Hague group conference

The Hague Group, a coalition of 30 nations, met in Bogotá this week to deliberate a series of initiatives to restrain Israel’s crimes in accordance with international law, chaired by Colombia and South Africa. Of these 30, 12 have committed to implementing six measures:

Prevent the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment, and dual-use items to Israel…

Prevent the transit, docking, and servicing of vessels at any port…. in all cases where there is a clear risk of the vessel being used to carry arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment, and dual-use items to Israel

Prevent the carriage of arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment, and dual-use items to Israel on vessels bearing our flag… and ensure full accountability, including de-flagging, for non-compliance with this prohibition.

Commence an urgent review of all public contracts, to prevent public institutions and funds from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory and entrenching its unlawful presence.

Comply with obligations to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes under international law, through robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes.

Support universal jurisdiction mandates, as and where applicable in national legal frameworks and judiciaries, to ensure justice for victims of international crimes committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

These are stringent and robust provisions, but are directed at a state—Israel—which has shown total disregard for international law, which has been shielded against all repercussions by its master—the United States.

A question lingers: how? How will these measures be enforced? How will this assembly of nations bring its righteous fury down upon Israel? The vast majority of Israel’s trade—and weapons—flows from the West, non-participants in the Hague Group: the United States, Canada, Europe. Unless these shipments stop, the genocide will not. Absent from the Hague Group is the political power to enact their will.

The truth is that political power flows from the barrel of a gun—and it is the Yemeni people who have long since taken up the gun; Ansar Allah has fired dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel since October 7th, has sent cargo vessels carrying munitions bound for Israel to the bottom of the Red Sea, has stood defiant in the face of US bombing campaigns, with the explicit intent of punishing Israeli peridy and ending the genocide—this is what we would call concrete.

It is prescient that South Africa is co-chair of the Hague Group; in the last decades of Apartheid, South Africa too was subject to a campaign of isolation, sanctions—and this did contribute to the end of Apartheid—but the death blow was delivered by the masses of South Africa themselves. It is now as it was then; only a mass movement, militant, willing and eager to do what must be done, by any means necessary, can end the genocide, end the Israeli occupation of the whole of Palestine, and cleanse the scourge of imperialism from the world.

Gaza Food Aid Massacres

For over four months, Israel has blocked the entry of critical humanitarian aid from entering Gaza—food, baby formula, medicine, and fuel. With supplies dwindling comes the loss of power to sustain the remaining hospitals, sanitation and water facilities, transportation, bakeries, and kitchens; the world is witnessing the forced starvation of 2 million people in Gaza, while enough food to feed the population is ready to enter, but standing in the way are the Israeli Occupation Forces and Israeli settlers.

Gaza once had 400 aid distribution sites; there now remain just four, run by the US-backed “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), patrolled by the IOF and US mercenaries. Malnourished Palestinians not only risk death from starvation, but when they attempt to attain food for their families, they are butchered by Israeli gunfire and explosives. When the World Food Program managed to enter Gaza with 25 trucks of food aid, the crowds that gathered were met with Israeli tanks and snipers that went on a massacring spree.

Since May, nearly 1,000 Palestinians seeking aid at or near a GHF distribution site have been slaughtered, including those waving white flags as they walk toward the militarized sites. An IOF soldier shared in an interview that they target those who shift from the designated route or “get too close” to them, attempting to portray the starved and desperate as a threat to their safety, also mentioning that “mistakes happen” to explain the massacres.

A starving Palestinian being shot in the head while trying to reach food to save themselves and their families is no accident. The deliberate starvation of the people of Gaza, alongside the deliberate slaughter of people desperately seeking food aid, is the demonstrated policy of the US-Israel war machine. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Syria

Last week, Israeli bombs struck the Syrian capital of Damascus. Dropping bombs on the capital city of a sovereign country with impunity is nothing new for the US-Israel war machine. Syria now stands alongside Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen as countries that have had their capital cities bombed by Israel in the last 2 months. The Israeli spin doctors are claiming that they are carrying out an intervention in Syria in defense of the Druze religious minority, a bald-faced lie disproven by studying a single day of Israel’s genocide on the people of Gaza. What Israel is doing, with the full backing of the United States, is systematically carrying out the destruction of the Syrian state, ensuring that it remains a quisling to US-Israel domination in the region. For decades, Israel has illegally occupied the Syrian Golan Heights, and Israel took advantage of the Syrian civil war to further sow chaos, including intervening on behalf of ISIS. Following the HTS takeover of Syria, Israel expanded its occupation of parts of Syria (uncontested by the HTS government), and carried out a wave of airstrikes targeting the Syrian military, destroying much of the Syrian Navy and Air Force.

The collapse of Syria’s Assad government and the rise of the HTS government, headed by former Syrian Al Qaeda leader Ahmed al-Shara, has seen a dramatic uptick in sectarian violence. The new Syrian government has either encouraged this violence or proved itself unable to stop it, all while continuing to prostrate itself before the US, Israel, and Europe. The western imperialists, who were all too eager to celebrate the exile of Assad and dress al-Shara in European suits, have given Israel the green light to carve up Syria, as they are attempting to do in Lebanon and carrying out in the West Bank. All of this intervention sets the stage for more sectarian violence, more destabilization, more starvation, the conditions that the US-Israel war machine will take advantage of for additional interventions, including settlements and annexations, serving the longstanding Zionist dream of a “greater Israel”, increasingly the policy of the US imperialists as well.

Los Angeles Troops

The US Pentagon withdrew 2,000 California National Guard troops, half of those deployed in June, from Los Angeles, where they had been sent to quell the righteous uprising against the mass deportation machine. The deployment of the California National Guard, alongside 700 US Marines as a domestic law enforcement agency by the Trump government, was both a show of force and intimidation against immigrants, and a fearful reaction to the militant mass resistance of people of LA. With Trump’s gestapo ICE thugs making an example out of LA’s massive Latino immigrant population (which, of course, has every right to be there, papers or not) California’s liberal leadership alternated between collaboration (deploying the LAPD and sheriffs to support the ICE goons and repress protests) and making bombastic statements and filing do-nothing lawsuits.

The National Guard deployment is a deep stain on anyone who participated in it and didn’t quit. While most of their activity seemed to be restricted to milling around in front of a few federal buildings, Guard troops were present at the made-for-TV federal invasion of MacArthur Park, and the raid at the Glass House cannabis farm. That raid, where hundreds of people defiantly confronted the invasion, resulted in the critical injury and ultimate death of Jaime Alanis, a 57-year-old farmworker. The New York Times reported on the widespread disenchantment of Guard troops, with troops describing the moral injury of participating, and calling it “fake mission.” That report indicates that some guardsmembers quit, sought deployment elsewhere, and even shit inside military vehicles as an act of protest. However, to our knowledge, none took the courageous stand of publicly quitting.

Palestinian American Murdered by Israeli Settlers

After months of Israel’s campaign to ethnically cleanse Gaza, which has since extended into the West Bank, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) continues to commit atrocities that defy even the most basic standards of morality. On July 11th, Sayfollah Musallet, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American, was brutally beaten to death by Israeli settlers near the West Bank village of Sinjil.

Born in Florida, Musallet spent much of his childhood in Palestine. He had been living in Tampa and was working at his father’s ice cream shop. Just shy of his 21st birthday, Musallet went back to Palestine. This trip offered a chance to reconnect with family, friends, and his homeland—but it ended in tragedy. On the day of the attack, over two dozen masked settlers descended on the surrounding area. Musallet was brutally beaten, nearing the point of death. Once the settlers finally dispersed, his family managed to reach him and put him in an ambulance.

For three hours, settlers, alongside Israeli soldiers, blocked the vehicle’s path, deliberately preventing Musallet from getting the life-saving care he needed. Musallet died en route—his death not just the result of violence, but of an intentional denial of life-saving care.​​​​​​​

Israeli settlers have long waged a systematic campaign of terror—​​​​​​​targeting farms, villages, and towns; tormenting Palestinians, burning homes, and destroying farmland—​​​​​​​in attacks that often turn deadly. According to the United Nations, there have been 757 settler attacks on Palestinians since January 2025, resulting in nearly 1,000 murders, which is an increase of 13 percent over 2024. Musallet is the fifth American to be murdered in the West Bank at the hands of the settlers since the genocide in Gaza began.

Despite thousands of well-documented attacks, Israeli settlers are rarely prosecuted. Rather, Palestinians continue to face the full weight of punishment; whether it be at the hands of the defunct Israeli “legal” system, which routinely denies access to lawyers, a trial, or the most basic of human rights, or at the hands of the increasingly violent Israeli settlers, often protected and enabled by the IOF.

US Ambassador, Mike Huckabee, issued a statement on Twitter/X, “There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act”. It is rare to hear any semblance of truth leave the hole on Mike Huckabee’s face that some would call a mouth. Settler violence against Palestinians is terrorism. But the hypocrisy of this statement coming from a United States government official needs little elaboration; for an American citizen to be murdered abroad while their own government funds, arms, and shields the perpetrators, underscores the true definition of a terrorist act. While U.S. officials call for “investigations,” we know what that means—either a cover-up by Israeli authorities or the familiar claim that it was all a “misunderstanding.” For the past 21 months, the US-Israeli war machine has operated in lockstep. And Musallet’s death is not an anomaly; it is a consequence of that alliance.