Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

The most important thing to make clear here is that anyone who suggests that Israel's onslaught in Gaza has anything whatsoever to do with hostages is either ignorant or lying. Reading by Tim Foley.

Zionism means exactly what we see before us today. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Nonstop violence and abuse. That's what Zionism means. And anti-Zionism means opposing these things. Reading by Tim Foley.

Things are so fucked up that the only way to get wounded Palestinian children in and out of the United States for medical treatment these days would be to disguise them as Israeli pedophiles. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's so revealing how Israelis keep begging Trump to end the killing in Gaza, because they understand that the US president has the power to force Israel to stop. It seems like Israelis understand this far better than Americans do. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do as much as you can to make the world a better place, and be content with your efforts regardless of whether or not they are successful. You'll never be able to save the world single-handedly no matter what you can do; all you can do is make one person's worth of effort. Make peace with that. Reading by Tim Foley.

The most culturally consequential fictional fantasy land ever authored is not Oz or Narnia or Middle Earth, but the liberal Zionist creation of Alternate Reality Israel. Reading by Tim Foley.

Probably goes without saying, but if Israel was on the side of truth and morality it would not have a military unit dedicated to manipulating the public narrative about actions which normal people would see as extremely evil. Reading by Tim Foley.

Stop platforming Israeli government officials and professional genocide apologists. Stop asking them what they think. Stop presenting their lies and manipulations as news stories. Stop asking them if they agree with their critics. Stop doing it. Stop. Reading by Tim Foley.

This isn't sad, it's enraging. And it deserves a response of unmitigated forceful aggression. Reading by Tim Foley.

During a speech in South Carolina, US Senator Lindsey Graham warned that God will "pull the plug" on Americans if they stop supporting Israel. Reading by Tim Foley.

The truth is that Palestinians will never be free as long as Israel exists as the hypermilitaristic racist settler-colonialist state that it is. Reading by Tim Foley.

Palestine is the moral issue of our time for the same reason if you saw someone in your family torturing another member of your family to death, it would be the most urgent matter happening in your life at that moment. You'd have other problems in your life, but that would come first. Reading by Tim Foley.

The IDF is of course claiming that al-Sharif was Hamas, because that's what they always do. They've been murdering a historically unprecedented number of journalists and defending their systematic effort to blind the world to their actions in Gaza by claiming that every journalist they kill is Hamas. The journalists are Hamas, the hospitals are Hamas, the UN is Hamas, the peace activists are Hamas, the demonstrations are Hamas, telling the truth is Hamas, human empathy is Hamas, objective reality is Hamas. It's all Hamas. Reading by Tim Foley.

Their goal is never to communicate or to have a conversation, it's to advance the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state. Reading by Tim Foley.

A note to future generations for historical record: Every pundit, politician and reporter of our time who claims they didn't know what was happening in Gaza is lying. They knew what was happening. They knew Israel was telling lies. They knew about everything. They had access to the same information as all the rest of us. We watched them make excuses and ignore indisputable facts every step of the way. There was absolutely no confusion about what they were looking at. It was all right out in the open. Don't let them get away with saying they didn't know. They knew. They knew the entire time. Brand them permanently with this shame, and force them to carry it with them for the rest of their lives. Reading by Tim Foley.

This genocide is one nonstop insult to our intelligence. It's actually degrading at this point. The lies Israel and its supporters have to pretend to believe are getting so ridiculous that supporting Israel is now an act of public humiliation and self-debasement. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's not okay to be a grown adult with internet access in August 2025 and still believe that what we are seeing in Gaza is not a genocide. It's not okay to be a grown adult with internet access in August 2025 and still believe this mass atrocity is about self-defense. It's not okay to be a grown adult with internet access in August 2025 and still believe that people in Gaza are not being deliberately starved by Israel. Reading by Tim Foley.

Reading by Tim Foley.

It wasn't that long ago when I sincerely wondered if we'd ever see Assange's face again, let alone in public, let alone in Sydney, let alone heading up what had to be one of the largest pro-Palestine rallies ever held in Australia. Dare to be encouraged. The light is breaking through. Reading by Tim Foley.

It was obvious in October 2023 that Israel intended to eliminate all Palestinians in Gaza, in part because you would never treat a population that way if you intended to leave survivors on your border. Because you'd know they'd seek revenge later on. Reading by Tim Foley.

A much more useful and interesting question than "What was Israel supposed to do in response to October 7?" is "What were Palestinians supposed to do in response to all of Israel's abuses prior to October 7?" Nobody's ever been able to give me a serious response to this question which doesn't entail mountains of lies and/or the dehumanizing expectation that Palestinians should accept conditions that none of us would willingly accept ourselves. Reading by Tim Foley.

This is humiliating for everything that passes for the "left" in mainstream US politics. Imagine being such a dogshit human being that you'd let Marjorie Taylor Greene be a better person than you. Reading by Tim Foley.

I will probably spend the foreseeable future periodically reminding the world that when everyone was angry at Israel for starving children in Gaza, Israel's apologists spent days loudly proclaiming that no, they were actually just starving SICK children. As their DEFENSE they said this. They actually believed this helped their case. Reading by Tim Foley.

People absolutely should admit that they were wrong, and they absolutely should be encouraged to do so, but they need to do it with humility, and with some outward expression of remorse. Reading by Tim Foley.

Israel apologists use language the same way malignant narcissists do. It's never to communicate or connect or find out what's true, it's always to manipulate and get things they want. Reading by Tim Foley.

Dear Mr Dreyfus, Today I saw the skeleton of a young man in Gaza picked clean by dogs, his arms and head intact but the rest of his body was bone and gristle. The colour of the bones was still a bright fresh red. He had been shot only days ago but the cats and dogs had got to him already and gnawed his bones clean. I have never seen anything like it. Every single day brings fresh horrors to my screen. Each time I think I can no longer be shocked, I am proven wrong. The image of that man made me gasp. It literally took my breath away. I then had to sit with my hands over my eyes while I waited for my heart and breath to come back to normal. When I close my eyes at night, all I can see is skeletal babies, their little mouths gaping open like baby birds waiting for a worm. I have started to dream about it. Each night I carry a child, a new child, a different baby, trying to find food for them. I wake up with a shadow of an ache in my arms because in my dreams their bones are as brittle as egg shells and I have to be so tender and careful. This. Must. Stop. All the waffle of who-did-what-and-when burns to dust when babies are starving. No amount of words can make that right. No amount of words can extinguish the images from my eyes, the ache in my heart, and the alarm going off in my head for those babies. Please do what you can! I beg of you. Please make it stop. It's all I can think about and I am not alone. Every day the numbers of people like me are growing. Every day more eyes snap awake.

As western pundits, politicians and celebrities suddenly pivot to denouncing Israel's genocidal atrocities after two years of silence, it's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago we were being told that saying "death to the IDF" is a hate crime. Reading by Tim Foley.

We've been asked to believe a lot of intensely stupid narratives throughout this genocide, but "it's actually HAMAS who's starving Gaza" has got to be the dumbest one yet. The fact that Israel and its supporters tried to blame the UN and Hamas for Israel's extensively documented starvation campaign makes it clear that these freaks intend to keep lying about this thing until the last dying gasp of the last Palestinian. Reading by Tim Foley.

Just so we're all absolutely clear about what we're watching here, Israel is intentionally starving civilians in order to bring about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and steal a Palestinian territory. That's all this is, and anyone who says otherwise is lying. Reading by Tim Foley.

Those tiny skeletal bodies you're seeing on your social media feed are the fruits of the empire. The shredded, eviscerated, decapitated children you've been seeing in footage from Gaza since 2023 are the fruits of the empire. This is known now, and it can never be unknown. Reading by Tim Foley.

The mass atrocity in Gaza is a genocide, obviously, and is an undisguised ethnic cleansing operation. But it's also a lot more than that. Reading by Tim Foley.

A doctor in Gaza named Nick Maynard reports that Israeli snipers are now shooting starving civilians in different body parts on different days, based on the injuries people show up with for treatment. There's a head day, a leg day, a genitals day, etc. Reading by Tim Foley.

Gaza isn't starving, it is being starved. And the people who are starving it have names and addresses. Reading by Tim Foley.

Saying you support funding Israel's "defensive weapons" while opposing sending it "offensive weapons" is as nonsensical as saying you would never give a mass shooter guns and ammunition, but you would give him body armor to keep him safe from the police. You're helping him commit mass murder just as much as you would be if you gave him guns and ammo. Kings didn't arm their knights with shields and armor so that they could live long and fulfilling lives, they did it so the knights would live long enough to kill the people the kings wanted killed. Reading by Tim Foley.

Of course they'd try to silence our speech. Of course they'd try to send our kids off to war with Iran. Of course they'd work to manipulate our government. Of course they'd pollute the information ecosystem with mountains of lies. They support a live-streamed genocide. They're bad people. Reading by Tim Foley.

It's so funny how Trump has stopped even pretending to be a populist. As soon as he was re-elected he was just "Yeah okay so Israel comes first and forget everything I said about free speech and the Ukraine war is continuing and there will be no Epstein investigation, fuck you." Reading by Tim Foley.

The Israel apologists have lost the argument. They might not know it yet, but they have. Public sentiment has turned irreversibly against them as people's eyes are opened to the truth of what's happening in Gaza, and more and more propagandists are choosing to rescue what's left of their tattered credibility instead of going down with the sinking ship. Reading by Tim Foley.

The Good Guys are building concentration camps in Rafah and massacring civilians trying to obtain food. The Good Guys are circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and telling us we're not allowed to oppose genocide. Yesterday I saw a little girl playing and I thought how nice it is that she has all her limbs and that she is not lying still covered in gray dust while her father screams and cries and calls out to God while trying to kiss her back to life. The world is changed now. The moon is covered with powdered buildings. The pigeons are weeping and the wind sounds like drones. Sometimes I cough and gray dust comes out. Sometimes it's a child's shoe. There's a dead donkey lying in my backyard that nobody wants to talk about. The Australians chat about real estate investments and how you can knock down one house and replace it with two houses and then make believe that neither house smells like corpses. The news man tells us the corporations are just dumping the products directly into the Pacific now while clinging tightly to the edge of the screen so the black hole doesn't pull him in. Everything's fine, the news man yells, and the system is working perfectly. We are the Good Guys after all. We are, after all, the Good Guys. Reading by Tim Foley.

If you want to really live an awake and inspired life, you've got to blaze your own trail. You've got to unlearn everything you've been told about what a life properly lived would look like, and write your own rules. Because the rules everyone else has been playing by were written by madmen. Reading by Tim Foley.

It really is nuts how a young person can fly to Israel and go play genocide games in Gaza for a while and then just fly back to their own country and expect to be treated like a normal member of society like it's some kind of genocide summer camp. Reading by Tim Foley.

As Australia's dear friend Israel announces its plan to move Gaza's entire population into concentration camps to prepare them for deportation and murder them if they refuse, the Australian government is laser-focused on tackling the problem of  — you guessed it  — antisemitism. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US has imposed sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for using her position to oppose the most thoroughly documented genocide in history. At the same time, the US has removed Syria's Al Qaeda franchise HTS from its list of designated terrorist organizations, because its leader successfully carried out the regime change in Damascus that the western empire had been chasing for years. At the same time, the UK has added nonviolent anti-genocide activism group Palestine Action to its list of banned terrorist organizations for opposing the Gaza holocaust. At the same time, the Israeli prime minister who is carrying out that holocaust has nominated the American president who is helping him perpetrate genocidal atrocities for a Nobel Peace Prize. At the same time, Israel has continued its ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza, while also arresting the Israeli journalist who helped expose the IDF officials who cooked up fake atrocity propaganda about burnt babies on October 7. At the same time, the Trump administration has enraged its MAGA base by concluding that Jeffrey Epstein had no client list for any kind of sexual blackmail operation and definitely committed suicide. The western empire is one nonstop insult to our intelligence. The peace advocates are terrorists, the genocide architects deserve peace prizes, the journalists are dangerous, and Epstein was just a wealthy socialite who made a few mistakes. Reading by Tim Foley.

Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok has gone full Nazi after changes were made to its programming to give it a heavier right wing bias, sparking international headlines with its tweets praising Adolf Hitler's treatment of Jews and babbling about Jewish conspiracies to spread anti-white hate. Reading by Tim Foley.

The US has removed Syria's Al Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organizations just days after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list of banned terrorist groups. Reading by Tim Foley.

Welcome to the empire, where peace activists are called terrorists, where hospitals are called military bases, where facts are called blood libel, where people opposing genocide are called hateful Nazis, where genocidal soldiers are a protected group and chanting for their death is a hate crime. Reading by Tim Foley.

Everyone's still talking about Bob Vylan, and rightly so. A crowd full of westerners happily being led through a chant of “Death, death to the IDF” at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival was a historical landmark moment for the 21st century, and the group's persecution at the hands of western governments is once again highlighting the way our society's purported values of free thought and free expression go right out the window wherever Israel is concerned. But one thing that's not getting enough attention is the fact that many, many other acts also spoke out in support of Palestine at that same festival, and that the crowd was full of attendees waving Palestinian flags. Supporting Palestine and opposing Israel's genocidal atrocities is just what's cool now. This is a massive cultural development, because it means we are seeing the emergence of actual, meaningful rebellion in western counterculture for the first time arguably since the Vietnam War. The artists and their fans aren't just talking the talk of sticking it to the establishment anymore. Reading by Tim Foley.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of knowing a manipulative narcissist has seen all these patterns before. The self-centeredness. The hypocrisy. The horrific abuse, followed by collapsing into blubbering victimhood the second the abuse is called out. The aggressive efforts to control the narrative and frame all critics and rivals as evil monsters. It's a very familiar playbook. Reading by Tim Foley.

Honestly at this point they should just get Netanyahu his own room in the White House and a desk in the Oval Office. The prime minister of Israel is taking his third trip to the White House in the five months since Trump has been back in office. I have immediate blood family members who I love with all my heart and visit less often than this. Reading by Tim Foley.

Do something every day to help undermine public perception of the empire. Draw attention to its abuses in places like Gaza. Get people laughing at its absurdities and hypocrisies. Spread distrust in the imperial propaganda services known as the western press by spotlighting their deceptions and manipulations. Help people to recognize all the ways their government is screwing them over for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Facilitate the collective dawning of the realization that everything westerners have been taught about their society and their world is a lie. Help people to understand that it really, truly does not need to be this way. Use every means at your disposal to help open up the next pair of eyelids to the ugly reality of the empire. Cultivate a habit of daily acts of sabotage against the imperial machine. There is always something you can do. You cannot defeat the machine by yourself, but you can do something every day to help tilt our society's collective consciousness toward tearing it down together. Reading by Tim Foley.

Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic Party primary in the New York City mayoral race after a frenetic smear campaign to portray him as an antisemite for his pro-Palestinian views, and now all the world's worst people are freaking out about it. Reading by Tim Foley.

The more exposed Israel's criminality becomes, the more absurd the arguments made in its defense are getting. Reading by Tim Foley.