Our Wednesday News Analysis | Israel’s attack on Iran: The violent new world being born is going to horrify you

Western politicians and media are tying themselves up in knots trying to spin the impossible: presenting Israel’s unmistakable war of aggression against Iran as some kind of “defensive” move.

This time there was no rationalising pretext, as there was for Israel to inflict a genocide in Gaza following Hamas’ one-day attack on 7 October 2023.

There was not a serious attempt beforehand to concoct a bogus doomsday scenario – as there was in the months leading up to the US and UK’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Then we were lied to about Baghdad having “weapons of mass destruction” that could be launched at Europe in 45 minutes.

Rather, Iran was deep in negotiations with the United States on its nuclear enrichment programme when Israel launched its unprovoked attack last Friday.

The West has happily regurgitated claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel was forced to act because Iran was on the cusp of producing a nuclear bomb – an entirely evidence-free claim he has been making since 1992.

None of his dire warnings has ever been borne out by events.

In fact, Israel struck Iran shortly after President Donald Trump had expressed hope of reaching a nuclear agreement with Tehran, and two days before the two countries’ negotiators were due to meet again.

In late March Trump’s head of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had expressly stated as part of the US intelligence community’s annual assessment: “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khameini has not authorised a nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003.”...

Read more: Israel’s attack on Iran: The violent new world being born is going to horrify you

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SUMUD: THE UNYIELDING HEART OF THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE IN GAZA

Source: Middle East Monitor
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250621-sumud-the-unyielding-heart-of-the-palestinian-cause-in-gaza/

By Dr Ramzy Baroud
Published June 21, 2025

Hundreds of people gather to protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza on the 77th anniversary of the Nakba at Potsdamer Square in Berlin, Germany on May 17, 2025. [Halil Sağırkaya – Anadolu Agency]

The profound and unrelenting struggles endured by Palestinians should, by any rational expectation, have irrevocably concluded the Palestinian cause. Yet, the struggle for freedom in Palestine is at its zenith. How is one to explain this?

Attempts aimed at the erasure of Palestine, the Palestinian people, and their cause go back well over a century. This encompasses the historical and ongoing impacts of the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent Mandate period, which ushered in an era of extreme violence, systemic suppression, and the imposition of harsh emergency regulations.

The devastating Nakba – the catastrophic destruction of the Palestinian homeland – was followed by the enactment of new emergency laws and the widespread dispersal of several Palestinian generations into the Shattat (diaspora).

A relentless cycle of constant war, new occupations, and persistent ethnic cleansing has been further compounded by a pervasive lack of international action and sustained Arab solidarity, exacerbated by the presence of corrupt Palestinian elites.

This litany of suffering extends to countless Israeli massacres, escalating violence, the relentless expansion of settlements, widespread destruction, and the recurring demolition of homes.

The protracted Gaza siege, marked by war after war, has now culminated in the ongoing genocide.

Yet, despite this comprehensive and overwhelming accumulation of adversities, the Palestinian cause not only endures but persists with an unwavering spirit. This remarkable and enduring resilience is most profoundly understood through the concept of sumud...

Read more: Sumud: The unyielding heart of the Palestinian cause in Gaza
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ISRAEL NO LONGER HIDES ITS GENOCIDAL AIMS IN GAZA. WILL THE WORLD KEEP LOOKING AWAY?

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/israel-no-longer-hides-its-genocidal-aims-in-gaza-will-the-world-keep-looking-away/

Omar H. Rahman writes in +972 on 3 June 2025

Since Trump's return, Israel has dropped all pretenses of self-defense. But even as it evades accountability, it has cemented its legacy as a global pariah.

A Palestinian mother mourns over the body of her 15-year-old daughter Raghad Abu Amra at Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, 3 April 2025

Since October 7, Israeli cabinet ministers, political figures, military officers and media pundits have openly and endlessly incited for the destruction of Gaza and its Palestinian inhabitants. Already by December 2023, South Africa had compiled an extensive record of these statements for its submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging that Israel intended to perpetrate genocide in the Palestinian enclave.

Yet as the list of inflammatory statements grew, and the Israeli leadership refused to articulate a post-war vision that precluded this ghastly outcome, they also spoke to international audiences in terms that highlighted the narrower military aims of defeating Hamas and rescuing Israeli captives. This gave overseas supporters the cover to ignore the more extreme rhetoric.

Meanwhile, Israel continued to inflict levels of death, destruction and deprivation that could not possibly be justified by military necessity. Gaza, populated for millennia, has been reduced to rubble and ash. Residential neighborhoods, schools, universities, libraries, hospitals, businesses, and cultural and historical sites have been obliterated.

While no proper accounting is yet possible under siege conditions, at least 54,000 people are presumed dead — including 18,000 children — and hundreds of thousands wounded, with almost no medical care available. Satellite images today reveal a wasteland reminiscent of what the deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament MK Nissim Vaturi, said was the country’s “one common goal” after October 7: “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”...

Read more: Israel no longer hides its genocidal aims in Gaza. Will the world keep looking away?