by NATE BEAR

Last week Microsoft admitted providing large amounts of AI and cloud storage services to Israel during its genocide of Gaza, but said an internal investigation found no evidence the IDF “used these services to target or harm Palestinians.”

This is not a serious claim and no one should take it seriously.

Just as Nazi Germany’s crimes could not have been committed without the technology IBM provided to track, round-up and murder Jews, Romani people and the disabled, Israel’s apartheid and genocide of the Palestinians would not be possible without Microsoft.

This week it was also revealed that Microsoft disabled the email account of the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan, impeding the court’s work on executing the arrest warrant for Netanyahu and other senior Israeli leaders.

This is no surprise.

The links between Microsoft and Israel are so long, deep and extensive it can be hard to see where Microsoft ends and the Israeli state begins.

Microsoft employs more than one thousand ex-IDF soldiers and intelligence officers in its offices in Israel, and dozens of ex-IDF in its global headquarters in Redmond, Seattle, and at its offices in Miami, San Francisco, Boston and New York. My investigation, drawing on an extensive list of names provided by a source, has identified well over three hundred former Israeli intelligence personnel who are currently working at Microsoft.

Current Microsoft employees in the US who had significant roles in the IDF include:

• Jonathan Bar Or, a principal security researcher for Microsoft at its Redmond HQ. He spent six and half years in the IDF, leaving in 2015.
• Eitan Shteinberg, a senior manager working on Microsoft’s cloud platform in its downtown Bellevue office. Shteinberg is a dedicated soldier for Israel, spending over a decade in the IDF across numerous stints. He also worked for Israeli arms company Elbit.
• Roy Rubinstein, based in Boston and who leads Microsoft’s data analytics platform Fabric. He spent over nine years in the IDF ‘focused on state of the art technologies for autonomous vehicles and fast paced development for special units.’
• Joseph Berenbilt based in Pennsylvania who works on the Microsoft Azure system implicated in the genocide was ‘an operator in an elite Israeli special operations combat unit.’

The extensive collaboration between Microsoft and Israel, including its employment of at least one thousand Israelis, has been confirmed previously by Israel lobby groups. The full list of ex-IDF I’ve identified working for Microsoft in the US can be found here.

The collaboration is long-standing and over the years Microsoft has been intensely focused on expanding its links to Israel. This focus has resulted in Microsoft buying seventeen Israeli tech companies since the year 2000, all of which were founded by former intelligence officers in the IDF’s spy unit. The company spent billions on these acquisitions, and made the founders, all of whom are digital architects of apartheid, extremely rich in the process. These acquisitions also deliver billions to Israel in tax revenues, keeping an economy reliant on the IDF-to-US-tech-giant pipeline, afloat.

Microsoft’s most recent acquisition of an Israeli start-up was web tracking and analytics company Oribi in 2022, whose founder, Iris Shoor, served in Israeli intelligence from 1999 to 2001.

The full list of companies which, once again, were all founded by former IDF intelligence unit personnel, is below.

• WebAppoint – 2000
• Maximal – 2001
• Peach – 2002
• Pelican – 2003
• Whale Communications – 2006
• Gteko – 2007
• 3DV Systems – 2009
• Aorato (Advanced Threat Analytics) – 2014
• Adallom (Microsoft App Cloud Security) – 2015
• Secure Island Technologies – 2015
• Equivio – 2015
• N-trig – 2015
• Hexadite – 2017
• Cloudyn – 2017
• CyberX – 2020
• Peer5 – 2021
• Oribi – 2022

Also worth an honourable mention is Amdocs, founded in the 1980s by IDF veterans. In 2023 Amdocs signed an agreement with Microsoft to build a new platform for the telecommunications industry. Despite being a multi-billion dollar company, Amdocs is secretive and its executives rarely give interviews. One reason is its shady past. In the early 2000s the company was suspected to be spying on White House and State Department communications, operating essentially as a front for the Mossad. The suspicions were strong enough for US counterintelligence to open an investigation, but they supposedly found no evidence of spying. In any case, Amdocs will be at home working with Microsoft, the collaboration bolstering the connections between Israelis and Israeli-Americans who have served in the IDF.

Given the vast number of former IDF and Israeli spies employed by Microsoft, and given the way we know Israel has used AI and big data in both Gaza and the West Bank, the claim that Microsoft’s services haven’t harmed a single Palestinian is simply not credible.

It was recently reported that the system used by the IDF to manage the population registry and movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, called ‘Rolling Stone,’ which is integral to apartheid, is maintained by Microsoft Azure. Other reporting by +972 magazine, an independent outlet based in Israel-Palestine, found that Microsoft employees work closely with units in the Israeli army to develop products and systems, often embedding themselves within the IDF for months at a time. The same outlet also reported that Israel’s top information technology officer, Racheli Dembinsky, when presenting at a conference in Tel Aviv, described AI as providing Israel “very significant operational effectiveness” in Gaza as the logo of Microsoft Azure appeared on a large screen behind her. We also know that Israel relies on big data and AI to churn out lists of names for assassination, and we know, from the daily videos of death and destruction, and from UN bodies working in Gaza, that many of those killed by Israel have been children.

Microsoft employs large numbers of people who quite literally helped build the digital infrastructure underpinning a genocidal apartheid state. Many of these people continue their work to further the goal of ethnic cleansing and Israeli domination of the region, only now as civilians for Microsoft (although in some cases as de facto IDF, embedded in the Israel army).

Far from being harmless, these people are the architects of harm.

Microsoft has helped enable some of the worst crimes against humanity we’ve ever seen. Their claim they’ve exonerated themselves via an internal investigation is laughable and smells of a company in panic mode as the consequences begin to dawn on senior management.

Do Not Panic for more

Norman Finkelstein breaks down how Israel’s “humanitarian aid” to Gaza was a smokescreen for a massacre — a prediction he made on Piers Morgan. He explores global fallout, real left politics & AI.

In this explosive interview:

• Why the Gaza aid drops were never humanitarian
• How Israel’s actions are reshaping U.S., Europe & Arab world responses
• Finkelstein critiques identity politics and warns the real left
• Why ChatGPT is driving a wedge between him and his students

Youtube for more

by ANTANASIJEVIC ANASTAZIJA GOVEDARICA, KRSTIC JANA

Members of the Centre for Girls from Niš believe that school philosophy must not remain trapped in canons that exclude women and other marginalised authors, and that it must become a living and engaged practice of critical thinking about the contemporary world. On 7 May, they submitted a proposal to the Institute for Education Improvement requesting the introduction of gender equality themes, feminist deconstruction, and intersectionality into philosophy teaching in Serbian secondary schools.

The project itself was initiated by women philosophers who never received feminist education during their formal education. It represents a response to centuries of neglect regarding women’s contributions to philosophical thought, as well as the need to offer schools content that reflects contemporary social issues—such as gender equality, marginalisation, and the systemic invisibility of certain groups in the philosophical canon.

The project is led by Jana Krsti?, a PhD student in philosophy whom we interviewed. The team includes Jelena Joksimovi?, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, Natalija Petrovi?, Master of Philosophy, Saška Stankovi?, philosophy teacher, and Bojana Vuleti?, political scientist.

Why is it important to introduce themes of gender equality, feminist deconstruction, and intersectionality into Serbian school curricula?

The crisis in Serbia’s educational system has been in the public eye for some time. After the trajic shooting incident at the “Vladislav Ribnikar” Primary School two years ago,[1] this crisis surfaced in daily politics. Despite all the protests then, and today’s blockades and strikes by education workers, there have been virtually no changes to the education system. In fact, there have been no changes to the education system for decades, although the world we live in has changed dramatically.

Our education system needs serious reform. Research by KOMS shows that nearly two-thirds of young people do not believe they have gained relevant knowledge and skills that would prepare them for later life after completing secondary school.

When we talk about philosophy as a subject, according to the current curriculum (Official Gazette of RS 4/2020), the main goal is to develop critical thinking. However, many of the topics on which students should sharpen their critical minds are not current, leaving students unprepared to critically observe reality. The oppression of certain social groups, the history of marginalisation based on gender, class, skin colour, sexuality, and the like, as well as gender roles that do not leave much freedom for individuals in a patriarchal society, are integral parts of our everyday life.

If we aim to develop critical thinking, we cannot and must not omit all these interpretations of reality from the canon. The questions of what it means to be a woman/man and how women/men should behave and what they should do today are answered by parents, schools, media, the work environment, peers… Thus, the entire society constructs our identity by telling us what we are and what we are not, while the task of philosophy is to teach us to critically examine all of this.

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres for more

DEMOCRACY NOW

Acclaimed scholar and activist Tariq Ali joins us for a wide-ranging conversation. In Part 1, he responds to Trump’s support of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the U.S.’s capitulation to Israeli aggression in the Middle East and the rise in right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Ali says Donald Trump is “the most right-wing president in recent years” and exposes “in public what his predecessors used to say in private.”

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

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

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to renew Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, saying the Israeli military will return to, quote, “intense fighting” unless Hamas agrees to release all remaining hostages by Saturday noon. This comes after President Trump said “all hell is going to break out” if the hostages aren’t freed. Hamas has accused Israel of repeatedly violating the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Trump on Tuesday met with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House, where Trump repeated his threat to take over Gaza and displace the entire Palestinian population. Reporters questioned Trump about his Gaza proposal.

REPORTER 1: Mr. President, you said before that the U.S. would buy Gaza, and today you just said we’re not going to buy Gaza.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re not going to have to buy. We’re going to — we’re going to have Gaza. We don’t have to buy. There’s nothing to buy. We will have Gaza.

REPORTER 1: What does that mean?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: There’s no reason to buy. There is nothing to buy. It’s Gaza. It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it.

REPORTER 2: Mr. President, take it under what authority? It is sovereign territory.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Under the U.S. authority.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Trump, sitting next to a grimacing King Abdullah of Jordan, who later wrote that they will not accept the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And the president of Egypt, President Sisi, canceled his trip to the White House next week after these comments.

We’re joined now by Tariq Ali, Pakistani British historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review, author of over 50 books, including, just out, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us on this side of the pond. But I do have to ask you: Mick Jagger wrote that Rolling Stones song for you, “Street Fighting Man”?

TARIQ ALI: Yeah, he wrote it and sent it to me, a handwritten version, saying, “Could you put this in the paper? I just wrote this for you.” I edited a radical newspaper at the time. “And the BBC are refusing to play this song.” So, we did publish the song. And, of course, a few weeks later, the BBC did play it. I mean, that was a time when politics and culture, radical politics, radical culture, were very mixed up together, in a good sense.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go back to Gaza. You have President Trump doubling, doubling, tripling, quadrupling down, saying he doesn’t even have to buy Gaza, he’ll have it, he’ll take it. He’s also said, originally said, “The world’s people will be there, yes, including Palestinians,” now, “No, Palestinians have no right of return.” Your response to what’s going on there?

TARIQ ALI: It is so appalling, Amy, what is going on now. Trump said, says it in public, what his predecessors used to say in private, that, effectively, they are going to let Israel have its way, both in Gaza and, believe you me, in the West Bank. They will both be ethnically cleansed. That has been Israeli policy for decades, and now they feel they’ve had leaders in the United States. Trump is, of course, shameless and open about it. Biden did exactly the same thing. For six months, Hamas had agreed to the ceasefire plan. Netanyahu didn’t want a ceasefire, and Biden backed him.

So, one problem we have today, that the reason you have Trump is because the previous administration was so weak-willed and so weak-minded, incapable of doing anything, whereas in this very country we had Reagan, Bush, Truman calling Israel to heel when they exceeded what was considered to be decent, honorable, according to United States policies. When they refused to obey, they were called to heel. Neither Biden and now Trump calling these people, “Enough. The whole world has seen what you’re up to. Enough. We will not tolerate it.” Netanyahu threatening to break the ceasefire, and the response of the United States president is what? The response is nothing to do with the ceasefire, but “We’re going to take Gaza. We can.” The Israelis have got it for you by killing over 100,000 people. “And now we’ll do with it as we please.”

I mean, if this is the way the United States Empire is going to carry on functioning, there will be more and more — not immediately — there will be more and more resistance. If even the king of Jordan and Sisi in Egypt, who have so far backed the United States, are getting slightly scared, it’s not because they’ve changed greatly. It’s they are scared there will be an uprising in their countries. Jordan is three-quarters Palestinian anyway. And the Egyptian masses are seething. So, you have a really extremely serious situation building up in the Middle East, where they publicly, in front of everyone, want to expel the Palestinians. No cover-up. Netanyahu says, “We’re going to do it.” The U.S. president supports him.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, the famous Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said was a friend of yours. You’re write about him in your memoir. Said was prophetic in many ways in terms of his skepticism of the possibility of a two-state solution. What is your sense of how he would have responded to what’s happening today?

TARIQ ALI: Well, yeah, Edward was a very dear friend. We often discussed Palestine. And he felt, as did many others, that the only serious solution for that region was a one-state solution with equal rights for all its citizens — male, female, Jews, non-Jews, etc. — that that was the only way we could proceed, because a two-state solution had become a joke. I mean, if you look what’s been happening in Gaza for a year — an open genocide — if you see what they’re starting to do to the West Bank now, a two-state solution is impossible. No one will believe in it.

Democracy Now for more

In-Depth Interview with Tariq Ali on His New Book, “You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024”

DEMOCRACY NOW

We speak at length with Tariq Ali, Pakistani British historian, activist, filmmaker. He is an editor of the New Left Review and the author of over 50 books, including his latest, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980–2024.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

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

We continue with Part 2 of our conversation with Tariq Ali, Pakistani British historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review, author of over 50 books, including, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024. He has just come to the United States, did a big event at the Brooklyn Public Library, interviewed by our own Nermeen Shaikh, who has known him for decades.

I want to really focus on the book. I mean, your years of antiwar activism, your writing, your involvement with the arts. First, start with the title, You Can’t Please All.

TARIQ ALI: Well, it’s our life as dissidents, Amy, you know, constantly going against mainstream opinions of politics on a global and domestic scale. And this is a plea to people who, you know, think, “Maybe we should move. The world is not looking in our direction.” And it’s a message for them and many others, saying, “You can’t please all. You have to say what you want to say. Don’t try and please anyone. Just speak the truth.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, this is a sprawling memoir, over 800 pages, but about a third of the way into the book, you have a section on your family, which talks about how you became engaged in politics in your home environment. Could you talk about that a little bit?

TARIQ ALI: Well, I was very lucky. My sort of extended family was an old feudal family, pretty conservative in politics. None of them were religious extremists in any sense, but they were conservatives. And what would have happened had my parents not turned out different, I didn’t know, because that shaped my biography considerably — is that in the late ’20s and ’30s, when India was still occupied by the British, both my parents became radicals, even though they belonged to the same family. And my father joined the Communist Party in the ’30s, my mother later on. So our house was filled with two types of people: one, those related to the family, who could be chiefs of police, generals, leading politicians, etc. — usually, one had to be polite to them, though I avoided mixing in that company too much — and, secondly, trade union leaders, peasant leaders, poets, Bohemians of every sort, who were great fun and didn’t patronize us, even when we were children. And that was my parents’ milieu, politically speaking. And so I grew up in that. There was no big rebellion, as far as I was concerned, against my parents, except in the sense that they were orthodox CP members, and when I came to Oxford, I became a Trotskyist, which I think irritated them, but they took it. So, it had an effect on me.

My first meeting was attending a May Day rally in 1949 when I was under 6 years of old, and the big chant at the rally was “The Chinese are going to win.” China’s revolution was on the march, and everyone was chanting, “China will win! Long live Mao Zedong!” And, of course, sitting looking at China in 2025, it’s an obsession with the United States now and the West, because this country has taken off in a huge way and is seen now as the biggest economic rival to the United States. So, one wonders whether a military solution will be attempted there. It would be totally crazy and would lead to a world war, if some crazies from here tried it. So let’s hope they don’t and they keep the competition to an economic level. But that was my first big meeting which I attended. And those chants of the people for China still echo in my ears sometimes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering also, you spent so much of your life in the U.K. and the — probably the greatest demographic change of the 20th and early 21st century is the migration of people from the Global South to the metropolises of the colonizer nations. To what degree has Indian and Pakistani migration changed or transformed the United Kingdom?

TARIQ ALI: To a considerable extent. For one thing, Juan, when I arrived in Britain to study at university in ’63, the food was truly awful. It was so bad that it was impossible to eat. I had to teach myself how to cook. But one of the great contributions of migrants from all parts of the world, especially South Asia, but also the Caribbean, has been that the food culture of Britain has been totally transformed. I don’t think future generations, whatever the color of their skin, will be able to live without this food and revert to what was being eaten during the war years and after.

Democracy Now for more

by AMMAR ALI JAN

Now that the dust has settled after the battle between India and Pakistan – the most significant aerial conflict between the two countries to date – it is worth reflecting on its wider significance. What were its origins and how will it affect the politics of the region? The immediate trigger was the terror attack in Pahalgam carried out by Kashmiri militants in late April, in which 26 tourists were killed. The Indian government accused its Pakistani counterpart of having orchestrated the shooting. Pakistan denied the allegations and offered to launch a joint investigation, but the Indian political class was implacable, and began beating the drum for war. Pakistan’s military high command declared that the country would retaliate against any aggression, raising the possibility of nuclear confrontation. It was not long before the two sides began to exchange fire, leaving 31 dead over the next four days.

The conflict erupted on 7 May, when India fired a barrage of missiles at so-called ‘terrorist sites’ inside Pakistan. More than two dozen civilians were killed, including at least one child. Pakistan’s military responded by deploying Chinese-manufactured J10 aircraft armed with PL-15 missiles – which meant that the conflagration was, on one level at least, a test of the PRC’s military hardware against that of the West. As reports began to circulate that five Indian jets had been downed in the battle, some defence analysts remarked that the real winner of the skirmish was China.  

Both sides immediately claimed victory after this initial round of hostilities. Yet hopes of a swift negotiated settlement were dashed on 8 May, when India sent a large number of Israeli-manufactured drones into Pakistani territory. The Pakistani military claimed it had intercepted nearly all of them before they could damage civilian or military infrastructure. But the onslaught was stepped up two days later, with more Indian drones and missiles hitting densely populated civilian areas in Pakistan’s major cities. At this point the Pakistani military leadership decided to retaliate with aerial and drone strikes of its own, some of which targeted Indian airbases. Talk of nuclear escalation suddenly seemed credible, and panic began to spread. 

Accounts of what happened next are varied. One version suggests that, having thwarted India’s attempt to assert its aerial superiority, Pakistan effectively forced its neighbour to accept a ceasefire. Others claim that Pakistan was feeling cornered and signalled its readiness to use the nuclear option if the conflict persisted, which accelerated talks to end the fighting. Either way, backdoor negotiations with Washington ended up brokering a fragile peace which Donald Trump announced on social media, claiming credit for the deal. In India, critics alleged that the government had buckled under US pressure without achieving any of its war aims. In Pakistan, the atmosphere was euphoric. Many there believe that the Chinese-backed Air Force has now successfully re-established military equilibrium and undermined India’s claim to regional hegemony. 

New Left Review for more

by VIJAY PRASHAD

Israel’s attacks on Iran, backed by the US and EU, violate international law and aim to maintain regional dominance by undermining Iran’s sovereignty, despite Iran’s compliance with nuclear agreements.

Israel’s consistent attacks on Iran since 2023 have all been illegal, violations of the United Nations Charter (1945). Iran is a member state of the United Nations and is therefore a sovereign state in the international order. If Israel had a problem with Iran, there are many mechanisms mandated by international law that permit Israel to bring complaints against Iran.

Thus far, Israel has avoided these international forums because it is clear that it has no case against Iran. Allegations that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, which are constantly raised by the United States, the European Union, and Israel, have been fully investigated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and found to be unfounded. It is certainly true that Iran has a nuclear energy programme that is within the rules in place through the IAEA, and it is also true that Iran’s clerical establishment has a fatwa (religious edict) in place against the production of nuclear weapons. Despite the IAEA findings and the existence of this fatwa, the West – egged on by Israel – has accepted this irrational idea that Iran is building a nuclear weapon and that Iran is therefore a threat to the international order. Indeed, by its punctual and illegal attacks on Iran, it is Israel that is a threat to the international order.

Over the past decades, Iran has called for the establishment of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone, a strange idea coming from a country accused of wanting to build a nuclear weapon. But this idea of the nuclear free zone has been rejected by the West, largely to protect Israel, which has an illegal nuclear weapons programme. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear weapon, although it has never tested it openly nor acknowledged its existence. If Israel was so keen on eliminating any nuclear threat, it should have taken the offer for the creation of a nuclear-free zone heartily.

Neither the Europeans, who so often posture as defenders of international law, nor the United Nations leadership have publicly pushed Israel to adopt this idea because both recognize that this would require Israel, not Iran, to denuclearize. That this is an improbable situation has meant that there has been no movement from the West or from the international institutions to take this idea forward and build an international consensus to develop a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

Israel does not want to build a nuclear-free zone in the region. What Israel wants is to be the sole nuclear power in the region, and therefore to be exactly what it is – namely, the largest United States military base in the world that happens to be the home to a large civilian population. Iran has no ambition to be a nuclear power. But it has an ambition to be a sovereign state that remains committed to justice for the Palestinians. Israel has no problem with the idea of sovereignty per se, but has a problem with any state in the region that commits itself to Palestinian emancipation. If Iran normalized relations with Israel and ceased its opposition to US dominion in the region, then it is likely that Israel would end its opposition to Iran.

Israel and the United States prepared the way

In January 2020, the United States conducted an illegal assassination at Iraq’s Baghdad Airport to kill General Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Soleimani, through the Quds Force, had produced for Iran an insurance policy against further Israeli attacks on the country. The Quds Force is responsible for Iranian military operations outside the boundaries of the country, including building what is called the “Axis of Resistance” that includes the various pro-Iranian governments and non-governmental military forces. These included: Hezbollah in Lebanon, various IRGC groups in Syria that worked with Syrian militia groups, the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, several Palestinian factions in Occupied Palestine, and the Ansar Allah government in Yemen. Without its own nuclear deterrent, Iran required some way to balance the military superiority of Israel and the United States. This deterrence was created by the “Axis of Resistance”, an insurance policy that allowed Iran to let Israel know that if Israel fired at Iran, these groups would rain missiles on Tel Aviv in retaliation.

The assassination of Soleimani began a determined new political and military campaign by the United States, Israel, and their European allies to weaken Iran. Israel and the United States began to punctually strike Iranian logistical bases in Syria and Iraq to weaken Iran’s forward posture and to demoralize the Syrian and Iraqi militia groups that operated against Israeli interests. Israel began to assassinate IRGC military officers in Syria, Iran, and Iraq, a campaign of murder that began to have an impact on the IRGC and the Quds Force.

Taking advantage of its genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel, with full support from the United States and Europe, began to damage the “Axis of Resistance”, Iran’s insurance policy. Israel took its war into Lebanon, with a ruthless bombing campaign that included the assassination of the Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, 2024. This campaign, while it has not totally demolished Hezbollah, has certainly weakened it. Meanwhile, Israel began a regular bombing campaign against the Syrian military positions around Damascus and along the road to Idlib in the north. This bombing campaign, coordinated with the US military and with the US intelligence services, was designed to open the roadway for the entry of the former al-Qaeda fighters into Damascus and to overthrow the government of al-Assad on December 8, 2024. The fall of the al-Assad government dented Iran’s strength across the Levant region (from the Turkish border to the Occupied Palestinian Territory) as well as along the plains from southern Syria to the Iranian border. The consistent campaign by the United States to bomb Yemeni positions further resulted in the loss of Ansar Allah’s heavy equipment (including long-range missiles) that fundamentally threatened Israel.

What this meant was that by early 2025, the Iranian insurance policy against Israel had collapsed. Israel began its march to war, suggesting an attack on Iran was imminent. Such an attack, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows, would help him in a domestic political fight with the ultra-orthodox parties over the question of a military exemption for their communities; this will prevent his government from falling. Cynical Netanyahu is using genocide and the possibility of a horrendous war with Iran for narrow political ends. But that is not what is motivating this attack. What is motivating this attack is that Israel smells an opportunity to try to overthrow the Iranian government by force.

Peoples Dispatch for more

by DAVID NORTH

This article is an edited version of a tweet that was initially posted on X.

Last year, Chris Hedges advocated self-immolation as a way to protest the Gaza genocide. In his latest demoralized screed, he transfers blame for the crimes of the Israeli-Zionist state and capitalist imperialism to the entire human race. Gaza, he proclaims, proves the futility of any belief in the possibility of human progress.

In support of his insistence of the hopeless state of humanity, he counterpoises what Hedges claims were the pessimistic views of Auguste Blanqui to those of Hegel and Marx.

Hedges writes: “The 19th century socialist Louis-Auguste Blanqui, unlike nearly all of his contemporaries, dismissed the belief central to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, that human history is a linear progression toward equality and greater morality.”

As so often in his previous writings, Hedges demonstrates once again that he understands nothing of the philosophical foundations of Marxism and the materialist conception of history. Neither Hegel or Marx claimed that history is “a linear progression” toward paradise.

Hegel (1770-1831), who witnessed the complex and tragic fate of the French Revolution, famously described history as a “slaughter bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized.” He explained, albeit in an idealist manner, that the historic development of humanity proceeds through contradiction and conflict.

As for Marx and Engels, they wrote in the Communist Manifesto (1847) that the class struggle leads to “the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” They rejected any form of simplistic determinism. Marx and Engels explained that the contradictions of the capitalist system created the objective possibility of socialism. But its realization and the fate of humanity would be decided in struggle.

WSWS for more

by AMIR NAEEM

On 2nd May 2025, in the scorching heat of Turbat, women and children blocked the road at D-Baloch Kech, they demanded, not missing persons or natural resources but the return of missing dead bodies. The dead bodies of three young men (namely Sarbaan, Nabeel, and Zikka) were killed in a clash with Pakistani security forces in Dannuk Kech. The forces took the dead bodies with them. The families continued their resistance, rather than returning the dead bodies of young men, the police, along with other district administration, threatened the families to end the protest.

Balach Baali, brother of Sarbaan, recounted heart-wrenching scenes that unfolded.”  When we became aware of the incident, we approached the authorities and requested that they approach the Frontier Corps (FC) to hand over the dead bodies of our brothers. However, we received no assurance from the authorities. On the second day, we, along with the other families, blocked the roads at two points—Jadgal-e-Daan and Kesaak—and continued our sit-in protest.

Later that evening, a Levies Major, along with the SHO of police, arrived with prisoner vans and threatened the families to end the protest. But we insisted that the FC had not listened to us, and we were left with no option but to block the roads. We told them, “Don’t come to us—go and talk to the authorities. Ask them to hand over the bodies so we can bury them according to our customs, in our own time and place.”

That evening, no one came—not the AC, DC, police, nor anyone. However, through the death squads, they continued to threaten the protesting families. They tried to forcibly clear the roads by saying, “The FC convoy is coming, and their cars are approaching.” But the entire night passed, and no one came. The second night passed in the same way.

The civil society, the media, the representatives of all political parties, the Turbat press—none of them came during this time.

On the third evening, we decided to silently end the protest. The next morning, we offered absentee funeral prayers. We assigned symbolic graves to each one and buried their memories. 

What unfolded next was inhumane, barbaric, and unethical, The protesting families were shocked and traumatized to find out that their loved ones were buried without proper burial rituals, and even without a shroud (kafan), and that even proper funeral rites were not performed. 

The grieving families gathered  near Taleemi Chowk Graveyard,  to gather more information about their beloved people but once again the the police along with other law enforcement agencies arrived, threatened the families, tried to disperse them however the families exhumed one of the dead bodies later buried him with proper Islamic rites and Baloch customs. 

Balach recalls after some days, “we became aware that three new graves had been dug near Taleemi Chowk in Ahsan Shan Graveyard, and people had seen Zikka’s Balochi chaddar lying on one of the graves.

The families gathered at the graveyard to find out more about the new graves.

The first day, we visited the DC and informed him of the situation. We requested permission to take the dead bodies with us, so we could perform the funeral rites according to our traditions and customs. The DC promised us and asked for two days.

After two days, we visited him again, but he wasn’t in his office. We waited for him and even went to his house, but he wasn’t there either. We haven’t seen him since.

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by B. R. GOWANI

In 1909, the renowned poet Muhammad Iqbal wrote Shikwa or Complaint to Allah <1>. The poem is a lament that Allah has neglected his followers, Muslims, the very people who spread Islam and gave Him global exposure.

A couplet refers to Mahmud Ghazni <2>, an eleventh century ruler, and his “slave” Ayaz:

ek hee saf meiN khaDe ho gaye mahmud o ayAz
na koi bandA rahA aur na koi bandA-nawAz

Muhmmad Iqbal, Shikwa or The Complaint to Allah in Bang-e-Dara, Rekhta

they stood in the same row: Mahmud (the lord) and Ayaz (the slave)

(praying to Allah), no more was there distinction of master and slave

Malik Ayaz, according to Majid Sheikh, was not a slave but was a white European from Georgia who was Mahmud’s “‘lakhtay’, a Pushtun polite word for ‘boy partner.’” According to S. Jabir Raza, there have been many other nobles with the name Ayaz. Many poets and authors, including Jalaluddin Rumi, have written about Ayaz.

Anyways, proceeding forward to this 21st century, Asim Munir and Shehbaz Sharif also rule the area which was once under Mahmud’s rule. Sharif is neither “lakhtay” nor a “slave” of Munir. But nonetheless, the relationship between COAS (Chief of Army Staff) General Munir and Prime Minister Sharif is not even that of equals.

The parliamentary system of government in Pakistan officially endows the most power in the prime minister’s office and all others, including Chief of the Army Staff, work under the premier. However, since the 1950s, military has usurped the power and so the civilian governments rule at the mercy of the army — which gets a significant portion of the country’s budget, but also runs several businesses, and has overthrown and installed governments.

Between May 7 and 10, 2025, India and Pakistan went to war. Both claimed victory. Munir and Sharif thanked Allah for the “victory,” by going to Saudi Arabia in the first week of June to perform Umrah, and to pay homage to the Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or MbS.

Like in Iqbal’s couplet, Munir and Sharif in the picture above, are standing as equal in front of their Allah. But a quick analysis clearly shows the contentment and happiness on them is not equal — more correctly, it is totally missing on Sharif’s face, who seems worried and frustrated. On the other hand, Munir seems very satisfied and delighted.

What was Munir praying to Allah:

“Ya Allah, I am going to thank you but first let me thank my enemy Narendra Damodardas Modi. I am here in Saudi Arabia, at this time, because of him. It’s due to him that my reputation, that was on a downward trajectory, suddenly picked up and went so high that I have now become a hero in Pakistan. Allah, you won’t believe but I feel like a superman, I have so much power. Please Allah, don’t be scared of me — I am not like Ayub Khan <3>.

“Allah, one more thing I have to tell you. Recently, I was made field marshal and was granted the baton of field marshal by President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. I am the second field marshal, Ayub Khan was the first one. Allah, isn’t it strange that both Sharif’s and Zardari’s parties [Pakistan Muslim League (N) and Pakistan People’s Party] have suffered at the hands of the army and yet they’re giving me more prestige. I tell you, now any if these two guys try to be clever with me, I’m going to use this very baton to spank their rears. By the way, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader, Imran Khan, is already rotting in prison.

“Now Allah, before I part, I should thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

(Munir received an invitation to attend the US army’s 250th anniversary on June 14, 2025. He is going to attend King Trump’s extravaganza. He must be feeling very happy but will also be very worried because commercial-animal that Trump is, will push him to be on the US side instead on China’s side.)

What was Shehbaz praying to Allah:

“Ya Allah, what is happening in your world? Why is it that I can’t exercise my due power as a prime minister? You can see the worry on my face, I can’t even close my eyes or at least pretend to close while offering prayers. Allah, look at this guy standing next to me — he seems to be in a post orgasmic state — calm, relaxed, and satiated.

In 1959, Ayub Khan became Pakistan’s first field marshal and now Munir has become one. Everyone knows, the minute my government will try to carve our own policy, he’ll shove the baton we awarded him, up my you know what.

Allah, please guide me as to how can we get rid of him. Should we put a case of mangoes in his plane or find some other way?” Please!

Notes

<1> Several poems of Iqbal in Urdu with English translation are at Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal. Khushwant Singh, journalist and author, translated both “Complaint” and “Answer” in a book form with introduction and can be found here. See also Frances W. Pritchett critiquing Singh’s couple of stanzas.

<2> Extremist Hindus use many excuses to discriminate against Muslims. One of those excuses is Muslim invader Mehmud Ghazni’s raid of temple of Somanatha and destruction of an idol in 1026 CE But that lacks historical truth. See eminent historian Romila Thapar’s “Somanatha and Mahmud,” in Frontline magazine.

<3> In the 1960s, during military dictator Field Marshal General Ayub Khan’s rule, a joke circulated about Ayub’s love for power. On the Day of Judgement, Pakistan’s leaders lined up to see Allah. Allah would rise from his throne and pat Pakistani leaders but would not arise when Ayub Khan came. A question was raised as to why? Allah’s reply: “He would have grabbed my throne.”

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com