The Wild Reed: Qasim Rashid

Showing posts with label Qasim Rashid. Show all posts

Monday, July 13, 2026

Mark Greene on How ICE Is a Weapon of the Epstein Class

ICE has killed yet another person – a 25-year-old Columbian man in Biddleford, Maine.

According to initial reports, this young man, who was authorized to work in the United States and was not the target of a warrant, was shot through the windshield of his car by ICE agents. These agents then dragged him out of his vehicle and handcuffed him as he lay dying on the road. There are also reports that this brutal and unwarranted killing took place in front of the young man’s wife and three-year-old daughter.

In response to this shooting, residents of Biddleford have spontaneously taken to the streets in protest (right and below).

This killing is the eleventh by ICE agents this year. To date, there has been absolutely no accountability demanded from those responsible for these execution-style deaths, and no justice for those killed or for their families.

ICE is out of control as it continues to act without impunity as the domestic terrorist organization that it is. The Trump regime is not going to stop this madness as it is of its making. ICE, by design, is Trump’s personal paramilitary group. Only a massive disruption to “business as usual” across the country will bring this travesty to a halt – localized general strikes, in other words. Those who are profiting from the fascist Trump regime and, in particular, the expansion of ICE and the building of for-profit detention centers have to be hit were it hurts most. We also have to organize locally to support workers and their families who will be most impacted by these strike actions.

We also need to be very clear about what ICE is really all about and who it is that benefits from its deadly actions in our communities. In understanding this, Mark Greene’s recent commentary is very helpful. Following is what he says about ICE as a weapon of the Eptsein class. Greene wrote his piece in the aftermath of the July 9 shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by ICE agents in Houston, Texas.

_________________

We need to understand exactly what’s being created inside ICE, inside Homeland Security. The murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo is one of hundreds of murders that have taken place either in detention centers or on the streets of our cities. Over 1,000 detainees disappeared from Alligator Alcatraz in Florida. Their records [have gone missing from ICE’s online database, with their families and attorneys unable to locate them].

It takes time for tens of thousands of men in an organization like ICE to slowly become desensitized to violence and torture. And it can only happen when these federal organizations, led by men like Donald Trump and Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, say explicitly to their officers that there are no limits on what they can do. It takes time for those men to believe it. It takes time for those men to try out little acts of violence fotst, to look around at the cameras pointed at them and say, I guess nobody’s gonna stop me. And slowly but surely, they grow their appetite for violence and cruelty.

The number of people that we do not know about, who have lost their lives in massive detention centers, people who are held in those centers not because they can’t be deported but because a private prison corporation is making massive profits every day that they hold those individuals.

It’s no accident that the men and women who run an operation designed to make profit off human torture and murder are also in the Epstein files. Over twenty people in the Trump administration are named in the Epstein files. This is the systemic and brutal torture being funded, operationalized, and profited off of by the Epstein class.

ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, and Homeland Security have become a massive for-profit murder and torture operation. And what comes next is they cease to make their mission immigrants and turn this huge infrastructure they’re building onto controlling and detaining American citizens.

We are at a grave and dangerous point in American history. This level of violence and torture being organized and implemented by our federal government isn’t going to end until the Republican Party loses its majorities in the Congress and eventually its grip on the White House.

But elections alone aren’t going to save us. And the only way this is going to end is if millions of Americans show up in the streets of our cities and demand that this ends. And it will not happen in a a single day. It may take months. We may be looking at an American Spring where we finally say this level of brutality, this level of savagery, this level of Epstein class violence must end.

– Mark Greene
via Remaking Manhood
July 10, 2026

UPDATE: The man killed by ICE in Maine today has been identified as Johan Sebastián Guerrero, a 25-year-old permitted worker from Colombia.

Wrote Qasim Rashid when he shared the above image on social media today:

This is Johan Sebastián Guerrero, the 25-year-old Colombian father and husband murdered by ICE fascists in broad daylight in front of his 3-year-old daughter.

He was NOT the target of the ICE warrant. He was documented. He did everything right. ICE murdered him anyway. And the Supreme Court of the United States has already ruled it legal for ICE to profile people based on skin color.

Saying it again – it was never about law and order. It was always about murdering anyone not white. This is fascism. Abolish and prosecute ICE.

Sunday, January 04, 2026

Progressive Perspectives on the Trump Regime’s Illegal Attack on Venezuela

The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife [Cilia Flores] solidifies America’s role as a gangster state. Violence does not generate peace. It generates violence. The immolation of international and humanitarian law, as the U.S. and Israel have done in Gaza, and as took place in Caracas, generates a world without laws, a world of failed states, warlords, rougue imperial powers and perpeptual violence and chaos.

If there is one lesson we should have learned in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, it is that regime change spawns Frankensteinian monsters of our own creation. The Venezuelan military and security forces will no more accept the kidnapping of their president and U.S. domination – done as in Iraq to seize vast oil reserves – than the Iraqi security forces and military or the Taliban. This will not go well for anyone, including the U.S.

– Chris Hedges
via social media
January 3, 2026

After illegally invading Venezuela, bombing its Capitol, and kidnapping its President and First Lady, Trump now says he will assume control of Venezuela and manage its oil. That’s what this has always been about. Modern day colonization and oil. Congress did not authorize this war. Impeach and remove NOW.

– Qasim Rashid
via social media
January 3, 2026

Whether Americans realize it or not, the United States has just declared war on Venezuela. And, in part because the declaration was less than clear, that could be even more dangerous than it sounds.

Today it’s Venezuela, tomorrow it’s Mexico, or any country that refuses to kneel, because Trump doesn’t see nations, he sees properties, and he thinks the world is zoned for his ego.

This is how democracies rot, not all at once, but in the public shrug, in the normalization, in the exhausted acceptance that “this is just how it is now.”

And don’t miss the accomplices, the congressional sycophants, the career cowards, the TV patriots, the propagandists, all of them clapping like trained seals, while the Constitution is used as a napkin.

The real danger is not only the war he starts, it’s the precedent he normalizes, if you can kidnap a president, you can invade a neighbor, if you can bomb Caracas, you can bomb anywhere.

Trump calls himself a “peace” president, yet every move he makes, every breath he takes, every headline he generates, is the exact opposite, coercion, violence, spectacle, and appetite. They will tell you this is about “security,” about “cartels,” about “stability,” about “freedom,” and they will expect you to forget the oldest motive on Earth, money, resources, oil.

Trump remains the most dangerous threat to the future of our planet, not because he is powerful, but because he is reckless, unbound, and surrounded by people who will not say no.

– Michael Jochum
via social media
January 3, 2026

Whether you like Maduro or not is not the point. The point is whether you are willing to support illegal acts of war, bombings of civilians, and the kidnapping of heads of state – or not. Are you willing to be part of normalizing and legitimizing political terrorism that will not stop with Venezuela and will undoubtedly turn inward?

Because they will use the same lawlessness and impunity with which Trump's administration and the billionaire class is moving abroad to crush any little semblance of rights that we have here – if they are applauded and enabled to continue. Only the organized masses of people have the power to stop the madness.

– Claudia De la Cruz
via social media
January 4, 2026

Elsewhere online, someone declared that what the U.S. is doing in Venezuela wouldn’t be happening if Kamala Harris was president. Why? Because “Democrats don’t do illegal things.” I appreciate how another person responded:

Kamala sat in the VP chair and watched Biden violate multiple federal laws to facilitate a genocide without so much as speaking out against it, much less resigning. She ALSO watched Biden attempt to coup Venezuela by recognizing a CIA asset who declared himself president in the middle of the street as the rightful ruler. I don’t want to hear a peep about “Democrats don’t do illegal things.”

As with many things in American politics, what goes on in front of the curtain bears little resemblance to what goes on behind it.

Trump says, “We're going to run [Venezuela] until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition . . . because that’s what we’re all about.”

Translation: It’s ours now, and we’ll decide what to do when we figure out who will play ball. Anyone willing to be our puppet, who will play along with the oil companies, who will help us extend our hegemony over the Western hemisphere, we’ll keep. Anyone else, we’ll figure out how to sideline or get rid of.

. . . In his press conference, Trump repeatedly referred to Venezuela’s “money in the ground” and said “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” He also said the oil companies will be "reimbursed” for all the money they lost when they were kicked out of Venezuela in 2007. Translation: We did it all for the oil. (It’s always worked out so well before)

Ah yes, we’ve seen this playbook before. It’s much like the coup orchestrated by the U.S. and U.K. in the 1950s’, putting the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh under house arrest and installing the Shah of Iran as the West’s puppet. Mosaddegh’s sin had been the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry, purporting the extraordinary, audacious and totally unacceptable proposition that Iranian oil should belong to the Iranian people. That coup, like most all of America’s imperialistic misadventures, had unintended consequences from which the world still suffers. It’s widely considered the main contributing factor to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the coming to power of the Ayatollah’s religious fascism in Iran.

. . . Regardless of the insanity displayed at times by American foreign policy, We the People should refuse to be insane. American imperialism isn’t just morally wrong or even illegal; it’s stupid. It’s one of America’s most dangerous missteps. At its worst, it’s a threat to the world.

That the Venezuelan people have suffered greatly under Maduro is indisputable, and I understand the joy so many of them feel at his overthrow. Clearly he was an evil dictator and an illegitimate leader. But so was Saddam Hussein. America’s invasion of Iraq, however, led to the deaths of a million of its citizens.

At the time of the Iraq War, I was hosting a Sirius XM radio show. Speaking by phone to a woman in Iraq, she said something I will never forget. “We knew we had a devil on our hands. We were waiting for the day when we could get rid of him and his sons. And we were plotting. But what you Americans have done is delivered so many devils, we’ll never be able to be rid of them.” We can feel horrible for the plight of the Venezuelan people and still not assume that America invading their country is the ultimate solution to their problem or even an end to their misery.

– Marianne Williamson
Excerpted from “Bang! Bang! Shoot ’Em Up! in Venezuela”
Transform
January 3, 2026

Let’s start with a question many prefer not to answer: Did Barack Obama authorize bombing campaigns in Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria – yes or no? The record is public. Most won’t look it up, not because it’s unclear, but because it’s inconvenient.

That avoidance exposes the fraud. Like the Republicans, the Democratic Party has no moral authority to lecture the world on democracy or legitimacy. It has consistently supported war, regime change, and imperial violence – often with enthusiastic backing from members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who align themselves with U.S. empire while speaking progressive language.

The hypocrisy is glaring. Figures like Hakeem Jeffries and Joyce Beatty denounce Nicolás Maduro as “illegitimate,” while ignoring America’s own compromised elections – defined by voter suppression, gerrymandering, and corporate control. Legitimacy is questioned only when Washington dislikes the result.

Now imagine the reverse. If a foreign country declared a U.S. president illegitimate, invaded the U.S., kidnapped the president and their spouse, and put them on trial abroad – Congress would call it insanity and an act of war. Yet this behavior is normalized when the U.S. does it to Haiti or Venezuela.

So the final question is unavoidable: Would today’s Black Caucus defend the sovereignty of Burkina Faso, Mali, or Niger? Or would they follow the usual script – branding leaders like Ibrahim Traoré as illegitimate, dangerous, or dictatorial?

Overall, the point is simple: Democrats and Republicans are on the same team. Both are pro-war, imperialist, and committed to maintaining a white supremacist global order. And both operate from the same assumption – that other nations do not have the right to control their own resources or determine their own futures.

– Black Knowledge
via Facebook
January 3, 2026

But Obama bombed foreign nations!

This isn’t a gotcha. Those of us committed to justice condemned Bush’s Iraq and Afghan wars, we condemned Obama’s drone strikes, we condemned Biden’s funding of Netanyahu to commit genocide, AND we condemn Trump’s bombing of seven different nations and regime change in Venezuela.

That’s what JUSTICE requires. Stop excusing atrocity because of the color hat they wear [blue or red], and start demanding justice on the tenets of actual justice.

– Qasim Rashid
via social media
January 3, 2026

The Green Party condemns the kidnapping of the Venezuelan President and his wife and demands their immediate release. We strongly oppose this illegal act of war which violates both the U.S. Constitution and international law. Congress needs to immediately commence impeachment proceedings against Trump.

The Party also harshly reacted to the assertion by Trump that the United States will now be running Venezuela for the near term and if he faces any local opposition, he will send in a second wave of American military forces to subdue the population.

The Party urges the Senate to vote on the resolution scheduled for next week to halt military intervention. The bipartisan resolution only needs a majority to pass.

According to the Charter of the United Nations, force is only permissible in response to an armed attack, or possibly to rescue a population facing an imminent threat of extermination.

“Trump is primarily interested in seizing control of Venezuela's oil and other natural resources. His pretext of seeking to protect Americans from drugs is ludicrous, especially in light of his pardon just a month ago of ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking. Congress must immediately convene to finally reign in this President who is ripping to shreds the Constitution and American democracy,” said Craig Cayetano, Co-Chair for the Green Party of the U.S.

“The White House National Security Strategy document released in November 2025, outlined what Trump considers a priority – focus on the Western Hemisphere – which clearly looks like taking control of Venezuelan oil while at the same time attempting to thwart a socialist government,” said Cassandra Lems, Co-chair for the Green Party of the U.S.

The Green Party is committed to join with other groups committed to peace, justice and the rule of law to organize nationwide protests to free Maduro and his family and to stop this illegal war.

– The Green Party of the United States
“Green Party Condemns Trump Attack on Venezuela”
January 3, 2026

Opposing war and a coup in Venezuela, workers and union members need to organize mass strike action. We need broad unity among labor, socialist, and antiwar organizations to build mass protests and civil disobedience actions.

The policy of aggression and regime change toward Venezuela is bipartisan, as with the genocide and occupation of Gaza.

Prominent Democrats like Florida Congressmember Debbie Wasserman Schultz are cheering on the coup, calling it “welcome news.” Grotesquely, Wasserman Schultz is also effectively calling for full-blown war, saying that “cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows.”

Even “progressive” Democrats have limited their critique to merely asking for Congressional approval, while actively helping Trump and the Republicans manufacture false narratives about “narcoterrorism” to justify the assault. Senator Bernie Sanders, in his statement about the U.S.–led coup in Venezuela, calls Maduro a “corrupt and brutal dictator.” Sanders does NOT talk about the many corrupt and brutal dictators that the Democratic and Republican Parties have propped up around the world when it suits the interests of U.S. imperialism. In the context of bombing and a coup by U.S. imperialism, Sanders is parroting pro-war rhetoric like that which has been used by Trump and Republicans to justify this attack.

Both billionaire-backed parties have ratcheted up towards war on Venezuela. It was Democratic President Barack Obama who first declared Venezuela an “extraordinary threat” to national security in 2015. In 2020, Trump issued a bounty of $15 million for Maduro. Democratic President Joe Biden increased that bounty to $25 million, and Trump increased it again to $50 million.

The only way to stop the war on Venezuela is for the American working class, led by unionized workers and the labor movement, to urgently organize mass strike actions to build toward a one-day general strike against imperialist war and the billionaire class. Workers internationally must stand with working people in Venezuela against the privatization and plundering of their oil resources by U.S. and Western European oil companies. We must also fight to end the sanctions against Venezuela, which have had catastrophic consequences. Working people need to take the major oil and gas companies into democratic public ownership to put an end to their warmongering and destruction of the planet.

American working people and the antiwar movement cannot afford to have illusions in the Democratic Party. We need to build independently to fight both parties of Wall Street and war.

– Kshama Sawant
via social media
January 4, 2026

The spectacle of [Trump’s] press conference is amazing. It looked like something out of a Hollywood movie set, a B movie set. This is the Pirates of the Caribbean. This is Marco Rubio now the viceroy of Venezuela. This is an effort to run Venezuela with 15,000 troops. That’s utterly impossible. There is a government in Venezuela. There’s a people in Venezuela. . . . The reality is that we’ve seen this before. We’ve seen this in Panama. We’ve seen this throughout the history of Latin America, whether Nicaragua, whether Haiti, whether Mexico. The reality here is, very clearly, Trump made this about oil. He says that what they do want to run is not the country; what they do want to run is the oil fields. And that’s the central part of this discussion. I think we need to keep an eye on that ball.

And I think the other part of this is it’s clearly a message internally for U.S. politics with a view towards midterm elections. The U.S. can impose its will. We saw that clearly in the national security strategy documents that were revealed a couple of weeks ago, where the U.S. will control the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. will impose its will. The message is clear for Mexico. The message is clear for Brazil. The message is clear for everywhere in Latin America. What we’ve seen here is an effort at regime change.

And we heard this before. We heard this in Iraq, when Bush said that the oil production in Iraq will pay for the intervention. Well, that didn’t happen in Iraq, and it won’t happen in Venezuela. This is about regime change. This is about establishing U.S. dominance. This is about the U.S. regaining control and excluding China and Russia. And imagine what Putin must be thinking, or Xi Jinping, about zones of influence. Well, if the U.S. can exert its role in the Caribbean, well, why shouldn’t Russia exert its role in Ukraine? Why shouldn’t China exert its role in Taiwan? The dimensions of this are incredible.

– Miguel Tinker Salas
Excerpted from “Special Report on Venezuela:
U.S. Kidnaps Maduro, Trump Says “We Are
Going to Run” Oil-Rich Nation”
Democracy Now!
January 3, 2026

The only truly astonishing thing about Donald Trump’s latest descent into authoritarian madness is that anyone still claims to be surprised. This is not a deviation from the plan. This is the plan. It is exactly what he promised from the beginning, and his MAGA base continues to swallow the con, the lie, the spectacle, without question, without memory, without shame.

So I sincerely hope that every single person who voted for this rat-fucking traitor, this false-promise prophet who bloviated endlessly about being the “peace president” and then promptly picked a fight with the Venezuelan regime, is pleased with what you bought. You elected a man in visible physical and cognitive decline, a man bereft of conscience, hollowed out by grievance and vanity, and obsessed with one thing only, remaining in the White House for as long as his body can be propped upright.

What we are witnessing is not just insane, it is entirely predictable. Trump laid out the blueprint years ago. During his 2024 campaign, he openly stated that he would not be a dictator “except for day one.” That wasn’t a joke. It was a confession. He has spent years praising strongmen like Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, and now he governs in their image, weakening democratic institutions, attacking the rule of law, eroding basic human rights, and dismantling the safeguards that once restrained presidential power. The danger is now magnified by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively grants presidents sweeping immunity for “official acts,” transforming the executive branch into a throne with legal armor.

And now, with war drums beating in Venezuela and new threats against Iran, the trajectory is unmistakable. Trump’s version of “peace” has always been submission, intimidation, and spectacle, chaos in service of control. He thrives on crisis because crisis justifies consolidation of power, and consolidation of power is the only legacy he seeks.

If you have never joined a protest before, this is the moment.

If you have never spoken up politically, this is the time.

If you believed it could never happen here, it already is.

The threat is not coming.

The threat is here.

And silence is exactly what Trump is counting on.

Since so many of your friends refuse to say this to you, I will: you are morons. I do not care how many degrees hang on your wall, the most dangerous form of stupidity is political illiteracy, and you used your vote to elevate a corrupt, authoritarian grifter who only ran for president to avoid prison, and now he is dragging the country with him.

History will not be gentle with any of you.

– Michael Jochum
via social media
January 3, 2026

Monday, December 29, 2025

Quote of the Day

As you watch war criminals Netanyahu and Trump meet at the White House, remember:

• The genocide of Palestinians is still ongoing

• Israel is still bombing Gaza with U.S. weapons

• Netanyahu is still blocking independent UN, ICC, ICJ, and media investigations into 10/7 and Gaza

• Israel is still illegally and violently annexing even more West Bank land, and

• At least 8,000 Palestinian hostages still remain in Israeli prisons.

And corporate media will likely ask about none of these atrocities.

– Qasim Rashid
via social media
December 29, 2025

Wednesday, December 03, 2025

Progressive Perspectives on Hillary Clinton’s Comments on Pro-Palestine “Propaganda” and TikTok

UPDATED 12/9/2025

At an event hosted by an Israeli news outlet owned by Israeli-American billionaire and Trump donor Miriam Adelson, Hillary Clinton says young Americans fell victim to pro-Palestine “propaganda” on social media.

She makes no mention of corporate media’s role in pushing hoaxes following October 7 or publishing Israeli government talking points without scrutiny

– Jacobin Magazine
via social media
December 3, 2025

Hillary Clinton is out here claiming young people, including young Jewish people, are only pro Palestine because of TikTok – not because of the painfully documented fact by dozens of human rights organizations confirming genocide, famine, mass rape, and war crimes by IDF.

No acknowledgment that people are relying on social media because the Israeli government has illegally blocked out all international media and killed more than 250 journalists inside Gaza. Her claim is “Just believe Netanyahu.” Absurd.

– Qasim Rashid
via social media
December 3, 2025

[Israel’s genocide in Gaza] is more documented and more confessed to than any other genocide-as-it-happened in history. We have detailed reports from the United Nations, non-governmental organizations [NGOs] ranging from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch to Médecins Sans Frontières. We have detailed studies from the likes of Airwars, an NGO comprised of experts who looked at 606 incidents of civilian harm in the first 25 days of the genocide alone in October 2023. According to the most conservative estimates, at least 5,139 civilians were killed in the sample of 606 attacks they analyzed. They made sure to say this was just a fraction. They found evidence of Hamas military casualties in just 26 of those 606 attacks. That’s just 4% of cases. The number of militants believed to be actually killed was between 32 and 60.

We also have overwhelming evidence of Israeli soldiers gleefully posting their war crimes, yes, Hillary, on TikTok, as well as an avalanche of statements of genocide and criminal intent issued by Israeli leaders and officials.

Hillary Clinton should not just be seen as a political failure who handed Donald Trump power in the United States. She’s a monster, with blood on her hands, who was associated with some of the great foreign policy catastrophes and crimes of our age.

The younger generation of Americans, including Jewish Americans, that she smears are far more knowledgable and moral than she is. And it’s not hard to be more moral than Hillary Clinton because there’s no evidence of any moral compass at all.

– Owen Jones
Excerpted from “Hillary Clinton Blames TikTok
for Opposition to Israel's Genocide”
via YouTube
December 3, 2025

By boiling down backlash against Israel to a social media problem, Clinton and her allies seem to have forgotten they’re still in an echo chamber that they built with their own hands and words.

– John Smith
via social media
December 3, 2025

[Clinton’s] remarks echoed those of former Obama White House speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz, who spoke recently about the challenges Zionists are presented with when they try to defend Israel to young Jewish people who have seen widely available, credible images and news out of Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and is continuing to restrict humanitarian aid despite a ceasefire deal reached in October. “Anything that we try to say to them, they’re hearing it through this wall of carnage,” Hurwitz lamented last month, drawing condemnation.

. . . Clinton has frequently claimed that pro-Palestinian Americans, particularly students who took part in nationwide campus protests last year as they urged the Biden administration to comply with US law and stop funding Israel’s attacks on Gaza, are simply misinformed about Palestine and ignorant of history, particularly pointing to the 2000 Camp David Summit hosted by former President Bill Clinton.

The former secretary of state has repeated the claim that the Palestinians were offered a “generous deal” at the meeting and “walked away” – a “myth” that Camp David negotiator Robert Malley has debunked, warning it’s been used by Clinton and others to “justify Israel’s genocide.”

“She’s the one getting the history wrong,” including at the Israel Hayom event, said Drop Site News on Tuesday.

A number of observers took issue with Clinton’s suggestion that anti-Israel sentiment in the US is being driven solely by young people, with Just Security executive editor Adil Haque issuing a “periodic reminder that the biggest shift in attitudes toward Israel and Palestine has been among older Democrats.”

In 2022, 43% Democratic voters ages 50 and up had an unfavorable view of Israel. That percentage has risen sharply since Israel began its onslaught in Gaza, with 66% of those voters reporting an unfavorable view in a Pew Research Center poll this year.

Meanwhile, 71% of Democrats ages 49 and under opposed Israel in the same poll, and 62% of them had expressed opposition in 2022, denoting a less extreme shift in opinion.

“Democrats get their news from CNN more than other mainstream sources,” said Haque, pointing to the network’s recent investigation about Palestinian aid-seekers who were killed by Israeli forces. “If you’re a 60-year-old with grandkids and you read or watch CNN‘s Gaza reporting, you don’t need TikTok to know that what’s happening is very, very wrong.”

Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, also suggested Clinton has an inaccurate view of who opposes Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians.

“I’m nearly 50. I don’t use TikTok. I listen to NPR Morning Edition and read the Financial Times daily,” said Williams. “I’m a lawyer who has worked on Israel-Palestine issues for the last 20 years. The evidence I’ve seen that Israel committed atrocities including genocide in Gaza is overwhelming.”

– Julia Conley
Excerpted from “Hillary Clinton Joins in Blaming TikTok
for Young Americans’ View That Israel
Is Committing Genocide”
Common Dreams
December 3, 2025

Hillary Clinton doesn’t care that young Jewish students were moved by videos and photos of the firebombing of families huddled in their tents after their homes were reduced to rubble, or the bloated bellies of children being starved to death by Israel’s deliberate policy of famine, or the murder or scores of doctors, nurses and paramedics, or the blatant killing of more journalists than any other conflict in the world, or the rape of a Palestinian prisoner, or the complete and utter decimation of nearly every structure in Gaza, or the coldblooded killing of 5-year-old Hind Rajab who was shot 335 times by Israeli soldiers as she sat in a car surrounded by the bodies of her dead family.

What Hillary Clinton does care about is that some of these young Jewish students couldn’t tell her which river or which sea was being referred to in the popular chant "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free."

To her, this is all "TikTok propaganda." Never mind about the scores of genocide scholars who have declared this to be a genocide. Never mind that Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem said their country is committing genocide. Never mind Doctors Without Borders, or Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch. Never mind UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. It is all just social media from the "Chinese communist party." Apparently, those Israeli politicians who talked about their genocidal plans openly and the IDF soldiers who posted their crimes were all "propaganda" from TikTok and China. This is her metric.

And why is this so important? Why do we need to keep talking about what Hillary Clinton said? Because it is the same metric and coldblooded calculous that every Western, liberal Zionist apologist has used to justify Israel’s genocide. A metric that involves ignoring a "wall of carnage," as former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz so aptly put it. Or the endless "Dead Gaza Babies" as liberal icon Van Jones bemoaned.

It is a metric of breathtaking arrogance, staggering apologetics and nauseating sycophancy. A metric that extracts the humanity of the Palestinians from the entire equation to rationalize and excuse their annihilation.

Western liberalism is even more dangerous than the far right because it has the effect of normalizing state violence in the name of "humanitarian intervention." It lulls decent people into complacency by using pacified and watered down rhetoric about human rights, inclusivity and equality, so much so that these terms becomes utterly toothless and devoid of any power. And it provides a veneer of respectability and civility through platitudes and bromides, masking its true imperialistic nature. It has also played the role of handmaiden to Trumpian fascism.

And it doesn’t stop in the U.S. Liberal leaders like Justin Trudeau, Kier Starmer, Ursula von der Leyen and Frank-Walter Steinmeier have all used their positions to justify and support this crime against humanity.

The genocide in Gaza has done what no other atrocity in contemporary history has been able to do. It has revealed to us just how depraved and twisted most Western political leaders and media figures are at their core. It showed us that if they can allow, aid or even applaud what Israel is doing, then they can easily do the same to us.

– Kenn Orfanos
Excerpted from “The Mask is Off
of Western Liberal Zionism”
Pharos
December 5, 2025

In the following BreakThrough News video Rania Khalek and Eugene Puryear discuss Hillary Clinton's claim that young people’s supposed inability to have a “reasonable discussion” about Israel is due to “propaganda” and “totally made-up” videos of atrocities in Gaza, and that these same videos are responsible for growing pro-Palestine sentiment. Khalek and Puryear also examine Clinton’s “long history as a war hawk who has peddled anti-Arab racism in support of U.S. geopolitical interests.”

And finally, in the following 10-minute video Angela of Parkrose Permaculture offers her informed critique of Hillary Clinton after Clinton doubled down on her comments blaming TikTok for young people in the U.S. and around the world becoming increasingly informed and thus critical of Israel and its genocide in Gaza.

Related Off-site Links:
Hillary Clinton Blames TikTok for Gaza “Propaganda.” She Can’t See Her Own Complicity – Etan Nechin (Haaretz, December 3, 2025).
Hillary Clinton Blames TikTok for Young People Turning Against Israel – Glenn Greenwald (System Update, December 3, 2025).
Hillary Clinton Teams Up With Miriam Adelson – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, December 3, 2025).
Ro Khanna to Hillary Clinton: Don’t “Disparage the Intelligence of Young People” on Israel – Prem Thakker (Zeteo, December 3, 2025).
Hillary Blames Anti-Zionism on TikTok – Michael Walker and Tadhg Hickey (Novara Media, December 4, 2025).
Hillary Clinton Delivers Israeli Propaganda, Proving Why Corporate Democratss Fail – Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan (I’ve Had It, December 5, 2025).
Hillary Doubles Down on Blaming TikTok for Israel PR – Breaking Points (December 8, 2025).
Hillary Clinton Confronted by Aaron Maté – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, December 8, 2025).
Hillary Clinton Still Out Here Proving Why Democratic Elites are Part of the Problem – Parkrose Permaculture (December 8, 2025).
Hillary Clinton Blames TikTok Again for Israel Critiques: An Interview with Aaron Maté – Useful Idiots (December 9, 2025).

UPDATES: Lemkin Institute Rebukes Clinton for Blaming Youth Outrage Over Gaza Genocide on TikTok – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, December 9, 2025).
Hillary Clinton Is Wrong: The Gaza Genocide Isn’t “Fake News” – Aastha Uprety (Common Dreams, December 21, 2025).

Image: Jacquelyn Martin / AP.

Tuesday, May 27, 2025

“A Holocaust, Live-streamed”

The following commentary by Qasim Rashid was published earlier today on his website, Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid.

Rashid, a human rights lawyer, is dedicated to “bringing the receipts to disentangle fact from fiction and advance the fight for universal human rights.”

_______________

I woke up to yet another gut-wrenching horror: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 52 people in Gaza Monday night – including 36 Palestinians who were taking refuge in a school-turned-shelter. Most of them were women and children. Killed while they slept, their belongings – and their bodies – incinerated in the night.

This wasn’t a battlefield. This was a school. A shelter. A place people fled to escape death, only to be immolated by it. The Israeli military burned children alive while they slept. Let me repeat, Netanyahu ordered the burning of babies as they slept.

This is not “just” genocide anymore. This is a full blown holocaust. Let’s Address This.

It is time to recognize we are witnessing a holocaust

Leading scholars of genocide, including Israeli scholars, are unanimous in recognizing Israel’s actions against Palestinians as genocide. For example, world renowned Israeli scholar Shmuel Lederman of Open University of Israel wrote just this month:

The cumulative effect of what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocidal in every sense. I think the second half of 2024 is the point at which a consensus emerged among genocide researchers (as well as the human rights community) that this was genocide. Those who may have still had doubts – I estimate that they have dissipated following Israel’s actions since the cease-fire was broken.

Those who continue to deny this genocide for what it is are denying the reality and gravity of the situation. And it is that same reality and gravity that moves us to now consider whether this is also a holocaust. While I accept some might object to using the term holocaust, I ask only that you look at the facts before drawing a conclusion. And when we analyze this from a definitional and factual perspective, the conclusion seems undeniable that what we are witnessing is in fact a holocaust.

Let’s start with the definition. The Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines holocaust as “a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life, especially caused by fire.”

Thus, this definition gives us three elements to consider: 1. A thorough destruction; 2. Involving extensive loss of life; 3. Especially through fire.

Now, let us apply that rubric to the ground reality in Gaza.

1. Has Gaza faced a “thorough destruction?”

Here’s what the facts tell us. Just this week a UN survey concluded that more than 95% of land in Gaza is now unusable for agriculture. Another report by Doctors Without Borders in January 2025 concluded that more than 92% of homes and more than 70% of all buildings in Gaza are destroyed, damaged, or unusable. Yet another UN report from last September concluded that nearly 70% of all infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed or damaged. Finally, simply compare the visual destruction in Gaza from October 12, 2023 to January 11, 2025.

By April of 2024 Gaza had already suffered more than 70,000 tonnes of bombing. To put that in perspective, that is more than the combined bomb tonnage dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London in World War II. Now more than a year later, that bombing has only increased. It is no surprise, therefore, that UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths declared Gaza “uninhabitable” due to the bombing, destruction, blockades, and subsequent famines. Given all of the above data, it is factually accurate to conclude that Gaza has been “thoroughly destroyed.”

2. Has that destruction involved “extensive loss of life?”

The Lancet estimated last summer that Israel’s genocide upon Gaza had already killed up to 186,000 people, conservatively. The analysis concluded:

In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death9 to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

The current “official” death toll in Gaza is approximately 56,000 people. That alone should suffice any metric to mean “extensive loss of life.” But applying The Lancet’s conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death lands us at a staggering 224,000 people killed. In fact, over the last 20 months, Israeli bombing has killed more children in Gaza than children killed in all global conflicts combined. While the latest data is far worse, even 1 year into Israel’s siege on Gaza, OxFam reported this horrifying fact: More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades.

Without question Gaza has suffered “extensive loss of life,” one that absolutely and tragically meets the second criteria of the textbook definition of a holocaust.

3. Has that destruction and loss of life especially been through fire?

While the first two definitional elements of holocaust can also be applied to genocide, the dictionary differentiates a holocaust with the third element of “killing by fire.” Again, let us look at the facts.

This week, Israeli bombing burned alive at least 36 Palestinians, including women and children, while they slept in a school designated as a shelter. And this is not a one-off event. It is part of a repeated, sustained pattern in which the Israeli military incinerates entire Palestinian families and family lines. And sadly is not new. Back in December, 2023, the New York Times reported: “Israel claims it protects civilians, but a New York Times investigation found that at least 200 times Israel dropped its most destructive bombs in areas it designated as safe for civilians in Gaza.”

Another investigation by NBC reached the same conclusion, that Israel repeatedly forced Palestinian civilians into what they called “safe zones,” then bombed those very safe zone, killing by fire and explosives the very people they forced into those trapped locations. How is this in any way different than rounding up civilians into camps, and then killing people in those camps?

And these reports were only from the first two months of bombing Gaza. The atrocities that have unfolded since further add to this death toll and mass killing by fire. And then there are the countless horrific stories like of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, who as reported, “left her ten children at home when she went to work in the emergency room at the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza. Hours later, the bodies of seven children arrived – most of them badly burned.” In total, the Israeli military killed nine of her 10 children by targeting them at home and burning them to death.

Let’s be clear. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bombings on locations Israel designated as safe zones, and forced people to move to under threat of death, before bombing them to death in those safe zones is not an accident – it is intentional policy. This is one reason why ICC prosecutor Karim Khan charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with war crimes. And we see these blazes live streamed right before our eyes. . . . We see tragic example after tragic example of the Israeli military killing Palestinians by burning them to death. In schools, in hospitals, while they sleep, and while they sit in what is left of their homes. Any fair minded person can see these hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of the Israeli military killing Palestinians by fire and acknowledge that it meets the third definitional criteria of a holocaust.

Conclusion

Let’s recap this painful discussion. The textbook definition of holocaust is a “thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire.” Applying this definition to the facts at hand, the Israeli military has:

• Destroyed more than 90% of Gaza

• Killed more than 224,000 Palestinians

• Incinerated Palestinians by fire and explosives with thousands of targeted, deliberate bombings, including in designated safe zones

Based on these documented and irrefutable facts, what other conclusion can we draw but recognize this as the literal dictionary definition of holocaust?

And still, no consequences for Netanyahu. Still, the world’s most powerful nations — including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada – continue to fund this horror, in opposition to the unanimous consensus of genocide scholars that this is genocide, in opposition to their own government reports that Netanyahu is committing war crimes. In my younger years I used to wonder how the world could watch the Holocaust unfold and do nothing? How governments could witness mass extermination and justify their silence with “complicated geopolitics.” But now we don’t have to wonder. We are living through it. We are watching a genocide unfold on our phones in real time.

A holocaust, live-streamed.

– Qasim Rashid
Excerpted from “Holocaust”
Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid
May 27, 2025

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“A Holocaust, Live-streamed”

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