May 6—America’s most able diplomat, CIA Director William Burns, is now in Israel and will meet later today with the butcher of Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. The word from sources in the U.S. is that Burns sees this as the last chance to push through a workable ceasefire/hostage release deal and to stop Bibi’s oft repeated intention to send the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) into Gaza’s last standing city, Rafah, and unleash what might be a months' long slaughter of innocent Palestinians, which, according to this tyrant’s own military and intelligence advisors, will still fail to wipe out or eliminate Hamas.Burns, on orders from President Sleepy Joe Biden, flew to Cairo over the weekend to keep the fragile talks toward a ceasefire going, after Hamas had accepted the basic framework of an Egyptian proposal, that had been worked on by Burns, only to have Bibi insist that there was no stated or unstated intention to end the war, nothing about allowing Hamas to play a role in governing post-war Gaza, and to repeat that he would soon order the IDF to launch operations against Hamas in Rafah. Netanyahu even refused to allow Israeli negotiators to fly to Cairo.When it became obvious that Israel would not negotiate, Burns and the Hamas negotiators left for Doha, where Hamas has its headquarters. While the Hamas delegation consults with Hamas leaders on Burns’ suggestions for a deal, Burns “officially” went to Doha to meet with the Qatari Prime Minister, although sources speculated that he may have quietly met with Hamas leaders.It is not known what Burns will tell Bibi, but one source said that he has now been given a carte blanche to do whatever he thinks necessary to force through a deal.“That is going to require some tough threats,” said one source. “Burns must at least demand that the parties get together to hear the proposals. If Bibi won’t agree to that, then the U.S. might threaten to cut off all military aid to Israel. At minimum, Burns must get an agreement to not have the IDF move on Rafah while talks continue. Burns is dealing with an insane person, who won’t listen to reason. If anyone can do this, Burns will know what to do. It is really like dealing with Hitler.”

May 5—*The Schiller Institute and the Fédération des associations d’amitiés Chine-Afrique (FAACA) held a three-hour video conference May 4 on “China-Africa Cooperation in Poverty Reduction Strategy.” The FAACA is a multi-nation association, with an office in Dakar, Senegal. Speakers included Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute; Assane Mbengue, President of FAACA; His Excellency Ibrahima Sory Sylla, Senegalese Ambassador to China; Zhang Hangbao, First Secretary to His Excellency Xiao Han, Chinese Ambassador to Senegal; Zhang Yun, CEO of SOMETA SA (Senegal’s leading iron and steel company); Edmond Moukala N’Gouemo, UNESCO representative in Ghana, and others.Some 50 people attended the entire conference, which included lively discussion, moderated by Sébastian Périmony, Schiller Institute-France. Below is Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s speech in English, the conference having been held entirely in French.*Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Dear participants of this conference of the Federation of China-Africa Friendship Associations, my dear African friends, we are clearly at a crossroads of history and the outcome of how this will end is not yet decided. We have on the one side an escalation of the war in Ukraine, which is actually a proxy war of NATO against Russia. NATO will soon have to make a decision, because it is not going well for the Ukrainians, either to negotiate or escalate. There are many forces in the Transatlantic world who call for escalation, which has the danger of leading in the short term to a global nuclear war.Then we have the genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza,and the pending attack by the Israel Defense Forces on Rafah, on people who are already dying of hunger, of starvation, of thirst, of need of everything. The entire Southwest Asia region is a powder keg, which if ignited, could also lead to global war.Then we have the extension of NATO, or the effort of NATO to become Global NATO by extending itself into the Indo-Pacific around the South China Sea, the Taiwan crisis with China, which is being steered from the outside.Now all these three crises are driven by the collapse of the Transatlantic financial system. Because what is behind all of this escalation is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a new economic system.Let’s briefly look back at the end of the Cold War where we had the chance for a peace order for the 21st century. With the LaRouche Movement, the Schiller Institute actually promoted [peace] by proposing the Eurasian Land-Bridge as the beginning of the World Land-Bridge connecting all continents through infrastructure.At that time there was the promise not to expand NATO one inch to the East, but this promise was broken right away. The neocons established the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which was the idea that the United States will be the leader of a unipolar world, and not allow any country or group of countries to bypass the United States economically, militarily or politically.Instead they went to consolidate this unipolar world by pushing regime change, color revolution, intervention with wars. All of that, which for the last thirty years has led to a gigantic blowback because the countries of the Global South saw what was happening. They saw the effect of the sanctions against Iran, against Syria, against Yemen, against Nicaragua, Venezuela, and all the other countries, and they saw what it did to increase the poverty of the poor.So, what were the consequences of the endless wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq, Syria, Libya? Millions of people died. They saw the weaponization of the dollar.But then on the other side you have the rise of China which first lifted 850 millions of its own people out of poverty, and then, when in 2013 Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative, the New Silk Road—which actually was an echo of our original Eurasian Landbridge proposal from 1991. The world started to change dramatically.In the ten years since, or almost eleven years, the Belt and Road Initiative has given the countries of the Global South, for the first time, the chance to overcome poverty and underdevelopment. The emergence of the BRICS, the BRICS-Plus, for which now more than 40 countries have applied, is causing a tectonic change in history. Six hundred years of colonialism is ending, and you have right now a revival of the Spirit of Bandung.At Bandung, Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Indonesian President Sukarno warned that even if colonialism was formally ending it was not ending in terms of its neocolonial form, namely the control and access to credit and trade. And this period is now coming to an end. Because with the cooperation with China and the tremendous civilizational effort China has provided to all of humanity, now the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America for the first time are absolutely in a position to no longer have to just export raw materials, but to add to the production chain in their own country with the aim to become middle level income countries very soon. So there is absolutely the tremendous chance that Africa will become the continent of the future as a result of this changes.In 2050 Africa will have 2.5 billions people, at very young ages, which means we have to create 1 billion productive jobs in the near future.Now, for our organization, for Lyndon LaRouche, Africa was at the center of our effort from the very beginning. The first plan for a comprehensive development plan, we presented it in Paris at a big conference. And my late husband Lyndon LaRouche said many times that the morality of the entire human species will be measured by how we treat Africa and their rightful demand for development. He first then produced another plan in 1980 which was a commentary and a criticism of the Lagos Plan of Action.We conducted several big international conferences in Khartoum with the five countries of the Nile which, you know, whose development is still on the agenda. We were fighting for 30 years for the Transaqua project which is the idea to bring about 3 or 4 or 5% of the water of the Congo and bring it up through a system of canals and rivers to Lake Chad, by canals and rivers and that way giving electricity to 12 countries along the way, refilling Lake Chad, which will then be the source of irrigation of a large territory surrounding the Sahel zone.Now, when the century agreement between China and the African Union was signed on the 27 January 2015 in Addis Ababa, there was opening a possibility for a continent-wide integrated, system of fast trains; and then at the Johannesburg Summit in 2023, when the BRICS countries convened there, and decided to become the BRICS-Plus, President Putin of Russia promised that he would head up [providing] the African continent with electricity from nuclear energy.So there is an epochal change taking place, and reason for absolute optimism that the plan of the African Union for 2063 will be fully realized. It will mean that the vision of statesmen who fought for the development of Africa and several of whom paid with their life, is coming true, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Kwame N’krumah in Ghana, the father of the Non-Aligned Movement, Cheikh Anta Diop in Senegal, Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and foremost, Lyndon LaRouche who had made a measuring rod for the moral identity of humanity, how Africa will be treated.Now the moral leadership role as already being taken over by the South African government, because it was they who brought the case of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza to the International Court of Justice. It was not the collective West. It was South Africa, and they did so in evoking the tradition of the fight against apartheid.The Global South, the Global Majority, is actually the key today, in my view, to overcome the strategic crisis and the danger of nuclear war. Because the relationship between NATO and Russia, and NATO and China is already so much poisoned and slandered, that it definitely requires the addition of the Global Majority to come out with a very strong voice. And you must unite. Speak with one voice. Because as Prime Minister Nehru and President Sukarno said in Bandung in 1955, if it comes to nuclear war, the Global South, the developing sector, will die as well, even if they die a few days or weeks later.So therefore the Global Majority has the absolute moral legitimacy to demand that the countries of the Global North cooperate, that they must stop confrontation, and they must work with the BRICS-Plus. The only way that the Global North can undo the guilt of colonialism is by cooperating with the industrial revolution of the Global South. And you have to take a very strong stand and be very firm. What South African President Ramaphosa in Paris said at the international financial summit a short while ago. He said the international community should provide the financing of the Inga Dam. “If you do that, then we believe that you are serious with your promises!” It will cost about $80 billions which will then produce 42 GW of electricity that will be a revolution for the energy supply of the entire continent and the entire economy of Africa. So take that stand and demand, because they owe it.First, South Africa took the genocide case in Gaza to the International Criminal Court of Justice, now the students in the United States are protesting the genocide as well. And both South Africa and the students are upholding the honor of humanity. But we have to bridge the Global South and those people in the Global North who are fighting for humanity to keep its soul. Because without this bridge, I don’t think we can succeed.Recently the Schiller Institute had a conference on an Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia. This is the idea that given the fact that much of Southwest Asia is desert, we need to produce lots of fresh water by building canals from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, to the Red Sea and then use nuclear energy to desalinate large amounts of ocean water, create actually new rivers this way, and have water for irrigation for agriculture, forests, new cities, and a real integrated infrastructure project.Now that same concept can apply for all of Africa. Egypt is already building many projects, but you can use the Oasis concept for Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and regain much of the Sahel zone in the Sahara by desalination of ocean water. Take Sudan for example. They have the most fertile soil on the planet and with water they could have three to four harvests each year.Now all of that is not enough: We also need a new international security and development architecture in the tradition of the Peace of Westphalia, which takes into account the security and development interest of every single country on the planet, and which pushes for the first time, the idea of the One Humanity first. And with this new paradigm I think we will have a very bright future. All my best for you.

OpinionIsraelis Must Flood the Streets to Keep the IDF Out of RafahMay 5--We run this unprecedented call to action against the government of the deranged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin“Bibi” Netanyahu to show that there are voices inside Israel who know the stakes and why action must be taken now to stop the likely slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. The author served as Prime Minister of Israel from 2006-2009. It was published as an opinion piece in the May 3 Haaretz.by Ehud OlmertAfter more than six months of hybrid warfare—in the air, on land and underground—it’s possible to conclude that the bulk of Hamas’ military power has been dismantled. Most of its rockets and launch sites have been destroyed and there has hardly been any rocket fire from the Gaza Strip for over four months.This isn’t the result of some tactical decision by Hamas intended to deceive and disarm Israeli security forces, to then surprise us again with an unexpected attack that could gravely damage the home front and our combat units. It is highly likely that Hamas has hardly any rockets or launch sites left, and is incapable of operating the few it has, as the [Israeli] military controls most of the areas from which rockets could be fired at Israel.A considerable portion of Hamas fighters has been killed, an accomplishment that is highly significant. These are not just its frontline combatants, but also members of its command level. It is almost certain that the most senior commanders, above all Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, are still alive. They are hiding in places whose penetration could exact a heavy price from Israel, one that would be wrong to pay.It will be possible to hit Sinwar and Deif in future targeted actions, even if it takes time and does not necessarily suit the prime minister’s personal timetable. For him, the killing of Hamas commanders is an opportunity to throw a victory gala designed to obscure the magnitude of the failure for which he bears responsibility—the October 7 disaster.However, as has been said repeatedly, the course of the war and its priorities must not be made subordinate to Netanyahu’s personal needs. There is no one in Israel who isn’t yearning to hear of Deif and Sinwar being killed. They are cold-blooded arch-murderers who lack moral inhibitions, terrorists in the fullest sense of the term. As much as we want to take them out, we must act with restraint, patience and reason.During the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was defined as a target for a strike. We wanted to chop off the head of that poisonous snake, but we did not make the war subservient to this cause alone. Ultimately, Nasrallah stated on Lebanese television that had he known what 1 percent of the scope of Israel’s response to the abduction and murder of Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev and other soldiers would be, and Israel’s ferocious response to Hezbollah’s rocket attack, he wouldn’t have done it.As an Israeli military accomplishment, such a statement from a live Nasrallah was almost the same as killing him and displaying his body. The 17 years in which he took caution not to initiate a single attack on Israel—not even with light arms—are a profound reflection of the military accomplishment of that 2006 war and the deterrence it created on the northern border. Even though some among us still enjoy criticizing its successes after all these years, the fact that Nasrallah understands the magnitude of his defeat is enough to put that war in the right perspective.At this point, we have achieved the same level of deterrence in Gaza that we had at the end of the Second Lebanon War. At the beginning of the ground maneuver in Gaza, the prime minister set an unrealistic goal, which there was no way to achieve and no way to measure. Benjamin Netanyahu did it, to my understanding, for vile conspiratorial reasons that can’t be concealed. He knew talk of “total victory” over Hamas was an empty slogan. There will not be such a victory. In its absence, he can always blame the military for not accomplishing it.In reality, we have seen a genuine, impressive and unprecedented victory. Never has a conventional military been forced to fight a terror organization that hides almost entirely inside a network of underground tunnels dozens of meters deep, located in dense urban centers housing hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians. These civilians were, against their will, placed at the center of Israel’s military activity and, unavoidably, became exposed to airstrikes and fire from commando units chasing terrorist leaders, becoming tragic victims of the war.In this complex entanglement, and under the international community’s critical eyes—including those of our staunchest friends and supporters—the Israel Defense Forces has performed admirably. There is no military campaign this complicated that is conducted without mistakes, without unnecessary friendly fire and shooting toward uninvolved civilians.There have been some troubling displays of trigger-happiness, whose victims included some of our hostages as well as Gazan civilians who were caught in combat zones and paid with their lives. Few could deny that in several cases, our soldiers were unnecessarily reckless. But it is hard to blame them, considering the highly unique nature of this combat, which takes place in the total confusion of fighting inside residential neighborhoods and above Hamas death-tunnel shafts.However, there is one goal we have not achieved yet—releasing the hostages. This goal was not at the center of Netanyahu’s attention from the start, and he has apparently thwarted several opportunities to expand understandings brokered between Israel and Hamas, and proceed to a comprehensive deal that would release all the hostages. Rafah is not a crucial objective that would decide the outcome of the fighting between Israel and Hamas.Although it’s emotionally difficult, almost impossible, to accept, it’s important to understand that Israel will not emerge victorious from this confrontation. The boastful talk of “total victory” reflects stupidity, arrogance and, above all, an effort to create distance from an image of non-victory and evade the inevitable public judgment that will likely follow.Netanyahu long ago stopped thinking about what is best for Israel, its future and its strategic interests. It’s been a long time since he’s considered the inevitable obligation to start limiting the damage of the harsh blow we have suffered and laying foundations for restoring the country, the military, the security forces, and, most of all, Israeli society, whose solidarity was once the secret of its strength.Netanyahu lives in a bubble that is cut off from reality. Inside the bubble, he tells himself and the others inside that he is fighting for Israel’s existence, that an immediate risk is threatening it, and that his historic mission is to face off against the entire world and defend Israel from those who want to destroy it.Netanyahu’s behavior leaves no other conclusion than that, in his view, many of his opponents knowingly and deliberately seek Israel’s destruction. I presume that those staying in the emotionally impervious human tunnel in which he is trapped (along with his family and a few supporters) believe most of Israel’s friends in the world, chiefly U.S. President Joe Biden and perhaps a few European leaders, could cause Israel’s destruction because of pressure from leftists and Israel-haters from within and their allies elsewhere.In this respect, it seems that in Netanyahu’s worldview, the country’s biggest enemies are the most fearless and daring of Israel’s soldiers and members of the elected opposition in the Knesset. I include Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, whose decency and devotion to Israel is being exploited by Netanyahu, while deep down, he unquestionably despises them and sees them as both enemies and rivals.We have reached the decisive stage: Are we heading for a hostage rescue deal or hurtling at an insane speed toward a crash in the outskirts of Rafah?Taking Rafah has no strategic significance as far as Israel’s vital interests are concerned. Netanyahu understands this, as do some senior military officers and retired officers. Destroying four additional Hamas battalions might have been the correct move had it been disconnected from the wider context of events. But such a maneuver would take months and involve many fatalities among our soldiers, kill thousands of uninvolved Palestinians and crush what remains of Israel’s international reputation.It would intensify demonstrations on every campus in America and around the world and lead to arrest warrants being issued against Israeli leaders and combat soldiers. Most of all, it would put the hostages in immediate danger. Such a move would constitute criminal recklessness by a group of people, led by Netanyahu, who are prepared to shatter the foundations of our existence merely to continue holding on to power.Some of the decisions I made when I headed Israel’s government were heavily criticized. Near its end, the Second Lebanon War was a source of incessant attacks on me and my cabinet members, as well as on the military commanders who waged the campaign. It does not matter at all that in retrospect, most critics realize it had been a successful—albeit not devoid of failures and mistakes—war with several strategic accomplishments, which have become clearer from a distance of many years. However, none of those who objected to the war at the time even thought about arguing that the government was motivated by the personal interests of the person in charge.The consensus among the overwhelming majority of Israelis is that the only motivation for expanding the military campaign and invading Rafah is not what’s right for Israel, but part of a planned decision to sacrifice the hostages’ lives in order to preserve the political life of the man who continues to push Israel into the abyss.It’s time to stop Netanyahu and the government of [Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Minister of Finance Bezalel] Smotrich. It’s time to flood the streets with millions of resolute opponents to surround the group of outlaws leading Israel to a crash and stop them, before it’s too late.

May 5—As this report is being filed, America’s most able diplomat, CIA Director William Burns, is in Doha trying to rescue a ceasefire/hostage deal, and in so doing save the last standing Gazan city, Rafah, from an onslaught by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) already ordered by the bloodthirsty butcher of Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. Bibi has thus far sabotaged the peace talks with statements that no matter what deal is reached, he intends to attack Hamas positions in Rafah and that he will not end the war until Hamas is annihilated. Sources in Israel report that if Burns’ efforts fail, that attack could commence as soon as tomorrow, which Bibi knows will likely kill all the hostages who are still alive, since they are all thought to be held in Rafah.Netanyahu knows that his oft stated intention to totally eliminate Hamas, ostensibly as a response to their now-clearly stupid and useless attack on Israel Oct. 7 of last year, that murdered more than 1,200, mostly innocent civilians, including women and children, can and could never be accomplished.“It was a lot of hot air,” said an intelligence source. “Netanyahu has been told by his own intelligence people and the IDF brass, that the attack on Rafah is not worth it, that it won’t kill all of Hamas, but it will kill potentially a catastrophic number of civilians. So, why is Bibi insisting on this senseless attack? Because he wants to drive Palestinians out of Rafah, out of Gaza, and destroy the place. He wants to do that also with the West Bank. It is not about terrorists. It is about the Palestinian state. If he destroys the Palestinian homelands, renders them uninhabitable, then there will never be a Palestinian state. Netanyahu is not a normal person. He is an insane racist, with a messianic complex. He thinks he is saving Israel, but he will destroy it. As many people in the Israeli political elite realize, Bibi and his cohorts among the religious loonies are the greatest strategic threat to the Israeli state, ever.”From this and other sources, we are able to piece together what transpired over the course of the week. First, the outlines of a ceasefire/hostage deal were worked out last week in Cairo between Burns and the Egyptians and were presented to both the Israelis and Hamas, both of whom took it under consideration.There was no specific wording that talked about an end to the war, and no mention of Rafah. Instead, through back channels, it was communicated to Hamas that the U.S. would work toward a full withdrawal of the IDF and that the IDF would cease all operations once all the remaining hostages were released. Also in the deal was the agreement by Israel to release Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti who could become part of a future government in Gaza.“The agreement had legs,” said a source. “But if Hamas was going to agree to it, it required Bibi and the loonies to simply shut up about not ending the war, and about their ‘right’ to attack Rafah. As envisioned by the U.S., in the process of the deal, with its multiple phases, all these things would be worked out.“While the Arab partners, Egypt and Qatar worked on the Hamas leadership in Doha, the Biden Administration proceeded to bungle things in Washington in how they handled Bibi. Burns told the President that he needed to be rough with him, that he should tell him that the U.S. would not tolerate any attack on Rafah, that there would be a cutoff of military aid if such an attack did occur, and that he had to get Netanyahu to agree that the war would end, were the terms of the agreement met by Hamas. In the last phase, Hamas would lay down its arms and work on putting together a joint administration of Gaza with Barghouti and Fatah.“State however proposed a softer approach to the dithering fool Biden that would, he was told, make him look tough, without having to be tough and lose the votes of pro-Israeli Jews, and thereby also counter Republican Party claims that he was giving in to the campus demonstrators, leftists, and socialists in his own Party who were supporting anti-Semitic attacks on Israel. Instead of threatening Bibi, Biden was advised to promise him normalization of relations with the Saudis, as an enticement to take the deal.“So, that incompetent and weak boob, [Secretary of State] Antony Blinken was dispatched to talk to Bibi and the war cabinet, and to see the Saudis and the U.S.’ other Arab partners. He was milk toast. He stood with Bibi and said that Hamas was the main obstacle for the deal. On Rafah, Bibi was told that while the U.S. did not see the attack as necessary, it would not try to stop it. Blinken urged Israel to pay attention to civilian casualties.”As soon as Blinken left the scene, word leaked out of the deal: That Hamas had accepted the Egyptian proposal and the final terms would be worked out over the weekend in Cairo. But then Bibi opened his mouth: Israel will never accept a compromise that allows Hamas to exist. We will not end the war, until they are crushed. And, we will be sending the IDF into Rafah.When the talks reconvened in Cairo, Hamas now wanted specific language on ending the war, and the full pullout of the IDF. And when the negotiations predictably broke down, Bibi doubled down on his insane rant about Israeli principles: “Hamas remains fixed on its extreme positions, primarily the demand to withdraw all our forces from Gaza, end the war, and leave Hamas intact.... Israel cannot accept this.”Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant meanwhile said May 5 that Israel is seeing “alarming signs that Hamas actually does not intend to follow any agreement with us. This means action in Rafah and the entire Gaza Strip in the near future.”“What a joke!” said the source of the Biden Administration strategy. “You’re dealing with a mad dog, frothing at the mouth. Bibi needs to be hit in the head and hard, and instead you offer him a bone. How stupid is that? The blood of Rafah will be on Biden’s hands as well, if Burns fails. What do they call him? ‘Genocide Joe’! Well earned.”“Netanyahu is fleeing from a hostage deal: The closer it gets, the faster he runs to avoid it,” wrote Yossi Verter in Haaretz May 5. “At least twice in recent months he has sabotaged the sensitive moves toward a deal, whether through public statements or covert messages, or by curbing the mandate of the negotiating team. It was no different this time”If Burns fails—and there is no reason to believe that he can succeed, especially given his lack of back up from the White House—then the only hope to stop this slaughter lies with the Israeli elite and the Israeli people. They will have to bear the responsibility of ousting their Prime Minister.On Saturday night, May 4, tens of thousands or more demonstrated in cities across Israel against the government, for an end to the war, and a return of the hostages. This followed the unprecedented call by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert May 3, in an opinion piece in Haaretz, calling for Israelis to “flood the streets” to stop what he said was an insane, useless, and destructive attack on Rafah.In that opinion piece, Olmert declared that Hamas has already been defeated and has paid the price for the Oct. 7 attack, but that they cannot and will not ever be eliminated. To attempt such was an insane goal. He called Netanyahu a danger to the future of Israel and that he must be stopped from doing more harm. He urged opposition leaders to stand up to this tyrant. Netanyahu will kill Israel by insanely trying to prevent a Palestinian state, the establishment of which is inevitable. Peace is possible, wrote the former Prime Minister who is known for his prosecution of a bloody war against Hezbollah on the West Bank.As such, these are amazing words coming from him.“There will be a Palestinian state,” writes Alon Idan in the May 6 Haaretz. “It’s not up to us and it’s not about us. It’s about reality. The only question is whether we’ll enter reality or continue to live in fantasy; if we’ll come to our senses at the last moment, or if we’ll continue being so utterly stupid.”

May 4—A profile published by the website The Grayzone of Columbia University Adjunct Professor Rebecca Weiner provides useful background on the brutal round of student arrests at Columbia on the evening of April 30, and Weiner’s role in this. As authors Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal point out in “Columbia Crackdown Led by University Prof Doubling as NYPD Spook,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams praised Weiner for “giving police the green light to clear out the anti-genocide students by force.”An adjunct professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), which feeds well-healed flaks to the U.S. State Department and similar agencies, Weiner  “moonlights” as head of the New York Police Department’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau, occupying an office close to where students had set up their encampment. This agency is the heir to what in rgw 1960s-70s days of student radicalism was know as the "Red Squad," headed by Police Lt. Finnegan, That agency was exposed for not only recruiting informants inside the student movement from among drug dealers and smiliar types, but working with both the FBI and CIA in what was called COINTELPRO (or counter-intelligence programs), planting agents inside the movement who encouraged and even committed acts of violence and hooliganism.Various sources, including those close to the demonstrations, say that the suspect that similar police agents have infiltrated their ranks, and have been the ones who have pushed rhetoric against Jews and all Israelis, as a perfect counterfoil to gangs Jewish Defense League (JDL)-type thugs who have attacked the demonstrators on several campuses. The pro-Jewish groups, some carrying batons and karate weapons, are thought to be sponsored through "fronts" and Individuals with money, by the notorious Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith, a group originally founded to claim that attacks on Jewish mobsters like Meyer Lansky and Harry Rothstein were "anti-semitic." In police capacity, Weiner, who supports the ADL, advised Adams on when to call in heavily armed police to violently dislodge nonviolent students from Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and their encampment of the university lawn and arrest several hundred of them. According to The Grayzone, Weiner “develops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence.”The NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau maintains an office in Tel Aviv, coordinates with Israel’s security apparatus, and maintains a department liaison with them.  As has been reported in several locations, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Federal government arranged for local police, including New York City police,  to be trained by the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli police agencies. “Weiner appears to serve as a bridge between the Bureau’s offices in Israel and New York,” the Grayzone article reports, also pointing out that a 2011 investigation by Associated Press discovered the existence of a “Demographics Unit”—or more correctly, the “ethnic profiling unit—” that was inspired by Israeli intelligence, and operated inside the NYPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This was the outfit that spied on Muslims in the New York area, as well as on students at out-of-state campuses who were involved in Palestine solidarity activism. Other sources report that they have also infiltrated those organizations.Revealingly, this unit was developed post 9/11in collaboration with the CIA, which to date, has refused to name the former Middle East station chief it posted in the “senior ranks” of the NYPD intelligence division. At the time of the AP investigation, a former police official told the news agency that the unit “attempted to map the city’s human terrain” through a program “modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.”Mayor Adams post police raid press conference May 1 was consumed by his rant that non-student outside agitators were radicalizing the students, and he and the police would never tolerate the campuses and the  City being taken over by or at the mercy of such radicalized mobs. This line was fed to the Mayor by Weiner. At the same press conference, she spouted off verbiage about “change in tactics” by protesters and other sociological gobbledygook about “mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with terrorism,” to justify the previous night’s police deployment. It was she who claimed—three times— that the completely innocent, 63-year-old Palestinian retired elementary school teacher, Nahla Al-Arian, who briefly visited the Columbia campus on April 25 with her daughter—and was in now way involved with the activities there at all—was a dangerous individual married to someone “convicted for material support to terrorism.” In fact, the case against Al-Arian’s husband, Sami, was an example of the persecution of Muslims and Arabs in the “war on terror” that followed 9/11.Weiner represents the same unconstitutional police state apparatus that was support to be shut down in the wake of the famous 1975 -76 Church Committee exposure of totally illegal CIA domestic operations. Instead, under the direction of then CIA Director and later President George H.W. Bush, these operations were off loaded into local police forces and various special operations, which have now, since 9/11 been militarized as well, and run through the Joint Special Operations Command of the military, which is accountable to no one in our government. This apparatus which extends through the Federal government, into the FBI, Justice Department and FBI, as well as the NSA is what should be investigated for the so-called Jan. 6 insurrection, which if properly examined and understood should be seen as a police riot. And the efforts to shut down the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to protest and the protection of free speech taking place to defend genocide should be seen a similar light.When the foolish Adams spoke of "outside agitators" involved the campus events, he was right—but being steered by those sponsoring such real and dangerous "perps," to attack innocent people. It is time to finally expose thus police state for what it is.​

May 3, 2024 (EIRNS)—In the midst of the tumultuous events of this past week—some hopeful, as with the hundreds of worldwide student assemblies convened to challenge the Anglosphere’s genocide in Gaza; others, catastrophic, as were the recent disastrous legislative actions to finance war, and to suppress freedom of thought, passed into law by the United States Congress—it is important for the LaRouche Organization to call attention to that which defines the higher battle under way for the soul of what was, only a short time ago, known and defended as Western Civilization, and the sovereign nation state. The late physical economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche, in his 2003 study, “Shakespeare as a Scholar: U.S. Politics as Tragedy,” begins:“The frequent attempt of academics, and others, to deprecate the authority of Shakespeare’s scholarship, must confront itself with such little details, as in Julius Caesar, for example, as the character Casca’s famously ironical reference to his auditing of a referenced address by the historical Cicero: ‘It was Greek to me.’ In actual history, the manner and circumstances of the death of Cicero, is a crucial turning-point in the history of Rome, as such history may be traced from that point until Rome’s ultimately inevitable doom. How many relevant academics who claim to be authorities, actually understand this history as well as Shakespeare did; or, instead, follow Coleridge, Bradley, or the like, on such matters? The evidence is, that a rare few of today’s academics or political candidates, are qualified in the practice of history as a science, to the degree Shakespeare was.”On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, 11 people were shot by National Guardsmen who invaded the campus, 4 fatally, in protests against the Vietnam War. Three days ago, May 1, Josh Paul, former State Department Director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs who resigned in October in protest against the Biden Administration’s support for the crimes against humanity being committed in Gaza, warned that “This generation of youth have spent their entire lives in fear of having guns pointed at them in schools; what a disgrace for America that it is now their own schools that are pointing the guns at them.” How can we avoid tragedy—what might seem, at the moment, to be the inevitable recurrence of precisely such incidents on campuses, either somewhere in the United States or in some other nation? The answer is, we must think like Shakespeare: Elevate this present moment of unfolding tragedy by elevating the subject of the protests, to be what it actually is: the dignity of humanity itself.We must simultaneously outflank the attempt to deflect focus from the mass graves in Gaza, from the impending attack on Rafah, and from the British India-style imposed famine already slowly killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, with food aid convoys being denied access. We must understand the human terrain, as the intelligence agencies say. The interface, through “counter-terror training programs,” of American police departments with the Israel Defense Forces, established after September 11, 2001, may explain some of the excessive law enforcement response, which is modeled on the IDF response to Palestinians in Gaza; in fact, some of that police training was apparently conducted in the occupied territories of Palestine. Then, there is the “counterinsurgency” deployment of police agents for continuous spying on students, as at Columbia University, as well as organizing of pro-Zionist, non-uniformed “paramilitary” units, as at UCLA. The reason for the attack on the students is not merely to suppress their message about the mass graves in Gaza, or their demands for a ceasefire, etc. The reason is to crush the idea of optimism—that there can, and must be a solution that does not require killing people.“Since mankind is the only creative species known so far in the universe, and given the fact that human creativity is the only source of wealth through the potentially limitless discovery of new universal principles, one of the main aims of the new International Security and Development Architecture must be providing access to universal education for every child and adult person living. The true nature of man is to become a beautiful soul, as Friedrich Schiller discusses this, and the only person who can fulfill that condition is the genius,” says the Fourth Principle of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Ten Principles of A New International Security and Development Architecture.” Posing the problem of what is to be done, through the LaRouche Oasis Plan, and how to implement such plans, not only in the case of Gaza, but in the case of Sudan, or Ukraine, or the South Bronx, that is, for the whole world, is now the subject of true education, potentially on every campus and in every school in the world. Higher education based on the higher principle, that “Alle Menschen Werden Brüder”—“All men shall be brothers”—is the pathway to genius, which indeed, can be taught, and reproduced, turning from tragedy to hope.