Tag: israel

Patrick Lawrence: Zionism on the Upper East Side

The organization Park East sponsored, Nefesh B’Nefesh, also assists American Jews who wish to emigrate to Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. This is a legal matter and as such not inconsequential.

Zionism on the Upper East Side

By Patrick Lawrence / Consortium News / December 4, 2025

Park East Synagogue, New York. (Gryffindor/Wikimedia Commons)

We watch in horror from afar as the Zionist terror state continues its genocide against the people of Gaza and escalates its slower-motion, lower-technology genocide against the 3 million Palestinians who reside in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, otherwise known as the Occupied Territories — illegally occupied, of course.

As a few Israeli commentators have pointed out — those few who guard their integrity— the operative principle here is the limitless impunity the Western powers have long granted “the Jewish state.”

This is the outcome, they say, when a people given to a culture of vengeance are told they will never suffer consequences however barbaric their conduct toward others, however many laws they break, however many their assassinations, however many their torture victims, however many exploding telephones they plant among civilian populations, etc.

Maybe we need no reminders, maybe we do, that this presumption of impunity is not bound by sovereign borders and is not limited to the cowardly, condemnable savagery of apartheid Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. But we had one last week, and it is well we consider it carefully.

Zohran Mamdani, the principled social democrat who is New York’s mayor-elect, is now under attack from Zionist Americans who insist Zionist Americans are above the law — American law and international law. You may look well on Mamdani and you may not, but as he is besieged by these objectionable people, so are we all.

This story begins on Wednesday, Nov. 19, at Park East Synagogue, a grand edifice that sits on East 67th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues in the Lenox Hill section of Manhattan.

Park East has been serving Modern Orthodox Jews since 1890. Its congregation, to be noted, is comprised of the great and good of the Upper East Side. These are observant but assimilated Jews, thoroughly plugged into, let’s say, secular public space.

Except.

Two Wednesdays back Park East hosted an organization dedicated to encouraging Jews to “make Aliyah,” the Hebrew term for emigrating to “the Promised Land.” O.K., you cannot find anything legally wrong in this, although it is unambiguously a moral wrong in that it expresses support for a genocidal state.

But let us set aside the moral question for now. The organization Park East sponsored, Nefesh B’Nefesh, also assists American Jews who wish to emigrate to Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. This is a legal matter and as such not inconsequential.

American Settlers

Statistics on the settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are hard to nail down (and I can easily imagine why). The Times of Israel reported eight years ago that some 60,000 Americans were among the Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

That was roughly 15 percent of the settler population then — not counting the considerable number residing in East Jerusalem. We have no precise figures now, but these populations — settlers and Americans among the settlers — are both higher.

As has been well-reported, and well-recorded in several documentaries, the Americans among the West Bank settlers are frequently the most violent in their incessant attacks on Palestinians. They have also been at times the most readily inclined to murder.

There is the infamous case of Baruch Goldstein, a freakshow Zionist from Brooklyn who killed 29 Palestinians when he attacked the Ibrahimi Mosque (tomb of Abraham and other patriarchs) in Hebron in 1994. Goldstein was not singular: He was and remains exemplary — and a hero among some Zionists. National Security Minister Ben Givr had a picture of Goldstein on his living room wall until 2020.

I cannot name the precise statutes applicable here, but they must be several. Open and shut, just the facts, Ma’am, Nefesh B’Nefesh is an accomplice to the settler movement.

Most immediately significant in the Park East case, Nefesh B’Nefesh — this translates as “soul to soul,” and who knows what that is all about — is directly implicated in the settlers’ breach of international law given that all the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal according to said law.

There was no claiming surprise that blustery Nov. 19th when a group of roughly 200 vociferous demonstrators gathered in front of Park East to protest the promotional seminar Nefesh B’Nefesh was running that day.

“Death to the IDF” was among the tamer of various chants; others encouraged violence against settlers. “It is our duty,” one leader of the demonstration said measuredly to those assembled, “to make them think twice before holding these events.”

Inside the Park East building, people indirectly but unmistakably promoting violence against Palestinians, land theft and all the rest. And on East 67th Street, righteous indignation, anger in behalf of a persecuted people, some violent rhetoric, but no violence.

It was obvious the mayor-elect would have to intervene. The event itself warranted this, and various Zionist constituencies, as well-reported before and since Mamdani’s election, have been attacking him as a radical jihadist, an anti–Semite and who knows what else, so attempting to poison his relations with New York’s Jewish community.

Here is the ever-poised Mamdani’s day-after statement, his first on the incident:

“The mayor-elect has discouraged the use of language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so. He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”

A few days later, storms of protest from Zionist quarters having instantly erupted, Mamdani sent this statement to The New York Times:

“We will protect New Yorkers’ First Amendment rights while making clear that nothing can justify language calling for ‘death to’ anyone. It is unacceptable, full stop.”

I find these statements a little in the way of Solomon in their discernment, in Mamdani’s determination not to tilt his hand and to articulate the core truth of the matter:

The more extreme language out on East 67th Street was wrong so far as it intimidated synagogue goers, but the principle of free speech is nonetheless to be honored; those encouraging breaches of international law are wrong, and a synagogue should not be used to promote illegalities.

‘A Hateful Mob’

Maybe what has come back at Mamdani in the course of all this was predictable, more-of-the-same babble. “Mob” was the de rigueur term among those responding to the mayor-elect’s response.

The demonstrators were “a hateful mob of anti–Israel protesters,” the New York Post reported, and it got worse from there. Mamdani sided with “an anti–Semitic mob,” eJP, or eJewishphilanthropy.com, declared. “Last week,” this outfit continued, “Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani failed the first test of his promise to protect all New Yorkers.”

And from William Daroff, the chief exec of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations: “We are still judging him, and I’d say that at the moment he’s got a failing grade.”

They sitteth in judgment, you see.

O.K., we have heard all this before in one or another context, so has Mamdani. He is surely in for more of same once he assumes office Jan. 1. But we ought not miss the very much larger matters raised by the Park East incident.

There is the First Amendment question, as Mamdani correctly noted, and there are the legal questions as pencil-sketched above. These are related at the not-too-distant horizon.

People speaking for Nefesh B’Nefesh now deny they promote emigration to West Bank settlements — which, as the group’s website attests, is simply not true. It advertises Gush Etzion, an expanding sprawl of 22–and-counting settlements south of Jerusalem, Ma`ale Adumim, whose location makes it key to the Israelis final takeover of the West Bank, and various others.

“Teaching about Aliyah and Zionism belongs in that space”: This is the aforementioned William Daroff. And from eJP again: “Mamdani condemned the synagogue’s choice of programming.”

Choice of programming.

You see what is going on here. Park East and Nefesh B’Nefesh are encouraging Americans to breach international law. And absolutely to a one, those defending the synagogue and the event-organizer do so by pretending this is not what is most pithily at issue.

“We are deeply concerned by, and firmly condemn, the violent rhetoric and aggressive behavior that took place outside of the Park East Synagogue,” Nefesh B’Nefesh now declares on its website. Violent rhetoric and aggressive behavior on East 67th Street but not in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.

To go straight to the point, this is another assertion of Zionist impunity. And we should understand what has lately transpired in New York as a very, very direct extension of the impunity that encourages and also protects the Israeli terror machine in Gaza and the West Bank. Impunity: It is a blight under which Palestinians suffer, and none of us is immune to it.

To put this another way, we witness an especially insidious case of chutzpah, the dangers of which I have considered elsewhere. You have your laws, the world has its, and we will ignore them before your eyes (and ostracize you as an anti–Semite if you object). This, in a sentence, is what Zionists now insist we must accept.

I do not know what I would have chanted were I among the 200 outside Park East Synagogue the evening of Nov. 19.

I know what I would have wanted to hear from those inside: I would have wanted every right-thinking congregant at Park East to emerge denouncing Zionism as a blight on the splendor of Judaism’s authentic traditions — this and loud denunciation of all that Israel’s impunity licenses it to do more or less everywhere.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a media critic, essayist, author and lecturer. His new book, Journalists and Their Shadows, is out now from Clarity Press. His website is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.

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December 19, 2025
“The Trillion Dollar War Machine”: William Hartung on How U.S. Military Spending Fuels Wars
“The Trillion Dollar War Machine”: William Hartung on How U.S. Military Spending Fuels Wars

By William Hartung / Democracy Now! / November 14, 2025

Democracy Now! speaks to William Hartung about his new book The Trillion Dollar War Machine and who profits from the United States’ runaway military spending that fuels foreign wars. Hartung says that U.S. policy is “based on profit” and calls for a rethinking of our foreign entanglements. “We haven’t won a war in this century. We’ve caused immense harm. We’ve spent $8 trillion,” he says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan González.

As the U.S. expands its military presence in Latin America, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared earlier this week the Pentagon’s now on a war footing. In a major speech, Hegseth called for weapons companies executives to speed up production of weapons for the military.

SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH: Every dollar squandered on redundancy, bureaucracy and waste is a dollar that could be used to outfit and supply the warfighter. We must wage an all-out campaign to streamline the Pentagon’s process to unshackle our people from unproductive work and to shift our resources from the bureaucracy to the battlefield.

Our objective is simple: transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing, to rapidly accelerate the fielding of capabilities and focus on results. Our objective is to build, rebuild the arsenal of freedom.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by William Hartung, coauthor of the new book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. Bill Hartung is Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Bill, welcome back to Democracy Now!.

How unprecedented is the Pentagon budget at this point and what the military’s doing? For example, even President Trump, in his executive order, renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War, although only actually Congress can officially do that.

WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, the Pentagon budget has never hit a trillion dollars before. Even its most ardent supporters kind of didn’t believe we would ever hit this mark. But now that they’re there, all bets are off.

And speeches like that by Pete Hegseth are basically saying, “Not only are we going to spend a trillion, there’s not going to be rules. We’re not going to have independent testing of these weapons, we’re not going to vet them for human rights when we export them.” It was basically a gift to the arms industry. And they talk about speeding it up. When it comes to weapons, speed kills.

AMY GOODMAN: So – yeah, go ahead, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, Bill, I wanted to ask you about the increasing shift in the military machine of the United States from actually troops to machines, this shift of this new defense industry that has arisen from Silicon Valley that, I guess, dreams of being able to fight wars without losing any human beings and just depending on remote-control killing abilities, robots, AI. Could you talk about to what degree this has moved forward?

WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, it’s definitely moving. In Washington, the two ways to make money, if you mention China, if you mention AI, or if you mention both, even better. It’s part of a long myth that technology can win wars, which didn’t happen in Vietnam, it didn’t happen in Iraq, didn’t happen with Reagan’s alleged leak-proof missile defense.

So, they’re selling kind of a bill of goods that’s kind of stale. It’s old ideology with new software. And they’re much more aggressive than the head of, like, Lockheed Martin, who might say to his shareholders, “Oh, this turbulence is going to create business for us.”

Palmer Luckey’s saying, “We’re going to have war with China in two years. We’re going to bury them. We’re going to have more ammunition.” They’re sort of acting like they’re in charge of our foreign policy, and they view themselves as almost the new technological messiahs. So, I think their ideology and their political influence is almost as dangerous as the weapons they want us to use.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in your book, you have an extensive discussion of the War on Gaza and how the Gaza War became big business for U.S. companies. Could you talk about that?

WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yeah, well, there’s this mythology in the Pentagon that sending arms is better than sending troops because our troops aren’t at risk, and the countries will, quote, “Defend themselves.” But of course, Israel committed genocide in Gaza. It was not defense under any terms. And when you’re sending weapons, all the money goes to the companies. You’re not doing troops, you’re not doing logistics. It’s almost pure revenue.

And when you say it’s military aid to Israel, it’s really military aid to Lockheed Martin and Palantir because the money rests in Israel, comes right back to them. Palantir even had its board meeting during the Gaza War and tried to get other companies profiting from the War to be more vocal in their support of Israel. Of course, they also gave them the software to accelerate the bombing.

So, it’s one of the more shameful episodes in the history of an industry that, of course, is not based on morality, it’s based on profit. And I think unfortunately, a lot of people who are kind of into tech are like, “Oh, these are amazing people. They put rockets in space. It’ll be cheaper,” and so forth. But we’ll pay a big price if we put our trust in these companies.

And of course, they’re very much into the Trump administration, including J. D. Vance, who was groomed in Silicon Valley, and is a creature of Silicon Valley and owes Peter Thiel, essentially, his career. When he was appointed VP, the champagne corks went off in Silicon Valley, and huge amounts of money came in behind Trump.

So, they’re trying to basically displace these huge companies like Lockheed Martin, and what the government’s going to do is pay off both of them. Golden Dome is going to have hardware by Lockheed Martin, software by Anduril and other companies. So, that just means that trillion dollars is going to be in the rearview mirror in a few years if we don’t fight back and fight back hard, which means not accepting the myth of technological superiority.

AMY GOODMAN: You have two fascinating chapters in this book, “The Militarization of American Science: Buying the Ivory Tower,” and, “Capturing the Media: How Propaganda Powers the War Machine.” Talk about both.

WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, this move towards AI and advanced tech means they need the university folks more because Lockheed Martin doesn’t have those kind of people. They’re prized now. And so, they’re doing much more recruiting, sending much more money. Johns Hopkins gets a billion dollars a year to work on things like ballistic missiles, but the average student there wouldn’t know it. The lab is 40 miles away. They’re occupied with other things.

Berkeley helps run a nuclear weapons lab. If you walked into a student on the quad, likewise, they would not know that. So, they’re accelerating that. And also, the pipeline from engineering students into the weapons industry. And the media, well, between vetting Hollywood scripts, spokespersons from think tanks funded by the weapons industry, just the framing.

Very few outlets now really do deep critiques of the military. And then, on top of that, they’re not covering it. Some papers don’t even have a Pentagon reporter anymore, so they just print up the Pentagon press release. And then, paragraph 32, somebody like Bill Hartung makes a little quote so they can say they’re being balanced. But the whole framing is pro-military.

And there’s this notion that if something happens in the world, if we don’t respond with the military, we’re, quote-unquote, “Not doing anything.” Of course, whenever we do it, it’s disastrous. You have members saying, “Oh, peace through strength.” Well, we haven’t won a war in this century.

We’ve caused immense harm, we’ve spent eight trillion dollars, we’ve got troops with PTSD in the hundreds of thousands, who we’re not taking care of. And yet, that myth persists. So, I think there’s kind of a cultural educational task that has to happen as well as pulling back the amount of money we’re throwing at these companies.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bill, you begin your book by citing Trump’s 2024 campaign speech in Wisconsin, where he pledged to end endless wars. But ultimately, as you point out, Trump wasn’t very different from Biden on many of these metrics. They both turned out to be staunch supporters of the U.S. war machine. Could you elaborate?

WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yeah, well, Trump uses that tool when needed. Like, when he beat Jeb Bush and Hilary Clinton over the head about Iraq, which, of course, he did not oppose when it was happening. And I think this stuff about war profiteering is a message to those parts of his base who are sick of corporate welfare, sick of war, some even voted for him because they believed this idea that he was going to be less interventionist.

But here we are, blowing innocent people out of the water off of Venezuela, continuing to arm genocide in Gaza, giving away the store to these companies. “We’ll give you money, we won’t regulate you, you’ll get to do pretty much what you want.” In his first term, he did a similar thing, until he cozied up to Saudi Arabia to sell them record amounts of arms and then claimed they were job creators in the United States.

So, he really views the arms industry as a political ally, and he’s not going to go after them in any big way. But every once in a while, he’ll lapse into that, or he says we have too many nuclear weapons. But there’s no evidence in his policy. In fact, they’re increasing spending on nuclear weapons. So, he’s erratic, but there is a political purpose, which is just to keep that part of his base that’s skeptical of war feeling like he maybe will do something about it.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we end, I wanted to ask you about Axios yesterday reporting Israel seeking a new 20-year security agreement with the United States, while the past agreement promised Israel around $4 billion per year in military aid, and Israel’s likely to seek at least that much going forward.

WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, yeah, they want to be kind of a permanent client of the United States and for us to pay for their aggression. And the current one that runs out had a few little things they didn’t like. Like, they used to be able to spend U.S. military aid to build up their own arms industry.

That was supposed to come to an end. It certainly will be waived if it’s negotiated under the Trump administration. So, basically, they’re going to – if they do that, they’re permanently tying themselves to whatever Israel does in the region. For example, when Israel bombed Iran while the U.S. was supposed to be negotiating with them, Trump followed right behind with bombings and false claims about how they’d obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. He even chided some of his own people for acknowledging that that was not the case.

So, it’s one of the worst moves that could be made. It’s tying us to an archaic, damaging, destabilizing policy and egging on the worst forces in Israel. So, I’m hoping there’ll be some pushback. The problem is, these deals are often done behind closed doors.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bill, one more question about this. In this trade war between the United States and China, the issue of rare earths has continued to come up as a major weakness of the U.S. military establishment, and also, obviously, in other industry as well. How big an issue do you think this is and a weakness for the United States?

WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, it goes against their notion that they can create this self-sufficient garrison state because it’s a global economy, and they can’t do everything here. They don’t have every resource, don’t have every technical kind of expertise. So, this idea that they’re going to have this perfect system all controlled by the United States is a pipe dream.

Even at the most dominant moments of the United States in history, we were never completely self-sufficient. So, Trump is actually selling a bill of goods that is not possible to actually fulfill, which, of course, is happening in other spheres as well, but is more dangerous when you’re talking about peace and security.

William D. Hartung (Bio from Quincy Institute where he is Senior Researcher)

William D. Hartung focuses on the arms industry and US military budget. He was previously the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-director of the Center’s Sustainable Defense Task Force. Bill is the co-author, with Ben Freeman, of the recently released The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. He is also the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). And Weapons for All (HarperCollins, 1995) is a critique of US arms sales policies from the Nixon through Clinton administrations.

Bill previously directed programs at the New America Foundation and the World Policy Institute. He also worked as a speechwriter and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams. Hartung’s articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal.

He has been a featured expert on national security issues on CBS 60 Minutes, NBC Nightly News, the PBS Newshour, CNN, Fox News, and scores of local, regional, and international TV and radio outlets.

Links

“The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America Into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home”

“Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex”

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November 16, 2025
Glenn Greenwald Reacts to Netanyahu’s UN Speech

Netanyahu speaks to an empty UN chamber…

By Glenn Greenwald / ScheerPost / September 28, 2025

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. He broke the Snowden leaks in 2013. Greenwald currently hosts a political commentary show for Rumble called “System Update.” Author Site

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September 28, 2025
How the UN could act today to stop the genocide in Palestine

As a key deadline approaches in the United Nations General Assembly, a little-used UN mechanism, immune from the US veto, could bring military protection to the Palestinian people — if we demand it.

How the UN could act today to stop the genocide in Palestine

Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, addresses the opening of the 77th General Debate of the UN General Assembly, September 2022. (Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa via ZUMA Press/APA Images)

By Craig Mokhiber Mondoweiss August 27, 2025  23

After twenty-two months of unprecedented carnage, three things are clear: (1) the Israeli regime will not end the genocide in Palestine of its own will, (2) the U.S. government, Israel’s principal collaborator, as well as the majority of Israelis, and the regime’s proxies and lobbies in the West, are fully committed to this genocide, and to the destruction and erasure of every remnant of Palestine from the river to the sea, and (3) other Western governments like the UK and Germany as well as far too many complicit Arab states in the region are fully dedicated to the cause of Israeli impunity.

That means that genocide (and apartheid) will only end through resistance against the Israeli regime, the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, the solidarity of the rest of the world, and the isolation, weakening, defeat, and dismantling of the Israeli regime.

As was the case in apartheid South Africa, this is a long-term struggle. But even in the face of Western government obstruction, there are things that can be done right now. Things like boycott, divestment, sanctions, demonstrations, disruption, civil disobedience, education, prosecutions under universal jurisdiction, and civil cases against Israeli perpetrators and complicit actors in our own societies. And yes, we can also demand intervention and protection for the Palestinian people.

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Established by a Cold War-era resolution adopted in 1950, the Uniting for Peace mechanism authorizes the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to act when the Security Council is blocked by the veto of one of its permanent members. Under this mechanism, the UNGA could mandate a UN protection force to deploy to Palestine, protect civilians, ensure humanitarian aid, preserve evidence of Israeli crimes, and assist in recovery and reconstruction.

And the upcoming deadline set by the UNGA last year for Israeli compliance with the orders and findings of the International Court of Justice, with a promise of “further measures” in the wake of non-compliance, provides a critical moment for action. Indeed, the time for intervention is long past due.

Models of intervention

As I have written previously, any country can legally intervene (individually or in concert with others) to stop the genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes of the Israeli regime. Indeed, under the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, and other sources of law, states are legally obliged to do so in the face of such atrocities. International law requires intervention, the State of Palestine has invited intervention, and Palestinian civil society has appealed for intervention. But few states have met this solemn obligation, while Yemen, under Ansar Allah, has been mercilessly attacked by U.S. forces for doing so, and the genocide has been allowed to rage on for almost two years now. Thus, a multilateral mandate could provide the legal, political, and diplomatic cover that most states would need to participate in an intervention.

Here, caution is warranted. There are many proposals for intervention. But some of these are not about protection for the Palestinian people, let alone their liberation.

Some have called for civilian monitors for Gaza, essentially a few dozen observers in blue vests armed only with clipboards and radios. But there have been human rights monitors in the West Bank and Gaza for decades, before and throughout the current genocide. While these perform valuable work, they have no deterrent effect, and the Israeli regime views them as no impediment at all to its nefarious designs.

Others, including the French and the Saudis, have called for a so-called “stabilization force.” But the details of their proposal suggest that such an intervention would not be designed principally to protect the Palestinians from the Israeli regime, but rather to keep an eye on the Palestinian resistance, and to restore the cruel status quo ante before October 2023, with the caging of the Palestinian people, and their slow, systematic annihilation.

At the same time, many such proposals appear to be designed in large measure to resume the process of normalization of the Israeli regime, and to resuscitate the ruse of Oslo. Needless to say, a return to a kind of Oslo 2.0, as yet another smokescreen for Israeli impunity, wherein Palestinians are told they must negotiate for their rights with their oppressor, as their rights and land are continuously eroded and the regime’s status increasingly solidified and normalized, is not the answer.

Then there is Donald Trump’s proposal for direct U.S. occupation, ethnic purging, and colonial domination of Gaza, revealing once again the dangerous and deeply racist delusions of the U.S. empire. Finally, the Israeli regime itself has suggested the deployment of a proxy occupation force manned by forces from Arab states that collaborate with the regime. As is self-evident, these proposals are not about ending genocide and apartheid. They are about entrenching them.

The UN options

That brings us to the United Nations.

Mid-September will see the expiration of the deadline set last year by the General Assembly for Israel to comply with the demands of the International Court of Justice and of the UNGA or face “further measures.” Western delegations are scurrying to forestall this ratcheting up of Israeli accountability by shifting the focus to recognizing Palestine or by trying to resuscitate the long-dead corpse of Oslo and the so-called “two state solution,” i.e., another political process that normalizes Israel, marginalizes Palestinians, provides a smokescreen for continuing Israeli abuses, and offers an amorphous promise of a Palestinian Bantustan somewhere down the road. But the UN need not fall for this ruse.

Of course, the UN itself has much to answer for in this genocide. To be sure, some in the UN have been absolutely heroic: like the UNRWA workers, who have been murdered in their hundreds by the Israeli genocide, many along with their families; other UN humanitarians who have continued to work to relieve the suffering of the people of Gaza, in the face of enormous risk; the UN’s International Court of Justice, which has issued historic decisions affirming the rights of the Palestinian people in the face of enormous pressure not to do so; and the UN special rapporteurs, like Francesca Albanese, who have endured two years of smears, slander, harassment, death threats, and U.S. sanctions, just for telling the truth and applying the law.

But the political side of the UN has failed miserably. Some, like the UNSG, his senior advisors (on genocide, children in conflict, sexual violence in conflict, political affairs, etc.), the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other senior political leadership, have failed miserably, not because they could not do more, but because they chose not to. And, of course, the enduring symbol of UN failure is the Security Council, rendered entirely useless under the constraints imposed on it by the U.S. and its Western allies. Uniting for Peace offers a chance to right the UN ship, and to rescue the legacy of the organization from the potentially fatal blow of yet another genocide on its watch.

Security Council scenarios

Of course, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the Security Council has the power to deploy an armed force and to impose that force even against a country’s will.

But given that the U.S., UK, and France (all genocide complicit states) have veto power in the Council, there are only two possible outcomes from the Security Council in addressing a proposal for intervention: (1) A mandate that pleases the U.S., as Israel’s proxy, and which therefore would be framed in a way disastrous for the Palestinians, and could be imposed against the will of the Palestinians, under Chapter 7, or (2) A U.S. veto of any force that would actually be helpful.

Clearly, the Security Council, by design, is no friend to the occupied, the colonized, or the oppressed. As such, the road to protection and justice travels not through the Security Council, but around it.

Uniting for Peace in the UNGA

Thus, meaningful UN Security Council action is effectively impossible in a body dominated by the U.S. veto.

But here is the point: the world need not surrender in the face of that veto.

The UN General Assembly (UNGA), that will meet in September, is empowered under the Uniting for Peace resolution, to act when the Security Council is unable to act owing to the veto. There are historical precedents. And taking such extraordinary action has never been more urgent.

A UNGA resolution adopted under Uniting for Peace could

1.    Call on all states to adopt comprehensive sanctions and a military embargo against the Israeli regime. While it lacks the power to enforce sanctions, it can call them, monitor them, and supplement them as required.

2.    Decide to reject the UNGA credentials of Israel, as the UNGA did in the case of apartheid South Africa.

3.    Mandate an accountability mechanism (like a criminal tribunal) to address Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, apartheid, and genocide.

4.    Reactivate the UN’s long-dormant anti-apartheid mechanisms to address Israeli apartheid, and

5. Mandate an armed, multinational, UN protection force to deploy to Gaza (and, ultimately, to the West Bank), acting at the request of the State of Palestine, to protect civilians, open entry points via land and sea, facilitate humanitarian aid, preserve evidence of Israeli crimes, and assist in recovery and reconstruction.

All of these actions could be adopted by the UNGA with a two-thirds majority, thereby circumventing the U.S. veto in the Security Council. As Palestine has requested intervention, no Chapter 7 action by the Security Council is needed to deploy a protection force. Palestine would retain full authority over when and for how long the mission was to be deployed, obviating fears of yet another occupation force.

Very importantly, as affirmed by recent World Court findings, Israel would have no legal right to refuse, obstruct, or influence the mission. The Court has affirmed that Israel has no authority, no sovereignty, and no rights in Gaza or in the West Bank.

The process is simple: (1) First, a proposal is vetoed in the Security Council (this is inevitable, given the role of the U.S. as a proxy for Israel in the Security Council); (2) States call for an emergency special session (ESS) of the UNGA under the Uniting for Peace mechanism (this too is easy, as the 10^th Emergency Special Session remains active, and can be easily resumed at the request of a member state); (3) A resolution is proposed by one or more sponsors, in close consultation with the state of Palestine; (4) The resolution is adopted with a two-thirds majority (a threshold required by the rules for “important matters” such as this. Previous voting patterns on Palestine indicate that this margin is achievable); (5) The UN Secretary-General is instructed to solicit troop contributions from countries, in consultation with the State of Palestine as the requesting entity, and: (6) The mission is assembled and deployed (while likely to be politically challenging due to predictably active U.S. interference, this is technically easy).

Legally, there are no hurdles. The rules allow it, the UNGA’s Uniting for Peace power has been repeatedly affirmed, and there are precedents, most notably the UNGA’s mandating of the 1956 UN Emergency Force to the Sinai (UNEF) over the objections of the UK, France, and Israel.

Of course, the U.S. and the Israeli regime will use every available carrot and stick to try to prevent the securing of the necessary two-thirds majority, seeking to water down the text, and bribing and threatening states to vote no, to abstain, or to be absent for the vote. The current lawless government in Washington may even threaten sanctions on behalf of the Israeli regime, as it has already done vis-à-vis the International Criminal Court and the UN’s Special Rapporteur. And they are likely to try to obstruct the protection force itself, once mandated.

As such, the global majority of states will need to stay the course in the face of U.S. and Israeli threats. And global civil society will need to be steadfast in its demands for protection and justice, ensuring the glare of public exposure under which states will be forced to vote for or against a force to protect the Palestinians from genocide. None will be allowed to hide behind the U.S. veto, throwing up their hands with the familiar refrain of “we tried but the U.S. vetoed it.”

Once mandated, let the protection force be deployed by air, land, and sea, accompanied by international media and supported by all diplomatic avenues to ensure its successful deployment and to press the regime and its Western backers to stand down. The world has a chance, belatedly, to stop a genocide and other crimes against humanity. All it needs is the will to do so.

Conclusion

In the face of historic atrocities such as these, that threaten the very survival of a people, and that could bury the nascent project of human rights and international law in their wake, every tool available must be deployed. The world has not done so. It must try, and quickly.

Of course, we are not naïve. Success is not assured. But failure is guaranteed if we do not try.

And time is of the essence. Genocide continues to rage in Gaza and is spreading as well in the West Bank. Famine has been declared in Gaza. Israel is expanding its military presence in Gaza and is rampaging across the West Bank. And September 18 will mark the end of a one-year deadline set by the UNGA for Israel to comply with their demands and that of the World Court or face “further measures.” The time to act is now.r

Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations Official. He left the UN in October of 2023, penning a widely read letter that warned of genocide in Gaza, criticized the international response and called for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on equality, human rights and international law.

Free speech is under attack—especially when it comes to Palestine.

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One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

August 30, 2025
Glenn Greenwald: Palantir Exposed —The New Deep State

The government, if it has a policy or is pursuing things that are unpopular, especially among its own voters, can just try and confuse things by claiming that people’s descriptions of what they’re doing is untrue and false and trying to just confuse people with a bunch of irrelevancies or false claims. And then a lot of people don’t know what to make of it.

Stephen Miller’s BLATANT CENSORSHIP LIES Debunked

In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth and engaging in honest discussion for critical issues is all the more important while censorship (and outright lies) along with attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media as we to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions.

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

August 20, 2025
Chris Hedges: Abolishing the First Amendment

Our sin was that we dared to mention the unmentionable – the genocide in Gaza.

Abolishing the First Amendment

Those who testified at the state capital against New Jersey’s adoption of the IHRA, arguing that it would criminalize free speech, had our microphones muted and were shouted down, proving our point.

The Final, Final Solution – by Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges / The Chris Hedges Report / ScheerPost / July 29, 2025

I testified at the New Jersey state capital in Trenton last week against Bill A3558, which would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

Chis Hedges testimony is included in the video below. Links are also included in the text.

“This is a dangerous assault on free speech by seeking to criminalize legitimate criticism of Israeli policies,” I said. “The Trump administration’s campaign to ostensibly root out antisemitism on college campuses is clearly a trope to shut down free speech and deport non-citizens, even if they are here legally. This bill falsely conflates ethnicity with a political state. And let’s be clear, the brunt of repression on college campuses is directed against students and faculty who oppose the genocide in Gaza, 3,000 of whom were arrested and hundreds of whom were censored, suspended or expelled. Many of these students are Jewish. What about their rights? What about their constitutional protections?”

“I have had numerous relationships with Israeli journalists and political leaders,” I went on. “I knew, for example, former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who negotiated the Oslo peace agreement. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli ultranationalist who opposed the peace accord. Rabin stated bluntly on numerous occasions that the occupation was harmful to Israel. Israeli colleagues frequently criticize Israeli policies in the Israeli press in language that would be defined as antisemitic by this bill.”

“For example,” I continued, “the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who served in the Israeli army and writes for the newspaper Haaretz, has called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel to stop the slaughter in Gaza, saying ‘Do to Israel what you did to South Africa.’”

“Omer Bartov, who served as an Israeli company commander in the 1973 war, is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University,” I said. “He stated in an article on July 15 in The New York Times that his ‘inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.’”

“These kinds of statements, and many more I can quote from Israeli colleagues and friends, would see them under this bill criminalized as antisemites,” I added.

Committee chairman Robert Karabinchak, a Democrat, muted my microphone, banged his hammer for me to stop and allowed gaggles of Zionists, who openly harassed and insulted Muslims in the room, to jeer and shout me down.

There I was arguing that this bill would curtail my free speech, at the same time I was being denied free speech.

You can see my full testimony here.

This cognitive dissonance defines the United States and Israel.

The committee chairman also muted Raz Segal, the Israeli historian and genocide scholar and, in an especially callous move, chastised Mehdi Rabee, whose 14-year-old brother Amer was killed by Israeli soldiers in April 2025.

“My 14-year-old brother who was from Saddlebrook, New Jersey, was murdered by the IDF,” Mehdi, his voice shaking with emotion, told the committee. “All he was doing was picking olives from an olive tree with his friends, which we have been doing as Palestinians for thousands of years. My brother, whom I will never see again, my brother who my parents will never watch graduate from high school or college. Assemblywoman Swain, my father and the Palestinian-American Community Center tried reaching out to you over and over. And all that we were met with was nothing but silence. Given your silence, you should not have the right to even consider voting for this bill until you meet with my family, who are under your district.”

“I am going to ask you to stick to the bill,” Karabinchak interrupted.

“This bill puts at risk my First Amendment right to criticize Israel for what they have done to my brother,” he went on. “I have a right to call Israel whatever I want to call it. When their policies mirror that of the Nazis, I have a right to call it as it is. I call on you to vote no in remembrance of my brother.”

You can see Mehdi’s statement here.

Karabinchak, angered that supporters gave Rabee a standing ovation, reduced all testimonies critical of the bill from three minutes to one minute.

“Time is down to one minute,” he told the crowd of about 400 in the committee and four overflow rooms. “I’m going to ask everybody now to speak, who wants to speak, is going to say ‘I oppose the bill’ or ‘I support the bill.’”

He paused.

“Let’s have some more claps,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s be happy now, right? I didn’t throw you out like I said I was going to. So now you just stifled the other people who have a right to speak. That’s what you just did! Understand what you did! Okay? One minute. One minute. That’s it. And I’m not going to be nice and say let’s rap it up. I’m going to shut the mic off. ”

Our sin was that we dared to mention the unmentionable – the genocide in Gaza.

The Zionists in the room were verbally and physically abusive to the Muslims who had come to oppose the bill. One Zionist repeatedly shoved himself into the bodies of those outside the state capital holding a rally against the bill.

You can see his harassment here.

Amy Gallatin, who is on the commission of the West Orange Human Relations Commission, “established by municipal ordinance in 1992 in order to create and foster values of diversity, equity and inclusion among groups in the community,” pulled up pictures on her iPad in one of the overflow rooms and said to those seated around her “Look, its Mohammed!”

You can see her Islamophobic hate speech here.

When Rabbi Yitzchok Deutsch made an emotional plea to save the people of Gaza Lisa Swain of District 38 and Assemblyman Avi Schnall of District 30, both Democrats, snickered and laughed as he spoke.

You can see their reactions to Rabbi Deutsch here.

Zionists, who painted lurid pictures of Jews living under harassment and in fear for their lives, and of Nazism supposedly running amok on the streets of New Jersey, were not muted, although their statements were hyperbolic to the extreme and often a product of over-active imaginations. They openly salivated at the adoption of the bill, which they said would give law enforcement the tools to criminalize those who engage in hate speech, which, if you read the “contemporary examples of antisemitism,” that accompany the IHRA, include speech that criticizes Israeli policies.

The IHRA has been adopted by 35 states, the District of Columbia and universities such as Harvard and Columbia.

“The IHRA working definition of antisemitism includes protected criticism of Israel and its policies,” writes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “For example, the definition declares that ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,’ ‘drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,’ and ‘applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’ are all examples of antisemitism.”

“If the Department of Education were to adopt this definition, and investigate universities for Title VI complaints based on it, college and university administrators would likely silence a range of protected speech including criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, analogies likening Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany, or sharing differing beliefs about the right to a Jewish state,” the ACLU continues. “People may disagree about whether such speech is antisemitic, but that debate is irrelevant to the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from censoring or penalizing core political speech.”

U.S. attorney Kenneth S. Stern — a self-professed Zionist and the lead drafter of what became the IHRA definition of antisemitism — laments that the IHRA has been “grossly abused” to “restrict academic freedom and punish political speech,” including “pro-Palestinian speech.”

The five committee members, who had clearly made up their minds before they entered the packed hearing room, unanimously passed the measure, which will go to the floor of the State Assembly for a vote. They will, like all politicians who bow before the dictates of the Israel lobby, no doubt, be compensated for their perfidy.

America, like Israel, exists in a parallel reality. It denies the stark and incontrovertible reality of the live-streamed genocide. It slanders anyone, including Israeli holocaust scholars such as Professor Segal, as antisemites.

I know, sadly, where this goes. I witnessed it in the many dictatorships I covered as a foreign correspondent for two decades in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Those of us who fight for an open society are silenced, attacked as traitors and criminals. We are blacklisted, censored and at times, locked up. If we can escape in time, we are forced into exile. As we are silenced, the sycophants, grifters, Christian fascists, billionaires, Zionists and thugs, elevated to the highest positions in the federal government by the Trump White House, are rewarded with absolute power, luxury and debauchery.

Our corporate-indentured ruling class has no genuine political ideology. Political parties are a farce, a species of entertainment to beguile the population in our pretend democracy. Liberalism, and the values it claims to represent, is a spent and bankrupt force.

The burlesque in the committee room in Trenton was another depressing reminder that there is little now that will halt our path towards an authoritarian state, not the press, not the universities, not the courts, which cannot enforce the few rulings made by courageous judges, not the political class, including the Democratic Party, and not the electoral process.

We must resist, if only to assert our integrity and dignity, if only to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, if only to slow the consolidation of tyranny, if only to revel in the small pyrrhic victories that resistance alone makes possible.

But we should not be fooled.

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In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth and engaging in honest discussion for critical issues is all the more important while censorship (and outright lies) along with attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media as we to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions.

July 30, 2025
Democracy Now! interviews Francesca Albanese on the “Economy of Genocide”

The Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award by World Beyond War goes to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, for her fearless, incisive, and eloquent reporting on the genocide in Gaza.

RELATED

Glenn Greenwald interviews Francesca Albanese.

Information about Francesa and the 2025 War Abolisher Awards from World Beyond War.

Please join World Beyond War for the presentation of the 2025 War Abolisher Awards to Ralph Nader, Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese.

The event is free and open to the public.

The event begins on July 24, 2025, at 18:30 UTC, which is 6:30 a.m. in Auckland, 8:30 a.m. in Honolulu, 11:30 a.m. in Los Angeles, 12:30 p.m. in Mexico City, 2:30 p.m. in New York, 7:30 p.m. in Yaoundé, 8:30 p.m. in Berlin, and 10 p.m. in Tehran.

World BEYOND War’s Fifth Annual War Abolisher Awards will recognize the work of individuals who directly support one or more of the three segments of World BEYOND War’s strategy for reducing and eliminating war as outlined in the book A Global Security System, An Alternative to War. They are: Demilitarizing Security, Managing Conflict Without Violence, and Building a Culture of Peace.

The awardees for 2025 are Ralph Nader, Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese.

The Artistic War Abolisher of 2025 award goes to Roger Waters for his incredibly powerful combination of song-writing, singing, speaking, and performing against the horrors of war. During the event, we will play a new 8-minute song pre-recorded by Roger Waters called Sumud.

The David Hartsough Lifetime Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award — named for the late co-founder of World BEYOND War — goes to Ralph Nader for his brilliant and relentless advocacy, educating, organizing, analyzing, and criticizing war and related crimes and abuses.

The Individual War Abolisher of 2025 award goes to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, for her fearless, incisive, and eloquent reporting on the genocide in Gaza.

Register for the award event July 24th:
https://worldbeyondwar.org/war-abolisher-awards/?clear_id=true

In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers is common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media. striving to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others.

Sue Ann Martinson, Writer, Editor

July 13, 2025
Chris Hedges: Surrendering to Authoritarianism

Elite universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia or Yale, were created to train and perpetuate the plutocracy. They are not and never have been centers of cutting-edge intellectual thought or hospitable to dissidents and radicals. They cloak themselves in the veneer of moral probity and intellectualism but cravenly serve political and economic power.

Stomp of Approval – by Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost / March 24, 2025

I was not surprised when Columbia University’s interim president Katrina Armstrong caved to the demands of the Trump administration. She agreed to ban face masks or face coverings, prohibit protests in academic buildings and create an internal security force of 36 New York City Police officers empowered to “remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them when appropriate.” She has also surrendered the autonomy of academic departments, as demanded by the Trump administration, by appointing a new senior vice provost to “review” the university’s department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies and the Center for Palestine Studies.

Elite universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia or Yale, were created to train and perpetuate the plutocracy. They are not and never have been centers of cutting-edge intellectual thought or hospitable to dissidents and radicals. They cloak themselves in the veneer of moral probity and intellectualism but cravenly serve political and economic power. This is their nature. Don’t expect it to change, even as we fall headlong into authoritarianism.

Armstrong, like most of the heads of our universities, is fruitlessly humiliating herself. She would, I expect, happily make space on her office wall to hang an oversized portrait of the president. But what she does not know, and what history has taught us, is that no appeasement is sufficient with autocrats. She, and the rest of the liberal elites, groveling abjectly in an attempt to accommodate their new masters, will be steadily replaced or dominated by buffoonish goons such as those seeded throughout the Trump administration.

The Department of Education has warned 60 colleges and universities that they could face “potential enforcement actions,” if they do not comply with federal civil rights law that protects students from discrimination based on race or nationality, which includes antisemitism. Columbia, stripped of $400 million in federal grants, is desperately trying to restore the funding. I doubt it will work. Those mounting these assaults against universities intend to turn them into indoctrination machines. The so-called campaign against antisemitism is simply a cynical tool being used to achieve that end.

The warning follows an open letter signed by 200 faculty members on Feb. 3 urging Columbia University implement measures to “protect Jewish students.” Amongst their demands are the removal of Professor Joseph Massad who teaches Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at the university and beginning a Title VI investigation against him, that the university adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which conflates criticism of Israel with racism against Jews, and the university hire tenured pro-Israel faculty.

These institutions of privilege — I attended Harvard and have taught at Columbia and Princeton — have always been complicit in the crimes of their times. They did not, until the world around them changed, speak out against the slaughter of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, the crushing of labor and socialist organizations at the turn of the twentieth century and the purging of institutions, including the academy, during the Red Scare in the 1920s and 1930s, and later the witch hunts under McCarthyism. They turned on their students protesting the war in Vietnam in the 1960s as viciously as they are turning on them now.

Many of the dregs of the Trump administration are products of these elite academic institutions. I can assure you their children will also attend these schools despite their public denunciations. Rep. Elise Stefanik, who humiliated in congressional hearings the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, graduated from Harvard. Vice President JD Vance graduated from Yale Law School. Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth went to Princeton University and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has ordered a review of grants to universities from his agency over allegations of antisemitism — graduated from Harvard.

Professor Katherine Franke, who taught at Columbia Law School for 25 years, recently lost her position at the university for defending Columbia students’ right to protest in favor of a ceasefire of the Israeli slaughter in Gaza and for Columbia University to divest from Israel. She also condemned the spraying of pro-Palestinian protesters on the campus with a toxic chemical that left students hospitalized.

“Part of why I think Colombia was such an easy target — and it’s not just Columbia, I think this is true for Harvard, for Yale, for the elite universities — is that the boards of trustees are no longer made up of people who are involved in education — committed to the educational mission, in some way professionally or otherwise — see themselves as custodians of the special role that the academy plays in a democracy,” she told me.

“Instead, they are hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, corporate lawyers and in our case, arms manufacturers as well.” She went on:

And they see that responsibility is to protect only the endowment. I often describe Columbia — which is the largest residential landlord in New York City — as a real estate holding operation that has a side hustle of teaching classes. It has evolved over time into just a business that enjoys nonprofit status. And so when the pressure started here, there were no voices on the boards of trustees to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we have to be the front line of resistance.’ Or at a minimum, we have to defend our academic mission.’ When I was sitting in my living room watching [former] president Minouche Shafik testify before that House committee…I was upset because they mentioned me, but more importantly, the fact that president Shafik did not even begin to defend Columbia, its faculty, its students, our project, our history of being one of the premier universities in the world. Instead, she groveled before a bully. And we all know that when you grovel before a bully, it encourages the bully. And that’s exactly what’s happened here up until today, where they’re still negotiating with the Trump administration on terms that the administration has set. And this university, I think, will never be the same if it survives at all.

You can see my interview with Professor Franke here.

Universities and colleges across the country have shut down free speech and squandered their academic integrity. They have brutalized, arrested, suspended and expelled faculty, administrators and students that decry the genocide. They have called police to their campuses — in the case of Columbia three times — to arrest students, often charging them with trespassing. Following the lead of their authoritarian masters they subjected students to internal surveillance. Columbia University, out front on the repression of its students, banned Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace a month after Israel’s genocide in Gaza had begun in November 2023, when both organizations called for a ceasefire, long before the protests and encampments began.

Columbia’s violent suppression of protests and decision to lock down its campus, which is now surrounded by security checkpoints, paved the way for the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, who was a graduate student at the School of International Public Affairs. He is a legal permanent resident. He did not commit a crime. But the university administration had already demonized and criminalized Khalil and the other students, many of whom are Jewish, who dared to protest the mass slaughter in Gaza.

The video — shot by his wife on March 8 — of Khalil being taken away by plainclothes federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who did not identify themselves, is a chilling reminder of the secret police abductions I witnessed on the streets of Santiago during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The law in authoritarian states protects the criminality of the powerful. It revokes due process, basic freedoms and the rights of citizenship. It is an instrument of repression. It is a very small step from the stripping of rights from a legal resident holding a green card to the stripping of rights of any citizen. This is what is coming.

Khalil was ostensibly arrested under the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act. It gives the Secretary of State the power to deport foreign nationals if he has “reasonable ground[s] to believe” their presence or activities in the U.S. “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” It was used to deny entry to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez and the British author Doris Lessing. It was also used to deport the poet and essayist Margaret Randall and civil rights activist and journalist Claudia Jones. Senator Patrick McCarran, an open admirer of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and a rabid antisemite, formulated the act to target not only dissidents and communists, but also Jews. When the law was enacted, it was used to ban Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors from entering the U.S. due to their alleged sympathies with the Soviet Union.

“The irony of that is not lost on any of us, that these are laws that are at their core, deeply antisemitic, that are now being deployed in the name of protecting Jewish citizens or our foreign policy goals with the state of Israel,” Franke said. “And that’s the cynicism of this administration. They don’t give a darn that there’s that history. They’re looking for every piece of power that they can get, every law, no matter how ugly that law may be. Even the laws that interned Japanese people during World War Two. I’m sure they would be more than happy to use those at some point.”

James Luther Adams, my mentor at Harvard Divinity School, was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 until he was arrested and deported by the Gestapo. He worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as the Confessing Church, led by dissident clergy such as Dietrich Bonhofer. Adams saw how swiftly and cravenly German universities, which like ours were considered some of the best in the world, surrendered to the dictates of fascism and self-destructed.

The theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, a close friend of Adams, was fired from his teaching post and blacklisted ten weeks after the Nazis came to power in January 1933. Tillich’s book “The Socialist Decision” was immediately banned by the Nazis. Tillich, a Lutheran pastor, along with the sociologist Karl Mannheim and the philosopher Max Horkheimer, who wrote “Eclipse of Reason” which examines the rise of authoritarianism, were branded as “enemies of the Reich,” blacklisted and forced into exile. The 1933 “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” saw all Jewish professors dismissed. The vast majority of academics cowered in fear or, as with the case of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, joined the Nazi Party, which saw him appointed as the Rector of Freiburg University.

Adams saw in the Christian Right disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi. He was the first person I heard refer to the Christian Right as “Christian fascists.” He also warned us about universities and academics which, if the country fell into authoritarianism, would debase themselves to protect their status and privileges. Few would speak out or defy authority.

“If the Nazis took over America, 60 percent of the Harvard faculty would happily begin their lectures with the Nazi salute,” he quipped.

And this is where we are. None of the liberal institutions, including the universities, the commercial media and the Democratic Party, will defend us. They will remain supine, hypocritically betray their supposed principles and commitment to democracy or willingly transform themselves into apologists for the regime. The purges and silencing of our most courageous and accomplished intellectuals, writers, artists and journalists — begun before Trump’s return to the White House — is being expedited.

Resistance will be left to us. Enemies of the state.

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April 2, 2025