[News] Israel’s Perpetual War Machine Demonstrates that Environmental Warfare is a Tool, Not a Consequence of Genocide and Settler Colonialism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Israel’s Perpetual War Machine Demonstrates that Environmental Warfare 
is a Tool, Not a Consequence of Genocide and Settler Colonialism 
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/israels-perpetual-war-machine-demonstrates-environmental-warfare-tool-not-consequence-genocide-and> 


Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright 
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright>
15 Oct 2025

Gaza 
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2025-10/13%20845x400_1.png> 


/Environmental destruction in Gaza is a calculated military strategy. By 
poisoning the land and water, Israel is ensuring a permanent and toxic 
genocide./

/“Seen from the point of view of colonial history, climate 
transformation is not the accidental and indirect consequence of 
conflict; the environment is not the collateral damage of history, but a 
tool in its arsenal of transformations, a form of government over land, 
peoples and the relation between them, the environment is one of the 
means by which colonial racism is enacted, land is grabbed, siege lines 
fortified and violence perpetuated.”/ - Shourideh C. Molavi

The zionist ethnostate’s recent pause in hostilities against the people 
of Gaza due to so-called Phase 1 of President Trump’s 20 Point Gaza 
Peace Plan has resulted in a collective sigh of relief for many the 
world over, who have observed and/or have been victims of the ongoing 
genocidal onslaught that’s pillaged an estimated 70,000 lives, including 
approximately 20,000 women and children, included the use of starvation 
as a weapon, and has reduced the Gaza Strip to rubble as critical 
infrastructure including homes, schools/universities, hospitals and 
places of worship have all been decimated by the Israel Occupying 
Force’s (IOF) war machine that has been aided, abetted, and funded by 
the United States and other Western governments.

Yet this sigh of relief cannot be considered the same thing as the 
ability to rest easy and breathe as the current ceasefire between the 
zionist ethnostate and the Palestinian Resistance is nothing more than 
an ephemeral enterprise due to the continued presence of the IOF in 
Gaza, as well as there being no reason to believe that indicted war 
criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and his henchmen of zionist zealots 
including, but not limited to, Israel Finance Minister, Bazalel 
Smotrich, and National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, have any 
intention of giving up their stated goals to complete a “Greater Israel” 
conquest that includes a final ethnic cleansing solution for Palestinian 
people in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank while rejecting any notion of 
a free and fully independent Palestinian state. And when it comes to the 
ability for the Palestinians to breathe, safely, at all, the zionist 
ethnostate’s bellicose and barbaric machinations have all but made this 
essential human function impossible for many years to come.

To this end, there are myriad reasons why Trump’s 20-point plan is 
arbitrary, capricious and, in total, illegitimate. From the fact that no 
Palestinians were even involved in drafting a plan for their future, 
thereby continuing to deny them self-determination and agency, to the 
omission of a clear determination of Palestinian statehood as the 
ultimate conclusion. Yet it's the lack of accountability and calls for 
the prosecution of actors, including but not limited to, Netanyahu, 
Donald Trump,  Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Marco Rubio, and others, for 
their roles in aiding, funding, and perpetuating myriad documented war 
crimes undertaken by the zionist ethnostate that, arguably, stands out 
the most. Yet for all the crimes including, “starvation as a method of 
warfare and intentionally directing an attack against the civilian 
population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and 
other inhumane acts from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 
2024,” <https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu> issued against the 
zionist ethnostate at the behest of Netanyahu,  crimes not included by 
the International Criminal Court, nor discussed as part of the larger 
lexicon regarding the wanton aggression against Gaza is that of 
intentional and systemic environmental warfare against the people of 
Palestine.

The use of environmental warfare as a primary tool of settler 
colonialism and genocide is nothing new - the praxis has, in fact, been 
used for centuries. Christoper Columbus and subsequent conquistadors 
from Cortez to Pizarro employed a slash, burn, and land alteration 
campaign against peoples indigenous to Turtle Island (present-day North 
America), which was accentuated by a biological warfare pogrom through 
the unintentional and intentional use of disease to wipe out and vastly 
reduce entire populations. Biological warfare was consciously utilized 
during the so-called French and Indian wars between 1754 and 1767 , 
when smallpox was also used as a biological weapon by the commander of 
Fort Pitt, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, who, under the direction of General 
Jeffery Amherst, ordered soldiers to distribute blankets that had been 
used by smallpox patients with the intent of initiating outbreaks among 
Indigenous peoples. It’s estimated that the resulting epidemic killed 
more than 50% of people in infected tribes.

As author Shourideh Moldavi notes in her book, /Environmental Warfare in 
Gaza, /“Destruction and control of environmental infrastructures has 
repeatedly moved from being a tactic of war or collateral damage, to an 
end in itself.” She continues, “Environmental infrastructure wars - 
operations that involved the systematic destruction of energy, 
sanitation, gas, oil, water, and water supplies and systems - are 
increasingly applied in the Middle East and North Africa.” Moldavi’s 
assertions are accurate, though she omits the use of environmental 
warfare in Asia by colonial powers, as well as domestic environmental 
warfare that’s been waged against domestic populations, specifically 
Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor people, in the United States for 
decades, as this article will explain.

As historian Joachim Radkau notes, “the chief problem of colonialism 
seems to have been not so much its immediate ecological consequences as 
its long-term impact, the full extent of which became apparent only 
centuries later, in the era of modern technology, and many times only 
after the colonial states had acquired their independence.” While we 
agree with Radaku’s overarching thesis, it’s also important to note that 
the full extent of environmental warfare consequences are also felt less 
than centuries later. In many cases, adverse impacts to public health 
and physical environments are surfaced and realized acutely and 
chronically sustained, which further makes the case that ecocide is a 
tool and result of genocide.

For instance, during the Vietnam War the use of chemical warfare had one 
of the most dramatic, long-lasting effects on combatants and civilians 
ever documented. The U.S. Army’s use of the dioxin-contaminated 
defoliant Agent Orange during the infamous Operation Ranch Hand 
<https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01537>, where over 19 million gallons of 
toxic herbicide was sprayed over approximately 6.4 million acres 
<https://libguides.fau.edu/vietnam-war/us-military-operation-ranch-hand> 
of South Vietnam, resulted in numerous deaths and myriad impacts to 
public health that are still being documented. When the Vietnam War 
finally ended on April 30, 1975, it left behind a landscape scarred with 
environmental damage <https://doi.org/10.1126/science.219.4589.1196> as 
vast stretches of coastal mangroves, once serving as critical habitat 
for rich stocks of fish and birds, lay in ruins. And forests that had 
boasted hundreds of species were reduced to dried-out fragments, 
overgrown with invasive grasses.

Biologist and self-described bioethicist, Professor Arthur W. Galston, 
coined the term “ecocide” at the 1970 Conference on War and National 
Responsibility in Washington, D.C. to characterize massive damage and 
destruction of ecosystems. During the conference, Gaston, who identified 
the defoliant effects of the chemicals found in Agent Orange, proposed a 
new international agreement to ban ecocide. This effort was compounded 
by Sweden’s then Prime Minister, Olof Palme, who referenced events 
occurring in Vietnam as “ecocide” during his opening speech at the 1972 
United Nations Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. The 
conference led to the development and adoption of the Stockholm 
Declaration 
<https://www.un.org/en/conferences/environment/stockholm1972>.  
Following the Vietnam War, the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of 
Discrimination of Minorities proposed adding “ecocide” to the Genocide 
Convention, and even prepared a study 
<https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/663583?ln=en&v=pdf#record-files-collapse-header> 
to make its case. The proposal was ultimately rejected in 1978 despite a 
direct request by UN Special Rapporteur on genocide, Benjamin Whitaker, 
to add ‘ecocide’ to the Genocide Convention. This rejection would have 
consequences that are felt to this day and may have also contributed to 
engendering a new tactic in the larger environmental warfare playbook as 
contemporary wars not only utilized chemicals on fauna/vegetation, but 
directly on human populations through the use of advanced weaponry that 
contain toxic chemicals, resulting in deleterious impacts to public 
health and physical environments contemporaneously.

According to a report released by the National Library of Medicine in 
2021 
<https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7903104/#:~:text=The%20US%20military%20first%20deployed,of%20DU%20weapons%20remain%20uncertain.>, 
“The US military first deployed depleted uranium (DU) weapons in Iraq 
during the Gulf War in 1990 and in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.” The 
report goes on to say, “Research funded by the U.S. government has 
denied the health risks posed by DU to the Iraqi population, while 
opponents have claimed that DU is responsible for increased rates of 
birth defects and cancers in Iraq.” And while the United States and 
other major actors who perpetuated the Iraq war, including the United 
Kingdom, deny claims that their weapons have induced chronic health 
impacts, according to a piece released in March 2025 by the outlet, 
Military.com 
<https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/03/26/study-long-term-health-environmental-consequences-of-war-evident-fallujah-today.html>, 
“For the first time ever, researchers have detected uranium in the bones 
of living Fallujah residents, high levels of lead in residents of 
previously bombarded neighborhoods, and a significant number of birth 
defects in babies born to those in the city.”

And Kali Rubaii, an assistant professor in the anthropology department 
at Purdue University, vindicated the research, noting, "What we are 
finding in the environment, in the body, is the sheer permanence of 
war's effects [and] in an interesting way, we measured that with 
numbers." Moreover, according to the same piece, a study supported by 
Brown University's /Costs of War Project,/ indicates that Fallujah's 
population has seen a 17-fold increase in birth defects and anomalies 
since 2003. Using a special bone scan known as X-ray fluorescence, or 
XRF, the researchers found uranium in the bones of 29% of study 
participants. And the scans also showed lead contamination in 100% of 
those tested, at rates 600% higher than average U.S. rates.

The U.S., of course, is no stranger to administering chemical warfare 
against its own residents. In Flint, Michigan, a majority Black city 
whose primary water sources were purposely contaminated with lead after 
a clean water supply was replaced by the contaminated Flint River. An 
act so sinister and draconian that pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, 
who brought the Flint situation to the world’s attention, proclaimed, 
“If you were going to put something in a population to keep them down 
for generations to come, it would be lead.” And the world over is aware 
of the ignominious situation in Louisiana’s /Cancer Alley, /a majority 
Black populated stretch of the state that holds this sobriquet due to 
the fact that it houses 25% of the nation’s petrochemical and oil 
refinery operations that have resulted in elevated rates and risks of 
maternal, reproductive, and newborn health harms, cancer, and 
respiratory ailments. Parts of Cancer Alley have the highest risk of 
cancer from industrial air pollution in the United States 
<https://www.hrw.org/united-states>.

But if the United States and their Western acolytes commenced the 
utilization of ecocide as part of a larger colonial conquest and 
maintenance of empire in the 1970s and early 2000s as part of a larger 
campaign of slow-genocide against its Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor 
white residents,  the zionist ethnostate has perfected a practice of 
instituting an accelerated ecocidal/genocidal matrix as part of its 
military campaigns against Palestine that irrefutably proves that the 
IOF is nothing more than a chemical warfare brigade. According to report 
E-003481 
<https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2015-003481_EN.html> 
produced by the European Parliament, “There is now enough convincing 
data to prove that Israel has repeatedly used depleted uranium 
weaponry.” The report further notes, “The lethal effects of 
radioactivity caused by explosions and subsequent fires, including 
cancer of the lungs and pleura, can persist for centuries in the 
environment and particularly in aquifers. We are therefore on the verge 
of another humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine and in particular in 
the Gaza Strip, where thousands of tons of depleted uranium bombs were 
dropped with the effects that have already been documented.”

Reporter, Samira Homerang Saunders, described the entire situation as 
“Gaza’s Toxic Biosphere,” in her piece entitled, /Environmental 
devastation and the war on Palestine / 
<https://www.redpepper.org.uk/environment-climate/environmental-justice/environmental-devastation-and-the-war-on-palestine/> provided 
the following insights into the zionist ethnostate’s concentrated and 
intentional use of ecocide as part of a larger ethnic cleansing initiative:

  * According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, within just two
    months in 2023, Israel dropped the equivalent of two nuclear bombs
    <https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5908/Israel-hits-Gaza-Strip-with-the-equivalent-of-two-nuclear-bombs>
    on Gaza, where over two million people live confined to a space half
    the size of Hiroshima. The impact of constant bombing, including the
    use of white phosphorus in Gaza and Southern Lebanon, is of an
    unprecedented magnitude;
  * In November [2023], Israeli shells incinerated 40,000 olive trees
    <https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/lebanon-says-fires-destroy-40000-olive-trees-blames-israeli-shelling-2023-11-02/#:~:text=BEIRUT%2C%20Nov%202%20(Reuters),crop%2C%20the%20agriculture%20minister%20said.>
    in Southern Lebanon. Over the previous month, its bombs burned
    through almost 3.5 million square metres
    <https://www.instagram.com/p/CzszYQTsak7/?igshid=N2ViNmM2MDRjNw==>
    of oak, lemon and banana trees, grasslands and shrublands, a
    cultural, spiritual and agricultural disaster;
  * Gaza’s water supplies are under the stringent control of the Israeli
    government, as documented and condemned repeatedly by major
    international bodies, including the UN and Amnesty International.
    Before the current attack, up to 96 per cent
    <https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/18/middleeast/gaza-water-access-supply-mapped-dg/index.html>
    of drinking water in Gaza was designated unfit for human
    consumption; and
  * When Israel cut off all supplies to the strip in October, it
    rendered all three of its desalination plants inoperable. In the
    south, where the majority of the population has been forced to flee,
    all of the water wells and sewage pumping stations have ceased
    functioning
    <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/19/diseases-spread-in-gaza-amid-water-and-sewage-crisis-cholera-feared>.
    The choice for Gazans is either death by direct military violence,
    or death by dehydration, starvation and/or disease.

The emissions generated by the zionist ethnostate’s war machine in 
itself must be qualified as an ongoing war crime. According to a 2024 
article by Philippe Pernot, “The greenhouse gas emissions generated 
during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the 
annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world's most 
climate-vulnerable nations, according to a British-American study 
<https://reporterre.net/Guerre-a-Gaza-300-000-tonnes-de-CO2-relachees-dans-l-atmosphere>,” 
which is the estimated equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tons of 
coal. Pernot also notes, “The UN further stated that Israeli 
bombardments have created 37 million tons of debris 
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-official-says-it-could-take-14-years-clear-debris-gaza-2024-04-26/>.”

To this end, many Gazans are returning to their homes after nearly two 
years of bombings and chemical warfare that rendered their lands and 
water sources into toxic cesspools, preventing them from growing and 
cultivating crops, and are now walking into open-air graveyards waiting 
for those who will later succumb to diseases and ailments ranging from 
cancer to terminal complications associated with damaged respiratory 
systems. Exposure to smoke and particulates from the debris will surely 
increase the already unacceptable and deplorable death toll at the hands 
of the zionist ethnostate. As Princeton University professor, Robert 
Jisung Park points out in his book, /Slow Burn, /“Recent research 
suggests that the hidden health costs of the smoke alone may vastly 
exceed the direct destruction and death from US wildfires,” and, “Across 
a range of studies, it is estimated that PM2.5 pollution is responsible 
for anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000 premature deaths in the United 
States alone.”

And while wildfires are certainly destructive, they pale in comparison 
to the incessant dropping of 2,000-pound bombs and munitions from tanks 
and other military equipment. Park also says that smoke both lingers in 
the air and can travel long distances, “Indeed, satellite imagery 
suggests that smoke can carry long distances: very long distances. Smoke 
plumes from fires in the Pacific Northwest can have measurable effects 
on air quality in New York or Boston.” So what does this say about how 
far the IOF’s emissions can travel - certainly as far as the Occupied 
West Bank, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and even Haifa. This is ironic, as Park 
even discusses impacts of smoke exposure in Israel, “…similarly, studies 
of Israeli students taking important exams across more polluted and less 
polluted days suggest that highly polluted days—for instance, a day with 
an [air quality index] above 100—reduces test performance by roughly 15 
percent of a standard deviation and may even affect the kinds of 
colleges that students are ultimately admitted to.” This in itself 
exposes how sadistic the zionist ethnostate is, as its willingness to 
sacrifice its own people to maintain and expand its empire mimics what 
its main financial and military backer, the United States, does to its 
own domestic population in communities like Cancer Alley and Flint to 
sustain and expand its own empire.

Policies that undermine the ability of human populations to realize 
sustainable needs from the biosphere must be seen as a fundamental 
violation of human rights because, without the ability to sustain life, 
all of the other rights- housing, food, education, and healthcare- 
become moot. To this end, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) 
indictments of Netanyahu are incomplete in that far more people, 
including IOF soldiers, such as those who recently documented themselves 
incinerating one of Gaza’s remaining sewage treatment plants 
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-idf-soldiers-set-fire-food-homes-sewage-treatment-plan-after-ceasefire-announced> 
while retreating to the so-called Yellow Line buffer zone included as 
part of Trump’s 20-point plan, must also be indicted. Moreover, the 
ICC’s current indictment makes no mention of numerous instances of 
ecocide against the Palestinian people, which runs counter to a recent 
opinion of the International Court of Justice 
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165475> that holds, “States have 
an obligation to protect the environment from greenhouse gas (GHG) 
emissions and act with due diligence and cooperation to fulfill this 
obligation.” The opinion further stipulates, “if States breach these 
obligations, they incur legal responsibility and may be required to 
cease the wrongful conduct, offer guarantees of non-repetition and make 
full reparation depending on the circumstances.” Furthermore, nation 
states that have their own ecocide laws 
<https://ecocidelaw.com/existing-ecocide-laws/> must not remain silent 
on this issue or risk being seen as tartufferous as nations like the 
United States which allow the zionist ethnostate to continue committing 
numerous crimes against humanity and the planet alike with qualified 
immunity.

The zionist ethnostate must be held to account for past, current, and 
future damage to Palestinian lands, Palestinian public health, and 
violations that are even putting its own citizens at risk.  Because, for 
all the money it will take to rebuild Gaza’s infrastructure, the amount 
of redress required for turning Palestinian lands and bodies into 
spheres of toxicity,  that will likely be felt for generations, may very 
well be unquantifiable while also rendering the very idea of 
accountability obsolete. To this end, the larger initiative of 
Palestinian Liberation cannot be realized without tribunals that lead to 
prosecutions and life sentences for perpetrators of ecocide and genocide 
not seen on this scale since the 15th and 16th centuries.

No Compromise

No Retreat

/*Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and 
environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a 
writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family 
and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member 
of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His 
radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the 
Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.*/

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