collective punishment

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ARTH-SHATTERING Speech on Gâza by Slovenian President SHOCKS the West!

The Africa News Network

Only 80 years have passed since the end of the Second World War. Only 80 years. And we already seem to have forgotten how vital human rights and dignity are for civilization and social progress. So deep is this collective amnesia that even the prevention of genocide, the most abhorrent crime against humanity, no longer carries the urgency it once did. I’m not here to compare the dehumanization of millions under Nazism and fascism leading to the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity. Far from it. But I must say this: the world condemned the Cerebranita genocide and brought its perpetrators to justice. Why then, only three decades later, do some politicians tolerate or even defend Israel’s genocidal policy against Palestinians in Gaza?

The international community resoundingly condemned Hamas’s terrorist attack in October 2023. How come we have no such consensus when it comes to the people living in Gaza? How can it be that there are still politicians, including those in European Union member states, who tolerate that most people in Gaza have been displaced multiple times? That more than 90% of homes are damaged or destroyed? How can they accept acute shortages of food, water, fuel, medicine, and shelter? Or reports of Israel negotiating with South Sudan to transfer people from one war-torn land at risk of famine to another? And let’s not forget the fact that humanitarian workers and doctors themselves are starving while trying to help those in need.

How can they not be moved after the news hit the world that Gaza city and surrounding areas are now, ladies and gentlemen, officially under famine? Distinguished guests, these are not rhetorical questions. As human beings, we must ensure that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank never fade from the political spotlight for several reasons. Firstly, through our dealings with Gaza, we reveal who we are. Gaza has become a symbol of our attitude towards atrocities worldwide. If we cannot address Gaza, what legitimacy do we have to confront gross violations of human rights anywhere else? Secondly, our handling of Gaza reflects our understanding of humanity. When Europe advocates human rights as universal values, do we truly mean it, or are they merely a tool for dominating political discourse?

Thirdly, humanity is indivisible. We are rightly united in strongly condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. We stand with the Ukrainian people and support the principle of territorial integrity. We cannot allow a country to seize another country’s territory just because it can. We cannot allow people to be killed merely for defending their country against an aggressor. In Ukraine, we defend international law and humanity. Values and norms are values and norms everywhere for everyone, including in Gaza.

Fourthly, Europe needs to show unity in defending humanity. The EU’s ultimate response to Israel’s actions in Gaza will show the world how our leaders see Europe’s future—whether democracy, unity, diversity, and trust in international law remain at the center of European integration. That being said, I find little cause for optimism. Attacks on democracy and fundamental freedoms are visible basically everywhere. Many of us grew up with leaders criticizing autocracies during the Cold War. Several of those regimes endure, and their practices are spreading regrettably even in Europe. Freedom of thought, academic freedom, and investigative journalism once shaped democratic discourse. Not anymore. And this is wrong; this is historically wrong.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no progress. Attempts to restrict free speech are always met with resistance. Those who suppress freedom of thought and critical thinking always end up on the scrap heap of history. With this in mind, I would like to express my support for the initiative to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Franchesca Albanz, the UN Special Rapporteur on the West Bank and Gaza, and to the doctors caring for the people of Gaza. They deserve recognition for risking their lives to restore peace and uphold humanity. They embody what multilateralism for human rights also means—preventing individual politicians from acting with impunity.

Dear friends, we cannot stand by and watch history unfold without us. We must not let cold pragmatism drain the soul from Europe. Now is the time to speak truth—bold, unwavering truth—to power to bring the united in diversity back to the very heart of the European dream. In an enlarged European Union, human rights and human dignity flourish in a world that is stable and just. But it is in times of crisis and uncertainty that the true test begins: the test of our courage, conviction, and willingness to stand firm and defend our values. Now is the time to raise our voices, not in whispers of compromise, but in a thunder of determination.

Let us reject those who bend their values to the winds of profit and personal gain. Let us fight for a Europe that speaks out loudly through every multilateral form against injustice and exclusion, against every crime against humanity, and for every silenced voice. Ladies and gentlemen, as leaders, we shape the future—a path towards democracy, prosperity, and peace, or a spiral into fear, crisis, and war. This is our moment to choose the side of history we will stand on. Billions, ladies and gentlemen, billions, depend on our choice. We Slovenians believe in justice, and we have no doubt. We stand firmly and proudly on the side of humanity. Thank you.

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The Persecution of Francesca Albanese

The sanctioning by the Trump administration of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, is an ominous harbinger of the end of the rule of international law.

CHRIS HEDGES

United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese holds a press conference in Geneva on December 11, 2024. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini / AFP via Getty Images)

When the history of the genocide in Gaza is written, one of the most courageous and outspoken champions for justice and the adherence to international law will be Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, who today the Trump administration is sanctioning. Her office is tasked with monitoring and reporting on human rights violations that Israel commits against Palestinians.

Albanese, who regularly receives death threats and endures well-orchestrated smear campaigns directed by Israel and its allies, valiantly seeks to hold those who support and sustain the genocide accountable. She lambasts what she calls “the moral and political corruption of the world” that allows the genocide to continue. Her office has issued detailed reports documenting war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, one of which, called “Genocide as colonial erasure,” I have reprinted as an appendix in my latest book, “A Genocide Foretold.”

She has informed private organizations that they are “criminally liable” for assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide in Gaza. She announced that if true, as has been reported, that the former British prime minister David Cameron threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, which Cameron and the other former British prime minister Rishi Sunak could be charged with a criminal offense for, under the Rome Statue. The Rome Statue criminalizes those who seek to prevent war crimes from being prosecuted.

She has called on top European Union (EU) officials to face charges of complicity of war crimes over their support for the genocide, saying that their actions cannot be met with impunity. She was a champion of the Madleen flotilla that sought to break the blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, writing that the boat which was intercepted by Israel, was carrying not only supplies, but a message of humanity.

You can see the interview I did with Albanese here.

Her latest report lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as BlackRock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law, are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.

You can read my article on Albanese’s most recent report here.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned her support for the ICC, four of whose judges have been sanctioned by the U.S. for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant last year. He criticized Albanese for her efforts to prosecute American or Israeli nationals who sustain the genocide, saying she is unfit for service as a special rapporteur. Rubio also accused Albanese of having “spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.” The sanctions will most likely prevent Albanese from travelling to the U.S. and will freeze any assets she may have in the country.

The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states, such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint. It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. No one, from now on, will take seriously our stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? We speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide.

“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass forced displacement and the mass homelessness, while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation — how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asked in an interview I did with her when we discussed her report, “Genocide as colonial erasure.”

The militarized drones, helicopter gunships, walls and barriers, checkpoints, coils of concertina wire, watchtowers, detention centers, deportations, brutality and torture, denial of entry visas, apartheidesque existence that comes with being undocumented, loss of individual rights and electronic surveillance, are as familiar to desperate migrants along the Mexican border, or attempting to enter Europe, as they are to Palestinians.

This is what awaits those who Frantz Fanon calls “the wretched of the earth.”

Those that defend the oppressed, such as Albanese, will be treated like the oppressed

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The Carnation Revolution

In April 1974, Portugal erupted in a revolution that shouldn’t have happened—but did. The Carnation Revolution didn’t begin with foreign bombs or riots. It started as a mutiny within the military itself. It bloomed, quietly, from a decision: not to obey.

For nearly 50 years, Portugal had been under the grip of the Estado Novo dictatorship. Censorship was law. The secret police were always watching. Young men were conscripted to fight endless colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. It was a country drowning in silence.

Inside the military, a group of officers had enough. The Armed Forces Movement (MFA) was born from that exhaustion. They were not politicians. They weren’t career revolutionaries. They were soldiers who saw the cost of obedience—and chose disobedience instead.

On the morning of April 25, 1974, tanks rolled into Lisbon. Orders were given to fire. But the revolution did not start with bullets. Some soldiers refused. Captain Fernando Salgueiro Maia emerged as the revolution’s human face—standing in the middle of the street, calmly negotiating with loyalist tank crews. He had a grenade ready but refused to use it. Legend holds that when a loyalist officer ordered a tank to fire on Maia, the crew refused.

At that moment, loyalty shifted to conscience instead of politics. Soldiers laid down their arms. Tanks turned around. No street battles erupted. Only 5 people were killed during the coup. Democracy was reborn not through force, but through refusal to obey. The revolution ended in flowers.

Celeste Caeiro, a restaurant worker, had been sent home early that morning. As she left, she carried with her leftover carnations meant for celebrating the restaurant’s anniversary. On the street, she handed them to soldiers. They placed them in the barrels of their rifles. Others followed. More civilians brought flowers. War machines bloomed.

It didn’t happen because people were ready. It happened because someone said no.

Now, shift the lens to Gaza.

Since October 2023, airstrikes have flattened entire neighborhoods. Refugee camps like Al-Shati, built in 1948 for Palestinians fleeing their homes, have been bombed again. Mosques, homes, water tanks—gone. People killed while sleeping, praying, charging phones. Not as accidents. As orders.

The language is familiar. “It’s necessary.” “Neutralized threats.” “Human shields.” Euphemisms used not to explain, but to numb. It’s language designed to give soldiers the courage to kill. To convince them it isn’t killing at all.

But just as in Portugal, obedience is not destiny. At that moment, when a tank crew chose conscience over orders, an entire regime fell. What if one soldier in Gaza refuses to fire? What if one international diplomat says no? What if one simply decides they cannot stay silent?

It’s not easy. Portugal nearly didn’t. But the ripple started with one man saying no.

Because the flower in the rifle isn’t a miracle. It’s a decision.

And decisions are always possible.