All posts by Green Planet Monitor

Scholasticide

Scholasticide. Bombing schools, libraries and cultural centers. Killing students and teachers. Sound like genocide? It is. The GPM speaks about Israeli scholasticide in Gaza with the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, and with a Palestinian academic doing top-drawer scientific research in the West Bank — against all odds. And, we play back voices at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, talking about Israel’s attempt to pulverize the foundation of Palestinian society — its learning institutions and its children.


Wheels of Justice

Some thought it would never happen. This past week it did: criminal charges against Israeli leaders at the International Criminal Court, in The Hague. Israeli leaders can kiss their overseas travel plans goodbye. Days earlier, the International Court of Justice ordered it to halt its assault on the southern Gaza city, Rafah — an order Israel is now defying, with US and British backing. Which does international law serve – power or justice? What difference does it make? The GPM speaks with three international law and human rights scholars — Toby Cadman, William Schabas and Michael Lynk.


Scoundrel Time Revisited

European governments try to stop a Palestinian surgeon from talking about Israeli ultra-violence – and fail. No one seeks to stamp out free speech more zealously than the Germans. How to explain the passionate attachment Western powers have for the State of Israel? It’s not what you’d think, says an Anglo-German Jewish activist.


Gowns and Goons

Dutch students and staff stand up for Gaza at a university gathering, and get a hearing. Free speech in the Netherlands? Just for show, protesters say. Weeks later, peaceful campus encampments are broken up by riot police, called in by university officials. Protesters persevere, the university relents – so it seems. Democracy in the Netherlands? Maybe. The GPM covers pro-Palestine protest at Utrecht University.



Beautiful Resistance

For those who’ve never visited a Palestinian refugee camp, these are not dense tent or tin shacks encampments. They’re more like barrios; densely packed, tightly knit, fully functioning communities. On a very recent trip, the GPM visited one of Palestine’s largest refugee camps – Aida – in the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem.


Genocide by Home Demolition

In the seven months since Hamas’ daring incursion into southern Israel, the Israeli military has demolished over 300,000 Gazan homes — almost three-quarters of Gaza’s housing stock — killing an estimated 35,000, most of them women and children. Countless thousands of Gazans remain buried under the rubble of their humble homes. Armed with US bombs and missiles, Israel demolishes Palestinian homes in an instant. Palestinian suffering and trauma will endure for generations. What’s its aim? Ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the consolidation of the settler-colonial regime it established in 1948, says Israeli author and activist Jeff Halper. Halper is a founding member of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He’s also the author of a host of books, including An Israeli in Palestine (2010), War Against the People (2015), and Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism and the Case for One Democratic State (2021).


Land & People

Clinging to the walls of a fertile valley beneath the city of Bethlehem, a half dozen kilometers south of Jerusalem, alienated from the holiest of Palestinian towns by walls, barbed wire and a string of mega-colonial settlements, boxed in by settler-only roads and militarized checkpoints, Mazin and Jessie Qumsiyeh and their friends are planting native Palestinian seeds, growing fruits and vegetables, raising chickens, rabbits and fish, and offering up habitat for birds, insects and other wildlife. Rescuing their beloved landscape cruelly scarred by land thieves without true roots.


Dear Mr. Trudeau

Starvation and famine in Gaza. A UN expert speaks out. And, a group of Canadian lawyers demand that the Trudeau government stop supporting Israeli genocide.



Arms Bizarre & Killer Drones

Fear and loathing in Doha. Merchants of death and their state clients hobnob. An intrepid Canadian journalist captures it all on his smart phone. The GPM speaks with Dimitri Lascaris about his experience. On the other side of the planet, in Ottawa, the Canadian military shops for surveillance drones that can kill. We speak about killer surveillance drones with Matt Korda, from the Federation of American Scientists.


Intellectual Author

Consider all the injustice, death and destruction gone down in Palestine over the past 50, 75, hundred years. No one more responsible for all this misery than the British. The GPM speaks with British scholar Victor Kattan. Then, looming famine and genocide. Will the UK, US, Canada and other Western Powers act, or will they help Israel out? The GPM speaks with former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness.


Day of Two Suns

The Day of Two Suns: 70 years ago, the Pentagon conducted its biggest-ever atmospheric H-bomb test at Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, in the central Pacific. The 15-megaton Bravo shot spewed radioactive fallout on thousands of Marshallese, and long-lived radioisotopes all around the planet. Nearby Rongelap Atoll suffered the worst. Seventy years later, the people of Rongelap and Bikini have yet to go home.



The Fire Beneath

Living on the edge of inferno. Perfectly normal for the people of Iceland, where volcanoes and ground cracks spew red hot magma. The GPM speaks with an Icelandic Earth scientist. Magma and the rock it turns into can be put to work, pumping carbonated water into it, turning atmospheric CO2 into limestone, for good. We speak about this with a Columbia University geologist.


Microbe Magic

We’ve all heard it before: Eat less meat. People lucky enough to eat, should eat less of everything. Microbe magic! Having fun with microbes. Growing them! And, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Israel’s eternal, undivided capital. For Jewish Israelis, not for indigenous Palestinians.


Geology Futures

The geology of cities — built out of stuff mined from the ground. That’s where all cities will end up, broken down and fossilized. The GPM speaks with a geologist who gazes into the future. Some human-made molecules won’t break down either. Forever chemicals, they’re called, and they’re everywhere. In non-stick cookware, cosmetics and clothing. They last forever, and they’re toxic. On a happier note — the human microbiome. All those bacteria living on us and in us, delivering crucial services. Nothing more amazing than the bacteria in the gut of a pregnant woman, steering healthy fetal development.


Landmark Ruling in The Hague

A victory for South Africa and the Palestinian people at the International Court of Justice. State parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention will now have to act, starting with Israel’s friends. One of those friends is Canada, with famously double standards.


United States of War

The United States of War: The United States of America has been waging wars for all but about a dozen years in its 250-year history, some of them genocidal. The GPM speaks with David Vine, author of a book called The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. American military bases make its wars – and its nuclear weapons arsenal — possible. The Marshall Islands, in the middle of the Pacific, were the scene of 67 US nuclear weapon tests between 1946 and 1958, and continue to act as a bullseye for US intercontinental ballistic missiles.


Genocide in Gaza

South Africa versus Israel at the International Court of Justice. Lawyers for South Africa depose. And, weaponizing genocide justice. Western powers accuse official enemies of committing it, while defending their dearest friend and ally. A conversation with Canadian genocide scholar William Schabas.