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Why won’t my German friends and colleagues speak up against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza?

An outsider’s (perplexed) perspective. The article which the taz never published


09/12/2025

Editor’s Note: In December, 2023, taz was supposed to publish this article by Nadja Vancauwenberghe. Nadja has submitted the article to taz twice. The second time the Berlin editorial board reached out, and expressly asked for it, the journalist even called her to say that they would like to publish it ASAP.

The article was never published. Instead, Nadja received a message saying: “we were agreeing with you on the same points, but we think right now it is not a good move to publish it.” Two years on, it appears that they have still not found the right time.

Although over 80% of Germans have consistently opposed Germany sending weapons to Israel, and increasing numbers of people have demonstrated for Palestine, the press is still playing a craven role. As an attempt to counter this, we are publishing Nadja’s article on theleftberlin.com

As a foreign Berlinerin with 20-plus years’ experience reporting about this city (I founded Exberliner magazine and ran its editorial for 21 years), I’m currently finding Germany increasingly difficult to understand. The German government’s zeal to support Israel “unconditionally” and oppose any ceasefire is one thing. But what is more disturbing: this mind-boggling blanket pro-Israel consensus in society at large, and among my colleagues in the German media.

It’s not that the debate is polarised, as it is in my native France (where a conservative ex-foreign minister has joined the radical Left to condemn Israel, and toxic domestic politics have hijacked the issue). Here, there’s just NO debate. Friends and colleagues whom I’d usually have an open and rational conversation with — including on the once ‘progressive’ Left — won’t discuss anything past Israel’s  “right to self defence”.

If you dispute the disproportionate way Netanyhu has been retaliating to the October 7th Hamas attacks, or show empathy for the deaths in Gaza — or if you just point to the unsustainability for Israel’s long-term security of a policy based on military violence, they end a conversation that will never happen with an opaque but authoritative: “It’s complicated,” before pleading the amount of historical knowledge one would have to acquire in order to express an informed opinion. “You know, there’s too much context,” concluded my German friend as an explanation for why she wouldn’t dream of joining a pro-cease-fire Demo with her many international and arabic friends.

But how “complicated” is it, really, to acknowledge that killing 18,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including a huge proportion of children and babies, is outrageously wrong and should stop? (In two months, Netanyahu has managed to kill twice as many civilians as Putin did in 22 months, feeding accusations elsewhere in the world about double standards.)

What “context” does one need to oppose the indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, schools and refugee camps, the murder of at least 70 journalists (most recently Al Jazeera reporter Samer Abudaqa) and over 130 UN agencies workers, the blockade of food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance – all acts the UN defines as war crimes and “likely genocide in the making”?

And what “context” did my German friend mean anyway? Could it be Israel’s violation of international law with its settlements in the occupied West Bank and the subsequent desperation of a people living in ghetto-like conditions and subjected to an Apartheid regime on their own land? This is not my opinion, by the way, but the unequivocal verdict of the UN’s rapporteur on Palestine last spring. But what does the UN know? Or Udi Raz, the Jewish tour guide at the Jewish Museum of Berlin, who got fired for using the “A-word” to describe the situation in her native country. She’s from Haifa. But Germany knows better. Here using words such as “genocide”, “ghetto” or “appartheid” is considered surreptitiously “antisemitic”. 

Antisemitism: hidden and everywhere

For the past two months the German media has been filled with articles about antisemitism. Kultursenator Joe Chialo’s resolve to crack down not only on “Jede Form von Antisemitismus” but “jede versteckte Form von Antisemitismus” (“Every form of antisemitism, including hidden forms of antisemitism”) has become the editorial order of the day, no matter how politically slippery the resolve to fight a “hidden” and loosely defined opinion crime. But, dutiful, the German press set itself to track down those hidden “antisemites” and found them everywhere you wouldn’t suspect: in the climate movement, among those art-scene interlopers, and of course all over the left-wing post-colonial and pro-Palestinian demonstrations (filled with violent and dangerous “Islamists”, hence a good reason to ban them or restrict them, which can only backfire considering Berlin has Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora).

Only in Germany could the “serious” media get so worked up about Greta Thunberg’s octopus toy and its “hidden antisemitic message” — and launch a massive character assassination campaign on this former media darling. By German standards, not only are Greta and the UN antisemitic, but also quite a few Jews in town — like the “Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost”. Working with Jewish Israel-critics can even cost you public funding as the Oyoun Cultural Centre found out — all in the name of Germany’s fight against antisemitism.

This has been going hand in hand with editors’ inclination to frame any news item in support of the antisemitism narrative. Recently a survey about intolerance — sexism, homo/transphobia, racism and above all Muslimophobia among Berliners ran in a local daily under the misleading headline “Antisemitism on the rise in Berlin!”, yet the findings showed much lower negative attitudes towards Jews compared to Arabs and Muslims (a staggering 54 percent consider Islam backward and incapable of adapting).

Selective solidarity

In these McCarthyist conditions, exhibiting “solidarity” has become an imperative. Solidarity with Israel and with Jews that is, in shocking disregard of the 18,000 Palestinians who’ve died since October 7. Take the open letter by over 50 of Germany and Austria’s leading filmmakers of the German Film association: published after a full month of bombing of Palestinians in Gaza: it doesn’t include a single compassionate word for the Palestinians. “Not the letter we needed” complained the Jewish film academic Marc Siegel who made a strong case for “those of us (Jews) who view the greatest threat to our security in the stifling of public expression of solidarity with Palestine; the silencing of debate and discussion about the aberrations of German memory culture…”. 

Recently, the Berlin-based Syrian-Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun shared his sadness on how not a single fellow German writer protested the cancellation of his latest book’s release event at the Haus für Poesie. “Only my Jewish friends” showed solidarity, he said. 

Another shocking example was when last Sunday I accompanied a friend to Sunday service in a pretty presbyterian church on the western edge of Berlin; there, a young, friendly minister dedicated his sermon to “victims of war. All  victims of war,” he made the emphasis with cherubic sincerity. “The innocent victims in Ukraine, but let us not forget the Syrian people.” Obviously there were no more topical examples he could come up with. Palestinians were never mentioned.

No dissident Jews allowed

In Germany, Jewish militants from organisations like Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost — who are campaigning together with Palestinians for a cease-fire and a political solution that respects the rights of all peoples living there — are considered ‘antisemitic’ and boycotted by the media.

“They don’t want Jews to criticise Israel,” says Iris Hefets. The Berlin psychotherapist and Israeli Jewish activist was recently disinvited from a debate on Deutschland Rundfunk, “They’re scared of losing their job,” she says about journalists here. “I was interviewed by the media from Korea, France, Greece, all over! Here, we’re boycotted.” Udi Raz met a similar fate: his interview with Zeit never got published. Both get invited to panels and talks all over — not here.

Few local dissident Jewish voices managed to break the silence. The famous US-German author Deborah Feldman did and when she complained that anyone who criticises the German response to the Hamas attack is being silenced and discredited, that is pretty much what happened to her — her voice replaced “by the louder ones of Germans whose Holocaust-guilt complexes cause them to fetishise Jewishness to the point of obsessive-compulsive embodiment.”

Meanwhile the foreign media has started taking notice. Masha Gessen’s takedown on Germany’s memory culture “gone haywire” in The New Yorker in December was read, shared and commented all over. Not by my German colleagues. Or if they did, it was to dismiss.

Zooming out: International Isolation and discredit

This failure of the ‘fourth estate’ in its mission to impartially inform is a danger for a functioning democracy. If we, journalists, aren’t here to do our job — see through the ideological fog and raise the alarm, who will?

Of course there are (few) exceptions. Colleagues like taz’s Daniel Bax have clearly and articulately exposed the reality of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Germany’s guilty support of them. Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Sonja Zekri has cautiously but surely brought up the sore issues and given a platform to those dissentive voices silenced or dismissed in other media (such as Deborah Feldman and Mascha Gessen). But this only reinforces my feeling of perplexity: if they can analyse the situation so well, why aren’t their colleagues able to do the same?

And I wonder: do the Germans read the foreign press? Do they have access to social media, where Israel’s war crimes are broadcasted on a quasi live basis? Do they realise how isolated Germany is in its obstinate support of Israel? What an unpopular minority position when four out of five countries in the world voted in favour of an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza at the UN General Assembly in November?

While mainstream news outlets from CNN to Al Jazeera, dailies from The New York Times to Ha’aretz report about Israeli’s crimes, the German media’s (self) censorship

is not just unprofessional and damaging for journalism credibility. This inability to see beyond one’s own historical circumstances and to adequately respond to a tragedy in the making ultimately damages Germany’s credibility on the world stage.

At home: a dangerous conflation

Meanwhile, under this blanket ideological conformism, a realignment of alliances is underway: in a staggering reversal of political allegiances and traditions, the far-right has strategically positioned itself as a champion of the Jews, while pro-Palestinian leftists are vilified as supportive of terrorism or antisemites — a well-known trope of the Springer Right that seems to have infected the progressive media. In a country obsessed with the Holocaust, being castigated as “antisemitic” is a sentence to political death. Meanwhile the Alternative for Germany  (AfD) has jumped on the bandwagon as an unconditional champion of Israel — in line with the rest of the German political establishment, including the governing Social Democrats and the Greens. Here, like everywhere in Europe, the populist far-right is buying itself a new respectability over its performative fight against antisemitism. The risk of trivialising antisemitism is real — as Europe as a whole, and this country of all places, seem increasingly happy to adopt the AFD’s notion of “imported antisemitism” to advance an anti-immigrant agenda.

There’s no shortage of eminent voices including among Jewish Holocaust scholars warning us of the dangers of this weaponisation of the Jewish cause; for Israelis and their future; and for our democracies.

 “My colouring book aims to rehumanize a people who have been dehumanized for more than 75 years”

Interview with Nathi Ngubane, whose book “From the River to the Sea” has just been banned in Germany


Hi Nathi. Thanks for talking to us. Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Nathi Ngubane and I am a South African illustrator, cartoonist, and author. My artistic journey began at the age of six, and by my teens, I had developed a passion for writing. I was particularly inspired by the work of renowned South African cartoonists like Zapiro, Dr. Jack & Curtis, and Nanda Soobben, which led me to political cartooning.

After earning a diploma in Graphic Design from the Durban University of Technology, I began my professional career as a political cartoonist for The Daily Vox and later The Citizen. My focus eventually shifted from politics to my deeper passion: illustrating stories of social justice and human rights.

In 2020, I authored and illustrated my first children’s book, Duma Says: Wash Your Hands, Wear a Mask!, which highlights how children from disadvantaged backgrounds not only survived but thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I currently work as a social justice cartoonist for the Daily Maverick in South Africa, where I continue to use my art to advocate for change.

Last year you published a colouring book called From the River to the Sea. What’s that about?

I’ve wanted to do something on Palestine for many, many years. In 2014, with my publisher Azad Essa, we launched a website called the Daily Vox. I was the cartoonist, That was the first time I touched on Palestine. But over the years I wanted to do more.

Then October 7 happened. South African lawyers approached the ICJ with the charge of genocide against the Israeli government. I was working with a fantastic team called Social Bandit Media which does a lot of research.

Our aim is to create learning materials that will help kids make sense of the world around them. You could say it’s an intervention. We try to introduce difficult topics to children. Kids are never too young to learn about what is happening around them.

After our lawyers approached the ICJ, we decided to create not just a colouring book, but something called From the River to the Sea which would be a gateway into Palestine. Kids get to learn about the Nakba. They get to learn about literary icons, like Edward Said and Ghassan Kanafani, about activists like Ahed Tamimi. They also get to learn about Nelson Mandela and what he said about the Palestinian cause when he was alive.

We knew that the title would be quite controversial. But I always stand by the fact that this title isn’t antisemitic. ‘From the river to the sea’ is an inspirational call for freedom and justice and self-determination for the Palestinians. Advocating for the rightful return to a land of a people that was taken over 75 years ago isn’t antisemitic at all.

We want to teach kids empathy and hope. We want to teach kids about what their peers are going through in this genocide and in this ethnic cleansing.

Who is the book for? What age range are you aiming at?

The book is really aimed at kids between six and ten. None of my family members knew about the Palestinian conflict. They thought that everything was so complicated and there was so much information to take in.

This book is for everyone to really start learning about Palestine from the land, to the Nakba, to the literary icons, and to learn about the journalists who have sacrificed themselves while reporting, about what is happening in Gaza and what link there is to South Africa.

Nelson Mandela is featured in the book and what he did during the time he was alive. So this book is really for everyone in spirit.

Does Soweto have a particular link with Palestine?

We definitely have a shared history of oppressive systems such as apartheid. I was fortunate enough not to have witnessed apartheid because I was born in 1990. That was also the year when Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

We’ve seen the struggle of Palestinians. We feel that as Africans, our struggles are universal and interconnected. Nelson Mandela said while he was alive that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians. We still see and feel the legacy of Apartheid South Africa today, through economic inequality and millions of South Africans still having no access to land.

If Israel can do what they are doing to Palestinians, we are going to be next. They are already oppressing us for supporting Palestinians and their right to  return. We definitely share the same struggle.

In South Africa the book doesn’t go down well universally. In some places, it was banned. What happened and why?

We officially launched From the River to the Sea on 25th February 2024. In May, we held our official launch in South Africa. At the end of that same month, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies caught wind of the book and put out a statement on Facebook, accusing the book of antisemitism. They said that it advocated the obliteration of the Jewish people.

This influenced many Zionists to contact South Africa’s biggest bookchain, Exclusive books to remove our book from their bookshelves. That started the backlash in South Africa. 

The book was extensively researched. Before we published anything, we consulted with professionals and scholars like Ilan Pappe. We made sure that all the content was age friendly for kids to consume. There is no single page in our colouring book that promotes hate or violence.

Exclusive Books put out two statements, one of them stating that they do not approve or censor books. The other statement said that after carefully reviewing the content of this book, they found it not to be offensive. So the book has been reinstated by Exclusive Books and I guess the Jewish board of Deputies in South Africa didn’t win in silencing Palestinian voices..

Have you experienced other forms of censorship?

Earlier this year, Israeli police raided the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem. During the raid, officers used online translators to confiscate books containing the word “Palestine” or images of its flag, and among the materials seized was our colouring book, which they cited as evidence of “incitement and support for terrorism” . The official Israeli police account even featured our book in a social media post to further justify their raid. 

Then there was the Paris backlash. The book store Violette and Co was bullied and harassed online for having such a colouring book, which, again, has been labelled as  Hamas propaganda.

And now the backlash has come to Germany. There was an article this week in the Jüdische Allgemeine which claimed that the book propagates conspiracy theories against Israel, and depicts Palestine as being peaceful and Israeli soldiers as aggressive.

I find that to be completely ridiculous. Zionists and supporters of Israel have asked me: “What about telling  both sides of the story?” My answer today is always: “there is no both sides of the story when a genocide is happening”.

Israel has been trying to change the narrative and silence Palestinian voices. The more Palestinian voices are silenced or accused as being antisemitic, the more they will be met with solidarity from our side.

It’s really heartbreaking when you get to read about Palestinian children like Hind Rajab, who was murdered by the IDF. They have no outrage for the murder of Palestinian children. But you have a colouring book that aims to humanise a people who have been dehumanized for more than 75 years. A book that aims to shine light about their culture, their history, their activism, their right to return to their homeland. This book is then labelled as antisemitic and hateful?

 There are no hate messages in this book. It’s just a message of solidarity, resistance  and justice. The backlash has aimed to try and silence Palestinian narrative, which is absolutely never going to happen. We will continue to advocate and continue to amplify Palestinian voices.

The backlash is having some effects in Germany. The book store Hugendubel have removed the book from their shelves in Germany. What’s their justification for this?

I guess their justification in pulling the book is to amplify the propaganda of Israel, and this victimhood that Israel is always playing. Israel’s narrative is getting weaker and weaker. They are trying so hard to ensure that Palestinians are silent. 

Of course, we can challenge literature that we do not “agree with”, but being banned, being removed, and being called “hateful material”? We  cannot fight hate with hate. We are fighting hate with truth through our research on the work that we do.

My latest book Malcolm X in Gaza continues the conversation about Palestine and touches on Malcolm’s very little known visit to the Middle East in the 1960s. This is our way of continuing the conversation of Palestine and to keep Gaza alive through our speeches, through our poetry, through our art and writing.

Christmas is coming up, and people are looking for presents. Your book is not available in German book stores at the moment. Is there any other way that people can order it?

The UK Friends of Al-Aqsa have the book available.

Are you aware of any campaigns in Germany to get the book republished? Or should activists in Germany be starting a campaign.

I’m unaware at the moment of any campaign to republish the book in Germany, but I did come across a gentleman who visited South Africa from Germany last year. He wanted to translate the book and make it widely available in German. I’ll have a chat with him and let him know about the latest backlash and we’ll talk about getting the book into Germany and possibly translated.

If there’s anybody who needs to know why it’s not that complicated, it’s the people in Germany.

Exactly.

Is there anything you’d like to say that we haven’t covered so far?

This book really teaches empathy, hope, and justice – what it means to be in solidarity with the oppressed. It’s not just in Palestine. We have the Congo, and so many other places where there are extensive human rights violations.

These books that we create for young ones are planting a seed of empathy through research and making sure that our content is factual – we don’t just publish for the sake of publishing. For those who are confused, still  on the fence, or don’t know what to do to support, just look through the noise, open the book, and learn about Palestine. We have a genocide happening tight in front of our eyes. Let’s bring Apartheid Israel and its supporters to account. 

Palestinian voices have been silenced for a very long time, but during this genocide, we have begun to see a shift. We’ve begun to hear more Palestinian voices.

This book is not just a colouring book. It’s an archive. We cannot simply wait for 10, 20, 40 years for such material to exist. We need to cover the genocide and the ethnic cleansing in real time while it is still happening.

In 40 to 50 years, a lot of countries will be ashamed of themselves for being on the wrong side of history and for supporting a genocide and ethnic cleansing,

Do you have hope in the next generation – the people who will be reading your book?

I know that we live in a time where people just don’t read, and we have social media and a lot of distractions. This kind of material really pulls us back and grounds us to really start learning about the world around us.

I’ve seen Gen Z have been very aggressive in the push back against oppression. So I really do have hope in the next generation picking up the book and continuing the fight.

We will not be able to help you

How Germany is militarising the health sector and why health workers are resisting


07/12/2025

In July 2025, the vdää (the Association of Democratic Physicians) published a booklet called “Wir werden euch nicht helfen können” (“We will not be able to help you”). The title echoes a peace-movement slogan from the 1980s, used by medical professionals to warn the German public. They cautioned that, should the Cold War escalate into a full-scale nuclear confrontation, the health sector would be unable to help.

The booklet arrives as Germany takes a Zeitenwende, with politicians calling for a more war-capable society. The German government intends to reshape the healthcare system for military purposes, while cloaking its militaristic policies in euphemisms such as “resilience,” “health security,” or  “ZMZ” (“civil-military cooperation”). 

According to the vdää, these policies would divert resources from civilian care, tie medicine to warfare, and undermine ethical medical principles. The association’s core message is simple: the healthcare system must not become an arm of the military. Physicians and health workers should resist being drawn into war preparations and instead focus on promoting peace, diplomacy, and social justice.

These concerns were reiterated at a recent congress organized by the vdää, the Gesundheitspolitisches Forum. A workshop on the militarization of the health sector was among the most attended events. 

The urgency felt by health personnel is understandable. Health workers are among the first professional groups on the front lines—both in peacetime and in war operations.

Preparing hospitals for war

At the end of August, two clinics in Rostock conducted a military exercise, transporting fake war casualties from the harbor to hospital grounds. The drill was intended to demonstrate how cooperation between the Bundeswehr and the health sector could work. 

In November, Bundeswehr Colonel Zimmermann was scheduled to speak at the symposium “Civil Emergency and Rescue Medicine in Civil Protection” at the Charité in Berlin. He was uninvited after protests were announced, including by the IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War). But this small victory should not distract from the bigger picture: the government remains determined to enmesh the military in the health system. 

In July, the Berliner Senat presented its plan „Zivile Verteidigung Krankenhäuser“ (Civil Defense Hospitals). This plan, drafted with the help of the Bundeswehr, outlines how hospitals will need to prepare for a crisis, and especially war. 

The vdää has expressed concerns about several aspects of the plan: a shift from “individual medicine to disaster medicine”; discussions about allowing “the severely injured or so-called ‘hopeless’ patients” to die; and the transfer of extensive powers in hospitals to the military.

Medicine for war vs Medicine for peace

There are many troubling issues to consider if a state integrates its military and health apparatus. Chief among them is how this integration will transform the way civilians are treated and cared for.

Medicine for war is very different from medicine for peace. Wartime medicine treats different injuries and uses different techniques. Emergency procedures used to treat high-velocity gunshot wounds are not necessarily applicable to injuries sustained in civilian life (such as trauma suffered after a bike accident for example). If more training time is devoted to war medicine, how does this affect the capability of health workers in peacetime?  In the vdää booklet, Bernhard Winter reports on the annual Symposium on Civil–Military Cooperation. There, a demand was made to grant military doctors preferential access to certain surgical procedures over civilian doctors during their specialist training.

Furthermore, triage rules differ significantly between peacetime and wartime. In civilian medicine, triage—the process of assessing and prioritizing patients—is aimed at providing the most effective treatment for all patients in need, to save the greatest number of lives. In wartime, priority is given to soldiers who can be returned to duty quickly, in order to maximize military effectiveness.

A civil–military collaboration, as it is currently being pushed, entails the subordination of civilian structures to military purposes. This also implies a shift in priorities. In the event of war, even if it does not occur on German soil, it becomes likely that injured or sick civilians will be deprioritized in favour of German or NATO soldiers. 

“Modern wars depend on the fact that large numbers of wounded soldiers are sent back into the firing line after they have received medical treatment. This means that the general aim of healthcare is inverted. This is a concept known as ‘reverse triage’, meaning that instead of our usual way of triage, where we assess a patient and treat those most in need of healthcare first, instead we will have to start looking for the least injured military personnel in order to treat them as a priority, because they are needed back at the frontline.”

Vital Signs, Against the militarisation of the health sector 

When the health sector is subordinated to military objectives, it undergoes profound transformation. Training in specialties relevant to wartime takes precedence over training for civilian medicine, while large-scale exercises focus less on more likely scenarios—such as a pandemic—and more on a war that may never happen. Even infrastructure planning is impacted: some hospitals needed for civilian care might close, while hospitals that are connected to transport axes envisioned for NATO operations might remain open or be newly built. 

There have even been talks about building underground hospitals. Tino Sorg, the CDU/CSU’s spokesperson for health policy, told die Welt:

“For the first time since the Cold War, our healthcare system must prepare itself again for an emergency. This will also have to involve structural changes. We could learn from Israel, where hospitals and other civilian structures are relocated underground when necessary in order to be protected from airstrikes”.

Changing the mindset of the population

Recently, the Future Forum for Public Security published the “Green Paper on Civil-Military Cooperation 4.0”. Based on a hypothetical conflict between NATO and Russia in 2030, the document outlines how a comprehensive civil-military cooperation could work. The healthcare system is seen as a key component of this strategy: ensuring medical capacity and war-readiness, but also tasked with upholding the morale of society.

No war can be fought without the cooperation of the health sector. Arguably, health workers always operate, to some degree, in service of the powers in place. At the vdää congress, Debora Darabi reminded the audience that, in a capitalist society, the health system facilitates the reproduction of capital. For example, by enabling workers to return to work after an injury. This unholy cooperation becomes even more pronounced in the context of war, as health workers are essential for restoring wounded soldiers and maintaining a war-ready population.

Several other speakers at the congress pointed out that the talk of “war-ready” hospitals is also a way of winning over the German population. It gives the illusion that, in the event of war, soldiers and civilians will be cared for by a functioning system prepared for every crisis. This makes war seem more manageable and winnable. The cooperation of the health sector, then, helps the population to swallow the bitter pill of re-militarisation.

But just as in the 1980s, many health workers say that if war comes “we will not be able to help you”. 

More money for war is less money for peace

It is very clear that more money for war is less money for social causes. 

Recently, the president of the IFO (Institute for Economic Research), Clemens Fuest, mused  about the costs of militarization on a talk show, saying:

“Guns and butter — it would be nice if that were possible, but that’s a land of milk and honey; it doesn’t work.” 

This phrase echoes Rudolf Heß, deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler, who declared in 1936: »Kanonen statt Butter.« (Guns instead of butter). 

War is never just a single moment in time. Soldiers don’t simply become IT workers and forget what they went through. Families don’t forget the loved ones they lost. Weapons don’t simply disappear. Even if the war never breaks out, the country’s infrastructure has already been reshaped. The arms industry has been strengthened and now relies on actual warfare, at home or abroad. Weapons must be used, or sold to foreign nations waging their own wars. Health workers become less effective at treating civilians because they have spent more time learning to treat soldiers. Hospitals in populated areas have been closed, while new hospitals lie empty along highways to a front that will never see any combat. 

Hypocrisy, climate sabotage and the limits of global governance at G20 and COP30

Hypocrisy and inaction define G20 and COP30 as crises deepen from Gaza to climate chaos


06/12/2025

07.11.2025 – Fotografia oficial da Cúpula do Clima (COP30)

Part 2 of 2
Editor’s note: Read Part 1 here.

From protocol indignities to ‘non-binding’ progressive policies and revealing omissions

What’s wrong with the documentation laboriously prepared in 2025 in those 130 meetings, putatively to guide G20 collective policy and action? Simply: another case of talk left, walk right.

Pretoria’s choice of three progressive theme words – solidarity, equality, sustainability – was uplifting, and were quickly recognised as the precise opposite of the new Trump regime’s agenda. As Rubio blurted out on X.com back on February 5: “I will NOT attend the G20 Summit in Johannesburg. South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote ‘solidarity, equality, & sustainability. In other words: DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and climate change’.”

The provocative themes can be credited to the ‘sherpa’ guiding the process: Zane Dangor, director general of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. Five years ago, Dangor wrote (in the country’s main ezine) of his desire to hear voices of “eco-feminists/eco-socialists,” whose “ideas are required if we are to build a new politics that can improve the well-being of all people on a healthier planet.” He represents one of the finest cases of catapulting from South Africa’s liberation tradition into civil-service realpolitik, so it was no wonder that progressive NGOs took Dangor’s leadership and the three theme words at face value, and that so many joined the various drafting processes.

Gilad Isaacs, the director of what is probably the most ambitious and effective of these, the Johannesburg-based Institute for Economic Justice, expressed optimism on November 22: “The U.S. boycott will not derail the work. The credibility of the presidency will be measured not by the presence of any one country, but by whether the agenda set in the interests of the Global South is carried through and used in other forums.”

But in reality, derailment of all progressive G20-legitimating work is inevitable. One reason is the Declaration’s continual resort to two weasel words – ‘voluntary’ and ‘non-binding’ – in vital areas where capitalism desperately needs major doses of nationalization, or at minimum tough regulation:

“we welcome the G20 Critical Minerals Framework, which is a voluntary, non-binding blueprint… we welcome the Voluntary and Non-Binding G20 High-Level Principles on Sustainable Industrial Policy for Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialisation, Jobs and Equality… We discussed the need for improved integrity, and interoperability in carbon credit markets and note the voluntary and non-binding Common Carbon Credit Data Model… we note the South African Presidency initiative on a G20 Africa Cooperation Agenda on Trade and Investment, which is a voluntary and non-binding initiative… [and] look forward to the roadmap towards the implementation of Voluntary and Non-Binding High-Level Principles on Combating Illicit Financial Flows.”

Vicious U.S. politicians will inevitably make fun of this wishy-washy posturing, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent already declaring, “We have whittled down the G20 back to basics … the G20 had become basically the G100 this past year. So it will be a concentrated group in Miami, seeing the best America has to offer, with American leadership.”

Indeed, Washington’s role in delimiting Dangor’s wordsmithing was apparently effective, as a New York Times reporter documented on November 15: U.S. functionaries “had spent much of the year drawing red lines, skipping working meetings and refusing to negotiate in the lead-up to the final gathering in Johannesburg. The moves, they said, put into stark relief Mr. Trump’s aggressive foreign policy and distaste for multilateralism, compromise and anything he considers political correctness.”

In scaling back G20 energy-access rhetoric, the Times named Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as Trump’s saboteur allies. And on public health, “The U.S. delegation said it could collaborate on fighting noncommunicable diseases like cancer, but issues of equity, universal health care and support for the World Health Organization were non-starters.”

Another example comes from a Media20 effort where a local reform leader, Michael Markovitz, wrote on FB how “we must also be honest about what was left out.” His team’s backroom support work on the M20 declaration – “endorsed by more than 70 organisations” – “set out four priorities essential to democratic resilience: information integrity, media sustainability, journalist safety, and the survival of public interest journalism.” But as a dismayed Markovitz discovered,

“None of these issues appear in the final Leaders’ Declaration at the G20 South Africa. There is no reference to information integrity. There is no acknowledgement of journalism’s role in safeguarding democracy. These are not minor omissions. In my view, it is a governance failure at the level of the G20. It is a gap that weakens the credibility of the multilateral system at the moment democracies need it most… If the information ecosystem is poisoned, every G20 goal becomes harder to achieve. Climate action, inclusive growth, digital cooperation and peaceful societies all depend on trusted information. In its absence, trust in important public institutions will continue to be eroded.”

G20 starves us of peace and food sovereignty

Even where host South Africans might have been ambitious in making demands, three other barriers arose to a serious declaration with implementation accountability: hypocrisy, a limited world view and upward-gazing elitism. On food security, for example, Ramaphosa had firmly signalled solidarity-equality-sustainability values in November 2024, at the Rio de Janeiro summit, beseeching fellow leaders that the G20 “must be capable of combating the use of hunger as a weapon of war, as we are now seeing in some parts of the world, including in Gaza and Sudan.”

Yet five days earlier, his lead minister within the SA Presidency – Khumbudzo Ntshavheni – vocally advocated systematic starvation as a weapon of class war, against thousands of underground informal-sector gold miners about two hours’ drive southwest of Johannesburg, in Stilfontein: “We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out.” Ntshavheni knew the consequences, because two weeks before that, she had bragged to the media how the police and army “blocked communities in and around these abandoned mining shafts in Orkney from delivering food parcels, water and necessities to these illegal miners.”

As a result, starving mineworkers were forced to eat cockroaches and human flesh. It is likely that, by mid-January 2025 when courts finally ruled Ntshavheni’s murderous practice must cease, many dozens or even hundreds of mineworkers had died due to starvation or, because in a desperately weakened state, they had tried to escape by climbing up extremely steep mineshafts – falling to their deaths. 


There was much more hollow, hypocritical rhetoric in the Johannesburg Leaders’ Declaration, e.g., “We will work for a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ukraine, as well as ending other conflicts and wars around the globe.”

Those crafting the Declaration’s vapid phrasing were too fearful to name the aggressors and profiteers – much less arrange punishment – in the four cases, which range from capitalists within the BRICS such as Emirati gold traders and Russian (Wagner Group) soldiers in Sudan; to Chinese and Johannesburg- and London-listed mining houses in the eastern DRC; to all G20 economies’ firms which trade with Israel; to Russia killing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian (and Russian) workers – yes, provoked initially by the G7’s eastward NATO military expansion but still inexcusable, and justifying a unified intervention to punish Putin effectively, to force him to return stolen territory (and children) and to pay reparations, in lieu of Trump’s incompetent Ukraine-surrender plan.

And speaking of Gaza, Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law Patrice Motsepe is still fueling the Israel Defense Forces with coal he co-supplies its power plants (and 18% of the genocidaires’ grid), alongside Ramaphosa’s former coal-mining partners at Glencore, dating to the late 2000s in both cases. This fuel violates an ICJ ruling in July 2024 that states must halt “aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, and a United Nations General Assembly resolution two months later (with a vote of 124 for, 14 against) for states to “prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation” – plus Pretoria’s repeated Hague Group commitments to respect UN courts and prevent fuel from reaching the military.

Notwithstanding Palestine Solidarity Campaign protests at Motsepe’s offices and weekly demonstrations at Glencore’s Joburg headquarters, neither Ramaphosa nor the other G20 genocide collaborators had anything specific to say in the Leaders’ Declaration about the ICJ or International Criminal Court, which indeed they are actively undermining in relation both to Palestinians and climate justice, in view of an ICJ ruling in July that states (mainly G20 members) should pay their climate debt.

Other high-minded hypocritical fibs pothole the Leaders’ Declaration: “We affirm our unwavering commitment to act in accordance with international law including international humanitarian law and the Charter of the United Nations and its principle of peaceful settlement of disputes and in this regard, we condemn all attacks against civilians and infrastructure.” Yada yada.

When it comes to hunger crises, other important words are unmentionable in either the Declaration or G20 Food Task Force statement: multinational agribusiness, intellectual property, genetic engineering, carnivore, profiteering and speculation. These terms are not to be found, because they are assumed to be a natural part of corporate agriculture – although all undermine food sovereignty and climate sanity. Reforms like “land redistribution” and “agro-ecology” and genuine peasant empowerment are not mentioned; for they would violate the G20 Food Task Force’s commitment to “pursuing actions that are in compliance with WTO rules and obligations.” The G20 declaration pushes ‘food security’ phraseology without any concession whatsoever to the objectives of grassroots food sovereignty movements.

In addition to ignoring the content demanded by progressive anti-hunger and food-system activists, the most obvious aspect of any G20 official statement is silence about – and thus disrespect for – processes of civil society mobilisation. The G20 Food Task Force statement ignores courageous movements around the world, e.g. the Via Campesina network, whose members have struggled valiantly for land redistribution and pro-peasant policies.

So civil society should have had no expectation of being taken seriously by the G20 in Johannesburg, within a country where more than 12 million of the 62 million population is considered to be food insecure, led by a hedonistic ruling class that exudes subimperial obeisance to agricultural imperialism.

Financial imperialism

The same upward-gazing obsession could be observed in the G20’s highest-profile task force – led by the same Trevor Manuel who bailed out the IMF in 2009 – on ‘Growth, Debt and Development’, which was aimed mainly at alleviating the home continent’s worsening fiscal crises, e.g. through IMF gold sales. The mass protests and demands from so many African movements where unrest has been intense in recent months – from Madagascar and Mozambique, up to Morocco and Tunisia – are not referenced, much less acknowledged and respected.

Specifically unmentionable for G20 financial-reform bureaucrats are the clear strategies coming from Kenya’s Gen Z since mid-2024, for example, demanding ‘debt audits’ to determine whether corrupt lending for corrupt projects should be considered ‘Odious Debt’ – so that the creditor takes a haircut, not just society’s most vulnerable. The two biggest South African parastatal debtors – Eskom electricity (for the Medupi and Kusile coal-fired power plants) and Transnet (for Chinese locomotives) – are obvious cases in which the fiscal burden of corruption soared over the past two decades due to Pretoria taking on foreign loan repayment obligations, even in cases where lenders like the World Bank were obviously implicated in the Odious Debt burden due to oft-acknowledged graft or project maldesign.

Many other civil society forces across Africa argue for ‘reparations’ based on standard ‘polluter pays’ principles, to be paid as ‘climate debt’ by the big Western and BRICS greenhouse gas emitters – including China, which is owed a substantial share of Africa’s foreign debt. Such ideas dare not be mentioned by Manuel’s small-minded team, so perhaps his declaration’s sentence of greatest merit is this: “Over recent presidencies, the G20 has debated Multilateral Development Bank reform, debt sustainability, and climate finance, yet progress has been slow and credibility is waning.”

One feature of waning credibility is non-acknowledgment of conflicts of interest. For many months, debt activists have worried that if Manuel – as chair of this commission, and the most effective neoliberal politician in the country’s history – also runs institutions that have African sovereign financial instruments among their assets (e.g. Africa’s largest insurance company, and the local branch of the notorious Rothschilds), then there is little hope for South Africa’s G20 presidency.

Moving to the Leaders’ Declaration, “We continue to urge the international community to support vulnerable countries with a strong reform agenda whose debt is sustainable but are facing liquidity challenges and encourage the IMF and the World Bank to continue their work on feasible options to support these countries, which should be country-specific and voluntary.” Translation: Africa’s toughest neoliberal finance ministers – aiming to privatise and to cut social spending (i.e. that ‘strong reform agenda’) – need to load on yet more debt, to swamp current and future generations with permanent structural adjustment obligations.

Climate chaos confirmed

The Leaders’ Declaration was correct to brag about the COP30: “We highlight the successful outcomes of the 2025 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference COP30 in Belém.” After all, ruling classes from the G1, the other G7s and the BRICS have – since the 2009 Copenhagen Accord – resolutely lined up against everyone else, on three foundational positions:

1) do not agree to cut emissions or leave fossil fuels underground to the extent necessary to save us all from planetary catastrophe;

2) do not admit you emitted by acknowledging the ‘polluter pays’ principle because you’ll face liability claims, and have to pay ‘climate debt’ and reparations (as even the ICJ in July 2025 ruled is logical);

3) instead, do limit climate finance to loans, and ‘privatise the air’ through carbon markets, dubious offsets and other emissions-trading gimmickry.

From these three standpoints, COP30 was a roaring success for the G20 ultra-polluters. One obvious conclusion is that a ‘Global North’ (bad, villains) versus a ‘Global South’ (good, victims) is not an appropriate framing. Instead we have a configuration that allows the COP30 – like so many before it – to fuse imperial and subimperial interests. Speaking to the BBC, Li Shuo of the Asia Society remarked, “This partly reflects the power shift in the real world, the emerging power of the BASIC and BRICS countries, and the decline of the European Union.” (BASIC is Brazil, South Africa, India and China).

The BBC continued, “US President Donald Trump stayed away, but his stance emboldened his allies here. Russia, normally a relatively quiet participant, was to the fore in blocking efforts on roadmaps [to phase out oil, gas and coal]. And while Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers were predictably hostile to curbing fossil fuels, China stayed quiet and concentrated on doing deals.”

In addition to the U.S. – also absent from Belém due to Trump’s anti-science climate denialism – and Russia, the 24-member ‘Like Minded Group of Developing Countries’ is to blame for preventing fossil fuels from being left underground: Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mali, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Vietnam. Of these, 11 are BRICS members, partners and invitees. The London Overseas Development Institute named China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the main forces preventing even mention of a fossil fuel phase-out. The Financial Times reported that UN Secretary General António Guterres singled out the Saudis for most of the wrecking blame.

But Pretoria also helped foil COP30 climate-adaptation work because of a surreal personality battle within Ramaphosa’s centre-right co-governing party, the Democratic Alliance. The white-dominated 25%-supported party had won the right to name an environment minister in a Government of National Unity after the last election, in July 2024, and chose Dion George – whose background in corporate finance in the ultra-corrupt Sandton central business district of Johannesburg and his unashamed role as an apartheid-era soldier lowered expectations. George was sufficiently subimperialist in orientation that he was chosen as the UN’s COP29 co-chair on emissions mitigation in 2024 and COP30 co-chair of adaptation.

Those roles meant that when African delegations walked out of the COP29 in fury, he could stay behind and side with the rich climate vandals, so as not to spook the G20. Yet when it came to protecting lions and other big game from hunters, George’s traditional version of conservationism ran up against white game-farming and wildlife-trafficking interests, and so unceremoniously he was dumped as minister just as the COP30 began, replete with sleazy rumours of sexual harassment that he vows to take up in a libel suit.

But overall, as climate advocacy groups argued, the firing of George “gives the perception that the South African government is not serious about climate change or its leadership in the negotiations, despite this being a crisis that threatens the fundamental social and economic aspirations of all in South Africa.” The perception is the reality, of course, with Pretoria seeking not only to keep coal-fired power plants open much longer than promised in its Just Energy Transition Partnership fundraising, but to initiate massive new methane gas processing investments from the World Bank to better import the $12 billion in promised purchases from Trump’s U.S. oil company mates, or from local digging by Shell and Total, joined recently even by Brazil’s Petrobras.

Johannesburg’s decorative but ineffective bottom-up counter power

South African society had not been particularly well mobilised to deal with the contradictions, compared, say, to the most intense G20 counter-summit and protest, which was in Hamburg in 2017. On Friday just before the leaders’ summit began, a national Women’s Shut Down was held in at least 15 cities, protesting gender-based violence. In the centre of town from November 20-22, there was a ‘We the 99%’ festival with several thousand participants demanding global economic justice, drawing on ‘Fight Inequality Alliance’ advocacy and the local New Economy Hub.

And Johannesburg’s United Front movement mobilised 350 community activists to march nearly an hour from Soweto to the conference site on the final day. Most aesthetically appealing was the way a small artivist network, Camp, decorated some of the city’s best-known skyline buildings with a political light show.

But two other forces of dissent made more of a dent in the local news. A few dozen right-wing populist xenophobes (‘Operation Dudula’) protested the very idea of regional solidarity, alongside former president Jacob Zuma’s MK Party, on November 22, and attracted police tear gas and arrests near the conference site. Second, the main municipal trade union traded off a $235 million back-pay settlement with the mayor of Johannesburg, in exchange for a promise not to disrupt the event (an earlier threat, later denied).

The latter deal may have solved a problem for Johannesburg authorities in the short term, but also has generated awareness of the flimsy nature of municipal management, especially in a wet period that, just days before the G20 summit began, witnessed severe flooding and inadequate stormwater drainage – again revealing the country’s and city’s notorious lack of attention to climate adaptation and resilience.

And the mayor’s promise that during the G20, water would flow uninterrupted to all parts of the city – a source of sustained protest – was also broken, as predicted by the city’s lead water activist, Ferial Adam: “The contrast could not be starker: our government is spending close to R1-billion for a global summit in Sandton while nearby informal settlements and suburban residents alike cannot get a single bucket of clean water.”

These were merely indications of the way such depraved ‘North-South’ partnerships are being generated through G20 co-optation of South African elites, and indeed also within the COP process as well, as Lula’s recent role confirmed. It’s all too reminiscent of what a white-supremacist Rhodesian leader, Godfrey Huggins, described as the preferred neo-colonial arrangements he foresaw in managing racist rule (from 1933-53), in what later became Zimbabwe, South Africa’s immediate northeastern neighbour: a “partnership between a rider and a horse.”

Against the imperial threat—our American union and resistance

Let the Greater Caribbean rise!


A helicopter lands on an airstrip on a U.S. warship.

“The United States seems destined by Providence

to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”

Simón Bolívar

“A beating so he learns that here there is honor

So he sees that in the Caribbean the shrimp doesn’t sleep

(If you see him coming, it means a beating for the shark)

Let’s hit him hard without hesitation.”

Rubén Blades

This statement is just a simple motion, one try among many, a grain of sand amidst the rage and pain. But it is in rage and pain that the most stubborn and impossible resistances have begun, the most dignified struggles of humanity against imperial and genocidal wars. A greeting towards the Sea of ​​the valiant Karib1, of the continent’s first independence movements, port of slave ships, sea of ​​trade routes of colonial plunder, tomb of pearl divers, home of maroon resistance and quilombos, sea of ​​necessary revolutions and cradle of the most beautiful corals.

A long history of interference

It is upon this sea that the talons of the bald eagle2 once again perch. They seek to tear apart the fabric of popular resistance and our anti-imperialist spirit, forged in blood and fire by the peoples of our continent in their quest for emancipation.

This is not the first time the US empire has attempted to define our destinies to guarantee, at all costs, the exploitation of nature and the control of politics in what, in its contempt for the rest of the continent, calls its “backyard.” There are countless strategies of the US interference in our America over the last two centuries, from the Monroe Doctrine3 to the Operation Condor4. The history of the US government intervention on American soil is longstanding:

From wars and direct military interventions on the continent to economic and military support for far-right governments in the region; financial and military backing for coups against revolutionary or progressive governments; economic blockades and sanctions, and intervention in security policy; the training and funding of military and paramilitary forces for the extermination, disappearance, and torture of the civilian population; the displacement of entire communities; and the exploitation of energy resources through extractive companies. Yesterday there was the justification for the counterinsurgency and anti-communist war; today it is the excuse for the war on drugs. Yesterday it was about bananas; today, black gold.

The Caribbean has fought for its sovereignty and dignity against its predatory neighbor countless times, from the invasion and annexation of Puerto Rico in 1898; the separation of Panama and the annexation of the Canal in 1903; the military occupation of Haiti in 1994; the military occupation of the Dominican Republic with the Banana Wars in 1916 and its repeated interference in national politics in 1965; the Bay of Pigs invasion (Cuba) in 1961; the support for paramilitary forces in Colombia to the financial and political support for the coup against Hugo Chávez in 2002. Among many other attempts to forcefully and starvingly undermine the sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples of the Caribbean.

Reclaiming back “the backyard”?

In recent months, under Trump’s presidency, in his internal struggle to win the trade war with China, Abya Yala (the Americas) has once again come under the watchful eye of the imperial eagle. Under the pretext of a supposed war on drugs, they (the imperialists) attempt once again to justify their intervention in the region. Yankee imperialist capitalism rearranges its stakes in Latin America, from the imposition of military bases with the complicity of far-right governments like Noboa’s in Ecuador, passing by the indebtedness and structural adjustment policies implemented by Milei in Argentina, to the murder of more than 80 people in the Caribbean Sea, thus creating a scenario of war against Venezuela and Colombia, with the sole aim of assuring the plunder of the world’s largest oil reserves, located beneath Venezuelan soil, and halting trade agreements which benefit China.

The shaping of a narrative of a failed state and a war on drugs to justify a military intervention in Venezuela has precedents and seeks to apply the same strategy as that previously used in Guatemala, Grenada, Chile, Colombia, and Panama. Some of the actions that have contributed on creating this war scenario in the last two years include:

  • Dialogue and mediation by the United States with the Guyanese government for political and military support amidst escalating tensions over the Essequibo territory dispute. Marco Rubio’s visit5 to Guyana for political agreements and joint Guyanese-US military exercises on Guyanese territory (March 2025).
  • Strengthening of economic sanctions against Venezuelan government officials (2023).
  • Strengthening of the economic blockade against Venezuela, leading to a profound crisis, increased hardship and impoverishment of the population.
  • Launch of “Operation Safeguard” to deport Venezuelans “en masse” from the United States, accused of being criminals (January 2025).
  • Mass deportations of Venezuelan migrants in the United States to maximum security prisons in El Salvador, accused of being part of the “Tren de Aragua”6 (March 2025).
  • Arrest warrant issued for the President of Venezuela as part of a terrorist organization, “Cártel de los soles”7 (October 2025).
  • Defining of the “Tren de Aragua” as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department (March 2025).
  • Awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan far-right opposition leader María Corina Machado (politically disqualified for explicitly requesting military intervention in Venezuela from various U.S. presidents—Bush, Obama, Biden).
  • Designation of the “Cártel de los soles” as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department (November 2025).
  • Deployment of U.S. warships, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, bombers, and 15,000 troops to the Caribbean (August – November 2025).
  • Extrajudicial killings of more than 80 fishermen of various nationalities in international and Colombian waters, accused of drug trafficking (September – October).
  • Military exercises and deployment of US troops in Panama and use of Trinidad and Tobago’s maritime borders with Venezuela.
  • Diplomatic tension between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago.
  • Overflight of military aircraft a few miles from Venezuelan territory (November 2025).
  • Announcement of a new phase of military advance in Venezuela and preparation for direct ground invasion operations (late November).

No one here will surrender!

The Caribbean Sea is a battleground today. Every week the threat intensifies. A direct military intervention in Venezuela via its coasts, or the beginning of a scenario of political destabilization leading to civil war, should not only generate the strongest condemnation from the peoples of the world, but also a wave of international solidarity that could prevent a regional massacre, the loss of sovereignty, and the complete surrender of our land to the most unsavory face of US imperialism.

The guarantee of peace today in Venezuela and Colombia implies the guarantee of peace on a continent once again ablaze with injustice, inequality, repression, and hunger. Our gaze must be attentive and fair. Also, we must understand the magnitude of what is happening. We cannot remain passive, clinging to purist positions that only speak out (and rightly so) against the abuses of a government disguised as revolutionary that betrayed the political project of socialism; we must be consistent with our continent’s history of resistance and speak out against a new imperialist threat. Our struggle is from and with the people.

We are children of a continent which forged its identity in resistance against colonialism, against bourgeoisie, against imperialism. A continent that has learned to shape its destiny when it has raised the banners of dignity and struggle. This time will be no exception. The voices of those of us who are unwilling to allow the armies of power to continue oppressing and threatening the peoples of the Americas with the sword of war in their imperialist expansion plans are already being heard.

From the Latin American Bloc we call for the urgent task of uniting forces, speaking out, and weaving networks of resistance against imperialism, beyond the differences we may have regarding Venezuelan politics in recent years, beyond our fragmentation. Just as we raised the Palestinian flag in the streets of the world and wore keffiyehs around our necks as a cry for justice and rebellion against Zionism, let us raise today the flag of Our American unity, let us reclaim the Gran Colombian dream, let us recognize ourselves today more than ever as part of a shared history, as brothers and sisters of the same land. Therein lies our strength and our tenderness. Let us not allow war on our land; let us resist once again the talons of the bald eagle.

From Palestine to Abya Yala, the struggle continues!

Before the imperial boot, we will triumph!

This article first appeared in Spanish on the Bloque Latinoamericano website on 29.11.2025. Translation: Ana Ferreira. Reproduced with permission.

  1. In Taíno, the term Karib means “strong,” “brave,” “valiant.” Caribe was used to name the indigenous peoples inhabiting the Antilles during colonisation.
  2. In 1782, the bald eagle was chosen as the official emblem of the United States.
  3. The United States’ foreign policy in dispute with European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It considers any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers from other continents as a potentially hostile act against the United States. (James Monroe, 1893).
  4. Campaign of political repression and state terrorism carried out from 1975 onward by several Latin American dictatorships with the backing of the United States government, which encompassed intelligence operations and the murder, torture, and disappearance of thousands of people across the continent.
  5. United States of America Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, from the Republican Party.
  6. Drug trafficking group from the state of Aragua in Venezuela.
  7. Alleged criminal organization from Venezuela.