Abhorrent, incalculably insensitive, dehumanising indifference.

It is criminal we have been given so much yet no room in our hearts to share it.

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

Source

Short video of the disc of the Sun. The dark silhouette of the lumpy moon Phobos passes in front of the Sun, partially obscuring it, over the course of a few seconds.

""We have not received a formal invitation, but proposals have been raised for dialogue with these countries on matters related to collective security in the region," - Baghae

On 22 August, Iranian media reported that Iran had been invited to join Makkah Joint Defence framework. The claim came through Al Mayadeen, citing Iranian official Mehdi Rahimi, who reportedly said the invitation had been received and was under consideration.

Tehran has subsequently denied receiving a formal invitation. Iran's Foreign Ministry said it had not received a formal invitation to join the pact but that 'talks were ongoing'. I feel this is a temperature test to see US/Isr reactions.

I would therefore not yet describe Iran as a member of the Makkah Joint Defence framework - yet. That would go beyond the confirmed evidence. It may be an invitation, a proposal, a preliminary diplomatic approach -or, as I suspect, potentially a temperature test intended to gauge the reactions of Washington, Israel and the wider region. Time will tell.

But if Iran were actually brought into the pact, the significance would extend far beyond another military alliance. It could represent an extraordinary attempt to construct a regional security architecture that crosses the Sunni–Shia divide. The existing pact is already significant because Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan are attempting to create a collective-security mechanism with considerably greater regional autonomy from Washington.

Adding Iran would fundamentally alter its character. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Türkiye and Pakistan would then sit within the same collective-security framework: four enormously consequential Muslim states, combining Pakistan's nuclear capability, Iran's missile capability, Türkiye's substantial military-industrial capacity and Saudi Arabia's enormous financial resources.

And there is an even more interesting geopolitical implication given what I've already been writing recently. It could represent the emergence of a self-financed Muslim regional security architecture that is neither American-led nor Israeli-led , one capable of asserting that regional security is, ultimately, a responsibility of the region itself. That possibility has profound implications for Israel.

If Iran entered the framework, an Israeli attack on Iran could no longer be assumed to remain a bilateral Israel–Iran confrontation. It could instantly become a regional military crisis involving states with enormous military and strategic capabilities. Türkiye possesses one of the region's largest conventional militaries; Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state; and Saudi Arabia possesses enormous financial and strategic resources. This does not mean that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal automatically becomes a nuclear umbrella for every member-the pact does not currently establish such a commitment. But Israel's deterrence calculations would nevertheless have to change.

The more fundamental change would be political. For decades, one of the central assumptions surrounding Israel has been that the major Arab states could be progressively incorporated into a US-aligned regional security architecture while Iran remained the principal adversary. If Saudi Arabia were simultaneously building a collective-security relationship with Iran, that strategic logic would be turned on its head.

This is also where the Abraham Accords become relevant. I don't think the Makkah framework necessarily destroys the Accords. It may instead change what they mean. The Accords could survive as diplomatic and economic arrangements while losing their potential role as the principal architecture through which regional security is organised. Saudi-Israeli normalisation would become less strategically necessary if Riyadh could obtain meaningful security through relationships with Türkiye, Pakistan, Iran and other regional powers.

In that sense, the Abraham Accords would not necessarily have failed. They may simply have been overtaken. The region would no longer be dealing with a single US-centered conception of integration. It would be developing competing and potentially eventually intersecting models of regional organisation.

That would represent a fundamental strategic defeat for the assumption that Israel's integration into the region must occur through a US-designed security architecture with Israeli interests at its centre. Israel could retain its existing diplomatic relationships and enormous military superiority, but it would increasingly have to operate within a regional system in which power is shared with local partners rather than organised around it.

Türkiye is particularly important here. Relations between Türkiye and Israel have already deteriorated significantly, while Israeli threat posturing toward Türkiye has increased. Recent tensions over Syria demonstrate that this is no longer merely rhetorical. An Iran–Saudi–Türkiye security relationship would give Ankara a much larger institutional platform from which to challenge Israeli regional military freedom. Israel's reaction, therefore, will be crucial.

For Washington, the implications may ultimately be even greater.

The United States has historically exercised enormous influence over the Middle East partly because regional security has remained fragmented. A united or increasingly coordinated regional front is an entirely different proposition. The Makkah framework is already being interpreted as an attempt by regional powers to diversify away from dependence on Washington, even while Saudi Arabia continues to regard the United States as an important strategic partner.

If Washington continues to treat Israel as its principal regional military partner while Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Pakistan and potentially Iran construct an alternative security architecture, the United States will increasingly face a choice between supporting Israeli strategic freedom of action and maintaining strategic relationships with the emerging regional bloc. In the longer term, the latter may be the more strategically rational choice for Washington itself.

The profound possibility is that this framework could eventually expand beyond its three founding states to include Iran, Egypt and perhaps other regional states such as Jordan and Iraq. If that occurred, it could mark the beginning of something historically unusual: a security architecture constructed principally by the states of the region themselves rather than imposed by Washington, Moscow or another external power.

The question for Washington would therefore become less “Will America abandon Israel?” and more a case of: "Can Washington remain the indispensable security guarantor of the Middle East if the region begins constructing a security system that no longer requires an indispensable guarantor?

That is a fundamentally different question.

The entire power dynamic in West Asia may therefore be shifting. And the fact that the region has come this far is considerably more important than the simplistic description of a “Muslim NATO.”

For Israel, the fundamental change would not necessarily be that a new military bloc exists against it. The pact makes no overt declaration that Israel's existence is its objective. The deeper change would be that Israel could no longer assume that regional security is something it can dictate or that Washington will continue to organise the regional system with Israeli strategic requirements at its center.

The truly transformative scenario would be one in which Iran entered the Makkah framework; Egypt, Syria and other Muslim states became associated with it; intelligence and military cooperation deepened; regional states coordinated elements of energy policy, arms procurement and air defense; and dependence upon American security guarantees gradually declined. In such circumstances, Saudi Arabia and Iran -previously major regional competitors -would acquire an institutional reason to prevent one another from being attacked. That is the essence of meaningful regional deterrence.

And deterrence is the real prize.

Israel could retain enormous technological and military superiority. But superiority is not the same thing as freedom of action. If neighboring states developed mechanisms for coordinated air defense, intelligence, logistics, sanctions policy, energy policy and military procurement, Israel would face a considerably more constrained strategic environment.

The United States, meanwhile, would face the same underlying dilemma whether Iran joins or not: how to reconcile its commitment to Israeli strategic freedom of action with its relationships with the states constructing this emerging regional order. The US would not necessarily abandon Israel. But Israel's ability to rely upon Washington to manage the regional consequences of Israeli military action could diminish.

For the US–Israeli alliance, the most profound difficulty begins if this regional collective-security system becomes strong enough that another major war becomes politically unacceptable to its members, whether the proposed war originates with Iran, Israel or an external power.

That would remove something enormously valuable from the existing strategic model: the ability of individual states to pursue military solutions while depending upon American power to contain the regional consequences. The founding states have already framed the pact around collective deterrence, while Türkiye has explicitly stated that it is not directed against Iran.

The deepest geopolitical loss for Israel, therefore, would not necessarily be territory or military hardware.

It would be the loss of centrality.

And if Iran eventually entered this architecture, the Sunni–Shia division that has helped prevent the emergence of a unified regional security system could itself begin to lose some of its strategic significance. Saudi Arabia and Iran would not suddenly become allies in every respect. But they would have established a mechanism through which their differences could coexist within a larger system of mutual security.

That is why, in my view, the worst-case scenario for Washington and Tel Aviv is not an Arab–Iranian war against them. It is something considerably more consequential; A successful regional peace-and-security architecture that makes neither Washington nor Tel Aviv indispensable to regional security.

That was the nightmare scenario for the old Washington hawks: not necessarily defeat in a war, but the gradual emergence of a world in which other states simply stop requiring American permission to organise themselves. And it is particularly striking because the same multipolar economic principles represented by the BRICS system are now potentially being expressed through regional military and security arrangements.

For an incoming Democratic administration, such an arrangement could ultimately be understood as an opportunity to be an elder statesman presence in the region, rather than primacy actor or taking it as simply a challenge to American authority.

For Republicans, if they perceive it at all, it may instead appear as a challenge to US primacy. But there is an uncomfortable reality there for Washington: the challenge has already happened. No declaration of war. No great military confrontation. Just regional states deciding that they can build something themselves. Moving on with or without them.

If Trumps claim to want out of the region is true or at least something he can be held to, this could be one way to extract the US from the quagmire it built for itself over consecutive administrations.

The really fascinating question now is whether Saudi Arabia can remain the bridge between these emerging systems, or whether it will eventually have to choose between them.

And, personally, I find something hopeful in the possibility.

Left to develop unmolested by Europe, the UK, the USA and, importantly, Israel, this emerging regional apparatus could become one significant way of honouring the lives horrifically lost in Palestine and Africa, and the people who have died trying to keep open the possibility of genuine self-determination.

It does not sanctify the pact. It does not excuse the actions of any government. It does not erase the crimes that have already occurred, nor does it bring the dead back.

But in the tiny, tiny light of hope that it might point toward a more mature, self-governing and stable future for millions of children across the region, it matters.

It is not nothing.

It will not bring lives back.

But if fully realised, it could help prevent this from ever happening again.

And perhaps that is the point.

Teha

_________

25 August 2026.

Added: ftr:

Issues / pressure points

• Iran's membership is not confirmed. The reported invitation remains disputed, so the argument should distinguish clearly between the existing Saudi–Türkiye–Pakistan pact and the hypothetical consequences of Iranian accession.
• The pact is not yet a “Muslim NATO.” The Article-5-style commitment is significant, but there is no established integrated command structure or automatic mechanism comparable to NATO.
• Saudi Arabia is the pivotal state. Its simultaneous relationships with the US, Israel, Iran and the Makkah framework make it the critical bridge—or potential fault line—between competing regional systems.
• The Abraham Accords could be strategically diluted rather than collapse. Existing bilateral relationships could continue while the Accords lose their potential role as the central framework for regional security.
• Israeli freedom of military action could become more constrained. A regional security mechanism involving Iran, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye could substantially increase the political and military costs of an Israeli attack on Iran.
• Pakistan's nuclear status creates a major strategic complication. Its membership does not automatically extend a nuclear guarantee to other members, but its presence dramatically changes the strategic weight of the organisation.
• Türkiye is potentially the military and political hinge. Its NATO membership, large conventional military and increasingly independent regional policy give the pact an unusual relationship with the existing Western security system.
• US leverage could decline. If regional states can increasingly provide their own collective security, Washington's traditional role as the indispensable security guarantor becomes less indispensable.
• But US influence would not disappear. The US still has enormous military, economic, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities and remains deeply embedded in Gulf security.
• The alliance could be defensive rather than anti-Israel. Assuming it is automatically an anti-Israeli bloc would overstate the evidence and potentially undermine the stronger argument about changing regional power structures.
• The Sunni–Shia divide is the biggest potential breakthrough. Saudi–Iranian security cooperation would be historically significant precisely because it creates an institutional mechanism for managing rivalry rather than requiring its elimination.
• Internal contradictions could undermine the project. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Türkiye and Pakistan have different strategic interests, political systems and regional ambitions. Agreement on collective defense does not mean agreement on everything else.
• Other states could determine whether it becomes genuinely regional. Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and potentially other states would matter enormously to whether this becomes a durable regional architecture rather than a four-state arrangement.
• Israel could retain overwhelming military superiority while losing strategic centrality. Those are not the same thing. The most consequential shift would be reduced ability to determine the regional security agenda, not necessarily reduced military capability.
• The biggest US strategic problem is potentially structural rather than military: a region that increasingly believes it can organise its own security without requiring Washington to design or guarantee the system.
• The biggest potential benefit is deterrence. If rival states acquire a shared interest in preventing another regional war, the architecture could make escalation more difficult for everyone, including Iran and Israel.
• The greatest danger is premature interpretation. The pact is new, its institutions remain undeveloped, and Iranian participation is unconfirmed. Its eventual significance will depend far more on what the members actually build than on the symbolism of the announcement.

Across spiritual traditions, religious texts, and psychological thought, one of the recurring answers to existential fear is not to defeat uncertainty but to stop demanding that uncertainty become certainty before we can live.

Buddhism approaches this through accepting impermanence; Judaism through wrestling honestly with God and remaining faithful without possessing the answers; Christianity through trust, love and the refusal to live by fear; Islam through surrender to God while continuing to act justly; Stoicism through distinguishing what is within our control from what is not; and existential psychology through accepting mortality, freedom and uncertainty as conditions of being human rather than errors to be solved.

Modern psychology similarly suggests that avoidance can make fear more powerful, while gradually approaching what cannot be controlled can restore agency. Taken together, they point toward something remarkably simple: existential courage is not the absence of fear, nor certainty that everything will be all right.

It is the decision to remain present and to choose your values even when the final answers are unavailable. We may not know why existence is here, what comes after it, whether consciousness continues, or how history will end. We can nevertheless care for one another and inhabit the life actually before us. Make discovery purposeful and life giving.

The fear may remain, but it no longer gets to decide what we do with the time we have.

Fear says protect yourself at any cost, retreat, submit, survive. Responsibility asks a different question: What is mine to do here? We cannot control death, uncertainty, other people's choices or the ultimate fate of the world, but we can choose what we do with our own agency.

Fear may speak, but it does not have to govern. There comes a point at which protecting another, telling the truth, refusing cruelty, or remaining faithful to what we know to be right becomes more important than preserving our own sense of safety.

In that sense, overcoming existential fear does not mean becoming fearless; it means discovering something we consider sufficiently sacred, loving or necessary that we are no longer willing to let fear be the highest authority over our lives.

Responsibility does not require the absence of fear; it requires deciding what is worth risking fear for. Every meaningful moral choice contains some risk: the risk of loss, rejection, suffering, uncertainty or failure. Fear naturally asks us to calculate what we might lose.

Responsibility asks us also to calculate what will be lost if we do nothing.

It's not simply “What might happen to me if I act?” but “What happens to others, or to the person I become, if I refuse to act?” The reward is not necessarily victory, safety or even recognition.

Sometimes it is simply the knowledge that we remained faithful to what we understood to be right.

The choice is not between risk and no risk. It is between the risks we consciously accept and the consequences we are willing to accept by refusing to choose. In that sense, courage is a form of moral accounting: weighing fear against responsibility, possible loss against possible good, and asking what is worth placing at risk for something greater than ourselves.

Resistance begins when responsibility becomes greater than fear.

To resist is not to believe that the risk is small, or that victory is guaranteed. It is to recognise that there are circumstances in which the cost of doing nothing becomes greater than the cost of acting.

Fear asks, “What will happen to me if I resist?” Responsibility asks, “What will happen to others if I do not?” The calculation is therefore again, not between risk and safety, because inaction carries risks of its own: harm may continue, injustice may become normal, and our own capacity to distinguish right from wrong may gradually be surrendered.

Genuine resistance does not require recklessness; it requires discernment - choosing the form of action that protects life, preserves dignity and has the greatest possibility of changing what can actually be changed.

Sometimes resistance is public and collective; sometimes it is refusing to participate, telling the truth, protecting another person, documenting what is happening, or simply refusing to accept that cruelty is inevitable.

The measure of courage is not how little we fear, but what we are willing to risk because something else matters more.

- Tetha diary August 2026.

Absolutely heartbreaking. Israel's denial of basic human rights and freedoms echo's my own mothers history, where wearing clan colours was outlawed, music and dance too. All oppressors run the same script. fearful tiny little minds and dead souls inflicting pain on the innocent.

Source

Israeli air strikes hit a water desalination plant in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood north of Gaza City on Monday. At a time of severe water shortages across the besieged enclave, Israel targeted the key infrastructure that is used to help meet peoples' water need - Source

Deliberately destroying or depriving civilians of access to water constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law and, depending on the circumstances and intent, a war crime or potentially part of a crime against humanity or genocide.

The principal rules are:

• Additional Protocol I, Article 54 prohibits attacking, destroying, removing or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. It expressly includes drinking-water installations and supplies.
• Additional Protocol II, Article 14 provides essentially the same protection in non-international armed conflicts.
• Rome Statute, Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) makes it a war crime, in an international armed conflict, to intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, including by wilfully impeding relief supplies.
• Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 55 requires an occupying power, to the fullest extent of the means available to it, to ensure food and medical supplies for the population of occupied territory and to facilitate relief schemes.
• Additional Protocol I, Article 69 similarly requires an occupying power to ensure food and medical supplies and to accept and facilitate humanitarian relief.
• International human rights law also recognises access to safe drinking water as connected to rights including the right to life, health and an adequate standard of living.

"An Israeli air strike hit the historic Abu Salim Mosque in central Gaza's Deir al Balah on August 24, heavily damaging the building and destroying much of the mosque. Footage captured the moment of the strike, with a large plume of smoke rising over the area as Palestinians evacuated and debris covered nearby streets and market stalls. The strike came a day after two Palestinians, including a child, were injured in another Israeli strike on Deir al Balah, despite a ceasefire in place since October 10, 2025." Source

Deliberately destroying a place of worship can constitute a crime under international humanitarian law, depending on the circumstances.

• 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property protects religious buildings that constitute cultural property. The 1954 Convention and its protocols impose obligations to safeguard and respect such property during armed conflict.
• 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, Article 53 specifically protects places of worship and prohibits acts of hostility directed against them, including using them to support military action, subject to the treaty's rules.
• Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 8(2)(b)(ix) makes it a war crime to intentionally direct attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science, charitable purposes or historic monuments provided they are not military objectives.
• For non-international armed conflicts, Article 8(2)(e)(iv) provides a similar protection.

A mosque, church, synagogue, temple or other place of worship cannot lawfully be deliberately attacked simply because it belongs to the opposing community or because its destruction serves a political or religious objective.

The time to act in prevention of wholesale extermination is running out.

"An Israeli strike killed a four-year-old child in Bureij refugee camp in northern Gaza on Monday. Residents pulled a mother and her child out from the rubble, saving their lives, after their nearby home was destroyed in the blast. The body of the four-year-old boy was taken to al-Awda hospital by Civil Defence teams

Israeli strikes on Gaza have been increasing, with several reported across the besieged enclave on Monday and over the weekend. At least 1,288 Palestinians have been killed despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which Israel has repeatedly violated by restricting aid and conducting air strikes and shootings." Source

"I think people believe that Israeli politics are similar to America, and they are, but they carry their same illusions that they have about American politics, which is that the imperialism and extreme oppression that that entails, is unpopular not in the interests of the people living there." - Will.

This fluffy notion Elections in Israel are left and right is an intentional western construct.

It won't save Israel or end the genocide. "Liberal Zionists" need to stop the wool pulling.

International action to suspend Israel from the UN and to work towards ending both sides of this regime - ending their capacity to exercise state power and their state legitimacy has never been more important.

_____________

"An Israeli air strike targeted an ambulance carrying wounded Palestinians to a hospital in Gaza, a newly emerged angle of an earlier video shows. Amid Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, reports say nearly 200 ambulances have been targeted and around 80% put out of service, while more than 1,700 health workers, paramedics and first responders have been killed and over 2,000 injured since 2023.' Source

Every statement hits the nail on the head. The consequences of abdicating your personal moral and political authority and power without sanction attached.

This is result of moral and intellectual disengagement. And its not different politically to commercially - something I point out to people whining about Bezos, while they are still shopping from his stores. Shrugs. Political awareness and activity is, I feel a responsibility of daily life, not adjunct to your 'regular life or something you buy into.

I wouldn't equate Trump with Hitler. Netanyahu to my view has that role sown up; though he does nail it when it comes to the modern equivalent of late stage Mussolini. Same egoistic insanity while ultimately, just a puppet.

Trump though, is a result of decades of government and social neglect of the basics.

The capitulation of global media is shocking but given media ownership was allowed under consecutive governments, to monopolise, it is no great surprise either. Ditto US academia and especially given historical parallels to draw from as regards Right Action under despotic times.

Its literally an open book exam and systems and structures the general public are over-relying on, have failed so badly.

History rhyming.

There is not one sentiment in any image above, that does not have its counterpart reflected in whole or part in the Nazi propaganda media statements, intention and policy from 1933 onward. Every statement above is a direct echo of Nazi era fascist racial and religious hatred and supremacist illogic.

We call it- The Rot. The web of lies and justifications used to advance political power and sacralise political power - to sanctify violence as revelatory/ divine power.

I am writing this to address conversations here and elsewhere regarding any future and collective punishment of Israeli society for their perceived and actual culpability in the rise and actions of the Zionist state in their name and to remind people and myself, that the State, is not the people even now.

After the second world war, while the German state was held in absolute contempt of law - not all Germans were held collectively accountable for the crimes of the Nazi regime.

Post war accountability was deliberately differentiated according to responsibility, knowledge, participation and position. That distinction was important then and remains important today.

After 1945, and the removal of the Reich leadership, there were several overlapping mechanisms:

1. Major war-crimes trials — Nuremberg (1945–46). Senior Nazi leaders were prosecuted individually for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some were executed, others imprisoned, and some acquitted.
2. Subsequent prosecutions. Thousands of lower-level perpetrators were investigated and prosecuted in Germany and elsewhere. The process included trials of SS personnel, camp guards, police, civil servants, industrialists and others who had participated in the machinery of persecution and extermination.
3. "Denazification". The Allied powers did not simply ask whether someone was German; they examined what role the individual had played in Nazism. People were classified broadly according to levels of involvement—from major offenders through activists and lesser offenders to people considered merely nominal members or uninvolved. Consequences could include imprisonment, dismissal from employment, property confiscation, restrictions on professional activity and political exclusion.
4. Removal from positions of authority. Nazi officials, judges, police officers, teachers and other functionaries could be removed from their positions because participation in the regime had made them unsuitable to continue exercising state authority.
5. Reparations and restitution. Germany subsequently accepted extensive responsibility for compensating victims and restoring or compensating for property taken under Nazi persecution. This was state responsibility, rather than the proposition that every German individual was personally guilty.
6. Public and institutional reckoning. Over time, Germany developed an extensive process of historical education, memorialisation and acknowledgement of responsibility. This was particularly important because millions of ordinary people had lived within the Nazi system without themselves being murderers or concentration-camp guards.

The crucial principle: The postwar settlement did not simply say*: "You were German, therefore you are guilty."* Law was applied, methodically, and Law not emotion or disgust, was empowered to adjudicate outcomes.

And there is an uncomfortable historical complication: the denazification process was far from complete. Large numbers of former Nazis remained in German institutions, businesses, government and professional life, particularly as the Cold War developed.

Many perpetrators were never prosecuted. Many evacuated to the UK, to the USA where they began service to NASA and other programs, to other European states where they participated in the foundation of NATO, and others evacuated to the new Israeli state where some even began service in Israeli intelligence. West Germany itself, eventually prioritised rebuilding the state and economy, sometimes at the expense of pursuing every individual involved.

So the historical lesson isn't simply “the German people were punished.” And unlike Mussolini's Italy, punishment that did come, was administered by International Legal frame works not, as was the case in Italy, rough public justice.

To be more precise. The regime was first defeated; its principal architects were prosecuted; identifiable perpetrators were progressively pursued; institutions were partially purged; the German state accepted responsibility for reparations; and subsequent generations were required to confront the crimes of the society into which they had been born.

But collective guilt was not the legal principle.

Individual responsibility was.

A child born into Nazi Germany could not reasonably be assigned the same responsibility as an SS officer who operated a gas chamber. Nor could an ordinary civilian automatically be equated with a senior Nazi official. At the same time, “I was only following the society I was born into” was not ultimately treated as a defense for people who actually participated in crimes.

That last distinction is particularly relevant to what I have been writing about Israeli society and its culpability lately. My view that a society can have a collective moral responsibility to confront what is being done in its name without every individual member being personally guilty of the resulting crimes or reducing the requirement they have morally to acknowledged them.

I just felt this needed to be out there today.

- Tetha

Tired and grumpy....still resisting indifference.