I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
The US is sending thousands of additional
troops to the Middle East and is considering restarting the bombing
campaign against Iran or launching ground operations in the country, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed US officials.
The report said that the forces include
6,000 troops aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush and its
accompanying warships. Notably, the Bush traveled around southern Africa
on its way to the region instead of going through the Mediterranean and
the Suez Canal, the typical route of US warships, signaling the US is
concerned the Houthis in Yemen could close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
About 4,200 other US troops, including
thousands of Marines, are heading to the region from the Pacific aboard
the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group. The Post said they are
expected to reach the Middle East by the end of April. Once both forces
arrive, the US will have more than 60,000 troops in the region.
Marines
aboard the USS Portland, part of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group,
conducting weapons functions check during a drill in the Pacific Ocean
on April 9, 2026 (US Marines Corps photo)
The buildup and the US blockade of Iranian
ports are framed as an effort to get Iran to agree to US demands for a
diplomatic deal. But according to President Trump, the US is continuing
to demand that Iran make a commitment to never again enrich uranium for
civilian purposes, a condition that’s seen as a non-starter and will
likely lead to a renewal of the bombing campaign if the US sticks to it.
The current ceasefire between the US and
Iran will expire on April 22 if it’s not extended. Other reports have
said that President Trump has considered launching “limited” strikes in Iran to get Tehran to capitulate, but any renewed bombing campaign would mean a return to full-blown war.
Concerning possible ground operations, the
Post report said that Trump administration officials have “discussed
everything from launching a complex Special Operations mission to
extract Iranian nuclear material, to landing Marines on coastal areas
and islands to protect the strait, to seizing Kharg Island, an Iranian
export facility in the Persian Gulf.”
On 14 April 2026, I was on “Judging
Freedom” talking with Judge Napolitano about Iran. My central point to
the judge was that Trump is in no position to work out a deal with Iran
that settles the ongoing war in a meaningful way. The reason is simple:
Israel has no interest in a ceasefire, much less an agreement that
satisfies any of Iran’s demands, especially its demand that it maintain
the capability to enrich uranium. Israel would prefer to wreck Iran,
much the way Syria was wrecked. And Israel and its enormously powerful
lobby have the means to make Trump dance to their tune, as they have
demonstrated repeatedly since Trump moved back into the White House in
January 2025. The only circumstance where Trump might stand up to Israel
and the lobby is if the world economy is on the verge of disaster, and
the president feels that eventuality would be so dire that he has no
choice but to stand up to Israel.
Published date: 15 April 2026 09:04 BST | Last update:2 hours 10 mins ago
Israeli prison guards have violently assaulted Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti three times over the past month, according to his lawyer.
A campaign calling for Barghouti’s release
on Tuesday described the incidents as “brutal attacks”. It said they
took place while he was in solitary confinement in Megiddo and Ramon
prisons, in northern and southern Israel respectively.
Barghouti was tortured “using various
tools of repression and beatings, causing multiple injuries and bleeding
across his body without medical treatment,” the campaign said.
It added that the prominent political
figure has faced a “systematic series” of attacks that have continued
since the start of Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
Israeli human rights lawyer Ben Marmarelli, who said he visited Barghouti on Sunday, detailed the alleged abuse in a post on X, describing the situation as “deeply alarming”.
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He said that on 24 March, prison guards
entered Barghouti’s cell with a dog, forced him to the ground, and set
the dog on him repeatedly.
Barghouti was also assaulted during his transfer from Megiddo to Ganot prison the following day.
‘These are not isolated incidents. They form a clear pattern of escalating abuse’
– Ben Marmarelli, Human rights lawyer
On 8 April, he was severely beaten in
Ganot and left bleeding for more than two hours. A subsequent request
for medical treatment was denied.
“These are not isolated incidents. They
form a clear pattern of escalating abuse: violence, medical neglect, and
treatment that places him at immediate risk,” Marmarelli said.
He added that his most recent legal visit
took place “under absurd conditions”, with the two forced to shout
through glass to hear each other because prison phones were not working.
“This is what a legal visit looks like
today: basic conditions denied, communication obstructed, and even the
most elementary human and professional standards ignored.”
According to Marmarelli, despite the conditions, Barghouti remained mentally sharp and engaged with events outside prison.
“He had a great deal to say. Above all, he
wanted to know more about his family and the Palestinian people, What
is happening in Palestinian and Israeli scene I tried to tell him
everything I know.”
Prominent figure
Barghouti, a senior figure in Fatah, has been imprisoned since 2004.
Israel targeted him for his leading role in the 2000–2005 Second Intifada.
He is serving five life sentences plus 40
years after being convicted over attacks that killed five Israelis.
Barghouti refused to mount a defence during his trial, saying he did not
recognise the court’s legitimacy.
Opinion polls have consistently suggested
that Barghouti would win the Palestinian presidency if elections were
held and he were permitted to run.
He is widely viewed as one of the few
remaining unifying Palestinian leaders, despite Fatah’s deep association
with the unpopular Palestinian Authority.
The 66-year-old has long been held in
solitary confinement and has faced intensified assaults alongside other
prominent Palestinian detainees since October 2023.
On 12 April 2026, I was on the
“Switzerland” podcast with Josh Landis, one of the world’s leading
experts on Syria, and the host Tom Switzer. In the wake of the failed
negotiations in Islamabad, President Trump announced that the US was
going to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which means that Iranian oil
will no longer flow out of the Persian Gulf into world oil markets. No
more oil profits for Tehran.
The underlying assumption is that this
policy will inflict massive punishment on Iran, causing it to surrender
to US and Israeli demands. I made the case that not only will it not
work as planned, but it will work against the US because that Iranian
oil is essential for limiting the economic damage being done to the
world economy. Of course, this is why the US has allowed Iranian oil to
flow into the global market up until now. As I have emphasized many
times, the Trump administration is playing a losing hand.
Palestinian testimonies reveal how
sexual violence, including rape using objects and dogs, is approved by
‘highest levels’ of Israeli leadership
Soldiers lock a gate at Sde Teiman
detention facility after Israeli military police arrived as part of an
investigation into the suspected abuse of a Palestinian detainee on 29
July 2025 (Reuters)
Published date: 11 April 2026 11:53 BST | Last update:1 day 21 hours ago
Sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza in Israeli prisons
is an “organised state policy”, endorsed by the “highest, political,
military, and judicial authorities”, a new report has revealed.
The report, seen exclusively by Middle
East Eye, is based on testimonies from Palestinian former
prisoners gathered by the rights watchdog Euro-Mediterranean Human
Rights Monitor.
It reveals how the scope of sexual
violence of Palestinian prisoners, including rape using objects and
trained military dogs, constitutes an “organised state policy”, aided
and abetted by Israeli institutions and leadership.
One former detainee, a 42-year-old woman
from north Gaza who was held in the notorious Sde Teiman detention
centre, said she was bound naked to a metal table and repeatedly raped
by two masked soldiers over the course of two days.
She recalled that she was left shackled,
naked and bleeding throughout the night before the soldiers returned the
next day to continue raping her.
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She said she wished for death and likened her experience to “another genocide behind walls”.
Throughout her ordeal, she was filmed.
Soldiers later showed her the footage while she was hung by her wrists
under interrogation, threatening to publish the videos if she did not
“cooperate”.
Amir, a 35-year-old Palestinian man also
held at Sde Teiman, recounted how soldiers forced him to strip naked,
before their dogs urinated on him and raped him.
He described how the dog “penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten”.
“This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.”
Khaled Mahajna, an attorney with the
Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, described how a
soldier in Sde Teiman inserted a fire extinguisher nozzle into a
Palestinian prisoner’s anus and then discharged its contents into his
body, resulting in severe internal injuries and intense pain.
‘Etched into their memory’
Another former prisoner, 43-year-old
Wajdi, recounted being shackled to a metal bed and repeatedly raped by
soldiers and a trained dog.
“I felt severe pain in my anus and
screamed, but every time I screamed, I was beaten. This continued for
several minutes, while soldiers filmed and mocked me, Wajdi said.
“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding.”
He said he was then untied and raped by
the dog. Later, another soldier forced his penis into the victim’s mouth
and urinated on him. Over the following days, the abuse continued, with
repeated rapes carried out by multiple soldiers.
“This case is particularly devastating
because it reflects an accumulation of almost every form of torture,
physical, psychological, and moral, layered with systematic
humiliation,” Khaled Ahmed, a Euro-Med field researcher, told MEE.
“It also includes the deliberate use of
multiple perpetrators and trained dogs as instruments of sexual
violence. The result is not a single act of abuse, but an extended
pattern of cruelty designed to destroy dignity, bodily integrity, and
any sense of safety. These are acts that defy comprehension.”
Victims said the attacks were filmed and
often conducted in “well-equipped institutional logistical settings…
intentionally designed to enable torture and sexual violence”. The
report said this evidenced the institutionalised nature of the violence.
Ahmed, who conducted some of the interviews with the victims, said the process was “by no means an easy task”.
“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding”
-Wajdi, former prisoner
“The details the survivors described and the way they relived the emotions and events were overwhelming,” Ahmed told MEE.
He described how some interviewees broke
down in crying fits while recounting their stories, noting that the
participants’ fear of reprisals and social stigmas around sexual abuse
stopped some of them from speaking altogether.
“But what we noticed was that all of them spoke about what happened as if they were seeing it in front of them,” Ahmed told MEE.
“They remembered every detail, as though the scene had been etched into their memory and could never leave it.”
Ahmed said that most of the victims he
spoke to were men, as women who experience sexual violence face a much
deeper and more complex stigma in Palestinian society, “making it nearly
impossible for a woman or her family to disclose that she has been
assaulted”.
He noted that, while the sexual violence
used against men and women is largely similar, women’s bodies in
particular were used as a means to blackmail men.
“We documented several cases of sexual assault against women due to their familial ties to wanted individuals,” Ahmed said.
‘A complex crime’
Euro-Med monitor concluded that the
testimonies are not isolated incidents but stand as evidence “of a
policy supported by senior civilian and military leaders, either through
direct orders or by tacit approval and a climate of impunity”.
It said that the scale of the abuse was
made possible by legislation, military directives and emergency
regulations, such as the “Unlawful Combatants Law”, which vastly
expanded detention powers without judicial oversight and stripped
detainees of any legal protections.
These legal mechanisms
turbocharged enforced disappearances of Palestinian detainees and
transformed Israeli detention centres into unaccountable “black holes”
in the aftermath of 7 October 2023. Notable among them is Sde Teiman
prison, where multiple reports have found torture, rape and murder to be
rife, while the Red Cross and lawyers are denied access.
The report insists that responsibility for
the abuse does not stop with its perpetrators; it is facilitated by the
collusion of medical and legal personnel and the Israeli judicial
system.
Euro-Med reported that doctors have helped
to obscure incidents of torture by hiding the perpetrators’ identities,
burying the victims’ injuries in medical records and issuing them “fit
for interrogation” certificates.
Meanwhile, the Israeli justice system has
shielded perpetrators by restricting evidence given by victims and
witnesses, and reclassifying serious incidents as minor offences,
resulting in the dismissal of charges.
In Israel, raping Palestinian prisoners is justified. Leaking the footage is betrayal
In March, the Israeli military announced it was dropping charges
against five soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at
Sde Teiman, despite leaked CCTV footage showing soldiers surrounding the
detainee as he was pinned against a wall.
The report said that these abuses breach
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, as they have caused serious harm to group members and are
aimed at preventing births within the group – “all within a larger
objective of partially or fully destroying the Palestinian community in
the Gaza Strip”.
It emphasised that responsibility for
these crimes extends “beyond the direct perpetrators, encompassing
leadership and institutions that shelter them”.
Numerous reports by rights groups and
investigations by news sites, including MEE, have extensively documented
the widespread use of sexual violence and rape of Palestinian detainees
across the Israeli prison system.
A United Nations inquiry
accused Israel of using sexualised torture and rape as “a method of
war… to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian
people”.
Ahmed emphasised that the proliferation of
sexual violence in Israeli prisons serves a specific purpose, “because
it encompasses almost all types of torture”.
“It keeps the victim trapped in a cycle of
violence, unable to escape it, even after the violence has practically
stopped,” Ahmed said.
“It continues to accompany the victim
throughout their life. The survivor keeps experiencing both physical and
psychological pain, and in many cases feelings of shame, humiliation,
self-blame, inferiority, loss of dignity, and a lack of safety.”
He noted that the trauma does not stop with the victim, but spreads to their family and community.
“Especially in a conservative society
where anything related to sexual assault is seen as an attack on the
dignity of the entire family. It is a complex crime that deeply impacts
and fractures the very fabric of society.”
John Mearsheimer: President Trump’s
decision to attack Iran on 28 February 2026 was irrational because it
was based on a noncredible or flawed theory of victory. He assumed that
independent air power alone could cause regime change in Iran, which
would lead to a new regime that would surrender to US and Israeli
demands.
Highly recommended video on President Trump’s war on Iran and its consequences for the region, America and the world.
Israel denies withholding supplies for Gaza’s more than 2 million residents
MADRID, April 12 (Reuters) – A second
flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza was due to
set sail on Sunday from the Spanish port of Barcelona to try to break
the Israeli blockade.
About 30 boats planned to leave the
Mediterranean port city laden with medical aid and other supplies on
the Global Sumud Flotilla, and more vessels are expected to join along
the route towards Palestine.
The Reuters Iran Briefing newsletter keeps you informed with the latest developments and analysis of the Iran war. Sign up here.
The Israeli military halted the roughly 40
boats assembled by the same organisation last October as they
attempted to reach blockaded Gaza, arresting Swedish activist Greta
Thunberg and more than 450 other participants.
MISSION TO ‘OPEN HUMANITARIAN CORRIDOR’
Israel, which controls all access to the
Gaza Strip, denies withholding supplies for its more than 2 million
residents. Yet Palestinians and international aid bodies say supplies
reaching the territory are still insufficient, despite a ceasefire
reached in October which included guarantees of increased aid.
Liam Cunningham, an actor who starred in
the Game of Thrones television series who is supporting the flotilla but
not taking part, told Reuters: “Every kilogram of aid that is on
these ships is a failure because all these people on these ships giving
up their time to help their fellow human beings are doing what their
governments are legally obliged to do.”
The World Health Organization has said
that even during armed conflicts, states are obligated under
international humanitarian law to ensure that people are able to reach
medical care in safety.
“This is a mission that aims to open a
humanitarian corridor so the aid delivery organisations can arrive,”
Saif Abukeshak, a Palestinian activist and member of the flotilla’s
organising committee, told Reuters.
Swiss and Spanish activists on last year’s
flotilla said they were subjected to inhumane conditions during their
detention by Israeli forces – an allegation that was rejected by an
Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson.
Reporting by Graham Keeley; Additional
reporting by Silvio Castellanos, Horaci Garcia, Nacho Doce, Albert Gea,
Michele Spatari and Amy McConaghy; Editing by David Holmes
