The new world disorder: will there ever be a day of reckoning?
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” President Trump’s April 7th Truth Social posting warning Iran about what would happen if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz showed how dangerously unhinged his ‘foreign policy’ had become. It was a step too far for many who had once been strongly identified with the MAGA movement. Marjorie Taylor Greene immediately called for the 25th Amendment to be used to remove an unstable president from office, and Tucker Carlson urged people close to him to refuse to carry out orders if Trump wanted to use nuclear weapons against Iran.
In the words of the historian Timothy Snyder, “As any historian of mass atrocity knows, there is no such thing as ‘only words.’ The notion of killing a whole civilization, once spoken, remains. It enables others to say similar things, as when another elected representative compared the entire country of Iran to a cancer that had to be removed. Whatever happens tonight, the president, by saying such things, has already changed the world for the worse, and made acts of mass violence more likely.”
As for the possibility of nuclear weapons being used, following Trump’s April 6th remark that it would not be a war crime to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants because “they’re animals” and his Easter Day profanity-laced rant warning Iranians that they would be “living in Hell” if they did not open the Strait of Hormuz , foreign policy analyst Trita Parsi told Democracy Now! that “a lot of former officials are very candid that this is an option on the table…The fact that that actually is being discussed or is being contemplated and discussed by former officials as an option that Trump is looking at, or the Israelis are looking at, is telling us about how badly this war is going, how desperate the situation is becoming, and how tremendously dangerous this would be for the entire world.”
A precarious ‘ceasefire’
By the time Trump threatened Iran with genocide, US-Israeli bombardments had killed over 3,600 people (including 254 children) in Iran, and damaged or destroyed more than 30 universities, some 600 schools, nearly 200 healthcare facilities, the Rafi’Nia Synagogue in Tehran, pharmaceutical companies, petrochemical facilities and over 130 historical and cultural sites, some dating back to the 8th century. Iran had shot downtwo US military aircraft – reportedly the first time in more than 20 years that this has happened – and hit major oil and gas facilities around the Gulf as well as US military bases, while the closure of the Strait of Hormuz had shaken the world economy.
On April 7, an hour before the threatened mass carpet bombing of civilian sites was due to begin unless Iran agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz, Trump accepted a request put forward by Pakistan for a two-week ‘ceasefire’ to consummate a deal based on Iran’s ‘10-point proposal’ which Trump wrote “is a workable basis on which to negotiate.” But as described in Newsweek, Iran’s demands (including a binding pledge not to attack Iran again, an end to sanctions, reparations for war damage, the removal of US troops from the region, the ability of Iran to keep enriching uranium and to keep control of the Strait of Hormuz) seemed unlikely to be accepted by the US. They would be adamantly rejected by Israel which claimed that the ‘ceasefire’ did not apply to Lebanon although Pakistan, its broker, said it did and at the time it was presented to Trump he seemed to agree.
The part Israel played in pushing the US to initiate a war against Iran was detailed on April 7 by The New York Times. On April 8, British journalist Peter Beaumont wrote that Netanyahu might be the “biggest loser” if the war stops now, as the Israel-US Axis has achieved neither regime change nor the end of Iran’s nuclear program, and Hezbollah is still firing missiles into northern Israel.
Netanyahu wants to keep the war going
On the same day, Netanyahu showed his displeasure with the ‘ceasefire’ and flaunted Israel’s ‘super Sparta’status by bombing some 100 targets in Lebanon in a 10 minute period, killing over 300 people and wounding 1,165. Those numbers are in addition to the already existing death toll of 1,500, and the devastation carried out in the south of the country where Israel has systematically destroyed entire villages, nearly 100 medical facilities, all seven bridges across the Litani river and ordered the evacuation of 15 percent of the country. Some 1.2 million Lebanese are now displaced from their homes, and Israel is fomenting sectarian divisions by ordering Druse and Christian communities not to shelter Shiite Muslims.
No sooner had Israel undertaken its April 8th blitzkrieg on Lebanon than Iran warned the US that the ‘ceasefire’ was in jeopardy and that Lebanon must be included in negotiations or the Strait of Hormuz would not be opened. Trump then appeared to reverse himself by backing his war partner’s claim that Lebanon was not meant to be included in the talks and that Israel would be holding separate negotiations with Lebanon in Washington DC. He said he asked Netanyahu to “low-key” his military assault on Lebanon so as not to jeopardize the US-Iran talks due to take place on April 11-12.
Trump’s press secretary had meanwhile told a press conference that “the Iranians originally put forward a 10-point plan that was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded. The idea that President Trump would ever accept an Iranian wish list as a deal is completely absurd.”
A day after Vice-President JD Vance (fresh from campaigning for Hungarian dictator Orbán who went on to lose his election), Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Iranian negotiators in Islamabad on April 11, they headed for home. Vance said that Iran had “chosen not to accept our terms” without specifying what those terms were, while Iran said the US team was more interested in dictating than negotiating. Trump declared that the US would immediately blockade the Strait of Hormuz.
On the evening of April 11 Netanyahu assured his hypermilitarized society that victory against Israel’s enemies was certain. He said that “the battle is not yet over,” but the war has already “crushed the nuclear program. We crushed the missiles, and we crushed the regime.” On April 12 Israel resumed its heavy bombardments of Lebanon while Netanyahu, who was due to face a resumption of his trial on corruption charges on the same day, has reportedly written to the judge of the Jerusalem District Court asking for it to be yet again postponed so he can concentrate on the war. Lebanon and Israel are supposed to begin ‘peace talks’ in Washington DC on April 14.
“Tragically”, analyst Yezid Sayigh writes, “Lebanon—along with Iran—is caught in a conundrum entirely of Israel’s own making: its refusal to permit Palestinian self-determination and relinquish occupied territory (including in Syria) compels it to ratchet up military pressure endlessly against multiple enemies in pursuit of goals that cannot be achieved through military means alone.”
Trump seeks a $1.5 trillion military budget and more bombs for Israel
Trump’s request to Congress represents a $400 billion increase over last year’s Pentagon budget. And it doesn’t include the Pentagon’s $200 billion supplemental budget to fund the unpopular war on Iran. Statingthat ‘it’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all of these individual things,” Trump proposed cutting $73 billion from domestic programs.
But taxpayers’ money can always be found to spend on more weapons for Israel, such as a $658.8 million subsidy from Foreign Military Financing for D9 Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes and some 22,000 bombs which Sen. Bernie Sanders has been trying to block. A vote on the senator’s ‘Joint Resolutions of Disapproval’ is due to take place after Congress returns from its spring break. The US has given Israel $300 billion (adjusted for inflation) since its founding, making it by far the largest recipient of US aid.
The request for additional funds comes at a time when over 60% of American adults and 80% of Democratic voters have an unfavorable view of Israel, according to the results of a Pew Research poll released on April 7, and a majority distrust Netanyahu.
Israel passes apartheid death penalty law
In addition to subsidizing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the ‘Gazafication’ of Lebanon, US taxpayers are supporting a system of apartheid that has, as Amnesty International states, been further entrenched by the passage of death penalty legislation on March 30. Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, wearing a noose pin on his lapel, uncorked a bottle of champagne after the Knesset by a 62-48 vote endorsed the final version of the bill introduced by Ben-Gvir’s Kahanist ‘Jewish Power’ party. Several human rights organizations and opposition parties immediately petitioned the Supreme Court to nullify the new law.
Shrugging off the criticism of Israeli and international human rights groups that have for several years accused Israel of violating the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (including B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International), as well as a joint statementby the foreign ministers of Australia, Germany, France, Italy, New Zealand and the UK, the Knesset made the death penalty the automatic default sentence for West Bank Palestinians tried in military courts and convicted of actions that led to the death of Israelis with the intent of “ending Israel’s existence.” The conviction rate in military court is above 99%, and it is common to present as evidence ‘confessions’ obtained through torture.
Under the new law it only takes a majority of judges in military court, not a consensus, to impose a sentence mandating execution, which must be carried out by hanging within 90 days of a conviction. Only in unspecified ‘special circumstances’ can a guilty finding lead to life imprisonment. There is no right of appeal and sentences cannot be commuted. The age of those to whom the law applies is not mentioned. Children as young as 12 are prosecuted in Israel’s military courts.
Jewish settlers carrying out terrorist attacks in the West Bank are excluded from the legislation. Limor Son Har-Melech, a member of Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party and sponsor of the bill, has claimed “there is no such thing as a Jewish terrorist.” According to Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the law is not just “deeply discriminatory” and a “particularly egregious violation of international law” but “its application to the residents of the occupied Palestinian territory would constitute a war crime.”
There are currently nearly 10,000 Palestinians in Israel’s prisons, over a third of whom are administrative detainees who have never been charged or tried. The new law would not be applied retroactively to convicted prisoners. But in the view of Ayah Shreiteh of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, “there are some 40 Palestinian prisoners charged with acts that led to killing Israelis who haven’t yet received sentences, and they are in the direct crosshairs of the death penalty law.”
Since Oct. 2023 more than 100 Palestinian detainees have died in Israel’s prisons from torture and physical brutality, starvation and denial of medical treatment, and more than 1,000 have been executed on the streets by Israeli forces. Extra-judicial killings have long been a routine practice. In the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass, “For years, army commanders, politicians and Israeli society have effectively delegated to every soldier the powers of prosecutor, judge and executioner – as long as he believes the person facing him is Palestinian.”
Now executions are being formally institutionalized by the state, giving Israel another tool to erase the Palestinian existence.
Israel tightens its hold on land, water and holy sites
Under the cover of the Iran war, the Israeli security cabinet has discreetly agreed to build 34 new settlementsacross the West Bank, the “largest number of settlements ever approved in a single cabinet session,” according to Israel’s Channel 24. Currently some 750,000 settlers live in 141 West Bank settlements – that are illegal under international law – and 224 ‘outposts’ – that are illegal under both international and Israeli law. According to the head of the Religious Zionist party, “liberating” water sources like the Ein al-Auja stream in the Jordan Valley - where this year hundreds of Israelis celebrated Passover following settler success in driving 120 Palestinian families off their nearby land - is vital to the transformation of the West Bank.
In Jerusalem, for the first time, a settler ‘outpost’ has been established within the city limits. Israel is meanwhile tightening its hold on Jerusalem’s holy sites. For the first time in centuries Christian churches were closed during Palm Sunday and Easter. On March 29, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pizzaballa, and other Catholic Church officials were barred from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. A day later, the Jerusalem-based Interreligious Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, which seeks to foster Christian-Jewish relations, issued a report examining 155 documented physical attacks in 2025 targeting clergy, monks and nuns, as well as attacks on church property. It concluded that “harassment and violence against Christians are continuing within a socio-political climate that is increasingly intolerant of diversity and more assertive in exclusivist national-religious claims.”
On April 6, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir made a provocative entrance into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, accompanied by a large contingent of police. There are fears that Israel is exploiting the war with Iran to assert more control over the Al-Aqsa compound where ultra-nationalist Jews have long wanted to build the ‘Third Temple.’ A proposal currently before the High Court would increase the number of Jews permitted into Al-Aqsa and times when it would be closed to Muslims. On April 9, the Mosque was reopened to Muslim worshippers after being closed for 40 days.
In Gaza the slaughter continues
Negotiations have been going on in Cairo between Hamas and representatives of the Board of Peace, with Hamas considering a Board proposal delivered by Nickolay Mladenov, the Board’s High Representative for Gaza, for a gradual handing over of all of its weapons and maps of the tunnel network in exchange for the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces. On April 6, The New York Times reported that Hamas was told it had to finalize a disarmament agreement by the end of the week. It would bind Palestinians it to an eight month period of phased disarmament at the end of which Israel will supposedly have withdrawn to a ‘security perimeter’ and reconstruction would begin.
In the less than half of the Gaza Strip not under direct Israeli control Hamas is struggling to function as the governing authority and provide protection to the limited number of aid convoys, even as its police force is being targeted by Israeli airstrikes. The situation has been made more dire by the actions of Israel-backed militias, such as the Abu Nasira group which calls itself ‘Free Homeland Forces’ and fought Hamas near the Al-Maghazi refugee camp on April 6 close to Israel’s lethal ‘yellow line.’ At least 10 people were killed when Israeli drones came to the aid of the militia by firing two missiles near a school sheltering families. As Free Homeland Forces’ Shawqi Abu Nasira told Israel’s Channel 14, “The relationship between us and the Israelis is a strong relationship and an intimate friendship, and we will live with them for the rest of our lives in security and peace…They provide us with weapons, food, and clothing, and we coordinate with them on security to the fullest extent.”
As many as seven different militias and clans are now contesting Hamas’ authority. Most of them are reportedly collaborating with Israel which provides them with arms, salaries and bases behind Israel’s ‘yellow line.’ The largest militia, known as the ‘Popular Forces,’ emerged from the Abu Shabab group and operates out of Rafah. The Abu Shabab group was notorious for hijacking humanitarian aid deliveries and stealing food from warehouses. The ‘Strike Force Against Terror’ operates in the Khan Yunis region in the center of the Gaza Strip while the Israel-backed ‘Ashraf al-Mansi’ militia seeks to control the north and has clashed with Hamas around Gaza City.
On April 10, UN Human Rights head Volker Türk reported that at least 32 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces since early April, bringing to 738 the number killed since the ‘ceasefire’ began. On April 6, Israeli forces fired on a vehicle carrying World Health Organization employees, killing the driver. Some 589 aid workers, 397 UN staff among them, have been killed since the war began. One of the three people whose lives were snuffed out on April 8 was Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed Wishah, whose death brought to at least 262 the number of journalists killed during Israel’s genocidal war. The following day, nine-year-old Ritaj Rihan lost her life when Israeli forces fired on a tented encampment in Beit Lahiya where she was studying in a makeshift classroom. As Volker Türk stated, the “unrelenting pattern of killings reflects continuing disregard for Palestinian lives, enabled by sweeping impunity.” During the subsequent 24 hours ending on April 11, 15more Palestinians were slaughtered by Israeli air strikes.
The war on children
Accounts of the impact of war on the children of Palestine, Lebanon and Iran make grim reading. After suffering from hunger, repeated bombardments, forced displacements, water-borne illnesses and floods and dust storms, children in Gaza – some 38, 500 of whom are newly orphaned - are now contending with rat infestations in the tented encampments. Several children have suffered rat bites and one baby was reportedlyleft in critical condition after being bitten on the cheek.
According to an April 5th report compiled by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, those killed during the war include 450 infants, 1,029 children under one year of age, and 5,031 children under five. At least 157 children have died of hunger and 25 of cold, while 44,486 children have suffered permanent injuries, with a thousand undergoing limb amputations. “Nearly 4,000 children face imminent death without urgent medical evacuation,” the report states. It goes on to summarize what the war has meant for the more than a million children suffering from psychological trauma, who are being denied education, proper nutrition, and must confront the threat of disease posed by contaminated water, which affected at least 77% of water samples that were tested by WHO in 2025.
It concludes: “This is not a series of isolated tragedies but a deliberate dismantling of an entire generation, stripping children of their right to life, safety, education, health, and a future.”
Children in detention lose key ally
Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), which has for 35 years provided legal aid to children and documented their abusive treatment in detention, reported last month that as many as 351 child detainees – half the number of children imprisoned by Israel - are being held without charges or trial. This month DCIP announced that it would be ceasing its operations. It has been under unrelenting Israeli pressure since 2021, when it, along with five other prominent Palestinian human rights and civil society groups, was labeled a ‘terrorist organization’ without any evidence being presented. The designation - which was widely condemned – enabled the government to shut their offices, confiscate their assets and arrest their staff.
Announcing its closure DCIP wrote on Facebook: “Palestinian children are living through genocide, apartheid, military occupation, and the rapid expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. They are imprisoned in Israel’s torture dungeons, buried under the rubble, and adapting to lifelong disabilities. They deserve protection and the fulfillment of all their human rights…..Now we look to others to take up the charge and fight for the future that Palestinian children deserve.”
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine