Trump continues to pursue his perverse ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize—now profferring "peace" plans for Ukraine and Gaza that would actually reward war crimes, and therefore portend wider war. In both cases these new "peace" plans are merely sanitized recapitulations of earlier proposals—for the surrender of the Donbas and Crimea to Russia, and for Israeli annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and "transfer" of their indigenous inhabitants. Meanwhile, the actual winner of this year's Peace Prize, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, is obsequiously pandering to Trump, and playing along with his bellicose designs on her country. In Episode 306 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg cuts through the Orwellian war-is-peace propaganda. 

Israeli military operations in the northern West Bank constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Nov. 20 in a report documenting the forced displacement of approximately 32,000 Palestinians from three refugee camps beginning in January 2025. The report charges that Israeli forces carried out mass forcible displacements as part of a widespread attack on civilians, accusations that, if substantiated, would constitute crimes against humanity under international law.

The regional head of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for the Occupied Palestinian Territory warned on Oct. 21 that Israeli settlers are increasing violence against Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank. The statement comes at the start of the critical olive harvest season, a main source of income for many Palestinian families.

The Israeli cabinet will convene to discuss annexation of areas of the West Bank this week, local media report. The discussion has been called in light of the recently-approved settlement construction plan spearheaded by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which will see some 3,400 housing units built in the West Bank's contentious E1 area between Jerusalem and the Ma'ale Adumim settlement bloc. (ToI)

Two of Israel's leading human rights organizations charged on July 27 that government practices and policies in the Gaza Strip amount to an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (PHRI) each published a report and jointly announced their findings. It marks the first time that any Israel-based rights group has labeled state actions as genocide. Both organizations invoked the "legal and moral duty" of Israel's Western allies to bring a halt to Israel's conduct.

At a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels July 15, the bloc opted not to take punitive action against Israel over widespread evidence of war crimes and atrocities committed in Gaza. For weeks, the EU had been discussing a range of potential actions, including: suspending its free trade agreement with Israel, an arms embargo, banning the import of products from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and ending visa-free travel for Israeli citizens. Instead of taking any of these measures—which advocates argue are necessary to avoid complicity in serious violations of international law—EU ministers pointed to an aid deal for Gaza struck on July 10 as justification for inaction. The details of that deal remain vague, and it has so far shown little on-the-ground impact. Amnesty International assailed the apparent quid pro quo as a "cruel and unlawful betrayal" of the Gazans.

The two most senior church leaders in the Holy Land on July 14 toured the Christian Palestinian town of Taybeh in the West Bank, which has been the scene of repeated attacks by Israeli settlers in recent weeks. In a joint statement, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, called the settler attacks a threat to Christian heritage, and demanded an investigation into the failure of Israeli authorities to respond to the ongoing assaults. Taybeh, the biblical Ephraim, has three churches—Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Melkite—whose pastors have issued an joint appeal calling on Israeli authorities to prevent further settler violence. They charged that the violence—including arson attacks that have threatened the Byzantine-era Church of Al-Khader (St. George)—has often taken place in the presence of passive Israeli soldiers. The settlers have also damaged the olive groves that are Taybeh's primary source of income, and are preventing farmers from accessing and working their lands. (VaticanNews, ToI, Al Jazeera)

Amid starvation and horrifically escalating atrocities in Gaza, Israel announces plans to build a giant concentration camp on the ruins of Rafah, an evident preparation for forced "transfer" of the Palestinian population from the Strip entirely—an idea Trump enthusiastically embraces. On the West Bank, amid growing settler attacks, more Palestinian land is enclosed behind separation walls built to protect Israeli settlements. Amid all this, Benjamin Netanyahu (wanted for war crimes by the ICC) meets with Trump in Washington to openly discuss the "transfer" plan—and announces that he has nominated the American president for the Nobel Peace Prize. In Episode 286 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that Trump could in fact get get the Nobel prize while facilitating genocide in Gaza and instating a mass detention state in the US—a fitting inauguration of the fascist world order.