Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Israel and/or Palestine Page 1 of 12

Iran Screws Up & Gaza Death Toll

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On June 24, 2025

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So, Iran has accepted the ceasefire offer. Iran was winning, as best I can tell. The Iron Dome could not stop their more advanced missiles and was days from running out of interceptor missiles (maybe two weeks if the US sent its entire stockpile). The US attack on Iran’s nuclear facility was a dud, the enriched uranium has been moved, etc…

I said that Iran had finally gotten over its caution, and that I feared it would revert, and so it has. It’s clear that the sooner Khameini dies and is replaced, the safer Iran will be — especially because that will be the end of the non-nuclear fatwa. (It should be noted that 60 percent-enriched is enough to create a dirty bomb which would render Israel uninhabitable, and Iran should inform Israel that it has created a number of them, ready for missile deployment.)

Iran could have kept going and insisted that Israel withdraw from Gaza and Lebanon (to be confirmed by Russian and Chinese satellites). Once again, Iran has abandoned its proxies as disposable proxies, not allies.

That said, this is an Iranian victory, just a very limited one. Israel and the US were the ones who begged for a ceasefire, not Iran.

Meanwhile, we have further confirmation that Gaza casualties are likely at least 377K.

A year ago, I estimated Gazan casualties at 500K. A new estimate has come out based on fairly conservative metrics, which puts them at a million.

(Source)

I find this estimate plausible, unfortunately — especially given the ongoing starvation campaign. (Regular reports now come in that the few aid stations permitted by Israel are being used to draw civilians in, then murder them.)

I reiterate that the only moral nation in the world appears to be Ansar-Allah’s Yemen. In a few years, everyone is going to be scrambling to pretend they were against this genocide or “didn’t know,” but we have the receipts.

There is no statute of limitations for genocide.

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TACO Trump Bombs Iran

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On June 23, 2025

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If you’re getting a bit tired of Iran all the time, so am I. We’ll see if we can slip in an article on something else.

In the meantime, Trump hit Iran’s nuclear enrichment site. As best as I can tell, the attack was ineffective and did essentially no damage. Even if it had, Iran’s highly enriched, 60 percent stockpile had already been moved. I’ve seen Israel claims they know where it was moved, but there’s a good chance they’re lying. If the Iranians are smart, they’ve split it up, and made sure that only a few people know where each package is, and further that no one knows where all the packages are, which doubles as, “If you hit it, you lose your spy.”

Iran’s parliament has passed a motion asking to close the Straits of Hormuz; it’s waiting for Khameini’s approval. Some ships appear to be already turning away. Parliament is also planning to vote to end Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Agency, which is exactly the right thing to do, as they’re both politicized and almost certainly spy for the Israelis and Americans. At least make your enemies work to get data on your secure nuclear sites and scientists.

Given the US couldn’t even stop the Houthi blockade, there is zero chance they can re-open the Straits of Hormuz with military force. It will stay closed as long as Iran wants it to. Among other things, very few civilian shipping companies are going to take the chance. One missile or mine is all it takes.

It should go without saying that Trump’s strike is a direct violation of international law, which requires the approval of the U.N. Security Council to declare war. Honored more often in the breach, etc. This is yet another nail in the coffin of the idea that anyone should pay even the least attention to international law, as the countries that created it sure don’t.

Meanwhile, the missiles keep raining down on Israel. While firm data is hard to get, I’m almost certain the “Iron” Dome” is not stopping most of them. Indeed, the WSJ reports that Israel is interested in peace.

Iran shouldn’t give it to them without conditions. They have the upper hand. At the least, they should demand a withdrawal from Lebanon, an end to the bombing there, and an end to the food and supplies blockade in Gaza, with immediate retaliation when they break the deal, which they always do.

A lot of my predictions about the Middle East have been wrong since October 7th. There are two reasons: I didn’t realize how cripplingly cautious the “Resistance” was (other than Hamas and Ansar-Allah), and I underestimated Mossad’s and American’s intelligence penetration of both — especially of Hezbollah. Fortunately, Israel has been at pains to teach everyone a lesson, and a lot of the overly-cautious Hezbollah and Iranian leaders are now dead.

There were a number of reasons for the intelligence penetration. One was that India’s intelligence was working with Mossad and had (has?) a huge network of spies in both the Indian tech diaspora and guest workers. The second is that Iran, in particular, has used Western tech — especially Western phones. (Admittedly, everyone runs Android or IOS, so it’s hard to avoid.)

Israel’s signals intelligence division (SIGINT), called Unit 8200 had been monitoring these targets for over a decade, compiling detailed itineraries — homes, workplaces, travel routes, and even bedroom locations. The precision of Operation Namiya (June, 2024) relied on a triple-layered surveillance ecosystem: Apple devices and unencrypted iPhones provided real-time GPS tracking.

General Soleimani’s 2020 assassination had already proven this vulnerability, yet Iranian officials continued using them. They also used Google/Microsoft Services: Gmail accounts, Cloud backups, and Android devices leaked metadata, revealing behavioral patterns and social graphs.

Regarding telecom backdoors: Iran’s telecom infrastructure, built on Ericsson (which exited in 2012 under sanctions) and Nokia hardware, remained vulnerable. Huawei and ZTE briefly replaced Western vendors between 2012 and 2016, but by 2018, Iran resumed purchases from European suppliers -— a fatal regression.

It’s clear that any country which doesn’t want similar issues has to rely on entirely non-Western tech from a trusted supplier — and even then, as revealed by the Hezbollah pager attack (which is really what defeated Hezbollah, along with knowledge of their missile stockpile locations), you have to secure the entire supply chain, including delivery, then check like a paranoid, because you have enemies.

It’s best to own your entire own tech stack, and a LOT of countries are going to be working feverishly towards this. Using Western tech this way is a great way to destroy markets for Western tech.

It should go without saying that every Western country is fatally compromised. The US knows everything they do. Even as a Canadian, I would want to get to a domestic stack, and Europeans are fools if they don’t, unless they intend to remain American satrapies for the rest of time.

Iran has finally thrown off its caution. I pray they don’t revert. They’re winning this war, and they shouldn’t let up until Israel is publicly humiliated and forced to actually stop their constant provocations and genocide.

As for TACO Trump, he wants the war over, and his attack was a PR stunt so he could declare victory and flex US muscles, worthlessly. I don’t think he has the guts for a real war, which is a good thing. (I could, of course, be wrong. The problem with Trump is that even he doesn’t know what he’s actually going to do most of the time. It is also amusing to watch Vance doing everything he can to distance himself from the attack, in preparation for running in 2028.)

Update: Iran says it has bombed Iraq, Qatar, Bahrein, and Kuwait US military bases.

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No, Iran Didn’t Target a Hospital (+Iran Update)

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On June 19, 2025

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Israel uses hospitals as human shields for their military targets, which is what they claimed Hamas did.

#SorokaThe hospital is located between two major Israeli military sites: the IDF’s main intelligence headquarters and a central command facility, both of which are situated in the Gav-Yam Technology Park. These installations reportedly serve as critical hubs for Israel’s cyber operations, digital command systems, and military intelligence infrastructure (including IDF C4I and C4ISR systems). While the hospital sustained shockwave damage from nearby blasts, it was not directly hit, Iranian reports emphasize.

Sororka is the primary hospital for military casualties, I understand, but it wasn’t targeted. It got hit in the blast.

Now, of course, for Israel to be complaining about a hospital attack is ludicrous. Wikipedia has a list of Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals. There are dozens.

My post on the initial attack on Iran noted how serious Mossad penetration was. What’s interesting about Iran’s missile attacks is that they seem to be prioritizing intelligence sites even more than strict military ones. They know their weakness and are working on it.

Iran has mainly been going after Israeli intelligence in the last couple of days: Mossad and 8200 bases throughout the country, from north through center to south. This seems to be their main focus now. I have no way to assess hits and damages, but these are large, extremely expensive, highly prized targets. They know where everything is – and if you remember the Hezbollah drone videos from a year ago, you can guess how accurate their information is.

Iran also has high-resolution satellites in space – this is Israel’s first war against an enemy with such capabilities. Israel has not reported a single IDF casualty since this war began, but tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians work in those places and in the other big bases that have been attacked.

Meanwhile, estimates are that Israel has less than two weeks left of interceptor missiles. If the US sends everything it can spare, well, that’s maybe two more weeks.

As I said previously:

This is entirely a race between Israel’s ability to destroy missile launchers with its aircraft, and Iran’s ability to keep launching missiles. The math is that simple. As an aside, Iran should be priority-targeting Israeli air fields alongside air defense.

And Iran has only begun to use its better missiles.

I don’t know how the math is working. Israel is sending its cops after Israelis posting video or pictures of attacks. Iran has shut down most outgoing internet. This makes sense for both sides, no reason to let enemies know how successful their attacks are.

Iran has also told its citizens to get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, as both are easily hacked. Going forward, I’d suggest that all countries need their own OS and their own social networks, hosted in their own countries, at a minimum. China has this. Android and IOS are extremely vulnerable, no matter what apps you’re using. As I’ve been writing for years, carrying a cell phone is carrying a bug, tracking device, and surveillance camera with you at all times. (The best OS for privacy right now appears to be Graphene, which only runs on the most recent Google Pixel phones, I believe.)

As you’ve probably heard, the US is moving three aircraft carrier groups to the Middle East. It’s not clear if the US will join the war. In fact I doubt anyone knows if it will. Even Trump couldn’t tell you, because he changes his mind so often.

Absent the US getting involved, I put the odds in Iran’s favor, but it’s not a strong bet. It’s simply too hard to tell the actual situation. Some claim Israel has complete air dominance over Iran, others say that’s not true, and I don’t know. Likewise, lots of claims are made about how many launchers have been destroyed, but there’s no reason to believe either side on this. Attack volumes from Iran are way down, but is that because of strategy or capability? If it’s capability, they’re sunk. If its strategy, maybe not. It’s quite conceivable they’re holding back a lot as they degrade AD and force the Israelis to run through their AD missiles.

Do bear in mind that Iran has the simplest advantage: It’s much larger than Israel, has a much larger population, and it is an industrial state which has the ability to build its own weapons. China is not going to intervene militarily, but I’m sure they’ll sell Iran as much cheap materials it needs to build more missiles and drones. China has the cheapest and most extensive supply network for both.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that if Israel decides it is losing, it does have nukes, and if any country in the world other than US is psychotic enough to use nuclear weapons, it’s Israel.

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Iran-Israeli War Update

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On June 16, 2025

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Let’s take this in steps.

Air Defense Iranian air defense was not active for the first attack wave. They were online for the second one, about six hours later. It’s unclear why. I have heard two credible claims. The first is that they were hit by a cyber-attack, but came online faster than the Israelis expected.

The second is that the Iranians deliberately played rope-a-dope. The first attack was largely a matter of stand-off munitions, which the Israelis have (had) very limited supplies of. The Iranians tanked that hit, counting on the fact that most military targets were underground and hardened. Then when the second attack happened, which required close in attack, the air defenses were turned on. Because they had not been compromised in the first attack (air defense use makes air defense visible) they were much more effective.

Intelligence Penetration of Iran This was obviously severe, given the number of senior personnel killed during the initial attacks, and given how much of the initial attacks were carried out by drones and automated anti-air defense inside Iran. But what needs to be understood is that Mossad’s networks are being severely degraded. Intelligence networks which are passive, which don’t do anything very active, can exist for years or even decades, but when they go live and are actually used for attacks assets are exposed. Reports are pouring out of Iran of raids on Israeli intelligence agents and collaborators, and while they may be overstated, I find them credible, because it’s how such things work. Israel has gone big, and they are burning assets.

Iranian Counter-Attack This was strong, but not as strong as it could have been. While there’s reason to believe that a lot of the missile launchers hit were dummies, the Iranians should have been able to launch about a thousand missiles in a salvo, and they didn’t. Air defense systems are very subject to be being overwhelmed by numbers. Now it’s possible that they didn’t because they wanted the data from initial strikes to pinpoint air defense, and that each wave was designed to “clear a path”, the first strike, even, hit hard: taking out a lot of military assets and state capacity.

It should also be noted that Iran has not used its most advanced missiles yet. The stuff being sent is mostly old crap that would have been decommissioned in a few years anyway, interspersed with some better missiles, but not the most recent varieties. Iran still has a lot held for future attacks.

If you need a little cheering up, this video compilation of hits on Tel Aviv (obviously partial), may help.

Here is some footage of destruction:

Some footage of destruction in Tel Aviv itself.

All of this is much worse than the previous Iranian attacks. Real destruction. I will point out that if Iran had done this after the embassy assassinations they might have restored deterrence and not suffered this particular attack. Cowardice has its price, and it is often greater than that of bravery.

Finally, from the IDF itself:

Israel does not have enough interceptors and air defense to stop the Iranians from completely devastating their country, which is why they are begging everyone to help them. Iran is already beginning to target Israeli Air Defense. US naval assets can only help so much, as they carry limited supplies and the US itself produces very few air defense missiles every year. Using them all up in Israel will make America completely defenseless in any other war (and Zelensky is already squealing.)

This is entirely a race between Israel’s ability to destroy missile launchers with its aircraft, and Iran’s ability to keep launching missiles. The math is that simple. As an aside, Iran should be priority targeting Israeli air fields alongside air defense.

And What About Nukes? Well, I find this interesting. Directly contradicting Khameini in public is important.

Iranian Major General Mohsen Rezaei on Iranian Radio and Television:

We are still exercising restraint and have not deployed all our capabilities to avoid global chaos.

However, we may reach a point where we use new weapons.

We are seeking to form an Islamic army with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and several other countries.

We should move towards the atomic bomb, but according to the Supreme Leader’s fatwa, we do not currently intend to build nuclear weapons.

Iraq should know, it is their turn after us. Iran may be forced to take actions that could destabilize the entire region.

It is, of course, obvious that if Iran had nukes, much or most of this would never have happened. North Korean leaders do not worry about being murdered in their sleep by foreign missiles, drones and bombs.

The China Syndrome. All of the materials required to build drones and ballistic missiles are available, cheap, from China. China gets a lot of oil from Iran, uses Iran for transhipment, and is in general a major ally of Iran. It is also aware that taking out Iran is one of the steps before war with it. Just as I said that China would not allow Russia to be taken out by sanctions (and was right), I expect China in the case of any sort of duration of this war, and, indeed, after it, to supply Iran with everything it needs to ramp up production of missiles and drones. Since China’s production abilities exceed those of the West when it comes to these requirements, this is not a small thing.

No Army Means No Fall. Iran cannot be defeated by airpower alone unless there is a significant uprising in the country which the army is unable or unwilling to stop. One should never underestimate the CIA’s regime change abilities, of course, but if they don’t pull it off then this war is about reducing Iran’s power projection ability: doing enough damage that they surrender in spirit if not in fact.

The Khameini Problem. Nations rot from the top, and this is clearly the fundamental problem in Iran. Khameini is cautious, even timid. He has underplayed his hand every single time during this crisis, most importantly when not sending ground troops to stop the fall of Assad. This caused great problems with the younger members of the Revolutionary Guard, who are hardliners almost to a man. The elimination of senior members of defense and government is not strengthening moderates, it is strengthening hardliners.

Israel has said that Khameini is not off-limits for murder. If they do so, it will be a huge mistake. It will end the non-nuclear fatwa (though the Iraniams will lie about that) and put hardliners in charge. Ironically, the best thing Khameini could do for Iran right now is be Martyred. If Allah Wills It, let it be so. I don’t want to get too down on him, in many ways he’s run Iran very well, but he is a victim of Machiavelli’s dictum that when times change most leaders can’t change with the times and the virtues that made them good leaders in the past make them terrible leaders in the present.

The Russia/China Issue. Iran could have had a full military alliance with Russia. If they did, they’d be in a lot stronger position. Iran really wants to be an independent major regional power. The other option is to be the junior partner in a tripartate bloc with China and Russia. I understand why they want to avoid that, but being in the world’s strongest alliance (and yes, that’s what it would be) comes with an absolute ton of benefits. They need to reconsider this issue. They will get some support from Russia and China, indeed, a lot of support, but neither country is going to go all out for them. If either would, Iran would be in a lot less danger.

Final Ironic Cowardly Nazi Note. 

Most of Iran’s air and missile command was killed in an underground bunker during a meeting. Hezbollah’s senior leaders were killed in an underground bunker during a meeting. Israel knows Iran has missiles capable of doing the same thing to them, but they know that Iran won’t strike a hospital to kill them. They of course have destroyed many hospitals, in one were the high command of their enemies hiding.

May God grant the side of good, whichever side that is, victory in this conflict and bring an end to genocide.

***

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What Do You Call Two Dead Nazis?

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On May 22, 2025

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A good start.

So, someone killed two Israeli diplomats in D.C., and everyone is crying crocodile tears and screaming about anti-semitism. (One of them was a Christian fundamentalist, as an aside.)

These two diplomats are agents of a genocidal state. Their job is to keep the weapons and ammunition flowing to Israel so that Israel can kill more Palestinians, wipe out the last remaining hospital, torture Palestinians, rape Palestinians (including, it appears, with dogs), deliberately snipe children in the head, cause a huge famine, and turn every building in Gaza into dust.

And I’ve left a number of sickening crimes out.

So, am I sad they are dead? No. Am I going to pretend I give a shit when someone who supports genocide winds up dead? No. Every single pious well-wishing for Biden is the equivalent of wishing Petain, the leader of Vichy France, who helped the Holocaust along, a good life.

All of these people are knowingly involved in genocide. They have had many opportunities to stop supporting mass murder, and they have refused every single one of them.

They are all, forgive me for using the word, evil. The bad guys. Torture. Rape. Mass murder. Deliberate killing of children.

It is my dream that every single one of them will eventually hang from the neck for their crimes. No exceptions. I think it would be wise to add the corporate leadership of companies like Palantir and Microsoft, both of which are helping the genocide along.

This is a moral stance, but it is also a pragmatic stance. People who have gotten away with genocide once are not the sort of people anyone wise wants in their society, or in a position of power anywhere. Once could easily become twice.

You don’t even have to give a damn about Palestinians. You just have to have good judgment, and a concern for your own neck and the lives, rectums, and limbs of people you care about.

From the neck. Unil dead. For everyone who knowingly aided or committed genocide.

(Addendum): If this is someone lashing out in rage at any Jew and just happening to kill two Israeli diplomats I can only say, “Thank God he killed evil people,” and note that the reason that people are conflating “Jewish” with “Zionist,” as I have written repeatedly, is that Israel constantly says they’re the same thing, and then goes on to mass murder children, rape, torture, and so on. Some people are going to believe them, “Oh, Israel is Jewish, not Zionist. The Israelis say they’re the same thing, and so do many non-Israeli Jews. I guess they know what they’re talking about.” Nobody and nothing causes more anti-semitism in the world than Israel itself. For them to cry crocodile tears about anti-Jewish racism after plastering themselves with the Torah then covering themselves in the blood of children is nauseating.

And, for a little leavening of the anger and rage, a classic:

Amidst Everything Else, the Palestinian Genocide Is Picking Up Steam

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On May 16, 2025

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A healthy person can survive forty to sixty days without food, depending on how fat they were to begin with. Women last longer than men (women are better at all extreme endurance feats I am aware of).

It’s been about two months since Israel cut off all food and water to Gaza. There were storehouses and some food, and it took about 30-40 days to exhaust the stores, but even before that, there wasn’t enough.

And even before this cut-off there wasn’t enough. There was a brief period after Trump took power with supplies moving in large amounts, but since the start of the crisis, Israel has been choking off food, medicine, and everything else, and Israeli citizens have stopped and hijacked aid trucks.

So, there aren’t any fat people in Gaza, except for some Zionist genociders who cosplay as soldiers. Most people in Gaza haven’t had enough food for well over a year.

Palestinians are going to start dying in massive numbers right about now, and the deaths will accelerate.

This is the first live-streamed genocide. Everyone knows it’s happening, and no one except the Ansar-Allah is doing shit, though credit to Hezbollah for trying until Mossad ripped them apart. (I do maintain Hezbollah’s strategy was awful, but that’s water under the bridge. At least they tried.)

I include Iran in this general indictment. It has enough missiles to really hurt Israel and proved that it could get thru the “Iron” Dome.

But, again, they’ve done more than pretty much every other country in the world.

I will note, for the record, though that it’s unlikely to matter much, that for the rest of my life I will judge people based on whether they were against the Palestinian genocide at the time. In a few years almost everyone will pretend they were against it, but we have receipts. And even if you are good to puppies and children, give lots of money to charities and are perfectly aligned with my politics on everything else, I will regard you as evil and a piece of human garbage, who could only improve the world by committing suicide, if you were OK with this.

This genocide could be stopped tomorrow by the US simply halting all shipments and aid to Israel. Even Europe, were it to act similarly, might be able to stop it.

But no one with the power to do anything decisive, is. Which means they’re all monsters.

And if you are depraved enough to think “who cares, it doesn’t affect me?”, let me assure you that on top of being human filth, you are also stupid and a fool. If they’ll do it to Palestinians, they’d do it to you and yours if they thought it was in their interest and they could get away with it.

Which, so far, they have every reason to believe they could.

Certain actions, like genocide, rape, torture and deliberate child murder have to be off the table entirely for the protection of everyone. You never want to normalize them, even if you are an evil piece of shit, because once something becomes routine, who knows who is next on the table?

Welcome to Hell.

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The End of Anti-Semitism

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On April 25, 2025

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We live in a weird time: the accusation of anti-semitism has never been more common and the consequences have never been more severe, but the accusation has never been more likely to be a compliment.

In most cases today, if someone is accused of anti-semitism, they are being accused of being against genocide. Against the mass murder of ci civilians. Against children being deliberately shot in the head and against prisoners being raped to death

To be sure, real anti-semites exist, but if someone hasn’t been accused to anti-semitism, one knows they have no ethics and are either a wimp, unwilling to even say “genocide is bad” or an evil person who thinks genocide is good.

On the other hand the phrase “pro Israel” means “supporter of mass murder, the deliberate killing of children, and of raping people to death.” If someone describes themselves as pro-Israel they are evil, they have condemned themselves out of their own mouths and no decent person will have anything to do with unless coerced.

The irony, of course, is that by wrapping themselves in Judaism Israel has made the charge of anti-semitism bear no moral weight and has increased real anti-semitism, as many people no longer take the care to distinguish between Zionism and Judaism. This is unfair to the many Jews (almost all outside of Israel, Israel is in the running for sickest society in history) who have opposed Israel’s genocide.

If you ever asked yourself “what would I have done were I alive during the Holocaust and aware of it?”, well, the answer is “whatever you’re doing right now.”

Your soul has been weighed, and many should pray it does not fall under Ma’at’s gaze.

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(Guest Post) Where Do Racism and Hatred Come From?

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On April 18, 2025

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Guest post by Whip Randolph

 

[From the One Disease One Cure Newsletter]

Remember that old story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?

A con man tricks an emperor into believing that he is dressed in beautiful, expensive clothing when, in fact, he is wearing nothing at all. Afraid to be called a fool by this very confident man, the emperor pretends that he really is wearing beautiful clothing, and his close officials go along with it. The emperor then goes out among the public stark naked, and the masses of people pretend to admire his fine clothing. Everybody maintains this pretense until a child blurts out that the emperor is stark naked.

Why would all the adults pretend to believe an obvious falsehood? When I first found this story as a child, it seemed silly! Eventually I learned that this story actually explains one of the major drivers of racism and hatred in the world, including major events happening in the news right now.

So what does The Emperor’s New Clothes have to teach about ignorance, racism, and hatred happening right now?

In this story, the emperor is the ruler, meaning he decides on the laws and how they’re enforced, and he can punish people who express beliefs that he doesn’t like. The people in this story know that, and know that it is safer to believe that he is beautifully addressed, or at least pretend. After all, acknowledging the truth could lead to imprisonment or worse.

It’s simply a common pattern in unhealthy cultures for authorities to punish people for saying uncomfortable truths, and I believe this pattern will continue until we can generate healthy cultures again.

Let’s look at some historical examples to see how this works.

In the US pre-Civil War south, slavery was assumed to be good for the slaves by all right-thinking people. Doctors even had a diagnosis called “Draepetomania” where any slave who tried to escape was believed to have a mental illness! Why would they believe such nonsense, even highly trained doctors, instead of simply recognizing the evils of slavery and acknowledging peoples’ healthy desire to escape?

The answer is simple: any white Americans who acknowledged the evils of slavery were heavily punished. In the slave states, people could be imprisoned for 10 years for having a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that showed slavery in a sympathetic light. Draepetomania represents what I call a blind belief where people believe something because authorities make it the safe or convenient thing to believe, not because it’s true. In other words, it was safe for doctors to believe the runaway slaves had mental illnesses, and it was unsafe to see runaways as healthy and slavery as evil.

Likewise in the Soviet Union and China in the mid 20th century, the government and society were assumed to be great and getting better, so any activists were assumed to have mental illnesses as well. Many activists were arrested and accused of having mental disturbances and sent to prison hospitals where they were treated like the political prisoners they were. These activists were behaving legally and trying to serve their people, and authorities made up theories of mental illness as a cover story to justify imprisoning them.

In this social pattern, authorities punish people for speaking the truth, making it safe and socially acceptable to believe falsehoods. Unfortunately, this can also cause huge amounts of racism and hatred in a society, as people are encouraged to adopt racist or hateful attitudes, and those who don’t are punished.

The Ku Klux Klan was a campaign of paramilitary violence operated by wealthy ex-slaveowners in the US South after the US Civil War. Most Americans know that this violence was directed at black people to scare them into remaining second class citizens. But few know that this campaign also attacked any white people who sympathized with those black people!

In other words, whites who were racist were left alone or even rewarded. Any anti-racist white people risked rape, murder, having their house burned, or other atrocities. I believe this is a major driver of anti-black racism in the US South: authorities wanted that racism to avoid solidarity among poor white and black people, and for centuries they brutally punished any white people who tried to stand for what’s right. Many KKK members were sheriffs and politicians, so the law was part of the problem!

Similar stories abound from unhealthy cultures around the world — that is, societies where a few people rule over everyone else. Nazi Germans and Soviet citizens were each trained by their governments to hate the other side during World War II. Anyone who didn’t hate risked being called a sympathizer and traitor and going to jail. When these authorities wanted war, they propagated hatred among the populace and punished anyone who spoke the truth and refused to hate.

Why did so many Germans learn to hate Jewish people after World War I? Well, the German monarchy, business leaders, and generals had really screwed up and lost World War I. Knowing it was a foregone conclusion, they surrendered before the enemy had crossed into German territory. Unfortunately, they had lied to the German public, and the media contained propaganda which said they were winning the war until the moment they surrendered. Thus many Germans were really confused: why did they surrender if they were winning?

The political, military and business leaders wanted to avoid accountability for losing the war and spreading lies, so they propagated a “stab-in-the-back” narrative, blaming Jews, labor activists, liberals, and others for undermining the country from within.

A tragic number of Germans believed this nonsense, and it wasn’t an accident: propagating hate and ignorance towards Jews and activists and blaming them for Germany’s WWI defeat was a way for the ruling class to avoid accountability for losing the war and lying about it in the news. Tragically this was one step on the road to the Holocaust a few years later.

Racism, hatred, and ignorance can thus be widely propagated by authorities for a variety of reasons. It is confusing to discuss because authorities will punish someone for one secret reason, but publicly accuse them of something different. For example, a Nazi German peace activist may have tried to convince his neighbors that ending WWII would be better for the country, but he’d be arrested and accused of spreading Soviet propaganda and undermining the army. The activist was only trying to speak the truth or share a perspective in service of his people, but he was punished and accused of something different.

The more examples I found like this — where people are punished for acknowledging the truth, or punished for not being racist or hateful in ways that serve the needs of unaccountable ruling classes — the more I saw it play out right in front of me in the news.

Right now, the United States is supporting Israel in its genocide of the Palestinians. Israel has occupied Palestine for decades, keeping Palestinians under intense surveillance. The control was so tight that even many years ago the Israelis were literally counting the calories of food being allowed in to keep the Palestinians at starvation levels, continually a notch above famine.

The Israelis began the genocide in October 2023, with tremendous US support in the form of weapons, surveillance, fuel, political cover at the United Nations, and more. But just how bad has the violence been? Many news stories say that only 40-50,000 Palestinians have died — surely a tragedy, but not a genocide.

Before the present conflict started in October 2023, the Palestinian population was estimated at 2.2 million. When US President Trump took office, he stated the Palestinian population as around 1.7-1.8 million.[1] Other estimates confirm this, using normal techniques to estimate military+civilian casualties in war. So between October 2023 and February 2025, Israelis had killed ~400,000-500,000 people through military violence, famine, disease, and so on while extremely few Israelis have died.

How have the Israeli and American governments trained their population to tolerate and even support this genocide? You guessed it: spreading racist and hateful propaganda towards Palestinians, and punishing anyone who tried to speak the truth and stand up for what’s right.

Many government statements called the Palestinians subhumans deserving immense cruelty. For example, Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Israelis were trained to see Palestinians as a threat on par with Nazi Germany, rather than victims of a cruel occupation.

In Israel, a school girl expressed sympathy with the Palestinians, saying she hoped they could return to their homes soon. She was suspended from school as other students threatened to burn her house down and the Ministry of Education accused her of “incitement against IDF [Israeli] soldiers.”

In America, we see similar disturbances. Anyone who tries to acknowledge the truth about Israeli aggression towards Palestinians is accused of antisemitism. President Trump is deporting many people for attending what he calls “illegal” protests and accusing universities of tolerating antisemitism for allowing protests against the genocide. This is only an expansion of the policy that his predecessor president Biden started.

And it’s not just the government that tries to scare protesters away from acknowledging the truth: many business leaders are trying to scare people into submission too. One businessman, Kevin O’Leary, went on television and said all activists were being monitored with AI-enabled cameras, and their protesting would be recordered and show up in background checks, and they would never be hired again! In fact, North Carolina outlawed wearing face masks outside just to make this possible.

Just like American slave owners scared poor and middle class white people into hating black people or remaining silent so they wouldn’t oppose slavery, modern day political and corporate leaders are trying to scare us into submission so we won’t oppose their genocide.

Why are Israeli and American government and corporate leaders supporting this genocide? People can only speculate: is it part of a plan for creating a major new west-Asian trade route through Israel? Accessing gas deposits off the Gaza coast? Developing beachfront real estate? All the above, or something else? When unaccountable leaders refuse to speak the truth, it can be difficult to know why they behave as they do.

So let’s take stock: the protests are legal, and the Israeli genocide against Palestine is real, and it’s not antisemitic to point these things out. But a strong coalition of American and Israeli business and political leaders have decided to support this genocide, and they’re punishing people for standing for what’s right by accusing them of antisemitism and using this as a cover story to justify punishing them.

This shows how ancient patterns of nations with rulers (or ruling classes) are playing out again all around us. America may not have a king, but anytime one person or a group can impose law on the rest, and choose how that law is enforced, you wind up with the same kind of tyrrany. This is predictable in any society where people are punished for upholding their own law (because that’s supposedly the police’s job, but of course they have to just follow orders). Ancient Rome, Germany, the Soviet Union, Israel, Canada, communist China, the capitalist United States — all of them have shown this pattern where authorities punish truth-tellers and propagate racism and hatred when it suits them. All these countries are actually dictatorships: cultures where some people dictate the law to everyone else, and everyone else is expected to just accept it.

These stories of selfish rulers contrast vividly with countless of stories of generous servant-leaders of healthy cultures. The Haudenosaunee describe how, when they were able to live in a fully traditional way until the early 1800s, their spiritual leaders were their political leaders, and to become a spiritual leader a person had to give away huge amounts of material goods. In other words, their leaders were the most generous.

Martin Prechtel described a similar pattern with the Tzutujil Mayans of central America. Leaders were expected to never campaign for office — it was up to others to see who should be leader and lift them up, due to their generous service. And each time a leader reached a new level in their hierarchy, they were expected to give away more and more goods, returning to total poverty so that they would be on the same level as the rest of the society. Like the Haudenosaunee, they chose the most generous leaders, the ones most willing to act in service of their people. They maintained this way of life until about 1990, when the Guatamalan military inflicted tremendous violence with American backing.

These stories seemed amazing when I first found them, but they are actually quite normal in societies that maintain a baseline of mutual respect as normal way of life, where everyone stands for what’s right as a normal way of life.

In these kinds of societies, I don’t see racism or hatred. So many problems, including racism, hatred, sexism, pollution, poverty in the midst of abundance, corruption, greed, child abuse, and more are symptoms of the root cultural disease where a few people rule over the rest. Any culture with this disease will show these symptoms, each in its own way. And I believe a single cure could end all these terrible troubles: creating cultures where everyone stands for what’s right, and no one rules over anyone else.

This is the theme of my free book One Disease One Cure. It explores examples of 69 different healthy cultures, including many alive today and others in the recent past, who maintain a baseline of mutual respect internally. They show that humans can live without racism or sexism or hatred. We can live without corruption and greed, with leaders that serve the people instead of selfishly serving themselves. Nations like the Ashaninka, Yequana, Haudenosaunee, Zapatista, Mbuti, traditional Cherokee and Nootka, and many others show that these terrible things are not inevitable. But so long as we remain in unhealthy cultures, with unaccountable rulers who behave extremely selfishly and punish anybody who stands for what’s right, all these terrible troubles will continue.

I will end on a positive note: the nations that make up the Haudenosaunee Confederacy have maintained their healthy culture for over 900 years till the present day, and they did this after experiencing a period of intense warfare 1,000 years ago. The Zapatistas are a collection of many different indigenous cultures in southern North America that experienced oppression for five centuries until 1994, when they rose up in resistance. They didn’t just install a new ruling class, but actually generated a new, sovereign healthy culture where the leaders serve the people, and everyone is expected to stand for what’s right. As but one example of the deep transformation, interviews with many Zapatista women attest to a dramatic decline in sexism.

These stories showed me that we’re not doomed to having unaccountable rulers. It’s possible to have deep change. But in order to do that, we must recognize the root cultural disease, and find a way to cure it: by creating cultures where everyone stands for what’s right, and nobody rules over anybody else.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-gaza-population-relocation-1.7457559

(The book contains citations for all this material, except Trump’s Palestinian population estimate which occurred after publication)

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