Monday 28th of July 2025
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... and bibi rejoiced with fanfare and genocide.....

Israel’s key enablers, the G7, plus Australia and New Zealand, have succeeded in muscling Israel back onto the invite list for the commemorations in Nagasaki on 9 August. Last year Israel was excluded, triggering a refusal by these countries to attend in 2024. Does the ‘personal’ invitation that Nagasaki has just sent to Israel represent a triumph of Western diplomacy or a sick joke?

 

Eugene Doyle

We have turned the Nagasaki 80th into a celebration of Israeli genocide

 

You know who your mates are when you’re committing genocide

As I wrote at the time, the boycott by the powerful white-dominated Western nations was a stunning “ Fuck you” to the Hibakusha, the last few survivors of the US’s 1945 nuclear attack. More importantly it was as clear a statement of collective commitment to Israel’s war on Palestine as you could possibly wish for. You really find out who your true mates are when you’re committing genocide.

At the time, Shigemitsu Tanaka, the 83-year-old head of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council, said he supported the move to keep the Israelis away from the commemorations, saying it was inappropriate to invite representatives from countries waging armed conflicts in defiance of calls from the international community.

Israel’s invitation is a triumph of Western pressure

A year later, the City buckled under pressure and has personally invited the Israelis. “After Israel was excluded last year over the Gaza war, Nagasaki’s mayor is avoiding renewed diplomatic tensions – especially following a clear message from the US,” Israel’s most popular news site, Ynet reported this month.

It is a triumph for Netanyahu and his government, cause for celebration in Tel Aviv, but diminishes the nobility of an event that was created with the explicit intention to say Never Again and to remind the world of the indefensible criminality of attacks on defenceless civilian populations.

Nagasaki and the Boycott Israel campaign

Israel goes to incredible lengths to break efforts to impose BDS (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions) and so Nagasaki had to be brought to heel. July 2025 marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of BDS, a non-violent campaign designed to hold Israel accountable for its crimes and apply real-world pressure for the state to change course.

BDS is potentially a game-changer which is why Israeli government ministers routinely make threats of physical violence against leading BDS activists. Israel Katz, currently the Israeli Defence Minister, is on record as calling for Israel to engage in ‘targeted civil eliminations’ of BDS leaders with the help of Israeli intelligence.

70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza – and Israel is invited to a peace ceremony

Think for a moment what the presence of Israel at this year’s event represents as an astonishing piece of semiology. A state that is actively committing the crime of crimes, genocide, sitting alongside the Hibakusha. They won’t be the only war criminals in attendance. American, German, and British bombs have levelled the tiny enclave of Gaza. More of their bombs – 70,000 tons and climbing – have been used to massacre Palestinians in Gaza than were used in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (36,000 tons), the fire bombings of Tokyo (1,665 tons) and Dresden (3,900 tons), and the London Blitz (19,000 tons) combined. And it is happening on our watch.

Another piece of astonishing optics: less than two months ago the US and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, doing so with no UN mandate but only their position as powerful, lawless states. Their actions dramatically raise the prospect of Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others deciding they need nuclear weapons as deterrence. What look will the US and Israeli ambassadors cast over their faces as the Mayor of Nagasaki delivers the message of “Nagasaki’s wish for the establishment of lasting world peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons?”

Is the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize the next to be trashed?

Talking of tone deaf and morally repellent, Donald Trump has been openly lobbying to receive the Nobel Peace Prize despite having killed thousands of people and bombed multiple countries this year. Interestingly, the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner was Nihon Hidankyo (Japan’s Atomic Bomb Survivors Organisation).

In his acceptance speech last year, Terumi Tanaka, one of the Co-Chairpersons of Nihon Hidankyo, said that the organisation was created in 1956 “to demand the immediate abolition of nuclear weapons, as extremely inhumane weapons of mass killing, which must not be allowed to coexist with humanity.”

New Zealand is a genocide enabler. What happened to our soft power?

As a New Zealander I am deeply ashamed of my country for having refused to attend last year’s ceremony and for its criminal complicity with Israel today. New Zealand’s tragic trajectory from humanitarian champions and nuclear-free pioneers to racist genocide enablers is captured in all its horror in this month’s Nagasaki commemorations.

New Zealand, the country that went to the brink of civil war in 1981 to stop sporting contact with Apartheid South Africa is now a fully-paid up member of Apartheid Israel’s war on Palestine. Everywhere our government is tearing down the pillars built by decades of struggle in New Zealand. The anti-nuclear policy, the anti-apartheid victories, the non-aligned foreign policies, the sacred principles of partnership between indigenous Maori and the Pakeha (those who settled from Europe and elsewhere) are all being shredded.

We refuse to recognise Palestine, we refuse to join South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ, we refuse to join the Hague Group which is mobilising countries to make those responsible for the genocide accountable and to shoulder state-level responsibility for forcing the end to it. But we mobilise to get Israel invited to the Nagasaki peace events.

From Auschwitz to Nagasaki to Gaza: whatever happened to Never Again? Whatever happened to our decency? The Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone wrote this month “If you’re still supporting Israel in the year 2025, there’s something seriously wrong with you as a person.” That goes triple for governments.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/07/we-have-turned-the-nagasaki-80th-into-a-celebration-of-israeli-genocide/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Israel is DOOMED....

Israel is DOOMED—Prof John Mearsheimer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zel0FY3dbE

 

John Mearsheimer considers Israel's bleak future, from the horrific cost of trying to remove all Palestinians to Netanyahu’s strategic mistake in relying on endless support from the US.

00:00 The future of Israel is not very bright
01:03 What happens when Israelis no longer feel safe and start leaving
01:48 Netanyahu’s fantasies and strategic mistake in relying on support from the West
02:39 Israel is daring people to compare them to Nazis and the ‘genocide’ label is starting to stick
04:42 How does this end and will Trump ever say ‘enough is enough?’
05:41 The horrific consequences of trying to remove all Palestinians
06:27 The Israel lobby’s strategy in the US is unsustainable
09:12 Israel is in real trouble

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago and the author of "Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics," "The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities," and co-author of the controversial and ground-breaking "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."

**Please support The Katie Halper Show **

 

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Lending your voice to the anti-imperialist struggle comes at a high price – Ramaphosa’s South Africa and Palestine

Lama El Horr

 

Cyril Ramaphosa’s South Africa has clearly understood the global significance of this struggle of all struggles and has repeatedly reminded the international community that, in line with Mao Zedong’s forward-thinking intuition, the struggle of the Palestinian people is the focal point of all other struggles for emancipation.

From Mao’s China to Ramaphosa’s South Africa, one slogan: Palestine

A week before the Six-Day War, an official statement from the Chinese government emphasized that “The struggle of the Arab peoples against American imperialism and Zionism is an important component of the global struggle against imperialism.” This statement reflected the vision of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, for whom the Arab anti-imperialist front was a shield for both Asia and Africa.

Pretoria helped restore the truth about the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been the victim not only of a murderous assault by the Israel-Washington duo 

In a way, China had just sketched out a roadmap for the global anti-imperialist struggle: it must consist of solidarity between Asia and Africa and rely on the Arab world, which is on the front line.

Following his release from apartheid prisons, Nelson Mandela made the same observation: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” The significance of this reality never left the South African fighter, who declared again in 1999, “Any talk of peace will remain hollow as long as Israel continues to occupy Arab territory”—a reminder that, despite the abolition of the apartheid regime, South Africa had not completed its struggle for freedom.

Today, in a context of imperialist expansion that is terrifying the world, Cyril Ramaphosa’s South Africa has decided to take up the torch of this global struggle against imperialism, rooting it in the Palestinian cause. Through this choice, the South African president is reminding us of an undeniable truth: the colonial history shared by the BRICS countries and the Global South means they are destined to fight the same battle for emancipation.

Cyril Ramaphosa’s Original Sin

It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency has had a seismic effect on the international scene and given spectacular impetus to the construction of multipolarity.

The facts speak for themselves: Ramaphosa’s country is now associated with the first significant expansion of the BRICS to include major African and Asian countries, including Egypt and Iran. It is also associated with the integration of the African continent into the G20 economic forum, from which Africa had previously been excluded. It is again South Africa’s shadow that hangs over Washington’s decision to boycott this year’s G20 meetings, organized by the South African presidency. And for good reason: Pretoria has broken a taboo by attacking the ally without which the United States would no longer be an empire: the Israeli occupation regime.

By taking Israel to the International Court of Justice for violating the Genocide Convention, Ramaphosa’s country has dealt a severe blow to the global imperialist oligarchy. Through these proceedings before the UN’s highest court, South Africa has not only exposed the atrocities of the Israeli regime—which has been widely shown to accumulate crimes of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide—but has also turned the spotlight on the sponsors and protectors of this colonialist regime, namely Washington and its allies in the EU and NATO.

Logically, the sponsors of this plan to annihilate the Palestinians felt just as threatened as the perpetrators. It is therefore not surprising to see the malicious reversal of accusations in the US and Europe, where all those who denounce this macabre plan are hunted down and persecuted, shamelessly prosecuted for “apologizing for terrorism.” The UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Italian Francesca Albanese, has not escaped the imperialist sword either, as she was subjected to sanctions immediately after revealing the names of the entitiesbenefiting from these crimes against humanity. Washington has pushed the deception to the point of adopting executive orders against Ramaphosa’s country, accusing it of violating “human rights,” committing “anti-white genocide,” persecuting its Israeli ally, and even drawing closer to Iran.

The battle is not won, but it has spread like wildfire

The legal action taken by Pretoria against the Israeli regime is all the more threatening to Washington and its satellites because it embodies political and legal cooperation between the African and Asian continents, two regions that colonial history has kept in contempt and ignorance of each other. These legal proceedings have also taken on a global dimension, as the list of countries joining Pretoria’s complaint continues to grow, with Brazil being the latest addition. This globalization of anti-imperialist rebellion is further confirmed by the creation of the Hague Group, a global coalition against genocide in Palestine co-led by South Africa and Colombia, which has set itself the task of translating the countless condemnations of the Israeli occupation regime by international courts and UN bodies into concrete action.

What’s more, in the context of imperialist wars of conquest in West Asia (from the Palestinian territories to Iran, via Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen), Pretoria’s initiatives have had the effect of legitimizing the armed struggle of regional resistance movements, drawing an unequivocal parallel between the ANC’s armed struggle against the South African apartheid regime and the Resistance Axis’ armed struggle against the Israeli colonialist regime and its Euro-Atlantic sponsors.

Similarly, Pretoria helped restore the truth about the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been the victim not only of a murderous assault by the Israel-Washington duo but also of a torrent of media lies aimed at legitimizing a new violation of international law by the Israeli-Atlantic axis—with the unwavering approval of the European Union.

Pretoria has therefore brought common sense back to the center of the debate: the Israeli occupation regime is, to say the least, illegitimate, since it is a colonialist, segregationist, expansionist, and genocidal regime.

By successfully uniting Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Cyril Ramaphosa’s South African initiatives take on an inevitably post-imperialist dimension, echoing not only Mao Zedong’s thirst for freedom but also the great march of the BRICS and the Global South toward a multipolar world—through the bloody wounds of Palestine.

 

Lama El Horr, PhD, is the Founding Editor of China Beyond the Wall. She is a geopolitical consultant and analyst specializing in Chinese foreign policy and geopolitics

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.