The UN Human Rights Office released a report Nov. 8 detailing six months of war in Gaza from November 2023 to April 2024, denouncing the "horrific" suffering inflicted by Israel as well as Palestinian armed groups, and warning of potential crimes against humanity. In an accompanying release, the UN rights chief Volker Türk urged Israel to comply with international law. He warned that there would be a "due reckoning with respect to allegations of serious violations of international law through credible and impartial judicial bodies…"

With UN aid agencies and humanitarian organizations warning of an "apocalyptic" scenario in North Gaza, the Biden administration faces a lawsuit charging complicity with genocide. The "pause" that the White House has imposed on some arms shipments to Israel by no means absolves the administration of moral (or legal) culpability. However, it may have had the effect of restraining Benjamin Netanyahu's maximalist plans to cleanse the Gaza Strip of Palestinians altogether. President Trump meanwhile recognized Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and launched the "Abraham Accords"—predicated on betrayal of the Palestinians by the Arab leadership. His 2019 executive order officially embraced the propagandistic conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and he now calls for complete repression (including by the military) of Palestine solidarity protests. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law who was his Middle East pointman, is now openly backing the cleansing of Gaza of all Palestinians, while his ultra-Zionist former ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is an open advocate of Israeli annexation of the West Bank and destruction of al-Aqsa Mosque. As Trump accuses Biden of "holding back" Israel, it is clear that Netanyahu and his most hardline cabinet members like Itamar Ben-Gvir are openly rooting for him—as is the Israel Lobby in DC.

The Commission of Detainees & Ex-Detainee Affairs, a Palestinian prisoner rights organization, and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club reported in statements on Oct. 28 that Israeli prison staff have brutally assaulted Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian political leader and member of the Central Committee of Fatah.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned Oct. 25 that "the darkest moment of the Gaza conflict is unfolding in the north of the Strip." Calling for urgent action by the international community, Türk stated: "Unimaginably, the situation is getting worse by the day. The Israeli Government's...practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians. We are facing what could amount to...crimes against humanity." Türk asserted that under the Geneva Convention, member states have "an obligation to act when a serious violation of international humanitarian law has been committed."

Israel's long-awaited strikes on Iran have targeted military and industrial installations in Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam, with air-strikes also reported in the Syrian cities of Damascus and Homs.  It is now Iran's turn to retaliate in the escalatory tit-for-tat game, as the brink of regional and even world war looms ever closer. In Episode 249 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg advocates a neither/nor position that rejects the militaristic and reactionary regimes of both Zionism and political Islam, and looks to a secular order in the Middle East.

In Episode 248 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the New York Times coverage of the ugly turn in the pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University, and warns against the targeting of Jews in the guise of a misguided supposed "anti-Zionism." The ongoing genocide in Gaza urgently demands protest, but just as urgently demands tactically and analytically astute protest that does not play into the cynical weaponization of the accusation of anti-Semitism by Zionist propaganda. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

A UN report released Oct. 11 documented Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities and medical personnel in the Gaza Strip in violation of international human rights law, calling the attacks war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report—written by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel—also condemned Israeli treatment of detainees, citing instances of abuse, torture, sexual assault, and arbitrary detention.

A joint media report has led Dutch prosecutors to consider a criminal case concerning claims that Israeli intelligence officials have interfered with the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into alleged crimes in occupied Palestine, The Guardian confirmed on Oct. 8. The Guardian and the Israeli publications +972 Magazine and Local Call jointly investigated what they allege are nine years of illegal surveillance and intimidation of the ICC prosecutor's office since a preliminary inquiry was opened into the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2015.