The line peddled by Western politicians and media outlets is that the US and Israel had to go to war because Iran was just weeks or months from developing nuclear weapons. 
<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iran-produce-nuclear-weapon-couple-weeks-white-house/story?id=123016638">The White House claimed</a> that Iran could have produced a nuclear weapon “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iran-produce-nuclear-weapon-couple-weeks-white-house/story?id=123016638">in a couple of weeks</a>”. Financial Times correspondents <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/46c60c82-7e5c-4013-a789-459e785d33fd">John Paul Rathbone and Charles Clover warned</a> of “the nuclear mountain that haunts Israel”. And Australian Defence Minister <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/defence-minister-richard-marles-stumbles-over-policy-gap-between-australiaus-in-iranisrael-conflict/news-story/5bf8bf19b4005ac6f1afc989a814dd9a">Richard Marles asserted</a>: <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/defence-minister-richard-marles-stumbles-over-policy-gap-between-australiaus-in-iranisrael-conflict/news-story/5bf8bf19b4005ac6f1afc989a814dd9a">“T</a>he Iranian nuclear ballistic missile program is most definitely a threat to the peace and stability of not only the Middle East”.
The problem is that there is no evidence to support these claims, which have been repeated for more than 40 years by war hawks. 
As early as 1984, shortly after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, British defence journal <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/iran-has-been-two-years-away-from-a-nuclear-bomb-since-the-1980s/389333/">Jane’s Defence Weekly reported</a>: “Iran is engaged in the production of an atomic bomb, likely to be ready within two years”. Timelines have varied since then, but the claim has stayed the same. In 1992, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/6/18/the-history-of-netanyahus-rhetoric-on-irans-nuclear-ambitions">Benjamin Netanyahu asserted</a> that Iran was three to five years away from a nuclear weapon, a claim he repeated three years later, and again in 2002. 
In 2012, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/6/18/the-history-of-netanyahus-rhetoric-on-irans-nuclear-ambitions">Netanyahu displayed a cartoon picture of a bomb</a> in front of the United Nations general assembly while claiming that Iran would be in the final stage of weapons development “at most by next summer”. Somehow, Iran has managed to bend the rules of time, being just a few months or years away from going nuclear for almost half a century.
Intelligence agencies themselves have reached different positions. 
<a href="https://archive.md/kbqyy#selection-355.0-361.59">A 2007 US national intelligence estimate</a>, touted by the director of national intelligence as the “most authoritative written judgments on national security issues”, concluded with “high confidence” that Iran had been trying to develop nuclear weapons, but ceased its program in 2003. It went on to admit: “Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005”.
Just three months ago, current US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, <a href="https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/congressional-testimonies/congressional-testimonies-2025/4061-ata-hpsci-opening-statement-as-delivered">in her opening remarks</a> at a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, included the evaluation: “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003”.
This isn’t an intelligence failure. The Western ruling classes are manufacturing consent for a major war against a rival state in the Middle East by lying. In some ways, it’s a repeat of the Bush administration’s strategy in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Iraq, according to Western politicians and journalists at the time, had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbP8HGxrgo8">US President George W. Bush</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/mar/18/foreignpolicy.iraq1">British PM Tony Blair</a>
and <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/what-led-john-howard-to-invade-iraq-the-question-remains-shrouded-in-mystery/3p4hsqleo">Australian PM John Howard</a> peddled claims that Iraq had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons and was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.
There was no evidence to support these claims. In the months before the US invaded in March 2003, UN inspectors in Iraq found nothing. <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/disarming-saddam-chronology-iraq-and-un-weapons-inspections-2002-2003">The Arms Control Association later noted</a>: 
“UN weapons inspectors worked in Iraq from November 27, 2002 until March 18, 2003. During that time, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspections Commission conducted more than 900 inspections at more than 500 sites. The inspectors did not find that Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons or that it had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.”
This didn’t matter to Bush and his allies, who were determined to invade and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050629021102/http:/downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html">A July 2002 memo from the British Prime Minister’s office</a>, leaked to the press three years later, showed that a great hoax was being perpetrated:
“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [the US National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record.”
Over the next decade, up to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24547256">half a million Iraqis</a>
were killed either directly or indirectly, as a result of the invasion, occupation and destruction of the country.
Two powers operating in the Middle East are known to have weapons of mass destruction and the willingness to use them: Israel and the United States.
Although Tel Aviv doesn’t publicly acknowledge its existence, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal">Israel’s nuclear weapons program is an open secret</a>. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons estimates that Israel has between <a href="https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals">90 and 200 warheads</a>. Israel is one of four nuclear powers that are not signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (the others being India, Pakistan and North Korea), which means that there is no monitoring of its nuclear program.
Israel is also believed to have extensive <a href="https://www.nti.org/countries/israel/">chemical and biological weapons</a>
programs. <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/lebanon-evidence-of-israels-unlawful-use-of-white-phosphorus-in-southern-lebanon-as-cross-border-hostilities-escalate/">Amnesty International reported</a> on the military’s use of white phosphorus, a horrific chemical that burns flesh down to the bone, on civilian areas of Lebanon in October 2023. The group called for Israel to be investigated for war crimes. But this wasn’t the first time Israel had used chemical weapons—<a href="https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/white-phosphorus-in-urban-environments">it did so in the 2008-09 war on Gaza</a>.
The United States has waged brutal wars to dominate the people of Asia, Latin America and the Middle East for the better part of a century, often involving the most heinous weapons ever produced. 
America was the first state to develop the atomic bomb, and later the even more deadly hydrogen bomb. It remains the only state to have used the weapon against civilian populations. <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/">The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists estimates</a> that up to 210,000 people were killed in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US dropped atomic bombs on them in 1945. Hundreds of thousands of people lived, stripped of limbs or suffering from radiation poisoning, for decades afterwards.
The United States has also murdered thousands of people with chemical weapons. The US military dropped napalm by the ton on the people of Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, burning men, women and children alive. In Iraq, having denounced the regime for its non-existent WMDs, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/nov/15/usa.iraq">America admitted to using</a> napalm and white phosphorus.
If the US and Israel truly want to rid the world of WMDs, they should start by destroying their own nuclear and chemical weapons. And if they are worried about threats to peace and security, they ought to stop invading other countries.

Lucas Brunning-Halsall

West recycles old lies to justify attack on Iran

As long as capitalism survives, there will be no reckoning for the Gaza genocide or the naked aggression of Western imperialism in the Middle East. 
Every day, Israeli soldiers murder dozens of defenceless and starving Palestinians queuing for rations among the rubble of their now almost uninhabitable homeland. That no government in the world will do anything about it should be evidence enough of the impunity.
Now, Tel Aviv and Washington are exporting even more violence to yet another country, Iran. How many deaths in this region are they responsible for over the last 25 years? Up to 4.7 million, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Yet these murderers receive sinecures rather than sanctions. 
This perennial spectacle of mass murder, and the spectre of more of it, have not elicited a rethinking of priorities among those who rule the world, let alone contrition or reparations. Instead, they are launching more wars and preparing for others—everywhere. Twenty-seven million active-duty military personnel are spread across the globe. But even this is insufficient. 
“If you have weapons, don’t abandon them; if you have the ability to produce weapons, produce them. Weapons of all kinds”, Lithuanian Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė last week told Yaroslav Trofimov, the Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign affairs correspondent. “Saying let’s disarm, let’s be peaceful pigeons—that’s suicidal.”
This exhortation is but a reflection of what’s already happening. Global military spending is rapidly expanding, increasing by nearly 40 percent in real terms over the last decade to US$2.7 trillion (A$4.2 trillion) and accounting for approximately 7 percent of government expenditures worldwide. All indications suggest that this is only the beginning, as an increase in the means of violence in one country begets a commensurate increase in its neighbours’ and competitors’ capacities.
The US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel together already possess more than 12,000 nuclear weapons. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2,100 are “kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles”—more than enough destructive capability to eradicate all human life several times over. 
Yet more countries are reportedly considering joining this nuclear club—a death cult by any reasonable definition. “The era of nuclear weapons reductions appears to have ended”, notes the SIPRI Yearbook 2025, released this month. “The signs are that a new qualitative nuclear arms race is gearing up and, compared with the last one, the risks are likely to be more diverse and more serious.”
It is too generous to say that the great challenges of the 21st century—the climate catastrophe and decimation of the planet’s ecosystems, the 700 million people undernourished and living in extreme poverty, the 2.2 billion without drinking water, the 3.5 billion lacking safe sanitation services, and more—are afterthoughts to the imperialist states and their capitalist ruling classes.
Increasingly, the primary feature of their system is destruction: destruction of living standards, destruction of life-support systems, destruction of cities and countries and peoples and spirit. The more it destroys, the wealthier the class of billionaires at the top becomes. The arms dealers, the fossil fuel barons, the tech oligarchs, the financiers—all of them profiting, and profiting all the more, as the destitution and destruction increase.
This is capitalism’s logic: unchecked, unending rapaciousness.
Last century, at least 180 million people were killed because of war; not a single year passed without cannons being fired or bombs being dropped. But every part of the world is now linked to the rest by some means. As long as this system grinds on, there will be no respite, let alone a reckoning, and no escaping the calamities resulting from so many natural resources and so much human energy being devoted to the military-industrial complex.
With the world entering a potentially even more destructive phase, there is an urgent need to tear down the existing imperialist order and replace it with a socialist order: a society run according to the maxim “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”, and in which cooperation, rather than competition, is the guiding principle.

Editors

Capitalism’s ruthless new order

“I saw it with my own eyes. My father was blasted out of the house. His face was burned, and his ears were torn off.” Amin Ahmad, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/16/athlete-pilates-instructor-teacher-human-toll-of-israels-attack-on-iran">speaking to Al Jazeera’s Saeedeh Fathi</a>, recounted his father’s death in eastern Tehran, Iran’s capital, on Sunday afternoon. An Israeli airstrike on the family home left him and his mother trapped inside. 
“I had to force the window bars open and call out for help. Someone brought a ladder, and my mother and I escaped”, he said. Amin’s father was a teacher. He worked all his life with the hope that he would one day retire in peace. “Now he’s dead, and the house is destroyed.” 
Amin’s story is one of hundreds. Israel has so far <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-conflict-news/card/iran-s-death-toll-surpasses-450-rights-group-says-Y8tyR2w2VwItM2BII2Ae">killed more than 450 people</a>, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a nongovernmental organisation that monitors the country. The Western political establishment calls this Israel’s right to self-defence. But like in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, Israel’s war on Iran is an act of naked aggression. 
The wounded come in waves to Tehran’s major hospitals. One doctor described it as a bloodbath. He told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/16/doctors-describe-carnage-iran-hospitals-israel-strikes">the Guardian</a>, “We were overwhelmed by chaos and the screams of grieving family members”. Many of the wounded had been struck by deadly shrapnel from Israeli airstrikes. Patients were found with metal lodged in femur bones and the soft tissues of the hip joints. 
Iranian petrochemical workers on Karkov Island, their workplace having been deemed a high-risk target, were left by their bosses to fend for themselves. In a statement on their Telegram channel, they said: “[The managers] have not even put a plan in place for the possibility of an attack. There is no shelter or equipment. There is no catalog [sic] of instructions on what to do in the event of an attack, where to go, or how to protect our lives”. 
It’s impossible to know the real toll of Israel’s air war. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/16/doctors-describe-carnage-iran-hospitals-israel-strikes">Hospital staff have reported</a> being told not to post online about the number of wounded or dead. But we do know that Israel’s attacks are widespread. 
A Children’s Hospital in southern Tehran. An assistant professor of neonatal medicine and her three-year-old child. A student sitting in her home with her family. They were destroyed in a flash of fire as bombs rained down. Israel says that they’re all “legitimate targets”—just like the hospitals in Gaza; just like the residential buildings in Lebanon. 
“[They have] directly targeted the country’s infrastructure, such as oil and gas resources, automotive industries, water, airports, the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation and even Farabi Hospital in Kermanshah”, a student in central Iran told Red Flag via Telegram. “Israel keeps saying that it’s only targeting military sites, which is not true at all.” 
The Middle East Monitor <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250616-report-israel-threatens-dahiya-style-assault-on-tehran-in-bid-to-destabilise-iran/">reported two days ago</a> that Israel is preparing for a massive, “Dahiya-style” attack on the capital:
“The plan, disclosed by Israeli broadcaster Channel 14, reportedly seeks to destabilise Iran’s government through systematic bombing of strategic sites while coercing mass evacuation from densely populated areas.
“The operation, said to have been greenlit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz, draws directly from Israel’s controversial military doctrine first employed during its 2006 war on Lebanon.
“That assault saw the wholesale destruction of the Dahiya district in southern Beirut—a stronghold of Hezbollah—marking the beginning of what military officials would later describe as a deliberate strategy of ‘disproportionate force’ and the targeting of civilian infrastructure to achieve political objectives.”
Indeed, Defence Minister Israel Katz warned: “Tehran will be treated like Beirut”. 
The Israelis are trying to exploit the deep unpopularity of the Iranian regime to gain support for their war. In a<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO8WlACdCB8">
televised address</a> to the Iranian public, Netanyahu smugly asserted: “We are clearing the path for you to achieve your objective, which is freedom”.
This narrative—that bombing people while they sleep will facilitate their freedom from the forces of political oppression—has been repeated time and again over the last twenty months of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza. 
And it continues. Western media outlets <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLqP7SAlrYg">such as the British Broadcasting Corporation</a> have given a platform to Reza Pahlavi, the son of the disgraced former dictator of Iran, who says that Israeli strikes will help “liberate” the country. As if 90 million Iranians are hoping for the return of a US-backed monarchy. As if freedom rises out of the rubble of an Israeli bomb. 
“Most people still oppose the government”, the student in central Iran said. “The rulers of Iran, like many other countries, are dictators ... but they believe the invasion [by Israel] is wrong.” 
World leaders speak of “restraint” and “de-escalation” while arming Israel with advanced heavy weaponry. Netanyahu’s war on Iran is made in America, where the Congress approves billions for “bunker-busting” bombs, where politicians and the media manufacture consent for war crimes. 
President Trump is now <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/17/world/israel-iran-trump#trump-iran">calling for Iran’s “unconditional surrender”</a>, declaring: “We [Israel and the US] now have complete control of the skies over Iran”. 
Israel is unleashing hell across the Middle East with the backing of the world’s most powerful state and with the support of most of the “civilised” world. They speak of the “Iran-Israel conflict” when it’s an invasion. The Western media and politicians have tried to desensitise the world to such horror over the past twenty months of genocide in Gaza. 
Tens of thousands of Palestinians and thousands of Lebanese have been slaughtered with impunity. The calculation now is that hundreds or thousands of Iranians added to the toll will not be of any international consequence. But each death is more than a number. It’s a child who will never become an adult; it’s a family torn apart forever. 
Parnia Abassi was one of these lives: a student killed, along with three of her family members, as they slept in their home in Sattarkhan, Tehran. Parnia’s friends described her as funny and full of life. In interviews and <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://hammihanonline.ir/%25D8%25A8%25D8%25AE%25D8%25B4-%25D8%25AC%25D8%25A7%25D9%2585%25D8%25B9%25D9%2587-23/40566-%25D8%25AA%25D8%25B5%25D9%2588%25DB%258C%25D8%25B1-%25D9%2585%25D9%2588%25D9%2587%25D8%25A7%25DB%258C-%25D8%25B1%25D9%2588%25DB%258C-%25D8%25AA%25D8%25B4%25DA%25A9-%25D8%25B5%25D9%2588%25D8%25B1%25D8%25AA%25DB%258C-%25D9%2585%25D8%25AA%25D8%25B9%25D9%2584%25D9%2582-%25D8%25A8%25D9%2587-%25D9%25BE%25D8%25B1%25D9%2586%25DB%258C%25D8%25A7-%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B3%25D8%25AA&amp;sa=D&amp;source=docs&amp;ust=1750205171857941&amp;usg=AOvVaw2c8RZUFj86VcTYEMPKZiN3">online</a>, they recounted their favourite memories. How she took them camping outdoors for the first time, how she gave them gifts, how her sense of humour often took a moment to sink in and then bowled them over with laughter. 
All of that, gone, in a second. Parnia was an aspiring poet. One of her last compositions reads: 
I burn
I fade,
I become a silent star,
That turns into smoke
In your sky

Bella Beiraghi

The human cost of Israel’s war on Iran

Israel’s military strikes against Iran are the latest evidence, if any more were needed, that the US and its proxies are rogue states.
Despite the US government’s earlier attempts to distance itself from Israel’s aggression, it is clear that Washington was in on it from the start. President Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Friday, US time, that he had spoken to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and knew “what’s going on”. The Financial Times on Saturday quoted “a person familiar with the situation” who indicated that the US had been informed of Israeli plans as early as Monday, “was in the know all along” and “raised no objection”. 
And so came another attack on another country and another people. Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran. The Zionist state is off the leash, again, promising to continue indefinitely its assault, all the while stocked with weapons and backed by a US carrier group in the Mediterranean and B-2 bombers in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. 
Netanyahu insists that Israel faces an existential threat from Tehran’s nuclear program. This flimsy pretext of “existential threats” has been trotted out again and again over the last twenty months to justify everything from the starvation of Gazan children to the flattening of hospitals and schools to terrorist attacks on Hezbollah members to the bombings of Lebanon and Syria to the ever-greater annexation of West Bank territory.
Like its cousin charge of “antisemitism”, which is casually levelled against even the mildest critics of apartheid, anything in the Middle East capable of sneezing in the direction of Tel Aviv is labelled an “existential threat” to the nuclear-armed, US-backed Israeli state. 
Whatever Netanyahu might claim, Tehran is considered enemy number one not because of its military capacities, but because of its recalcitrance. Iran is perpetually in the crosshairs of the US and Israel because no other country in the Middle East bends less to Washington’s will. 
Iran has been demonised, harassed and sanctioned ever since the Western-backed torture state of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by a popular uprising in 1979. Washington and London more than tolerated the horrors of Pahlavi’s regime. The two Western governments had conspired, in 1953’s “Operation Ajax”, to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh, which had nationalised the oil industry two years earlier.
“Since Venezuela and the Middle East are the only sources from which the free world’s import requirements for petroleum can be supplied, these sources are necessary to continue the present economic and military efforts of the free world”, noted <a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54v01p2/d159">a joint departmental report</a> to the US National Security Council eight months before the coup. “It therefore follows that nothing can be allowed to interfere substantially with the availability of oil from those sources to the free world.”
Torture states are acceptable if they serve Western interests. So Pahlavi was installed to prevent popular aspirations from being realised and to ensure that Western companies could again exploit the country’s oil wealth. That is, he was brought in to rule with an iron fist. It went swimmingly for the oil companies and for US Middle Eastern strategy until the Iranian population rose from the dungeons to reclaim their country.
But miraculously, after 1979, the West suddenly became deeply concerned about the human rights record of the Iranian government. Washington and Israel have repeatedly declared it a rogue state and a threat to peace ever since.
The US was so concerned with regional peace that it funded Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, supplying President Saddam Hussein’s regime with weapons and intelligence. Several hundred thousand Iranians were killed during the war. The US also helped the Iraqis launch chemical weapons attacks. 
“[S]enior U.S. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks [in 1988]”, Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid wrote in <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/">an exclusive investigation</a> for Foreign Policy journal in 2013. “They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.”
Unlike Israel, Iraq was no solid ally of the US. After he had done the work against Iran, Hussein fell out of favour with Washington. The US invaded in the first Gulf War (1990-91) before imposing sanctions that were responsible for killing an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children. Questioned about this horror in 1996, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1T5JRVR53Eo">US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright responded</a>: “We think the price is worth it”. 
Then the US invaded again in 2003 after lying about Hussein’s regime, which, the Americans said, possessed weapons of mass destruction, was sponsoring terrorism and was an imminent threat to regional and even world peace. To keep the peace, US destroyed the country, left <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html">hundreds of thousands dead</a> in the first few years of the occupation, and created the conditions for the rise of the Islamic State.
This criminal history isn’t deemed relevant to contemporary reporting of Israel’s attack on Iran. It’s scandalous, but of little surprise, that the media today is parroting the US and Israeli line when both countries have, in recent history, persistently lied, persistently invaded other countries, persistently supported dictatorial regimes, and persistently killed masses of people throughout the region. 
No doubt, the Iranian regime is despotic. It will be a welcome day when Iranian workers overthrow it. But any honest accounting of the last several decades in the Middle East shows the US and Israel to be partners in a criminality that throws shade on Tehran’s record.
It should go without saying that Israel’s aggression, backed again by the US, should be opposed. With its Gaza genocide, assaults in the West Bank, occupation of Syrian and Lebanese territory and the latest attack on Iran, the Zionist state is attempting to redraw the map of the Middle East—a redrawing most favourable to fascists and dictators aligned with one of the greatest purveyors of violence in history.

Rogue empire

As the mass ICE raids began on Friday in Los Angeles, members of the socialist group Tempest participated in rapid response and other protest efforts with mass organisations into the weekend. The Community Self-Defence Coalition, in which Tempest members participate, is a key formation that coordinates LA’s rapid response efforts. Tempest’s LA branch members were actively involved in defence efforts during skirmishes across downtown LA, the pitched battle in the city of Paramount and rapid response efforts to repel ICE in the city of Pasadena. They compiled and recorded their experiences throughout the weekend, covering the first days of mobilisation. All photos are by the Tempest LA branch and friends. This piece was first published at <a href="https://tempestmag.org/">Tempest magazine</a>.
--------------------
FRIDAY 6 JUNE
The first day involved nearly a dozen raids near downtown Los Angeles, Sun Valley and North Hollywood neighbourhoods, and LA County suburbs, including Pomona. Emergency rallies were called and converged around the downtown Metropolitan Detention Center. After dispersing protesters there, different law enforcement officers went over to the adjacent district of Chinatown to stage late night around 9pm. There was a lot of contradictory and confusing information spread across different protest chats throughout the night. At first, we were told that they were setting up for a night raid; later, word on the block was that they were setting up for Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan’s press conference at 7am the next morning. Dozens of FBI agents stationed in a parking lot in Chinatown on Hill St., later joined by Border Patrol, LAPD, and Homeland Security. Protesters quickly gathered to monitor and heckle them, soon outnumbering law enforcement, which also reinforced their numbers. Know Your Rights information was blasted on megaphones in English, Spanish, and Cantonese, as protesters informed local residents of their rights.
Things became more intense as armoured personnel carriers and additional law enforcement personnel poured in, although it was still unclear why they were staging in Chinatown. Some protesters, including bikers, tried to block vehicles from entering the lot. Some identified undercover officers and their vehicles on the protesters’ side and successfully heckled them to leave. Others followed various vehicles exiting the lot to figure out where they were going. Soon, law enforcement occupied the whole street beyond the lot to pressure the protesters out. Loud popping sounds started, with some claiming that they were sound cannons being blasted by the police. The pressure from protesters continued into midnight, after which all law enforcement retreated without explanation. There were no further reports of mass raids and Homan’s press conference the next day. (Homan later appeared on television the next afternoon to announce the deployment of the National Guard.)
<figure><img src="https://newcms.redflag.org.au/files/public/articleCoverImages/Tempest-1.jpg" alt="" /></figure>
SATURDAY 7 JUNE
On the second day, rapid responders rushed to the city of Paramount in the morning, located about a half hour drive south of LA, upon reports of an ICE raid at a Home Depot. Paramount developed into a war zone throughout the day. Paramount is a majority low-income and Latinx area, and one of LA’s key industrial regions. The organised left has little presence in this area, but the militancy seen on 7 June demonstrates the spontaneous power of Brown working-class youth in defending their communities. ICE cars were seen burning. Hundreds of law enforcement officers were deployed throughout Paramount, throwing tear gas and flash bombs as protesters fought back and the Home Depot barricaded itself for safety.
As the Paramount battle stretched on, supporters continued to respond to different reports of ICE raids across LA, as some continued to support detainees at the downtown detention centre. More people began gathering back at the detention centre early in the evening. Around 100-150 protesters were there around 7pm. LAPD gathered en masse to use tear gas and shoot pellets at protesters in this area between 8 and 10pm. Most of the street around the detention centre was cleared out and occupied by hundreds of LAPD officers. In the meantime, Homan confirms on national television that he’ll be federalising the California National Guard for deployment in LA, against Governor Gavin Newsom’s dissent. It was unclear that night what this meant or when exactly the Guard would arrive. The day-long battles in Paramount stretched west into the city of Compton, which was one of the last sites where militant mobilisation continued that day.
There were reported ICE sightings at probably six other locations throughout southern California but the majority of protest and state activity occurred primarily in the vicinity of the Home Depot in Paramount and Compton that went into the early morning Sunday, and again at the Downtown LA Metropolitan Detention Center where protesters had been gathered the entire day.
<figure><img src="https://newcms.redflag.org.au/files/public/articleCoverImages/Tempest-2.jpg" alt="" /></figure>
SUNDAY 8 JUNE
LOS ANGELES
On 8 June, Angelenos woke to the news that over 2,000 National Guard had been deployed. A protest in the predominantly Latinx working-class Boyle Heights neighbourhood was planned by Centro CSO and other immigrant rights and local groups for the morning. Crowds had also already begun to gather back at the detention centre downtown.
<figure><img src="https://newcms.redflag.org.au/files/public/articleCoverImages/Tempest-3.jpg" alt="" /></figure>
Activists gathered at Mariachi Plaza to protest the ICE raids of the previous two days. Speakers included labour movement icon Dolores Huerta. Speakers generally emphasised not only the rights of immigrants but also applauded the courage and rapid response of the activists gathered, as well as the importance of showing the Trump administration that people will continue to fight back against his draconian methods. The gathering mobilised to march down 1st Street for 1.5 miles to the Federal Metropolitan Detention Center on Alameda Street where they met a larger crowd of activists that had been gathering from the previous two days. Within minutes of arrival, the authorities fired upon the crowd of protesters, presumably with only tear gas, and the front of the crowd began to disperse. There did not appear to be any serious injuries, though many seemed unprepared for tear gas, and some were adversely affected. The Centro CSO organisers, worried about crowd safety, encouraged those remaining from the Mariachi Plaza rally to return to Boyle Heights. Many of us stayed to record the events, in particular the fully militarised presence of local, state, and federal authorities, including the National Guard. I left soon afterward when the tear gas became too overwhelming.
The crowd at the detention centre remained at about 100-300 people for the next two hours and had not yet encountered further violence. Protesters stood off with the ~20 California National Guard members stationed at the rear of the building. Eventually, a squadron of ~15 LAPD cars arrived further down the road, pre-positioned to block one exit along the walled-in road. A large portion of the crowd then moved around the guarded door and went around the corner, escaping a potential kettle. The police formed a line around their vehicles and appeared to fully surround a portion of the protesters, but did not make arrests.
<figure><img src="https://newcms.redflag.org.au/files/public/articleCoverImages/Tempest-4.jpg" alt="" /></figure>
Around this time, a rally called by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) at the city hall nearby began to march toward the detention centre. It was unclear whether the march was part of the original rally plan or if the crowd spontaneously decided to march. This mass contingent arrived just in time to reinforce the surrounded protesters near the detention centre. As they arrived, the police were forced to retreat promptly. Thousands of protesters continued to flood the streets outside the detention centre throughout the afternoon and occupied the nearby intersection at Alameda and Temple. Some remained around the intersection while others continued to march. This contingent went through Little Tokyo back to the Federal Building.
At this point, the crowd was too large to be effectively organised. Some remained at the detention centre, others continued to march, while a smaller group occupied the freeway.
A formation of LAPD officers opposed the crowd of ~200 protesters, who kept a close distance from the line. The police continued to shoot volleys of less-lethal weapons into these different sites, though protesters remained steadfast for hours. Pro-Palestine slogans and clothing were not only ubiquitous, but many of those furthest in the front defending the protests from the police were wearing keffiyehs. We witnessed multiple people around us injured. Street medics helped many protesters tend to their injuries. The police soon declared unlawful assembly but were unable to fully sweep the intersection for hours. At one point, the police declared that they would begin arrests in a minute, but were halted by a protester’s car that slowly rolled through the intersection with a child sitting at the window, raising a Mexican flag with his fist up. The crowd protected them, and the sweeps were delayed for another half an hour.
After another stand-off, the protesters crossed over the median of the freeway, stopping the flow of traffic in the opposite direction. As soon as this happened, the police widened their line and began shooting flash bangs in the sky above the protesters on the freeway. Peaceful protesters were met with disproportionate state violence that increased with time, including being fired on with less-lethal guns from rooftops. Several Waymo automated cars were burned. Significant numbers of protesters remained in the streets at various points around downtown LA into the evening and after nightfall. They were forced off the freeway but continued to march to other locations. As the protesters’ numbers grew thinner, police aggression increased. By sunset, the remaining protesters were forced to construct makeshift barricades using benches and signs.
<figure><img src="https://newcms.redflag.org.au/files/public/articleCoverImages/Tempest-5.jpg" alt="" /></figure>
PASADENA
In Pasadena, word got out early in the morning across rapid response chats that ICE and DHS agents were staying at three local hotels: the Westin, Dena Hotel, and the new AC Hotel. There were reports of ICE agents questioning hotel workers who were servicing the rooms. By noon, Unite Here and the National Day Laborers Organizing Network brought out more than one hundred people from Pasadena and Altadena to inquire about and protest ICE’s presence. Faith leaders, community organisations and politicians, including Mayor Victor Gordo, showed up afterwards, and the crowd swelled to several hundred. Speakers at the rally denounced the intimidation and the hotel’s collaboration with ICE as they profit from family separation.
Throughout the day, protesters marched and circled the block, vowing to stay until ICE left. Some of the ICE vehicles’ tires were damaged. The protest served as a rallying point for the community. Community organisations like AUSIIME and the pro-immigrant band Los Jornaleros del Norte kept spirits high throughout the day with chants, cumbia, and anti-ICE songs. After several hours of protests, local politicians who had been intermediating with management announced that ICE had been asked to leave the hotel, and the crowd erupted in jubilation. Still, protesters did not leave until the agents had checked out and continued waiting, anticipating any movement. Since the morning, workers had been informing the rally of potential ICE movements, and everyone anticipated the humiliating exit from the hotel. After fixing their popped tires under the hot sun, ICE agents began to exit swiftly from the parking structure where protesters waited for them at all exits. As vehicles swerved through the parking structure, they were chased out by triumphant protesters who celebrated their victory, chanting “Si se pudo!” (We did it!)
<figure><img src="https://newcms.redflag.org.au/files/public/articleCoverImages/Tempest-6.jpg" alt="" /></figure>
MONDAY 9 JUNE
Early in the morning, families of several workers (mostly women and youth) who were detained in Friday’s mass raid at Ambiance garment factory gathered for a press conference, assisted by the Garment Workers Center and other community organisations. A Tempest member assisted with security. The detained workers were the main providers in their families, and the families shared that they have not been able to hear from them yet. They called on ICE to free them, and to leave our communities. A group of over 100 people gathered to support them, including Palestinian and Palestine solidarity organisations, Indigenous organisations, progressive clergy, and other community nonprofits. The families also shared that Ambiance has still not released the workers’ owed wages to them, and a delegation of them went to the company offices after the press conference to demand these wages. There was no visible police presence or counter-protests, but many of us were informed throughout the event that ICE activity was beginning again in other parts of LA, including in Huntington Park, and the Fashion District again just a mile away from us. Many attendees went directly to the Grand Park rally to support David Huerta and SEIU right after.
<figure><img src="https://newcms.redflag.org.au/files/public/articleCoverImages/Tempest-7.jpg" alt="" /></figure>
Later that morning at 11am, there was a rally at Grand Park in downtown led by SEIU in support of SEIU California President David Huerta, who was detained for participating in the protest against the mass raids at the detention centre on Friday. There was a curiously light police presence at first, despite the clashes over the weekend. In addition to SEIU International and various locals, many other major unions were present, including AFSCME, UHW, LULAC, Teamsters, UNITE HERE!, ILWU, LIUNA, IBEW and IATSE. There were also representatives of various civic and community organisations, like Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), LAUSD, CARECEN, UCLA Labor Studies and LA County. The DSA-endorsed City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado was also present and spoke.
The general theme was that David Huerta’s arrest is also an injury to all of us. It was a demonstration of around 2,000 to 3,000 people that affirmed courage in the face of the federal presence sent by Trump. A band, Las Cafeteras, performed some songs like “La Bamba”, “If I Was President”, “Stand By Me”, which also asked the audience what they would change if they were president for a day. Prominent labour leaders spoke and affirmed labour’s role in the fight against fascism, including SEIU president April Verrett, Dolores Huerta, NAACP president David Johnson (who connected workers’ and civil rights, drawing on the Black struggle). Johnson powerfully declared that the Black struggle has taught him that saying nothing about the oppression of the most vulnerable would be an invitation for more abuses against everyone. Representatives from Justice for Janitors USWW, like Luis Fuentes, spoke about David Huerta’s labour bona fides.
But there was little emphasis on the need to build a resistance outside of the Democratic Party. Dolores Huerta emphasised nonviolence and the need for electoral strategies during the midterms, which was reaffirmed by the SEIU political policy director. Another policy representative spoke about the importance of forming coalitions with allies in other movements, emphasising the need for strength in numbers and solidarity.
Police presence and pressure began to ramp up toward the end of the rally, as a student walkout that morning converged at the nearby Federal Building. Hundreds of students and other community members began to join, and police vehicles from other cities, such as Vernon, Torrance and San Marino, appeared.
The Trump administration announced the deployment of Marines into LA around this time, as mass raids ramped up targeting many cities across Orange County, south of LA.
The situation remains highly fluid, and more protests are sure to occur in the coming days and weeks. There have already been reports of heightened ICE activity for the next 30 days. Tempest LA branch members will continue to participate and report on any resistance activities.
This piece was first published at <a href="https://tempestmag.org/">Tempest magazine</a>.
<figure><img src="https://newcms.redflag.org.au/files/public/articleCoverImages/Tempest-8.jpg" alt="" /></figure>

The battle of Los Angeles

The following article is from the <a href="https://www.puntorojomag.org/">Puntorojo magazine</a> editorial collective in North America.
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The scenes of fleeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles being pelted with rocks, bricks, and any other makeshift projectiles by lines of people taking aim at the despised migra agents inflicting so much harm and terror in their communities. A burning ICE vehicle in the middle of an intersection, with people setting off fireworks, taking selfies, and even dancing on the burned-out car. Throngs of people on a highway bridge overpass dropping objects onto police in their cars, smashing windshields, and forcing the cops to quickly retreat from the scene with their shields up. Rows of heavily armed cops shooting rubber bullets and tear gas cannisters into crowds of anti-ICE protesters with complete disregard, intending to harm and provoke, while people make shields out of durable objects, trash can lids, and metal chairs. Thousands of people coming out to join the uprising, waving Mexican, Central American, and Palestinian flags, even as the Trump regime has called out National Guard troops to take up positions around the city.
These are some of the scenes from the anti-ICE uprising in Los Angeles in June 2025, emerging street battles and clashes between the most oppressed and exploited sectors of the working class and heavily armed ICE agents—the American Gestapo. 
ICE unleashed in the shadows of imperialist war
ICE was created in 2003 in a period of massive state investment and buildup in military and state repressive capacities in the period after the attacks of 9/11. Then US president, George W. Bush— with broad support from the Democratic Party—launched the invasion (and 20-year occupation) of Afghanistan in October of 2001 known as “Operation Enduring Freedom”. This was followed in early 2002 with Bush declaring at his State of the Union address that the US state was initiating a generational and global “War on Terror”, beginning with intention to attack the “Axis of Evil” nations of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The US invaded and occupied Iraq on March 20, 2003, under the name “Operation: Iraqi Freedom.” Analysts have since documented that the US has conducted and spread military action—invasion, occupation, airstrikes, drone attacks, special ops, assassinations, and advisory and training roles— into 78 countries that has led to the <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures">killing</a> of nearly 5 million people.
While the attacks of 9/11 gave a pretext, the US state had already been in the process of preparing for a new phase of an imperial war to re-assert US military hegemony in the Middle East, Asia, and other parts of the world. This was expressed most directly through the influence of a right-wing ruling class think tank known as “The Project for a New American Century” (PNAC), which since 1997 had advocated for a more assertive and interventionist US internationally. PNAC promoted the idea of preemptive war, regime change, and neocolonial occupation to reassert “American primacy” against its rising imperialist rivals and enemies.
Since 2001 military spending has increased dramatically, with the Pentagon <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget/pentagon">spending</a> over $14 trillion dollars to fund expanding war and occupation. This is the context in which the US state simultaneously opened a domestic front in its generational war, with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In 2003, the bipartisan US state developed and merged 22 federal armed enforcement agencies into the Department of Homeland Security as an all-encompassing domestic state-repressive apparatus. ICE was created to repress so-called “national security threats” within US territorial boundaries, with agents given broad license and individual discretion to execute the charge of surveilling, pursuing, detaining, and deporting those deemed by ICE to be “Individuals believed to pose a threat to public safety or national security.”
From the outset, ICE became a distinctive and exceptional type of policing agency, given broad license to act without oversight, accountability, and to conduct its operations with impunity and without fear of repercussion or recrimination. The extralegal nature of ICE has enabled the agency to become deeply politicised, to attract and recruit agents with far right, racist, and violent dispositions; and to be weaponised, operationalised, and unleashed by a reactionary and white supremacist regime for explicitly political purposes. 
ICE as a weapon of class war and political repression
ICE was initially deployed through the “National Fugitive Operations Program” to surveil, target, arrest, and deport undocumented Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern people from over 20 targeted nations who were residing in the US. The focus then shifted towards targeting undocumented workers from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean after the mass immigrant worker mobilisations of 2006, where over 3 million people participated in strikes, marches, boycotts, and walkouts demanding legalisation. Between 2006 and 2007, ICE agents orchestrated hundreds of invasive raids across the country in over 100 cities and towns nationwide that targeted factories, farms, homes, and public community spaces.
ICE was deployed to arrest workers organising union drives, conducting workplace protests, or otherwise participating in class struggle activities in different locations across the country. Numerous undocumented activists were identified and targeted for their political activism and advocacy. Through these fugitive recovery operations and workplace and community raids, over 80,000 people were targeted, arrested, and deported in 2006-7 alone. The state attack using ICE was to “neutralise” the mass immigrant workers’ movement by mass arresting and deporting its most militant, organised, and resistant sectors.
The state-led attack on the migrant and transnational working class has persisted ever since in a bipartisan manner to use the threat of ICE arrest, detention, and deportation to further segregate, terrorise, and render millions of immigrant workers more vulnerable and precarious. Under these conditions, they are made less able to organise and resist, and more susceptible to higher levels of exploitation, and to enable the extraction from their labor of greater amounts of wealth for the capitalist class.
The imperative to contain, control, and instill the permanence of fear in the migrant and transnational working class as a function of the US capitalist system can explain why both the Republicans and Democratic Parties have worked together to build up ICE and detention and deportation capacities through successive administrations. The DHS has since become a massively expanding state repressive apparatus that has seen its size and scale growing exponentially, with an initial <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/publication/securing-homeland-strengthening-nation#:~:text=The%20President's%20Budget%20for%202003,from%20%2419.5%20billion%20in%202002.">budget</a> of $38 billion in 2003 and rising to a <a href="https://www.dhs.govhttps://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/2023-03/DHS%20FY%202024%20BUDGET%20IN%20BRIEF%20%28BIB%29_Remediated.pdf">bloated</a> $103 billion by 2024.
Trump’s currently proposed 2025 budget proposal (his so-called “big beautiful bill”) that recently passed the House of Representatives <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/house-republican-budget-bill-gives-trump-185-billion-to-carry-out-his-mass-deportation-agenda-while-doing-nothing-for-workers-immigration-enforcement-would-have-80-times-more-funding-than-la/#:~:text=The%20bill%20provides%20$155%20billion,funding%20for%20labor%20standards%20enforcement.">includes</a> $185 billion in new funding for immigration and border law enforcement. If passed, this will dramatically expand the Department of Homeland Security by nearly doubling its current budget. Specifically for ICE, the bill will allocate $45 billion for immigrant detention and $14 billion for deportation operations.
Since the creation of the ICE, the targeting and systematic deportation of “removals” of sections of the undocumented working class has become a permanent feature of the landscape (removals from the interior of the US, not including “expulsions” from within the border region). Under George W. Bush (2000-2008), more than 2 million undocumented workers were arrested and deported; under Barack Obama (2009-2016) over 3 million people were deported, despite him getting elected to president alongside a supermajority of Democrats in Congress on a promise to legalise all undocumented workers; under Trump I (2017-2020), 1.2 million were deported; and under Biden (2021-2025) over 400,000 were deported with millions more expelled from the border region, although he was also elected on a campaign promising to suspend deportations and to pass a general legalisation of the undocumented.
The foundational characteristic of ICE as a state-repressive instrument deployed against labor unionism and political dissidence was recently displayed with ICE agents <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/us-universities-students-israel-palestine-protests">targeting</a> and arresting pro-Palestinian activists and sympathisers. High-profile arrests and abductions of Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both of whom are legal permanent residents in the process of attaining citizenship, show how the state is now expanding the purview of repression of political opponents to go beyond those who are undocumented. Furthermore, more than 1,000 people have had their visas <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/17/us/university-international-student-visas-revoked">revoked</a> or statuses terminated for alleged Pro-Palestinian activism.
The use of ICE as a state weapon against the working class, while simultaneously used against the political opponents of US imperialism, Zionism, and Palestinian genocide—reveal the scale of the political crisis of legitimacy in the US state. It also reveals the scale of violence to which the state is willing to deploy against broad segments of the population to quell dissent and opposition to the economic and imperialist objectives of the US capitalist class. 
Towards mass resistance—and the abolition of ICE
Increased ICE activities targeting migrant workers and political activists has been increasing over the last decade. Since the Obama Administration, ICE has become increasingly <a href="https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/major-city-police-leaders-join-ice-discuss-partnership">integrated</a> into national policing efforts to participate in a wide array of enforcement activities, including efforts to repress political protest and social unrest. For instance, DHS and ICE agents were also deployed in cities across the country to surveil, disrupt, and repress the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/government-watching-blacklivesmatter-and-its-not-okay">Black Lives Matters</a> protest movements of 2014 to 2021. In some cases, like that in Portland, Oregon, DHS agents used unmarked vehicles to track, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-use-unmarked-vehicles-to-grab-protesters-in-portland">abduct</a>, and incarcerate protest participants over the course of the protests. 
Rising anger and active opposition to ICE has taken shape in recent years. In 2017-18, a nationwide movement called “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/03/occupy-ice-protests-immigration-families">Occupy ICE</a>” was organised to block and disrupt operations at ICE facilities across of the country. This movement advanced the demand of “abolish ICE” in very practical terms: disrupt their activities and make it impossible for them to operate. This impact and popularity of the movement, under Trump’s first administration, even compelled some <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/politics/abolish-ice-democrats-list">Democratic Party</a> candidates to mouth support. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, and others stepped forward and feigned support for the abolition of ICE—only to quickly walk it back and reverse course after the election cycle. 
During the election cycle of 2024, both Democrats and Republicans ramped up their support for an immigration crackdown and the unleashing of ICE. Having no alternative to offer amid the recurring crises of capitalism and imperial decline, both capitalist parties <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/07/30/nx-s1-5055670/harris-trump-border-immigration-georgia">converged</a> in a full-throated attack on immigrants, refugees, and transnational workers. The complicity of Democrats in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/-border-broken-democrats-solidify-shift-tougher-migration-stance-conve-rcna167638">shifting</a> the political terrain against immigrants enabled the racist and reactionary Trump to scale up his fascist rhetoric, mobilise his base of support (including in <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/immigration-customs-enforcement-union-endorses-trump-228664">ICE</a> and the <a href="https://thehill.com/latino/4932425-trump-border-patrol-union-endorsement/">Border Patrol</a>), and declare a war on immigrants as the main onslaught of his second term—with the Democratic Party in complicity or silence.
The last few weeks and days show the potential for a movement of militant mass resistance to ICE, the Trump regime, and the whole state-repressive apparatus that underpins the US capitalist system. There have been several community-based confrontations against ICE raids in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE3VYMkb-Po">Worcester</a>, Massachusetts, <a href="https://www.puntorojomag.org/2025/06/10/the-people-vs-ice-an-uprising-against-state-terror/in%20defense%20of%20migrant%20workers">San Diego</a>, California, <a href="https://youtu.be/fx9GAblcGtU">Minneapolis</a>, Minnesota, and in several other <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/52yVGaNZ63M">parts</a> of the country. The current <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mgdny2YW3Y">uprising</a> in Los Angeles shows that we have the numbers, power, and capacity to disrupt and defeat ICE operations and drive these invaders out of our communities.
For the struggle against ICE to grow, advance, and inflict more setbacks and defeats on ICE, there will need to be more coordinated acts of confrontation and disruption across more cities with the militancy now being witnessed in Los Angeles. This will necessitate higher levels of organisation, planning, and involvement. To build a mass movement capable of defeating ICE, it is also necessary to understand, strategize, and organise for the complete abolition of the agency. Acts of mass disruption can weaken ICE operations, and with radical organisation and orientation, can potentially inspire more sectors to join in the resistance. Most importantly, a mass movement against ICE can spread into the workplaces with strikes that can disrupt the capitalist economy and thereby its very capacity to function. Working-class power to shut down capitalist production is its greatest potential power. A <a href="https://inthesetimes.com/article/flight-attendant-union-labor-trump-shutdown-sara-nelson-strike">threatened</a> general strike in the airline industry in 2019 forced Trump to back down and cave during a federal government shutdown to force congressional funding for the expansion of the border wall. 
As an instrumentalised weapon of class war used openly against the working class, the very existence and ongoing terror operations of ICE are directly connected to the needs of the capitalist class to subjugate the most resistant segments of the working class and make them vulnerable to super-exploitation to enrich the capitalists. ICE is also a weapon that is increasingly used to repress political dissidents and outspoken critics of the sitting regime, so it can continue in its imperialist war efforts and to conduct the genocide in Gaza. If we can unite and build movements of mass resistance to ICE, we will not only realise our potential to disrupt and stop ICE but can also become aware of our potential and ability to defeat and overturn the capitalist system itself—that which has spawned the monstrosities of ICE terror, Trump, US imperialism, endless war, and genocide.

The people vs. ICE: an uprising against state terror

The end of the Trump-Musk “bromance” was as predictable as the sun rising in the east.
But the speed of the collapse and the vitriol unleashed were something to behold. The world’s richest man and the world’s most powerful man—both billionaire narcissists and egomaniacs—attacking each other like scorpions in a bottle.
In the early days of online flame wars, “Godwin’s Law” tracked the toxicity of exchanges by how soon one flamer called the other “Hitler” or compared them to a Nazi. Among the MAGA set, those insults don’t carry the same weight. Some might even consider them compliments. So Musk went in a different direction, accusing Trump of covering up his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the child sex trafficker to the rich and famous.
Throughout the day on 5 June, official Washington watched in various states of amazement as the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-tax-bill-6e7845081259c34db785182c51569c0c">online fight escalated</a>, and Tesla’s stock crashed. By the end of the day, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/06/tesla-already-had-big-problems-then-musk-went-to-battle-with-trump.html">Tesla had lost $150 billion in market capitalisation</a> and Musk had lost about one-tenth of his net worth.
For opponents of Trump and Musk, it’s satisfying to watch the two chief clowns in the MAGA circus savage each other. But we need to step back and ask what this may mean.
The first question is whether the Trump-Musk break-up is real or just another episode in the reality TV White House. There’s always a possibility that this cage match will end, and Musk will return to the fold. If erstwhile opponents of Trump are willing to grovel and debase themselves, Trump can welcome them back to the team. Ask “Little Marco” Rubio, who called Trump a “con artist”, or J.D. Vance, who once called Trump “America’s Hitler”. As secretary of state and vice president, Rubio and Vance are now chief enablers in the Trump regime.
Whether that’s Musk’s future or not, just how and why the current situation developed is a key question.
From the Trump side, Musk was “wearing thin” his welcome, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/06/05/nx-s1-5424686/donald-trump-elon-musk-bromance-breakup">as the president put it in one of his Truth Social posts</a>. In the early days of the regime, when Musk and his crew of twenty-something acolytes were rampaging through federal agencies, Musk appeared as co-president. This caused friction with Trump and with cabinet officials like Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-power.html">There was no love lost between Trump’s appointees and Musk.</a>
Musk came into Trump’s orbit promising his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) would root out $2 trillion in government “waste, fraud and abuse”. Instead, after DOGE marauded through one department after another, stealing their data, ordering the liquidation of whole agencies and the firings of thousands of government workers, it could only document, at most, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doge-cuts-cost-135-billion-analysis-elon-musk-department-of-government-efficiency/">$160 billion in “savings”</a>. Most of those will vanish as DOGE’s errors turn out to cost the government more to fix. 
DOGE was therefore a failure in its own terms, but is serving Trump’s interests in other ways: illegally terminating programs and terrorising thousands of workers. And putting the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in the “woodchipper” (Musk’s words) was both a sop to the xenophobic MAGA base and an end to the agency’s investigation of <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/corruption-in-plain-sight-how-elon-musk-has-benefited-from-the-first-100-days-of-the-trump-administration/">Musk’s corruption in seeking deals for his Starlink satellite firm</a>.
There is plenty to criticise about <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/26/with-aid-agencies-like-this-who-needs-enemies/">USAID’s service to US imperialism</a>, but Musk and Trump aren’t concerned about that. Meanwhile, the destruction of its food aid and vaccination programs will cost the lives of thousands. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/05/08/bill-gates-will-close-gates-foundation-in-2045-after-donating-99-of-his-fortune/">As Musk’s fellow billionaire Bill Gates</a> put it, “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one”.
In a very short time—and due largely to the grassroots <a href="https://internationalsocialism.net/the-grassroots-opposition-to-trump-can-and-must-grow/">“Tesla takedown” protests</a> that started in February—Musk became a political liability to Trump. Musk’s “chainsawing” of the federal workforce and essential services, along with his embrace of far-right politics, transformed him into one of the most hated figures in global politics.
Moreover, Musk’s association with Trump and his predations under DOGE had immolated the Tesla brand with its main customer base: affluent liberals. When Tesla Takedown protests regularly took to the streets of affluent suburbs like Walnut Creek, California, and Golden Valley, Minnesota, the Tesla board took notice. Tesla’s declining sales throughout Europe and the US even led the company’s board to consider replacing Musk.
All of these, and more, reasons could explain why Trump and Musk were going to part ways. But the amiable 30 May retirement press conference, when Trump presented Musk with a golden key, gave way to threats and insults after Musk took to X to denounce Trump’s “<a href="https://internationalsocialism.net/the-big-beautiful-bill/">big beautiful bill</a>” moving through Congress as “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-slams-trump-one-big-beautiful-bill-as-disgusting-abomination/">disgusting” and a “pork-filled” “abomination</a>”.
Of course, Musk did not object to the multi-trillion-dollar package of tax cuts because it threatens to throw tens of millions from health insurance or food assistance. He claims, along with other right-wingers in Congress, to be concerned with the bill’s addition of more than US$2 trillion to the long-term national debt. But Musk’s concern for the deficit may be cover for more prosaic—and nakedly self-interested—objections to Trump’s (and the Republican Party’s) only domestic policy agenda. 
Trump withdrew the nomination of a Musk ally as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator. Musk had expected his buddy at NASA to favour his SpaceX and Starlink companies. Trump sidelined Musk when other tech oligarchs accompanied him on his recent trip to the Gulf monarchies. And the “big beautiful bill” <a href="https://braddelong.substack.com/p/the-oddest-man-out-among-our-hundred">cuts tax subsidies to electric vehicle manufacturers that helped to prop up Tesla when its sales slumped</a>.
One of Musk’s social media posts recounted that he spent more than $250 million to aid Trump’s election and that Trump was showing “ingratitude”. It’s doubtful that Musk’s money was the key element that swung the election for Trump. But the naked quid pro quo he implied shows how open is the corruption of government in the Trump era. It’s as if Musk was telling Trump, “Hey, bro, I spent a quarter of a billion dollars on you, and I expect the return on my investment”.
Musk got plenty from his West Wing sojourn, including the neutering of federal investigations into his corruption, and even the State Department’s <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/195297/elon-musk-state-department-force-country-starlink">open strongarming of foreign governments</a> to sign contracts with him. But as a huge federal contractor, Musk could find himself in a similar position as Harvard and Columbia universities if Trump decides to cut billions in contracts with Starlink or SpaceX.
Musk certainly has his own cards to play. He threatened to decommission one of his SpaceX rockets, which could impede the US government’s ability to launch satellites and other payloads into space. But when evaluating threats like this, we should remember two of Karl Marx’s insights: first, that the capitalist class is a band of “hostile brothers” and second, that the “executive of the capitalist state” is merely a “committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie”. This means that Musk may not have the running room he thinks he has.
First, his tech brethren like Amazon’s/Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos and Open AI’s Sam Altman or Palantir’s Peter Thiel will be happy to screw Elon if Trump decides to invest in Blue Origin as an alternative to SpaceX or Open AI or Palantir as an alternative to Musk’s Grok or xAI. Second, the state (especially under a vindictive boss like Trump) still has many levers of power to bring Musk to heel.
The Trump-Musk alliance was the most public manifestation of the “<a href="https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/maga-feeding-frenzy-has-caused-a">shotgun marriage</a>” that is the Trump regime: an alliance of “America First” MAGA nativists, Christian nationalist reactionaries and tech oligarchs who don’t always see eye-to-eye. <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/who-got-duped-maga-activists-worry-that-nativism-and-tech-oligarchy-may-not-go-hand-in-hand">Recall that Trumpworld erupted in controversy even before Trump took office</a>. Then, the tech faction, including Musk and his then-DOGE sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy, fought with MAGA nativists over restrictions on H1B visas for highly skilled immigrants. Against the MAGA racists who want to keep brown people out of the US, the Silicon Valley oligarchs are happy to encourage temporary visas for software engineers from Asia binding them to their employers.
There are many crosscutting interests among the main factions of the Trump regime. For example, the Wall Street and Silicon Valley oligarchs hate Trump’s tariffs, but these are gospel to the America Firsters. For now, though, these factions remain mostly united. And that’s mostly because they hate the same people: trans people, pro-Palestine activists, government workers, “woke” liberals and the like. And while they are, in the argot of Silicon Valley, “moving fast and breaking things”, they seem to be a juggernaut.
If there is to be a reverberation of the Trump-Musk fight in the broader Trump project, the bill moving its way through Congress could feel it. It’s a monstrous bill in terms of its impacts on ordinary people, but it’s a Frankenstein’s monster assembled to keep all of Trump’s legislative enablers on board. The Christian reactionaries get Medicaid bans on gender-affirming care. The tech oligarchs get bans on state-level regulation of artificial intelligence. And the MAGA nativists get a huge expansion in the deportation industrial complex.
But the congressional majorities Trump needs to pass it are paper-thin, so any defection of any part of his base could sink it. Recognising this, Trump and his lackeys in Congress have jammed their entire agenda into this one bill. They want to make support for it a single up-or-down vote on the full Trump agenda. For that reason, it’s still likely to pass with most of its worst provisions preserved.
But could Musk and his money cause Republicans heartburn as they try to pass the mega bill? Possibly, if he chose to mount a campaign. But if he’s true to what he says, Musk might approve of the bill if it became even more of a handout to the rich and a punishment to the poor. That’s why it’s beyond pathetic that at <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/06/06/2025/khanna-steps-up-his-work-to-pull-musk-toward-democrats">least one leading Democrat</a> (and a prominent past Bernie Sanders supporter) is trying to move Musk and his chequebook over to the Democratic side. Now, that’s the way to revive the Democratic “brand”: ally with the most hated oligarch in the world!
The Trump-Musk feud is exhibit #1 of the rottenness at the core of US politics.

Lance Selfa

Trump-Musk shit show displays how much US politics stinks

“I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact.” Thus spoke Elon Musk in a keynote session at the 2013 South by Southwest Conference. It’s a provocative statement, and not just because it conjures imagery of the world’s richest man being consumed in a fiery explosion in a place no-one would be able to hear him scream. It’s provocative because it is attached to what Musk says is the most important task facing humanity: to establish permanent human presence on a planet other than Earth.
This lofty goal is a cornerstone of the cult of personality Musk has built around himself, populated mostly by tech bros, MAGA sycophants, and those predisposed to falling victim to cryptocurrency scams. If you buy into the vision, Musk becomes a sort of messiah leading humanity to some kind of immortality.
This, of course, is fantasy. Musk is no messiah. The narrative he’s constructed around Mars, like everything else he does, serves one main purpose: making himself more wealthy and more powerful.
What Musk is proposing is not to go to Mars only for the sake of it, but to guard against the existential threat of the collapse of human society. As he put it in a <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1050812486226599936">post</a> on X in 2018, “About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth &amp; half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens &amp; we destroy ourselves”.
Let’s let it go that he seems to have forgotten the first bit about helping solve problems on Earth. The second part about building a city on Mars hasn’t slipped his mind at all. According to<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/technology/elon-musk-spacex-mars.html">
a piece in the New York Times</a> based on private interviews and internal documents from insiders at SpaceX, in April 2024 Musk told SpaceX employees that he expects to have a million people living on Mars within two decades.
This is such a ludicrous idea it shouldn’t be worth wasting ink or pixels on. But, unfortunately, Musk is seen by many as an engineering genius, and too often his grand statements are insufficiently scrutinised. He also doubled down on it publicly on US Republican Senator <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKxgaxAVDfM">Ted Cruz’s podcast</a> in March of this year. So, let’s quickly think through what it would take to get a million people to Mars in 20 years.
SpaceX is working on Starship, a spaceship with a maximum capacity of 100 passengers, to take people to Mars on journeys that take a minimum of nine months. To get a million people there by 2045 they would need to build and launch a fully loaded Starship every day starting… in 2017. Better get a move on.
They might have a way to cut down on the number of people needing to be transported from Earth—Musk allegedly volunteered his own sperm to help boost the numbers in the new colony, according to the New York Times. Somehow finding takers on that offer seems even less likely than filling out 10,000 Starships.
It’s certainly possible that a crewed mission to Mars with a small number of people could happen within the next decade or so. But a functioning society on another planet is certainly not yet on the horizon.
If Musk actually believes it’s possible to have a million people living on Mars in less than two decades, he’s an idiot. More likely is that he knows it’s not. He’s a businessman who has a commercial interest in SpaceX appearing very important and very productive. So he’ll claim a Martian metropolis is within reach and that his company is going to be the one to make it happen to build that image.
In reality, the main purpose of SpaceX isn’t saving humanity from extinction; it’s making money. And on that metric, it’s been very successful. Through launching billionaires on space tourism flights, filling low Earth orbit with an ever-denser web of Starlink satellites and contracting out rockets to NASA and the US military to take their payloads into space, SpaceX has become the biggest company in the space industry. 
SpaceX is not publicly traded and doesn’t publish its financial numbers. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-10/spacex-share-sale-is-said-to-value-company-at-about-350-billion">Bloomberg recently reported</a> an insider deal putting its total value at US$350 billion. Profit margins are a well-guarded secret, but <a href="https://payloadspace.com/estimating-spacexs-2024-revenue/">industry analyst estimates</a> of its 2024 revenue are at about US$13 billion, up from US$8.7 billion in 2023. There is one well-known metric we can use to measure SpaceX’s dominance in the sector: last year, it launched more rockets into orbit than the rest of the world combined, including both private companies and state agencies.
Starlink is one of SpaceX’s most important projects. It’s an artificial satellite constellation made up of more than 8,000 satellites in orbit, with thousands more planned. For a premium price, it provides internet access practically anywhere on Earth, no matter how remote.
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-air-force-nominee-arranged-satellite-contract-manner-that-favored-musks-2025-02-07/">Reuters
reported</a> in February it also acts as communications infrastructure for a parallel constellation of US military surveillance satellites. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that runs the US’s secret spy satellite network, has launched more than 100 of them since last year on SpaceX’s rockets through the company’s Starshield unit.
The NRO’s satellites are not scientific instruments but intelligence-gathering devices that are an integral part of the US imperial machine. Far from preserving humanity, SpaceX is part of the US military industrial complex, the key aim of which is to kill and destroy more effectively. Being the biggest stakeholder in a private company so central to the world’s biggest military’s surveillance operations certainly puts Musk in a powerful position. It’s no wonder he has had (until recently) a VIP pass to the White House.
Musk is enjoying the spoils of SpaceX’s revenue streams and position of power, but it was not his own work that made him the richest person in human history. It’s the workers employed by his companies who are really to thank for that. Workers are the ones who design, build, test, develop and launch SpaceX’s rockets. They’re also a key audience for Musk’s Mars fairytale.
A 2023 <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-musk-safety/">investigation</a>
by Reuters revealed how the Mars fantasy is explicitly used within SpaceX to justify unsafe workplaces. More than 600 injuries of SpaceX workers since 2014 were documented, many of them swept under the rug, including amputations, eye and head injuries, and one death.
Tom Moline, a former SpaceX employee, told Reuters: “Elon’s concept that SpaceX is on this mission to go to Mars as fast as possible and save humanity permeates every part of the company. The company justifies casting aside anything that could stand in the way of accomplishing that goal, including worker safety”.
Moline was one of nine workers fired in 2022 after writing an open letter criticising a culture among SpaceX managers of dismissing employee concerns and unfairly enforcing discipline, and speaking up against Musk’s flippant public responses to sexual harassment allegations. He was told by SpaceX’s chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, that he was distracting from the goal: “Please focus on your job and the mission of SpaceX—to get humanity to Mars as quickly as possible.”
This is perhaps the most insidious effect of the “colonise Mars to save humanity” narrative. Entrenching such a cultish vision in the company acts as both a carrot and a stick for its workers: work hard and you can be part of something important; step out of line and you’re disrupting the mission. This doubtlessly puts pressure on workers to put up with unsafe workplaces, notoriously long hours, and intense deadlines.
The biggest winners from this are Musk and the other SpaceX executives. Less money and time spent on workplace safety means more productivity and more profit. That SpaceX now has its own company town, the newly established Starbase, Texas, signals a further tipping of the scales away from SpaceX workers towards their bosses.
It is undeniable that SpaceX’s workers have made impressive technical feats. That Starlink is capable of enabling global internet access is testament to that. That Musk gets to take the credit and the profit simply because he owns the company is one of the injustices of capitalism.
If SpaceX proves anything, it’s that workers are capable and willing to take on difficult problems and find solutions to them. But because of capitalism, currently their efforts go only towards enriching a select few at the top. Instead of it being free, publicly owned infrastructure, Starlink’s main functions are to generate more wealth for Musk and facilitate US imperial domination.
It is understandable that SpaceX workers would want to make a contribution to landing humans on another planet, which would genuinely be a monumental scientific achievement. But such a project exists only because one incredibly wealthy and powerful man decided that’s what he wanted to spend his money on, and only because he stood to gain from it.
Reaching Mars is possible, but so is distributing food to the world’s hungry and giving every homeless person a safe place to live. The climate crisis is presenting humanity with an immediate existential threat, and yet capitalism is incapable of addressing it.
A rational society would hit pause on any plans to explore the solar system until we’ve found solutions to the problems on Earth, as Musk will never do. Such a society would immediately reallocate the immense resources poured into building rockets, bombs and oil rigs into removing our reliance on fossil fuels and reversing the effects of climate change where we can. It would redistribute the immense wealth that already exists and make it so that no-one on Earth ever has to go hungry again.
To get to such a society, capitalism must be destroyed. The Elon Musks of the world must be overthrown and their power taken from them. A new world will need to be built based on meeting human needs instead of profit for the few.
Overthrowing capitalism, not moving to Mars, is the most urgent step in making sure humanity does not extinguish itself through climate collapse or nuclear war.
Once we have done that, then we can begin to direct the immense creative wellsprings of the working class towards scientific advancement for the genuine benefit of humanity. Then, and only then, should we set out into the stars to see what’s out there.

Danica Rachel

Elon Musk’s big Mars lie

Starving Palestinians forced to walk kilometres under scorching heat in a desperate search for food are crowded into metal cages. Drone broadcasts direct civilians to aid distribution points, where Israeli forces open fire on them. The situation is so desperate that many decide to brave the gunfire and attempt to gather food for their families.
“People fought over five pallets. They told us to take food—then they fired from every direction”, Mansour Sami Abdi, a father of four, <a href="https://msf.org.au/article/project-news/gaza-dozens-massacred-us-israel-backed-food-distribution-sites">told Doctors without Borders</a>, a humanitarian organisation, earlier this week. “I ran 200 metres before realising I’d been shot. This isn’t aid, it’s a lie.”
Massacres occur almost daily. On 1 June, at least 30 Palestinians were murdered like this. On 3 June, there were another 27. Who can now deny that Israel is waging a war of extermination? As the horrific results of the Zionist state’s project are laid bare, the collaborators—politicians, media organisations and “respectable” capitalist institutions—are searching for alibis. 
Last month, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Canada for the first time <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-from-the-leaders-of-the-united-kingdom-france-and-canada-on-the-situation-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank">issued a joint statement</a> criticising Israel’s “disproportionate” escalation in Gaza. The asymmetry has been discovered just 600 days into a “war” between one of the world’s best-equipped militaries and a starved civilian population. They should not be allowed to feign ignorance. The architects of these crimes could hardly have been clearer in their intentions. 
At the invasion’s outset, Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cze5w2wd4x0o">wrote on X</a>: “Now we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth”. Two days after 7 October, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was “<a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/we-are-fighting-human-animals-dehumanization-of-palestinians/">fighting human animals</a>” as he announced a complete siege of the territory.
“It’s time to kiss doomsday”, Israeli MP Revital Gotliv wrote, also on X. “Shooting powerful missiles without limit. Not flattening a neighbourhood. Crushing and flattening Gaza ... with penetrating bombs. Without mercy! Without mercy!” 
Ariel Kallner, another member of parliament, wrote: “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join!”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suddenly finds distasteful the use of starvation as a weapon of war. On 26 May, he told a press conference: “It is outrageous that there be a blockade of food and supplies to people who are in need”. But UNICEF began warning that all children under five were at risk of death from starvation in December 2023. And Israel has blockaded Gaza for almost twenty months. 
Albanese knew exactly what Israel’s endgame was when he refused to criticise US President Donald Trump’s plan for forced relocation back in February. “I’m not going to have a running commentary on statements by the president of the United States”, is all he had to say. Foreign Minister Penny Wong knew that access to food and water in Gaza had been cut off when she said on 10 October 2023: “I think it’s always very difficult from over here to make judgements about what security approach other countries take”. 
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s recent statement that he “no longer understands” what Israel is doing has been <a href="https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/05/27/no-longer-comprehensible-german-chancellor-slams-israels-gaza-strikes/">hyped in some quarters</a> as an “unprecedented criticism of Israel’s Gaza operations”. But, like the rest of the world, Merz does understand. He understood it in February when he invited Netanyahu to Berlin, promising to find a way around the prime minister’s <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu">International Criminal Court arrest warrant</a> for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He understood it last year, when his party approved €161 million (A$284 million) of arms shipments to Israel. The entire German establishment understood it as they closed ranks to have opponents of the genocide <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250304-german-ministry-dismisses-lawyer-for-supporting-gaza-rejecting-genocide/">fired</a>, <a href="https://hyphenonline.com/2024/10/04/ava-moayeri-germany-pro-palestine-protest-free-speech-police-arrest-violence/">raided, arrested</a> and <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/germany-palestine-activists-deportation-state-repression">deported</a>. 
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy recently labelled Israel’s actions “abominable”. But he’s comfortable with UK-manufactured drones being used by the Israeli army. According to testimony from a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7893vpy2gqo">retired British surgeon</a>, those drones target and shoot children who survive air strikes. Palestine solidarity activists who attempted to disrupt drone production have been <a href="https://thebristolcable.org/2025/02/filton-18-palestine-action-activists-treated-like-terrorists-elbit-israeli-arms-factory-action/">arrested</a> by “counter-terrorism” police and are imprisoned awaiting prosecution by Lammy’s government. 
Politicians in the West have united to defend their states’ economic and political relationships with Israel, a vital ally for projecting their power and influence in the Middle East. This has been more important to them than the 2 million people whose lives have been devastated in the Gaza Strip. Now that they have proven their loyalty, now that the job is nearly done, now that nobody is standing in Israel’s way, these politicians want to wash their hands of the inevitable results. 
For the same reason, a slight shift is occurring in media coverage. The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post publishes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/22/israel-gaza-ethnic-cleansing-genocide-2/">opinion pieces</a> decrying genocide. The BBC runs humanising stories on families decimated by Israeli airstrikes. Everyone, it seems, is starting to get the memo that a bit of equivocation and “balance” might be in order, if for no other reason than to begin scrubbing the stains from their reputations. 
But it doesn’t change the fact that corporate and state media outlets have spent 600 days acting as loyal agents for the Israeli military. They’ve treated Israeli accounts of events as facts, silenced dissenting voices and embedded their journalists with Israeli units to be taken on North Korea-style propaganda tours.
One of the most notorious examples occurred at the beginning of the war, when CNN international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson accompanied the Israeli army to Gaza’s bombed-out al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital. The network broadcast “evidence” that Hamas was using the hospital to hide Israeli captives. Military spokesperson Daniel Hagari showed CNN a document on the wall written in Arabic, which he said was a roster of Hamas guards. “Every terrorist has his own shift”, Hagari told Robertson. 
The problem was that it wasn’t a Hamas roster—it was just an Arabic calendar. Despite the footage already being debunked by Arabic speakers and a protest being lodged by a Palestinian producer at the network, the lie was broadcast, giving the Israeli state cover for war crimes it may have committed at the hospital. 
The systematic bias against Palestinians and their supporters has been so overwhelming that many normally apolitical journalists at major news outlets—from American CNN to the BBC in Britain—have felt compelled to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/5/failing-gaza-pro-israel-bias-uncovered-behind-the-lens-of-western-media">blow the whistle</a>. In Australia, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/26/australias-abc-staffs-concerns-over-gaza-bias-revealed">journalists have complained</a> that editors have effectively banned the use of the word “Palestine” in reports.
It’s not until the damage is done that the rewriting of history begins. Wars that can no longer be defended are re-framed by their perpetrators as unforeseeable and unfortunate mishaps. 
During the US invasion of Vietnam, opponents of the war faced a solid wall of capitalist institutions committed to its prosecution. Intellectuals overwhelmingly supported the war as a defence of freedom against communist tyranny. University heads called the police on protesters targeting their defence ties. American journalists identified with the objectives of “their side”, repeated government justifications for war crimes and assisted in their cover-up. Anybody who stood against this consensus was slandered as a “communist sympathiser”.
When as many as 3 million Vietnamese were dead, the occupation collapsed and opponents of the war were proved right. Then the war was rewritten self-servingly as a “tragedy of good intentions”, a noble mission gone awry. 
It was similar with Iraq. Sponsors of the war falsified evidence to justify the invasion, and suppressed, monitored and smeared opponents. Then, when it all fell apart, they shrugged it off as an intelligence failure. Hillary Clinton brushed aside her support for the war during her first presidential bid, saying: “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have voted that way”.
As in Vietnam and Iraq, so now in Gaza. From the beginning, the left and the Palestine solidarity movement have argued that Israel’s aims are clear: an extension of their decades-long project of ethnic cleansing and expansion. From the beginning, we argued that if Israel wasn’t forced to stop, the war would end with the brutal forced depopulation of Gaza. For telling the truth, we were sacked, suspended, slandered and put on trial. 
Israel’s backers now admit the reality of this war, yet they continue to persecute those who oppose it. Now that our leaders mouth rhetorical criticisms, we should demand real action. 
All political prisoners who have been demonised as “terrorist sympathisers” and threats to “social cohesion” should be released. All bogus charges of antisemitism against anti-war and anti-racist activists should be withdrawn. 
States should impose real sanctions on Israel. The “sanctions” announced by the UK government are nothing of the sort, consisting of the pausing of free trade talks and travel bans on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/22/violent-israeli-settlers-under-uk-sanctions-join-west-bank-outpost">a handful of West Bank “settlers”</a>. The government will continue to send weapons and share intelligence from surveillance flights over Gaza, assisting Israel in its targeting of civilians. 
As world leaders try to distance themselves from Israel’s crimes, we must continue to hold them accountable. They’ve been accomplices in this atrocity and implacable enemies of those who have tried to stop it. They must never be forgiven.

Luca Tavan

Western collaborators in genocide now scramble for alibis

The weaponisation of food echoes the horrors of the Jewish ghettos, as Palestinians are pushed beyond the limits of human endurance, writes Soumaya Ghannoushi. This article was first published at <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-how-israel-replicating-nazi-starvation-tactics">Middle East Eye</a>.
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A woman <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKUjoFXMjiV/?igsh=aDRhcnAxM3hrZTEw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">kneels</a> in the dust.
She is thin, trembling—not old, but famine has aged her. Her bones protrude through a threadbare dress. Her face is ash. Her fingers claw at the ground. 
Around her, others bend too—not in prayer, but in desperation, scraping at the dirt for flour. Not even full grains. Just remnants. Scraps. Whatever the wind and boots and bombs have not yet claimed.
Then she breaks.
She sinks fully to the earth, as if the weight of hunger is too heavy to carry. And she cries, not softly, but with a violence that cuts through the silence of the ruined street: “My kids will eat flour scraped from the floor”.
She weeps into the gravel.
This is not just starvation. It is the calculated breaking of a people, pushing them beyond the limits of human endurance.
This is what Gaza’s “aid” looks like.
Not distribution, but oppression. Not relief, but ritual debasement.
Rations of suffering
The flour had been withheld for weeks—stockpiled, blocked, used as bait. Exhausted families walked for miles, past corpses and craters, to reach the drop sites—only to find cages, soldiers and drones. When they ran towards the food, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-kills-32-starving-palestinians-latest-us-aid-point-massacre" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">they were shot</a>.
More than 30 <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Palestinians</a>
were massacred on Sunday, and more than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/01/israel-gaza-aid-rafah-shooting/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">170 were wounded</a> near an aid distribution site in Rafah, as <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Israeli</a>
forces opened fire on starving civilians trying to collect food. The drop was coordinated by the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">US</a>-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Aid has become a trap. And hunger, a pretext for slaughter.
They have built a bureaucracy of starvation, calling it a “humanitarian foundation”.
But let’s call it what it is: the GHF doesn’t deliver aid, but control. It rations not food, but suffering.
Even the food they promise, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/the-u-s-backed-gaza-aid-plan-has-started-operating-why-are-so-many-humanitarian-groups-opposed-to-it" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1,750 calories per person</a>, is not enough to stave off malnutrition. The World Health Organisation sets the emergency minimum at 2,100 calories.
But most Palestinians in Gaza receive far less than that because the food never comes.
In April 2024, people in northern Gaza were surviving on an average of<a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/people-northern-gaza-forced-survive-245-calories-day-less-can-beans-oxfam" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> 245 calories a day</a>, less than a can of fava beans, according to Oxfam.
Grandparents chew flour laced with sand. Toddlers are fed leaves.
The body begins to consume itself: the mind flickers, the breath slows.
Death comes not with a bomb, but with a whisper in the stomach: empty, empty, empty.
And all of this is not accidental. It is replication.
No one spared
In the weeks leading to <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/germany" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Germany</a>’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Reich Minister of Food Richard Darre and his state secretary, Herbert Backe, developed the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34907689/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hunger Plan</a>, a strategy of deliberate starvation to exterminate Soviet civilians and Jews while feeding German troops.
It killed at least 7 million people, not as collateral, but by design.
The Nazi regime’s food ration system reflected a <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34907689/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">racial hierarchy</a>: 100 percent for Germans, 70 percent for Poles, 30 percent for Greeks and 20 percent for Jews.
In the Jewish ghettos, food was weaponised. Access to meat or bread was controlled. Shops were empty. Hunger was not a failure—it was policy. 
“That we sentence 1.2 million Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally”, <a href="https://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/news/hitler-s-hungerplan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hans Frank</a>, the Nazi governor of occupied Poland, wrote in a diary entry.
Today, more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza—the territory’s entire population—are being forced, by design, into famine.
Not one million. Not most. All of them.
Women and men, infants and the elderly. No one is spared.
And yet—in a twisted echo of history—the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-plan-to-initially-only-feed-60-of-gazans-as-they-endure-extreme-deprivation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GHF’s plan</a>, like the Nazi food hierarchies before it, will serve only 1.2 million people in its initial phase, excluding the rest of the population.
And that should never be noted marginally.
Even if the GHF achieves its goals, the average Palestinian in Gaza, by design, will receive fewer than 1,000 calories a day, when those receiving no food at all are taken into account. 
This is very close to what Jews in the <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-defiant-jewish-doctors-in-warsaw-ghetto-detailed-effects-of-nazi-starvation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Warsaw Ghetto</a> were receiving, through both their allocated rations and smuggling. 
Mockery of the dying
Gaza is now the hungriest place on earth—the only area where <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/30/gaza-hungriest-place-earth-all-people-risk-famine-un" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">100 percent of the population is at risk of famine</a>, according to the United Nations.
Meanwhile, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared in April that not even “<a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/smotrich-says-not-even-grain-wheat-will-enter-gaza" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a grain of wheat</a>” should enter Gaza.
In <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Britain</a>, the advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel grotesquely suggested that the war might help <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/10/uk-lawyers-for-israel-condemned-over-claim-war-may-reduce-obesity-in-gaza" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“reduce obesity” in Gaza</a>.
This is not just cruelty. This is contempt; it is mockery of the dying.
Even the man appointed as executive director of the Gaza Humiliation Foundation, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/54ec0009-5023-4130-b69e-300c7333e63d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a former US Marine</a>, recently resigned, warning that the project is incompatible with humanitarian standards.
And no wonder. This is not a relief effort. It is a siege conceived by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, endorsed by US President Donald Trump, and inspired—in logic and layout—by the Nazi Hunger Plan.
Armed gangs loot aid convoys with impunity, moving freely in areas under Israeli control.
An internal<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/18/gaza-looting-aid-convoys-israel-famine/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UN memo</a> seen by The Washington Post last year warned these groups “may be benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” or “protection” from the Israeli army.
When guards in Gaza tried to stop these gangs, Israeli air strikes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfD4NK2Z3H4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">killed twelve</a>—not the looters, but those trying to protect the food.
This is not chaos. It is a calculated breakdown.
It aims to turn hunger into disorder, starvation into surrender.
Stripped of dignity
There are conflicts in the world. There are wars, occupations, displacements.
But nowhere on Earth—not anywhere—is an entire population, young and old, locked inside a flattened, walled-off strip of land, bombed from the air, shelled from the sea, and systematically starved under total siege.
Gaza is not a battlefield. It is a prison. A graveyard.
Eighty years ago, a group of Jewish doctors in the Warsaw Ghetto documented the effects of hunger on the human body.
They called their book <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-defiant-jewish-doctors-in-warsaw-ghetto-detailed-effects-of-nazi-starvation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Maladie de Famine</a> (The Disease of Starvation). In it, the project’s lead doctor, Israel Milejkowski, wrote: “I hold my pen in my hand and death stares into my room … In this prevailing silence lies the power and the depth of our pain and the moans that one day will shake the world’s conscience”.
This is exactly what doctors in Gaza are saying today.
They treat toddlers who haven’t eaten in days. They watch infants die with sunken eyes and protruding ribs. They speak to the world, but the world does not listen. 
That day is now.
After seeing their homes, schools and bakeries razed; after being displaced again and again, infants on shoulders, elders in wheelchairs, entire families turned to ash—they are now denied bread.
Gaza’s people are not just being starved. They are being stripped of the final thing left to them: their dignity.
They are treated worse than animals. Hunted when they gather. Shot when they eat.
Because Israel is not content with crushing Palestinian bodies. It wants to crush their souls. To erase not just their presence, but their will to exist.
And while the world looks away, somewhere, in a corner of the rubble, a mother kneels.
Still scraping. Still crying.
Trying to feed her children with flour dusted in dirt, and drenched in blood.
Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer. This article was first published at <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-how-israel-replicating-nazi-starvation-tactics">Middle East Eye</a>.

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