Anti-War, Civil Rights Groups Rev Up (Week 24/25)

President Trump’s approaches to diplomatic peaceful solutions in the Middle East, Iran, Ukraine, and elsewhere have largely been failures in recent weeks. Why? Could it be that Reductions-in-Force at the U.S. State Department and USAID have had a deleterious effect?

Senators Believe Losses at USAID, State Department Crippling

According to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in an Oversight Hearing, the reform of the Department of State and elimination of USAID has caused harm for both diplomatic missions as well as overseas recipients of aid. However Deputy Secretary of State Michael Rigas didn’t think so. In an opening statement on July 16, 2025, he defends Secretary of State Rubio’s budget cuts and department-wide reorganization:

“Henceforth, every bureau and office will have a clear mission and purpose. We want to empower our ambassadors and diplomats in the field, and our regional bureaus in Washington to push forward the America First foreign policy and deliver results for the citizens of this nation. For too long, single-issue offices have mushroomed in number and influence, often distorting our foreign policy objectives to serve their parochial interests and slowing down our ability to function.”

At least 1700 experts, seasoned diplomats, translators, and foreign policy personnel have been laid off, which is causing harm to America’s reputation as a great civilizational power. Senators testified that there have also been at least 100 political appointees placed by the Trump Administration, as well as a new “fidelity precept” in guidance in hiring practices. Personnel must prove that they can readily adapt to Defense Department goals, rather than allow for the careful deliberation and sophisticated policy-crafting that helps support diplomatic dialogue.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia pointed out that the appointees had overseen the incineration of 500 tons of food aid, nutrition biscuits meant to be distributed to starving children overseas. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon asserts that the Department of State, like the other branches of government, exist to prevent an authoritarian state dominated by the Executive Branch. Instead, what is resulting is a lack of accountability for home and foreign offices and goals to prevent money laundering, prosecute war crimes, or improve energy resource policy. Chris Van Holland of Maryland and others point out that while it seems as if there is a huge workforce of 76,000 personnel, at least 50,000 are foreign nationals while many critical personnel in the United States are being fired, such as those who review passport fraud complaints, passport applications, help with refugee resettlement, language experts, etc.

Senator Corey Booker of New Jersey argues that the RIF is chaotic, cruel, and lacks decency. Rigas is not providing the real picture on career officers whose lives are now upend; of the impacts from rapid response officers laid off; of those whose firings left them without the resources to evacuate properly; and of those experts deemed no longer indispensable: experts enforcing the convention on prohibition of chemical weapons, preventing human trafficking in north Africa and Asia, and aid workers formerly with USAID. Booker emphasizes that what is meant to save taxpayer money lacks veracity when the biggest taxcuts in history are going to the billionaires or those earning more than $400,000 per year.

Michael Rigas’s only response to the incineration and spoilage of food meant to be distributed overseas was that “he would look into it” when in fact, as Tim Kaine pointed out, his office had already called his office about this and sent written inquiries several times. But Senator Cynthia Shaheen, Ranking Member from New Hampshire, also closed the July 16th Hearing with the request that a full inventory of the food that is being held by the Department of State and USAID be provided to the public so that other aid organizations might be allowed to redistribute the food rather than allow it to spoil or incinerate it.

The reduction in U.S. food aid distribution can also be viewed as more proof that President Trump does not care about the poor. That the African nations choose not to vote with the United States at the United Nations is beside the point—access to food is such a basic human right. But the statement by Rigas is that all aid is now supposed to be conditioned:

“As the Secretary recently noted, the countries that benefit most from our generosity often fail to recipricate that support. For example, sub-Saharan African nations voted with the United States only 29 percent of the time on essential UN resolutions in 2023, despite receiving billions in assistance paid for by the American people.”

Could Rigas be referring to resolutions passed by the United Nations General Assembly condemning the genocide taking place in Gaza? Has Trump taken cues from his buddy, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu, that collective punishment on Gaza and the West Bank is justified unless the Palestinian people resign from their terrorist-supporting political parties and agree to give up their lands and properties and whatever financial assets they have to any Jew demanding it?

Trump Administration Negotiating Peace at Gunpoint in Palestine

Negotiation at gunpoint is not much different from starvation and the “death traps” being created by the (misnamed) Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in which over 850 people have been murdered while trying obtain food. Backed by the U.S. and Israel, GHF is supposed to replace the aid distribution efforts of UNRWA and the countless aid trucks which have been held up along roads outside of Rafah since 2023. Created in May 2025, the GHF is supposed to alleviate the total blockade of aid imposed by Israel since early March.

Since October 7, 2023, food aid had been allowed to trickle in, with aid largely the responsibility of UNRWA, but the Israelis have repeatedly alleged that UNRWA is infiltrated by Hamas operatives, and used that as a pretext to bomb relief facilities. Now UNRWA watches helplessly as Palestinians are shot, bombed, suffocated, trampled over, or sickened while standing in line for hours waiting to be admitted into the GHF. But the IDF also kills other Palestinians standing in line for water and waiting for food elsewhere, so that at least a hundred more people die every day. According to the Middle East Eye:

“The United Nations human rights office says it has documented at least 875 Palestinians killed over the past six weeks near aid delivery points across Gaza, most of them in areas tied to Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)….674 deaths occurred near GHF distribution sites. Another 201 people were killed along aid convoy routes operated by the UN and other agencies, according to the official.”

Numerous GHF aid seekers have described the conditions going into the GHF relief centers as harrowing and “running the gauntlet.” There are very long lines forcing people to stand in line for hours just to receive a modest 25 pound cardboard box of food, less than the size of what one receives from food banks in the United States. One news clip from Middle East Eye features a London reporter interviewing passersby and asking them for comment on these Gaza aid boxes and how long they think it would last a family of 5-6 people.

“It looks more like a PR exercise than a humanitarian response” states one foreign news commentator

“Honestly when I looked at it, when you showed me, my heart’s broken, that my children might risk their life to get this box” states one mother

One child brightly described the contents in the food box, but eventually concluded it was inadequate for a family for very long, while the mother wiped tears from her eyes.

The consensus is that this is false hope, because these limited supplies of rice, flour, spaghetti, biscuits, and beans are also accompanied with very limited access in Gaza to clean water and electricity. There is no baby formula, baby food, nappies, menstrual pads, or soap. But this is because the Israelis do not even think the Palestinians are worthy as animals. Their lawmakers and the PM himself has made this clear repeatedly. Worse, the Western public and news media has turned a blind eye with regard to the IDF repeatedly shooting at children standing in long queus in Gaza. US mercenaries participating in security at the GHF relief centers are also firing upon Palestinians, according to whistleblowers reporting these incidents to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Former State Department official Annelle Sheline told Al Jazeera:

“In contrast to UNRWA, which had hundreds of distribution sites across Gaza, which allowed people to gain food and assistance much more easily from where they were and where they needed it, the GHF has only four distribution sites….hundreds of people have been killed, fired upon trying to gain aid. And the US is completely supporting this effort to not only murder Palestinians seeking aid, but to move Palestinians into these smaller and smaller areas…intended to facilitate this involuntary transfer of Palestinians elsewhere.”

In other words, Trump backs Netanyahu in fostering these concentration camp type conditions imposed upon Gaza which has intensified exponentially since October 7th. The Trump Organization itself even envisions a new “Riviera” on the Gazan coast and denounces the lives of the Palestinians as impoverished or that they deserve to be put out of their misery in one way or another. Trump always ignores who is actually conducting the killing and massacres in Gaza— not the helpless unarmed, but mostly the IDF.

“I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there and frankly who’s been really very unlucky. It’s been very unlucky. It’s been an unlucky place for a long time. Being in its presence just has not been good and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existance there.” —President Trump, February 5th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House

Trump’s speech, reprinted in full at the Independent.com, makes evident such high levels of insensitivity, superstitution, magical thinking and worse, that it is unimaginable that anyone except a war criminal such as PM Netanyahu could recently nominate Trump for a “Nobel Peace Prize.” Having not accomplished anything, Trump should have had the dignity and decency to turn him down, but instead, the vanity of gold brashly accepted while the real citizens of America bravely and boldly protested during Netanyahu’s third visit this year to the United States (July 7-9). Present were AMP, CAIR, CodePink, US Council for American Muslim Organization, and Rabbi Dovid Feldman.

According to American Muslims for Palestine, Trump is just being dragged into a new war envisioned by Netanyahu to attack Iran; so much for “Peace President” should a new war begin with Iran. He is outsmarted by Netanyahu in provisioning more death and starvation to Gaza paid for with 30 to 100 million dollars worth of US food aid and mercenary soldiers.

Dr. Osama Abu Irshaid stated at the Joint Press Conference Condemning Netanyahu’s Visit to the White House on July 7th, 2025:

“Humanitarian aid must flow through the United Nations, and international humanitarian agencies, not under the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has become nothing short of a death trap for starving civilians…Any genuine humanitarian corridor must comply with the principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality. If President Trump is serious about ending this genocide, his administration must stop funding the mercenary-backed GHF, open all crossings for UN aid, and force Israel to lift its inhumane blockade on food, water, medicine, and fuel in compliance with both US and international humanitarian laws.

“Furthermore, no foreign entity, neither Israel, the US, no regional government has the legal or moral right to dictate Gaza’s future. Only the Palestinian people can decide their future, their political future, and only they can rebuild their own homeland on their own terms. Any attempt to exclude the Palestinians from those negotiations or to impose a western designed postwar framework is a continuation of colonial violence.”

With a Congress largely captured by the Israeli lobby, and at the beck-and-call of its mastermind criminal Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is treated on these state visits as if he were the real king of America, it is as if the cries of the Moslem community (excepting the elitist leaders of the oil-rich states of the GCC) go largely unheard or are being sidelined. In fact since President Trump assumed office, the persecution against pro-Palestine voices has intensified. ICE or their masked representatives have detained a number of Arabic-Americans and foreign students, as documented at Status Coups News. Goaded by his billionaire supporters and his murderous exploits inside Iran, Netanyahu recently threatened the ICC through a British-Israeli defense lawyer, Nicholas Kaufman, that unless the ICC withdraws its arrest warrants, Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan and other ICC prosecutors would be “destroyed.”

Already the United States has repeatedly asserted (under Biden now under Trump) that the ICC and ICJ cases against Israel are “meritless.” Typical of the Israelis, there have been reports that Mossad was shadowing the ICC judges and their families. The ICC was also sent a letter in May 2024 signed by 12 GOP leaders including Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Tom Cotton (Arkansas), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee), Katie Britt (Alabama), Ted Budd (North Carolina), Kevin Cramer (North Dakota), Ted Cruz (Texas), Bill Haggerty (Tennessee), Pete Ricketts (Nebraska), Marco Rubio and Rick Scott (Florida) and Tim Scott (South Carolina), likely coordinated with the Lobby that “any arrest warrant” is a “threat to not only Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.” The letter contained explicit threats including that the ICC prosecutors would be targeted, sanctioned, and excluded from the United States.

Typical for Israeli deep-state, the actions have also included smears against ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan including accusations of sexual assault within months of recommending arrest for the Israel PM. Another person recently sanctioned is UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who Secretary Marco Rubio recommends for removal for daring to speak out against Israeli war crimes and genocide. This is because of a recent report she published about how complicit corporate America is in the ongoing Gaza genocide being conducted by Israel, concluding with recommendations that these corporations should desist in profiting from crimes against humanity.

Clearly advocating for peace, diplomacy, unconditional ceasefire, an end to the war, and human rights is more of a threat than ever to corporate America. This is why more than ever, grassroots citizens and watchdog groups are rising up to protest the insensitivity, broken promises, and ending of the social contract for America. One upcoming event is listed at 50501 as the July 17th “Good Trouble Lives On” named after the late Congressman John Lewis (Georgia) who helped organize the 1963 March on Washington. With some luck, perhaps the huge crowds will prove that they also are worthy of sanctions, starvation, medical deprivation, unemployment, and even more miserable, unlucky lives than those poor martyrs in Gaza.

Graphic from WorldBeyondWar.org, Published by AGN Editor