[News] The powerful who stand with Israel

Tue Oct 28 11:55:56 EDT 2025

peoplesdispatch.org 
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/28/the-powerful-who-stand-with-israel/> 

  The powerful who stand with Israel

Vijay Prashad
October 28, 2025
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jd-vance-netanyahu-herzog-2-1.jpg

US Vice President JD Vance meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog in Israel. Photo: US VP JD Vance/ X

On October 26, Caroline Willemen of Médecins Sans Frontières stated 
<https://al24news.dz/fr/ghaza-laide-humanitaire-continue-detre-utilisee-par-lentite-sioniste-comme-moyen-de-pression/> 
that Israel continues to use the need for humanitarian aid in Gaza as 
“means of pressure”. “The humanitarian situation in Gaza has not 
improved significantly,” she told the press, “as water and shelter 
shortages persist and hundreds of thousands of people continue to live 
in tents as winter approaches”. Israel’s armed forces have now annexed 
more than half of Gaza’s land and are dumping 
<https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/163713> vast amounts of debris 
into that zone, turning it into a mountain of garbage. To move the 
rubble without experts and equipment is very dangerous, as about ten to 
twelve percent of the Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza have not exploded.

“Every Gazan person is now living in a horrific, unmapped minefield,” 
said 
<https://www.humanity-inclusion.org.uk/en/gaza-every-gazan-person-is-now-living-in-a-horrific-unmapped-minefield> 
Nick Orr of Humanity and Inclusion, a non-governmental organization at 
work in Palestine. “The UXO [Unexploded Ordnance] is everywhere. On the 
ground, in the rubble, under the ground, everywhere”. As Palestinians 
dig through the hills of concrete, they risk triggering a dormant bomb – 
creating more casualties of the Israeli genocide.

Over the past two years, Israel hasdropped 
<https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/10/08/200000-tonnes-of-explosives-dropped-on-gaza-equivalent-to-6-nuclear-bombs/> 
at least 200,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, a tonnage equivalent to 
thirteen atom bombs of the scale dropped on Hiroshima by the United 
States on August 6, 1945. This is unimaginable, particularly given the 
fact that Palestinians have no air defense systems, no air force, and no 
ability to defend themselves from high-altitude and drone bombing or to 
strike back in any comparable way. Genocides are, by their nature, 
asymmetrical. But to describe these past two years as asymmetrical is 
obscene: this was one-directional violence, the Goliath-like Israelis 
using their immense advantages against the David-like Palestinian 
resistance.

The opaqueness of official arms transfers means we have no precise idea 
how much of this tonnage came to Israel from its major suppliers during 
the war: the United States, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. 
However, we have enough evidence to know that most of the bombs came 
from the United States, with smaller supplies from the other countries. 
A newreport 
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/a80492-gaza-genocide-collective-crime-report-special-rapporteur-situation> 
from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human 
rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, entitled 
/Gaza Genocide: a collective crime/ (October 20, 2025), makes it 
indisputably clear that the countries supplying Israel with military 
equipment, or assisting it in any way – including through diplomatic 
support – are utterly complicit in the genocide.

In other words, the obligation to abide by the UN Convention on Genocide 
is not discretionary; the duty to do what they can to stop the genocide 
is mandatory. The participation makes them wholly culpable. The report 
notes that the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza makes this 
“an internationally enabled crime”.

The level of complicity is extraordinary. Take the case of the United 
Kingdom, whose Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is a human rights lawyer 
and indeed wrote the textbook on European human rights law (1999). On 
August 6, 2025, Matt Kennardtold 
<https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/exposed-flight-path-of-secret-british> 
Palestine Deep Dive about how UK military aircraft left RAF Akrotiri in 
Cyprus and escorted an unidentified plane over Gaza. Six days later, 
Iain Overton at /UK Declassified/revealed 
<https://www.declassifieduk.org/us-flew-spy-flights-for-uk-months-before-mod-admitted-it/> 
that amongst these planes was an RAF Shadow R1 surveillance plane flying 
alongside a Beechcraft Super King Air 350 owned by the Sierra Nevada 
Corporation (from the United States) with a call sign CROOK 11. What 
were these aircraft doing? Who had sanctioned them this work? Who is 
CROOK 11?

In December 2024, Starmertold 
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/starmer-visits-gaza-spy-planes-air-base> 
troops at RAF Akrotiri: “There’s a lot of different work that goes on. 
I’m also aware that some, or quite a bit, of what goes on here can’t 
necessarily be talked about all of the time…We can’t necessarily tell 
the world what you’re doing here…because although we’re not saying it to 
the whole world for reasons that are obvious to you”. The obvious reason 
is that this is a genocide, and the UK is complicit, so they cannot talk 
about it.

The record for the United States is even more ghastly. One paragraph 
from the Special Rapporteur’s report is damning enough:

Since October 2023, the US has transferred 742 consignments of “arms and 
ammunition” (HS Code 93) and approved tens of billions in new sales. The 
Biden and Trump Administrations reduced transparency, accelerated 
transfers through repeated emergency approvals, facilitated Israeli 
access to US weapons stockpile held abroad, and authorized hundreds of 
sales just below the amount requiring congressional approval. The US has 
deployed military aircraft, special forces and surveillance drones to 
Israel, with US surveillance purportedly being used to target Hamas, 
including in the first raid on Al Shifa hospital.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC)filed 
<https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-rejects-state-israels-challenges> 
a warrant for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. Based 
on this recent UN report, the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, should be 
obliged to file warrants against Rishi Sunak, Starmer, Olaf Scholz, 
Friedrich Merz, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump – at a minimum. Anything 
less makes a mockery of the rules-based international system, namely the 
United Nations Charter.

*/Vijay Prashad/*/is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is 
a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an 
editor of//LeftWord Books/ <https://mayday.leftword.com/>/and the 
director of//Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research/ 
<https://thetricontinental.org/>/. He has written more than 20 books, 
including//The Darker Nations/ 
<https://smile.amazon.com/Darker-Nations-Peoples-History-Third/dp/1595583424/?tag=alternorg08-20>/and//The 
Poorer Nations/ 
<https://smile.amazon.com/Poorer-Nations-Possible-History-Global/dp/1781681589/?tag=alternorg08-20>/. 
His latest books are//On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and 
Struggle/ <https://thenewpress.com/books/on-cuba>/(with Noam 
Chomsky),//Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for 
Socialism/ 
<https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1869-struggle-makes-us-human>/, 
and (also with Noam Chomsky)//The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, 
and the Fragility of US Power/ 
<https://thenewpress.com/books/withdrawal>/. Chelwa and Prashad will 
publish How the International Monetary Fund is Suffocating Africa later 
this year with//Inkani Books/ <https://inkanibooks.co.za/>/./

/This article was written by//Globetrotter/ <https://globetrotter.media/>/./

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