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By Nora Barrows-Friedman

The following is from the news roundup during the 13 February livestream. Watch the entire episode here.

Since the 19 January ceasefire in Gaza, Israel has violated the ceasefire in a myriad of ways, including by withholding the amounts of aid, fuel and medical deliveries agreed upon under the ceasefire terms, restricting people’s freedom of movement and by continuing to attack and kill Palestinians.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has reported, “Despite the declaration of a ceasefire … Israel continues to commit genocide in the Gaza Strip by denying Palestinians the basic necessities for survival and imposing conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”

The rights group added that more than 100 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire came into effect, including some who died from previous injuries during Israel’s genocidal attacks, and at least 900 have been injured.

On 10 February, Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas political party, announced that the planned release of Israeli captives would be postponed indefinitely unless Israel fulfilled its obligations and stopped its ceasefire violations.

Hamas officials then submitted a report to mediators on 11 February, listing 269 “field violations” by the Israeli military since the ceasefire, as well as the ongoing denials of aid and fuel deliveries.

Also included on the list were several “political violations.” They included statements by Israeli lawmakers urging the expulsion of Gaza’s population, and the ways Israeli prison authorities were subjecting Palestinian captives to assault and violence upon their release during the exchanges.

Israeli lawmakers then accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire, with US President Donald Trump insinuating that Israel should cancel the ceasefire if the Israeli captives aren’t released.

But even the Israeli military admitted in Hebrew media that Hamas had not violated the terms.

[https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1889322495032836547]

Trucks filled with fuel, medical supplies, tents, caravans, heavy machinery and food have been set to enter the Gaza Strip. But it is unclear when these necessary supplies will arrive as agreed upon.

[https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1889968679561080878]

Israel withdraws from Netzarim corridor

Israeli forces officially withdrew from the Nezarim corridor, which bisected Gaza for more than a year.

By 9 February, the French news agency AFP and The Times of Israel jointly reported that a Gaza government official said that “Israeli forces have dismantled their positions and military posts and completely withdrawn their tanks from the Netzarim corridor on Salah al-din Road, allowing vehicles to pass freely in both directions.”

The joint report added, “An AFP journalist on the scene said there were no Israeli troops present on the corridor.”

The Al Jazeera Arabic channel filmed footage of the wreckage left behind by the Israeli military after it withdrew from the Netzarim corridor.

[https://twitter.com/AJA_Palestine/status/1888494971243688282]

In a statement, the Hamas political party said that “the withdrawal of the Zionist occupation army from the Netzarim axis is a victory for the will of our people.”

Medical equipment “deliberately destroyed”

Turning to the healthcare situation in Gaza, Caroline Seguin, the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, stated from northern Gaza on 11 February that “the level of destruction is total, it’s a flat land. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Our Palestinian colleagues are no longer able to recognize their own neighborhoods, some were in shock, others literally collapsed.”

[https://twitter.com/MSF_USA/status/1889423275853304274]

“Kamal Adwan Hospital has been razed, while al-Shifa, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals are seriously damaged and only partially functioning,” Seguin added.

“We were utterly shocked to observe that in Indonesian Hospital every medical machine seemed to have been deliberately destroyed; they were smashed to pieces, one by one, to make sure no medical care could be provided anymore. You have to ask, what is the motivation of such action? These machines are made to save people’s lives, mothers, fathers, children. It’s devastating to see the state of these hospitals.”

There is an update on the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was abducted by the Israeli military on 27 December along with his colleagues, medical staff, patients and their companions.

As we reported last week, Abu Safiya was still prohibited by the Israeli prison authorities any access to a lawyer as he remains in administrative detention at Ofer military prison.

On Tuesday, 11 February, after 47 days of arbitrary detention, Abu Safiya met with a lawyer from the human rights group Al Mezan for the first time since his abduction from Gaza.

During the visit, “Dr. Abu Safiya detailed the various forms of torture and abuse to which he has been subjected both during his unlawful arrest and throughout his arbitrary detention by Israeli forces and authorities,” Al Mezan stated.

“When he was captured from Gaza and transferred to the Sde Teiman military detention camp, he was subjected to various forms of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment – methods that are emblematic of Israeli mass arrest operations in Gaza.”

Abu Safiya reported “being forcibly stripped, having his hands tightly shackled, and being made to sit on sharp gravel for approximately five hours by Israeli forces. He was also subjected to severe physical abuse, including beatings with batons and electric shock sticks, as well as repeated blows to the chest.”

Al Mezan said that Abu Safiya was held in solitary confinement for 25 days at Ofer prison and “endured nearly continuous interrogation for 10 days.” He reported severe health problems and a precipitous decline in his weight, and has been denied access to healthcare.

Al Mezan urged the so-called international community, particularly Israel’s enabling allies, “to take immediate action to demand the immediate and unconditional release of Dr. Abu Safiya, as well as of all Palestinians who have been unlawfully arrested and arbitrarily detained by Israeli authorities, including hundreds of healthcare workers.”

In a statement, Hussam Abu Safiya’s family said there is “a possibility of his release in the coming stages, as there are no charges against him from the Israeli public prosecution. He urges the world to help secure his release and the release of all detained healthcare personnel from all hospitals. They must be protected, their rights ensured, and they should receive care and be released as soon as possible.”

[https://twitter.com/HussamAbuSafiya/status/1889412170766754224]

However, on 14 February, Al Mezan stated that the Israeli army has issued an order to “detain Abu Safiya under the Unlawful Combatants Law.”

This law, Al Mezan says, “enables prolonged detention without charges, stripping detainees of any meaningful judicial review or due process rights.”

[https://twitter.com/AlMezanCenter/status/1890415985749803022]

40,000 forcibly displaced in occupied West Bank

Turning to the occupied West Bank, The Electronic Intifada’s Tamara Nassar reports that Israel’s ongoing deadly assaults have nearly emptied several refugee camps, specifically in the northern areas.

Some 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since Israel’s military operation, dubbed “Iron Wall,” launched in the northern Jenin refugee camp on 21 January.

Since then, Israel expanded its assault to Tulkarm refugee camp and Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm, also in the north. Al-Faraa refugee camp in the foothills of the Jordan Valley, south of Tubas, was also targeted.

Nassar writes that the Israeli army has carried out invasions and airstrikes, destroyed critical infrastructure such as electricity, sewage and water lines, raided homes, arrested youth and deployed snipers in residential areas.

Nearly 50 Palestinians have been killed in those areas and over 100 have been injured.

And in occupied Jerusalem, two owners of the Educational Bookshop were arrested and detained on 9 February after Israeli police raided both of their stores in the city and threw books on the floor, accusing the owners of selling items that incite terrorism, including a children’s coloring book titled From the River to the Sea.

The owners, Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna, were released on Tuesday, and according to their lawyer, the Israeli court charged them with disturbing public order and ordered that they be placed under house arrest for five days.

The court also ordered them not to be allowed to return to their bookstores for 20 days.

Highlighting resilience

Finally, as we always do, we wanted to share images of people expressing determination and resilience in the aftermath of Israel’s 15-month campaign of destruction.

A group of kids sitting around a campfire in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, spoke with journalist Anas al-Sharif about US-Israeli aspirations to expel them to other countries and take over Gaza.

Every time Anas asks the kids if they’re thinking about leaving the north of Gaza, they all shout in unison “no!”

“Let Trump bark all he wants,” one of the kids says. “We’re not leaving.”

[https://twitter.com/translatingpal/status/1889451618971832630]

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014).

14 February 2025

Source: electronicintifada.net

By Sondos Asem

For over 15 months, Israeli soldiers have taken to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms to show off their handiwork in Gaza.

Now, this very evidence is being used to pursue war crimes charges against them across the globe, with the Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation at the forefront of these efforts.

“You can’t massacre people, film yourself doing it, broadcast it to the world, confess to your actions, and then simply go about your life, sitting next to me at a cafe in Brussels,” says Dyab Abou Jahjah, president of the foundation.

He emphasises that their mission is clear: “We are going after war criminals wherever they go.”

Abou Jahjah says that the foundation has gathered over 8,000 pieces of evidence related to alleged war crimes by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.

“The evidence is there,” he tells Middle East Eye. “The challenge is to turn it into a legal case.”

Videos of soldiers proudly demolishing homes, wearing Palestinian women’s underwear and torching libraries have caused huge offence worldwide.

But Abou Jahjah says the Hind Rajab Foundation is looking at this footage in a different light.

“We’re looking at a crime scene, searching for the crimes, and establishing connections between the perpetrators, the crime and the victims,” he explained.

The Hind Rajab Foundation is named in honour of a six-year-old Palestinian girl whose tragic death at the hands of Israeli soldiers on 29 January 2024 has become symbolic of the widespread violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israeli forces.

An investigation in June revealed that Rajab and five of her family members were targeted with 335 Israeli army bullets as they attempted to flee northern Gaza in their car.

For three hours, Hind was the sole survivor, trapped alongside her slain relatives. Desperate for help, she called Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, but they were killed by Israeli forces before they could rescue her.

A harrowing recording of Hind’s final phone call, released after the incident, captured her chilling pleas: “I’m scared of the dark, come get me.”

Her tragic story has driven Abou Jahjah and his team of human rights lawyers to seek justice for countless victims like Hind.

“In this genocide, children make up the majority of the victims,” Abou Jahjah says, “which speaks volumes about the nature of the genocidal party: the Israeli army and the Israeli state.”

Palestinian health officials say that at least 18,000 children were among the more than 48,000 Palestinians killed by Israel’s war on Gaza.

Offensive litigation

The Hind Rajab Foundation brings cases against state officials, senior commanders, as well as lower-ranking soldiers.

The bulk of its work is focused on offensive litigation and a two-pronged accountability strategy, targeting two categories of soldiers: Israelis who hold the nationalities of a country where a court case can be initiated, and travelling soldiers who are not nationals of their countries of destination.

“We we do not see ourselves as an NGO. We see ourselves as a justice machine,” Abou Jahjah says.

So far, the Hind Rajab Foundation has sought to initiate nearly 100 cases against Israeli soldiers in 14 countries with universal jurisdiction: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden and Thailand.

National courts can prosecute international crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a state to prosecute individuals for serious international crimes, regardless of where the crime was committed or the nationality of the victim or perpetrator. But universal jurisdiction rules vary by country.

Most UN member states have jurisdiction over one of the four most serious crimes under international law: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and torture.

A 2021 survey by Amnesty International showed that 164 (roughly 85 percent) of the 193 UN member states have criminalised at least one of these crimes under their national law.

The litigation is easier when soldiers hold the nationality of the country where they are present. Lawyers can immediately establish jurisdiction, explained Abou Jahjah.

“We are very hopeful that on the level of dual-national soldiers, we will reach judgments and convictions.”

It is less straightforward to prosecute visiting soldiers who aren’t citizens of countries they are visiting. In that case, universal jurisdiction is the legal basis for bringing war crime charges.

Additionally, under international criminal law, soldiers can be held criminally responsible for violations of international humanitarian law even if they were following orders from their superiors.

The Israeli army denies committing war crimes in Gaza and insists that its commanders and soldiers abide by the laws of armed conflict, which prohibit targetting non-combatants.

Two breakthroughs

In its first five months, the Hind Rajab Foundation achieved two major breakthroughs, says Abou Jahjah.

The first was in Cyprus in November, where a prosecutor opened an investigation against an Israeli reservist soldier after a case that the foundation filed against him.

The Israeli state helped the soldier flee Cyprus, according to Abou Jahjah and Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

In its complaint, the foundation supplied Cypriot authorities with evidence, including his own video footage showing him burning a civilian home and property in Gaza while stating: “We will not stop until we burn all of Gaza.”

A few weeks later, the foundation initiated a similar case, this time in Brazil against another Israeli soldier who was visiting the country on holiday. The Hind Rajab Foundation said that the Israeli state again helped the soldier flee Brazil before he could be arrested.

The Hind Rajab Foundation, acting on a power of attorney granted by families of Palestinian victims, accused the soldier of taking part in the destruction of entire neighbourhoods in Gaza, which it argued amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity.

They submitted 500 pages of video evidence as well as photographs and geolocation data documenting his participation in the alleged crimes.

Acting in response to the criminal complaint filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation, the Federal Court of the Federal District, following a probe by the prosecutor, issued an urgent order for the police to investigate and take action against the suspect.

Abou Jahjah says the Brazil case marked a historic precedent. It was a court order, by a judge, which would have been followed by an arrest warrant had the suspect been on Brazilian soil.

Additionally, Abou Jahjah says he considers it a form of indictment, with significant legal weight, because a judge would not issue such an order unless he or she were convinced that there was a plausible case.

In the aftermath of the Brazil case, Israeli media published guidelines for travelling soldiers to avoid arrest for war crimes, including refraining from sharing social media posts showing evidence of unlawful actions.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army announced new rules to blur the photos and conceal the identities of soldiers of all ranks in publicity materials.

Changing the mindset of states

Abou Jahjah says that even though states around the world have universal jurisdiction on war crimes, many tend to be reluctant to allow cases against Israeli combatants to move forward, under the pretext that the alleged crime was not committed on their territory and the suspect isn’t a national.

He believes the Hind Rajab Foundation has a role to play in convincing them to apply universal jurisdiction where they can.

“Most countries have the tendency to say: ‘this is not our problem, go elsewhere, go to the ICC or go to Israel itself’,” Abou Jahjah explains.

“We’re trying to enter that debate with them, trying to convince them, trying to actually educate them on the fact that they have jurisdiction,” he adds.

“I think it’s important to keep doing that because we need to change the mindset of prosecutors and judges, and eventually also politicians in many countries around the world in terms of how they look at international law.”

In addition to using national court systems, Hind Rajab Foundation lawyers filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against more than 1,000 soldiers in October 2024, including evidence that Abou Jahjah says will remain in the court’s archive permanently and assist with related cases.

The ICC is the world’s only permanent international court with the jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.

But the ICC is a court of last resort, operating under the principle of complementarity, which means that it only intervenes when states are unwilling or unable to prosecute suspects.

It also follows a gravity threshold, typically targeting senior officials and commanders responsible for the most serious crimes rather than soldiers and lower-ranking officers.

Prosecuting Israeli officials

But seeking to prosecute senior officials and commanders is also part of the organisation’s work, Abou Jahjah says.

This includes an ICC case brought by the group against Israel’s military attache in Belgium, Colonel Moshe Tetro, who had previously served as the commander of the Israeli military unit accused of orchestrating famine in Gaza during the early months of the war.

Following reports about the case, Israel’s ambassador to Belgium denied the accusations against Tetro.

“There was no objection to his appointment and he received full diplomatic accreditation,” Israeli Ambassador Idit Rosenzweig-Abu told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. “Israel acts according to international law.”

The Israeli military, meanwhile, decribed Tetro as a “highly respected and distinguishe officer” and said it “strongly rejects allegations of war crimes”.

Another case was filed against Major General Ghassan Alian, head of Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees civilian activities in Gaza such as aid distribution, while he was visiting Rome in January.

The complaint accused him of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes over his leading role in enforcing and supervising Israel’s total siege on Gaza following the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.

Alian also publicly referred to Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals”, demonstrating his genocidal intent, the group said.

In Tetro’s case, prosecuting him before a Belgian court would be prevented by his diplomatic immunity. But he has no immunity before the ICC, since Belgium is a state party to the court’s statute.

The ICC in November issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who was then defence minister, for several charges: primarily the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.

Abou Jahjah expects the ICC to issue additional warrants for Tetro and Ailan because they were the executioners of Netanyahu’s and Gallant’s orders on the ground.

These efforts may take years to bear fruit, he says, but they are worth the wait.

“It’s an important fight and we will keep doing this.”

Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.

14 February 2025

Source: middleeasteye.net

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

Palestinian prisoners burned the uniforms they were forced to wear upon release, highlighting Israel’s mistreatment and fueling criticism of its prison policies.

Freed Palestinian prisoners burned on Saturday the uniforms that Israeli prison authorities forced them to wear before their release.

The clothing, bearing Israeli symbols and phrases, sparked widespread anger in Palestine and criticism in Israel.

On Saturday morning, the official Israeli Broadcasting Authority (KAN) published images showing the prisoners in white shirts printed with the Star of David, the Israeli Prison Service logo, and the phrase “We do not forget and we do not forgive” on both sides.

The Israeli Prison Service not only compelled the prisoners to wear these shirts but also took photographs of them in what has been described as a humiliating manner.

The prisoners were forced to kneel with their heads lowered, while other images captured them lined up inside a prison yard, surrounded by barbed wire.

[https://twitter.com/PalestineChron/status/1890751420581740885]

This incident occurred shortly after the release of Israeli detainees from Gaza, who were handed over to the Red Cross in clean, well-kept clothing and carrying gifts.

Upon arriving at the courtyard of the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, several freed prisoners set fire to the Israeli-marked clothing, as their families and supporters chanted in a collective rejection of the occupation’s attempt to impose its symbolism on them.

Hamas Condemns Israeli Actions

The Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas denounced Israel’s actions, stating that forcing Palestinian prisoners to wear shirts with racist slogans before their release was part of an ongoing campaign of humiliation.

This occurred during the sixth batch of the prisoner exchange deal under the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

In an official statement, Hamas condemned “the occupation’s crime of imposing racist slogans on the backs of our heroic prisoners and subjecting them to cruelty and violence, in blatant violation of humanitarian laws and norms.”

[https://twitter.com/PalestineChron/status/1890732477750055294]

Israel’s decision, according to the statement, contrasted this with the resistance’s commitment to moral values in the treatment of Israeli detainees.

Hamas further emphasized that the release of three Israeli captives earlier on Saturday places Tel Aviv under the obligation to abide by the agreement and humanitarian protocol and move forward with negotiations for the second phase without stalling.

Islamic Jihad’s Response

The Islamic Jihad Movement also strongly condemned “the latest racist crime committed by the occupation forces against the freed Palestinian prisoners.”

The group stated that beyond this disgraceful act, Israeli media deliberately broadcast the images to further humiliate the prisoners, describing it as a desperate attempt to break their will.

They characterized it as “a flagrant violation of all international and humanitarian laws, revealing the occupation’s racist, inhumane nature and deep-seated hatred.”

Islamic Jihad further noted the stark contrast between the treatment of prisoners by both sides: “The world saw how the resistance treated the enemy’s prisoners with dignity and respect. Their release was orderly, and no harm came to them, unlike the systematic abuse suffered by our heroic prisoners.”

The military spokesman for the Al-Quds Brigades, Abu Hamza, reinforced this message, stating: “The resistance upholds ethical treatment of prisoners, while the enemy specializes in torturing ours.”

He pointed out that forcing Palestinian prisoners to wear degrading clothing and subjecting them to harsh conditions illustrates the brutality of Israeli treatment.

Abu Hamza called on the United States not to ignore these horrific scenes of systematic abuse and killings of Palestinian prisoners, whom he described as “the rightful owners of the land.”

He urged the US to demand that Israel release all Palestinian prisoners, just as it insists on the release of all Israeli detainees.

[https://twitter.com/PalestineChron/status/1890755513077342610]

Prisoner Exchange and Stalled Agreements

Earlier in the day, the Al-Qassam Brigades and Al-Quds Brigades handed over three Israeli detainees, including two dual nationals (one American and one Russian), to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Red Cross then transferred them to the Israeli army as part of the sixth batch of the prisoner exchange agreement.

The transfer of this batch had been delayed the previous week due to Israel’s failure to adhere to the humanitarian protocol of the ceasefire agreement.

In response, Al-Qassam announced on Monday that it was freezing the release of Israeli prisoners until Israel ceased its violations.

Israeli Criticism of Prison Service

Within Israel, KAN reported that the treatment of Palestinian prisoners sparked internal criticism of the Prison Service, particularly regarding the clothing they were made to wear.

The report indicated that Israeli political leadership was unaware of the Prison Service’s decision to dress prisoners in these uniforms, which led to backlash.

Critics pointed out that the decision undermined Israel’s efforts to contrast its treatment of prisoners with that of Hamas, following the well-documented humane release of Israeli detainees by the Palestinian resistance.

[https://twitter.com/PalestineChron/status/1890832248775282837]

Violations of the Ceasefire Agreement

Hamas has accused Israel of violating the agreement on four major fronts: targeting and killing Palestinians; delaying the return of displaced people to northern Gaza; blocking the entry of humanitarian aid, including shelter supplies, fuel, and rubble-removal equipment needed to recover bodies; Delaying critical medical supplies necessary to restore hospitals and the health sector.

As tensions escalated, efforts were made in recent days to salvage the agreement. On Thursday, Hamas stated that mediators from Egypt and Qatar had intervened to resolve these disputes, and it described the atmosphere of negotiations as positive.

Hamas reiterated that it remains committed to implementing the agreement as originally signed, including the prisoner exchanges according to the specified timetable.

However, despite assurances from mediators, no mobile homes or heavy machinery for rubble removal had entered Gaza by Friday, as stipulated in the humanitarian protocol, according to Gaza’s government media office.

On Thursday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that 763 trucks entered Gaza but did not provide details on their contents or whether they fulfilled the necessary humanitarian commitments.

Today I Am Palestinian, Tomorrow I Am Palestinian! | Interview w/ Ahmet Davutoğlu

15 February 2025

Source: palestinechronicle.com

My dear Aung San Suu Kyi,

I am now elderly, decrepit and formally retired, but breaking my vow to remain silent on public affairs out of profound sadness about the plight of the Muslim minority in your country, the Rohingya.

In my heart you are a dearly beloved younger sister. For years I had a photograph of you on my desk to remind me of the injustice and sacrifice you endured out of your love and commitment for Myanmar’s people. You symbolised righteousness. In 2010 we rejoiced at your freedom from house arrest, and in 2012 we celebrated your election as leader of the opposition.

Your emergence into public life allayed our concerns about violence being perpetrated against members of the Rohingya. But what some have called “ethnic cleansing” and others “a slow genocide” has persisted – and recently accelerated. The images we are seeing of the suffering of the Rohingya fill us with pain and dread.

We know that you know that human beings may look and worship differently – and some may have greater firepower than others – but none is superior and none inferior; that when you scratch the surface we are all the same, members of one family, the human family; that there are no natural differences between Buddhists and Muslims, and that whether we are Jews or Hindus, Christians or atheists, we are born to love, without prejudice. Discrimination doesn’t come naturally; it is taught.

My dear sister: If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep. A country that is not at peace with itself, that fails to acknowledge and protect the dignity and worth of all its people, is not a free country.

It is incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country; it is adding to our pain.

As we witness the unfolding horror we pray for you to be courageous and resilient again. We pray for you to speak out for justice, human rights and the unity of your people. We pray for you to intervene in the escalating crisis and guide your people back towards the path of righteousness again.

God bless you.

Love

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu DM

Photos: Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (Reuters) and Aung San Suu Kyi (Reuters)

8 September 2017

Source: dailymaverick.co.za

By Ranjan Solomon

Here is revenge- Trump styled! The US has imposed sanctions on Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to that effect. The US Treasury Department stated in a release that it imposed sanctions on Khan under the provisions of the executive order issued by Trump on February 6, which mandates punishment of the ICC for issuing arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Big powers prefer to punish weaker nations by imposing illegal and unethical means to bring them to obey who they still believe to be the ‘Master’ versus the Slave. In this case, the ICC/ICJ commands the higher moral grounds. Israel’s status and US support have no status except to try and bully. Netanyahu and Gallant deserve a large  slice of time in jail for their atrocities on well over 50,000 innocent civilians especially women and children. They are war criminals and one doe4s not even need to be a judge to figure that out.

Karim Khan is not alone in making his judgement. A group of eminent judges scrutinised the evidence provided by South Africa and supported by numerous other countries, and a vast body of civil society. Quite obviously the evidence is plausible. Add to that informed public opinion, and the voice of justice movements, trade unions, and students around the world, the case is well certified.

The streets, intellectuals, and all manner of social movements should heighten public opinion in their respective countries to lobby with their governments to ensure that the ICC is not restricted in any way to hand justice to the guilty.

Trump is a man out-of-touch with the world of reality. Trump 2 is a version that is far more dangerous than he was in his first term. First he knows too little about the world. This makes him a dangerous bully – someone who will act on the assumption that he is stronger than others. He will bring his own country to ruins for certain. He will lose his bets in the Middle East for certain. He has miscalculated his capacities. This is visible when one hears some of his press encounters. He has lost the plot because he never really had one. He tends to confuse deal-making with dialogue. Reality is not his forte to grasp. With his limited intellect, he is currently working to consolidate himself with a bunch of select bureaucrats and oligarchs. These are not people from the field of public service and experience. They are simply sycophants who are there to ensure they are in chorus when they act as ‘yes men’. It is a safe guess to claim that many of them will desert Trump when his ship starts sinking.

Trump is already tired and worn out. He slept in a church service and Melania had to keep him awake. His ideas have run out and the only thing one can expect is an outpouring of irrationality of ideas. This is dangerous because the man has his fingers that can press all the wrong buttons.

His ‘tariff gambles’ may work in countries here and there. But, by and large, he is being snubbed and the US has become the ‘joker of the pack’. China has firmly rejected all his propositions and countrered Trump’s tariffs  deals with checkmates that have made Trump nervous and fidgety.

After backing down on China’s punishing counter-tariffs,he tried desperately to call Xi Jinping on the phone. He got no response and that is reality. It may be too late for Trump to learn from errors of judgment. He lives in the evening of his life and the sun is setting on his capacities to think better and act more efficiently. A state of collapse and a US that loses influence and respect in the global community will soon arrive. Even his oligarch friends could well stumble and fall.

This weekend will demonstrate whether Trump’s threat that “ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOOSE” of all hostages are not released at the same time! Trump does not want this release of hostages one at a  time. He has conveniently forgotten that on the other side, Israel has well over 1000 prisoners including hostages that have been detained without good reason. So Trump has once again made a threat he cannot keep.

Rifat Kassis, a well known social activist/human rights activist and political thinker/advisor and an eminent Christian leader says: “We may seem to be the weaker side militarily speaking. History attests to what have been called moral victories over mighty armies. The Americans have hardly ever won a war with all their sophisticated armoury. Their defeats have taught them nothing at all. To live in peace and justice, does not seem to fall within their scope of thinking.” Rifat Kassis adds: ” Recall the recent Gaza war. Who won? Gaza. Who lost? Israel. The country is now demoralised for many reasons. They have not told the truth to their people about the thousands of deaths on the Israeli side. They have hidden the truth about the hefty numbers that have fled with everything- bagt, baggage, money from their banks, investments, pension funds etc. Nothing remains. A microscopic few return to have a peek at whether there is any purpose saved by returning. A collapsing economy is not a good space to return to.” Kassis concludesA: “Not only have we won. We know it will be an uphill struggle. But we have the energy and resilience to protect what is our culture, heritage, and authentic ownership of the spaces. Most Jews have come from here, there, and everywhere. They don’t feel about the land as we Palestinians do. To us our land is mother. No wonder they can flee so easily and when they find it convenient. We, Palestinians, are here to stay” Forever”.

In solidarity

Ranjan Solomon
On behalf of MLN/Palestine Updates 14 February 2025

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

– Trump’s idea is a declaration ‘effectively to commit a war crime,’ Zarni tells Anadolu

– ‘The US’ 300-year history speaks volumes about how these white supremacist land thieves view the rest of the world,’ says Zarni

LONDON

US President Donald Trump has declared to the entire world that he intends to commit a war crime in Gaza by expelling its Palestinian population, according to a prominent genocide scholar.

Trump’s remarks were made “without any conscience or compassion, as if the Palestinian people, including hundreds of thousands of children, don’t mean anything to him,” Maung Zarni, a renowned genocide scholar, educator, and human rights activist, told Anadolu.

Trump first made the comments during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited Washington last week despite a warrant from the International Criminal Court seeking his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Dismissing fierce condemnation from world leaders, rights activists, and legal experts, Trump has doubled down on his controversial proposal, telling reporters on Sunday that the US remains “committed to buying and owning Gaza.”

For Zarni, Trump’s idea is a declaration “effectively to commit a war crime.”

“Outrageously, Trump presented his proposal to deport the entire population of Palestinians into other countries without having any sovereign jurisdiction over them,” he said, describing the absurdity of the plan.

Zarni emphasized that Trump’s proposal is not only illegal but also a continuation of historical colonialist policies rooted in white supremacist ideologies.

He further criticized Trump’s framing of the idea as a so-called humanitarian effort.

“He presented that proposal as if it was out of his humanitarian heart,” Zarni said, calling it a cynical attempt to justify ethnic cleansing.

Calls for emergency UN Security Council meeting

Zarni argued that Trump’s declaration of intent regarding Gaza should trigger an immediate response from the international community, particularly the UN Security Council.

“Under international humanitarian and criminal law, you cannot remove the population under occupation,” he explained, referring to the fact that Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for nearly six decades now.

No matter how “powerful and imperial” the US may be, it is still part of the UN system and bound by international laws and agreements, he added.

“The US is still a member of the Security Council,” Zarni stressed.

“At the very least, the Security Council should be holding an emergency meeting to discuss why the head of a member state, particularly a permanent member state, is blatantly declaring his intent to commit a war crime.”

Threat of Trump and his ‘oligarchical Cabinet’

Zarni also linked Trump’s comments to a broader shift in global politics, warning of the dangers posed by rising authoritarianism and oligarchic rule in the US.

He argued that the current political climate in the US, dominated by billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, is creating a society that is even more dangerous than the former Soviet Union.

“This … completely insane and criminal mind of Donald Trump, supported by guys like Elon Musk, (Mark) Zuckerberg, and others, makes the US far worse than the former USSR,” he said.

Zarni further asserted that while the USSR “never threatened the entire welfare of the world,” Trump and the powerful oligarchic forces backing him pose an existential threat not only to American democracy but also to global stability.

“Trump and the oligarchical Cabinet that he has assembled pose the greatest threat to the American people, American democracy, and as far as I’m concerned, to people around the world,” he warned.

“And Palestinians are being made an example of this.”

‘Classic genocidal white man’s colonialism’

The genocide scholar also placed Trump’s Gaza plan within the broader historical context of European imperialism, drawing parallels to the colonial era when European powers forcibly displaced Indigenous populations and plundered resources.

“We are being dragged back 100 plus years into the past,” Zarni said, emphasizing how Trump’s policies reflect a resurgence of colonialist ideology.

“Israel is allowed to behave as if the world is stuck in the 19th century, where white men came and plundered any resources of value, moved populations, committed atrocities, and took over land … That is precisely what Israel has been doing since the proclamation of the Israeli state in 1948.”

Zarni added that the recent escalation of Israeli aggression, combined with Trump’s statements, marks the “blatant revival of Western white supremacist imperialism at the expense of millions of Palestinian people.”

“This is classic genocidal white man’s colonialism,” he said.

“That is why many of us from former colonies of European powers identify with the Palestinian people, and we will do everything in our power to stand up for them.”

According to Zarni, Trump’s declaration is not an isolated incident but rather a continuation of the US’ long history of colonial expansion and land grabs.

“Trump has declared that the US wants control of Canada, the Panama Canal, Greenland, and now Gaza. Maybe later, he will claim other countries – or even Mars, Venus, and Jupiter,” he added.

He argued that this expansionist ideology is deeply embedded in American history.

“The history of the United States is a history of colonial expansion, of controlling land, people, and populations through violence since the early 17th century,” he explained.

Zarni contended that Israel represents the latest iteration of this colonial project, comparing it to other settler-colonial states.

“This is not simply about Trump thinking criminally. From the perspective of the US and any other settler colony in the world, Israel is the latest white supremacist land-grabbing settler colony,” he said.

Zarni urged people to view Trump’s statements within this historical context.

“We don’t need to get into Trump’s mind to understand how he thinks,” said the scholar. “The US’ 300-year history speaks volumes about how these white supremacist land thieves view the rest of the world.”

13 February 2025

Source: aa.com.tr

By Chris Hedges

The billionaires, Christian fascists, grifters, psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants who have seized control of Congress, the White House and the courts, are cannibalizing the machinery of state. These self-inflicted wounds, characteristic of all late empires, will cripple and destroy the tentacles of power. And then, like a house of cards, the empire will collapse.

Blinded by hubris, unable to fathom the empire’s diminishing power, the mandarins in the Trump administration have retreated into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. They sputter incoherent absurdities while they usurp the Constitution and replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with threats and loyalty oaths. Agencies and departments, created and funded by acts of Congress, are going up in smoke.

They are removing government reports and data on climate change and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement,. They are pulling out of the World Health Organization. They are sanctioning officials who work at the International Criminal Court — which issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Gaza. They suggested Canada become the 51st state. They have formed a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.” They call for the annexation of Greenland and the seizure of the Panama Canal. They propose the construction of luxury resorts on the coast of a depopulated Gaza under U.S. control which, if it takes place, would bring down the Arab regimes propped up by the U.S.

The rulers of all late empires, including the Roman emperors Caligula and Nero or Charles I, the last Habsburg monarch, are as incoherent as the Mad Hatter, uttering nonsensical remarks, posing unanswerable riddles and reciting word salads of inanities. They, like Donald Trump, are a reflection of the moral, intellectual and physical rot that plague a diseased society.

I spent two years researching and writing about the warped ideologues of those who have now seized power in my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” Read it while you still can. Seriously.

These Christian fascists, who define the core ideology of the Trump administration, are unapologetic about their hatred for pluralistic, secular democracies. They seek, as they exhaustively detail in numerous “Christian” books and documents such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, to deform the judiciary and legislative branches of government, along with the media and academia, into appendages to a “Christianized” state led by a divinely anointed leader. They openly admire Nazi apologists such as Rousas John Rushdoony, a supporter of eugenics who argues that education and social welfare should be handed over to the churches and Biblical law must replace the secular legal code, and Nazi party theorists such as Carl Schmitt. They are avowed racists, misogynists and homophobes. They embrace bizarre conspiracy theories from the white replacement theory to a shadowy monster they call “the woke.” Suffice it to say, they are not grounded in a reality based universe.

Christian fascists come out of a theocratic sect called Dominionism. This sect teaches that American Christians have been mandated to make America a Christian state and an agent of God. Political and intellectual opponents of this militant Biblicalism are condemned as agents of Satan.

“Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the 10 Commandments form the basis of our legal system, creationism and ‘Christian values’ form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all,” I noted in my book. “Labor unions, civil-rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship. Aside from its proselytizing mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the protection of property rights and ‘homeland’ security.”

The Christian fascists and their billionaire funders, I noted, “speak in terms and phrases that are familiar and comforting to most Americans, but they no longer use words to mean what they meant in the past.” They commit logocide, killing old definitions and replacing them with new ones. Words — including truth, wisdom, death, liberty, life and love — are deconstructed and assigned diametrically opposed meanings. Life and death, for example, mean life in Christ or death to Christ, a signal of belief of unbelief. Wisdom refers to the level of commitment and obedience to the doctrine. Liberty is not about freedom, but the liberty that comes from following Jesus Christ and being liberated from the dictates of secularism. Love is twisted to mean an unquestioned obedience to those, such as Trump, who claim to speak and act for God.

As the death spiral accelerates, phantom enemies, domestic and foreign, will be blamed for the demise, persecuted and slated for obliteration. Once the wreckage is complete, ensuring the immiseration of the citizenry, a breakdown in public services and engendering an inchoate rage, only the blunt instrument of state violence will remain. A lot of people will suffer, especially as the climate crisis inflicts with greater and greater intensity its lethal retribution.

The near-collapse of our constitutional system of checks and balances took place long before the arrival of Trump. Trump’s return to power represents the death rattle of the Pax Americana. The day is not far off when, like the Roman Senate in 27 BC, Congress will take its last significant vote and surrender power to a dictator. The Democratic Party, whose strategy seems to be to do nothing and hope Trump implodes, have already acquiesced to the inevitable.

The question is not whether we go down, but how many millions of innocents we will take with us. Given the industrial violence our empire wields, it could be a lot, especially if those in charge decide to reach for the nukes.

The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — Elon Musk claims is run by “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” — is an example of how these arsonists are clueless about how empires function.

Foreign aid is not benevolent. It is weaponized to maintain primacy over the United Nations and remove governments the empire deems hostile. Those nations in the U.N. and other multilateral organizations who vote the way the empire demands, who surrender their sovereignty to global corporations and the U.S. military, receive assistance. Those who don’t do not.

When the U.S. offered to build the airport in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, investigative journalist Matt Kennard reports, it required that Haiti oppose Cuba’s admittance into the Organization of American States, which it did.

Foreign aid builds infrastructure projects so corporations can operate global sweatshops and extract resources. It funds “democracy promotion” and “judicial reform” that thwart the aspirations of political leaders and governments that seek to remain independent from the grip of the empire.

USAID, for example, paid for a “political party reform project” that was designed “as a counterweight” to the “radical” Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo) and sought to prevent socialists like Evo Morales from being elected in Bolivia. It then funded organizations and initiatives, including training programs so Bolivian youth could be taught American business practices, once Morales assumed the presidency, to weaken his hold on power.

Kennard in his book, “The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire,” documents how U.S. institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, USAID and the Drug Enforcement Administration, work in tandem with the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to subjugate and oppress the Global South.

Client states that receive aid must break unions, impose austerity measures, keep wages low and maintain puppet governments. The heavily funded aid programs, designed to bring down Morales, eventually led the Bolivian president to throw USAID out of the country.

The lie peddled to the public is that this aid benefits both the needy overseas and us at home. But the inequality these programs facilitate abroad replicates the inequality imposed domestically. The wealth extracted from the Global South is not equitably distributed. It ends up in the hands of the billionaire class, often stashed in overseas bank accounts to avoid taxation.

Our tax dollars, meanwhile, disproportionately funds the military, which is the iron fist that sustains the system of exploitation. The 30 million Americans who were victims of mass layoffs and deindustrialization lost their jobs to workers in sweatshops overseas. As Kennard notes, both home and abroad, it is a vast “transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich globally and domestically.”

“The same people that devise the myths about what we do abroad have also built up a similar ideological system that legitimizes theft at home; theft from the poorest, by the richest,” he writes. “The poor and working people of Harlem have more in common with the poor and working people of Haiti than they do with their elites, but this has to be obscured for the racket to work.”

Foreign aid maintains sweatshops or “special economic zones” in countries such as Haiti, where workers toil for pennies an hour and often in unsafe conditions for global corporations.

“One of the facets of special economic zones, and one of the incentives for corporations in the U.S., is that special economic zones have even less regulations than the national state on how you can treat labor and taxes and customs,” Kennard told me in an interview. “You open these sweatshops in the special economic zones. You pay the workers a pittance. You get all the resources out without having to pay customs or tax. The state in Mexico or Haiti or wherever it is, where they’re offshoring this production, doesn’t benefit at all. That’s by design. The coffers of the state are always the ones that never get increased. It’s the corporations that benefit.”

These same U.S. institutions and mechanisms of control, Kennard writes in his book, were employed to sabotage the electoral campaign of Jeremy Corbyn, a fierce critic of the U.S. empire, for prime minister in Britain.

The U.S. disbursed nearly $72 billion in foreign aid in fiscal year 2023. It funded clean water initiatives, HIV/Aids treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work. In 2024, it provided 42 percent of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations.

Humanitarian aid, often described as “soft power,” is designed to mask the theft of resources in the Global South by U.S. corporations, the expansion of the footprint of the U.S. military, the rigid control of foreign governments, the devastation caused by fossil fuel extraction, the systemic abuse of workers in global sweatshops and the poisoning of child laborers in places like the Congo, where they are used to mine lithium.

I doubt Musk and his army of young minions in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which isn’t an official department within the federal government — have any idea about how the organizations they are destroying work, why they exist or what it will mean for the demise of American power.

The seizure of government personnel records and classified material, the effort to terminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of government contracts — mostly those which relate to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), the offers of buyouts to “drain the swamp” including a buyout offer to the entire workforce of the Central Intelligence Agency — now temporarily blocked by a judge — the firing of 17 or 18 inspectors generals and federal prosecutors, the halting of government funding and grants, sees them cannibalize the leviathan they worship.

They plan to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service, part of the internal machinery of the empire. The more dysfunctional the state becomes, the more it creates a business opportunity for predatory corporations and private equity firms. These billionaires will make a fortune “harvesting” the remains of the empire. But they are ultimately slaying the beast that created American wealth and power.

Once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, something the dismantling of the empire guarantees, the U.S. will be unable to pay for its huge deficits by selling Treasury bonds. The American economy will fall into a devastating depression. This will trigger a breakdown of civil society, soaring prices, especially for imported products, stagnant wages and high unemployment rates. The funding of at least 750 overseas military bases and our bloated military will become impossible to sustain. The empire will instantly contract. It will become a shadow of itself. Hypernationalism, fueled by an inchoate rage and widespread despair, will morph into a hate-filled American fascism.

“The demise of the United States as the preeminent global power could come far more quickly than anyone imagines,” the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power”:

Despite the aura of omnipotence empires often project, most are surprisingly fragile, lacking the inherent strength of even a modest nation-state. Indeed, a glance at their history should remind us that the greatest of them are susceptible to collapse from diverse causes, with fiscal pressures usually a prime factor. For the better part of two centuries, the security and prosperity of the homeland has been the main objective for most stable states, making foreign or imperial adventures an expendable option, usually allocated no more than 5 percent of the domestic budget. Without the financing that arises almost organically inside a sovereign nation, empires are famously predatory in their relentless hunt for plunder or profit — witness the Atlantic slave trade, Belgium’s rubber lust in the Congo, British India’s opium commerce, the Third Reich’s rape of Europe, or the Soviet exploitation of Eastern Europe.

When revenues shrink or collapse, McCoy points out, “empires become brittle.”

“So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly wrong, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, eleven years for the Ottomans, seventeen for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, just twenty-seven years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003 [when the U.S. invaded Iraq],” he writes.

The array of tools used for global dominance — wholesale surveillance, the evisceration of civil liberties including due process, torture, militarized police, the massive prison system, militarized drones and satellites — will be employed against a restive and enraged population.

The devouring of the carcass of the empire to feed the outsized greed and egos of these scavengers presages a new dark age.

NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

8 February 2025

Source: scheerpost.com

The 47th president of the United States is a danger to his country, Britain and the world. Who would have thought that sentence would ever be written? And yet, less than three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, it is barely controversial to many people looking on from shell-shocked democracies beyond America’s shores. By his destructive, vindictive, illegal and irrational actions, Trump sets himself beyond the pale. In place of American exceptionalism, the world must now learn to manage, and if necessary confront, a gross American objectionablism.

Proof of these assertions is to be found in the White House’s daily outpourings. Seeking revenge against those who tried to punish his attempted 6 January 2021 electoral coup, Trump is weaponising the justice department by executive order. Political opponents, FBI agents, prosecutors, media outlets and journalists are in his sights. In contrast, about 1,500 convicted Capitol Hill rioters have been pardoned. He has even had the gall to withdraw the security clearance of his predecessor, Joe Biden, citing mental incapacity.

Trump is treating federal government agencies like enemy territory to be stormed and purged of deep state, so-called woke and liberal elements. To this end, he has recruited the sycophantic billionaire, Elon Musk, and teams of youthful, unaccountable acolytes to physically take over offices and computer systems, suspend, lock out or sack civil servants and seize control of programmes and budgets. The treasury, the education department, the federal election commission and independent government watchdogs are all under the hammer wielded, principally, by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”. Nor has the CIA and the wider “intelligence community” escaped Trump’s vendetta. It, too, faces mass firings under the proposed leadership of Tulsi Gabbard, a Russia apologist. Putting the anti-vax conspiracy theorist, Robert F Kennedy Jr, in charge of health and human services demonstrates how little Trump really cares about ordinary people’s welfare.

“Diversity, equity and inclusion polices, in particular transgender rights, are under siege

Trump’s arbitrary, often unlawful orders indulge other far-right obsessions. Diversity, equity and inclusion polices, in particular transgender rights, are under siege. He has demanded a halt to the rollout of EV charging stations, declared open season on wildlife and the environment by relaxing oil and gas drilling regulations, and withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement. He even wants to ban paper straws, preferring plastic. From an immediate international perspective, Trump’s decision to eviscerate USAid, the world’s biggest foreign aid provider, and the attempted sacking of nearly all its staff, is the most savagely objectionable misdeed of all.

His freezing of USAid’s $42.8bn (£34.5bn) budget spells death or renewed suffering for millions of dependent people, from Sudan to Bangladesh to Ukraine. The US accounts for about $4 in every $10 spent globally on humanitarian aid. To the instant human toll, as Britain’s former prime minister Gordon Brown points out, must be added a loss of US global influence that will benefit authoritarian rivals China and Russia. “The era when American leaders valued their soft power is coming to an end,” Brown wrote. His view was echoed by foreign secretary David Lammy, who described Trump’s mindless aid vandalism as a “big strategic mistake”.

Trump’s egotistic rampage is causing widespread additional international damage and confusion. His on-off tariff wars with China, Canada and, prospectively, the EU; his militarisation of migration policy along the US border with Mexico; his imperialistic vow to seize Greenland by force from Nato ally Denmark; and his disdain for the UN, typified by his withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, are all decisions underscoring his broader contempt for the multilateralist, rules-based international order. Nothing more damningly illustrates that contempt than yet another outrageous executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC).

Trump’s ICC attack was prompted in part by a wish to protect Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister and court-indicted war crimes suspect, who was feted at the White House last week. He used this occasion to unveil his most absurd, most dangerous idea to date: a forcible “clean-out” of the 2 million inhabitants of Gaza and a US-owned “Riviera” real estate development amid the ruins of their Palestinian homeland. This wheeze is too ignorant, too insulting and too inhumane to be taken entirely seriously. Yet that has not stopped Israeli and US rightwingers using it as potential justification for wrecking the ceasefire, resuming the war and laying the ground for annexations in Gaza and the West Bank.

Trump, the convicted felon, proves each day that he is unfit for the high office he holds. He aims to destroy the fundamentals of American democracy: the separation of powers, civil and voting rights, secularism, free speech and equality under the law. He is a menace to global peace, stability and prosperity. Pushback has begun, largely through the courts. Yet a few defiant judges cannot win this huge, rapidly developing struggle. The Democrats, stunned into virtual silence, must wake up. Meanwhile, Britain and the western democracies must take a united stand. So far, Keir Starmer and his ministers have been too circumspect. They must be bolder and braver in their criticism and in upholding British values.

The rise of Trump and like-minded far-right populists, lawless bullies and anti-democratic autocrats around the world is the great challenge of our age. Trump the objectionable is setting the world on fire.

8 February 2025

Source: theguardian.com

By Jean Shaoul

Under the cover of the Gaza ceasefire, the far-right government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a military offensive focusing on the refugee camp in the northern city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, and the towns of Tulkarem and Tammun.

The Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Operation Iron Wall has pulverised whole neighbourhoods of Jenin and Tulkarem with massive aerial bombardments and drone attacks, forced the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and seen a new wave of house-to-house searches and mass killings.

Al-Haq, the Palestinian human rights group, warned that Israel is employing many of the same tactics in the West Bank that it used in Gaza, stating, “Israel’s genocidal tactics to destroy the Palestinian group are further evident in the West Bank, including Jerusalem.” UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese issued a similar warning on X, “If it is not forced to stop, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians will not be confined to Gaza. Mark my words.”

The IDF operation that began on January 21 comes just weeks after the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, working as Israel’s subcontractor, carried out a four-week long operation against militants in the Jenin area that left dozens dead, displaced thousands and caused widespread losses of water and power.

The IDF was far more destructive. It targeted 23 buildings in the Jenin refugee camp that it claimed were being used by “militants” and ripped up all the roads leading to the camp as well as some of the roads within the camp. The tactic, widely used in Gaza, is aimed at widening the roads to facilitate the IDF’s movement of armoured vehicles through the area and the division of the camp into separate enclaves.

Almost 90 percent of the camp’s population have been forced to flee their homes, with many seeking refuge in towns and villages across Jenin governorate. According to Al-Haq, “The remaining families are living in grave danger with no access to water, electricity, and other basic services.”

The Israeli military also continued its wide-scale assault on Tulkarem city and its refugee camp in the western West Bank, causing extensive damage to infrastructure and civilian property. It stormed several areas in the Ramallah governorate and assaulted and arrested two Palestinians in the Old City of Hebron as they were distributing bread.

Also in the northern area, the Israeli army continued its offensive in Tammun and the Far’a refugee camp, conducting house-to-house searches under the cover of air strikes and drone attacks targeting various locations in the town. Residents are reportedly suffering from a severe shortage of supplies and a near-total power outage.

As in Gaza, IDF strikes on hospitals, medical staff and patients have been a particular feature of the campaign. The army laid siege to Jenin Governmental Hospital, after bulldozing the main entrance and the main road leading to it in previous raids. It fired stun grenades directly at an ambulance responding to an emergency and wounded a paramedic during a raid in the town of Beita. It has besieged Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital.

Medecins Sans Frontieres’ report Inflicting harm and denying care cited World Health Organisation data showing 647 attacks on healthcare facilities and personnel in the West Bank in the first 12 months since the start of the Gaza war, “with Israeli forces routinely encircling hospitals, refugee camps, and villages—hence creating unprecedented barriers to medical access.”

The IDF operation killed 25 people in the Jenin area and wounded 65 others, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry. It killed at least 10 others in other cities and arrested 100 people, bringing the total number killed in the West Bank to 70 since the beginning of the year and more than 900 since October 2023.

All this takes place as Israel’s ban on UNRWA, the main United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees—preventing it from operating in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem—comes into effect. Aid organisations have warned of the disastrous impact on aid delivery jeopardizing regional stability. UNRWA provides vital aid and public services, including health and education, to around 2.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as 3 million more in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Last August, Defense Minister Israel Katz, who was then foreign minister, called for Israel to display “the same determination” in the West Bank as in Gaza to root out “terrorists” and called for the “temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and any necessary measures.” More recently, he suggested that the IDF’s aim was to remove armed resistance from the Jenin refugee camp so that “terrorism does not return to the camp after the operation is over—the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza.” The IDF would, he said, remain in the Jenin refugee camp even after the operation is completed.

A few weeks ago, Finance Minister and Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich demanded the IDF employ the same violence in Jenin as that used in Gaza, saying, “Funduq, Nablus and Jenin need to look like Jabaliya [the refugee camp in Gaza].”

The online Israeli magazine +972 has published a study by Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, which monitors Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian land in the West Bank, showing that at least 57 Palestinian communities—mostly in the northern Jordan Valley, east of Ramallah, southeast of Bethlehem, and the South Hebron Hills—have been forced to flee their homes since the start of the war on Gaza as a result of Israeli settler attacks. Of these, seven have been partially displaced, while 50 have been wiped off the map entirely.

Kerem Navot and Peace Now estimate that Israeli settlers have established at least 41 settlement outposts and herding farms in the West Bank, of which at least 10 were set up close to the Palestinian communities forced to flee their lands. The settlers have also set up “observation posts” or planted Israeli flags to prevent the Palestinians returning to their property. According the Medecins Sans Frontieres’ report, they have impeded Palestinians’ access to healthcare, intimidating and attacking healthcare workers and implementing roads blocks that particularly affect the more remote communities.

All this proceeds with the collusion of the IDF. It is no longer a case of settlers in civilian clothes harassing and attacking the Palestinians and their property but settlers in military uniform and armed, taking advantage of their role as army reservists. They carry out violent raids, break into homes, steal livestock and even arrest Palestinians as well as Israeli and international activists who come to support vulnerable shepherding communities. In December, settler leaders called for the government to mount an operation in the West Bank “like in Gaza.”

Last month, dozens of masked Israelis ran riot through the village of Al-Funduq, setting fire to Palestinians’ property and a nursery. They surrounded a house where a family was sheltering and hurled stones. Settlers rioted in the nearby village of Jinsaput, setting fire to buildings and vehicles. None were arrested.

As well as a green light from Israel’s far-right politicians, the ultra-nationalist settler movement has the open support of the Trump administration.

In the three weeks since taking office, Trump has lifted the Biden administration’s hold on the supply of 2,000 pounds bombs—amid a supposed ceasefire—and the sanctions against settlers and groups responsible for land grabs and violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. He has slapped sanctions on the International Criminal Court—accusing it of attacking Israel and the United States by way of its indictment of Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes—and is leading efforts at the UN to replace UNRWA.

On Friday, the US State Department told Congress that it plans to sell a more than $7.4 billion package of weapons to Israel, including thousands of bombs and missiles, that “improves Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats, strengthen its homeland defence, and serves as a deterrent to regional threats,” confirming Israel’s role as Washington’s attack dog in the region.

These actions have been welcomed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s former security minister until he resigned in opposition to the Gaza ceasefire, and Smotrich, who added, “The state of Israel looks forward to continued fruitful cooperation to further enhance our national security, expand settlement across all parts of our homeland, and strengthen Israel’s standing in the world.”

Trump has said he will make an announcement about Israel’s annexation of the West Bank in four weeks’ time. His previous initiative, From Peace to Prosperity, announced in 2020, approved Israel’s unilateral annexation of more than one third of the West Bank, a move that has since been supported by his officials. These include his proposed ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who has previously endorsed Israel’s “right” to the West Bank, which he refers to by its Hebrew and biblical name of Judea and Samaria, and Elise Stefanik, another evangelical Christian, as his ambassador-designate to the United Nations.

Trump, referring to Israel’s size, said. “It’s a pretty small piece of land, and it’s amazing that they’ve been able to do, what they’ve been able to do when you think about it. There’s a lot of good, smart brainpower. But it is a very small piece of land, no question about it.” Last August, he told a crowd at an event in New Jersey, “It’s really a tiny spot. I actually said, ‘Is there any way of getting more?’”

10 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kathy Kelly

“There is something sick and rotten about states and societies that not only support and enable mass killings but also make money off of them.”

                                                               – Pankaj Mishra, January 30, 2025

At a February 4^th, 2025, press conference in Washington, D.C., President Trump, standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, announced U.S. intent to turn the Gaza Strip into something that could be phenomenal…the Riviera of the Middle East.

Reading from prepared notes, he stated “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip.” He said Palestinians in Gaza would be relocated to other countries, and he later questioned why they would ever want to return. He went on to say that he would decide about Israeli annexation of the West Bank in the next month.

According to international law, forcibly transferring people from their land is a crime against humanity. Annexation violates people’s right to self-determination, a fundamental principle of international law.

States and societies around the world harshly condemned President Trump’s total disregard for international law. And yet, every member state of the United Nations General Assembly has a duty, now, under international law, to abstain from any actions enabling the Israeli military to continue its illegal occupation of the Occupied Palestine Territory.

This means every state must stop shipments of weapons to Israel. The U.S., for instance, is required not to send the one billion dollars’ worth of bombs, rifles, ammunition, and Caterpillar bulldozers which President Trump had readied to send Israel.

In the past, Democrats in positions of power allowed President Biden to provision Israel with massive arms sales, enabling a killing spree, over the past 15 months, which has left Gaza in ruins. In June, 2024, following intense pressure from the Biden administration, the U.S. Congress moved forward on an $18 billion arms sale to Israel.

Pankaj Mishra, an Indian essayist and novelist, sadly describes the bleak reality of international weapon peddling. “There is something sick and rotten,” Mishra writes, “about states and societies that not only support and enable mass killings but also make money off of them.”

Throughout the world, grass roots groups struggle to uphold international law and resist governments which support the wholesale Israeli slaughter and destruction of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestine Territory.

In Ireland, activists across the country hold weekly demonstrations insisting Ireland must not allow use of Shannon Airport for transport of weapons or equipment to Israel’s military.

A flier announcing an upcoming action at Shannon airport on February 9, 2025 calls for protest against “the use of Irish airspace to deliver arms, tech and logistical support to the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians over the past 15 months, including more than 17,000 children, while more than 100,000 have been maimed. In the West Bank, more than 800 people have been killed, and Israel’s brutal illegal occupation continues…”

European human rights activists emphasize that the European Union is Israel’s biggest trade partner, accounting for 28.8% of its trade in goods in 2022. Israel is also among the EU’s main trading partners in the Mediterranean area.

Now, a coalition of over 160 human rights organizations, trade unions, and civil society groups is calling on the European Commission to take immediate action to ban all trade and business with Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The coalition’s demand follows a landmark advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024, which reaffirmed that:

“Pending an end to Israel’s occupation, third states must immediately stop all forms of aid or assistance that help maintain the unlawful occupation, including halting arms transfers to Israel and ceasing all trade with illegal settlements.”

Robert Jereski, an attorney in NYC, works with Code Pink and a coalition of activists campaigning for UN member states to suspend Israel from the United Nations because it has murdered Palestinians and driven them off their land. Jereski and his colleagues note that Israel’s renewed offensives in the West Bank mark a shift in the tactics of genocide rather than an actual ceasefire. Israel’s bombing of Jenin has led to the forced displacement of 26,000 Palestinians. The Israeli military has escalated widespread arrests and restrictions while settlement expansion continues at an unprecedented pace, with frequent approvals for new outposts and housing.

President Trump’s most recent statements, coupled with his withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council, underscore the urgent need for the United Nations General Assembly to hold an emergency meeting. The UNGA should judge whether the United States fails to be an impartial arbiter and is, instead, party to the genocide in Gaza. Further, the UNGA should decide whether to suspend the United States veto power at the Security Council visavis matters pertaining to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Mindful of Pankaj Mishra’s observation that there is something sick and rotten in the act of enabling and profiting from mass killings, we must vow never to stop clamouring for the United Nations member states to fulfil their obligations under international law and live up to the UN’s founding mission: to eradicate the scourge of war for future generations.

This article appeared in The Progressive Magazine

Kathy Kelly (kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is board president of World BEYOND War
She has co-coordinated the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal.

8 February 2025

Source: countercurrents.org