Welcome to Andy Worthington

My analysis of the 20-point Gaza “Peace Plan” unveiled yesterday by Donald Trump in the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu, who claimed to accept it. While many world leaders have responded to it positively, and Hamas’ leadership is currently studying it, it is clearly fraught with profound problems and unanswered questions despite seeming to promise an end to hostilities, and the resumption of the delivery of humanitarian aid at scale. Anyone with any fundamental decency wants the killing to stop, but the plan, with its demand for the immediate release of all the hostages, would remove Hamas’ sole bargaining chip, allowing Netanyahu to resume hostilities having placated his fiercest internal critics — the families of the remaining hostages. Also of great concern is the intention to initiate the “temporary transitional governance” of Gaza by “a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee”, because that would, in turn, be overseen by “a new international transitional body, the ‘Board of Peace’”, chaired by Trump, and including the former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, widely and understandably hated in the Middle East for his role in facilitating the Iraq War. As if this proposal for a neo-colonial takeover of Gaza isn’t revolting enough, Hamas also faces demands to disarm completely, even though that would provide the Palestinians with no defence if Israel were to break the terms of the deal, which, on past experience, seems likely, and is especially worrying because, immediately after agreeing to the plan, Netanyahu posted a video telling his Israeli audience that there was “no way” that the IDF was leaving Gaza, pouring scorn on any future hopes for a Palestinian state, and seemingly relishing the continuation of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. As I state in the article, “Although everyone with a heart aches for an end to the killing, the timing of the plan, above all, reeks of desperate efforts by Israel and the US to stem the increasing tide of high-profile western support for Palestine”, and is “too high a price to pay for a people whose right to independence and self-governance on their own land, after nearly 80 years of barbaric oppression, apartheid and slaughter ought to be non-negotiable”, and I’d be surprised if Hamas accepts it.

My analysis of Israel’s increasing international isolation, as a number of western countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, Portugal and France, have finally recognized the State of Palestine, as pressure mounts on FIFA to ban Israel from international football, and as calls also increase for it to be banned from the Eurovision Song Contest. In addition, just two days ago, Benjamin Netanyahu also faced an almost total walkout when he visited the US to address the UN General Assembly. Although the respected Middle East commentator Mouin Rabbani was undoubtedly correct to state that the actions these governments chose to take in recognizing the State of Palestine “were the least consequential available”, I believe it should not be underestimated, given the deeply embedded nature of Israeli influence in these countries, how even the “least consequential” actions will have led to a tsunami of criticism behind closed doors, as they break with what, to date, has been a rigorous insistence by Israel’s supporters that its actions must never be meaningfully criticized or challenged. None of the above will bring to an end Israel’s ongoing and ever more deranged genocidal actions in Gaza, for which, above all, arms bans and the imposition of punishing economic sanctions are needed, but, as I state, “every blow delivered may bring Israel’s collapse closer”, and in the meantime, it’s important to “recognize that it is people power that has been pushing western leaders to act, and to move, however slowly, away from their previously unbreakable support for Israel”, and this must “reinforce our determination to keep pushing for an end to the genocide, for meaningful accountability, and for Israel to be shunned until some just resolution is delivered for the Palestinian people.”

My analysis of the devastating new report by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, establishing that Israel is engaged in a genocide in the Gaza Strip, and has been for the last 23 months. Although the report is significant, and a worthy product of the human rights mechanisms that are at the heart of one of the UN’s key founding purposes, to “maintain international peace and security”, I explain how, sadly, the lack of any enforcement mechanisms, coupled with the permanent veto that the alleged victors of the Second World War — the US, the UK, France, Russia and China — granted themselves when the UN Security Council was established, has meant that Israel, protected in particular by the US, has evaded responsibility for its actions since the blood-soaked founding of the state in 1948, which I describe as “a dark shadow of impunity haunting the UN throughout almost the whole of its existence.” As I discuss, the lack of any enforcement mechanism to compel countries to act is particularly dispiriting right now, as Israel, “ever more unhinged and genocidally belligerent”, is “engaged in the planned erasure of Gaza City, the last great population centre of the Gaza Strip, where around half of the estimated two million survivors of the genocide to date were still living until Israel issued mass evacuation orders and began systematically destroying entire neighbourhoods, home after home, apartment block after apartment block, with barely any pretence anymore of military necessity.”

Photos from, and my report about the 32nd consecutive coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US, and in London, Brussels and Belgrade on September 3, 2025. In my report, I also discuss the significance of today being the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which not only led to the extraordinarily ill-advised establishment of the prison at Guantánamo, but also perilously sought to redefine the rules regarding warfare and detention, with baleful and far-reaching effects that, 24 years on, seem particularly to have provided inspiration for Israel’s behaviour over the last 23 months of its genocide in Gaza, and its unjustifiable attacks on numerous neighbouring countries.

Last week, a joint investigation by +972 Magazine and the Guardian into an Israeli military intelligence database from May this year, indicating that 8,900 militants had been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, suggested that, based on the official health ministry death toll of 53,000 at the time, that meant that over 83% of those killed were civilians. This is a startling statistic, but as another investigation, by Adam Rzepka for CounterPunch explained, the true death toll is considerably higher, with researchers having established a 41% undercount in the ministry’s figures, and with “indirect deaths”, added to those caused by traumatic injury, exceeding direct deaths many times over, as analyses of conflicts over the last 30 years have shown. This means that the final death toll will be, at the very minimum, over 350,000, and possibly over 450,000, or even more, and, as a result, a conservative estimate of the number of civilians killed suggests that it is at least 95% of the total, rather than 83%. This is a death toll that, as I describe it, “is almost beyond comprehension”, and is “so grotesque” that the genocidal entity responsible “will, henceforth, be shunned as a deadly pariah state, engaged in the slaughter of civilians on such a significant scale that it will be forever compared to the Nazis.”

Today, as I report, the UN’s mechanism for assessing famine, the IPC (the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) confirmed, in a brand-new report, that the most severe famine conditions are occurring in the Gaza Strip, that this is an “entirely man-made” disaster, deliberately engineered by the State of Israel, and that it can and must be “halted and reversed”, via an immediate ceasefire “to allow humanitarian aid to reach everyone in the Gaza Strip.” The UN’s Tom Fletcher announced the publication of the report with articulate, controlled fury and indignation, and I’m posting a video and a transcript of his speech, as well as some of the report’s main findings, and a history of Israel’s deliberate starvation of the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip over the last 22 months. Despite the copious evidence demonstrating Israel’s intent to starve the Palestinians as part of its genocidal assault on Gaza, including rulings by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and mounting evidence of an increase in the starvation policies over the last six months, since Israel broke the six-week ceasefire deal with Hamas at the start of March, Israel has refuted the IPC’s report, with Benjamin Netanyahu calling it “an outright lie”, and with the defense minister, Israel Katz, pledging to “open the gates of hell” in Gaza City via its planned military invasion. This would be an incomparable disaster, as Gaza City was identified by the IPC as the epicenter of the famine, but is there any way that Israel can be stopped?

Two of the most talented artists in Guantánamo, Moath Al-Alwi and Khalid Qassim, resettled in Oman in January after being held for nearly 23 years without charge or trial, discuss their artwork and their memories of Guantánamo with their friend, the former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi. Both men’s work has featured in various art exhibitions of prisoners’ art over the last eight years, in the US and in Europe, and Moath’s vast sailing ships, made from recycled and scavenged materials, attracted significant attention — so much so that, for five years after the first exhibition in New York in 2017, the Pentagon petulantly imposed a ban on prisoners leaving with their artwork, and even threatened to destroy it, until the Biden administration capitulated to demands made by two UN Special Rapporteurs. Less well-known, but no less striking, are Khalid’s sculptures and symbolic paintings, some painted on gravel from the prison’s recreation yards, mixed with glue, which, as I describe them, “reveal a tantalizing conceptual fascination with using the elements of Guantánamo itself to tell a story.” The article was published two weeks ago on Spencer Ackerman’s Forever Wars website, and this cross-post features my own detailed introduction. Also included are photos of artwork by both men which hadn’t been seen until the Forever Wars article was published.

Photos from, and my report about the 31st coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and in London, Brussels, Mexico City and Belgrade on August 6, 2025. I describe Guantánamo as doubly forgotten because, as we continue to campaign for justice for the 15 men still held in the “war on terror” prison, who now seem largely to have receded from memory, Trump’s recent reanimation of Guantánamo as a venue for his “war on migrants” seems also to have drifted from view, after a flurry of media activity in the first few months of his baleful second presidency. This is in spite of the fact that, six weeks ago, it was reported that 72 migrants were being held at Guantánamo, and that 26 of them, including a British national, had been identified as having criminal records for serious crimes. Since then, however, the trail has gone cold, even though it is reasonable to fear that the administration is planning a one-way trip for these men to obliging third countries. This recently happened with South Sudan and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), where the men disposed of by the administration were given no safeguards that they would not be subjected to torture, “disappearance” or even death, as required under the Torture Convention, to which the US is a signatory.

My report about Israel’s monstrous targeted murder last night of the extraordinarily hard-working Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four of his colleagues from Al Jazeera Arabic, in which I mourn their loss, dissect Israel’s lies about their involvement with Hamas, and criticize the western media for never having platformed Palestinian journalists in their reporting. I also express my fears that the murders were deliberately intended to create a media blackout for the imminent planned invasion and occupation of Gaza City, home to a million surviving Palestinians, where, it seems horribly probable, Israel is planning to replicate the “genocide within a genocide” that took place in northern Gaza from October last year until the ceasefire in January this year, which both Anas Al-Sharif and another murdered colleague, Hossam Shabat, covered assiduously. As I ask, “Is there any hope left, or will Israel’s darkness engulf us all?”

Israel’s deliberate campaign of mass starvation in Gaza has finally prompted outrage in western political and media circles, putting pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to finally lift the deadly siege on all supplies into Gaza that has been in place for nearly five months. This seems like positive news, but, predictably, Netanyahu is seeking to provide nothing more than “minimal” aid — enough, he hopes, to placate his critics, but, crucially, not enough to address the desperate crisis unfolding in Gaza, which requires nothing less than the delivery of food, water, medical supplies, medical equipment and trained personnel on a colossal scale. It remains to be seen if he can get away with this almost incalculable cynicism, but it seems unlikely, as the death toll will inexorably rise in the weeks to come even if all the borders were opened today and unfettered aid was allowed in. Will western leaders and the media stay focused, or will their attention drift away once more? It’s clear that maintaining pressure on Israel is essential, because, behind the provision of “minimal” aid, Israel remains intent on continuing its starvation policy and its relentless bombing campaign. This is because its ultimate aim is nothing less than the extermination of the Palestinian people, and, as recent political developments within Israel have revealed, the complete military occupation of both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — colossal crimes that it has only been able to contemplate implementing because of the west’s persistence indulgence of its genocidal actions for the last 663 days.