Archives: Articles

By Sian Norris

A coalition of hard-right politicians, commentators, and influencers have empowered this hateful movement to inflict widespread violence against families fleeing fear.

Every Saturday night throughout summer, young people gather in Bristol’s historic Castle Park to sit on blankets under the cherry blossom trees, eating ice cream and drinking from cans as reggae, dub, and drum n bass rattle through tinny speakers. The music competes with the squawks of the city’s seagulls, the roar of traffic leaving the Galleries mall, and the strumming of a guitar. Teenagers try out circus skills, while bikes whizz along the river toward the bars and clubs of Old Market.

This weekend, the scene was very different.

Gangs of far-right race rioters stormed the park, passing its commemorative plaque to the city’s anti-fascists who fought in Spain in the 1930s. They were joined by those pulled into the far right via a toxic mix of anti-vax, anti-LGBTQ, QAnon conspiracy theories. Punches were thrown at a Black passerby. Counterprotesters insisted that fascists and racists were not welcome here, before moving south to the river to form a human barrier around a hotel housing migrant people, which the mob attempted to attack.

The scenes in Bristol were repeated across the country. In Rotherham and Tamworth, people who had fled violence and persecution in their own countries hid in hotel rooms as the buildings were set on fire. Asian men were dragged from their cabs to shouts of “kill him,” while Syrian shopkeepers, determined to build a new life away from dictatorship and civil war, watched in despair as their businesses were trashed. By Sunday night, more than 90 people had been arrested, but the violence did not stop, spreading to city after city, to Liverpool and Belfast and Plymouth and London and beyond.

The inciting incident was ostensibly the tragic killings of three girls, and the stabbing of other women and girls, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. British-born teenager Axel Rudakubana has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

The horrific deaths of the three children had nothing to do with the terrorising of asylum-seeking people and children in hotels, the destruction of Black and Brown people’s businesses, or the attacks on mosques. The street violence that has gripped much of England and Northern Ireland since 30 July instead tells a story of who the modern far right are, how they organise, what they believe, and the coalition of hard-right politicians, commentators, and influencers who have empowered this hateful movement to inflict widespread violence against families fleeing fear.

Who Is the Modern Far Right?

The early days of the violence were met with suggestions from the new Labour government that the English Defence League (EDL) could be designated as a “proscribed group”—one that is forbidden under U.K. law due to terrorist connections.

But the suggestion fails to understand two crucial issues. The first, is that the EDL does not really exist. Its co-founder and most famous member, far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) left in 2013, claiming he had concerns over the “dangers of far-right extremism,” after which the group’s membership dwindled until it ultimately became defunct a few years later.

The second is that the modern far right is no longer made up of organisations with clear hierarchical structures. Instead, it is an international and online-networked movement. It organises around a shared ideology spread by a core of theorists, leaders, and influencers who use their power to put out statements designed to trigger others to commit violence. In this, the influencers commit what is known as “stochastic” or “random violence,” while of course making sure they are not the ones throwing the punches and smashing the glass themselves, and can claim plausible deniability when it comes to incitement.

The movement breaks out into the real world with violent, racist outbursts and attacks. That violence is filmed and live streamed across its network, with each action used to tell a story that will inspire new followers and, crucially, influence nonmembers by creating an atmosphere of insecurity and fear.

Following the killings in Southport, an online conspiracy claimed the killer was a Muslim man who had arrived into the U.K. illegally on a small boat last year. The lie brought together the two tropes driving the modern far right: Islamophobic claims that Muslim men pose a threat to women and girls and manufactured outrage over “fighting age men” arriving in the U.K. on small boats to live off the taxpayer.

While the false claims about the Southport killings were specific to that incident, the disinformation being shared was built on years of far-right influencers engaged in rhetorical violence against primarily Muslim migrant people. Numerous posts from Robinson’s Telegram channel, for example, discuss how migrant men who “inevitably go on to rape and murder” are “invading” the U.K. and “taken in and housed in hotels at taxpayer expense.” Governments and NGOs are even accused by him of “using little girls to encourage fighting age men to come to the U.K. who see nothing wrong in diddling kids.”

These messages have gathered pace over the past four years as the former Conservative government ramped up messaging to “stop the boats” and accused migrant people of abusing the system while being “child rapists” and “threats to national security.” In the same time period, growing anti-immigrant rhetoric and a failing policy to house asylum-seeking people in hotels has repeatedly triggered real-life violence and intimidation, mainly outside the hotels housing families.

“Citizen journalists” who made their names as “migrant hunters” such as Amanda Smith (who uses the social media avatar Yorkshire Rose) and Alan Leggett (Active Patriot), as well as groups including Britain First and Patriotic Alternative, have increasingly targeted hotels, live streaming their “visits” in footage that shows activists intimidating residents. Smith wrote how “women and girls are frightened to walk around the area of the [Rotherham] hotel at night,” pushing the message that migrant men are a threat to white women. Even children are positioned as a threat: One Britain First post said that a child in a hotel waving at their cameras was mocking them.

When it was revealed that the individual charged with the Southport murders was a British-born teenager, the far-right narrative shifted to maintain its Islamophobic focus. Robinson and others shared disinformation about Muslim men stabbing people in Stoke-on-Trent, giving a new inciting reason for the riots, despite Staffordshire Police confirming there have been no such stabbings. Footage of the so-called “Muslim Defence League” portrayed British towns as under attack.

The claim that white Britain is under attack by Muslim men is then used to incite the far-right’s ultimate goal: a genocidal civil war, otherwise known as Day X.

The Ideology

The networked nature of the modern far right means that rather than coalescing around a physical leader, they instead organise around a shared ideology and aim: the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which can be defeated via a race war.

The theory baselessly claims that white people in the Global North are being “replaced” by migrant people from the Global South, aided by feminists repressing the birth rate via abortion and contraception. All of this is supposedly being orchestrated by “cultural Marxists,” a catch-all term that includes liberal elites, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, LGBTQ+ people, and Jewish people.

This so-called replacement is commonly referred to as a “white genocide.” To defeat this so-called genocide, the far right wants to incite a civil war—sometimes referred to as Day X or boogaloo—that would result in pure ethno-states. It’s for this reason that the owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, warned that “civil war is inevitable” in the U.K., in the wake of the riots. While it is far from inevitable, it is the desired outcome of the global far right, who are looking for an inciting incident to trigger Day X.

When white men in England are dragging Asian men out of cars with shouts of “kill them,” and when white gangs are setting fire to hotels housing families from various countries across the Global South, they are rehearsing the actions they would take during the thing they fantasise about: genocide. When white men attack mosques, they are rehearsing a cultural genocide.

The central replacement/white genocide theory is supplemented by secondary conspiracies designed to provoke anxieties that children are in danger, and that parental authority is being usurped by outside, hostile “others.”

Those attending the riots had signs written with “save the children” and “save our children.” The same slogans also appear at anti-vax protests and anti-drag queen protests. While seemingly a benign slogan—who doesn’t want to save children?—the message now evokes the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory claiming liberal elites are trafficking and torturing children in Satanic rituals in order to harvest “adrenochrome.”

The demand to “save the children” feeds directly into the overarching Great Replacement conspiracy theory. A hostile “other,” the message reads, is coming to take your children away. Children are the frontline against replacement. To prevent white genocide, men are told that it is their duty to defend their family—and to defend whiteness—through violence.

Strategy

The desired outcome of this violence is to create insecurity, fear, and anxiety in the general population, which in turn leads to a collapse in faith in democracy and society.

That this is happening now, less than a month into a Labour government, is important to note. Labour has already cancelled the Rwanda scheme and implemented a statutory instrument to start processing asylum claims that were in a backlog as a result of rule changes in the Illegal Migration Act. Though the party, which has a long history of courting anti-immigrant support, is also acting “tough” on immigration, with raids on businesses and deportation flights to Vietnam and Timor-Leste, Labour is the traditional enemy of the far right. It is associated with progressive values, multiculturalism, and “woke.” For the far right to achieve its aims, it has to destroy the electorate’s trust in the Labour Party, in government—and in democracy.

In many ways, the far right is grooming the general public to believe the violence and disorder of the past week—and any future violence—is an inevitable consequence of political failings around immigration. Worse, it is a result of the failure of democracy.

That’s why, following U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s intervention on Sunday night, where he condemned “far-right thuggery,” social media filled up with messages that he was a “traitor to his country,” a “Soros puppet” (an antisemitic trope) running a “radical government.”

Former actor and failed politician Laurence Fox called Starmer a “traitor,” writing that he is on the “side” of “immigrant barbarians” who rape “British girls.” He finished the tweet with the threat of violence: “Fine. Then it’s war.” His tweet echoes Musk’s “civil war is inevitable.”

Following the Southport riot, Reform U.K. Member of Parliament Nigel Farage put out a video where he claimed the violence was a reaction to “fear, discomfort, to unease… I am worried, not just about the events in Southport, but about societal decline that is happening in our country… this prime minister does not have a clue… we need to start getting tough… Because what you’ve seen on the streets of Hartlepool, of London, of Southport, is nothing to what could happen over the next few weeks.”

In his video, Farage hints to the far-right trope of Western decline—an offshoot of the Great Replacement theory. He argues that the government is failing to protect its people. More importantly, he suggests that if the government fails to get “a clue,” it will get worse. The violence, fear, and disorder will increase. And then what happens? What happens when violence leads to people no longer trusting the state?

This is part of the modern far right’s strategy: If the state cannot protect us from inevitable violence, it says, the far-right strongman can. Sowing fear, anxiety, and distrust in societal norms allows for the far right to achieve its ultimate aim: to replace democracy with a strong-man, authoritarian leader who can rule on a war footing.

This is the lesson of the 1930s. It’s one we cannot afford to forget in the 2020s.

Sian Norris is a writer and feminist activist. She is the founder and director of the Bristol Women’s Literature Festival and runs the successful feminist blog sianandcrookedrib.blogspot.com.

9 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard Falk

[Prefatory Note: This post originated in a series of responses to questions asked by a journalist writing a feature story for the Turkish publication, TRT World. My responses here are derived from that source but took on a different life of their own.]

What does Hamas chief Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran mean for the wider conflict?

It appears that none of the countries directly involved in the conflict with Israel–Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen–seek a wider war in the Middle East. Only Israel, and its leader, Bibi Netanyahu seem to approach such a prospect favorably. This cycle of provocative acts followed by retaliations almost all initiated by Israel have their own escalating momentum that is difficult to control, and at some point, might merges with a deadly commitment to securing a wider victorious outcome.

There is much speculation that Netanyahu has his private motivations centering on his personal survival and the related likelihood that his coalition government would soon collapse after the Gaza war recedes from view. He was also associated with obsessively pushing a vendetta against Iran, especially recently as a useful distraction from the Gaza campaign that failed to achieve its main explicit objective of destroying Hamas and promoting the Greater Israel Project of territorial expansion.

Additionally, the recent cycles of tit-for-tat provocative acts almost exclusively initiated by Israel have an escalating momentum that is difficult to control, and at some point, merges with a commitment to securing a victorious outcome through sustained warfare.

Ismail Haniyeh’s July 31 assassination while attending the inauguration of the new president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, was a step in the direction of regional war. It was further aggravated because of the location, the occasion, Haniyeh’s reputation as a ‘moderate’ in the Hamas leadership circle. And even further by taking account of his current role as the chief negotiator in the search for a ceasefire, prisoner exchange, and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei immediately threatened a response that will be perceived as a ‘harsh punishment’ by political actors. The religious leader added that Iran is ‘duty-bound’ to inflict a response that ‘avenges’ the assassination. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian offered his strong condemnation of the killing of Haniyeh: “We will make the occupying terrorist regime [of Israel] regret its action.”

This assassination may also be seen as Israel’s reaction to Iran and Hamas in the aftermath of the Unity Deal between Hamas and Fatah facilitated by the mediation efforts of China. The agreement signed in Beijing on July 23 by 14 Palestinian factions including Hamas and Fatah agreed on the composition of an ‘interim national reconciliation government,’ and seems to be the most serious effort to achieve Palestinian unity since Hamas emerged after the 1967 War. Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA), made a meaningful gesture of his own that is being interpreted as an affirmation of the newfound unity of Palestinian resistance by joining in the condemnation of Israel for carrying out the assassination of Haniyeh. This seems significant as the PA has long been the bitter adversary of Hamas.

The Biden presidency seems intent on managing these tensions in such a way that avoids a general war in the region while not alienating Israel and its supporters in the West. It also purports to play its customary intermediary role in relation to Israel/Palestine conflict by putting forth a three-stage ceasefire, hostage/prisoner exchange, and Israeli Gaza withdrawal. It is odd that the Palestinians would accept such a diplomatic process, given the depth of US complicity in lending crucial support to the genocidal assault during the last ten months directed at the entire population of Gaza.

Even Iran despite its seeming commitment to revenging Haniyeh’s death while on a state visit to a high profile public event in Iran seems searching for a response that is viewed as retaliatory but as signaling its intent to avoid a war with Israel.

There are many actors involved with a wide range of disclosed and disguised motivations, making predictions hazardous. If a wider war  does occur, it will almost certainly be undertaken at Israel’s initiative, quite possibly reflecting Netanyahu’s personal animus. If Iran succeeds in inflicting heavy symbolic or substantive damage in executing its retaliatory attack, Israel might treat magnify the event as a suitable pretext for launching a wider war that I believe it would come to regret. Among other consequences, it may induce Iran to cross the nuclear weapons threshold, assuming this has not happened already. Given the security prerogatives of sovereign states, it would not seem unreasonable for Iran to seek a nuclear deterrent, given the threats and provocations over the years. Such a move would deeply challenge Israel and US-led anti-proliferation geopolitics, being a blow struck against the imperfect regional nonproliferation regime in the Middle East. So long as an aggressive Israel possesses and develops its own nuclear weaponry, without any pretense of accountability, the security situation highlights the double standards embedded in the Biden/Blinken ‘rules governed world.’=

2. How will Iran respond to this? 

My earlier answer tentatively predicts a proportionate retaliation that may be treated by Israel as sufficiently ‘disproportionate’ to induce a further escalatory cycle. Although Iran has shown that it does not seek a wider war, it also seems poised to take risks to avoid being seen as weak by both adversaries and allies—the latter being demeaned by being called ‘proxies’ in the Washington and European official statements and media.

Although the world and particularly Iran, assumed that Israel was responsible for Haniyeh’s assassination, Israel failed to claim responsibility for several days.  Before doing so, Israel had been widely accused by Iran, and assumed responsible for this sovereignty-violating assassination. Israel’s official silence rather than offering an evidence-based denial strengthened the dominant impression that Israel was the culprit.

Also passed almost without prominent noticed was the almost simultaneous assassination of  Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah military commander and close associate of accused by Israel of planning a deadly attack on a Druze town of Majjid-Shams in the Israel occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children playing on a soccer field. Hezbollah denies responsibility for the attack, and it seems that whoever was responsible for the attack misfired as the missile hit a site unassociated with Israel.

3.   The Gaza/Hamas Angle

In a notable statement, the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, indirectly accused Israel of assassinating Haniyeh in a post published on social media. Al Thani observed, “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” referring to Haniyeh as one of the main mediators in the cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas. And further, “Peace needs serious partners and a global stance against the disregard for human life.” Israel has failed to respond to such an allegation, although it seems to have backed a rumor that Iran might itself have carried out or at least facilitated this assassination.

The US has been the pioneer in relying on assassination as a major instrument of covert warfare during the Cold Year, generally under the auspices of the CIA. During the Carter presidency Senate hearings were held (‘Church Hearings’), leading to the issuance of Executive Order 11. 905 in 1977 prohibiting political assassinations. This Executive Order was later somewhat relaxed during the Reagan Presidency in the 1980s. There seems to be agreement that the ceasefire proposals that looked quite promising in the days before Haniyeh’s assassination now are indefinite hold given the leadership to the supposedly hardline Yahya Sinwar.

Israel has a long record of assassinations in Iran, including of high profile nuclear scientists (e.g. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh) and a much revered military commanded and diplomat. Qasem Solemani, in January 2020, the last days of the Trump presidency.

Political assassinations carried out on the territory of a foreign country in the form of an official undertaking of a government is a violation of international law, an act of aggression, and a violation of fundamental human rights standards.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years.

9 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jordan Shilton

The United States has led a boycott by six G7 members of Friday’s ceremony commemorating the atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II. Justified on the basis that the mayor of Nagasaki refused to invite the ambassador of the genocidal Israeli regime to the ceremony, the coordinated decision by the imperialist powers to stay away underscores that they are prepared to risk a world war waged with nuclear weapons.

A ceremony is held each year on August 9 at the Nagasaki peace statue to mark the dropping of the second atomic bomb, which killed an estimated 40,000 people instantaneously and killed tens of thousands more over subsequent weeks and months. It followed just three days after the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. American imperialism remains the only power to have used these barbaric weapons in warfare.

The ambassadors to Japan of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the US and the European Union addressed a letter to the city authorities in July stating that “it would become difficult for us to have high-level participation” if Israel was excluded. Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki confirmed Thursday his refusal to invite Israel, citing the security threat posed by potential protests against the Zionist regime’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. In June, the Japanese city addressed a letter to the Israeli government calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where the Israeli military has slaughtered upwards of 200,000 people over the past 10 months, according to an estimate by The Lancet medical journal.

In this context, the insistence by the imperialist powers that the representative of a regime guilty of crimes on a scale not seen since the Nazis’ Holocaust of European Jewry and the incineration of two Japanese cities by American imperialism is a scandalous provocation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has bombed hospitals, universities and all other civilian infrastructure, intentionally starved more than 2 million Palestinians, authorised the torture and abuse of prisoners, and cut off water, electricity, fuel and medical supplies to the Gaza Strip. On Thursday alone, the Israel Defence Forces struck two schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza City, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens.

By the end of March 2024, Israel had dropped some 65,000 tons of ordnance on Gaza, more than three times the explosive power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A large proportion of the explosives used to raze Gaza to the ground consists of the 14,000 2,000-pound bombs sent by the Biden administration to Israel since October 2023.

In their letter protesting Israel’s exclusion, the ambassadors of the imperialist powers nonetheless had the audacity to accuse city authorities in Nagasaki of “politicising” the ceremony by failing to invite Israel. They asserted that it would be unjustified to place Israel on par with Russia and Belarus, the only other two countries excluded from the ceremony in Nagasaki. This is rich coming from Washington, Berlin, London and Paris, the very imperialist powers that organised the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in a fascist-led coup in 2014, armed Kiev to the teeth, and provoked the reactionary Putin regime to invade Ukraine in 2022. In the more than two years since, the imperialist-fuelled conflict has claimed the lives of at least 500,000 Ukrainians and tens of thousands of Russians.

Moreover, these same imperialist powers have endorsed the Gaza genocide as part of advanced preparations for a region-wide war against Iran, which would plunge the long-suffering Middle East into a bloodbath and risk the lives of millions. The war in the Middle East is one front in what is rapidly emerging as a third world war involving all of the imperialist powers in a redivision of the world to secure their geostrategic and economic interests. In pursuit of these interests, the imperialists are prepared to sanction any crime, including the use of nuclear weapons.

The dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American imperialism led to the deaths of over 200,000 people in the blasts and subsequent radiation. With this demonstration of its utter ruthlessness and brutality, Washington wished to demonstrate to the world its readiness to use unrestrained force to secure its hegemony and ensure a swift end to the Second World War so as to prevent the further advance of Soviet troops into Japanese-occupied parts of China.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in an article marking the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings,

There is a certain naïveté on the part of the American people with regard to the utter ruthlessness of the American ruling class, particularly in relation to the Second World War. That war has long been presented by the American media and political establishment as a great war for democracy, against fascism and tyranny. In fact, the principal reason that the United States entered the war—and the underlying motivation behind all its actions in prosecuting the war—was to establish itself as the dominant and unchallenged world power. In pursuit of this aim the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese were of little consequence.

Almost 80 years on, American imperialism’s determination to offset its rapidly deteriorating economic position through the use of military might takes precedence over the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Ukrainians and Russians, whose fate is as inconsequential for the imperialist warmongers as that of the Japanese civilians was for their predecessors.

The imperialist ambassadors’ decision to boycott the ceremony comes in the wake of the NATO summit last month in Washington at which plans were finalised to directly intervene into the war with Russia in Ukraine. The aggressive military alliance announced the creation of a permanent office in Ukraine, and a command centre in Germany tasked with overseeing weapons deliveries to the fascistic Kiev regime and waging the war on nuclear-armed Russia. This is a prelude to the deployment of NATO troops, hundreds of whom are already in Ukraine. These reckless moves intensify the conflict with Russia, which threatens to spiral into a nuclear exchange that would risk human life across Europe and the world.

Washington and its NATO allies are not only risking a nuclear exchange with Russia, but also with China in the Asia-Pacific. Last month’s NATO communique denounced Beijing as “a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine.” The preparations for war with China are supported by Japanese imperialism, which agreed to an expansion of the US-Japan Security Treaty to deepen bilateral cooperation on military and defence cooperation. Washington has established a series of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral alliances in the Asia-Pacific, including its regional allies Japan, Australia and India, to isolate Beijing diplomatically, economically and militarily. The trilateral AUKUS alliance between the US, Britain, and Australia specifically focuses on the construction of long-range nuclear attack submarines for use in a war with China.

The only way to stop the descent into imperialist barbarism in a third world war is through the development of a global anti-war movement led by the working class. The international working class must unify under its leadership all progressive elements in society in a fight for the socialist transformation of society to put an end to imperialist war and the capitalist profit system in which it is rooted.

9 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Maureen Clare Murphy

Israel issued new forced displacement orders in Gaza, killed another journalist and massacred more civilians at schools being used as shelters for displaced Palestinians as the genocide stretched into its 11th month.

The latest attacks on Palestinians in Gaza come amid a looming regional war following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last Wednesday and the killing of Fuad Shukr, Hizballah’s top military commander in Beirut, hours earlier.

Both Iran and Hizballah have promised significant retaliatory attacks.

Israeli officials have stayed silent over the country’s role in the killing of Haniyeh, though Tel Aviv is widely assumed responsible. Israel did admit responsibility for the killing of Shukr, who was described by Hizballah Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah as a founding leader of the group during remarks delivered on Tuesday.

Hamas announced on Tuesday that Yahya Sinwar, the former head of the faction in Gaza who is believed to be one of the architects of the unprecedented and devastating 7 October operation dubbed al-Aqsa Flood, would be succeeding Haniyeh as head of the movement.

The announcement was likely a surprise to some after international outlets suggested that other Hamas figures such as Khaled Meshaal or Khalil al-Hayya would be likely to succeed Haniyeh, whose deputy Saleh al-Arouri was assassinated in Beirut in January.

[https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1820916346395263199]

Whereas Haniyeh was based in Qatar, and was considered a more moderate figure in the movement, the succession of Sinwar was seen as sending a message that Hamas remains committed to armed struggle and that there is unity between the leadership in Gaza, the West Bank, those in Israeli prison and in the diaspora.

Because a full leadership meeting of Hamas’ decision-making Shura council would be impossible to convene with dozens of its members in Gaza, Sinwar appears to be a consensus pick before a formal election, as political analyst Hani al-Masri anticipated in a comment given to the AP news agency.

The decision reinforced that “the decision-making lies in Gaza and on the ground,” according to commentator Ibrahim Hamami, who added that it is a “clear message” that negotiations for a ceasefire and exchange of captives happen there.

It also was a sign of discontent over the subservient role played by Arab states during the Gaza genocide, Hamami said, and of Hamas’ strengthened relations with Iran, which the faction may lean on to rebuild when the war is over.

Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, said that the selection of Sinwar not only signals a harder line in Gaza ceasefire talks with Israel, it “also broadcasts an uncompromising and resolute message for the ‘day after’ political landscape.”

Saad added that this “implies that Hamas has secured commitments from its partners guaranteeing ongoing and steadfast military backing.”

“This support is all the more meaningful considering the very real possibility of a worst case scenario unfolding – where Israel exploits Iran and Hizballah’s retaliatory actions as a justification for initiating all out war against the entire [Resistance] Axis,” Saad said, referring to armed groups throughout the region.

More than 300 days of genocide

The government media office in Gaza said on Tuesday that since the beginning of Israel’s offensive in early October, more than 39,650 fatalities had been received at hospitals, including 16,365 children and more than 11,000 women, indicating that the vast majority of Palestinians killed were civilians. An additional 10,000 people remain missing under the rubble or their bodies not yet recovered from the streets or inaccessible areas.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimates that at least an additional 51,000 Palestinians have died as a result of Israel’s siege on Gaza and its deliberate collapse of the medical sector in the territory, as well as the widespread destruction of infrastructure and mass displacement of civilians, leading to the spread of disease.

Nearly three dozen hospitals and 68 health centers in Gaza have been knocked out of service due to Israel’s assault. Israel’s military offensive has inflicted $33 billion in “direct initial losses” overall, the government media office added.

After more than 300 days of genocide, the media office said, more than 91,500 people in Gaza had been injured, at least 36 people had starved to death, while nearly 900 medical workers and nearly 80 civil defense members were killed.

The Israeli military had dropped 82,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, according to the office, destroying homes, universities, schools, mosques, churches, government buildings, sports and recreation facilities, water and hygiene infrastructure, and archaeological and heritage sites.

Meanwhile, Gaza has gone 300 days without electricity, the government media office said on Friday after Israel cut off the supply of power on 7 October and the only power plant in the territory was forced to shut down four days later after running out of fuel.

In what is widely cited as proof of Israel’s genocidal intent, Ghassan Alian, the head of the military body that deals with the civil administration of the occupation, said in early October that “Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage.”

“You wanted hell – you will get hell,” he added while referring to the population of Gaza as “human beasts.”

Israel Katz, Israel’s electricity minister, likewise stated following the cut-off of fuel in early October that this is what Israel would do “to a nation of murderers and butchers of children. What was will not be.”

The absence of electricity has prevented the normal operation of vital infrastructure and services for Gaza’s population, which before the war stood at 2.3 million Palestinians. This includes health, water and sanitation facilities, schools, flour mills and bakeries. The resulting environmental catastrophe has allowed for the spread of diseases and the emergence of the highly infectious polio virus and meningitis.

Journalist killed

The government media office in Gaza said on Tuesday that the number of journalists killed in the territory since last October now stands at 166 after the death of Muhammad Issa Abu Saada, a correspondent and photographer with several media outlets, in an Israeli attack.

[https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1820846614581272827]

Last week, Israel deliberately killed prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi in an airstrike in Gaza City. Khaled al-Shawa, a 17-year-old bystander, was also killed in the strike.

Basma al-Shawa, the slain teen’s mother, said that the boy was killed while out delivering food to an older man and told The Washington Post that “my son is not just a number.”

Israel attempted to justify the killing of the two journalists by accusing al-Ghoul of participating in the 7 October attack “while working as a journalist for Al Jazeera,” though he only joined the network in November. An Israeli military spokesperson claimed that a file from a Hamas computer showed that al-Ghoul was “an engineer in the Hamas Gaza Brigade.”

Al Jazeera Media Network rejected the accusations as “baseless” and pointed to “Israel’s long history of fabrications and false evidence used to cover up its heinous crimes.” It pointed out that Israel is denying international journalists access to Gaza, thereby preventing them from reporting on “the deteriorating humanitarian conditions and suffering” there.

The accusation against al-Ghoul echoed Israel’s attempted justification for previous attacks targeting Al Jazeera personnel.

In January, an Israeli strike killed Hamza Dahdouh, a journalist and son of the broadcaster’s Gaza bureau chief. Mustafa Thuraya, a drone operator, was killed alongside Hamza Dahdouh, along with their driver, after they had used “a drone to document the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike south of Khan Younis,” a Washington Post investigation found.

Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Abu Omar was severely injured in a deliberate Israeli attack in February but survived.

Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, condemned the killing of al-Ghoul and al-Rifi and said “the Israeli military seems to be making accusations without any substantive evidence as a license to kill journalists, which is in total contravention of international humanitarian law.”

A statement released by Khan noted Israel’s “total ban on [Al Jazeera] in Israel, and the vicious smear campaign against the broadcaster” and called for the International Criminal Court “to move swiftly to prosecute the killing of journalists as a war crime.”

Schools, hospital courtyard attacked

On Wednesday, 7 August, Israel issued additional forced displacement orders in the already hard-hit areas of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, instructing residents to evacuate to shelters in central Gaza City. Local media warned that “a ‘large scale’ Israeli army operation is expected to begin there soon,” Al Jazeera reported.

Palestinians in central Gaza were also bracing for an Israeli invasion after “concentrated air attacks” on the area, “coupled with heavy artillery in the past few days,” Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday.

Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, now densely populated with people displaced from other areas of the Strip, is the only city in the territory that has remained largely intact, “with buildings people can shelter in,” the broadcaster added.

“But right now, there is a growing concern that the repeated attacks on Deir el-Balah indicate that this area, and largely the central area, is on the verge of a wider-scale attack and a larger invasion,” according to Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud.

Three Palestinians were killed in a home in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Several Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a tent housing displaced Palestinians east of Khan Younis the same day, according to Al Jazeera.

Journalist Anas al-Sharif reported that the victims included a woman and child whose bodies were burned by the fire caused by the bombing:

[https://twitter.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1821170812235255817]

Also on Wednesday, at least four Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack in western Khan Younis, “a very busy area,” Al Jazeera reported.

Israel bombed three schools sheltering displaced people on Saturday and Sunday, killing dozens of Palestinians.

At least 17 Palestinians, including women and children, were reportedly killed in a strike on the Hamama school in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City on Saturday.

[https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1820090066431012912]

On Sunday, at least 30 Palestinians were killed in strikes on al-Nasser and Hasan Salama schools in the Nasser neighborhood. Another 16 people were missing under the rubble of al-Nasser school, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense.

That same day, five Palestinians were killed and 15 injured in an Israeli strike on tents in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah. Thousands of displaced people were at the hospital complex at the time of the attack, which occurred without warning, according to Physicians for Human Rights Israel.

[https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1819878417212297654]

The strike on the hospital sheltering displaced people came the same day as the Israeli military issued new orders for the forcible displacement of Palestinians in parts of Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said on Saturday that “people in Gaza are constantly displaced, living in tents under the scorching summer sun with minimal access to drinking water.”

The UN human rights office stated on Monday that it was “horrified by the unfolding pattern” of “escalating” Israeli attacks on schools being used as shelters.

“Strikes on at least 17 schools just in the last month reportedly killed at least 163 Palestinians, including children and women,” the UN office said, adding that it indicates “a failure to comply with the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in carrying out these attacks.”

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said “the Israeli military is systematically creating a coercive environment by repeatedly, violently and directly bombing homes, residential neighborhoods and shelter centers.”

Israel hands over “desecrated” bodies

Israel transferred the decomposed remains of 89 people whose corpses had been handled in an undignified manner, the government media office said on Monday.

Yamen Abu Suleiman, the director of the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service in Khan Younis, told media that Israel provided no information about the “names, or ages, or anything” regarding the bodies and that it was unclear whether they had been exhumed from cemeteries or if they belonged to “detainees who had been tortured and killed.”

“He said the bodies would be examined in an attempt to determine the causes of death and to identify them, before being buried in a mass grave at a cemetery near Nasser hospital in Khan Younis,” Reuters reported.

Israeli forces have seized more than 2,000 human remains from cemeteries in Gaza during the military’s ground offensive, according to the government media office in the territory.

Israel has previously returned bodies to Gaza “after confirming that they were not Israeli hostages taken by Hamas,” according to Reuters.

The Gaza government media office said on Sunday that Abd al-Fattah al-Zriei, the deputy economy minister in the territory, was killed along with his mother in an Israeli airstrike on a home in Deir al-Balah.

The Israeli military claimed without substantiation that al-Zriei was “involved in the manufacturing department” of Hamas’ military wing and “stopped humanitarian aid from reaching Gazan civilians” – a tacit acknowledgement that al-Zriei was deliberately killed.

One day after the Israeli military implied that al-Zriei had diverted aid from reaching those in need in Gaza, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, complained that “nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”

Smotrich said that “international legitimacy for this war” was holding Israel back from doing so.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies such as Smotrich are viewed within Israel’s defense establishment and its negotiating team, as well as its allies abroad, as the primary obstacle for a negotiated ceasefire agreement that would secure the release of the remaining captives in Gaza – particularly after the assassination of Haniyeh, a key Hamas interlocutor in the talks.

A deal to end the war is also necessary to prevent a further escalation between Israel and Hizballah, the latter of which has reiterated its position that de-escalation will come only once the bloodshed ends in Gaza.

Nasrallah describes existential battle

During his speech on Tuesday, Hizballah’s Nasrallah said that judging by Israel’s actions in Gaza, “it is clear that Netanyahu doesn’t want a ceasefire and he doesn’t want to end the war.”

[https://twitter.com/ME_Observer_/status/1820822136535326858]

He added that Israel’s plan in Gaza is to uproot the population and force it into submission while consolidating its hold on the lands of historic Palestine, Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms.

If Israel and the US “were to achieve victory against the resistance in Gaza, in the West Bank and the region,” Nasrallah warned, it would mean that there would be no deterrence against the genocidal state “running loose in the region.”

“The region today is confronting real dangers, everyone must understand the nature of this current battle,” Nasrallah emphasized. “If [the Israeli] government were to achieve victory in the battle of Gaza and the West Bank, it would mean there is no such thing as Palestine and the Palestinian people, nor Palestinian refugees.”

“Even al-Aqsa mosque, which the Muslims say is our first qibla, our sanctity … will be in very grave danger,” he added.

The defeat of resistance to Israel’s ambitions would endanger Lebanon’s sovereignty while the regime in Jordan, viewed by Netanyahu and his far-right allies as an alternative location for Palestinians, “would become something of the past.”

“I’m speaking about the current dangers, not in the next 10 years,” Nasrallah said.

But a defeat of the resistance is hardly a foregone conclusion.

“Nothing has changed: the captives haven’t returned, the resistance in Gaza hasn’t been eliminated,” Nasrallah said. To the contrary, he added, Israel’s army is becoming exhausted while its economy is suffering and social and political divisions within the country are widening.

“So there’s a horizon for this battle,” Nasrallah said, adding that “the fate of the region is now being determined.”

As if to underscore Nasrallah’s warnings of the danger posed by Tel Aviv, people in Beirut reported sonic booms from Israeli warplanes minutes before his televised address.

“The loud booms sent residents rushing to open their windows to prevent the glass from shattering, or standing on their balconies to get a glimpse of the planes flying over,” the news agency added.

Nasrallah’s speech marked the one-week anniversary of the killing of the resistance group’s senior military commander Fuad Shukr. Israel said that it killed Shukr in retaliation for what it said was a Hizballah rocket strike that killed 12 children in Majdal Shams, a Syrian town in the occupied Golan Heights, late last month.

Hizballah has said that it was not connected in any way to the explosion in Majdal Shams. In a speech last week, Nasrallah blamed it on a failed Israeli missile interceptor.

Earlier on Tuesday, Hizballah said “it launched a swarm of attack drones at two military sites near Acre in northern Israel and also attacked an Israeli military vehicle in another location,” according to Reuters.

Several people were injured, one critically, by an interceptor that “missed the target and hit the ground,” the Israeli military said.

Nasrallah did not divulge anything about the nature or timing of Hizballah’s response to the killing of Shukr but said it “will be strong, effective and impactful.”

A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry said on Monday that Tehran “seeks to establish stability in the region, but this will only come with punishing the aggressor and creating deterrence against the adventurism of the Zionist regime.”

Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada

8 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

At present there are about 56 conflicts in the world, more than in any year since WW2. In addition there is a tendency for conflicts to be more prolonged. The percentage of conflicts ending with peace agreements has declined from 23% in the 1970s to just 4% in the 2010s. The possibility of ongoing conflicts escalating into much bigger and destructive wars is very high just now. The humanitarian crisis arising from conflicts is endangering the life of many times more people than die directly in the violence of conflicts, while the budgets available for humanitarian aid are diminishing.

All these are important reasons for a significantly enhanced sense of urgency in finding peaceful solutions for conflicts and in particular for such ideas that can bring at least some immediate relief, apart from laying the foundation for more durable peace. With modern heavily destructive weapons in use, it is an immense relief if the shooting, bombing and fighting can stop as early as possible even if various contentious issues take longer to resolve. Thousands of deaths, very painful injuries and disabilities can be stopped on daily basis if such steps can be taken up on a significant scale.

Hence the way forward for peace efforts in the case of most conflicts should be to combine three important steps that are mutually supportive of each other.

The first part in turn consists of two sub-parts. First, the two sides agree to unconditional ceasefire i.e. cessations of all fighting in whatever form, more or less on the basis of the existing line of control. The second sub-part consists of the two sides agreeing at the same time to engage in peaceful negotiations to settle all contentious issues.

Such an agreement has the advantage of stopping the fighting, bombing and shooting immediately and providing immediate relief to long-suffering people. Food and other relief supplies can now be rushed much more easily and safely to people who need these the most. Medical care and medicines for seriously injured and ill people can now be provided more easily. Large-scale reconstruction and repair work can also start now and many displaced people can gradually start returning to their homes.  In addition there is no loss of face for either side as all contentious issues are kept open for future peace negotiations.

The second part of the peace process parts starts a few month later after preparations have been made for peace negotiations. This should not be seen as a hurried affair. Both sides should agree that regardless of any persisting differences, the peace negotiations should not break down. There can be one round, followed with a short rest (I won’t call it a break), then the second round can start, and then after a gap the third round can start. If in the process big differences get resolved that is very good, but even if this does not happen and only some minor ones are resolved, this too is a step forward.  What is important is that the peace negotiations should not be allowed to break down and should be conducted as politely as possible, taking special care to avoid any provocative statements. Attempts should be made to create near consensus on both sides that peace negotiations should not break down and should continue.

The third part of the peace process is that while peace negotiations are taking place with some rest periods, outside of the main peace negotiations a number of other efforts should be made with even greater continuity to create goodwill between the people of the two countries, remove misunderstandings, promote cultural exchanges, have co-production of movies, promote economic ties and trade in such ways that are genuinely beneficial for the people of both countries and strong economic reasons are also created for a relationship of friendship between the two countries.

All the three processes are intended to be mutually supportive towards each other.

While the above suggestions have been in the context mainly of conflicts involving two countries but of course these apply also to conflicts involving more than two countries or to two or more sides of internal conflicts.

These suggestions are for a path which can create durable peace and goodwill.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now.

7 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin

Representative Cori Bush, a progressive black woman from St. Louis, MO who is a member of the “Squad” and has been a powerful voice in Congress for poor people, women’s rights, healthcare, housing–and Palestine, just lost her primary because pro-Israel lobby groups flooded the race with outside funding. Her loss is a tremendous blow to progressives and to the U.S. electoral process itself.

This is the pro-Israel lobby’s second “win” of the season. The first was the June defeat of progressive, black congressman from Westchester County, N.Y., Jamaal Bowman, who was a forceful critic of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. AIPAC and its mis-named super PAC, the United Democracy Project, barged into Westchester County to anoint an opponent—white, pro-Israel Westchester County Executive George Latimer—and then shower him with cash.

The ads against Bowman were not about Israel. Instead, AIPAC smeared the congressman’s character and criticized him as a “hot head” who was not a reliable member of the Democratic team. In the words of President of the Arab American Institute Jim Zogby, the race became  “the angry, frightening young black man versus the calm, thoughtful older white guy.”

By throwing $17 million into the race, pro-Israel groups turned Bowman’s primary into the most expensive one in U.S. history. When Bowman was defeated, AIPAC declared the outcome showed that the pro-Israel position is “both good policy and good politics.” On the contrary. It showed that pro-Israel groups can buy elections and it sent a frightening message to all elected officials that if they criticize Israel, even during a genocide, they may well pay with their careers.

Buoyed by its success, AIPAC then took on Cori Bush, marching into St. Louis, MO determined to defeat a black woman who was one of the most unique voices in all of congress. Once a unhoused single mother of two, and a survivor of gun violence, domestic violence and sexual assault, Bush became a nurse and a pastor, and in the wake of the killing of the unarmed black man Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014, she became an activist on the frontlines of the movement to save black lives. After protesting in the streets for 400 days, she jumped into the political arena. In 2020 made a successful run for Congress, becoming the first black representative from Missouri.

In Bush’s two terms in Congress, she demonstrated leadership on many fronts, including reproductive justice and abortion rights. At a House of Representatives committee hearing in 2021, Bush was one of three congresswomen to share her abortion story publicly. And after the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, she introduced a host of bills, including the Reproductive Health Care Accessibility Act, the Protecting Access to Medication Abortion Act, the Reproductive Health Travel Fund Act, and the Protect Sexual and Reproductive Health Act.

She also championed housing rights. When the COVID moratorium on evictions was about to expire, she grabbed her sleeping bag and lawn chair, and organized a “sleep in” on the steps of the U.S. Capitol that resulted in an extension of the moratorium on evictions.

Foreign policy was not her focus, but in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 9, 2023 and Israel’s subsequent bombing of civilians in Gaza, Bush felt compelled to speak out. Just nine days after the October 7 Hamas attack, she had the courage to introduce a ceasefire resolution in the House. She was one of only nine House members who opposed a resolution supporting Israel. She boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, calling him a “war criminal.”

As a result of defending Palestinians, she found herself in AIPAC’s crosshairs. “Cori Bush has been one of the most hostile critics of Israel since she came to Congress in 2021 and has actively worked to undermine mainstream Democratic support for the U.S.-Israel relationship, “ AIPAC claimed.

AIPAC’s super PAC spent nearly $9 million, much of it coming from Republican mega-donors, to buy ads smearing Bush and shoring up contender Wesley Bell, a St. Louis County Prosecutor. The attacks were vicious, including ads that darkened Bush’s skin and manipulated her racial features. They also distorted her domestic voting record, condemning her for not supporting Biden’s Infrastructure Bill instead of explaining that her vote was part of a strategy to gain leverage for key social programs in the Build Back Better Act.

Curiously, in the cases of both Bowman and Bush, the attack ads did not even mention Israel. But if Israel is AIPAC’s singular focus, why did the ads avoid the issue? That’s because most Americans, especially in those liberal Democrat districts, agree with their positions. Most Americans want a ceasefire and disapprove of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.  As Jewish Voice for Peace Executive Director Stephanie Fox said during a call to rally support for the Congresswoman Bush, “She has been a life raft for our values and principles in Congress and she has been under attack because far right extremist groups like AIPAC are scared.

Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute agrees.  “Pro-Israel groups are running scared,” he said. “They are losing the public debate over policy—especially among Democrats. Most Democrats are deeply opposed to Israeli policies in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian lands. Majorities want a ceasefire and an end to settlements. And they want to stop further arms shipments to Israel.” So AIPAC hides the Israel issue and then claims the “win” is a victory for Israel.

If we are going to stop U.S. support for Israel’s genocide, prevent the Middle East from erupting in flames and reclaim our elections here at home, we have to stop AIPAC.

Medea Benjamin is an author and the cofounder of the peace group CODEPINK. You can find her on social media @medeabenjamin.

7 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Brett Wilkins

In an urgent appeal for financial and other resources, two top United Nations human rights officials on Tuesday condemned the world’s inadequate response to a nascent famine in Sudan.

The U.N. Famine Review Committee announced last week that famine now exists in the Zamzam refugee camp near al-Fashir in North Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Sudanese are sheltering amid 15 months of a civil war that’s displaced more than 10 million people and cut off delivery of desperately needed food and other aid.

Other parts of Sudan—including Greater Darfur, South Kordofan, and Khartoum—are at risk of famine.

“This announcement should stop all of us cold because when famine happens, it means we are too late,” Edem Wosornu, director of the Operations and Advocacy Division at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said Tuesday.

“It means we did not do enough. It means we, the international community, have failed,” she added, pointing to the numerous warnings of imminent famine over recent months. “This is an entirely man-made crisis and a shameful stain on our collective conscience.”

[https://twitter.com/UN_News_Centre/status/1820905232127164855]

As U.N. News reported:

The Sudanese National Army and a rival, formerly allied military, known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have been battling since April 2023, pushing “millions of civilians into a quagmire of violence and with it, death, injury, and inhumane suffering treatment.”

A staggering 26 million people are facing acute hunger… More than 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes, including some 726,000 displaced from Sennar state following recent RSF advances.

Sudan’s once vibrant capital, Khartoum, now lies in ruins, the national healthcare system has collapsed, and recent heavy rains in Kassala and North Darfur have increased the risk of cholera and other waterborne diseases. An entire generation of children is missing out on a second straight year of education.

“Let me be clear: It is still possible to stop this freight train of suffering that is charging through Sudan,” Wosornu stressed. “But only if we respond with the urgency that this moment demands.”

Justin Brady, who heads OCHA’s Sudan office, toldU.N. News on Monday that “if we don’t have enough resources and we don’t have enough access, it is going to be very difficult to stop famine conditions from taking hold” in other parts of Sudan.

“Access continues to be a major problem,” he continued. “And some donors have seen that and said, well, we’ll give you funding when you get access.”

[https://twitter.com/JustinTBrady/status/1820817468954169706]

“Second of all, when we do get access, we need to take advantage of those openings very quickly,” Brady added. “If we don’t, they will close very quickly. So not having enough resources… Our appeal for this year is only a third funded, under $900 million received.”

Echoing Brady, Wosornu said that “we are pushing from every possible angle to stop this catastrophe from getting worse, but we cannot go very far without the access and resources we need.”

Wosornu outlined the humanitarian community’s four key demands:

• Warring parties must end the conflict;
• They must uphold their obligations under international law;
• They must allow rapid, safe, and unimpeded humanitarian access across all possible routes; and
• The international community must provide adequate funding—OCHA is seeking $2.7 billion—to support aid operations.

“Assistance delayed is assistance denied for the many Sudanese civilians who are literally dying of hunger during the time it takes for clearances to come through, permits to be granted, and flood waters to subside,” Wosornu warned.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

7 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ralph Nader

Soldiers saw the body parts of little children, heard the screams, the cries, and groans of the dying, smelled the stench of rotting corpses being eaten by stray dogs, and saw their victims—mothers and fathers—begging in vain for help to save their dismembered children.

Israeli soldiers, like soldiers in other countries, bask in the self-serving effusive praise showered upon them by politicians, but privately they know BS when they hear it.

Right from the start on October 7th, the soldiers knew that the sudden collapse of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s state-of-the-art multitiered border defense system left the door open for the Hamas attack. Still denied an official investigation by Netanyahu, people know that had the border defense been in place, all the terrible consequences never would have occurred. (See, the open letter by six very prominent Israelis in The New York Times on June 26, 2024: “We Are Israelis Calling On Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.”)

The soldiers also know that the small Hamas militia of some 25,000 fighters hidden in tunnels, having only small arms with dwindling ammunition, is up against the 465,000-person military armed with 1,500 F-16 fighter pilots and nuclear weapons. The Israeli military is also equipped daily by U.S. President Joe Biden with the most modern weapons. All this makes Netanyahu’s absurd description of Hamas as an existential threat sheer propaganda designed to protect his job.

The evidence is on the bloody body-strewn ground of tiny Gaza and its crowded 2.3 million people. The Israeli military has dropped over 100,000 precision bombs, countless artillery shells from hundreds of tanks, and even naval missiles to kill over 300,000 innocent Gazan civilians, mostly children, women, and elderly, who had nothing to do with October 7th. (See also my March 5, 2024 column “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza”). Most of the remaining people in Gaza are sick, injured, or both. (See the open letter to Biden and the U.S. Congress titled, “45 American Health Workers’ Letter on Their Experiences in Gaza” dated July 25, 2024.)

How many Israeli soldiers have died? The official figure is 395 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers—many from friendly fire in the fog of explosions, accidents such as collapsing buildings, and diseases. The exaggerated “Hamas battalions” send fighters popping up from their underground tunnels to fire rifles or grenade launchers before most are immediately extinguished by overwhelming firepower.

The largest number of Israeli casualties are the soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including moral traumas, being treated in the thousands by Israeli psychologists and mental health specialists. These are the soldiers who will tell the stories of who they were ordered to kill and what they were ordered to destroy. The lack of a truthful account of the atrocities in Gaza—because of Netanyahu blocking war correspondents from Israel and other nations from freely reporting there—will be brought to light by the reports of these soldiers.

To be sure, the thirst for vengeance after October 7th animated most of the soldiers at the outset—especially those screened for having no qualms about killing innocent children, women, and men and destroying civilian facilities.

But as the weeks became months, the Torah’s instruction of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” to limit escalating cycles of revenge, according to Biblical scholars, became a hundred and then a thousand eyes for an eye and a thousand teeth for a tooth. More soldiers and generals are questioning why they are still there amidst the smoldering ruins and ghastly slaughters.

Netanyahu’s drive to remain in power has stoked the carnage in Gaza. Despised by 3 out of 4 Israelis for earlier moving to weaken the judiciary, under indictment for political corruption by Israeli prosecutors, and soundly condemned for his defense failure on October 7th, ending this one-sided annihilation of defenseless people would mean the end of his political career.

Consider what these soldiers have witnessed or done: Powerful precision bombs blowing to bits babies, children, pregnant women, refugee camps, apartments, schools, health clinics, hospitals, ambulances, water mains, and electricity networks; families starving on genocidal orders from the Israeli military “no food, water, medicine, electricity, fuel”; and homeless people trapped, unable to escape, surrender, or shelter.

The soldiers have seen their bulldozers flatten critical civilian infrastructure, even cemeteries and agricultural crops. F-16s have blown up universities, government buildings, and many schools, mosques, and historic churches. Snipers, among the most brutal of the army, kill patients in broken hospitals and survivors desperately try to pull their crushed families out from under the rubble.

Already, several reservists have told reporters in Israel that the military has no operating “rules of engagement.” They could blow up or shoot and kill anyone who moves, including United Nations relief workers, journalists, and health workers protected by international law. The laws of war—the duty to disobey illegal orders—don’t exist in Gaza.

Soldiers saw the body parts of little children, heard the screams, the cries, and groans of the dying, smelled the stench of rotting corpses being eaten by stray dogs, and saw their victims—mothers and fathers—begging in vain for help to save their dismembered children.

Unlike other wars, Israeli soldiers were not allowed to facilitate the emergency rescue crews that still exist in Gaza such as those with Doctors Without Borders, the Palestinian Red Crescent, and several internationally respected providers of food and water—themselves subject to Israeli attacks. (See December 13, 2023, an open letter titled, “Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe” to Biden by 16 Israeli human rights groups which appeared in The New York Times).

Soldiers obeyed their commanders’ orders to repeatedly push hundreds of thousands of desperate Gazans on foot, exposed to the stifling heat and lethally polluted air, from one Israeli-designated area to another. The treachery is unlimited.

Other soldiers were told to block thousands of trucks ready to enter from Egypt, packed with humanitarian aid of food, water, medicine, and other critical supplies. Still, other soldiers were ordered to kidnap thousands of Gazans, including women and children, and send them without charges to be tortured in Israeli jails, as documented in a just-released U.N. Human Rights Office report titled, Detention in the Context of the Escalation of Hostilities in Gaza.

Of course, there are plenty of soldiers happy to have such sadistic and unlawful commands. How dare the Gazans revolt against the decades of violent Israeli bombing, occupation, invasions, and military embargoes? That’s historically been the imperious attitude of cruel, colonizing, land-seizing regimes. The ranks will grow to join past “refuseniks” who in 2002 courageously declared their refusal to go and beat up people, demolish homes, and otherwise rampage against defenseless Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

From The Combatants’ Letter, January 2002:

We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the state of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty in the occupied territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people.

[…]

We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this war of the settlements.

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve, and humiliate an entire people.

Dozens of Israeli human rights organizations and leading advocates will record these reservists’ recollections, their remorse, and their recurring nightmares. The vicious omnicidal extremists who make up Netanyahu’s ruling coalition will be exposed for their war crimes and destruction of their own country’s freedoms. Returning war veterans have credibility that will fortify the forthcoming entry into Gaza of international commissions of inquiry and scores of investigative journalists. (See the new documentary The Night Won’t End.)

The violent Netanyahu knows all this, which is why he is now scheming to provoke a wider regional war by dragging spineless Biden and the U.S. military directly into the fighting. Remember Biden’s intense backing of the Bush/Cheney criminal invasion/war in Iraq.

If you don’t care what Netanyahu is doing over there, you’d better care about what he’s doing to America, our Congress, our tax dollars, our freedom of speech, and our national security.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012). His new book is, “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All” (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).

5 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jake Johnson

Israeli forces killed dozens of displaced Palestinians—mostly children—on Sunday with attacks on a pair of United Nations-run schools in the Gaza Strip as diplomats in the region worked to prevent all-out war from breaking out in the aftermath of Israel’s latest assassination spree.

Al Jazeera reported that 80% of the roughly 30 people killed in the Israeli attacks on two schools in Gaza City were children, strikes that came shortly after Israel’s military bombed a hospital complex in central Gaza, killing at least five people.

“This is beyond horror now,” David Shoebridge, an Australian senator, wrote in response to the attacks on schools-turned-shelters.

Tareq Abu Azzoum of Al Jazeera noted that rescue teams were still searching the rubble of the two schools for survivors on Monday.

“At least 16 Palestinians are still missing, including children, under the remnants of these areas that were targeted by Israel without any prior warning,” Azzoum wrote. “Civil defense crews have been using only their bare hands in order to look for survivors. They have been saying that sometimes the process for recovering and pulling out victims can take days simply because there isn’t enough fuel to operate the vast majority of bulldozers, and due to the Israeli attacks on bulldozers at the municipal facilities, used in the initial months of the war to rescue victims.”

[https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1820104591565795824]

Israel’s monthslong war on the Gaza Strip has devastated the territory’s children, killing more than 14,000, wounding more than 12,000, and leaving over 20,000 missing. The physical toll has been compounded by what one Gaza mother recently described as the “complete psychological destruction” of the enclave’s youth.

Becky Platt, a British pediatric nurse who recently returned from Gaza after a stint at a field hospital there, wrote Monday that “the psychological distress that I witnessed among children and young people is like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

“It’s very easy to be overwhelmed by the numbers when we watch the news or read about what’s happening in Gaza,” Platt continued. “Remember that each one of those numbers is one person, a child who has been forever changed by what’s happened. Then multiply that one child by thousands. That’s the work that needs to be done.”

Israel’s attacks came after a round of cease-fire talks in Cairo concluded without a deal to end the assault on Gaza. Critics, including some Israeli officials, believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is actively sabotaging cease-fire talks in a bid to remain in power.

Axiosreported Sunday that “Israeli officials and families of hostages are concerned Netanyahu, who recently toughened his demands and presented new conditions for a hostage and cease-fire deal, sent the delegation [to Cairo] only to create an appearance of negotiations to relieve some of the pressure from” U.S. President Joe Biden, who has called for a cease-fire while continuing to provide military support for the war on Gaza.

“Hamas rejected Netanyahu’s new conditions, which include forming an international mechanism to prevent weapons transfers from southern Gaza to the north,” according to Axios. “Israeli officials say this and other new demands are making a deal impossible.”

Meanwhile, diplomats are trying to prevent the region from descending into full-scale military conflict following Israel’s assassination of a Hezbollah commander and Hamas’ political leader.

Iran’s supreme leader has reportedly ordered an attack on Israel in retaliation for the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told G7 nations on Sunday that Iran’s military response could begin as soon as Monday.

Late last week, the Pentagon announced it would “deploy additional fighter jets and Navy warships to the Middle East” as lawmakers and anti-war campaigners warned of deepening U.S. involvement in the regional war.

“Americans do not want to fight another war in the Middle East,” Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said last week, “and the path out of the unimaginable death and destruction in Gaza that threatens to engulf the region is through a cease-fire.”

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

5 August 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard D. Wolff

2 Aug 2024 – Fans of capitalism like to say it is democratic or that it supports democracy. Some have stretched language so far as to literally equate capitalism with democracy, using the terms interchangeably. No matter how many times that is repeated, it is simply not true and never was. Indeed, it is much more accurate to say that capitalism and democracy are opposites. To see why, you have only to look at capitalism as a production system where employees enter into a relationship with employers, where a few people are the boss, and most people simply work doing what they are told to do. That relationship is not democratic; it is autocratic.

When you cross the threshold into a workplace (e.g., a factory, an office, or a store), you leave whatever democracy might exist outside. You enter a workplace from which democracy is excluded. Are the majority—the employees—making the decisions that affect their lives? The answer is an unambiguous no. Whoever runs the enterprise in a capitalist system (owner[s] or a board of directors) makes all the key decisions: what the enterprise produces, what technology it uses, where production takes place, and what to do with enterprise profits. The employees are excluded from making those decisions but must live with the consequences, which affect them deeply. The employees must either accept the effects of their employers’ decisions or quit their jobs to work somewhere else (most likely organized in the same undemocratic way).

The employer is an autocrat within a capitalist enterprise, like a king in a monarchy. Over the past few centuries, monarchies were largely “overthrown” and replaced by representative, electoral “democracies.” But kings remained. They merely changed their location and their titles. They moved from political positions in government to economic positions inside capitalist enterprises. Instead of kings, they are called bosses or owners or CEOs. There they sit, atop the capitalist enterprise, exercising many king-like powers, unaccountable to those over whom they reign.

Democracy has been kept out of capitalist enterprise for centuries. Many other institutions in societies where capitalist enterprises prevail—government agencies, universities and colleges, religions, and charities—are equally autocratic. Their internal relationships often copy or mirror the employer/employee relationship inside capitalist enterprises. Those institutions try thereby to “function in a businesslike manner.”

The anti-democratic organization of capitalist firms also conveys to employees that their input is not genuinely welcomed or sought by their bosses. Employees thus mostly resign themselves to their powerless position relative to the CEO at their workplace. They also expect the same in their relationships with political leaders, the CEOs’ counterparts in government. Their inability to participate in running their workplaces trains citizens to presume and accept the same in relation to running their residential communities. Employers become top political officials (and vice versa) in part because they are used to being “in charge.” Political parties and government bureaucracies mirror capitalist enterprises by being run autocratically while constantly describing themselves as democratic.

Most adults experience working at least eight hours for five or more days per week in capitalist workplaces, under the power and authority of their employer. The undemocratic reality of the capitalist workplace leaves its complex, multilayered impacts on all who collaborate there, part time and full time. Capitalism’s problem with democracy—that the two basically contradict one another—shapes many people’s lives. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Walton family (descendants of Walmart’s founder), along with a handful of other major shareholders, decide how to spend hundreds of billions. The decisions of a few hundred billionaires bring economic development, industries, and enterprises to some regions and lead to the economic decline of other regions. The many billions of people affected by those spending decisions are excluded from participating in making them. Those countless people lack the economic and social power wielded by a tiny, unelected, obscenely wealthy minority of people. That is the opposite of democracy.

Employers as a class, often led by major shareholders and the CEOs they enrich, also use their wealth to buy (they would prefer to say “donate” to) political parties, candidates, and campaigns. The rich have always understood that universal or even widespread suffrage risks a nonwealthy majority voting to undo society’s wealth inequality. So, the rich seek control of existing forms of democracy to make sure they do not become a real democracy in the sense of enabling the employee majority to outvote the employer minority.

The enormous surpluses appropriated by “big business” employers—usually corporations—allow them to reward their upper-level executives lavishly. These executives, technically also “employees,” use corporate wealth and power to influence politics. Their goals are to reproduce the capitalist system and thus the favors and rewards it gives them. Capitalists and their top employees make the political system depend on their money more than it depends on the people’s votes.

How does capitalism make the major political parties and candidates dependent on donations from employers and the rich? Politicians need vast sums of money to win by dominating the media as part of costly campaigns. They find willing donors by supporting policies that benefit capitalism as a whole, or else particular industries, regions, and enterprises. Sometimes, the donors find the politicians. Employers hire lobbyists—people who work full time, all year round, to influence the candidates that get elected. Employers fund “think tanks” to produce and spread reports on every current social issue. The purpose of those reports is to build general support for what the funders want. In these and other ways, employers and those they enrich shape the political system to work for them.

Most employees have no comparable wealth or power. To exert real political power requires massive organization to activate, combine, and mobilize employees so their numbers can add up to real strength. That happens rarely and with great difficulty. Moreover, in the U.S., the political system has been shaped over the decades to leave only two major parties. Both of them loudly and proudly endorse and support capitalism. They collaborate to make it very difficult for any third party to gain a foothold, and for any anti-capitalist political party to emerge. The U.S. endlessly repeats its commitment to maximum freedom of choice for its citizens, but it excludes political parties from that commitment.

Democracy is about “one person, one vote”—the notion that we all have an equal say in the decisions that affect us. That is not what we have now. Going into a voting booth once or twice a year and picking a candidate is a very different level of influence than that of the Rockefeller family or George Soros. When they want to influence people, they use their money. That’s not democracy.

In capitalism, democracy is unacceptable because it threatens the unequally distributed wealth of the minority with a majority vote. With or without formal institutions of democracy (such as elections with universal suffrage), capitalism undermines genuine democracy because employers control production, surplus value, and that surplus value’s distributions. For capitalism’s leaders, democracy is what they say, not what they do.

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York.

5 August 2024

Source: transcend.org