talking to the reporter, a mother with her little one, say that there is an “atmosphere of hope, of optimism” in the air. She says that it will be good if the non-stop bombing stops once and for all. “If the ceasefire happens, my first question to my friends and family would be ‘what are your plans, your dreams’?”

Well, the resilience of the people of Gaza has always been beyond the impossible, and history is replete with such stories of their guts and bravery — and the desire to live and start anew. Undoubtedly, no ‘Final Solution’ can ever succeed in the face of such infinite courage. If Maxim Gorky’s great novel, Mother could be written again in our times, it should be on the ‘Great Mothers of Gaza’, dead and alive.

And those who will live to tell the tale.

According to Al Jazeera, an old man, in a tent, said, crying, “I love my homeland. I love the soil I live in. As many as 45 people survive on one kilo of flour.”

A woman said, on the street, “My main aim is to seek eye-treatment. I want to see. I want to see the world!” With no medical treatment available, her retina had become worse during this one-sided war. Now she wants to see again.

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Others want to go home. Meet their families, friends, neighbours and relatives. Perhaps, mourn for the dead, collectively, so that the wounds can be healed.

The video shows that people are walking on the ravaged streets, others are out in the open, some cars are on the road, and kids — those who have survived the bombs — are laughing and playing around.

Another video shot by unknown people has gone viral on social media. A young man in a refugee camp is smiling. Yes, smiling. Almost happy! And he is holding a big hammer. Why, for God’s sake?

He says, the smile refusing to leave his haggard, bearded face, that he has been keeping the hammer below his pillow, hoping against hope that finally there will be peace in the morning; and then, he will dismantle his tent with the hammer.

And, perhaps, yet again, start a new life — with hammer, sickle, iron in the soul, wearing shoes and socks, in a shirt and trouser, warm clothes, planting a seed of an Olive tree which they love so much, water it with his blood and sweat, and, then, grow an utopian orchard of Olive trees on the rubble.

Bisan is an intrepid young Palestinian woman reporter, who has been reporting from Gaza (or somewhere unknown). She has posted, “Two million Palestinians in Gaza and millions outside, are waiting for the ceasefire right now, tired, hungry, grieving and helpless. God don’t break our hearts.”

Early this week, Hind Khoudary, another brave woman journalist, was seen hugging her colleague, in a nameless location. They seem to be strong, optimistic. Yes, almost happy!

She said in an interview: “When people ask me, why did you stay in Gaza? My answer is simple. I am in love with Gaza.”

Yesterday, there wee signs of hope in Gaza, after a long, long time. Today there is great joy, deep inside, certainly, mixed with infinite pain. Perhaps, a sense of relief.

Now, once journalists, writers, filmmakers and story-tellers enter Gaza, there will be so many stories to be discovered, inside the rubble and outside, on their skin smeared with faded, clotted blood, in their simmering wounds; there will be stories in the half-burnt pictures of loved ones which have still managed to survive in a half-burnt kitchen wall of a half-burnt home.

There will be a bunch of wild purple flowers, swaying with the winter wind, which have grown through the crevices of that destroyed building, defying the bombs, promising eternal life.

Rusted with fire, old steel trunks will be dug out from the remains of their lost, shattered memories, bangles, keffiyehs, letters, photo albums; sweaters stitched so meticulously, with the nimble fingers of a grandmother, like an artist; love stories and stories of separation; messages, which never managed to reach their destination.

The clock had stopped!

Hand-written letters, un-posted, un-stamped, un-addressed, scattered like ruins of a sublime relationship. A sister who could not see her brother for years because she was in Gaza, and he was in West Bank; because the check-points did not allow it; the brother, who reached out, because her mobile messages simply stopped coming one day.

He soon discovered that she, a dedicated doctor, who lived in a bombed out building and slept on a broken chair, was murdered while travelling to her hospital. Like so many doctors and nurses.

There will be not ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, like that epic novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. There will be no magic realism here. There will be a million years of solitude and sadness stalking the sudden, solitary, serenity of this silence.

And feverish eyes will hide many more stories. They will run away from other eyes. Fingers will ache to hold the fingers of those who are no more — that warm touch. Oh!

Gone. Forever.

War Crimes & Genocide

By Amit Sengupta

In a moment of symbolic optimism it seems that Benjamin Netanyahu’s goose has been cooked. The latest is a warrant of arrest issued against him, and the 60-day ceasefire in Lebanon.

Anyway, the war was started by Israel with targeted pager attacks against civilians in Beirut and elsewhere, in which pagers subverted by Israeli intelligence would explode suddenly, blowing parts of the body — torso, genitals, limbs, face, eyes, fingers. Besides, around 4,000 Lebanese people have been killed by air strikes. Not able to get the underground fighters of the Hezbollah, the mass murder of civilians seems to be a deliberate military policy of the extreme Right-wing regime in Tel Aviv.

On November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu, his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (Deif). According to Israel, Deif has been killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). This report has not been confirmed as yet.

The ICC stated that it had “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare”. It is well known, that apart from the bombs, the snipers, the tanks, and the targeted assassination of mothers and children (including about 190 journalists), the blockade of food and medical aid has been used as a military strategy by Israel. All wars are brutal, but this regime seems to be unsurpassed in its execution of daily brutality.

Unofficial sources have reported that the death toll might be many times higher in Gaza, while the Western media now cites a figure of 44,000, a large number of them women and children who are especially slaughtered so that new generations of Palestinians are not allowed to be born.

The ICC has said that the compulsive blockade of food and aid seems to be the principal charges against Netanyahu and Gallant. As for Dief, he was declared as “responsible for the crimes against humanity, of murder; extermination; torture; and rape and other forms of sexual violence…”

In an opinion piece in Al Jazeera (November 28, 2024), the writer says: “On the positive side, in and of itself, the ICC decision is historic, as for the very first time, it issued warrants for nationals of – politically speaking – a Western country. Intense pressures and threats from Israel, its friends and its protector-in-chief, the United States, did not shield the two principal members of Israel’s war cabinet from becoming fugitives… Of course, the prospect of seeing Netanyahu and Gallant in the dock is quasi nil. For now, those seeking a modicum of justice would find solace in the symbolism the international warrants for the two Israeli leaders carry.”

Significantly, Justin Trudeau has said that he will “abide” by the ICC decision. “We stand up for international law, and we will abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts. This is just who we are as Canadians.”

He also said, “We need to see a ceasefire that protects civilians. We need to get back on track towards a two-state solution with a peaceful Israel living alongside a peaceful Palestinian state.”

Besides, the spokesman of British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer , said: “The UK will always comply with its legal obligations as set out by domestic law, and, indeed, international law.”

Other countries that are in agreement with the ICC are France, Belgium, Jordan, Iran, Turkey, Ireland, The Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, Norway and the European Union. UK and Canada are members of the ‘Five Eyes’, an intelligence network along with New Zealand, Australia, and the US.

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The US, not part of the ICC, has reacted in a predictable manner. Joe Biden called the ICC decision “outrageous”. He gave the usual spiel: “Whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

This is the line he and Kamala Harris have been taking since last year, all the while supplying Israel with billions of dollars, bombs, arms and ammunition, while backing the genocide in Gaza, even while thousands of students and citizens in America protested for months against the killings, calling for a ceasefire.

The ceasefire with Lebanon is more than a breakthrough, though Israel went on a bombing spree in southern Lebanon soon after citing “terrorist activity”. However, there has been no escalation. The point is that why did Israel go for a ceasefire at all?

There could be many reasons. While media reports are more or less absent from inside Israel, or, perhaps, censored, there are reports that since long big cities in the country are surviving in a state of siege. Thousands have gone underground in bunkers, and normal life has been disrupted. Clearly, the emotional and mental state of the people might be on a volatile edge. This especially triggered after Netanyahu opened up another front with Hezbollah and Iran — killing two top commanders of Hamas and Hezbollah in a high security area in Tehran. Iran vowed revenge.

No one knows what is the death toll of IDF soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon, or the damage inflicted by the missiles of Iran and Hezbollah, which have, effectively, broken through the once invincible Iron Dome, a gift by the US to its Nazi ally in the Middle East. Reservists were called in for the new war against Lebanon. Thousands of Israelis have reportedly escaped out of their country — looking for sanity and peace. A huge section is against Netanhayu, who is living on the edge with a serious corruption case hanging over him.

“It’s a whole new kind of world that we’re going into…And we’ll also have to wait and see if the ceasefire holds. I think the Israelis will do everything they can to provoke,” said Karim Makdisi, a professor of international politics at the American University in Beirut. “I think that as long as you have Netanyahu, something is going to happen.” He was quoted by independent media outfit, Drop Site.

In a speech on television, Netanyahu said he backed the ceasefire to rebuild arms and ammunition (now depleted), that he will shift his attention to Iran, and “to separate the fronts and isolate Hamas. From day two of the war, Hamas was counting on Hezbollah to fight by its side. With Hezbollah out of the picture, Hamas is left on its own.”

Meanwhile, Biden said on X: “Over the coming days, the United States will make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and others to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza with the hostages released and an end to the war without Hamas in power.”

Will Gaza see peace in the coming days? It’s doubtful because Netanyahu’s best trump card is an endless genocide, and the liberation of the holy land, so that armed settlers can now occupy large parts of Gaza, as they have done in the West Bank — the two little strips of land left with the Palestinians of their original homeland.

He has shown no intention for the release of hostages, and, reportedly, has been the main obstacle as and when reached some form of reconciliation in Qatar. Indeed, he cares two hoots for the suffering of the hostages, or the suffering of their loved ones and families.

Besides, Hamas wants IDF to totally withdraw from Gaza. This seems highly improbable. And it wants thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, most of them innocent, now condemned in Israeli prisons, in exchange for the hostages. This too seems improbable, with Israel picking up several young boys and men recently from Gaza, taking them to unknown destinations.

As for Hamas getting isolated after the ceasefire with Lebanon (and Hezbollah), that too seems unlikely. The Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are linked politically and militarily. And they will always operate strategically, in synthesis.

Hence, as a bitter and freezing winter takes over a ravaged Gaza, new stories of infinite tragedy will unfold. It’s just that there are no journalists or writers from across the world reporting and writing about it.