Russia doubled its diamond exports to India in August, according to data from India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, as cited by RIA Novosti.
Russia’s diamond exports to India surged to $31.3 million in August, more than double the $13.4 million recorded in August 2024.
However, the total volume of Russian diamond supplies to India decreased by nearly 40%, reaching $342.1 million, in the first eight months of this year. The largest supplier of the precious gems to India in August was the UAE ($685 million), followed by Hong Kong ($173.1 million) and the US ($140.3 million), according to the data.
Russia is the world’s largest producer of rough diamonds and has historically been one of the key suppliers for India’s giant cutting and polishing industries.
However, Western sanctions against Russia’s diamond trade and its biggest mining company, Alrosa, have affected Indian industry.
European Union and G7 countries have restricted direct imports of non-industrial diamonds which have been mined, processed, or produced in Russia since January 2024.
The ban was later extended to diamonds that were cut and polished in third countries but originated in Russia.
In addition, the Indian diamond industry is facing challenges from a 50% tariff imposed by the US on cut and polished diamonds. This levy includes a 25% punitive tariff as a penalty for the country purchasing Russian oil, in addition to a 25% reciprocal tariff imposed on goods from India after New Delhi and Washington were unable to reach a trade agreement in August.
The US remains India’s largest export market for gems and jewelry products. In August, the US partially relaxed the restrictions, introducing a temporary waiver allowing limited imports of certain Russian diamonds before September 1, 2026.
The restrictions on Russian gems, coupled with slow demand for diamond jewelry globally, have disrupted the Indian cutting and polishing industries, which employ thousands.
According to the Gem and Jewelry Exports Promotion Council (GJEPC), the gross exports of cut and polished diamonds during April-June 2025 stood at around $2.8 billion, reflecting a decline of almost 23% compared to the same period last year.
US Soldiers with Joint Task Force–Southern Border near the US-Mexico border in New Mexico (US Army photo by Sgt. Griffin Payne)
By Dave DeCamp
According to NBC News, the Trump administration is considering going through with the plan even if the Mexican government objects
The Trump administration has begun developing detailed plans to send US troops and intelligence officers into Mexico to target cartels in operations that would include drone strikes, NBC News reported on Monday, citing current and former US officials.
The report said that US military personnel have already begun training for the potential mission, though a deployment is not imminent. Many of the troops would come from Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and would operate under the authority of US intelligence agencies, with involvement from CIA officers.
Unlike the current US bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the waters of Latin America, which the Trump administration is conducting without legal authority, the idea of the campaign in Mexico would be to keep it secret and not publicize attacks.
The NBC report said the administration wanted to operate in coordination with the Mexican government but was also considering conducting the campaign without Mexico’s approval, which would mark a significant violation of the country’s sovereignty. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has increased law enforcement cooperation with the US and has allowed the CIA to ramp up surveillance flights along the border, but she has repeatedly ruled out US military intervention in her country.
“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military,” Sheinbaum said in August. “We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out.”
The Mexican leader has also condemned US strikes on boats in the region, saying she “doesn’t agree” with the policy. The US recently bombed several alleged drug vessels in the Eastern Pacific, and in one case, the Mexican Navy had to rescue a survivor.
The Trump administration has not provided any evidence to back up its claims that the boats it has been targeting were carrying drugs and has admitted to Congress that it doesn’t know the identities of the people it has killed. Since the bombing campaign began on September 2, the US military has extra-judicially executed 64 people at sea.
The strikes on boats and the push toward regime change in Venezuela have come under increasing scrutiny from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress due to the lack of transparency and lack of legal authority.
“People were very frustrated in the information that was being provided. It was a bipartisan briefing, but people were not happy with the level information that was provided, and certainly the level of legal justification that was provided,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said after a briefing on the military campaign.
The NBC report signals that the potential US bombing campaign in Mexico, which would target alleged cartel targets, would have even less transparency since the idea is to do it in secret.
In response to the report, a senior administration official told NBC, “The Trump administration is committed to utilizing an all-of-government approach to address the threats cartels pose to American citizens.”
By Daniel Boguslaw
The FBI’s growing list of domestic threats has mutated in recent years to include every conceivable affiliation of Americans across the political spectrum: right-wing violent extremists, left-wing violent extremists, black identity extremists, and animal rights extremists. The current administration has even added nihilistic violent extremists—those who “believe in nothing”—to the laundry list. The Biden administration, for its part, aided in this exercise by vastly overstating the threat posed by Trump-aligned conservatives in the wake of January 6th. But neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have ever grandstanded about another significant threat group that the FBI secretly monitors on U.S. soil: Israeli Based Organized Crime Syndicates, or “IBOCS”.
Leaked FBI records and court filings detail widespread money laundering, taxpayer theft, and drug smuggling enterprises operated in the U.S. by Israeli citizens connected or belonging to Israeli crime groups. Despite the trickle of prosecutions over the past 25 years, the FBI has never publicly disclosed the fact that it has designated resources allocated to investigating these criminal organizations.
A 2020 FBI intelligence report from the “Blue Leaks” hack conducted by the hacker group Anonymous and archived by the nonprofit DDoSecrets describes IBOCS operating in Nevada and Florida embezzling money from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). IBOCS “have defrauded US Government relief programs and manipulated tax documents since at least 2015 to reduce tax liability and conceal money laundering activities, as well as have access to companies and agents, which are necessary to process PPP loan applications,” the report found.
The report also lists instances of IBOCS committing both disaster relief and tax fraud, and notes that IBOCS are involved in money laundering, extortion, illegal gambling, fraud, and narcotics trafficking in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, according to FBI investigations.
As far back as 2009, leaked State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks detail one of the reasons why criminals belonging to or associated with Israeli crime families and syndicates have been able to operate inside America with ease: The State Department is not authorized to block their visas. The cables warn of the Israeli mafia taking on a growing role in the American trade of ecstasy, and of the loophole which prevents U.S. embassies from automatically denying Israeli crime figures travel documents.
While the State Department has formalized powers in its foreign affairs manual to restrict visas for Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, the Italian mafia, the Hells Angels biker gangs, Outlaws, Bandidos, Mongols and two dozen Latin American gangs including Tren de Aragua, Israeli organized crime groups remain absent more than a decade after the State Department cable first warned of the Israeli mafia loophole.
“Given the volume of travel and trade between the United States and Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli OC [organized crime] has also gained a foothold in America,” one cable reads. “The consular section has revoked several visas for those who have been convicted of crimes in Israel, but many OC figures have no prior criminal convictions and carry no visa ineligibilities. As a result, many hold valid nonimmigrant visas to the United States and have traveled freely or attempted to travel for a variety of purposes.”
A former FBI special agent who worked on investigations involving IBOCS told The American Conservative, “There is real Israeli organized crime in this country, and there is a formalized FBI program for investigating these groups,” adding that “they look for the success of other criminals and then try to build a better model on those.”
He also said, “Once you move beyond that and your target becomes more sophisticated, they are presumed to be intelligence operatives and operatives of the Israeli government and then that gets moved highside in the national security division.”
A sentencing letter for an international narcotics smuggling case prosecuted in the Southern District of New York hints at this reality, referencing the IBOCS designation in connection to an international ecstasy smuggling conspiracy:
“The defendant engaged in internationally laundering narcotics proceeds as part of an Israel-based organized crime syndicate. In addition to his demonstrated ability to launder drug money across borders, he also possessed ample global connections in in the narcotics trade and access to narcotics themselves.”
A second former FBI agent pointed to the recent west coast indictment of “a suspected high-level member of an Israeli transnational organized crime group” running an illegal poker game in Hollywood. “It’s no secret that politics inevitably shapes enforcement priorities,” the agent said, explaining why the bureau has never highlighted its IBOCS enforcement. “This has not been a popular thing to wave around in the press, which is why you see a steady stream of prosecutions related to Israeli crime figures without the same discussion of organization that you might have with cartels or gangs.”
So politically unpopular is criticism of illegal activities by Israelis that repeated espionage efforts have been swept under the rug, or at the very least, restricted from public view. In 2019, POLITICO reported that intelligence officials suspected that Israel was behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices planted around the White House and in other locations in Washington D.C. According to the report, the Israelis were not sanctioned with a formal reprimand from the State Department.
Another potential reason for the lack of visibility on IBOCS is the changing face of Israeli politics and the increasing proximity of organized crime figures to the ruling Likud party. Ten Likud officials chose to spend the Jewish holiday of Sukkot with convicted mobster Rafi Chaim-Kedoshim this year. In the past, members of Israel’s mafia families elected to parliament on the Likud line have attempted to use their positions to quash investigations in organized crime. The FBI did not respond to The American Conservative’s request for comment about the current status of the Bureau’s IBOCS investigations.
US War Department officials don’t know the identities of the 61 people who have been extra-judicially executed in US military strikes on boats in the waters near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, POLITICO reported on Thursday, citing House Democrats who attended a classified briefing on the campaign.
“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to smuggling,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”
While the Trump administration has cited overdose deaths in the US related to fentanyl to justify the bombing campaign, lawmakers were told in the briefing that the boats that have been targeted were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Pentagon has not provided evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels were carrying.
“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” Jacobs said.
The briefing on Thursday came after the Pentagon shut out Democrats from another briefing it held with Republicans a day earlier, which left Democratic senators fuming. Democrats who attended Thursday’s briefing said Pentagon lawyers were pulled from the meeting at the last minute.
“Am I leaving satisfied? Absolutely not. And the last word that I gave to the admiral was, ‘I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the peril you are putting our troops in,’” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told reporters after the briefing, according to CNN.
Jacobs said that, based on what she was told, even if Congress authorized the bombing campaign, it would still be illegal. “[T]here’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” she said.
Criticism of the US bombing campaign has also come from Republicans, most prominently from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said this week of the people who have been targeted. “They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public … so it’s wrong.”
Paul has joined Senate Democrats in introducing a War Powers Resolution aimed at preventing the Trump administration from starting a war with Venezuela amid threats of US strikes on the country aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro and a major US military buildup in the region. A vote on the bill is expected to happen next week.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Donal Wales. (File photo)
Press TV
The co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has faced backlash from contributors after personally deciding to block editing of the platform’s “Gaza genocide” page.
Wales intervened on Sunday to block editors from modifying the article, claiming without evidence that the page and its introduction reflect an “anti-Israel bias.”
The introduction of the page currently states: “This article is about the ongoing genocide by Israel in Gaza.”
It defines the “Gaza genocide” as “the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war.”
In a recent update posted on the article’s discussion page, Wales said he had been asked about the entry during a media interview.
He stated that his response was that the article does not comply with “Wikipedia’s neutrality standards” and therefore requires immediate review.
The intervention has angered many Wikipedia editors. One accused Wales of yielding to “political pressure and asking us to betray scholarship.”
Another editor remarked, “There is also an ‘ongoing controversy’ over whether mRNA vaccines cause ‘turbo cancer’ and whether [Donald] Trump actually won the 2020 Presidential election. Do you want us to be bold and go edit those articles as well?”
A veteran contributor added, “I have been editing in the [Israel/Palestine] area for just over 20 years, and [as far as I know] there has never been as much external attention on Wikipedia’s coverage of this topic as now. Much of it negative, from pro-Israeli commentators, X, blogs, you name it … Wales says ‘the neutrality of this article is disputed, and there are very good reasons for that.’ Could [he] please tell us one or two of these good reasons?”
Amid the backlash, Wales insisted that he was not denying that genocide is taking place. “My argument is that it is not the job of Wikipedia to adjudicate the issue.”
At present, the “Gaza genocide” article on Wikipedia is marked as “protected” until 21:47 UTC on November 4, 2025.
The United Nations, major international organizations, and the broader international community have characterized Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal.
In September, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) stated that Israel’s war in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide.
Israel also faces an open case for Gaza genocide in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
During Israel’s two-year genocidal war on Gaza, the regime killed 68,858 Palestinians, wounding 170,664 others, the majority of them women and children.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro waving next to Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow on May 8, 2025. (Photo by AFP)
Press TV
China says its partnership with Venezuela is “sovereign” and not directed at any third party, following reports that Caracas has asked allies for military equipment amid heightened tensions with the United States.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Tuesday that cooperation between Beijing and Caracas “does not target any third party” and “is not subject to disruption or influence from any third party.”
Mao made the remarks at a press briefing after being asked about reports that Venezuela is seeking missiles, drones, and other military equipment from China, Russia, and Iran to deter possible US military aggression.
Referring to the United States’ recent military operations in the Caribbean, Mao said China “stands against moves that undermine peace and stability in Latin America and the Caribbean” and opposes “unilateral and excessive enforcement operations against other countries’ vessels.”
She said that Beijing “has a clear-cut stance on the US cracking down on so-called drug cartels by force in the Caribbean Sea.”
China supports international cooperation to combat cross-border crime, Mao said, adding that law-enforcement must be conducted through “bilateral and multilateral legal frameworks,” not unilateral force.
She also warned US against turning Latin America into “a stage for hegemonic power plays.”
Washington has stepped up military deployments in the Caribbean under the guise of counter-narcotics mission, sending warships, aircraft, and special-operation forces close to the Venezuelan territory.
While US officials frame the moves as security operations, governments across Latin America warn the buildup resembles preparations for coercive regime-change efforts, citing recent US strikes on boats accused of drug activity and rising rhetoric against the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
US President Donald Trump, however, has played down the prospect of a direct war with Venezuela while threatening that Maduro’s “days are numbered.”
Trump has accused the Venezuelan leader of drug trafficking without presenting evidence. Maduro, in turn, says Washington is using narcotics allegations as a pretext to pursue regime change and seize control of Venezuela’s oil wealth.
There was a time when the white coat symbolized courage. It meant that a physician stood between humanity and harm, guided not by decree but by conscience. We earned our knowledge through humility, not hierarchy; our oaths through suffering, not signatures. Somewhere along the way, that covenant was broken. Medicine ceased to be a vocation of service and became a system of obedience.
The quiet transformation began long before the pandemic. It crept in under the banners of efficiency, safety, and scientific consensus. Hospitals turned into bureaucracies, universities into funding machines, and physicians into employees of invisible masters. The doctor’s sacred question — “What is best for this patient?” — was replaced by the bureaucrat’s: “Is this permitted?”
The public never saw the chains being forged. To the outside world, the physician still appeared sovereign, standing tall in the light of reason. But inside the institutions, we felt the tightening leash. Grants dictated thought, algorithms replaced judgment, and the art of healing was coded into a billing system. By the time the world noticed, the transformation was nearly complete.
The Capture of Science
The 20th century brought miracles — antibiotics, imaging, organ transplants — yet every triumph deepened dependence on the machinery that funded it. Regulatory agencies that were meant to protect the public became revolving doors for the industries they governed. Academic journals ceased to be marketplaces of ideas and became gatekeepers of ideology. The phrase “follow the science” came to mean “follow the approved version.”
The great irony is that censorship in our time did not require bonfires; it required algorithms. Search engines and social platforms quietly learned to decide what truths were permissible. A paper could be erased not by rebuttal but by invisibility. A career could end not in scandal but in silence. The most dangerous heresy was not being wrong — it was being early.
Within this apparatus, obedience became the new professionalism. Medical students were trained not to think but to comply. Residency programs rewarded deference. Institutional review boards stifled curiosity under the guise of safety. The result was a generation of clinicians fluent in protocol but illiterate in courage.
The Pandemic as Revelation
When 2020 arrived, the system finally revealed its true form. A global emergency provided the perfect justification for control. Bureaucrats issued treatment decrees from offices far from the bedside. Editors, administrators, and social-media executives decided what constituted “acceptable science.”
Doctors who tried to treat patients with inexpensive, well-known medications were condemned as dangerous. Data were suppressed, autopsies discouraged, and dissenters decredentialed. Those who refused to stay silent discovered that the punishment for compassion was exile.
The moral injury inflicted during those years will echo for decades. We watched patients die alone because policy demanded it. We were told to prioritize compliance over conscience, metrics over mercy. And yet, in that darkness, something ancient stirred — the physician’s instinct to heal, even when forbidden.
That defiance was the beginning of the Great Medical Awakening.
The Moral Cost of Compliance
Every act of compliance has a moral cost. In ordinary times, it is measured in bureaucracy; in crisis, in blood. Many physicians, trapped by fear, told themselves they were protecting patients by following orders. But medicine divorced from conscience becomes cruelty by protocol.
To obey an unjust rule is easy; to live with the memory of obedience is not. The sleepless nights that followed were not due to exhaustion but to shame. We realized that the burnout so often diagnosed in clinicians was, in truth, the body’s revolt against moral betrayal.
Healing began with confession. Physicians spoke to one another not about treatment regimens but about guilt — about the patient they could not save because policy forbade it, the truth they could not publish because it threatened funding. From those quiet conversations emerged something radical: forgiveness. Only by acknowledging complicity could we begin to restore integrity.
The Rise of the Independent Physician
Every captured system eventually gives birth to its resistance. Around the world, doctors who refused to bow began creating new networks — small at first, then global. They built clinics that treated patients according to evidence and ethics, not directives. They founded journals that would publish suppressed research. They formed alliances devoted not to profit but to principle.
The Independent Medical Alliance and similar groups became sanctuaries for conscience. They reminded physicians that the right to heal does not come from institutions; it comes from the oath we swore to life itself. These doctors were mocked, censored, and punished — yet each attempt to destroy them only proved their point.
Patients, sensing authenticity, followed. Trust migrated away from logos and toward names. When people realized that some of the most persecuted physicians were the ones who had actually saved lives, the narrative began to crack.
The independent physician is not an ideologue. He is the return of the original doctor: empirical, compassionate, unafraid. He treats patients, not populations; listens more than he lectures; doubts more than he declares. In his defiance lies medicine’s redemption.
Unlearning Obedience
Freedom in medicine is not a political slogan; it is a psychological transformation. To rebuild the profession, we first had to unlearn obedience. Generations of hierarchy had conditioned us to conflate humility with silence. The attending’s word was law, the guideline a commandment. To question was to risk career suicide.
But healing demands discernment, not deference. Real humility means recognizing truth even when it contradicts authority. The new physician does not mistake consensus for correctness. He understands that integrity sometimes requires isolation.
This process of unlearning is neither comfortable nor quick. It requires facing the truth that we — not “they” — surrendered our autonomy. No institution could have enslaved us without our participation. Once that realization dawns, freedom becomes irreversible.
The Science They Tried to Bury
The pandemic years accelerated an old pattern: the burial of inconvenient science. Early treatment data, nutritional studies, and discussions of natural immunity were not disproven — they were suppressed. Researchers who produced results that threatened corporate or political interests found their papers retracted or their reputations smeared.
But truth is resilient. When journals closed their doors, independent platforms opened theirs. When algorithms censored, physicians found encrypted channels to share data. An underground network of researchers began verifying one another’s findings, conducting real-world studies without institutional permission.
Many of the ideas once dismissed as “misinformation” are now quietly acknowledged as accurate. The establishment’s effort to control reality backfired: it taught a generation of clinicians how to practice science without permission.
Healing the Healers
The emotional wounds of this era run deep. The damage was not only clinical but spiritual. Many of us had to confront the unbearable truth that we had been part of a system that harmed those we meant to heal. The recovery from that realization required not new protocols but new honesty.
We began meeting in small groups — no PowerPoints, no administrators — simply to tell the truth. Out of those gatherings grew something medicine had forgotten: empathy among physicians. We learned to listen to each other’s confessions without judgment, to transform guilt into wisdom.
This is how the profession will regenerate — not through institutional reform, but through moral renewal. To heal the healer is to remind him that medicine is not a career but a covenant. Once that memory returns, no bureaucrat can command it away.
Medicine Beyond the Algorithm
Technology, too, must be reclaimed. Artificial intelligence promises efficiency but risks replacing judgment. The algorithm knows data but not compassion; it can predict death but not understand suffering. When programmed by bureaucracies, it becomes a new form of tyranny — the digital supervisor of every clinical decision.
Yet the same technology, guided by conscience, can serve liberation. AI can democratize research, reveal corruption, and free physicians from clerical drudgery. The difference lies in governance: who writes the code, and with what values.
Medicine beyond the algorithm does not reject progress; it redefines it. Machines should assist, never absolve. The most advanced intelligence on Earth remains the conscience of a free physician.
The Ethics of Freedom
Freedom is not a luxury of medicine; it is its foundation. Without autonomy, healing becomes administration. The rediscovery of freedom begins with honesty — the willingness to tell patients the whole truth even when it contradicts official policy.
True ethics cannot be delegated to committees. Real ethics lives in the space between two human beings deciding, together, what risks are worth taking. Every act of informed consent is an act of civilization; every act of coercion is its undoing.
The pandemic revealed how easily ethics can be replaced by enforcement. But it also revealed how powerful individual conscience can be when it refuses to yield. The awakened physician now understands that moral responsibility cannot be outsourced. To practice medicine ethically is to guard freedom itself.
Building the Parallel Future
While the old institutions decay, a parallel system is quietly being built. Independent clinics, transparent journals, decentralized trials, and cross-border alliances are emerging everywhere. They are the mycelial network beneath the rotting tree of captured medicine — flexible, alive, and unstoppable.
In these spaces, research is open-source, data belong to patients, and dialogue is sacred. Young physicians are learning from mentors who teach integrity before protocol. The conferences of this movement hum with energy — the thrill of rediscovered purpose.
Economically, the model is cooperation over competition. Physicians share resources, patients invest in their own care, and communities fund research that serves them directly. Medicine is returning to its original economy: trust.
The establishment can no longer ignore this reality. It tries to mimic the authenticity it once mocked, but sincerity cannot be faked. The parallel system is not utopian; it is functional because it is moral. It reminds us that care can exist without coercion, and that science flourishes when freed from ownership.
The Covenant Renewed
Every generation of healers inherits a covenant — an unwritten vow that the first loyalty of a physician is to truth and to the life before him. During the age of submission, that covenant was violated. But covenants, unlike contracts, do not expire; they wait to be remembered.
The Great Medical Awakening is that remembrance. It is the moment when thousands of doctors around the world decided that integrity matters more than institutional approval. It is the collective vow that no system will again stand between the healer and the healed.
Renewal does not come through anger but through love — love for the patient, for truth, for the sacred act of healing itself. To practice medicine in freedom is to pray with one’s hands. And as those hands return to their true purpose, the profession begins to heal the world that once silenced it.
The Meaning of the Awakening
The Great Medical Awakening is not a manifesto or a movement; it is a moral correction. It is medicine rediscovering its soul. It asks every clinician, researcher, and citizen to confront a single question: Will we serve truth, or will we serve comfort?
History will remember this era not for its censorship, but for its courage — for the physicians who refused to bow, the patients who refused to be silenced, and the alliances that rose from exile to rebuild science in daylight.
The Trump-Netanyahu “Peace” for Gaza does not conform to international law and does not augur well for sustainable regional and international peace and reconciliation.
The Trump-Netanyahu construct is incompatible with the UN Charter and with the erga omnes obligation of all UN member States to ensure the enforcement of Security Council Resolutions, including Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967,[1] which ordered the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied Palestine territory.
The only hope for durable peace in the Middle East lies in the implementation of the concrete, pragmatic Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice of July 9, 2004,[2] July 19, 2024,[3] and October 22, 2025,[4] the implementation of the final report of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry,[5] submitted to the Human Rights Council on September 16, 2025, and the implementation of the detailed reports of UN Special Rapporteurs on Palestine John Dugard, Richard Falk, Michael Lynk and Francesca Albanese.[6]
There cannot be a “separate” peace settlement for the Middle East that ignores binding United Nations pronouncements. It would not only be illegal, but it would be illegitimate. A “fait accompli” does not create international law. It only manifests the lack of effective enforcement mechanisms in the United Nations system.
Accepting the Trump-Netanyahu dictate would entail abandoning the whole body of international law and the international order established at the end of the Second World War. It would mean venturing on the slippery road to World War III.
The United Nations bears particular responsibility for what happens in the Middle East, because it was the mid-wife that facilitated the emergence of a new State called “Israel” and failed to ensure the emergence of a second State called “Palestine.”
The UN could have done it, if the right impulse had come from the great powers. It could have been possible in the early years, before the many wars and the growing hostility between Muslims and Jews.
But what is the United Nations but its member States with all their competing values, conflicting interests and endemic contradictions? Over the past 80 years there have not been great visionaries or leaders. All have watched the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, without adopting concrete measures to prevent the genocide and punish the perpetrators.
Admittedly, some academics did anticipate and condemn the crimes, and there have been dozens of General Assembly and Security Council resolutions but, in the absence of enforcement of international law, genocide has become the “new normal.”
In many ways the United Nations is responsible for the existence of the State of Israel, which emerged from a Zionist project that was already anachronistic when conceived, and which is fundamentally at odds with the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Although rooted in the Jewish experience of persecution in Europe and Jews’ historical attachment to the Holy Land, the Zionist experiment belongs in the imperialist and colonial mentality of the end of the 19th century and the idea that Europeans could settle in other parts of the world and displace the local populations. This latter mindset is responsible for endless wars of decolonization in Africa and Asia and for the unending saga of the Palestinian tragedy.
The establishment of the State of Israel, an Apartheid State for Jews,[7] where other ethnic groups did not enjoy the same rights, was only possible because of the enormity of the Holocaust and the solidarity that the world felt for the Jewish survivors. Solidarity and empathy were legitimate, but should not have been implemented at the expense of the native Palestinians.
The irony of history is that the State of Israel, which emerged from the Holocaust, would soon become a practitioner of ethnic cleansing and genocide, that the horror that Jews endured during the Second World War would be visited upon the Palestinians, who had no responsibility for the Nazi crimes.
[…]
The international community knows from experience over the past 80 years: Israel has waged war on all of its neighbors and, thus, has demonstrated in practice that it is not “a peace-loving State.” It has engaged in countless aggressions against Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, thereby violating the Principles and Purposes of the UN Charter.
This open rebellion against the UN Charter and international law would justify the expulsion of Israel from membership, as envisaged in Article 6 of the Charter, which stipulates: “A Member of the United Nations who has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”
Here lies the problem of UN inefficacy: the structural inability to enforce its decisions, because of the frequent abuse of the “veto” power by the Permanent members of the Security Council. We observe that the Security Council does not always act within its terms of reference laid down in Article 24 of the Charter, and allows the five permanent members to act contrary to the purposes of the organization, which are to promote peace, development and human rights.
[…]
It is a disgrace that a State like the United States can abuse the veto power to shield Israel from accountability, to veto resolutions calling for a cease-fire, and to veto resolutions providing for the recognition of Palestine as a member State of the organization.
Under normal circumstances, the Security Council would be expected to ensure the implementation of the Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice, but the United States blocks enforcement action against Israel and, thus, becomes complicit in the genocide.
[…]
Trump-Netanyahu “Peace Agreement”
Navi Pillay, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Chairperson of the International Independent Commission on Palestine, stated that the so-called Trump-Netanyahu “Peace Agreement” breaches international law.[12]
This commission of inquiry was established in 2021 and its 72-page report to the Human Rights Council concluded that Israel had committed genocide.[13] In her comments about U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, Pillay said “Israel has committed genocide and is continuing to do so….The conclusions of the commission still stand.”
[…]
While we accept the partial cease-fire as a first step toward justice and peace, the priority now must be to ensure that humanitarian assistance enters Gaza and the Occupied Territories immediately and in sufficient amounts, and that the recipients can safely access this humanitarian assistance.
Under no circumstances should it be administered by the United States or by the pseudo-NGO Gaza Humanitarian Foundation[14]–it should only be distributed by a UN agency like UNRWA,[15] the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine.
In an interview in September 2025 Philippe Lazzarini, Assistant Secretary General, UNRWA Chief and former head of communications at the International Committee of the Red Cross, referred to this so-called foundation as mercenary, whose employees are highly paid former soldiers who come to Gaza to carry out supposed humanitarian activities without knowing what humanitarian work is.
The goal of this foundation was to force the Palestinian population in the north and center of the Gaza Strip to go south to get food. The number of local distribution centers went down from 400 to just a few, forcing the most vulnerable to move.
The end of the daily massacres does not erase the genocide already perpetrated and does not end the genocide—the dying—because of the long-term sequels and trauma. A true peace agreement must be crafted that recognizes that genocide has occurred and there must be accountability. Whatever peace agreement is eventually crafted, it must vindicate international law, international human rights law and international humanitarian law. It is impossible to turn the page, call for tabula rasa and go back to “business as usual.”
Genocide is not “business as usual”—it is the ultimate crime, and any State, government, or individual complicit in it must be held to account.
Thus, the arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Minister of War Yoav Gallant must be followed by the indictment of many other Israeli officials and military, as the International Military Tribunal for Nuremberg indicted 22 German leaders and six Nazi organizations.
Seven Nuremberg Principles were formally adopted by the General Assembly and the International Law Commission in 1950. These principles apply to the Israeli leadership as well.
Enforcement
Enforcement is key to the authority and credibility of any institution, including the United Nations, which has steadily lost authority because judgments and advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice, arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court, and Resolutions of the Security Council and General Assembly have been violated with total impunity.
Why was the genocide possible? Because governments and the media have created a manufactured perception of who are the victims and who are the perpetrators. Because we are surrounded by fake news, fake history and fake law, massive public relations and relentless propaganda have turned the victims into terrorists, and the perpetrators of genocide into leaders entitled to the right of self-defense.
The media have whitewashed Israeli Apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and daily atrocities and humiliations committed against the Palestinians. The Western media dehumanized the Palestinians, not unlike the Nazis dehumanized the Poles, the Czechs, and the Jews. The Western media disseminate a manufactured image of Israel as a country under the rule of law, as the only democracy in the Middle East.
In the conflict with the native population, the Palestinians are depicted as terrorists, while the Israelis are celebrated as good democrats.
The conditio sine qua non for the State of Palestine, for a return of the Palestinians to their homes in Gaza and in the Occupied Territories is a gradual but thorough change of mindset. Governments and the public must acknowledge the enormous crime committed against the Palestinians over the past 80 years.
Since October 2023, we have been witnessing the ongoing genocide, made possible only because of the media brain-washing, the inversion of roles: Israelis as victims; Palestinians as barbarians.
Back in 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in his book Why We Can’t Wait that “our country was born in genocide”—meaning not the Afro-Americans, the slaves and the discriminated and humiliated blacks—what he meant was the first Nations of the American continent, the Algonquins, Crees, Cherokees, Dakotas, Iroquois, Mohawks, Sioux.
Tough words about our own American history—but true.
I have heard UN colleagues say that “Israel was born in Terrorism”—with reference to the countless terrorist acts by the new colonizers, the settlers that expelled the native Palestinians from their olive orchards, destroyed their houses, forced them into exile.
This, however, is not perceived by everybody, because of the hijacking of the mainstream media by the globalists and the public relations and propaganda campaigns of the “collective West.” In a very real sense, we are surrounded by fake law, fake history and fake law…
Concrete Actions Today
What can be done today to save the Palestinians and to reaffirm the continued validity of the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and international law? Here are a few scenarios:
Expel Israel under Article 6 of the UN Charter. Even if the U.S. vetoes Israel’s expulsion in the Security Council, a strong message will be sent.
Alternatively, the General Assembly could withdraw the accreditation of Israeli diplomats, as was done in 1974 with the diplomats of the then Apartheid South African regime.[16]
The General Assembly should adopt a Uniting for Peace Resolution, which would allow the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect[17] doctrine – specifically to protect the Palestinians from further depredations by Israel. The R2P doctrine is enshrined in General Assembly Resolution 60/1, paragraphs 138 and 139.[18]
The General Assembly should call on member states immediately to stop all military and economic relations with Israel—and impose a total arms embargo.
The General Assembly should call on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction within their territorial jurisdiction and arrest any Israeli military or official linked to the genocide against the Palestinians.
The international community should cooperate in ensuring the enforcement of the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
A key role in this process is played by the International Municipal BRICS Forum (IMBRICS Forum).
From October 29 to 31, St. Petersburg hosted the IMBRICS Forum, bringing together leading representatives of municipalities and businesses from more than 70 countries. This year’s event was unprecedented, as it was held jointly with the Russian Industrialist exhibition — combining the needs of cities with the capabilities of industry.
Participants shared experiences and development strategies, explored industrial solutions for smart cities, housing and utilities, and environmental management. The forum became a platform for direct networking between municipalities and industrial enterprises.
The Russian Industrialist exhibition amplified the IMBRICS Forum by giving entrepreneurs an opportunity to establish direct contacts, discuss investments, and sign agreements directly linked to urban development needs.
The St. Petersburg forum clearly demonstrated that the future of BRICS+ cities lies in the symbiosis of advanced governance and industrial potential — where global ideas turn into real progress. The IMBRICS Forum showcased how collaboration between municipalities and industrial innovators can create a prosperous future.
Trump’s Gaza reconstruction plan envisions rebuilding only within areas under Israeli control in the strip
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are pushing back against US President Donald Trump’s plan to construct roughly half a dozen residential regions on the eastern half of Gaza, which is currently under Israeli control, The Times of Israelreported on 2 November.
Citing two Arab diplomats familiar with the matter, The Times of Israel said that Trump and his real estate developer son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have proposed the plan to donors in the Gulf to build the “new Gaza” on the eastern side of the strip only, which is now under direct Israeli control.
Following the 11 October ceasefire agreement, Israeli forces withdrew to the east of a “Yellow Line” drawn up during the negotiations to divide Gaza into two parts. Hamas remains in control of the territory to the west of the line.
The partial withdrawal leaves Israeli forces in direct control of at least 53 percent of Gaza.
Trump’s plan to build residential areas in the Israeli-controlled east of Gaza reportedly envisions the Israeli army “gradually withdrawing to the other side of the Gaza border and leaving the Strip altogether,” The Times of Israel wrote.
However, such a withdrawal is conditioned on the establishment of an International Stabilization Force (ISF) for postwar Gaza, and the disarmament of the Hamas.
“With those two conditions for continued Israeli withdrawal so difficult to meet, the US is not waiting to begin the reconstruction process,” The Times of Israel added.
The US wants the international force to deploy to the west of the Yellow Line, the area remaining under Hamas control.
Washington also wants its Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to pay for the force.
However, the diplomats stated that the wealthy Gulf states are pushing back on the plan, as are Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Turkiye, and Egypt, who are expected to provide troops.
These nations are reluctant to assist Washington without a clear UN mandate or agreement with Hamas to hand over its weapons, the two Arab diplomats said. They also want to first deploy their forces on the east of the line to replace Israeli troops.
This information aligns with a previous Israel Hayom report, which revealed that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE had warned the US administration that they would not take part in Gaza’s reconstruction unless Washington enforced the ceasefire terms on Hamas and ensured the group’s disarmament.
Israel is also backing four militias as part of a project to oust Hamas and create a “new Gaza,” according to a report released by Sky News on 25 October.
These armed groups – which throughout the war have been engaged in hostilities against Hamas on behalf of Israel – are currently operating along the Yellow Line of Washington’s ceasefire map, in Israeli-held territory.
Jared Kushner stated he wishes to begin building on the Israeli side of the Yellow Line, in particular on the ruins of the destroyed city of Rafah in the south of the strip on the Egyptian border.
“The US proposal envisions as many as one million Palestinians — around half of Gaza’s population — moving to the residential areas on the Israel-held side of the Yellow Line,” The Times of Israel stated.
Kushner plans to complete the construction of these areas within two years, even if Israeli forces have not withdrawn by then, the two diplomats briefed on the plan stated. Both Arab diplomats concluded the timeline was “highly unrealistic.”
“Palestinians may not want to live under the rule of Hamas, but the idea that they’ll be willing to move to live under Israeli occupation and be under control of the party they also see as responsible for killing 70,000 of their brethren is fantastical,” one of the Arab diplomats said.
Additionally, there is no guarantee Palestinians would be allowed to return and live in the new housing developments. If Israeli forces remain in control of the area, Tel Aviv could decide to house Jewish Israeli settlers in the newly built neighborhoods instead, leaving Palestinians to languish in tents on the other side of the line.
One diplomat stated the Trump White House plans to sponsor a UN Security Council resolution to establish the international security force later this month, possibly before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visits the White House for talks on the future of Gaza on 18 November.
Kushner and Vice President JD Vance previously stated the US and Israel are considering a plan to divide Gaza into separate zones, one controlled by Israel and one by Hamas, with reconstruction only taking place on the Israeli side until Hamas is disarmed and dissolved.
Vance and Kushner summarized the plan during a press conference in Israel on 22 October, explaining that no funds for reconstruction would go to areas that remain under Hamas’s control.
“There are considerations happening now in the area that the [Israeli army] controls, as long as that can be secured, to start the construction as a new Gaza in order to give the Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live,” Kushner said.
Kushner is seeking to “create an environment that would be safe for the billions of dollars in investment needed to rebuild,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) commented.
“White House officials said Kushner is the driving force behind the split-reconstruction plan, having devised it alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff,” the WSJ said.
The financial newspaper added that with time, Israel could take more territory in Gaza from Hamas, and try to replicate what it has done in the occupied West Bank, with Israel taking complete security control while “forcing Gazans into small, unconnected areas of control.”
“Gaza has represented the only patch of territorial contiguity for a Palestinian state,” explained Tahani Mustafa, a fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“A plan like this could end up creating what Palestinians feared.”
US Soldiers with Joint Task Force–Southern Border near the US-Mexico border in New Mexico (US Army photo by Sgt. Griffin Payne)
(Photo credit: EPA)
The Most Revolutionary Act 