• Perhaps even more disturbing, it explicitly tries to blame and punish Palestinians as a whole for these alleged crimes, using a genocidal Bible story as its motivation — the rape of Dinah in Genesis chapter 34.

• Delizo accounts for the rise of new imperialist powers, outlines the faulty logic behind the idea and promotion of multipolarity,

• We have discussed some developments since Lenin wrote his book on imperialism. One issue we have not broached is whether the original imperialist powers Lenin wrote about are still the only imperialist powers, or if other nation-states have subsequently transitioned from non-imperialist to imperialist? If so, how were the economic foundations of these new imperialist forces laid, and what specific characteristics enabled them to join the camp of imperialist powers?
• However, the imperialist core now contains a duo of imperialist states that strategically compete against the Western imperialist bloc. This rival anti-Western imperialist bloc is composed of a regionally hegemonic pair located in the Eastern Hemisphere: China and Russia.

• This Eurasian duo of imperialist great powers does not compete to overthrow the global capitalist system; rather, it seeks to secure maximal superprofits by remaining in the topmost ranks of the imperialist world system’s hierarchised order. These imperialist blocs do not represent the dyadically opposed historic camps of capitalism/imperialism versus socialism/communism. Instead, their bourgeois ruling classes and oligarchic elites seek to attain a permanent accumulation of the greatest amounts of surplus value at the expense of the world’s proletarian masses.

• Within this current world situation, the communist-led international working-class movement must resolutely wage its independent revolutionary class fight to change the capitalist system into a socialist socioeconomic order. This is the global correlation of class forces today. In view of this, I shall explain some of the specific characteristics that enabled China and Russia to become imperialist powers.

• First, the present-day material development of China and Russia’s socio-economic formations, while varied in their particular configurations, show a substantively high degree of exploitatively oppressive capitalist growth. Lenin’s five basic features of imperialism are manifested by the domestic and foreign economic dynamics and behaviours of these two countries.

• As well as what he penned in his 1916 pamphlet, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin wrote about a major related aspect later that year. In his October 1916 article, “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism,” Lenin elucidated on his theory of imperialism in a non-economistic way, polemicising against the opportunist Kautskyite social-imperialists. Applying the dialectical method, and avoiding a non-mechanistic approach, he professed the following points, characterising imperialism as a “specific historical stage of capitalism” (italics from the original text):

  ... On the contrary, not only have the capitalists something to fight about now, but they cannot help fighting if they want to preserve capitalism, for without a forcible redivision of colonies the new imperialist countries cannot obtain the privileges enjoyed by the older (and weaker) imperialist powers…

  …The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era. Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys a monopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements, partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital.)...

  … The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; the era of imperialist wars has begun…

• Lenin added these assertions in synthesis to his prior-stated basic features of imperialism. This methodology clearly shows a revolutionary Marxist theory of imperialism that is not static. Neither is it limited to a purely economic question in general, nor to the issue of capital exports in particular. Lenin’s approach is a logic in motion that keenly captures the essential nature of globalised capital’s continuous materialist development over time. So, by extension, the real class character of any potentially developing imperialist state must be totally summed up by its overall economic, social, political, technological and military features.

• What features does the Russian state exhibit that make it an imperialist state?
• The Russian state reverted to its existing capitalist mode of production immediately following the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in December 1991. Since then, its distinct path of economic development has pursued the rationale of capital accumulation via a mixed economic setup.

• Presently the world’s 11th largest economy in nominal GDP rates (US$2.20 trillion), Russia’s variant of state capitalism displays public sector monopolies dominantly controlled by its bourgeois state apparatus, operating side-by-side with monopolies dominated by private shares. Its national economy is largely governed by domestic monopolies (state-owned enterprises, private corporations, banks, etc) and is not dependent on foreign ones.
• Some of these countries formally belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — the ex-Soviet Union’s former constituent republics that now autonomously operate within Russia’s “post-Soviet space”.
• As a predatory militarist aggressor-state, Russia — currently ranked third in the global arms trade behind the US and France — has seen a fresh surge in its national economic growth, due largely to rising shares from its military-industrial monopolies (in combination with its oil and gas monopolies). As a predominant Eurasian state, Russia is also steadily building its great power projection beyond its own national frontiers. Moscow now has command and control of approximately fifteen military bases and facilities abroad; this includes newly established ones in Africa’s Sahel states (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger)
• Ever since the birth of the Russian Federation in 1991, Russian imperialism has been actively involved in at least nine other interventionist conflicts. Aside from its almost decade-long military intervention in Syria (from September 2015 to December 2024), Moscow has also been militarily engaged in Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, among others.
• Largely powered by monopolies under the political control of its party-state nexus, Chinese imperialism aims to militarily monopolise its adjacent terra firma borders and maritime realms (for example, the Southeast Asian Sea) at the risk of sparking future conflicts.

• Its overall transformative process, which began just two years after Mao Zedong’s death with a defined batch of national economic reforms in late 1978, including terminating centralised collective agriculture, initiating private enterprises on a limited scale, permitting investment flows from foreign capital, establishing a network of special economic zones, introducing a system of dual pricing, etc, only deepened after 1992. For the next two decades, Beijing effectively pursued a wide-ranging privatisation of its economic foundations in synergy with a reduced imprint of its state-owned sector. By the start of the 2010s, China’s economic recasting allowed it to become the new centre of gravity for most of the world’s leading transnational monopolies, specifically for the latter’s offshore production activities.

• After almost half a century of pursuing pivotal bourgeois changes to its socio-economic system, China today manifests imperialism’s five basic features, as outlined by Lenin. The convergence of the top echelons of the CPC and the PRC’s state apparatus have ultimately (created and) enabled the country’s party-state financial oligarchs to not just amass and concentrate immense wealth and political influence. The unique social status of the Chinese oligarchic layer significantly allows it to decide how best, and where, to invest China’s vastly accumulated surplus value — without much substantive policy input from its mammoth working-class masses.

• This specific political condition is starkly highlighted by the fact that, in a country of about 1.4 billion people with a working-age population (15-59) estimated at 857.98 million in 2023, the standing proletarian composition (industrial workers, blue-collar labour, etc) of the CPC Central Committee — the central leading organ of China’s “vanguard party of the working class” — is less than 50%. This stark socio-political condition affecting the CPC’s central leadership merely reflects the expanding bourgeoisification of Chinese society.
• This pressing and pivotal national situation comes as Chinese capitalism’s firm nationalist orientation strongly harnesses the elements of its so-called Comprehensive National Power to craft and execute Beijing’s swiftly intensifying geostrategic thrusts.

• China’s externally directed strategy, which also factors in its key geopolitical considerations, strives to redivide the Eastern Hemisphere’s widely arranged division of labour to Beijing’s long-term strategic advantage. The pursuit of this external policy track is being maximised through the export of China’s robust monopoly-finance capital to adjoining and neighbouring countries. Through Beijing’s comprehensively integrated Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese imperialism aspires to rework the scope of its regionally-linked spheres of influence. In carrying this out, China’s OFDI flows are vitally supported by the Bank of China (BOC) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), among other leading Chinese monopolies. With this exploitative external relations approach, especially through mechanisms of unequal exchange, China is able to guarantee its net appropriation of surplus value from dominated non-monopoly countries in the global periphery.

• And as an imperialist great power comprising the world’s third most powerful military force, China equally endeavours to build its necessary strategic depth. In deepening its buffer zone, Beijing is militarily securing its western frontier zone (bordering Central Asia) and southern border region (adjoining South Asia and into the Indian Ocean), while projecting far eastward past Taiwan, into the middle of the Pacific Ocean (beyond the First and Second Island chains). China’s potently extending forward force projection seeks to impede and/or deny US imperialism’s bolstering armed might radiating from the Western Hemisphere. US military force, comprising naval and air components for mainly expeditionary warfare, chiefly emanates from a maritime sector located westward of Hawaii and the US’s Western Seaboard, around the Pacific Ocean’s Third Island Chain. It is in the area between the Second and Third Island chains that Chinese imperialism seeks to thwart US imperialism’s intensely aggressive power projection capabilities. This maritime space is where the strategic interests of both contending imperialist powers are already overlapping within the Pacific Ocean.

• This scenario can only bring about heightened inter-imperialist geostrategic struggles for ever more indispensable resources via their respective spheres of influence and dominance. In this regard, Lenin affirmed in Imperialism: “But the division of the world between two powerful trusts does not preclude redivision if the relation of forces changes as a result of uneven development, war, bankruptcy, etc.” As of the middle of 2025, the world’s starkly changing “relation of forces” is once again generating an acutely ruptured international order.

• There is a distinct layer of countries occupying an intermediate zone resting between the core and the periphery. This semi-peripheral zone comprises economies whose states equally exploit and oppress the dependent semi-colonial states of the periphery, yet are simultaneously exploited by, and subordinated to, the imperialist core. These non-static semi-peripheral economies belong to states that generally play a sub-imperialist role via mechanisms of unequal exchange, while frequently aligning themselves with the external policy thrusts of the main imperialist blocs.

• There is a distinct layer of countries occupying an intermediate zone resting between the core and the periphery. This semi-peripheral zone comprises economies whose states equally exploit and oppress the dependent semi-colonial states of the periphery, yet are simultaneously exploited by, and subordinated to, the imperialist core. These non-static semi-peripheral economies belong to states that generally play a sub-imperialist role via mechanisms of unequal exchange, while frequently aligning themselves with the external policy thrusts of the main imperialist blocs.
• Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkiye, etc.
• Furthermore, as geopolitical power centres in their own regions, these semi-peripheral states continually maximise their positions within the global capitalist system by growing their monopolies and attaining ever higher degrees of trade competitiveness for themselves. This course of development is additionally enriched through their additional exports of finance capital, including the designing and manufacturing of advanced technological innovations to lock in their distinct international role in the world economy.

• What is your position on the concept of multipolarity, which is advocated by some on the left?

• Before answering your questions, I would like to leave my particular global standpoint very clear, as it has a principled bearing in view of the rapidly shifting international situation. I principally stand for — and with — a left foreign policy line that upholds and advances the Leninist principles of anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism. I firmly believe that revolutionary communists everywhere must take a consistent stance against all of the world’s imperialist powers — regardless of the degree of antagonisms between the latter states — while exploiting and exacerbating their contradictions, however and whenever possible.
• In the arena of global affairs, the primary agenda and interests of the working classes must always be advocated and endorsed above and beyond the reactionary agenda of the capitalist states and their bourgeois ruling classes, especially those of the imperialist great powers

• Therefore, I do not agree with the concept of multipolarity as advocated by some tendencies on the left. In my view, it is not an apt concept to apply in analysing the present-day world situation from a consistently left standpoint. Neither is it helpful in guiding the global proletarian movement’s anti-imperialist struggles. Multipolarity, both as a term and an idea, should be avoided — if not, discarded altogether.

• This is chiefly because the various imperialist great powers, together with autocratic, authoritarian and fascist regimes, are deliberately utilising and even popularising the question of multipolarity. They ramp up their foreign policy narratives around multipolarity to assert their respectively hypocritical, deceptive and right-wing agendas. They do so by selectively deploying this specific conceptual word, wrongly using and even substituting multipolarity as an expression for an “anti-imperialist” policy. Imperialist powers often hide behind multipolarity to openly accuse their top rival(s) of being “imperialist” (such labels are never applied to themselves, of course). All the while, these same imperialist states are actively upholding the imperialist world system, with its structural mechanisms of class exploitation and oppression.
• With a solid and far-reaching spread all through the international economy, the prevailing architecture of the globalised and neoliberal capitalist system remains framed on the core-periphery axial division of labour
• Accordingly, the core is basically characterised by two competing imperialist blocs: the US-led G7 bloc and the dual alliance of China and Russia.

• Neither of the core rival blocs seek to smash and destroy international capital, replace global capitalism, dismantle the imperialist world system, or much less establish world socialism as a post-capitalist alternative. Since this system’s current array of imperialist states are certainly not advancing any genuine socialist revolution, it is safe to conclude that their common goal is simply to seek even greater portions of superprofits via ongoing economic-security competition.

• This imperialist great power engagement is, therefore, not like the 20th century’s Cold War “bipolar” conflict. It is clearly not a global struggle between opposing ideological poles in support of strategic visions of contending socio-economic systems. The Cold War was a clash of starkly counterposed systems: the capitalist pole (led by the camp of US imperialism) versus the Communist pole (led by the former Soviet Union). This is definitely not the case today.

• The modern day inter-imperialist conflict is being waged through a singular capitalist unipolar order. All competing imperialist powers belong to the same — and single — international pole of capitalism. Jointly, they principally direct the global core’s anti-worker agenda of monopoly-finance capitalism, albeit in an adversarial manner toward each other. As such, neither of them challenges the fundamentals of the capitalist system of production and circulation.

• Neither of them opposes globalised monopoly-finance capitalism’s exploitative norms of extracting surplus value through mechanisms of unequal exchange; they only seek to guarantee capital accumulation in permanence for the global core. Nor do they attempt, in any serious way, to demolish imperialism’s circuits of global capital, which oppressively control the periphery. Above all, US, Chinese and Russian imperialisms openly support the capitalist logic of securing the net flow of value (wealth) from dominated countries in favour of the centres that dominate world capital.

• Given the dynamics of this international arrangement and context, the triad of world imperialism — the US, China and Russia — are merely fighting each other for ever larger shares of finance capital, much wider spheres of influence and dominance, and greater control over raw earth minerals and other strategic resources. They all strive to seize a monopoly of hegemonic control over the capitalist world system’s economic base, particularly through military force. The imperialist great powers’ mutual rationale only proves that their imperatives are simply to preserve and enhance the capitalist unipolar order, especially the economic-political agenda of the core, at the expense of the working-class masses.

• Is it possible today to advance a position of neutrality or non-alignment with poles or imperialist blocs without abandoning solidarity with struggles elsewhere?

• In contrast, support for multipolarity fundamentally enables and strengthens the contending imperialist great powers. This position endorses their escalating geostrategic thrusts toward reshaping their spheres of influence and domination in West Asia (for example, for greater access to Iran’s vast reserves of oil and gas, gaining full political-military control over the Persian Gulf, extending a firmer grip on the region’s connecting transnational land corridors, heightening strategic leverage from across Central-South-West Asia and into the Mediterranean and Eastern European zones, etc).
• I will instead focus on the premise that the generalised system of class exploitation and oppression through capitalist accumulation and competition still remains systemically predominant on a universal scale.

• Because the world’s social majority lives, works and socially regenerates within the state-centred parameters of the imperialist world system’s bourgeois socio-economic formation, revolutionary class struggle is the primary way forward for the exploited and oppressed working classes to break free and eventually construct a socialist world system. Therefore, the global revolutionary socialist/communist movement needs to unleash, in an internationally coordinated fashion, a colossal amount of ideological-political-organisational firepower concentrated upon imperialism’s vulnerable points.
• their revolutionary mass movements and organisations must continue to be built vertically from below and forged in the existing arenas of class struggle within their respective nation-states

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• It seems to us – rather an unusually frank article. At least for a paper that has striven so hard to be silent without passing any blame on Israel or indeed, on Netanyahu.

   

• When this happens, sensible people must ask a minimum of two questions.

   

  The first is why did take so long for the newspaper to print materials that were long known – and which many observers had long remarked on?
   The second is why now?
• “Out of office, Netanyahu was vulnerable. Since 2020, he had been standing trial for corruption; the charges, which he denied, mostly related to granting favors to businessmen in exchange for gifts and favorable media coverage. Shorn of power, Netanyahu would lose the ability to force out the attorney general who oversaw his prosecution — as indeed his government would later attempt to do.”

• Then the report makes a few caveats, but states that there are three “unavoidable conclusions”:

   

  “Yet for all these caveats, our reporting has led us to three unavoidable conclusions. In the years preceding the war, Netanyahu’s approach to Hamas helped to strengthen the group, giving it space to secretly prepare for war. In the months before that war, Netanyahu’s push to undermine Israel’s judiciary widened already-deep rifts within Israeli society and weakened its military, making Israel appear vulnerable and encouraging Hamas to ready its attack. And once the war began, Netanyahu’s decisions were at times colored predominantly by political and personal need instead of only military or national necessity. .
• We found that at key stages in the war, Netanyahu’s decisions extended the fighting in Gaza longer than even Israel’s senior military leadership deemed necessary. This was partly a result of Netanyahu’s refusal — years before Oct. 7 — to resign when charged with corruption,”

• Of these the first is still not even now well enough appreciated, even on the left. We drew attention to the marked and suspicious lapses of Israeli military intelligence (MLRG.online at October 2024). In light of the remarkable ability and penetration of Israeli intelligence, this we believe points firmly to this “lapse” being deliberate. Nothing better can be imagined for Israeli goals to “eliminate” Palestinians can be imagined, than such a “casus belli’ as the terrorist action of Hamas in October 2023.

   
• “Under political pressure from those coalition allies, Netanyahu slowed down cease-fire negotiations at crucial moments, missing windows in which Hamas was less opposed to a deal. He avoided planning for a postwar power transition, making it harder to direct the war toward an endgame. He pressed ahead with the war in April and July 2024, even as top generals told him that there was no further military advantage to continuing. When momentum toward a cease-fire seemed to grow, Netanyahu ascribed sudden significance to military objectives that he previously seemed less interested in pursuing, such as the capture of the southern city Rafah and later the occupation of the Gaza-Egypt border. And when an extended cease-fire was finally forged in January, he broke the truce in March in part to keep his coalition intact.”

• True the reporters point out that “all this came at a cost.” Well apart from the Palestinian dead – of whom more anon – the reports note that these costs included that:

   

  “It delayed the Saudi deal and sullied Israel’s image abroad. And it led prosecutors at the International Criminal Court to call for Netanyahu’s arrest.”

• But rightly, the reporters note the gains nonetheless – to Netanyahu himself:

   

  “But for Netanyahu, the immediate rewards have been rich. He has amassed more control over the Israeli state than at any other point in his 18-year tenure as prime minister. He has successfully prevented a state inquiry that would investigate his own culpability, saying that the fallout must wait until the Gaza war ends, even as the defense minister, army chief, domestic spymaster and several top generals all either have been fired or have resigned. As he attends court up to three times a week for his corruption trial, his government is now moving to fire the attorney general who oversees that prosecution. The war’s continuation has also shored up his coalition. It gave him time to plan and enact his attack on Iran. Above all, as even his strongest supporters note, it kept him in office. “Netanyahu pulled off a political resurrection that no one — not even his closest allies — thought possible,” said Srulik Einhorn, a political strategist who is part of Netanyahu’s inner circle.

• “It is of course impossible to say that Netanyahu made key wartime decisions entirely in the service of his own political survival.”

   
• The cost of delay has been high: With each passing week, the delay has meant death to hundreds of Palestinians and horror to thousands more. It also meant that at least eight more hostages died in captivity, deepening the divisions in Israel between those who sought a hostage-release deal above all else and those who thought the war should run until Hamas was destroyed.”
• And those TV news, videos and social media – truly came at a “cost”. They came despite the Israeli state policy of killing of those who were disseminating this news. This conscious Israeli policy has been well described in many reports. For example, by “Intercept“. For only one example see – Neha Madhira; “The Israeli plot to exitnguish the journlaists documenting goenocide.”; The Intercept’; July 3 at Neha Madhira

• Gingerly. . . carefully. . .  the intrepid reporters at the NYT avoid terms such as ‘targeted genocide’ and ‘deliberately inflicted starvation’ and ‘murder of those on the edge of famine seeking food aid.’

   
• In Janury 2025, independent researchers from the London School of Tropical Medicine andd Hygiene, had already issued a novel methodology (capture-recapture) in assessing the death rate. They used this to align several differing sources of information. Their report estimated up to “64,260 violent deaths up to the end of June 2024”
• The fact however that ‘Nature’ prints a summary of this study – is reassuring that the data are valid.
• It estimates more than 80,000 fatalities up to January 5, 2025 – in line with the earlier disputed study by Jamaluddine et al.

• “the violent death toll of the war resulted in the deaths of aroudn 3.6% of Gaza’s population, exceeding the offical figures of the Gaza Ministry of Health; aronud 56% of the violkent deaths were among women, children, and the elderly – a percentage similar to that endorsed by the GmoH.”

   

• Despite all this, we acknowledge that the NYT – finally – has found the courage to ventilate this news. Old hat though it is to many observers, it strengthens the factual base upon which Palestine supporters can continue to make their case for Palestine. For sceptics willing to re-consider the case against Israel, it may be easier to swallow when coming from the NYT than from the left.

   
• Attacks by forces led by Hamas and 3 other smaller groups, were planned for several months. These were Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Gaza’s second largest armed faction, the Mujahideen Brigades and Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades. The groups had four full-scale practice drills. These were publicly announced as a ‘success”. They were very well known to Israeli personnel. Moreover the training was “realistic” and involved building mock-ups of the Israeli defence structures. They were collectively known as ‘Strong Pillar’. The exercises were close to Israeli observation towers, and easily locatable on commercial GPS locating services. The Israel Defence Force (IDF) were obviously monitoring activity near the border carefully, as usual. . .
• Robert Dover (Professor of Intelligence and National Security, University Hull UK) says that a document called “The Jericho Wall Document” outlined the attack and was with Israeli intelligence “about a year prior” to the attack:
   “… It is becoming clear that Israeli military intelligence had collected specific information on how Hamas could invade. Additionally, they had evidence of what assets and techniques Hamas were likely to use, and what Israeli facilities and possessions would be targeted. From, observing rehearsals, they also had information about the level of violence Hamas terrorists were willing to inflict. Evidence suggests that about a year ago Israeli analysts had a copy of the Hamas attack playbook, the Jericho Wall document. . . An intelligence unit had also observed a rehearsal exercise in Gaza City, and drawn the document and exercise together to correctly assess the relevance of both. The analyst had shown remarkable insight when she suggested to her superiors that the rehearsal was not for a raid, but an invasion, according to evidence collected by the New York Times.” (Added emphasis on 11 July 2025 – for obvious reasons -Ed)
   Robert Dover; “Why Israel’s intelligence chiefs failed to
   listen to October 7 warnings – and the lessons to be learned”; ‘The Conversation’; Dec 7 2023; Accessed 10 October, 2024.”
   Cited in MLRG.online “From October 7, 2023 to October, 2024 – and the Aftermath”; October 12, 204; at  October 12 2024

• Even with our limited resources we could say – even though it was relatively late as October 2024:

   

  “(In the light of the developing new world war – ed) It is in this overall context that Israel’s “overlooked” Hamas practice drills must be viewed. Bluntly put, it may well have been allowed to occur to claim the necessary ‘moral high ground’ by which to perpetrate the most vicious war conducted in real-time in the news – without an iota of world attempts to stop the barbarity. The ICJ is in the end toothless, as is the UN.”
   Cited in MLRG.online “From October 7, 2023 to October, 2024 – and the Aftermath”; October 12, 204; at  October 12 2024

• Why with all their resources, ‘investigative” and fearless, brave reporting – did the NYT not figure this out? Well they likely did. In the quote from Robert Dover (Professor of Intelligence and National Security, University Hull UK – See above quote) he makes it clear the NYT had been aware of key evidence.

   

  The answer as to why the NYT did not publish this type of information and data – lies in the slavish role that the NYT has played in supporting both USA imperialism and its mission in the Middle East.

• Why then has the NYT now taken their new position?

   

  We believe this argues for the obvious swing upwards in the support for Palestine.

   

  Finally – the pro-Palestinian voice of the most progressive sections of the people is being heard. Or at least – is starting to be heard.
   People are disgusted with the actions of the Netanyahu government.
   Even the NYT finally has to “accommodate” and acknowledge what is becoming a loud voice.

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• Central to the multifaceted economy of genocide, the report charges, is the military-industrial complex that forms “the economic backbone of the State.”  Albanese cites a stellar example: the F-35 fighter jet, developed by US-based Lockheed Martin, in collaboration with hundreds of other companies “including Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A, and eight States.”

  Since October 2023, the process of colonisation and displacement has assumed an air of urgency, aided by the private sector.  In 2024, US$200 million was advanced for “colony construction”.  Between November 2023 and October 2024, 57 new colonies and outposts were established “with Israeli and international companies supplying machinery, raw materials and logistical support.”  Examples include the maintenance and expansion of the Jerusalem Light Rail Red Line, the construction of the new Green Line, encompassing 27 kilometres of new tracks and 50 stations in the West Bank.  The infrastructure has proven to be invaluable in linking the colonial project to West Jerusalem.  Despite some companies withdrawing from the project “owing to international pressure”, an entity such as the Spanish/Basque Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles has been a keen participant, along with suppliers of excavating machinery (South Korea’s Doosan and Sweden’s Volvo Group), and providers of materials for the light-rail bridge (Germany’s Heidelberg Materials AG).
• Palantir Technologies Inc., a specialist in software platforms, comes in for a special mention.  “There are reasonable grounds to believe Palantir has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scale-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision making.”
• Ambassador Dorothy C. Shea, acting representative to the UN, other than a snotty dismissal of UN General Assembly resolutions and advisory opinions by the International Court of Justice as lacking any binding force “on either States or private actors”.

  Shea claims Albanese “misrepresented her qualifications for the role by claiming to be an international lawyer despite admitting publicly that she has not passed a legal bar examination or been licensed to practice law.”  A fabulous accusation, given the surfeit of allegedly qualified legal members working in the Israeli Defense Forces and other offices executing their program of displacement, starvation and killing.

  The accusations against various corporate entities, notably over 20 US entities, were “riddled with inflammatory rhetoric and false accusations”, making such daring claims of “gross human rights violations”, “apartheid” and “genocide”.  These charges, ventured through letters of accusation, constituted “an unacceptable campaign of political and economic warfare against the American and worldwide economy.”

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• Het gaat om een beleidskeuze die vrouwen straft voor zorgtaken, voor deeltijds werken, voor een niet-lineaire loopbaan. 49 procent van de vrouwen dreigt vanaf 2026 getroffen te worden door de malus op vervroegd pensioen. Dat maakt de pensioenkloof nog groter dan ze al is.

• Voor vrouwen met een migratieachtergrond is de situatie nog schrijnender. Velen werken in sectoren met onregelmatige uren en onzekere contracten, zoals de zorg of schoonmaak. Door het wegvallen van IGU en de versoepeling van werktijdregels worden zij de speelbal van werkgevers.

   

• Sociale zekerheid wordt bijstand

   

  Wat de regering voorstelt, is meer dan een besparing. Het is een verschuiving van sociale bescherming naar bijstand: van een recht naar een gunst. Wie werkloos wordt, moet maar zien. Wie deeltijds werkt, moet inleveren. Wie zorgt voor een kind of ouder, wordt afgestraft

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• Israel Katz said he has ordered Israel’s military to prepare for establishing a camp, which he called a “humanitarian city”, on the ruins of the city of Rafah, Haaretz newspaper reported.

• Palestinians would go through “security screening” before entering, and once inside would not be allowed to leave, Katz said at a briefing for Israeli journalists.

• Israeli forces would control the perimeter of the site and initially “move” 600,000 Palestinians into the area – mostly people currently displaced in the al-Mawasi area.

• Eventually the entire population of Gaza would be housed there, and Israel aims to implement “the emigration plan, which will happen”, Haaretz quoted him saying.

• Since Donald Trump suggested at the start of the year that large numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to “clean out” the strip, Israeli politicians including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have enthusiastically promoted forced deportation, often presenting it as a US project.

• Katz’s scheme breaks international law, said Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s leading human rights lawyers. It also directly contradicted claims made hours earlier by the office of Israel’s military chief, which said in a letter that Palestinians were only displaced inside Gaza for their own protection.

• “(Katz) laid out an operational plan for a crime against humanity. It is nothing less than that,” Sfard said. “It is all about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip.

• “While the government still calls the deportation ‘voluntary’, people in Gaza are under so many coercive measures that no departure from the strip can be seen in legal terms as consensual.

• “When you drive someone out of their homeland that would be a war crime, in the context of a war. If it’s done on a massive scale like he plans, it becomes a crime against humanity,” Sfard added.

• Work on the “humanitarian city” at the heart of Katz’s plans could start during a ceasefire, the defence minister said. Netanyahu is leading efforts to find countries willing to “take in” Palestinians, he added.

• “If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave,” Netanyahu said, as he prepared to have dinner with Trump.

• Israeli politicians including the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have also been enthusiastic advocates of new Israeli settlements in Gaza.

• Plans for the construction of camps called “humanitarian transit areas”, to house Palestinians inside and possibly outside Gaza, had previously been presented to the Trump administration and discussed in the White House, Reuters reported on Monday.

• The $2bn plan bore the name of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Reuters said. GHF denied it had submitted a proposal and said slides seen by Reuters, which laid out the plan, “are not a GHF document”.

• Sfard represented three reservists who filed a petition to Israel’s courts, demanding the military revoke commands to “mobilise and concentrate” the civilian population of Gaza, and to prohibit any plans for the deportation of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.

• In a letter responding to their claims, the office of Israel’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, said that displacing Palestinians or concentrating the population in one part of Gaza were not among the objectives of the operation.

• That statement was directly contradicted by Katz, said Prof Amos Goldberg, historian of the Holocaust at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

• The defence minister laid out clear plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Goldberg said, and the creation of “a concentration camp or a transit camp for Palestinians before they expel them”.

• “It is neither humanitarian nor a city,” he said of Katz’s planned holding area for Palestinians.
• A city is a place where you have possibilities of work, of earning money, of making connections and freedom of movement.
• “There are hospitals, schools, universities and offices. This is not what they have in mind. It will not be a livable place, just as the ‘safe areas’ are unliveable now.”
• He added: “What will happen if the Palestinians will not accept this solution and revolt, because they are not completely helpless?”

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• “Today, the United States of America is by all appearances an Israeli-occupied state. The U.S. Congress dutifully authorizes the annual payment of an immense tribute to Israel, some three thousand million dollars a year.”

• In that regard, one could easily make the case that the greatest threat to the nation of Israel is Benjamin Netanyahu. In his years of public life, due to his unrepentant acts of horror and violence, especially in his latest tenure as prime minister, even American support for Israel has cratered. And the global decline is starker yet, with European nations like Ireland, Luxembourg, and Spain now considering massive embargoes of the Israeli state.

   

• I thought of that day again as I was writing this, how in the age of Donald Trump we’ve betrayed the sacrifices of all those generations and how far we’ve fallen as a nation. After I reached out to my editor, Tom Engelhardt, with my ideas for this piece, my mom asked me if it was “safe” to write such an article while Trump was president. After all, he and his goon squad, to their everlasting shame, have gone to the ends of the earth to crush free speech, especially any criticism of Israel or the administration’s nefarious deeds writ large. (Just ask Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student who dared coauthor an op-ed questioning the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Netanyahu regime, only to quickly find herself disappeared off the street by masked agents of the Department of Homeland Security and imprisoned by the American government.)

   

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