Some are praising Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, as well as Kier Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, for saying they will recognize Palestine as a state. For Starmer, it is conditional on Israel agreeing to a ceasefire. If it does, the UK will back down once again and allow Israel to continue its colonial project. But anyone who has followed this issue for any length of time understands how untruthful and unrealistic this proposal is, when one considers the facts on the ground.

Israel has steadily stolen land from historic Palestine since the Nakba in 1948, when Zionist militias violently expelled Palestinians from their lands. In fact, Gaza is largely made up of refugees who suffered from this blatant act of ethnic cleansing. After dismantling its illegal settlements in Gaza in 2005, it blockaded the enclave up to the present day, trapping over 2 million people in a concentration camp where food was restricted and where they were routinely bombed and surveilled by the Israeli occupation forces.

Israel has funded and supported illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank for decades which has carved up the territory into isolated islands. Palestinians there have been terrorized by violent settlers for years. Separated from their farmlands and other villages by checkpoints and walls. Forced to use separate roads from Jewish Israelis. Subjected to military tribunal, night raids, random abductions and pogroms led by settlers and protected by the IDF.

So, what will this Palestinian “state” look like? Israel has already said it would not recognize a Palestinian state. But even if it did, it would be an ungovernable group of Bantustans. And Israel would still enforce its will over the land and the skies. Is this what they mean by sovereignty?

The two state “solution” has always been a lie. It has always been a way to justify colonial dispossession of the Palestinians. Since its founding, Israel has been illegal. It has no right to the land. And its construction of an elaborate apartheid system that rivels apartheid South Africa is a testament to this. The international players, which operate from the mindset of European colonial empire, have used this supposed “peace process” as a ruse to allow Israel to complete its own colonial settler project.

Let’s be clear, Carney and the other European leaders do not care about the mass murder of civilians in Gaza by the Israeli and American regimes. They care about their reputations and the very real possibility that they will be found complicit in this genocide. After all, it took them nearly two years to finally make a peep. Two years of carpet bombing, shootings of toddlers and mass starvation. Two years of complete destruction of hospitals, bakeries, shelters, universities and nearly every structure in the enclave. Two years of Israeli politicians and media openly using genocidal rhetoric. Two years of Israeli soldiers brazenly posting their crimes online for all to see. And it was the most feeble and mealymouthed peep imaginable.

It is time for the two state lie to be buried in the dustheap of history where it belongs. The only solution is a one state solution. And this is not a pipedream. Israel and Palestine are already one state. An apartheid state that is engaging in genocide of its indigenous population. The solution is to end this genocide and dismantle the infrastructure of apartheid. The solution is for there to be a reckoning for war criminals and genocidaires. For a Truth and Reconciliation process. And for all residents of historic Palestine to have full citizenship with equal rights. The solution is for Western political leaders to finally listen to their own constituents and end this charade once and for all. Anything less than this is a cynical ploy aimed at whitewashing the political image of the few, while millions of people stand on the precipice of annihilation.

Kenn Orphan, July 2025

Why are so many apologists for Israel’s genocide in Gaza suddenly changing their tune now? Why are political opportunists like Hillary Clinton suddenly choosing to highlight the human-made famine? Because they have seen the photographs of skeletal babies too. But this is not about empathy or solidarity. This is about reputational damage control.

Clinton has said nothing about Israel’s blockade, or the flattening of Gaza, or the thousands killed or maimed by Israeli carpet-bombing which far outdoes previous wars. She has said nothing about her own complicity or her condescending condemnation of student protestors as they spoke out against an obvious genocide.

Clinton, along with Barrack Obama, Keir Starmer, Mark Carney, Emmanuel Macron and Hakeem Jeffries know that their tepid lamentations will have absolutely no material effect. Strongly worded tweets mean nothing when policy remains virtually unchanged. When there are no sanctions or consequences to actions. They know that Israel enjoys unprecedented impunity as it carries out the Final Solution in Gaza. They know that it is already too late for thousands of Palestinian children who can never recover from this imposed starvation even if food and formula were allowed in. The only thing they care about are their rancid reputations.

Media figures like Piers Morgan and Bari Weiss are also doing reputational damage control. Their ghoulish complicity in the 21st century’s worst crime against humanity is on the record. The internet never forgets. But they desperately want us to do just that as they construct a facsimile of a humanity they never possessed to begin with.

No one is saying that people can’t change their minds or that those with enormous influence should remain silent. But there is a difference between changing your mind based on learning the facts and changing your message based on reading the room.

All of these people knew exactly what Israel was doing from the very start. They heard Israeli politicians openly using genocidal language and incitement. They saw the mass graves and rubble. They witnessed the torture of Palestinian prisoners, the targeting of medical staff and journalists, the bombing of hospitals, bakeries and water treatment facilities. They heard the cries of little Hind as she called emergency services to save her from an Israeli tank that murdered her family and eventually murdered her.

The role these people played in providing cover for genocide, or even cheering it on, should never be forgiven. They must never have a days rest as long as they live. And in a sane world, they should face charges for their complicity in this genocide, the very worst crime imaginable against humanity.

Kenn Orfanos, July 2025

Everyone likes to think they would have saved people from the Nazis. That they would have hid people from them or even fought them. That they would have risked everything, even their own life. But the truth is much darker.

The prism of distance is a drug. Distance from a place. Distance from a time. It entrances us with a romanticized picture of history and of choices. The people in these stories become archetypes. Not flesh, blood and bone humans like us. They are devoid of the shadows that we contend with. Every decision is a moral and courageous moment to prevail over dire circumstances. But if so many of us fear the stigma or association with being labeled a bigot for simply opposing the murder of children, how can we believe we would have opposed the Nazis when they rolled into our village or city?

This drug is one of the most potent on earth, because it can be used by leaders or influential people to ignore the current reality in exchange for some imagined moral greatness. But every day we face the same choice. To be human, or to dissolve any trace of it.

Decades after those camps were closed and the dead disintegrated into dust, new camps have been opened. Different in optics, but exact in intent. Annihilation of that other we have been conditioned to dehumanize. We exchanged their insignias for new ones, but the monsters are the same. Only this time, we are on the wrong side of that red line.

Gaza is close to being erased. Almost every building has been reduced to rubble. Tombs for their inhabitants. The people who have survived thus far are being massacred every single day as they are starved by the Israeli regime. Corralled like cattle into ever shrinking pens, desperate for food or water, but really just waiting to be slaughtered.

We watch it all being normalized as it unfolds. The extermination process being presented as “humanitarian aid.” And we are scolded if we simply say what we see with our own eyes.

Gaza gives us a glimpse into the abyss of our deepest fears. A terrifying look at how depraved our leaders can actually be. How comfortable they are with evil. A clear window that shows us how shallow and meaningless our civilization is when its leaders are asked, begged, pleaded with to do the most simple of things. To stop killing people. To stop killing children. Or to just stop arming the assailants.

When this is over. And it will be over at some point. Some will try to understand our powerlessness in the face of such blatant evil. Such raw sadism. Others will try to rewrite the script. What many of us have found out, to our everlasting horror, is that most of us wouldn’t be the hero in a story about fighting fascism or state brutality. Not necessarily the villain. Maybe not the collaborator. But certainly not the ones who risked it all.

Some of us will carry on with our lives as if nothing ever happened. But there are many of us who will carry it all with them to the grave. One thing is certain, none of us will ever be the same again. The relationships that have been severed. The families that have been split. The friendships that have been broken. None of them can be mended after this. Even the indifferent ones will taste life differently. Bitterly. Indeed, Gaza will haunt us all, every one of us, for every single day we have left on this earth.

Kenn Orphan, June 2025

I remember reading about the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, and the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II when I was a child. The photos depicted horrendous human and animal suffering. Yet, we were told it was all “necessary” to defeat German fascism and Japanese imperialism.

It was years later that I discovered this to be a lie. That there was no need to incinerate civilians. That in so many cases, the atrocities that took place were purely geopolitical strategies or merely out of some sadistic curiosity.

To be sure, I do understand the satisfaction many have at seeing an oppressive regime, belligerent bully or a brutal empire getting a taste of what they have dished out to millions of people. And I have no sympathy for the political leaders who engage in or cheer on genocide.

But war has always been at the pleasure of the powerful, and it is always the working class on either side who pay the ultimate price. They are the pawns. The disposable ones. The faceless who are erased from history or who get statues and memorials raised in their honour while the powerful place wreaths upon them and pontificate about their “sacrifice.” Meanwhile, arms dealers and weapons manufacturers lay on beaches in the riviera, sipping cocktails and counting their blood-soaked cash.

In our age, every war is a war against our biosphere. Every jet, tank and drone is fueled with the primordial blood of this planet. Every bomb inflicts a deep wound in the living loam of this world. A massacre not just of human beings, but of animals, trees, insects and all manner of life. Indeed, every war is an unforgiveable crime against the earth itself. And at some point, she will deal with her abuser.

This is not to shame anyone who feels a sense of comeuppance at some of the images and videos we are seeing. And the oppressed have every right to resist their oppressor in whatever means they have at their disposal. I understand this even more so after bearing witness to nearly two years of an ongoing genocide.

But at some point we must understand that if our species continues down this path, then war will eventually end us all.

*photo is of the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Tehran.