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.
“Children have reportedly been killed in several mass casualty
events, including nighttime attacks in Gaza City, Khan Younis, and
al-Mawasi, a unilaterally designated ‘safe zone’ in the south,” UNICEF
said on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, an Israeli strike on al-Mawasi in
south Gaza killed five displaced children who were sheltering in tents.
The IDF has repeatedly bombed al-Mawasi despite designating it as a
so-called “humanitarian safe zone.”
Displaced
Palestinian children sheltering at a school in Deir el-Balah, central
Gaza, on January 7, 2025 (IMAGO/APAimages via Reuters Connect)
Palestinian children are also dying due to the conditions caused by
the Israeli siege and relentless bombing campaign. UNICEF said that
since December 26, “eight infants and newborns have reportedly died from
hypothermia – a major threat to young children who are unable to
regulate their body temperature.”
Gaza health officials said in December 2023 that 17,000 children had
been killed in the genocidal war, a number that does not include those
missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by
the siege.
Newborn babies are especially vulnerable since many have been born
prematurely due to the health conditions of their mothers. Palestinian
mothers in Gaza also struggle to make milk, and there have been
shortages of formula and other baby products.
In October, The New York Times published accounts
from American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza, including
many who worked with babies. “I worked in a neonatal ICU. Several
infants died every day due to lack of medical supplies and appropriate
nutrition,” said Dr. Amen Odeh, a pediatrician from Texas.
“We had to make tough decisions about which very sick baby would be
on the ventilator due to lack of equipment. I saw a family bringing in
their dead 3-day-old infant who had been living in a tent,” Odeh added.
Despite the slaughter of children and death of so many newborns under
the siege, the Biden administration has continued to provide military
aid and political support to Israel. President Biden is reportedly
planning to approve one more major arms deal worth $8 billion before he leaves office.
Published date: 2 January 2025 11:10 GMT | Last update:5 days 3 hours ago
The incoming US president’s transactional approach to politics will
see immigrants suffer, while suppport for Israel’s oppression of
Palestinians will continue
A man shows support for US president-elect Donald Trump near his
Mar-a-Lago resort on 14 December 2024 (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty
Images/AFP)
Given his mercurial nature, shifting from the politics of revenge to
the politics of accommodation without explanation or changed
circumstances, it is foolhardy to predict what lies ahead as Donald
Trump prepares to be US president for a second time.
His rhetoric and ideology seem untamed and extreme – and this time around, he enters the White House with a strong electoral mandate as Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, and the support of an ultra-conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
This would seem to ensure the prospect of Trump’s total control over
the governing process in the US, but there are some daunting bumps in
the road ahead.
Some of the contours of Trump’s presidency have become clear even
before he officially returns to the White House. Firstly, it seems
certain that he will make millions of undocumented immigrants in the US miserable from day one.It is not a good sign that Trump blamed the New Orleans car incident
on weak border security considering it was the work of an American army
veteran who recently converted to the Islamic State group.
His obsession with stopping asylum-seekers and immigrants from
crossing the border without proper papers is certain to be acted upon.
Already, the man Trump has selected as “border czar” has indicated his
intention to deport entire families of undocumented persons, including naturalised citizens.
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Trump could get away with this approach, however cruel in
application, for a while – but the economics of the labour market will
soon pose a challenge, creating strategic labour shortages in such
critical sectors as agriculture in the southwestern US, exacerbating
inflationary pressures.
There are also considerations around the growing need for skilled workers in the high-tech sector,
which will increasingly shape the country’s economic future. These
workers have been given high priority in relation to robust economic
development, as Trump’s chief adviser, Elon Musk, keeps reminding him.
These concerns will be magnified if Trump goes ahead with his announced plans to place 25 percent tariffs
on imports from Canada and Mexico, along with punitive tariffs on
Chinese imports. Such policies are the surest way to start a mutually
destructive trade war.
Global dangers
On foreign policy, the outlook for a Trump presidency is more mixed,
but uncertain and globally dangerous. In the beginning, Trump will
probably seek to portray himself as a peacemaker, particularly in the
context of the Russia-Ukraine war.
This conflict is both an example of the type of “forever war” he
rejected during his first term in office, and an opportunity to explore
whether a cooperative relationship with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia could circumvent the Atlantic alliance that has been a centrepiece of American foreign policy since the end of World War II.
Pushing for a ceasefire and diplomatic compromise was a grossly
negligent missed opportunity during Joe Biden’s presidency, which seemed
determined to inflict a geopolitical defeat on Russia, even at the cost
of causing a disaster for Ukraine and its people.
Where does Donald Trump stand on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East?
If this change of direction occurs, Nato
loyalists will have to rethink European security arrangements, and the
American deep state will have to swallow defeat, or use its untested
leverage to back the primacy of the US in geopolitical realms by keeping
Russia out and Nato in.
When it comes to the Middle East, the story is different in terms of policy priority.
Trump has given every indication of wanting to exceed Biden’s unconditional support for Israel, including through the genocidal onslaught on Gaza,
land grabbing, ethnic-cleansing operations and settlement expansion in
the occupied West Bank, and escalating unlawful violence against
regional adversaries.
Trump, by his political appointments and undisciplined commentary,
seems determined to “finish the job” in Gaza, which can only be
understood as erasing Palestine and Palestinians as obstacles to the rapid establishment of Greater Israel from “the river to the sea”.
Beyond this, he seems determined to confront Iran
in a more muscular manner, possibly by destroying its nuclear
facilities and taking more overt steps to provoke regime change in
Tehran.
These policies, if actualised, would have many risks and adverse
consequences, including the possibility of a wider regional war and a
surge of anti-US sentiments. They would also cement Israel as the pariah
state of our time, which could weaken it to the point of emboldening
the peoples of the Arab world to rise up against their western-oriented
repressive regimes, and unite behind the cause of liberating Palestine
from settler-colonialism.
Contempt for internationalism
Finally, in every way, Trump and his entourage have signalled their
opposition to internationalism. Trump has long displayed an unwavering
commitment to an ultra-nationalist and transactional world view. He
exhibits contempt for addressing global challenges, and for the benefits
of cooperative problem-solving, even in the context of climate change.
In this sense, the UN will be valued only to the extent that it fully
backs American strategic priorities – and should it dare to censure or
oppose these priorities, Trump will surely threaten, and then cut, US
funding, or even withdraw US participation.
Given such attitudes, it is not surprising that Trump is dismissive
of the regulatory role of international law, especially if directed at
restraining the US. Say goodbye to the cynical pretensions of Secretary
of State Antony Blinken’s “rules-based world order”, which has seemed more a synonym for US-led geopolitics than a genuine submission to universally applicable principles.
In the end, the Trump presidency may be forced to choose between a form of neo-isolationism and neo-imperialism
Trump may unintentionally provide a service to humanity by stripping
away the liberal illusions shielding the reality that the US and its
friends habitually avoid the constraints of international law that their
rivals are bound to obey. In effect, Trump’s nihilism may be preferable
to Biden’s hypocrisy.
In the end, the Trump presidency may be forced to choose between a
form of neo-isolationism and neo-imperialism. If the isolationist
alternative prevails, then an accelerated transition will likely occur
from the post-Cold War world of unipolarity to a new era of complex
multipolarity.
If the neo-imperialist model prevails, due to a compromise between
the ultra-nationalist Trumpists and the globally ambitious American deep
state, tensions will emerge between antagonistic forms of multipolarity
and competing alliance networks, resembling in structure the Cold War,
yet with differences, including the agenda of geopolitical rivalries.
The de-centring of conflict that includes the partial bypassing of
Europe is all but certain. Europe is no longer the chief geopolitical
prize, as it was in the three 20th-century global wars (including the
Cold War).
Whatever else, the Trump presidency is likely to confound
expectations, including these, while keeping busy the world’s most
influential media platforms.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations
scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. In 2008 he
was also appointed by the UN to serve a six-year term as the Special
Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
Dear Zarah Sultana MP! Apparently, PM Keir Starmer and Lammy don’t say they are
supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing by providing weapons and
diplomatic support to Israel. However, they follow the mouldy and odious
mantra of Biden, Blinken and Scholz instead, and call Israel’s
genocidal crimes against the Palestinians as ‘Israel has a right to
defend itself’!
As we all know, it is a blatant lie, a lie on stilts, but it has no
legs to stand on. It is akin to saying if I can give an example from
Nazi Germany that Germany was exercising a right to defend itself when
it attacked Poland to start with and then started the war against the
USSR, not sparing England, including your constituency Coventry!
Before President Joe Biden leaves office, he will approve one more
massive arms sale to Israel. The $8 billion sale of missiles and
artillery shells comes as human rights groups have labeled Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide.
Axios reported on
Friday, “The State Department has notified Congress “informally” of an
$8 billion proposed arms deal with Israel that will include munitions
for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells.”
Author Barak Ravid did not define what it means to “informally”
notify Congress of the sale or if it fulfills the White House’s
requirement to notify Congress of arms deals.
The massive arms sale to Tel Aviv comes after Amnesty International
declared Israel’s onslaught in Gaza a genocide. “Amnesty International’s
research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has
committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in
the occupied Gaza Strip, the organization said in a landmark new report
published today,” the report released in early December explained.
The sale includes AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, Hellfire
AGM-114 missiles, 155 MM artillery rounds, small-diameter bombs, JDAM
kits, and 500-pound bombs. Many of these munitions have been used by
Israel during its campaign of extermination in Gaza, including in
attacks on civilian targets.
In June, CNN reported that Israel used US small-diameter bombs in an attack on a school that killed 40 civilians. In October, The Washington Post noted,
“The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports alleging
Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that caused unnecessary
harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip.”
Amnesty International is calling on the US and other states that
provide Israel with arms to cut off the flow of weapons to stop the
genocide. “States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time
must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and
are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide,” said Agnรจs Callamard,
the secretary general of the organization.
“All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms
suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the
UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against
Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end,” she added.
Israel receives most of its weapons, 78%,
from the US, and officials in Tel Aviv have acknowledged it would not
be able to sustain its military operations with continued US support for
more than a few months. Since the October 7 attack, the US has provided
Israel with $22 billion in military aid.
Still, Biden has been routinely criticized by Republicans in
Washington and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not
providing Israel with enough military support.
The Axios reports that some of the munitions will come
directly from US stockpiles. However, many of the weapons will be
delivered years into the future. The goal of the deal is “supporting
Israel’s long-term security by resupplying stocks of critical munitions
and air defense capabilities,” one official explained.
Thick
smoke billows from a residential building in Bureij refugee camp after
it was hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Deir al-Balah, Palestinian
Territories, on June 3, 2024.
The Israeli military has announced that it carried out over 1,400 air
strikes on Gaza in December alone, amounting to dozens of strikes a day
on average on Palestinians also suffering under famine conditions due
to Israel’s enduring aid blockade.
This is the equivalent of over 45 airstrikes a day, with the attacks
carried out by Israeli aircraft like fighter jets and drones, the Israeli Air Force said on social media.
This is a staggering amount of strikes in such a small period of time, coming after Israel has already destroyed roughly 70 percent of infrastructure in Gaza.
The military did not specify the firepower of the strikes. But rights groups noted
that, within the first months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israeli
forces had already dropped the equivalent of multiple nuclear bombs on
the Gaza Strip — a territory spanning only 25 miles long and with
roughly the same land area as Las Vegas.
Israeli forces have claimed
that they were striking military targets within Gaza, but many of the
strikes documented by journalists and human rights groups have targeted
civilian areas, including many children.
The population has declined by 160,000 people since October 2023, with at least 45,000 people killed by Israeli attacks. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout
January 2, 2025
These strikes have been carried out on Palestinians, adults and children alike, who were trying to find food or forced to take shelter in makeshift tents on the beach, in Israel’s designated “safe zone.” They have killed medical workers trying to save people’s lives after Israeli attacks, or those injured by attacks only to be struck again. In one strike in late December, Israeli forces bombed a press van and killed five Palestinian journalists near a hospital, where the wife of one of the journalists was giving birth.
Even as the military carried out these strikes, Israeli officials were taking part in ceasefire negotiations that appeared to be gaining steam, according to media reports. Like others before, these talks fizzled out as Israeli officials insisted on staying in Gaza even after a deal was struck and as reports have found that Israel intends to openly violate the terms of its ceasefire agreement in Lebanon.
The U.S. was party to these negotiations, but American officials have
also played a major role in allowing Israel’s attacks to continue. In
just the first year of Israel’s genocide, the U.S. sent $17.9 billion in military assistance to Israel — at minimum, according to a tally of just the publicly reported transfers.
More military sales are in the pipeline, all but guaranteeing that Israel can continue its aggression in the Middle East with the backing of the most well-funded military complex in the world. The Biden administration has pushed
a massive $20 billion weapons sale to Israel — including tank rounds,
JDAMs and fighter jets — while, just in November, reports emerged that
the Biden administration is moving forward with a sale of thousands of JDAMs and small diameter bombs to Israel, worth $680 million.
Human rights groups and experts have documented dozens of instances of Israel using U.S. bombs to commit war crimes in Gaza. According to reporting by The Washington Post from October, the State Department has reportedly swept aside over 500 reports of Israel using U.S. weapons to kill civilians in Gaza and causing “unnecessary harm.”
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about:blank This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
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Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter and Bluesky.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, you have stood for the social, political
and economic rights of people in your constituency, migrants, migrant
children, Native Americans, and coloured people steadfastly and
consistently. When a war criminal addressed a joint session of Congress a
few months ago, you were the only one who held a placard with the words
‘War Criminal’ and ‘Genocide’. You were the one who dared to
tell the truth in this way, while most others were ecstatic in cheering
the war criminal!
Some of us who follow your posts on your Page notice some vicious and
negative comments by some right-wing people who firmly support and
cheer on what Israel is doing in Gaza and the rest of the occupied West
Bank, etc. However, you persist with your work and activities despite
the misleading propagandists and trolls. For all that, I thank you on
behalf of many people who are my readers and friends.
I wish you a happy new year and hope you will continue serving the
causes and meeting the challenges in the new year as you have.
