Pas de musique sans justice/No Music without JusticeLettre ouverte au directeur de la Philarmonie de Paris, Olivier ManteiOpen Letter to Olivier Mantei, Director General of the Philharmonie de Paris

English version after the French original

Ce dimanche 30 novembre 2025, le Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra donnera un concert à la Philarmonie de Paris (Cité de la Musique) sous la direction de son directeur musical Lahav Shani, qui est aussi directeur musical de l’Orchestre philarmonique d’Israël et sera celui de l’Orchestre philarmonique de Munich à partir de septembre 2026. Un précédent concert donné le 6 novembre au même endroit par l’Orchestre symphonique d’Israël sous la même direction avait été le théâtre d’incidents, à la suite desquels 4 manifestants propalestiniens ont été mis en examen et ont déposé à leur tour diverses plaintes pour agressions et violation du secret de l’enquête. Plusieurs organisation viennent d’adresser la lettre ci-dessous au directeur de la Philarmonie.-Tlaxcala

Jeudi 27 novembre 2025

Monsieur le Directeur,

Depuis le début du génocide à Gaza, on atteste de près de 70 000 personnes assassiné.e.s, hommes, femmes et enfants compris. Toujours à Gaza, ce sont 345 personnes qui ont été assassinées et 889 blessées par l’armée israélienne, depuis l’entrée en vigueur du « cessez-le-feu », le 11 octobre dernier, cessez-le-feu violé plus de 500 fois. En deux ans, c’est 6 fois la bombe d’Hiroshima qui s’est écrasée sur un territoire d’à peine 150 kilomètres carrés. L’aide humanitaire et médicale reste bloquée alors qu’avec l’hiver les épidémies s’apprêtent à emboîter le pas à la famine. Tous les jours les cadavres s’amoncèlent lorsqu’ils ont la « chance » d’être retrouvés. Lundi 24 novembre, c’est en armes que les milices israéliennes ont chassé les enfants du Théâtre national palestinien (El-Hakawati Theatre) de Jérusalem occupée. Ces armes feront certainement moins parler d’elles que de pauvres fumigènes brandis face aux ambassadeurs culturels de l'État d’Israël.

Le génocide, tel qu’il a été caractérisé par les instances de droit international compétentes, se poursuit sous nos yeux. Et vous, que faites-vous ?

Protestations contre une série de concerts de l'Israel Symphony Orchestra au Carnegie Hall de New York, 15 octobre 2025

Non content d’inviter l’Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) et son chef titulaire, ambassadeurs officiels de l’état colonial en plein génocide, non content d’accueillir ces musicien.ne.s qui se font le relais de la déshumanisation des Palestinien.ne.s par des propos de désinformation condamnables sur leurs réseaux sociaux à l’instar d’Eleonora Lutsky qui nous parle de « Hamaswood » et Kirill Mihanovsky qui désigne les Palestinien.ne.s  de « monstrueux voisins », non content d’attaquer en justice des militant.e.s pacifiques qui appellent au boycott légitime des institutions culturelles israéliennes qui participent à la normalisation du génocide, vous, vous décidez de vous enfoncer avec votre institution dans le mensonge en espérant ne jamais avoir à assumer vos responsabilités face à l’histoire et face à la justice.

Vous avez menti à vos salarié.e.s lors d’une assemblée générale extraordinaire en qualifiant de violent.e.s des militant.e.s pacifistes, en passant sous silence la violence des insultes racistes et homophobes d’une partie du public, en affirmant que vous ne saviez pas que l’orchestre allait jouer l’hymne israélien alors qu’il l’interprète régulièrement lors de ces tournées. Car oui, cet hymne n’a pas été joué en réaction à l’action de nos camarades, c’était déjà un acte prémédité.

Vous avez été cordialement invité, au regard des appels palestiniens et dans le cadre du droit international, à annuler les venues de Lahav Shani, de l’IPO et du Jerusalem Quartet pour le rôle institutionnel qu’ils occupent dans la politique d’effacement par la culture du crime de génocide commis par Israël. À ces appels, là encore, vous avez répondu par le mensonge et par l’instrumentalisation outrancière des artistes palestinien.ne.s programmé.e.s dans votre institution pour justifier votre collaboration avec les institutions culturelles de l’état génocidaire. Ce mardi 25 novembre, vous avez décidé d’assumer cet agenda politique et d’entraîner toute votre institution dans le discours de propagande en répondant positivement à la demande de Lahav Shani de s’expliquer auprès de vos salarié.e.s. Un discours d'explication qui n’est autre qu'un redoublement de condamnation qualifiant la protestation pacifiste d’ « attaque armée » à l’encontre de l’identité israélienne. Or, chacun des appels à boycott que vous avez reçus était très clair sur la nature de l’action : « nous n’appelons pas à boycotter des artistes du fait de leur nationalité israélienne mais du fait de leur participation institutionnelle à la politique d’effacement des vies palestiniennes orchestrée par l’État israélien. »

Vous imposez à vos salarié.e.s le discours de propagande par l’explication - hasbara - alors que vous refusez le dialogue avec celles et ceux qui vous alertent depuis le début sur cette complicité avec le pire. C’est votre manière de passer sous silence les voix palestiniennes.

Cacher vos décisions derrière le supposé apolitisme de la musique classique relevait déjà de l’outrage face aux souffrances endurées par les Palestinien.ne.s depuis plus de deux ans et à l’égard du droit international. Devions-nous espérer, après un tel acharnement à maintenir la collaboration avec les ambassadeurs du génocide notamment par le recours démesuré à la force policière et judiciaire, que vous reveniez à la raison ? Vous êtes aujourd’hui prêt à excuser un tel affront à la dignité humaine et au droit international - comme l’a été l’hymne de l'État génocidaire qui a retenti dans vos murs. Et tout cela pourquoi ? Pour ne pas prendre le risque d’annuler un concert avec Martha Argerich parce que cela ferait mauvais genre auprès de vos confrères ? Ou pour ne pas froisser l’extrême droite politique et médiatique qui, depuis le 6 novembre, vous soutient inconditionnellement comme elle a soutenu la politique génocidaire ?

Renoncez donc à vos valeurs humanistes de pacotille et assumez l’agenda réactionnaire que vous avez décidé d’endosser en ouvrant les portes de votre institution à celles et ceux qui nient la valeur des vies palestiniennes et le droit international. Vos mensonges se poursuivent car non, cette institution n’est plus la nôtre. Vous l’avez livrée au fascisme qui ronge le monde, vous en avez fait l’étendard de la déshumanisation, la normalisation des heures les plus sombres de notre présent. Vous n’avez jamais souhaité nous écouter lorsque nous vous avons alerté. Vous faites la sourde oreille au bruit des bombes lorsqu’elles explosent sur Gaza en tuant par milliers hommes, femmes et enfants, mais vous ouvrez votre scène à celles et ceux qui les lancent là-bas, mais aussi au Qatar, en Iran, au Yémen, au Liban et en Syrie.

À quoi s’attendre pour les concerts des 30 novembre et 16 janvier prochains ? À une Philharmonie aux allures de bunker, nouveau fief des forces de l’ordre et de la répression dans le 19e arrondissement de Paris ? À une réunion au sommet des institutions et associations négationnistes du génocide en cours et qui, par le pire travers antisémite qui consiste à associer toustes les Juif.ve.s du monde à l’état d’Israël, instrumentalisent l’histoire et la culture juive à des fins guerrières ?  Si vous n’entendez pas les souffrances des Palestinien.ne.s avez vous au moins compris celles de vos salarié.e.s et des mélomanes que vous traînez dans votre complicité outrageante ?

Au nom de la musique que nous défendons, au nom de l’humanité que nous incarnons et puisqu’il s’agirait encore selon vous de notre institution, nous vous exhortons à cesser toute collaboration avec les institutions culturelles et académiques israéliennes qui lavent les mains des génocidaires. Après vous avoir invité cordialement à envisager l’annulation des venues de Lahav Shani et du Jerusalem Quartet, nous vous l’exigeons. Et malgré vos habitudes policières prises le 6 novembre dernier, nos revendications et surtout les voix palestiniennes dont nous nous faisons le relais ne souffriront aucune de vos répressions. Enfin, dans le doute que tout cela soit entendu il nous faudra constater que vous n’avez pas été à la hauteur de vos fonctions d’un point de vue politique et moral et qu’il nous semblera justifié d’exiger votre démission au nom de la dignité des victimes d’un génocide que vous avez décidé de normaliser. L’histoire finira par juger les auteur.ice.s du génocide et leurs complices. À ce jour, vous êtes sur le banc des accusés.

Tahia Falestine !

Artistes pour la Palestine - France
Palestine Action
Union Juive Française pour la Paix
Tsedek
Culture en luttes

On Sunday, November 30, 2025, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra will give a concert at the Philharmonie de Paris (Cité de la Musique) under the baton of its music director Lahav Shani, who is also music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and will be music director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra from September 2026. A previous concert given on November 6 at the same venue by the Israel Symphony Orchestra under the same conductor was the scene of incidents, following which four pro-Palestinian protesters were charged and in turn filed various complaints for assault and violation of the secrecy of the investigation. Several organizations have just sent the letter below to the director of the Philharmonic. -Tlaxcala

Thursday, 27 November 2025

Sir,

Since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, nearly 70,000 people have been killed—men, women, and children included. Still in Gaza, 345 people have been killed and 889 injured by the Israeli army since the so-called “ceasefire” came into effect on October 11, a ceasefire that has been violated more than 500 times. In two years, the equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs has been dropped on a territory barely 150 square kilometers in size. Humanitarian and medical aid remains blocked while, with winter approaching, epidemics are preparing to follow in the footsteps of famine. Every day, bodies pile up—when they have the “luck” of being found. On Monday, November 24, armed Israeli militias forced children out of the Palestinian National Theatre (El-Hakawati Theatre) in occupied Jerusalem. These weapons will certainly attract less attention than a few harmless smoke flares raised in front of the cultural ambassadors of the State of Israel.

The genocide—characterized as such by the relevant international legal bodies—continues before our eyes. And you, what are you doing?

Not only have you invited the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and its principal conductor, official ambassadors of a colonial state in the midst of committing genocide; not only have you welcomed musicians who relay the dehumanization of Palestinians through reprehensible disinformation on their social media—for instance, Eleonora Lutsky speaking of “Hamaswood,” or Kirill Mihanovsky referring to Palestinians as “monstrous neighbors”; not only have you taken peaceful activists to court for calling for the legitimate boycott of Israeli cultural institutions that participate in the normalization of genocide—you have chosen to plunge your institution deeper into falsehood, hoping never to have to assume your responsibilities before history and before justice.

You lied to your employees during an extraordinary general assembly, describing peaceful activists as violent, ignoring the racist and homophobic insults from part of the audience, and claiming you did not know the orchestra would play the Israeli anthem even though they perform it regularly on tour. Yes—the anthem was not played in response to the action of our comrades; it was a premeditated act.

You were cordially invited—considering the Palestinian calls and in accordance with international law—to cancel the appearances of Lahav Shani, the IPO, and the Jerusalem Quartet due to the institutional role they play in the cultural whitewashing of the crime of genocide committed by Israel. To these calls you again responded with falsehoods and with the blatant instrumentalization of Palestinian artists programmed in your institution, using them to justify your collaboration with the cultural institutions of a genocidal state.

This Tuesday, November 25, you chose to fully assume this political agenda and drag your entire institution into the propaganda narrative by agreeing to Lahav Shani’s request to address your employees. His “explanation” was nothing more than a renewed condemnation, describing peaceful protest as an “armed attack” against Israeli identity. Yet every call to boycott you received was very clear: “We are not calling for a boycott of artists because of their Israeli nationality, but because of their institutional participation in the erasure of Palestinian lives orchestrated by the Israeli state.”

You impose propaganda—hasbara—on your employees through these explanations, while refusing dialogue with those who have been warning you from the start about this complicity with the worst. This is your way of silencing Palestinian voices.

Hiding behind the supposed apolitical nature of classical music was already an outrage given the suffering endured by Palestinians over the past two years and in the face of international law. After such relentless efforts to maintain collaboration with the ambassadors of genocide—calling disproportionately on police and judicial force—were we to hope you might come to your senses?

Today you are ready to excuse an affront to human dignity and to international law—just like the anthem of the genocidal state that resounded within your walls. And why? To avoid risking the cancellation of a concert with Martha Argerich because it would look bad among your peers? Or to avoid offending the far-right political and media forces that have supported you unconditionally since November 6, just as they support genocidal policy?

Cast aside your sham humanist values and assume the reactionary agenda you have chosen to adopt by opening your institution’s doors to those who deny the value of Palestinian lives and international law. Your lies continue, because no—this institution is no longer ours. You have handed it over to the fascism eating away at the world; you have made it a banner of dehumanization and the normalization of the darkest hours of our present. You never wished to hear us when we warned you. You turn a deaf ear to the sound of bombs exploding over Gaza, killing thousands of men, women, and children, but you open your stage to those who drop them there—and in Qatar, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria as well.

What are we to expect for the concerts of November 30 and January 16? A Philharmonie turned into a bunker, new stronghold of law enforcement and repression in Paris’s 19th arrondissement? A summit of institutions and associations denying the ongoing genocide and—through the very worst form of antisemitism, which consists of conflating all Jews worldwide with the State of Israel—instrumentalizing Jewish history and culture for warlike purposes?

If you cannot hear the suffering of Palestinians, have you at least understood that of your employees and of the music-lovers you are dragging into your outrageous complicity?

In the name of the music we defend, in the name of the humanity we embody, and since this is supposedly still our institution according to you, we call on you to cease all collaboration with Israeli cultural and academic institutions that wash the hands of the perpetrators of genocide.

After having cordially invited you to consider cancelling the appearances of Lahav Shani and the Jerusalem Quartet, we now demand it. And despite the policing habits you embraced on November 6, our demands—and above all the Palestinian voices we relay—will not tolerate any repression from you.

Finally, should all this go unheard, we will be forced to acknowledge that you have failed to meet the political and moral responsibilities of your position, and it will seem justified to demand your resignation in the name of the dignity of the victims of a genocide you have chosen to normalize.

History will judge the perpetrators of genocide and their accomplices. As of today, you sit on the defendants’ bench.

Tahia Falestine!

Artistes pour la Palestine - France

Palestine Action

Union Juive Française pour la Paix

Tsedek

Culture en lutte

 

Tucumán, Argentina: The Zionist octopus extends its tentacles in all directions, from the Jewish community to State institutions

 Rubén Kotler, 30/10/2025

Rubén Kotler (b. 1974) is an Argentine historian, Jewish anti-Zionist, and specialist in the recent history of Tucumán. He is cofounder of the Argentine Oral History Association and coadministrator of the Latin American Oral History Network. He also co-wrote and conducted the historical research for the documentary El Tucumanazo, which explores the workers’ and students’ uprisings in Tucumán. https://www.deigualaigual.net/

Israeli historian Ilan Pappé defines a lobby as “the influence exerted to change a government’s policy or to alter public opinion.” In his recent book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic , he analyzes the history of the Zionist lobby between the United States and the United Kingdom. Zionist penetration in Latin America dates back to the first half of the twentieth century and has been essential to the survival of the State of Israel and its policies of genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, colonialism, expansionism, racism, and Islamophobia—the backbone upon which the self-proclaimed Jewish state is built, to the detriment of the Palestinian people.
This colonial framework is sustained by Jewish-Zionist communities worldwide. Such dynamics can be observed, under closer inspection, in local communities such as that of Tucumán, Argentina.

Argentina’s smallest province hosts a small but influential Jewish-Zionist community, where both Ashkenazi and Sephardic heritages coexist. Its institutions range from several synagogues and schools to a club called Unidad Sionista (“Zionist Unity”) and a cemetery. The main community school—where I myself studied during my school years—maintains a dual curriculum, and its Jewish-Zionist education is a key element in maintaining and reinforcing communal support for Israel.

The Jewish educational programs, far removed from religious orthodoxy, are designed to foster a deeply Zionist identity.Argentine national holidays are celebrated with equal emphasis to Jewish holidays, imbuing them with a nationalist narrative that rivals that taught in schools in the colonial enclave of Israel itself. Zionist influence in the religious Jewish world has been so profound that even Reform congregations  have included a prayer asking God to protect the Israeli army in their religious services.

 

Images from a “Patriotic Israeli” School Ceremony in Tucumán
(Author’s Archive)

At the same time, a scholarship system funds initiation trips to the self-proclaimed Jewish state—as if to a kind of Disney World. Combined with a tightly woven network of local institutions, this reinforces a sense of Israel as a “second homeland,” and for some, as an imagined nation that serves as refuge from a potential apocalyptic repetition of a “second Holocaust.”

The bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires (1992) and the AMIA (1994) strengthened the narrative of a possible “Holocaust” in Argentina. Since 1994, Jewish-Zionist institutions have maintained external walls around their buildings “to prevent car bomb explosions.” For thirty years, Argentina’s Jewish-Zionist community has awaited a “third attack” as though waiting for the Messiah.

The oath sworn by soldiers of the world’s most criminal army at Masada, in occupied Palestine—pledging that Zion will never fall again—is replicated with equal fervor in Jewish-Zionist schools.

In Argentina, there exists a notorious pro-Zionist lobbying institution known as the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas (DAIA)—the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations—whose initial purpose was to protect Jewish interests in Argentina. Nothing could be further from reality: DAIA defends Zionist interests in the country. It is also one of the key promoters of the idea that anti-Zionism is equivalent to anti-Semitism, as we will see later.

Kirchnerist José Jorge Alperovich (b. 1955) served as governor of Tucumán three times between 2003 and 2015. In November 2019, he was criminally charged with sexual abuse, and in 2024 he was sentenced to sixteen years in prison and permanently disqualified from holding public office.

To understand Zionist penetration in Tucumán over recent years—functioning as a kind of fifth column that justifies and accompanies genocide—we must consider the political landscape. Provincial governments since 2003 have maintained firm economic, cultural, political, and social ties with Israel.

Alperovich, the son of a Jewish-Zionist family from Tucumán belonging to the commercial elite, became a paradigmatic case in a country whose official religion is Roman Catholicism. His election was as novel as his alliances with Zionism at a global level. These ties predated his governorship but were reinforced by the inclusion of local Jewish community members in the provincial cabinet. Prominent community figures embraced Peronism as a political vehicle through which they anchored their influence and linked the provincial state to the State of Israel via a series of economic agreements.

Juan Luis Manzur (b. 1969), later governor and today the wealthiest official in the national administration, continued this line of submission to Zionism. With close, even affectionate ties to sectors such as Chabad Lubavitch, Manzur quickly made business deals with Israel in one of the colonial enclave’s most specialized areas: security.

By the end of 2018, the provincial government purchased 4,000 semi-automatic Jericho 9mm pistols with polymer frames, developed by Israel Military Industries (IMI)—a company privatized that same year and absorbed by Elbit Systems. The nine-million-dollar deal brought to Tucumán weapons identical to those used against Palestinians in the West Bank. One of these guns, in the hands of the provincial police, killed Luis Espinoza during the pandemic lockdown, when police raided a social gathering on May 15, 2020. Espinoza was kidnapped and disappeared for seven days before his body was found in another province.

But the agreements didn’t stop there. Two years before Espinoza’s death, on August 13, 2018, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra performed in one of Tucumán’s main theaters under the sponsorship of the provincial government. I titled my commentary at the time “A Concert of Gunfire” to highlight how cultural events were being used to normalize the embrace of the Zionist state and the oppression of the Palestinian people.
The normalization of colonial structures through culture and sports is a distinctive feature of this global pattern of Zionist influence.

Peronism as an ally of Zionism

Today, Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei is openly allied with Zionism, supporting the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Yet part of the Peronist movement hypocritically remains silent or looks away when it comes to the state’s agreements with Zionist institutions. Visits to Israel by Argentine officials have continued from one administration to another.
From Tucumán, local governments and university authorities have repeatedly signed agreements with Israel, regardless of political turnover.

Let us recall that the first international trip of Peronist president Alberto Fernández, just before the pandemic, was to Israel—to shake hands with war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. His minister Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro, himself the son of victims of Argentina’s last civil-military dictatorship, brought the Israeli company Mekorot to Argentina to manage a strategic resource: water. De Pedro could not have been unaware of international accusations against Mekorot for its role in Israel’s apartheid system and its control of water resources in occupied Palestine.
Today, these agreements are being expanded as Milei’s ultra-liberal government seeks to privatize Agua y Saneamiento Argentino (AYSA), the national water and sanitation company. Will Mekorot take over AYSA? It is highly probable.

Health and the Hadassah Network

On October 13, 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Health of Tucumán signed a cooperation agreement with Israel’s Hadassah Medical Network. The agreement was signed by then-Minister of Health Rossana Chahla, now the mayor of the provincial capital.

According to the ministry’s website, “this agreement aims to share medical knowledge developed at Israel’s Hadassah Medical Center, to provide access to training sessions, symposiums, and lectures by professionals, as well as to integrate hospitals and health centers in Tucumán into the Hadassah Health Network.”
The objective is explicit: sharing provincial health data with an Israeli institution—an unprecedented step in such a sensitive public sector. The ministry’s note also confirmed that this relationship between the provincial government and Hadassah has existed for over fifteen years, dating back to Alperovich’s administration.

The local academy strengthens the Zionist narrative

The Zionist narrative requires its scribes. The Hasbara—Israel’s state-sponsored propaganda apparatus—deploys a wide range of tools, from funding mass media outlets to flooding social networks with influencers who mold public perception. As war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu recently declared, “Israel should buy TikTok.”

Within this strategy, academia plays a crucial role. Agreements between Argentine public universities and Zionist or pro-Zionist institutions are particularly notable.

Returning to Tucumán: on July 23, 2025, the Faculty of Law at the National University of Tucumán hosted a Hasbara-style event clearly intended to reinforce Zionist narratives—the presentation of the book Antisemitismo: Definir para combatir (“Antisemitism: Define to Combat”) by Ariel Gelblung, director of the controversial Simon Wiesenthal Center, a defender of the Zionist narrative.

The event was supported by the local DAIA and attended by university authorities, provincial government officials, and members of the judiciary—including Supreme Court justices Claudia Sbdar and Daniel Posse, journalist Álvaro José Aurane of La Gaceta, and officials Raúl Albarracín and Hugo Navas.

Notably, Gelblung’s presentation was part of a postgraduate diploma program on Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity offered by the Faculty of Law—one that makes no mention whatsoever of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

On July 25, a follow-up talk was given to local students, again promoting the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. In an interview with the local newspaper, Gelblung declared:

“We are living through the worst moment of anti-Semitism since the end of World War II. The conflict in the Middle East has placed Jewish communities around the world in real danger. Allowing certain masks to fall and aligning with terrorism is truly dangerous.”

For this propagandist, “Zionism is not a bad word; it is the movement for the national self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral land. Someone cannot claim to support self-determination for all peoples except one. That is discrimination. One cannot say, ‘I’m not anti-Semitic, I’m just anti-Zionist.’ That’s a fallacy.”

For Gelblung—and indeed for the entire Jewish-Zionist establishment—no genocide is being committed in Gaza, despite reports to the contrary from Israeli human-rights organizations such as B’Tselem. Neither Gelblung nor Tucumán’s academic or judicial authorities seem to have read the report titled “Our Genocide”. By echoing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, they equate it with anti-Zionism—nothing could be more false.

Since October 7, 2023, these circles have loudly insisted that the world is witnessing a surge in anti-Semitism—a claim unsupported by evidence. In Argentina, even members of parliament have been prosecuted for mentioning genocide in Palestine, accused of anti-Semitism, as happened to Vanina Biassi, deputy of the Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores (Left and Workers’ Front).

Rossana Chahla (1966), intendenta (alcaldesa) de Tucumán, justicialista (peronista/kirchnerista)

Rossana Chahla (b. 1966), physician of Syrian-Lebanese origin and now mayor of San Miguel de Tucumán, has written yet another chapter in the province’s alliance with Zionism. She signed a security-training cooperation agreement with the Israeli agency Mashav for the municipal staff.

Despite protests from the group Tucumán por Palestina, the municipality proceeded with the agreement. At the height of an ongoing genocide, the mayor deepens ties with Zionist institutions.

According to the municipal website,

“The course, conducted in Spanish at the Beit Berl Institute campus near Tel Aviv, covers key topics such as coordination between municipalities and police forces, the creation of community police units, emergency management, youth work with at-risk populations, and cooperation with educational institutions, community organizations, and the private sector.”

Such agreements, mirrored throughout Latin America, exemplify what journalist Antony Loewenstein has called ‘The Palestine Laboratory’—Israel’s use of its repressive systems against the Palestinian people as showcases for its “technological advances” in security and warfare. Israel remains one of the world’s major arms exporters [8th largest exporter and 15th largest importer in the world] , selling to regimes of all kinds, including dictatorships.

A Phantom Haunting Tucumán: The Phantom of Genocide

The collective Tucumán por Palestina, made up of Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews, artists, political and trade-union activists, and academics, has for years denounced Zionism and exposed Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. Yet not a single line about their work has appeared in Tucumán’s main newspaper. On the contrary, whenever the Jewish-Zionist community holds public events, the same paper devotes lavish coverage to them.

In general, local media—barring rare exceptions—ignore the persistent activism that fills the capital’s streets. It is evident that Zionist influence in Tucumán extends across all three branches of government, the hegemonic press, and parts of academia.

As a son of that same Jewish community, I once again raise my voice in opposition to Zionism and genocide. Like the comrades of Tucumán por Palestina, I speak out wherever possible.

The penetration of that ghost called genocide in the province has names and faces—many of them descendants of Syrian-Lebanese families, such as the current mayor of the provincial capital. Breaking the dominant narrative, making as much noise as possible, and convincing Jewish communities around the world that Israel does not represent Judaism—in any of its religious or cultural forms—may help weaken the colonial enclave.

Withdrawing communal support, as several anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian Jewish organizations are already doing, could contribute to the fall of a regime that for over a century has waged war, committed crimes against humanity, and perpetuated genocide and ethnic cleansing in historic Palestine and other strategic parts of the Middle East.

Demonstration in Extremadura Against Rheinmetall Death Factory: A Universal Message

Tlaxcala, 23 October 2025

From the depths of rural Spain rises a cry of anger, of violated dignity, of appeal to the conscience of old Europe: stop the manufacturers and merchants of death! On Saturday 25 October, for the second time, a demonstration will take place in front of the Rheinmetall arms factory in Navalmoral de la Mata, province of Cáceres, Extremadura, called by the collectives La Vera con Palestina and Extremadura con Palestina. Below is a summary of the documents we published in Spanish and German.

The call is titled “No al rearme, stop genocidio”—No to the rearmament of Spain and Europe, stop the genocide. Within the framework of the European Commission’s “Rearm Europe” plan, the Madrid government has committed itself to NATO’s target of 2% of GDP in military spending. The goal—dividing the governing coalition—is to reach a budget of more than 40 billion euros by 2029.
“Os parece ético trabajar para esta empresa cómplice del genocidio?” – Do you think it’s ethical to work for this company complicit in genocide?

Linking Anti-Armament Struggles and Solidarity with Palestine

The central demand: to link the struggle against rearmament with solidarity for the Palestinian people, victims of a genocide perpetrated by Israel with Western complicity. The organizers call for the creation of an internationalist social movement against militarization and the war economy.

Critique of the Western Model and a Call for Disobedience

The appeal paints an apocalyptic portrait of the modern world: the West is a decadent empire led by selfish elites (USA and Europe) who, faced with ecological and energy crises, turn to war and conquest. Rearmament is seen as a strategy to sustain the hyper-consumerist model and seize the South’s resources. Germany, once the land of “poets and thinkers,” becomes again that of “judges and executioners,” following the USA, abandoning its energy autonomy (Russian gas) to relaunch itself through arms production.

The appeal advances an economic and moral argument: every increase in military spending results in a decrease in social spending. The authors denounce a new era of austerity, comparable to that of the 2010s, and accuse Spanish governments, including socialist ones, of privatizing the common good for the benefit of the military-industrial complex.

A direct appeal is addressed to Rheinmetall workers in Extremadura:

The demands include: withdrawal of public aid to the arms industry, total embargo on weapons to Israel, breaking diplomatic relations, prosecuting involved leaders, ending European rearmament, and initiating a program of degrowth.

Rheinmetall: Symbol of Modern Warfare

The article by José Luis Ybot (El Salto, 17 September 2024) traces the history of Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest arms company, founded in the 19th century, associated with the Nazi regime, later converted to civilian production, and since 1956 again a pillar of rearmament. Since 2000, it has refocused on the military: Leopard tanks, Eurofighter Typhoons, drones, lasers, defense systems, and more.

In 2022, Rheinmetall bought Expal, a subsidiary of the Spanish group Maxam, owner of the El Gordo and Navalmoral de la Mata plants. These sites, involved in the manufacture and dismantling of antipersonnel mines, make Extremadura a “sacrificed” region in service of the war economy.

Since the war in Ukraine, Rheinmetall’s value has quintupled. Its shareholders include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America. The company profits from global arms demand, particularly through its Ukrainian subsidiary created in 2023.

Investigation: Rheinmetall in El Gordo and Navalmoral

A report by Luis Velasco San Pedro (El País, 1 November 2024) shows how the village of El Gordo lives off Rheinmetall: 200 residents work there, salaries exceed 1,600 euros, and unemployment is nearly zero. But secrecy reigns. Employees sign confidentiality agreements and say: “Lo que se hace allí es top secret.”

Deputy Nerea Fernández (Unidas por Extremadura) denounces regional complicity and public funding of Rheinmetall (58,060 euros of European funds). She calls for the conversion of these factories to civilian production. For her, “the genocide in Gaza begins in Extremadura.”

Popular Mobilizations and Global Critique

The communiqué calling for the previous demonstration on 6 October 2024 urged boycott of Israel and civil disobedience: “La única forma de buscar la paz es no fabricar la guerra.” – The only way to seek peace is not to manufacture war.

Europe was described as a militarized “mega-Israel,” built on fear and dependence on the war economy.

The dossier combines investigation, manifesto, and moral plea. It denounces war capitalism and links the local struggle against Rheinmetall to the Palestinian cause. The authors assert a conviction: the fight for peace begins where weapons are made.

The message applies urbi et orbi—in Europe, North and South America, and Asia: we must stop the manufacturers and merchants of death, wherever they are, “by any means necessary.” To date, only one arms factory—Elbit Systems in Bristol, UK—has ceased operations. Credit goes to the courageous militants of Palestine Action, now banned as a “terrorist” group, with members prosecuted. The same fate befalls Palestine Action Germany, whose activists carried out symbolic actions against Elbit Systems in Ulm; five are now on trial.

Another aspect of necessary mobilization concerns the transport of arms to Israel—either ready-to-use weapons or components destined for Israeli arms factories. Protests have occurred in Marseille, Genoa, and Tangier, with others ongoing.

The cargo ship Marianne Danica, carrying 155 mm shells for Elbit Systems from Chennai, India, to Haifa, diverted from Gibraltar to Casablanca to avoid Spanish protests. Another vessel, Ocean Gladiator, carrying 163 tons of brass cartridge cases from the Wieland factory in Buffalo, USA, recently passed through the Strait of Gibraltar en route to Ashdod, with its next stop scheduled in Limassol (Cyprus) on 3 November [track it here]. We'll await it there. 

The People Without a Map: Diaspora, Conscience, and Palestinian Recognition

Two years after the onset of the Gaza genocide, the State has vanished, but the people remain. Across the world, the Palestinian diaspora embodies a conscience that refuses erasure.

François Vadrot, Oct. 7, 2025                           

Silhouette of Gaza, void at the heart of a sky saturated with stars. Around the darkness, the light — that of the living dispersed.

On October 7, 2023, what was first presented as a new “war” between Israel and Hamas marked instead one of the most violent episodes in a process that began in 1947: the progressive destruction of the Palestinian people. Two years later, the military fiction has collapsed. It was not a war, but an annihilation.

And yet, beyond the ruins, Palestine endures through its diaspora — a people without a map, but not without memory. This recognition, the acknowledgment of the Palestinian People on the same moral level as the Jewish People, now defines the century’s deepest moral fault line.

Gaza, Destruction, and the Return of the Real

Two years after October 7, 2023, the truth can no longer be evaded: Gaza did not endure a war but a genocide. The report of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry, published on September 16, 2025, formally concludes that Israel has committed, and continues to commit, acts constituting genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention. The experts document, with evidence, the four legal criteria: “killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction, imposing measures to prevent births,” with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian people of Gaza.

The report dismantles the fiction of a “war”: these are not “disproportionate operations,” but a systematic campaign of destruction. Civilians were the target — bombings on evacuation zones, executions inside shelters, hospitals and schools razed, water and power infrastructures annihilated, the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon (the blockade of infant formula, fuel, and water). The report details the targeting of children — “including toddlers shot in the head and chest” —, the destruction of Gaza’s only in-vitro fertilization clinic, and the repeated use of sexual violence as a tool of domination. Even symbols of continuity — mosques, churches, cemeteries, universities — were deliberately obliterated.

The numbers defy language: over 50,000 dead, 83% civilians, 200,000 homes destroyed, and 1.5 million people displaced in a strip rendered uninhabitable. A military expert cited by the UN notes that Israel “dropped in one week more bombs than the United States did in an entire year in Afghanistan.” The report concludes: “There was no military necessity to justify this pattern of conduct. The people of Gaza, as a whole, were the target.”

What has been destroyed is not merely life, but the very condition of living. What collapses under the ruins is not a political entity — it is the possibility of inhabiting the world.

Yet precisely in this total negation appears the trace of survival: where the land is destroyed, memory expands.

A Global Diaspora, Mirror of Erasure

TIGRILLO L. ANUDOThe Flotillas That Are Kidnapped Every Day

Tigrillo L. Anudo, October 6, 2025
Translated by Tlaxcala

Español Français Italiano عربية

The world changes little. Historical patterns repeat themselves. The past never left. The objectification of human beings continues. Colonization is the order of the day. Piracy in international waters is revived with other actors (who finally kept the aid and belongings of the occupants of the humanitarian flotilla bound for Gaza?). Those who undertake actions in favor of justice are labeled “terrorists.”

The hijacking of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was carrying humanitarian aid to the tormented people of Gaza, is what happens every day in many countries. It is happening right now in Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, where neoliberal policies subject the population to hunger, lack of healthcare, education, housing, employment — to a slow death.

The difference is that these are not flotillas traveling by sea. They are flotillas of social investment, which remain kidnapped in plutocratic and corrupt Congresses and Assemblies. The difference lies in the fact that this practice of global capitalism becomes more visible in a nation invaded, massacred, and humiliated by Zionist ideology, the conception of a supremacist State that carries out ethnic cleansing against those it considers “inferior” and “terrorists.”

In the countries mentioned, the human rights of other ethnic groups (indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, peasants, mestizo workers) are kidnapped; repressive and anti-democratic dictatorial regimes operate there. They do not kill with bomber planes and artificial intelligence, but with the denial of human dignity — an ignominy made invisible by corporate media and educational apparatuses that program political illiterates.

Everything is interconnected. Daniel Noboa (President of Ecuador), Dina Boluarte (President of Peru), and Javier Milei (President of Argentina) are allies of the Zionist government of Netanyahu. Like them, Donald Trump (President of the United States) and other presidents of European nations have business interests and defend the Israeli regime. Although some European governments verbally rejected the terrorist actions of the Israeli State in Palestine (among them Italy and Spain), they ended up bowing their heads before the genocide. There is no integrity in their rejection. They are afraid to assume upright positions; they do not want to leave the Club of the world’s powerful accomplices.

The United States government follows Zionist ideology; it is its point of reference. It is the natural ally of those who embody the most characteristic features of capitalism 2.0: usury, control of banking and the financial system, management of the most lucrative industries, production of weapons and surveillance technologies, espionage services and techniques for combating “internal enemies,” developments in artificial intelligence that increase labor exploitation and unemployment. Capitalism 2.0 advances technology and diminishes humanity.

Israel teaches the United States how to do business, involving it as a partner in an ambitious hotel project on Palestinian territory. Neither International Law nor Human Rights stop the rate of profit. The elitist political world continues, for the most part, to be very permissive toward the genocide in Gaza. It suits them. Invisible threads of commercial and diplomatic interests predominate in the agenda of foreign policy. Political economy prevails, not ethics nor international solidarity.

Not even the dystopian novels of the 20th century foresaw the negative utopia the world lives in today. A small country with a powerful army, backed by the U.S. empire, “defends” its right to commit genocide. Furthermore, it considers the act of bringing food, water, medicine, and other humanitarian aid to a besieged people as terrorist acts financed by Hamas. It grants itself permission to impose a maritime blockade on the Gaza Strip (for 17 years), subjecting it to thirst, hunger, and lack of medicine. It also allows itself to violate the right to the sea by boarding vessels in international waters.
Who cares about Palestine?

How to confront the danger posed by Israel’s State terrorism? Marches and humanitarian flotillas are more symbolic than effective. However, they are valuable and must continue because they make visible the infamous offensive of a machine that kills children and women. There are also boycott campaigns against companies that finance the terrorism of the Zionist army. Their reach is limited, but they add to the cry for peace. President Petro proposed an Army of Salvation of Humanity, but there was no timely response to make it a reality. President Trump announced a recolonizing “Peace Plan” to stop the “war” (he does not say genocide) and administer the Gaza Strip with Tony Blair (killer of Asians). A deception and mockery of the world. They cancel the self-determination of peoples with a stroke of the pen; they decide for Palestine.

Ahmed Rahma, Türkiye

Everything indicates that the disorder that destroys International Law can only be compensated by the use of force by new and daring actors. The Houthis of Yemen, a poor country devastated by war, have dared to launch drones and missiles at Israel; they do so out of solidarity with Palestine, to make themselves felt as a neglected and beaten nation, for historical-religious motives, for strategy, political calculation, and because they have the dignity and courage that rich nations lack. These actions, along with the supersonic missile responses from Iran that shattered Israel’s Iron Dome, are encouraging other countries to intervene to stop the massacres committed daily with impunity by the fanatical soldiers led by Netanyahu. Israel is not so invulnerable; it has already been demonstrated. And a tiny country like Yemen understands that it can play a role by controlling the Red Sea, through which navigates a large part of the fuel and goods of international trade. In a world where the rules of coexistence and respect between nations are violated, the continuation of such violations by other interested parties is authorized. Israel is risking being erased from the map because of its persistent defiance of peace and international morality.

If the Israeli army arrogates to itself the right to kidnap ships in international waters, it is validating the Houthis attacking ships carrying weapons, goods, or fuel through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern entrance to the Red Sea, through which pass ships loaded with oil that supply not only Israel but also Europe and the United States. The ships of this last country will also suffer. Oil prices may rise. The world economy could be affected. The law of the jungle is expanding across the planet; an uncertain future could mark international relations.

The dispute over markets and global trade routes is a chessboard for Russia, China, Europe, and the United States. None of them cares about the fate of Palestine. They are concerned with how they position themselves against their rivals. Each time a new war front opens for the U.S., Russians and Chinese take advantage of it. They are interested in seeing the U.S. exhausted by helping its Israeli partners. Hence, bears and dragons do not enter energetically to defend Palestine. That is how political economy works. Small countries like Yemen and Lebanon (Hezbollah) do more for Gazans than the great powers. Arab governments also fail to agree on how to support their Palestinian brothers or how to confront the Zionist challenge.

Only the peoples save the peoples. Other initiatives will be indispensable to halt the genocide. There is no military power that saves lives in Gaza. No government dares to intercede for the massacred Palestinians. None wants to “get into trouble”; each one looks to its own interest. So far, only Indonesia has offered 20,000 soldiers for an improbable army of salvation. No one believes in armies of salvation.

Gaza is alone. Its inhabitants continue to fall under the murderous bullets of Netanyahu. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Palestinian genocide is the greatest failure of humanity.
The Zionist leadership is determined to exterminate the people of Gaza. It has been doing so since 1947, when its British partners deliberately settled them in Palestinian territory.
Their hatred and fear (lack of love) have led them to consider all Palestinians as terrorists.
They say the same about those who try to bring them aid.
Fascism is reigning, and we have not realized it.

JORGE MAJFUDThe Peace Agreements of the Addicted White Man

Jorge Majfud for La Pluma y Tlaxcala, Oct. 5, 2025

Translated by Tlaxcala

On September 29, 2025, The New York Times reported on the meeting at the White House between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. under this headline with a clarifying subtitle:

Cease-fire…It is not that history rhymes—it repeats itself.
Since the fifteenth century, all the treaties signed by the European empires have been made at gunpoint and systematically ignored once they stopped serving their purposes or when they managed to push forward their lines of fire.
Destruction and dispossession were always seasoned with some noble cause: civilization, freedom, democracy, and the invader’s right to defend himself.

For centuries, it was the same story repeated in the diplomacy between Indigenous peoples and white settlers—no different from the most recent case of the “Peace Agreement” proposed and imposed under threat by Washington and Tel Aviv on Palestine.
It is the same history of the violation of every peace treaty signed with the Native Nations on either side of the Appalachians, before and after 1776.
Later, what historians call the “Louisiana Purchase” (1803) was not a purchase at all, but a brutal dispossession of the Indigenous nations who were the ancestral owners of that territory, as large as the entire rising Anglo country in America.
No Native person was invited to the negotiating table in Paris, far from those being dispossessed.
And when one of these agreements included some “representative” of the attacked peoples—as in the 1835 Cherokee Treaty—the representative was false, a Guaidó invented by the white settlers.

The same occurred with the transfer of Spain’s last colonies (Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam) to the United States.
While hundreds of Sioux dyed the snows of Dakota red demanding payment according to the treaty that had forced them to sell their lands, in Paris a new peace agreement was being signed over tropical peoples.
No representative of the dispossessed was invited to negotiate the accord that supposedly made their “liberation” possible.

For Theodore Roosevelt, “the most righteous of all wars is the war against savages… the only good Indians are dead Indians.”
Further south, he wrote and published that “Negroes are a stupid race.”
According to Roosevelt, democracy had been invented for the benefit of the white race, the only one capable of civilization and beauty.

During those years, the Anglo-Saxon ethnicity needed a justification for its brutality and its habit of stealing and then washing its crimes away with peace agreements imposed by force.
Since in the second half of the nineteenth century the epistemological paradigm of science had replaced religion, that justification became racial superiority.

Europe kept most of the world subjugated through its fanaticism and its addiction to gunpowder.
Theories about the superiority of the white man went hand in hand with his victimization: Blacks, Browns, Reds and Yellows took advantage of his generosity while threatening the minority of the superior race with replacement by the majority of inferior ones.
Sound familiar?

Because those biologicist theories were not sufficiently grounded, history was invoked instead.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Europe was teeming with linguistic and later anthropological theories about the pure origin of the noble race (Aryan, Iran), the white race derived from the Hindu Vedas.
These far-fetched stories—and Hindu symbols such as the Nazi swastika and what is now known as the Star of David (used by different cultures centuries earlier but originally from India)—became popular as racial symbols in print.

It is no coincidence that it was precisely at that moment that supremacist theories and Zionism were founded and articulated within their historical concepts in the white, racist, imperialist Europe of the North.
Even the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, understood that Jews belonged to the superior “Aryan race.”

Until the Second World War, these supremacisms coexisted with certain frictions but not enough to prevent them from forming agreements, such as the Haavara Agreement between Nazis and Zionists, which for years transferred tens of thousands of white Jews (of “good genetic material”) to Palestine.
The first anti-Zionists were not the Palestinians who received them, but the European Jews who resisted that ethnic-cleansing agreement.
At the same time that the Palestinians were colonized and stripped of their lands, Judaism itself was colonized and stripped of its tradition.

When the Soviets crushed Hitler’s Nazis, being a supremacist became a disgrace.
Suddenly, Winston Churchill and the USAmerican millionaires stopped boasting of being Nazis.
Earlier, the 1917 Balfour-Rothschild Declaration had been an agreement among whites to divide and occupy a territory of “inferior races.”
As the racist and genocidal Churchill—then Minister of War—said:

“I am strongly in favor of using poisonous gas against uncivilized tribes.” [and he used it in Iraq, Transl. n.]

But the brutal irrationality of the Second World War also ended the Modern Era, founded on the paradigms of reason and progress.
Science and critical thought gave way to the irrationality of consumerism and religion.

Thus, today’s Zionists no longer insist before the UN or the White House on their Aryan racial superiority, but rather on their special rights as God’s chosen Semites.
Netanyahu and his evangelical escorts quote the biblical sacredness of Israel a thousand times, as if he and King David were the same person and as if that dark-skinned Semitic people of three thousand years ago were the same Khazars of the Caucasus who adopted Judaism in medieval Europe.

The Washington agreement between Trump and Netanyahu, to be accepted by the Palestinians, is illegitimate from the start.
It does not matter how many times the word peace is repeated—just as it does not matter how many times the word love is repeated while a woman is being raped.
It will always be a violation, just as Israel’s occupation and apartheid over Palestine are.

On Tuesday, September 30, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gathered his generals and quoted George Washington:

“He who desires peace must prepare for war,”
not because Washington “wanted war, but because it loved peace.”
President Trump concluded: it would be an insult to the United States if he were not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1933, in his speech before the Reichstag, the Nobel Peace Prize candidate Adolf Hitler declared that Germany sought only peace.
Three years later, after remilitarizing Rhineland, he insisted that Germany was a pacifist nation seeking its security.

Even if the new agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv is accepted by Hamas (one of Netanyahu’s own creations), sooner or later it will be violated by Tel Aviv.
For the superior race—for the chosen peoples—there are no agreements with inferior beings, only strategies of plunder and annihilation: strategies of demonizing the slave and the colonized, and of victimizing the poor white man, that addict to gunpowder—now to white powder.