- by Luis E. Sabini Fernández
Violence
In my personal life, I have always been skeptical of the guerrilla raids I have witnessed or heard about in the Southern Cone (although some were very sympathetic and virtually all involved enormous personal commitment, a "devotion to the cause"), because they seemed to me potentially autocratic, facilitating too quickly the enthronement of other leaders, always at the expense of the role of "ordinary people".
Such are my experiences with the Latin American guerrilla movement, undertaken with great courage and selflessness, but also with blindness. This is why I subscribed to the testimony of a former Cuban secret agent, the son of the famous Argentine guerrilla Ricardo Masetti, to whom Guevara had entrusted the mission of creating a revolutionary stronghold in his "continental" plans for South America—a mission he was barely able to accomplish. The son, Jorge Masetti, Argentine but raised in Cuba, was educated and trained as a revolutionary agent. Fidel wanted to achieve with the son what he had been unable to achieve with the father. And when he was fully "ready," he abandoned this path upon witnessing the series of failures of the Latin American guerrillas (and the almost inevitable next phase: common delinquency). He then commented:How lucky we didn't win!».
“Death Basements 3”, acrylic on canvas, 2021.
Palestine
All this preamble is to acknowledge that the violence existing in Palestine is different, radically different. The violence coming from below, that of the Palestinians, is little more than a response to the overwhelming Israeli machine.
The image of the child or children throwing stones at a tank is extraordinarily apt in illustrating the balance of power. Such self-defense, a desperate, civilian counter-attack, is like that of the young girl brandishing a pair of sewing scissors in the street because she couldn't take it anymore, and who was shot dead without hesitation (and unnecessarily). For Israel represses in this way: brutally, annihilatingly, outside the law, but with an excess of technical skill.
We are facing a peculiar treatment of the enemy. Netanyahu and other leaders have said it repeatedly: they are fighting animals, not humans—or rather, yes, humans, but Amalekites. And their god gave them permission, a few millennia ago, to kill them (see the Exodus (in the Bible).
It's a very long-term permit. And "perfectly valid" in the 21st century.
But who told Netanyahu that the Palestinians were Amalekites?
“Gaza Relief”, acrylic and other materials on canvas, 2015.
The behavior of the Israeli population is striking. Look at the settlers in the West Bank. Never authorized by the UN, yet settling de facto on territory internationally recognized as Palestinian, with the tacit consent of the Israeli government. A few years ago, they numbered in the tens of thousands and, in small groups protected by the army, approached Palestinian villages and stoned them, damaging olive and lemon groves. With axes or rocks. Sometimes there were injuries. Today, the settlers number in the hundreds of thousands, still protected by the army, and in armed gangs of tens or hundreds, they raze Palestinian villages, destroying homes, infrastructure, crops, vehicles, and sometimes the bodies of Palestinians they find in their path. Seeking to instill terror.
Recently, the army took the initiative: under the pretext of searching for "terrorists," it destroyed entire neighborhoods inhabited by unarmed Palestinians: homes, clothing, gardens, toys, books, utensils—all the material elements of social life. Families are left homeless, without possessions, often without loved ones, murdered in a daily dose of horror.
This is practically the "scorched earth" policy attributed to certain invasions such as that of the Huns, "barbarians" of the 4th and 5th centuries AD.
The Israeli military has even established standards: to eliminate a small guerrilla, they allow up to 15 civilians killed; for a guerrilla leader, up to 100 collateral victims.
For decades, we have seen the effects of Yinon map, presented in the early 1980s. Oded Yinon proposed fragmenting neighboring states into smaller political units: Lebanon into two or three; Egypt into five or six; Iraq into three; Sudan into two… and so on.
Israel, openly or under cover of structures like Daesh, has seen its objectives gradually realized: Libya, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, Palestine have been devastated by its policy of attrition, always materially supported by the USA, which has played the role of tow truck and supplier of the unstoppable Israeli machine.
This unconditional US support for Israeli geopolitics can be explained in several ways; there are certain parallels between the historical developments of the US and Israel, albeit in very different historical contexts. One relatively common religious basis is that Protestants are the Christians who re-evaluated certain aspects of the Old Testament, which is the ideological core of Judaism. And it was they who colonized North America, exterminating the indigenous population. Bible in hand.
But above all, because at the end of the Second World War, when the USA broke its ties with the obsolete League of Nations (which disappeared in 1946) and founded "their" UN (October 1945), the WASP elite, founders of the USA, had already been partially replaced by the Jewish elite through a series of stratagems: think tanks, The Jewish intelligentsia has an increasingly important weight; the Federal Reserve (Jewish financial capital became the majority among the ten founding banks in 1913); Hollywood (six of the seven major companies would be owned and run by Jews in the 30s, so that more and more images of the USA would be produced with a Jewish gaze); and above all thanks to the costly financing of US political personnel, for which AIPAC was founded in 1951.2 Without these subsidies, the social integration of most of these legislators would be very difficult.
This is why one of the most simplistic and erroneous images used by some international political analysts has been, and still often is, that of the "US fleet submarine" when talking about Israel in the Middle East. The image (tail wagging the dog), very well known in American critical thought, according to which the tail makes the dog wag, seems more appropriate.
Two recent events, in the orbit of the UN, that old instrument which the USA arrogated to itself at the end of the Second World War to order and/or administer the world, show us how much Israel is leading the way, even changing the modalities of domination.
Untitled, 2020.
Until very recently, the powers that be used to hiding their faces, or their fangs, and concealing their actions under the guise of a "will to peace," a "pursuit of democratic goals," "conciliation," and "smoothing over difficulties." After all, the result of the Second World War in 1945 was victory against all forms of dictatorship (there remained, "behind the curtain," a supposedly proletarian dictatorship, and therefore completely different from those known until then; there also remained Franco's in Spain, but the latter, like so many others in "Latin America," was part of that pragmatic Yankee policy of taking care of the son of a bitch if he is "one of us").
In other words, the defense of democracy had its difficulties, but it was still invoked.
1. The Security Council resolution of 11 November 2025
The resolution "on the conflict in Gaza" completely exonerates Israel. It tacitly accepts the Israeli version of Israel as "a victim of Hamas terrorism," completely ignoring the decades of blockade, suppression, and abuse that shaped the events of October 7, 2023.
Israel thus suffers no political (or economic) damage from the resolution.
They will not even have to answer for the mass murders and their monstrous "equivalents" in human lives, nor compensate for the brutal damage inflicted on a territory that appears crushed and devastated as rarely before. They will also not have to bear the costs of restoring the land, housing, communication and sanitation networks, or rebuilding hospitals, not to mention the thousands of human beings broken simply by living in the infernal cycle created by Israel.
The US president, who aspires to maintain the hegemony that was entrusted to them in 1945, now claims a virtual presidency or government of the Gaza Strip, for – he proclaims – its reconstruction, always in search of prosperity (the only positive thing in this approach would be to remove Israel's hold on this territory, but I put it in the conditional, because it is not exactly Trump who decides).
The plan allocates two years for urban and real estate reconstruction. Given the visible damage, its extent and scale, this timeframe seems insufficient.
However, it does have one positive aspect: the idea of the forced exile of Gazans, so strongly promoted by the Israeli government, has been abandoned. On the contrary, at least in words, the resolution expressly declares the desire to see the historical inhabitants remain in the Gaza Strip.
In any case, the plan makes no secret of its ambitions to business attracting significant capital to create comfort zones, not specifically for the Gazans, but for the billionaires that Jared Kushner is so keen to attract in the future tourist complex from Gaza.
We cannot forget that surveys have confirmed the presence of at least gas in the Mediterranean, near the Gaza Strip. And that the transnational and imperial power that Trump and Blair – no less – seek to embody has a marked preference for their own prosperity.
The UN doesn't hold Israel accountable. It's always absolved of everything. By birthright, one might assume. But moreover, in practice, the UN is re-establishing outright colonialism: an imperial power, the USA, is appointing Trump and Blair as "king and viceroy" of these territories, in order to reinstate the colonial framework. Only, this isn't Israeli colonialism, but American colonialism.
The task that the colonizing leaders have set for themselves is arduous: they intend to "changing Palestinian mindsets and narratives", in order to persuade, it seems, these savages"the benefits that peace can bring» (sic!).
If these self-proclaimed moral guardians—Blair and Trump—would want to proclaim the virtues of peace, they should urgently address themselves to the Zionist political movement, which, for a century, has consistently followed the path of violence, not peace, the path of war and conquest, invading lands occupied for millennia, based on dubious biblical texts. They deliberately conflate religion and legend with documentary history.
The resolution of November 11, 2025 was adopted by the expanded UN Security Council, which no longer includes only the five original members (USA, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China), but also the current members: Argentina, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey, Indonesia and Germany.
Only two abstentions (with little justification) came from Russia and China. None of the 15 national representatives asked why Israel could get away with violent, racist, and genocidal behavior with impunity.
"Detained", 2024.
The clear-sighted and courageous individuals, appointed or officials of the UN itself, over time, such as Francesca Albanese, Susan Akram or Richard Falk before them, and even Folke Bernadotte at the very beginning of the UN, and so many others, are not enough to counterbalance the imperial, then neo-imperial, role that the UN continues to play, despite restrictions and budget cuts.
2. The vote of November 21, 2025 against torture
On November 21, 2025, the United Nations General Assembly issued a statement against the use of torture. The plenary session included 176 national delegations, and the resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority (there were four abstentions, including those of Nicaragua and Russia, which raises numerous questions). However, it also provoked strong opposition from three national delegations: the USA, Israel, and Argentina. These countries defended precisely that: the use of torture.
Dark clouds hang over our present: not only is torture still used, but some advocate it, like dictatorships such as the famous "Latin American" dictatorships of Trujillo or Pinochet, or that of the Shah of Iran and, especially today, the highly sophisticated ones of Israel and its very rational system of domination which includes so many types of torture.
Undated, charcoal and pastel drawing.
Our cultural fabric is so shattered that an Israeli military prosecutor, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who, after ignoring so much previous abuse and torture, recently chose to criminalize five soldiers from "the most moral army in the world" for inserting metal tubes into the anus of a Palestinian prisoner and (obviously) harming him. The world's media are reporting on the prosecutor's arrest, but not on the Palestinian's health (or death); the prosecutor herself has been imprisoned.
Netanyahu condemned the release of the video made by Tomer because, of course, "it damages the image."
What matters to Netanyahu is "the image" and not the (seriously damaged) reality.
What happened to Tomer is a clear example of the behavior adopted and defended by the governments of the USA, Israel, and Argentina.
From shame, even if only as a stance, we have moved to "great honor". The "legitimate" ones torture and not only do they not dishonor themselves, dishonoring us all, but they are even proud of it.
source: Tlaxcala
Illustrations: works by the Palestinian painter Mohamed Saleh Khalil, Ramallah