The wall of silence on the Gaza genocide is finally starting to crack
Like thieves shunning the scene of their crime, media and politicians are suddenly scrambling to distance themselves from Israel.
Proletarian writers
Monday 23 June 2025
With popular outrage continuing to grow, and the war to crush all middle-eastern resistance movements failing, the imperialists are desperately seeking a way out that might allow them to retain their regional domination – ideally by somehow keeping Israel itself alive.
Editors’ note: Since this article was written, the imperialists have launched a criminal, unprovoked, aggressive war against Iran. In this context, there has been a rush to whitewash Israeli crimes, to bury once again the truth about the Gaza genocide, and to present the zionist leaders as rational and principled actors. How long this narrative can be sustained in the face of reality remains to be seen.
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As this article was being written, 604 days had passed since Israel began its latest barbaric assault on Gaza, presented as a ‘response’ to the Palestinian resistance’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation on 7 October 2023. Every single one of those days has seen atrocities committed by the zionist regime – atrocities the imperialist media have either ignored, sanitised or justified.
From day one, the Israeli bombardment has been framed across the west as a ‘response to terrorism’, reducing a genocide to a supposed ‘act of self-defence’. Western media deliberately erase all context, presenting the conflict as something that begins and ends with ‘Hamas’.
‘Do you condemn Hamas?’
Rather than addressing the political, economic and historical root conditions of the conflict, media talking heads feign mock outrage and subject even slightly pro-Palestine interviewees to the now notorious loyalty test: “Do you condemn Hamas?”
No context is provided. No mention is made of over a century of colonial violence and subjugation. No mention of the repeated rounds of ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation. No mention either of any of the other strands of Palestinian resistance (whether communist, secular or islamic). As far as the imperialist narrative is concerned there is only one resistance organisation, ‘Hamas’, and only one way of describing its activities – ‘terrorist’.
This aggressive technique is used to deflect attention away from the crimes of Israel, which, if they are ever mentioned, are presented as either ‘unproven’ or a ‘painful but necessary response’. All focus is instead placed on the supposed crimes (mostly exposed as being fabricated but still endlessly repeated) of the resistance.
The question is particularly hard to answer clearly for those living in a country, like Britian, where Hamas itself is a proscribed organisation. Overt support for ‘Hamas’ can get you arrested, sacked and jailed, even though Hamas is the elected government of the Gaza strip, with many of its officials dealing in civilian administration far from the resistance activities of its armed wing. In fact, armed resistance to illegal occupation is a right enshrined in international law and repeatedly recognised in United Nations resolutions over the decades, and British law itself is in violation of this precept.
Not that you would know that from reading British media.
This trickery is one of the tools used to manufacture consent for imperialist-backed genocide – or at least to create confusion and apathy amongst the British population. If you say you do support Hamas, you can be arrested. If you say you don’t, you have immediately conceded that Israel has some basis for its genocidal actions.
Israel routinely and systematically targets hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, journalists, health workers, scientists, water plants, power stations and mosques. It blows up entire residential blocks and flattens neighbourhoods. All of which is presented by its spokespeople (who are then parroted in British media) under the blanket label of ‘striking Hamas targets’.
Of course, since ‘Hamas’ activities could be deemed to include everything involved in maintaining civil society in Gaza, according to the twisted logic of the zionists, that does indeed make teachers, journalists, street sweepers, irrigation workers and hospital staff (and all their friends and extended family members) ‘military targets’.
When Israel conducts its massacres, it claims it is killing terrorists – and the west nods along. Those who argue are immediately branded ‘supporters of terrorism’.
“Do you condemn Hamas?” has been a favourite weapon of media mouthpieces like Piers Morgan. While boasting that he is happy to “offer a platform” to pro-Palestine voices, Morgan has repeatedly browbeaten all such guests, putting them on the defensive from the off and making it very difficult for them to talk about the real facts of the matter.
One such guest, Dr Abdul Wahid, described the events of 7 October as “a very welcome punch on the nose” against the illegal occupation. Morgan immediately used this to launch a smear campaign that aimed to get Dr Wahid struck off the medical register.
Cracks in the narrative: the truth will out
Yet now even the mainstream imperialist media have begun to shift their tone – not because they suddenly gained a conscience after 20 months of endless slaughter, but out of necessity.
The imperialist bloc is not winning this war. Neither on the battlefield, nor in the court of global public opinion. The zionists were driven out of Lebanon, humiliated by Iran and Yemen, and have utterly failed to break the Palestinian resistance.
The genocidal destruction of Gaza has not secured Israeli supremacy – only guaranteed global disgust in perpetuity. The suppression of dissent across the west has not quelled mass support for Palestine – only granted hero status to those who continue to advocate for justice in the face of such repression. And the settler-colonial state itself is bankrupt and on the brink of social and economic meltdown.
With popular outrage continuing to grow, and the war to crush all middle-eastern resistance movements failing, the imperialists are desperately seeking a way out that might allow them to retain their regional domination – ideally by somehow keeping Israel itself alive. But if any such face-saving, colony-preserving deal is to be arrived at, there will need to be an accepted narrative regarding who is responsible for all the terrible crimes that have been perpetrated in the name of ‘stopping Hamas’.
Suddenly politicians and talking heads who yesterday were aggressively insisting on Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ ‘by any means necessary’ are distancing themselves from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from his closest and most rabidly genocidal cabinet colleagues, and from the most obviously egregious of Israel’s crimes.
Everyone now wants it to seem that they are personally opposed to the present starvation siege and continued massacre of innocents (even as the bombs continue to flow). Nobody wants it remembered that these crimes could not have been perpetrated without western bombs and planes, western military and intelligence cooperation, western manipulation of supposedly ‘international’ institutions (notably the International Court of Justice) and western media support.
Having done everything possible to facilitate the genocide in Gaza for a year and a half, no one wants to find themselves in the firing line if and when a peace process is instituted that has to at least appear to address the question of justice and accountability.
The shameless Piers Morgan is now among many who have started denouncing Israeli atrocities, particularly the killing of children, and who have begun to grill Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely in ways previously reserved for those trying to expose her country’s crimes.
Documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux has released a film called The Settlers. Though heavily sanitised, the programme does expose some of the realities of settler extremist violence and racism – and it has been aired by the notoriously pro-Israel BBC. A year ago, that would have been unthinkable.
Of course, what is missing when ‘right-wing lunatics’ are blamed for the crimes in Palestine (or, indeed, Ukraine) is the role of Anglo-American imperialism in creating these forces in the first place. Zionism is an ideology that was artificially created by British imperialism, which weaponised Judaism to serve its interests in the middle east. Not only was the ideology created in London, but the zionist movement has been funded and promoted by British and US finance capital for more than a century.
This is the true source of the apparently inexhaustible funding of the ‘Israel lobby’.
It was British imperialism that funded and backed the creation of the zionist settler-colony in Palestine, and US imperialism which took over the main role of keeping the colony armed and funded after the Suez crisis of 1956. Zionist supremacist fundamentalism may be the proximate cause of the troubles in Palestine and across the region, but Anglo-American imperialism is the ultimate cause – and the true culprit for every crime committed by its Israeli proxies.
This truth has been repeatedly recognised by leaders of middle-eastern resistance movements, from Iran to Lebanon, and from Palestine to Yemen.
The crisis of legitimacy
The shift we are now seeing in western media narratives is not indicative of a moral awakening. It is a tactical adjustment. The imperialists fear losing their grip, and the cracks in their narrative reveal the deeper rot in their system itself.
The wall of silence is cracking not because the system cares, but because it has realised it is losing. The resistance of the Palestinian people, not only in the last year and a half but across the last century, has brought us to a point where the brutality of imperialism is being fully exposed for the world to see. For once, a genocide is being documented in real time and followed by millions of people – as opposed to being gradually exposed decades later to the small numbers who are engaged enough to take an interest in such matters.
The media is scrambling not to save lives, but to save face. Meanwhile, our job is to help the working class recognise the umbilical cord that connects zionist atrocities with British imperialism; to popularise the understanding that if we want to rid the world of such abominations as we are seeing in Gaza today, we must oppose and destroy the imperialist system itself.
https://thecommunists.org/2025/06/23/ne ... -genocide/
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Harvard study finds Israel ‘disappeared’ nearly 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children: Report
The study uses data-driven analysis and spatial mapping to highlight a severe decline in Gaza’s population due to Israel’s indiscriminate attacks and siege
News Desk
JUN 24, 2025
(Photo credit: AA)
A new report published by the Harvard database reveals that Israel has “disappeared” at least 377,000 Palestinians since the start of its genocidal campaign against the Gaza Strip in 2023.
Half of this number is believed to be Palestinian children.
The report was written by Israeli professor Yaakov Garb, who used data-driven analysis and spatial mapping to show how the Israeli army’s siege of Gaza and indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the enclave have led to a serious drop in its population.
The 377,000 Palestinians who are unaccounted for due to Israel’s genocide are approximately 17 percent of the Gaza Strip’s entire population, which now stands at about 1.85 million. Prior to the war in Gaza, the strip’s population was estimated at 2.227 million.
While some are displaced or missing, a significant number are believed to have been killed by Israeli forces, according to the report.
The professor notes that the official death toll of 61,000 is clearly an underestimate, as victims who remain trapped under rubble are not included.
Garb also condemned in the report the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – a controversial US-Israeli aid distribution mechanism launched last month.
“These aid compounds seem to reflect a logic of control, not assistance, and it would be a misnomer to call them 'humanitarian aid distribution hubs'. They do not adhere to humanitarian principles, and much of their design and operation is guided by other objectives, which undermine their declared purpose,” he said.
The UN has accused GHF of being designed to further the forced displacement. Since it began operations, GHF has led to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian aid seekers by Israeli forces.
The Harvard report is not the first indication that the death toll in Gaza could, in fact, be significantly higher than reported.
The Lancet medical journal released a study in January this year revealing that the death toll from Israel’s genocide in Gaza was most likely undercounted by 41 percent in the first nine months of the war.
The January study highlighted that around 59.1 percent of those killed were women, children, and elderly.
The year before, in July 2024, The Lancet said Israel's assault on Gaza could lead to between 149,000 and 598,000.
https://thecradle.co/articles/harvard-s ... ren-report
Thousands flee Israel as western states scramble to extract citizens
Israel’s closed airspace and escalating missile strikes prompt evacuations by land, sea, and air as western states rush to remove their citizens
News Desk
JUN 23, 2025
(Photo credit: EREZ UZIR/COURTESY OF BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL)
As of 23 June, more than 11,000 foreign nationals have been evacuated from Israel as its war on Iran enters its second week, prompting dozens of governments to launch emergency operations under closed airspace and intensifying missile fire.
Germany, the UK, Australia, France, the US, and several EU states have mobilized military aircraft, chartered civilian transport, and overland convoys to extract their citizens, many of whom were forced to cross into Jordan, Egypt, or Azerbaijan by bus or on foot before boarding outbound flights.
The UK Foreign Office has confirmed plans for a chartered flight out of Tel Aviv, while Germany has already flown out over 400 nationals. France, Italy, and others are coordinating similar extractions through neighboring countries as Israel's skies remain unsafe for civilian travel.
The US Embassy in Tel Aviv has organized six evacuation flights and cruise ship departures for more than 6,500 US citizens who registered to leave.
Australia has evacuated 1,200 citizens and deployed military personnel and aircraft under Operation Beech.
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Harris confirmed that 18 Irish citizens have been evacuated from Israel and Iran, expressing gratitude to EU partners for their assistance.
Romania has removed over 100 people, as Serbia evacuated 38 citizens and is preparing further extractions for more than 2,500 stranded nationals.
Portugal has taken out 69 individuals, Ukraine 176, and Japan 87, while Greece, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, South Korea, and Taiwan have also completed evacuations, with many involving foot crossings, bus convoys, and military transport under fire.
On 23 June, nearly 10 days after shutting its airspace following strikes on Iran, Israel reopened outbound flights from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, with departures capped at 50 passengers per plane, with priority given to medical, humanitarian, and national security cases.
All flights operate from Terminal 3 under strict regulations, as authorities warn the airport remains a potential target.
While El Al, Israir, and Arkia resumed limited inbound flights last week, foreign nationals had previously relied on overland or maritime exits through Egypt, Jordan, and Azerbaijan.
Though extractions from Iran are also underway, the bulk of international evacuation efforts remain focused on Israel, where the collapse of basic security assumptions has become increasingly difficult for its foreign allies to deny.
https://thecradle.co/articles/thousands ... t-citizens
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Israel’s War Is Florida’s New Investment
June 21, 2025
By Katya Schwenk & Luke Goldstein, The Lever, 6/11/25
Florida is poised to eliminate long-standing guardrails limiting local investment in increasingly risky Israel bonds that help finance the country’s war efforts.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is set to quietly ban any financial-risk standards when local governments use public money to invest in bonds funding Israel’s government – just months after a major credit rating agency warned the bonds were at risk of default and a potential “junk” rating.
By creating the special carveout and allowing unrestricted investments into a foreign country on the brink of regional war, Florida politicians now threaten to funnel an even greater share of local governments’ savings to the Netanyahu regime’s war efforts.
The legislation also introduces a new financial model enabling local governments around the country to invest virtually limitless sums in the Israeli war effort, despite the mounting financial risk of doing so.
The Florida bill was brought to the legislature by one of the state’s wealthiest counties and home base of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort: Palm Beach, which is facing a lawsuit from its own residents for sinking 15 percent of its savings portfolio in debt-issued Israeli bonds, making the county the world’s largest investor in Israel bonds. The only foreign bonds that localities in Florida can invest in by law are from Israel.
Outside of direct military assistance to Israel from the federal government, bond purchases have become a key node for U.S. states and localities to provide billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, particularly during the Israel-Hamas war following the Oct. 7 attacks.
The main broker for Israel bonds, which operates on behalf of the Israeli government, lobbied for the first-of-its-kind legislation, according to records reviewed by The Lever.
The introduction of the bill came just months after the preeminent Wall Street credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded Israel’s bonds from an “A” to a “Baa” rating amid its mounting geopolitical turmoil, indicating a significantly higher risk that Israel fails to pay back its investors.
The assessment also noted that the impact of the war on the country’s long-term financial prospects created “much higher [risk] than is typical” even at the lower investment rating. That means another potential downgrade could be on the horizon, which would put the country’s debt security into the lower “junk” bond tier, making it an even riskier asset to hold.
Two other major U.S. credit rating agencies slightly downgraded Israel last year.
Because of the downgrades, Palm Beach and other counties invested in Israel, including Miami-Dade, would be in violation of their local investment policies for any future Israel bond purchases, which mandate an “A” rating for Israel bond purchases. Those restrictions would be wiped away by the new bill, which passed unanimously through the Florida legislature in April and now awaits signing by DeSantis before the end of the legislative session this month.
“The bill is specifically designed to create an exemption [for Israel] just like the U.S. government has in lots of other areas where Israel would otherwise run afoul of U.S. law,” said Michael Omer-Man, the director of research at Democracy For The Arab World, an advocacy group that’s tracked the activity of Israel bonds.
Another example Omer-Man cited is a federal law that prohibits U.S. aid to security forces committing human rights abuses, which human rights organizations have documented at the hands of the Israeli military.
The Florida legislation could also have widespread financial implications, according to municipal finance experts.
“This is definitely a first,” said University of Chicago professor Justin Marlowe, who runs the school’s Center for Municipal Finance. “I’ve not seen any attempt to do some sort of a legislative carveout of the sort that we’re talking about here.”
He said the policy is “paving the way for a big shift in behavior on the part of states and localities.”
Palm Beach County did not reply to The Lever’s request for comment on the bill.
A Possible “Foreign Agent”
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Israel has received a record-setting influx of $5 billion in financing from public and private U.S. investors to help address its mounting piles of debt. State and local governments make up $1.7 billion of that overall investment.
Bonds are fixed-income securities bought by investors to loan the government money and are paid back over a long period of time, anywhere from two to 15 years, at a set interest rate.
Proceeds from these bonds return to Israel as a surplus budgetary fund for government projects, including to offset the costs of its military campaigns.
Some 90 states and localities already had millions of dollars of investments in Israel bonds on the books well before the Israel-Hamas war, but such efforts increased dramatically in the past year and a half.
All of this U.S. investment is facilitated by the main underwriter and promoter of these government-backed instruments: the Development Corporation for Israel, also known as Israel Bonds. The operation has sales offices across the country, offering bonds to retail investors as well as public pensions, treasury funds, and institutional investors on Wall Street.
“Oct. 7 changed everything,” said Dani Naveh, the current president of the Development Corporation for Israel and former member of both the Israeli Knesset and a cabinet minister, earlier this month, announcing record U.S. sales of Israeli debt. “What followed has been nothing short of extraordinary. This $5 billion isn’t just capital, it is a global vote of confidence in the Israeli economy.”
Israel Bonds, whose head is selected by Israel’s finance minister, dates back to the early years of the country and played a crucial role in corralling U.S. financing for the Six-Day War in 1967 and later the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
The broker doesn’t just facilitate bond sales. Israel Bonds has transformed into an all-encompassing financial and political operation that lobbies for legislation to boost bond sales and hosts lavish private junkets to wine and dine politicians, according to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists last year.
These influence-peddling activities have raised legal questions about whether or not Israel Bonds is operating in the U.S. as an unregistered foreign agent. According to a letter sent to the Justice Department last year from Democracy for the Arab World Now calling for an investigation, Israel Bonds acts “at the direction and control of the Israeli government, acts as a publicity agent for Israel; promotes the public and political interests of Israel.”
Israel Bonds did not return a request for comment from The Lever.
Israel Bonds has successfully convinced numerous state governments, including Louisiana, Indiana, New Jersey, and New Mexico, to undo long-standing rules banning them from purchasing foreign government bonds. Israel Bonds has also gotten county governments to ease remaining local investment restrictions on foreign-issued debt.
It’s not just Florida that’s poured out its coffers to show support for the U.S. ally. Under Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Arkansas’ public pension plan authorized a $50 million investment in Israel bonds this spring. Ohio, meanwhile, has invested more than $50 million since October 2023, bringing the state treasury’s holdings up to $260 million. New York State has committed a total $267 million from its state employees’ pension fund into Israel bonds.
Yet these investments pale in comparison to those of Palm Beach County, which under its Democratic local comptroller Joseph Abruzzo has become the world’s largest investor in Israel bonds. When Abruzzo took office in 2021, Israel bonds were capped at 5 percent of the county’s portfolio. In his first year, Abruzzo doubled the cap to 10 percent. Last year, the county voted again to raise the cap to 15 percent.
Abruzzo has since increased the county’s Israel bonds holdings to $700 million, up from just $40 million in 2022. According to county finance documents, Israel bonds now make up 16 percent of Palm Beach’s holdings.
Like other public investors in Israel bonds, Abruzzo has explicitly described his investment calculus as politically motivated, in direct support of Israel’s military operations.
“There could be no greater advocacy that we could do in our office right now than support the state of Israel,” Abruzzo, a former reality TV star with a net worth of $16 million, said in the days after Oct. 7, announcing an initial $25 million round of bond purchases. More recently, he has denied that the motivations are anything other than strictly financial. Florida state law bars any investments of public savings for ideological reasons.
In turn, as state and local treasuries ramp up their investments in Israel bonds, they have faced mounting public opposition. Protesters across the country have demanded public divestment from Israel bonds, citing their role in funding the carnage in Gaza.
Last May, several anonymous residents of Palm Beach County brought a lawsuit against Abruzzo over the mammoth investment in Israel bonds, arguing that the county’s $700 million purchase was “unprecedented,” “a great concentration of risk,” and violated its fiduciary duty to taxpayers, given the clear signs the bonds would be downgraded as Israel’s economy struggled. Florida statute, the plaintiffs noted, directs that local governments cannot invest to benefit “any social, political, or ideological interests.”
The plaintiffs in the case are Palestinian Americans, all of whom have lost friends and family members in Gaza, where tens of thousands of civilians have been killed since Oct. 7.
“I feel such horror at my local taxes being used to fund such violence and destruction towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” one plaintiff said in a declaration last year.
The suit highlighted Palm Beach County’s ongoing financial troubles, including a $730 million funding gap for capital projects — all worsened by security costs for Mar-a-Lago, which the county must foot. “If the State of Israel were to default on these bonds, then Palm Beach County would have to find a way to pay its bills without money that it had counted on being available,” one expert is quoted as saying in the lawsuit.
In a November 2024 legal filing, attorneys for Palm Beach called the lawsuit against the county “entirely devoid of legal support.”
The lawsuit was voluntarily dropped in January due to a procedural issue, but a lawyer working on the case, Lydia Ghuman, confirmed to The Lever that the team intends to refile the suit in the fall.
In the meantime, the ongoing legal battle — alongside national attention to Palm Beach County’s investments — may be an impetus behind the county’s efforts to get a carve-out for Israel bonds passed at the state level.
Ghuman emphasized, though, that the legislation wouldn’t put an end to her team’s case. “It doesn’t change the fact that… we have a bunch of other statutes regulating investments that we’re suing [Abruzzo] under,” she said. “If anything, it shows how he is not listening to the voice of his constituents and is manipulating different processes to allow him to make unchecked investments.”
A “Striking” Shift
After Moody’s downgraded Israel bonds, Palm Beach County faced a conundrum: Palm Beach’s local investment policy, like those in other counties, prohibits investment in bonds rated lower than an A credit rating. Not only did the policy threaten future county investments in Israel, it also exposed county officials to legal scrutiny over their current investment portfolio.
In February, Florida lawmakers unveiled a bill that aimed to solve Palm Beach County’s problems. The legislation would amend state law to bar any local government from setting a minimum credit rating exclusively for Israel bonds. The legislature’s own bill analysis specifically cites the Moody’s downgrade and Palm Beach County’s investment policy as part of the rationale for why the legislation is necessary.
Abruzzo, the Palm Beach County treasurer, brought the bill to the legislature, and he testified in support of the legislation at a March public hearing.
“I cannot thank the committee enough for taking up this bill to ensure we keep supporting what I consider our greatest ally Israel and investing in Israel bonds,” he told lawmakers.
Behind the scenes, the Development Corporation for Israel used its lobbying muscle to push for the bill’s passage. The group hired the well-connected Florida lobbying shop Capital City Consulting, which includes numerous former DeSantis aides and staffers.
Meanwhile, Palm Beach County advocated for the legislation through the lobbying titan Ballard Partners, whose Florida alumni include Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
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Both chambers of the Florida legislature subsequently passed the bill unanimously. A DeSantis spokesperson confirmed to The Lever that the bill “has not reached his desk.” There are a number of bills still awaiting a signature from the governor in the remaining weeks of the Florida legislative session.
Should DeSantis sign the bill, it could set a precedent for other states and localities to take on more financial risk to finance Israel’s war effort. Abruzzo, Ghuman noted, holds a position with an Israel Bonds’ leadership group, composed of treasurers across the country. “He’s already in a position of power where he can spread his ideas to other states,” she said.
Daniel Garrett, a professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Lever that while he didn’t think that the guidance would have much impact on local investment decisions, he wasn’t aware of any comparable legislation.
“I can’t think of any other kind of encouragement to invest in risky securities,” he said, although he added that most states set various “restrictions on how investment policies can be written.”
Marlowe at the University of Chicago emphasized that the bill was part of a “striking” government investment shift allowing a “serious concentration of risk in these portfolios in a way that we had never seen before.”
He added, “It’s one thing for a county to buy up these bonds in the first place, it’s another to explicitly de-diversify the portfolio, which flies in the face of the philosophy of how to invest public money.”
https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2025/06/isr ... nvestment/
