Posted by Internationalist 360° on April 6, 2025
Myriam Charabaty
The masks of “democracy” and “human rights” that Western powers and their proxies—including Israel—have now been ripped off, revealing their true face: an insidious drive to annihilate a people that have repeatedly rejected subjugation.
US-led proposals have never aimed to end the bloodshed but only to enforce submission. Every plan put forward on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the wider region has relied on a one-sided narrative, divorced from reality and blind to the facts on the ground.
Worse, they ignore the root cause of the conflict entirely.
The resistance in the region is not just a matter of organized movements; it is a widespread and deeply rooted popular choice, evident in Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and, eventually, Syria.
These movements have developed over decades, grounded in the region’s historical struggles for survival, dignity, and the rejection of foreign domination.
The resistance is a popular, existential force, born of the region’s bloodied history, and it cannot be easily extinguished.
The will to resist is a collective sentiment that unites the people across these countries, and no external force can erase this deep-rooted resolve.
Proposals that suggest dividing the region or forcing movements like Hamas to surrender to the Palestinian Authority (PA) or Israel are fundamentally misguided.
Resistance groups in Lebanon and Iraq, for example, will not lay down their arms at the demand of foreign powers, particularly the United States. Let alone Yemen and its foundational resistance movement Ansar Allah.
The resistance is a product of the people’s indomitable will and sense of purpose. In is founded in their values scale.
[Despite the few (or many) who drown in greed and are willing to become traitors both knowingly or unknowingly in return for a few gains or some illusions of gains and superiority.]
Any attempt to dismantle these movements will fail because they are built on the refusal to accept subjugation, no matter the pressure. In Syria, too, the resistance will persist, no matter how much external manipulation seeks to weaken it.
Even if the established movements are crushed, the spirit of resistance will live on in new forms, for the people’s resolve is unyielding and their options are minimal in the face of definite death, and the lie of a rules-based order, it is only resistance that can save them.
The cost of resistance is thus, once again, less than that of surrender.
The United States has long understood that the social and economic fabric of the region plays a key role in sustaining resistance.
For years, it has launched soft power campaigns aimed at breaking these social foundations using programs like USAID, media manipulation, and co-opting local elites.
While some of these efforts have seen limited success in co-opting a small fraction of the population, they have failed to break the will of the people.
When the struggle for survival becomes a matter of life and death, the West’s empty promises of “democracy” and “development” are exposed for what they truly are: tools of control in the service of genocide.
The reality of the destruction caused by endless wars, foreign interventions, and the erasure of entire populations cannot be hidden by glossy narratives of freedom.
The masks of “democracy” and “human rights” that Western powers and their proxies—including Israel—have worn for years have now been ripped off, revealing their true face: an insidious, systematic drive to annihilate a people that has repeatedly rejected subjugation.
When USAID and the rhetoric of Western-backed democracy fail to meet the real needs of the people, they sink into the abyss of irrelevance. People search for what can offer them real answers.
The resistance continues because it is a force grounded in the lived reality of the people—fueled by their history, their suffering, and their refusal to be erased. The desire for self-determination, the drive to survive, and the rejection of foreign domination will not be crushed.
No amount of bombs, threats, killings, assassinations, economic suffocation, soft power, no manipulation, and no false narratives can destroy the people’s will to resist.
This resistance is not simply political; it is a social and cultural force woven into the fabric of every person who has fought and suffered for the right to exist. And that is a force that no external power can ever truly erase.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/04/ ... continues/
UN Report Exposes Systematic Israeli Rape of Palestinians
Posted by Internationalist 360° on April 6, 2025
Kit Klarenberg
Palestinians inspect damage to a school in Gaza where displaced people shelter, after it devastated by an Israeli strike, April 4 2025
On March 13th, the UN Human Rights High Commission published a horrifying report exposing in oft-emetic detail how the Zionist entity has employed “sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians” on an industrial scale since the Gaza genocide erupted in October 2023. The UN concludes these hideous acts are a central component of Israel’s “broader effort to undermine [Palestinians’] right to self-determination,” their systematic nature pointing unambiguously to endorsement by Tel Aviv’s military and political leaders.
The report records, “sexual and gender-based violence is by no means a new element of the Israeli occupation.” However, in the wake of October 7th, there has been a “sharp increase in sexual violence against Palestinian women and men”, both by Zionist Occupation Forces and settlers. The UN encountered no obstacles collecting voluminous highly incriminating evidence of this vile abuse. In addition to a welter of victim and witness testimony, perpetrators often voyeuristically captured themselves and their confederates openly committing these crimes on camera.
Frequently, these abhorrent images were pridefully posted on the culprits’ personal social media accounts. Such actions amply attest to the culture of total impunity in which ZOF soldiers literally rape and pillage. “Despite the abundance of witness and digital evidence of Israeli soldiers committing crimes in Gaza,” the UN found “there have been no meaningful efforts by Israel to hold the perpetrators accountable.” Requests submitted to Tel Aviv for clarity on investigations into sexual violence committed by Occupation Forces have been ignored:
“The Commission has not seen any evidence that Israeli authorities have taken any effective measures to prevent or stop acts of sexual violence or to identify and punish perpetrators.”
By contrast, the UN documented multiple statements by Zionist entity officials actively supporting ZOF militants accused of sex crimes, and “legitimizing rape and other forms of sexual violence” against Palestinians, particularly detainees. That Israel’s rulers advocate sexually-charged attacks on Palestinians is further reinforced by a deliberate ZOF strike on a women’s rights centre in Gaza, in mid-November 2023. The UN noted the broadside’s “clear gendered dimension,” with soldiers daubing deeply offensive, sexist insults directed at Palestinian women on the building’s inner walls in Hebrew.
Outside, ZOF tanks precisely blitzed the building’s fifth floor, which provided shelter for women and families. That area was “completely destroyed”, but the rest of the building “remained intact”. Mercifully, the site and its surrounding area had been evacuated well in advance of the attack, meaning no one was harmed. The Commission “did not find any military justification” for the ZOF’s targeting of the centre. Yet, from the Zionist entity’s perspective, it undoubtedly served a very specific military purpose.
Collectively, the Commission’s conclusions point ineluctably to the fact that sexuality and gender are now key, dedicated battlegrounds in Israel’s unending erasure of the Palestinians, while sexual abuse, rape, and resultant physical and psychological trauma are entrenched, well-honed weapons in the Zionist entity’s Mephistophelian military arsenal. Gravely, given Tel Aviv’s tendency to export its tools and methods of repression and mass murder abroad, the implications of this grotesque evolution in modern warfare could be global.
‘Foreign Devices’
The UN Commission report contains five separate sections on the Zionist entity’s weaponisation of sexual abuse; “sexual harassment and public shaming of Palestinian women”; “filming and photographing acts of sexual violence against men and boys during arrest”; “sexual violence during ground operations including at checkpoints and evacuations”; “sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence in detention”; “sexual and gender-based violence by settlers and other civilians.” Each is rife with repulsive descriptions, and stomach-churning attestations.
While ranking circles of hell is a tawdry task, the section detailing sexual violence directed towards male and female Palestinian detainees is most vital to examine. The sheer scale of abuses documented, and consistency of accounts provided by victims imprisoned in over 10 separate Israeli military detention facilities, means it cannot be plausibly argued this savagery is aberrational, or attributable to ‘rogue’ ZOF militants or units. It can only be deliberate, determined policy, signed off and directed at the highest levels.
Detainees at Sde Teiman military prison
From October 7th 2023 until July 2024, the UN Commission finds at least 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – among them hundreds of women – were incarcerated by the ZOF. Many were not informed of the reasons for their imprisonment. In case after case, “sexual violence was used as a means of punishment and intimidation from the moment of arrest and throughout [their] detention, including during interrogations and searches”:
“Acts of sexual violence…appear to have been motivated by extreme hatred towards the Palestinian people and a desire to dehumanize and punish them…Forced nudity, with the aim of degrading and humiliating victims in front of both soldiers and other detainees, was frequently used…Male detainees reported ZOF personnel had beaten, kicked, pulled or squeezed their genitals, often while they were naked…In some cases, objects such as metal detectors and batons were used to brutalise them while they were naked.”
The Commission documented widespread rape and sexual assault of male detainees, “including the use of an electrical probe to cause burns to the anus, and the insertion of objects, such as fingers, sticks, broomsticks and vegetables, into the anus and rectum.” One victim was suspended from the ceiling so only his toes touched a chair below, and beaten with tools for hours. During the abuse, a “metal stick” was inserted into his penis roughly 20 times until he began bleeding, before fainting.
The Commission has determined that detainees were routinely subjected to sexual abuse and harassment, and that threats of sexual assault and rape were directed at detainees or their female family members. The Commission received information about detainees being forced to undress and lie on top of each other while subjected to verbal abuse and forced to curse their mothers. They were beaten if they did not comply.
Female detainees were also subjected to sexual harassment, assault, rape, and threats to their lives. One was told by a ZOF soldier he would kill her and burn her children, asking: “How do you want us to rape you? One by one or all together?”. Another was threatened with sexual assault in front of her husband, before soldiers spat in her face and beat her until she fainted. Several Palestinian women suffered the heinous indignity of “foreign devices” being inserted into their vaginas or rectums.
Female detainees moreover endured “repeated, prolonged and invasive strip searches, both before and after interrogations.” One Palestinian woman was strip searched in her cell every three hours during her four-day detention, “even though she was menstruating.” Women were regularly forced to remove all their clothes, including veils, in front of male and female ZOF soldiers. Beatings and harassment, while being bombarded with foul insults and sexual slurs, such as “bitch” and “whore”, were also commonplace.
‘Terrible Injustice’
In July 2024, 10 ZOF soldiers were arrested after subjecting a male Palestinian detainee to such vicious sexual violence, he required urgent surgery. The Commission finds this was by no means an isolated incident since October 7th, but it remains the only instance to date of a victim’s tormentors facing repercussions for their unconscionable abuse. Accordingly, the UN refers to this sordid case as “an illustrative example of the culture of impunity” rampant within the Zionist entity’s military and security apparatus:
“Five soldiers were released without charge within a few days and five others were placed under house arrest. In September 2024, a military court eased the conditions of their house arrest, removing the requirement for them to be accompanied by a supervisor during their night-time house arrest and allowing them to submit requests for release during the holidays.”
A since-published indictment records how the five accused soldiers burst into the man’s cell at Sde Teiman detention facility, beat him with batons and tasered him in the head, before forcibly inserting a baton into his mouth, all while intimidating him with a dog. He was also stabbed in the rectum with a sharp object. The attack left the Palestinian with several fractured ribs, a punctured lung, and other life-threatening injuries.
Unmentioned in the report, the initial arrest of the 10 ZOF soldiers responsible for this gruesome barbarity elicited outrage among Israeli citizens, leading to mass protests demanding their release. Nonetheless, the Commission did record how several high-ranking Zionist entity officials expressed outrage at the soldiers’ arrests. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said they had suffered “terrible injustice”. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stated it was “shameful” that Tel Aviv’s “best heroes” had been subject to such “vicious persecution.”
Protesters, including MPs from Israel’s governing coalition, protest at Sde Teiman
The Western media remained deathly silent on this open championing of rape as an instrument of terror. The UN Commission’s disturbing findings have likewise fallen on mainstream deaf ears. As ever, news outlets, and the Zionist entity’s Western puppet masters, are complicit by their silence – and it is precisely this silence that encourages and safeguards the ZOF’s culture of impunity. As a result, we can surely expect the “sharp increase in sexual violence against Palestinian women and men” to only increase in future.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/04/ ... estinians/
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Trump Reframes Palestine as an Immigration Issue While the Real Goal is Extermination
Posted by Internationalist 360° on April 5, 2025
Sam Husseini
Presidents are tools to manage the public mind. Analysts and activists have to be more aware of the manipulations by the system and combat their false narratives more effectively.
One of the best things to watch to keep up with Israel’s genocide is the Electronic Intifada livestream. And one of the best analysts on Gaza is Helena Cobban, whom I’ve happily promoted.
She was recently on the show. All seemed to agree that Trump was being “incoherent” in his Gaza policy.
I think this misses the point.
The point is that all US presidents seem “incoherent” because their stated goals are not their actual goals. So they seem confused when they are actually being diabolical and deceitful.
As is often the case, the key to understanding what’s actually going on is to parse through the interesting timing of actions.
Trump seems to have backed a “ceasefire” as he came into office and now is backing Israel’s escalation for a simple reason: The primary purpose of these political operatives of Empire is to control the public mind.
What they did was to wind down the Gaza genocide in the public mind with the inauguration of Trump: Turn the page.
(This was actually done in stages by the system. There was a concerted effort to rebrand Genocide Joe as Geriatric Joe. And then they prevented a Democratic primary process to ensure there wouldn’t be an outbreak of democracy about the genocide as part of the 2024 “election”.)
Now, Trump has green-lighted imperial Israel ramping up its genocide and starvation tactics, etc. by using ICE to go after Palestine activists.
That is, the use of ICE has several effects. One obvious one is to intimidate people into silence, and I’m not suggesting that shouldn’t be countered.
But a more subtle one is to deceive Trump’s electoral base who believe in “America First” that somehow Palestine is an immigration issue and these crazed Palestine activists lied on their visa applications to get into the US and are now tearing down the US.
This helps Trump and Israel in rebranding the issue. It’s not about genocide, it’s about immigration.
It’s all a big lie. Rubio, Trump and company are obviously attacking the First Amendment in service of Israeli genocide, but their strategy is politically effective: Cast Palestine as another immigration issue, so they can pretend to be America First and not — as even some rightwinger critics are charging — Israel First.
Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of media at Columbia University in New York, 1 June 2024 (Reuters/Jeenah Moon)(The focus on Mahmoud Khalil has been extensive in terms of mainstream media coverage. Notably, it makes no mention of Israel at all, it’s just about legal process. This is boring to the public. I should note the interesting piece by Craig Murray: “The Curious Case of Mahmoud Khalil”.)
Biden’s “ceasefire” narrative was a similar manipulation — also under-appreciated by intelligent people — which helped sabotage international law and kept Israel’s genocide going for over half a year….
Jeremy Scahill writes in the otherwise insightful piece “How Israel Ceased Negotiations and Resumed Firing on Gaza” that:
The agreement signed January 17 was effectively same deal on the table going back to May 2024 when then-President Joe Biden announced it as a breakthrough. In early June, the UN Security Council endorsed the deal…
What’s critical to understand is that Biden announced that in late May 2024, clearly because the International Court of Justice had just issued orders for Israel to stop its attack on Rafah. The Biden announcement’s main purpose was to prevent a vote at the UN on the ICJ orders. The Algerian government was proposing a resolution to implement the ICJ orders. The US attacked the resolution. Biden made his phony announcement and got the UNSC — including the Algerians!! — to vote for their farce of a resolution, instead of the one the Algerians were reportedly proposing. The farcical US government resolution made no mention of the ICJ orders and instead blessed the “negotiation” process that would obviously be manipulated by the US on behalf of imperial Israel.
All this could have been combated if activists were alert and organized and pressed the Algerians into forcing a vote on their resolution.
The thoughtful Mouin Rabbani, like Scahill, overlooks the motive of undermining the ICJ orders in a recent thread posting on X.
Thus, looking at this trajectory we see how the US government:
Hinders international law with phony talk of “ceasefire” that many unfortunately get sucked into;
Pretends to the general public that the crisis in Gaza is over with a shortlived and phony “ceasefire”;
Allows the resumption of the genocide under conditions in which tons of Democratic party operatives are focusing on other nefarious Trump actions (some real, some exaggerated).
The net result is a dwindling of the fight against the genocide just as it is ramping up.
This movement is circling the drain — unless people pay attention and act more strategically.
See —
One Year Later: Seven Big Lessons from South Africa’s Genocide Convention Case Against Israel
Sam Husseini
·
December 29, 2024
On December 29, 2023, South Africa invoked the Genocide Convention against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Read full story
VIDEO: State Dept. Denies Rigging UN Process on Palestine
Sam Husseini
·
June 26, 2024
See video by Decensored News —
Read full story
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/04/ ... rmination/
Sometimes I think we are desperate to ascribe some sort, any sort, of reason, to apparent stupidity or madness. But sometimes it is what it is. To be sure there is a desire of certain ends but the follow-through and work ain't there, just wishes. That's what happened on Jan 6, 2020.
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Israel targets tent full of journalists in south Gaza’s Khan Yunis
Footage shows journalist Ahmad Mansour being burned alive as his colleagues scrambled to rescue him
News Desk
APR 7, 2025
(Photo credit: EFE/EPA/Haitham Imad)
At least two were killed and several others injured early on 7 April in an Israeli airstrike which targeted a tent full of journalists near Al-Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis.
The Israeli airstrike targeted the tent belonging to the Palestine Today news agency.
Video footage showed one of the journalists, Ahmad Mansour, trapped under a plank of wood, burning alive as others attempt to spray water on him and pull him out. He has reportedly survived but is in extremely critical condition.
Journalists Hilmi al-Faqawi and Youssef al-Khazindar were killed. Among the injured were journalists Hassan Asleih, Ahmad al-Agha, Mahmoud Awad, Mohammad Fayeq, Abdullah al-Attar, and Majed Qudaih.
The wounded have been transported to hospitals.
“We condemn the occupation's targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists. We call on the International Federation of Journalists, the Federation of Arab Journalists, and all journalistic bodies worldwide to condemn the systematic crimes against journalists,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement on Monday.
“We hold the occupation, the US administration, and the countries complicit in the crime of genocide fully responsible for committing this heinous and brutal crime against journalists. We call on the international community, international organizations, and organizations involved in journalism and media work to condemn the occupation's crimes, deter it, and prosecute it in international courts,” it added.
Israel has been systematically targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza since the beginning of the war.
The number of journalists killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023 has now become over 210.
Late last month, Israeli strikes targeted and killed Al Jazeera correspondent Hossam Shabat and Palestine Today journalist Mohammad Mansour.
The Israeli army admitted to assassinating Shabat, claiming he was a Hamas sniper.
In 2024, the Israeli army was responsible for nearly 70 percent of all journalists killed throughout the world, the deadliest year for journalists globally, according to a report released on 12 February by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 1,335 Palestinians have been killed since 18 March, when Israel renewed its genocidal war on the strip.
https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-ta ... khan-yunis
