One Thousand Days of Genocide and the Collapse of USA Hegemony – Blog 85
24.06.2026
Who would have thought that the world would watch one thousand whole days and whole nights of Israel committing genocide against the people of Gaza? Without being able to stop Israel?
Especially when we know politicians can, in reality, be stopped.
Think of this.
On Friday around 7:00 pm, the Budget First and Second Readings were voted to introduce means-test for the universal pensions. By Monday at 9:30 am, the Prime Minister was already meeting his Cabinet to “freeze” the measure. Years of political and trade union work bore fruition over 72 hours.
We only have to do a small bit in Mauritius to help stop the thousand-day genocide. So far, we can’t yet even manage to force Ramgoolam to cut ties with this criminal State of Israel, nor even just to ban Israelis from entering the country if they have links with the Israeli military. Not so far, anyway. We must persist until we succeed. This genocide is not unrelated to the discontent about the budget. The genocide, over there, as a key part of a geo-political confrontation, is directly linked to Mauritians getting poorer, here.
Let us look where we are up to on fighting the genocide. We have organizations representing one hundred thousand Mauritian working people, who have, with LALIT, publicly called on Ramgoolam to cut ties with Israel, and to ban visitors with military links. Not a small coalition. So far, we have only met inaction from Ramgoolam. And this, despite the ICC, of which Mauritius is a signatory, issuing an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And this, despite the ICJ finding Israel is committing “plausible genocide”. Despite the ICJ finding Israel’s occupation of Palestine “unlawful” – and in so doing relying on Mauritius’ own successful case against the UK’s unlawful occupation of Chagos including Diego Garcia.
And, who would have thought that during the World Football Cup group matches, after one thousand days of genocide, we would still see the gentle, kind men of Palestine organizing a parallel “Gaza Cup” for adolescents and boys in a cleared space in the ruins of their bombed and shelled neighbourhoods? With the netting for the goalposts made of roughly sewn together bits of left-over fishing nets from their bombed pirogues? Or that we would watch the tournaments of amputee children in Gaza, too, playing football on improvised crutches? Yes football teams of amputees. Each child amputee we see reminds us of four dead children, massacred, one after the other, by the Israeli military. Twenty thousand children in one thousand days. And how many children’s remains remain, in that rubble that is the backdrop for the living children’s football match in Gaza? And how all those children playing football in those ruins’ minds are haunted by memories of dead little friends and little cousins, little neighbours and little school-buddies?
And who would have thought that the only country that has acted as a fit ally for Palestine, the Islamic Republic of Iran, would have come out so strong and dignified from its defensive war against the aggressors, USA and Israel? Against the strongest of all militaries on earth in alliance with the most murderous military on the planet? Iran’s capacity to come out of this war so strong is now evident to all military commentators, who are not part of the establishment of the “West”. You just have to read the Fourteen Point Memorandum of Understanding to know who “won”. And Iran’s victory is increasingly evident to everyone in the whole world. 92% of Israelis know Iran won the war against the USA and Israel (see Times of Israel quoting survey conducted by Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with the Agam Institute). The question was put differently in a USA survey. The answer is not as down-to-earth as the Israelis’ answer, but getting there: Less than 16% of Americans think the USA and Israel won, or are winning, against Iran (Brookings Institution poll).
Iran’s coming out so strong was because it prepared beforehand. It relied upon 20 years of strategic patience, and then a war of strategic proportional counter-response against US bases and the US’s biggest “base”, the State of Israel. Iran acted in a principled way. And then, when the USA and Israel lashed out in a war they thought would end in victory in four days, when it did not, they had forgotten, so used were they to being hegemons, to prepare a Plan B. They began by the intentional massacre of 156 people, over a hundred of them primary school children, and continued on to bomb hospitals. Iran decided it would have to impose its control over the straits of Ormuz, which were always theirs and Oman’s to control. This way, 20% of the world’s petroleum, in particular that used for diesel and engine oil, and all Mauritius’ oil (whether via India or now Singapore), has been blocked for over three months. Strategic reserves in the USA have been used up, as Trump recently announced, and are down to “sludge” level, levels it is dangerous to pump further. Prices of petrol and diesel have risen, and will remain higher. Freight costs have risen and will remain high. This, in turn, affects the price of everything. Prices of food have risen because of the nitrates in fertilizers are a by-product of petroleum products, and so on. And the war is not over. There is the key Memorandum of Understanding in 14 points, which will act as a possible “de-conflicting” mechanism for the next 60 days, starting with Israel and Lebanon. Yesterday the President of Lebanon, and armed forces chief, Joseph Aoun, very much a “zom Amerikin”, announced, for the first time agreeing with Hezbollah, that Israel must withdraw from all of Lebanon. But, everyone knows Israel wants the USA to continue the war. And Trump’s big donors of the “capitalist military industrial complex” as well as the pro-Zionist capitalist lobby in the USA and Europe, all want the USA to continue the war, aiming to break Iran into bits. As the USA’s empire begins to unravel fast, if it does nothing, it unravels fast as the world capitalist system goes into massive recession or even collapse, it is goes back to fighting Iran, it will further lose its bases in the Middle East dictatorships, if it withdraws completely from the Middle East, it will be a more dignified retreat into a new role as a non-hegemon, in a world that needs no hegemons.
All this to also mention that the price of everything is rising because of the USA and Israel’s war of aggression against Iran, Iran that is Palestine’s one-and-only “country that is an ally” during this genocide. And we must know that, however much we get paid at work, or via our pensions, the prices we pay affect the value of this income. And we must know that prices depend also on “external factors”, because our economy has remained in “colonial dependence” to the West. So, we need to act to end the genocide and the war of aggression against Iran in our own self-defense as well as on principle. And we need, at the same time, urgently to force the Ramgoolam Government to force the sugar estate bosses to invest in food security, put say one-third of their land under basic food crops, and dedicate their infra-structure for a food industry, and to force the hotel capitalists to invest in a fleet of fishing vessels to produce seafood. And to raise Bonds to help the CEB provide solar energy for all. All this should be in the Ramgoolam Budget. And we are in the excellent posture of having close trade and diplomatic links with China, South Africa, India, Russia, Bangladesh, Iran, Madagascar and Pakistan – relationships we must cherish when the West goes into its collapse, at whatever speed it falls.
The value of our Rupee depends on this kind of relative independence from the USA-controlled international system.
And to get back to the principled action that our own Government MUST take against Israel because it is committing genocide. Yesterday, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel published its Report. On the UN’s site, you can read: “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar [chair of the Commission] .... Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law”.
The UN titled its article – and note its use of the word “genocide”, already used last year by this Commission – “Israel continues to commit genocide and other atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children”. Please act, Dr. Ramgoolam, in the name of the Republic of Mauritius. Join South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide! Ban any Israeli with IDF or other military connections from our land!
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT
