Michael K. Smith's Blog

U.S./Israel Push Final Solution As Solidarity With Palestine Soars

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remaining in Gaza City to get out, calling it their "last chance" to save themselves before being considered Hamas terrorists and subjected to the full force of the Israeli military, which is to say they will be murdered in cold blood. Of course, any reference to "Gaza City" is by now obsolete, as what remains of that urban center is a diminishing number of doomed buildings surrounded by mountains of rubble. 

Like all the operations carried out by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank since October 8, 2023, the invocation of Hamas is simply a reflex accompanying the age-old Zionist quest to rid Palestine of its rightful inhabitants, so they can be replaced by a Jews-only state, which goal has been re-iterated to the point of tedium by Prime Minister Netanyahu, his cabinet, and Zionist leaders going back to the very beginning. One unusual note this time around is that Donald Trump and Tony Blair are apparently slated to become honorary Jews, entrusted with administrative duties for a de-populated Gaza after it has been razed to the ground by Israeli soldiers and U.S. arms.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Armed Forces forcefully terminated the Global Sumud Flotilla yesterday, an international humanitarian initiative composed of people from dozens of countries all trying to bring urgently needed food and medical aid to the people of Gaza in the face of a total blockade by Israel, which has committed similar acts of piracy in the past, even killing members of previous flotillas, the most famous of which was the Mavi Marmara. These kidnappings on the high seas are just one more indication of the impunity Israel enjoys thanks to Washington's unquestioning support of the Jewish state.

Europe has disgraced itself completely over Gaza. No European state has arrested Netanyahu when he has been in European territory, though the International Criminal Court ordered him detained back in November 2024 because of Israel's massive and ongoing crimes in Gaza. Especially shameful has been the conduct of Spain, Greece, Italy, and Turkey, whose governments committed themselves to sending warships to accompany the Flotilla, but then abandoned the humanitarian activists once they entered the high-risk zone and Israel attacked, as had been expected from the beginning. 

Waves of protest have broken out across the world at the seizure of the Flotilla, its passengers, and the continued extermination being waged in Gaza. In Italy, the country's largest union has called for an immediate general strike. 

International solidarity efforts must now re-double their strength to bring unrelenting diplomatic, political, and economic pressure on Tel Aviv, in order to force (1) an end to Israel's barbaric slaughter, (2) a return of the Flotilla hostages it has abducted on the high seas (as well as the thousands of Palestinian prisoners Israel holds in jail), and (3) prompt entrance into Gaza by the thousands of aid trucks waiting to deliver food and supplies to starving Gazans, as well as the supplies confiscated from the Flotilla.

Source:

 "Israel: Genocide and Piracy," La Jornada (Spanish), October 2, 2025

International Solidarity vs. U.S./Israeli Madness

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered all Palestinians remaining in Gaza City to get out, calling it their "last chance" to save themselves before being considered Hamas terrorists and subjected to the full force of the Israeli military, which is to say they will be murdered in cold blood. Of course, any reference to "Gaza City" is by now obsolete, as what remains of that urban center is little more than mountains of rubble. 

Like all the operations carried out by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank since October 8, 2023, the invocation of Hamas is simply a reflex accompanying the age-old Zionist quest to rid Palestine of its rightful inhabitants, so they can be replaced by a Jews-only state, which goal has been re-iterated to the point of tedium by Prime Minister Netanyahu, his cabinet, and Zionist leaders going back to the very beginning. One unusual note this time around is that Donald Trump and Tony Blair are apparently slated to become honorary Jews, entrusted with administrative duties for a de-populated Gaza after it has been razed to the ground by Israeli soldiers and U.S. arms.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Armed Forces forcefully terminated the Global Sumud Flotilla yesterday, an international humanitarian initiative composed of people from dozens of countries all trying to bring urgently needed food and medical aid to the people of Gaza in the face of a total blockade by Israel, which has committed similar acts of piracy in the past, even killing members of previous flotillas, the most famous of which was the Mavi Marmara. These kidnappings on the high seas are just one more indication of the impunity Israel enjoys thanks to Washington's unquestioning support of the Jewish state.

Europe has disgraced itself completely over Gaza. No European state has arrested Netanyahu when he has been in European territory, though the International Criminal Court ordered him detained back in November 2024 because of Israel's massive and ongoing crimes in Gaza. Especially shameful has been the conduct of Spain, Greece, Italy, and Turkey, whose governments committed themselves to sending warships to accompany the Flotilla, but then abandoned the humanitarian activists once they entered the high-risk zone and Israel attacked, as had been expected from the beginning. 

Waves of protest have broken out across the world at the seizure of the Flotilla, its passengers, and the continued extermination being waged in Gaza. In Italy, the country's largest union has called for an immediate general strike. 

International solidarity efforts must now re-double their strength to bring unrelenting diplomatic, political, and economic pressure on Tel Aviv, in order to force (1) an end to Israel's barbaric slaughter, (2) a return of the Flotilla hostages it has abducted on the high seas (as well as the thousands of Palestinian prisoners Israel holds in jail), and (3) prompt entrance into Gaza by the thousands of aid trucks waiting to deliver food and supplies to starving Gazans, as well as the supplies confiscated from the Flotilla.

Source:

 "Israel: Genocide and Piracy," La Jornada (Spanish), October 2, 2025

Democracy Stillborn: A Look Back As The United Nations Turns 80

The formation of the United Nations in 1945 was introduced to the world as international cooperation to end the scourge of war, but it was dominated by the Western imperial countries and a massive military power - the USSR, which were given veto power over decisions of the General Assembly, made up of the overwhelming majority of the nations of the world, but nevertheless a merely advisory body. To this day, the Security Council nations have exclusive control over questions of war and peace, though their members are the leading international weapons manufacturers, the United States far and away in the lead among them.

Other glaring features of the fledgling "parliament of man" included the fact that it accepted coolie labor and cheap raw materials as the basis of the world economy, redefined colonies as "dependent territories," placing them under Great Power trusteeship until they demonstrated they could govern themselves to the satisfaction of their colonizers, and denied representation to blacks, Puerto Ricans, and indigenous peoples. India had representation, but its delegation was entirely British.  

The great international body began by discarding the guarantees of the Atlantic Charter - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. At the same time, Washington announced that it would neither propose nor support a declaration of universal human rights. When the General Assembly went ahead and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights anyway (1948), including economic security as a basic entitlement, the State Department quickly dismissed it as socialist heresy, successfully lobbying to establish a divided covenant with civil and political rights split off from economic rights. Washington never ratified the Covenant guaranteeing economic security and has relegated it to inferior status ever since.

Attending the U.N.'s opening session as a spokesman for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, W. E. B. DuBois protested the continued abuse of 750 million oppressed people around the world, complaining that there was no provision "even to consider the aggression of a nation against its own colonial peoples," which meant that "at least one-fourth of the inhabitants of the world have no part in it, no democratic rights."

Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov declared it essential that "dependent countries are enabled as soon as possible to take the path of national independence." The West regarded this as a subversive sentiment. 

When Latin American delegations showed eagerness to resist continued Great Power rule, a U.S. delegate urged Nelson Rockefeller, Assistant Secretary of State For Latin American Affairs, to reign them in: "Your goddamn peanut nations aren't voting right. Go line them up."  

 

Sources: 

Lawrence Wittner, Cold War America, (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978) p. 24; David Levering Lewis W. E. B. DuBois: - The Fight For Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 (Henry Holt and Co. , 2000) pps. 503-10, Diane Shaver Clemens, Yalta (Oxford, 1970) pps. 217, 240-3, Noam Chomsky Towards A New Cold War, (Pantheon,1982) p. 373n. Edward Herman, "Immiseration and Human Rights," Z Magazine, April 1995

Growing Public Pressure Isolates Israel and the U.S. As Global Pariahs

Days ago the governments of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and Portugal recognized Palestine as a state in response to growing international disgust with the U.S. and Israel as enthusiastic promoters of Palestinian mass slaughter. The political significance of the development is indicated by the fact that the British and Canadian governments are part of the group of the six most industrialized Western governments, and both, along with Australia and New Zealand, are members of the first circle of strategic allies with whom Washington cooperates in intelligence matters and shares top secret information, an Anglo-sphere spy alliance officially designated Five Eyes that does not even obey the laws of its own member countries according to Edward Snowden. The fact that even these high achievers in lawlessness cannot abide Israel's conduct shows that international support for the Jewish state has collapsed.

Obviously, the recognition of Palestine by these Western countries is more a face saving gesture than a genuine effort to end the wholesale massacre in progress in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but it would not have occurred at all absent the growing public pressure against Israel's extermination campaign. While Canada, Great Britain, and Australia recognized Israel in 1949 and Portugal did in 1977, none of them had been willing to grant similar recognition to Palestine, in spite of the fact that since 1974 the U.N. established Palestinian rights to self-determination, independence, and national sovereignty, as well as their right to return to homes and properties from which they had been forcibly uprooted.  

International outrage is at fever pitch, not only because of Israel's extermination campaign in Gaza, but also due to its ferocious and unjustified attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Qatar, Yemen, and the West Bank. Obviously, Israel will continue to attack whenever and wherever and whomever it likes as long as it enjoys Washington's backing, which state of affairs is finally being recognized by nearly everyone as the principal threat to world peace.

Though a diplomatic defeat for Israel, the declarations of "recognition" of a non-existent Palestinian state do nothing to stop the ongoing strafing and bombing of a deliberately starved people, carried out not in secret but right in front of the world's eyes for nearly two full years now, with no end in sight. The idea that a genocidal Jewish state awash in the instruments of mass murder can live in peace and security side by side with a "sovereign" state it openly despises and will never stop trying to eliminate, is quite frankly preposterous. 

Just as apartheid South Africa was eliminated only due to world pressure, Israel's Holy Apartheid will be eliminated only when there is overwhelming international pressure determined to make that happen. 

Symbolic gestures by fearful politicians attempting to appease the wrath of public opinion accomplish nothing. 

 

Source:  "Great Britain, Canada, Australia and Portugal Recognize Palestinian State," La Jornada (Spanish), September 22, 2025

It Is A Poor Service To Charlie Kirk's Memory To Go Against His Clear Advocacy of Free Speech

 "Employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people, you need to look at people who are saying horrible things and they shouldn't be working with you. . . . . We can prosecute you . . . "

 

-----Attorney General Pam Bondi

"Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment."

 

 -----Charlie Kirk

 

Source:

Trump AG THREATENS Kirk 'Hate Speech' CRACKDOWN, Breaking Points, September 16, 2025

It Is A Poor Service To Charlie Kirk's Memory To Violate His Clear Advocacy of Free Speech

 "Employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people, you need to look at people who are saying horrible things and they shouldn't be working with you. . . . . We can prosecute you . . . "

 

-----Attorney General Pam Bondi

"Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment."

 

 -----Charlie Kirk

 

Source:

Trump AG THREATENS Kirk 'Hate Speech' CRACKDOWN, Breaking Points, September 16, 2025

It Is A Poor Service To Charlie Kirk's Memory To Violate One Of His Central Tenets

 "Employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people, you need to look at people who are saying horrible things and they shouldn't be working with you. . . . . We can prosecute you . . . "

 

-----Attorney General Pam Bondi

"Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment."

 

 -----Charlie Kirk

Source:

Trump AG THREATENS Kirk 'Hate Speech' CRACKDOWN, Breaking Points, September 16, 2025

Charlie Kirk and the Tsunami of U.S. Political Violence

Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was shot to death yesterday during a speaking engagement at a university in Utah. A single shot to the neck by a sniper ended the life of the 31-year-old, whose two little children will now have to grow up without him.

Kirk was considered by President Trump to be the most influential public figure in the country among young men, a key constituency that helped him win the 2024 presidential elections.

At the very moment of being assassinated, Kirk was discussing American gun ownership, and specifically blaming trans people for "too many" mass shootings, though trans perpetrators have been responsible for only a handful of mass shootings in the last decade, while just in 2024 there were over 500 mass shootings in the United States. While it is certainly fair to say even one mass shooting is too many, it's not fair to portray trans people as more murderously violent than other groups.

Public figures all along the ideological spectrum condemned Kirk's murder, which is just the latest in a growing trail of political violence in the U.S., including attempts on the life of President Trump, the attempted assassination of ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, an arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's home, and the murder of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman.

Ex-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, victim of a shot to the head that put an end to her career in 2011, urged people to not let the U.S. become a country that attempts to resolve through violence political conflict that is inherent to democracy.

Gifford's naive message, though well-intentioned, comes far too late in the game. For not only is the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," in the words of Martin Luther King Junior, but it was actually founded on the mass extermination of dozens of native peoples and the attempted erasure of their cultural imprint, an effort that is not at all ancient history. As recently as 1970 the forced sterilization of Indian women was still practiced in the United States.

After having murdered and displaced the original inhabitants of the Eastern half of what is today known as the continental U.S., the Euro-American colonists invaded and plundered Mexico, permanently seizing half of its national territory. Upon discovering gold in conquered California, they put a bounty on every murdered Indian's head, a clear invitation to the rapid eradication of Indian peoples that followed. 

After having achieved what very well may be the most thorough mass extermination in history within its violently-established borders, Washington took its mass murder campaigns to the rest of the world, killing millions of Koreans and Vietnamese to prevent any possibility of these peoples becoming self-governing, hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan Indians in order to hand over their land to the United Fruit Company, more than a million Iraqis and perhaps a quarter million Afghans in fulfillment of neo-con geopolitical designs, as well as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (with additional millions exiled) to preserve Jewish supremacy in Palestine.

Add to this bitter but very partial U.S. legacy the many other countries invaded by Washington over the years, plus the wide network of bloody dictators it has maintained in power for decades, in addition to two atomic bombings of Japanese civilians in three days, and one sees that the idea that we have only recently descended into political violence is sheer absurdity.

Unless Charlie Kirk's death turns out not to have been politically motivated, it can only realistically be seen as a microscopic part of a vastly larger problem: the national commitment to murder as an expression of righteous violence, routinely practiced by all administrations and endlessly celebrated in U.S. movies, songs, news coverage, political speeches, and school textbooks. 

"The Boomerang of Violence," La Jornada (Spanish), September 11, 2025

 

In the U.S.A. Domination Is An Art Form

"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. . . . One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country . . . 

"How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled-out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scarce by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices."

 

----Howard Zinn, "A People's History of the United States," pps. 632, 634

International Solidarity Surges, Seeks To End Gaza Siege

 "Governments have failed and the people have to step up."

------solidarity activist with the Global Sumud Flotilla

 

After being briefly held-up by bad weather, a flotilla of dozens of boats and hundreds of solidarity activists representing forty-four countries has resumed its voyage to Gaza intending to break Tel Aviv's blockade of the strip, currently the scene of a deliberate famine orchestrated by the Jewish state, on top of ongoing bombings that have released the equivalent of eight Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on the tiny enclave.

A striking feature of this peaceful, humanitarian initiative, named the Global Sumud Flotilla, is the fact that it constitutes the broadest gesture of solidarity with the Gazan population yet seen, as well as  the widest repudiation of the U.S.-Israeli massacre and expulsion campaign, the latter shamelessly proclaiming its intention to seize the land and resources of the area, even if it means walking over piles of dead Gazans to do so. 

 This is not the first attempt to break the blockade imposed by Tel Aviv; on various occasions groups like Open Arms, World Central Kitchen, and the Flotilla of Liberty sent ships loaded with aid for the Gazan population, but in each case the activist crews were kidnapped on the high seas by the Israeli Navy and prevented from arriving at their destination.

What distinguishes the current attempt from previous ones is the large number of ships and people involved, as well as the mass demonstrations of solidarity that have greeted the Flotilla in various Mediterranean ports along the route.

It is truly shameful that this initiative has had to be organized by civil society, as apart from Yemen, no government has dared to directly confront Israel over its wholesale barbarism, not even just enough to let the Gazan population receive desperately needed food and medicine. 

Labor solidarity is proving itself a crucial part of the emerging resistance to the vile U.S.-Israel extermination effort. In Genoa, Italy, for example, Riccardo Rudino, representative of port and dock workers there, recently issued this warning: "It has to be clear to everyone. In mid-September the boats will be approaching the Gaza Strip, in the critical zone. If for just twenty minutes we lose contact with the boats, with our solidarity comrades, we will blockade all of Europe . . . not one nail will ship from here. We will institute an international strike; we will close the roads and schools." 

Meanwhile, at least eighty-five more Gazans were killed yesterday, including five children looking for water in al Mawasi, a supposed safe zone. 

"We wake up to bombings and find the majority of our neighbors dead," said resident Sanaa al Dremili.

It's up to us to end this nightmare.

Sources:

"Gaza: Demanding Humanity," La Jornada (Spanish), September 1, 2025

"Israel Calls Up 60,000 Reservists To Reinforce its Gaza Offensive," La Jornada (Spanish), September 3, 2025

"Maritime Workers Threaten To Paralyze Europe if Anything Happens to the Humanitarian Flotilla," La Jornada (Spanish), September 3, 2025

"Israel Threatens Greta With Hard Prison Time As New Gaza Flotilla Sets Sail," Due Dissidence, September 3, 2025