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By Andre Damon

A sprawling, highly fortified Russian arms depot located north of Moscow exploded in a giant fireball Wednesday night, against the backdrop of an escalating media and political campaign demanding that Ukraine be allowed to strike Russia with NATO weapons.

The explosion marked one of the largest strikes on a Russian arms depot since the start of the war. The arsenal in Toropets, located 300 miles north of Ukraine and 230 miles west of Moscow, reportedly housed long-range missiles and glide bombs.

The massive blast registered on earthquake monitors, and NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System showed the entire arsenal on fire.

The Washington Post reported that an official from Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, took credit for the attack, declaring the arms depot was “literally wiped off the face of the Earth,” and that the operation involved “more than 100 drones.”

Meanwhile, the Tver regional government said in a Telegram post that “a fire started as a result of drone debris falling while air defense forces were repelling an attack.”

Neither the Ukrainian explanation of a major coordinated drone strike nor the Russian explanation of drone fragments lighting a fire aligns with previous Russian statements about the arsenal’s defensive capabilities.

In 2018, when the site was renovated, the Russian Ministry of Defense declared the site met the “highest international standards” and could defend against weapons from missiles and “even a small nuclear attack.”

How a hardened facility built to withstand a strike by a nuclear weapon could have been completely destroyed by drones carrying, at most, a few dozen kilograms of explosives each, has not been explained.

Moreover, the town is significantly closer to Latvia, a NATO member, than it is to Ukraine, leading to speculation—as yet without evidence—that the strike could have been launched from Latvia.

The attack takes place against the backdrop of an escalating campaign by the US media and political establishment to allow Ukraine to carry out long-range strikes against Russia using NATO weapons.

Unlike Ukraine’s kamikaze drones, the UK’s Storm Shadow missile carries a payload of nearly 1,000 pounds and is capable of penetrating hardened targets.

Last week, the Guardian reported that “British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia.”

While an announcement about the move was expected last week at a meeting between US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, no announcement was made at the time.

Instead, US and UK media outlets began raising the suggestion that the US could simply authorize the strikes in secret, without making any such announcement. As the Economist wrote at the time, “There is unlikely to be a public announcement. A decision may be quietly communicated to Kyiv, to downplay its significance and to keep it secret. It may not be until targets in Russia are struck with Western missiles that a change will be confirmed.”

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared, “If this decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the US and European countries, in the conflict in Ukraine.” He added, “Their direct participation, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.”

Former Russian President Dimitri Medvedev added that “formal prerequisites” exist for turning Kiev into a “giant gray melted spot,” in a threat to retaliate against attacks on Russia using nuclear weapons.

Regardless of these warnings and threats by Russian officials, the NATO military alliance is openly advocating such strikes.

Over the weekend, Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, argued that NATO had the legal right to facilitate strikes against the Russian mainland. “Every nation that is attacked has the right to defend itself. And that right doesn’t stop at the border of your own nation,” Bauer said.

He continued, “You want to weaken the enemy that attacks you in order to not only fight the arrows that come your way, but also attack the archer that is, as we see, very often operating from Russia proper into Ukraine.”

He added, “So militarily, there’s a good reason to do that, to weaken the enemy, to weaken its logistic lines, fuel, ammunition that comes to the front. That is what you want to stop.”

On Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg added his name to calls for strikes on Russia in an interview with the Times of London. “There have been many red lines declared by him before, and he has not escalated, meaning also involving NATO allies directly in the conflict,” Stoltenberg said. “He has not done so because he realizes that NATO is the strongest military alliance in the world.”

In a separate series of remarks to the British media, Stoltenberg declared, “We have a full-scale war in Europe launched by Moscow. There are no risk-free options in the war. But I continue to believe that the biggest risk for us will be if President Putin wins in Ukraine.”

On Thursday, UN officials announced that Ukrainian President Zelensky would address the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday. Zelensky will also meet next week with US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss a purported “victory plan” for the war against Russia.

Zelensky’s visit comes amid a series of military setbacks for the Ukrainian military in Russia’s continued offensive in the Donbas. Against the backdrop of a potential collapse of the Ukrainian military, the US-aligned media and political establishment are agitating for an escalation of US involvement in the war as a means to turn the tide.

An op-ed published Wednesday in Politico concluded, “the Ukrainians are ceding ground in the eastern Donbas region and fighting off massive drone and missile attacks on their largest cities. They need a morale and momentum shift. Lowering the restrictions on missile use could help.”

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Never in its history of war, and military occupation has Israel been so incapable of developing a coherent plan for its future, and the future of its victims.

Even a quick glance at headlines in international media reveals the depth of the Israeli dilemma. While Tel Aviv continues to carry out a genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, it seems to have no idea what to do beyond simply destroying the Strip and its people.

Even the country’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, who could soon be officially wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), indicated on multiple occasions that Israel has no post-war plan in Gaza.

“Since October, I have been raising this issue consistently in the Cabinet, and have received no response,” Gallant said in the clearest possible language last May.

Others suggest that Netanyahu and his far-right government might have a plan but, in the language of the Washington Post, it is a ‘no workable plan’ or, according to Vox, “is no plan at all”.

Netanyahu’s ‘not workable’ plan, or ‘no plan’ at all, is inconsistent with the wishes of the US administration.

True, both Israel and the US are in full agreement regarding the war itself. Even after Washington had finally begun shifting its position from wanting the war to continue, to asking Netanyahu to conclude his bloody task, American weapons have continued to flow at the same rate.

The Americans, however, are not convinced that destroying Hamas, fully demilitarizing Gaza, taking control over the Gaza-Egypt border, shutting down the UNRWA refugees’ agency and the ‘de-radicalization’ of the besieged Palestinian population is the right approach.

But Netanyahu himself must have already known this, if not at the very start of the war, at least nearly a year into the genocide. His exhausted army kept moving from one phase to another, declaring ‘tactical victories’, without achieving a single strategic goal in Gaza.

The most optimistic estimation of the Israeli army is that their war, which has practically destroyed all of Gaza, has resulted in a stalemate. A more sober reading of the war, according to former Israeli Prime Minister General Ehud Barak, is that Israel must end it before “sinking into its moral abyss”.

Yet, more delusional plans, pertaining to both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, continue to be leaked to the media.

The first major leak was a taped recording of a speech by extremist and very influential Israeli minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich.

“I am telling, it is mega-dramatic. Such changes change a system’s DNA,” Smotrich told a group of Israeli Jewish settlers last June, according to the New York Times.

The minister’s “carefully orchestrated program” hinges on transferring the authority of the West Bank from the occupation army to a group of civilians under the leadership of Smotrich himself. The goal is to seize more Palestinian land, expand the illegal settlements and prevent any possible continuity of a viable Palestinian State.

In fact, the plan is already underway. On May 29, Israel  appointed Hillel Roth, a close ally of Smotrich, as the deputy in the West Bank Civil Administration.

The plan for Gaza is another episode of cruelty, but also delusional. It was revealed in an article by the editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, on September 9.

Aluf Benn wrote that Netanyahu’s plan also consists of the hiring of an Israeli ‘governor of Gaza’, Brigadier General Elad Goren, who became the ‘Head of Humanitarian-Civilian effort’ in the Strip on August 28

Using a combination of tactics, including starvation, military pressure and the like, Netanyahu wants to drive the population of northern Gaza to the south in preparation of formally annexing the region and bringing back Jewish settlers.

These are not the only plans that have been leaked or, at times, communicated openly by Israeli officials.

At the start of the war, such ideas as ethnically cleansing the Gaza population into Sinai were advocated openly by Israeli officials, and were also the main topic of discussion in Israeli evening news programs.

Some Israeli officials spoke of fully occupying Gaza, while others, like Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, floated the idea of dropping a nuclear bomb.

The plan of totally evacuating Gaza did not work simply because Palestinians would not leave, and Egypt had rejected the very insinuation that ethnically cleansing Gazans was an option. Additionally, the total depopulation of northern Gaza also did not work, partly because Israel was massacring civilians in both north and south at comparable rates.

Israel’s new plans will not succeed in achieving what the original plans have failed to achieve, simply because Israel continues to face the same obstacle: the steadfastness of the Palestinian people.

However, much can still be learned from the nature of the Israeli schemes, old and new, mainly the fact that Israel regards the Palestinian people as the enemy.

This conclusion is not only gleaned through statements by top Israeli officials, including President Isaac Herzog himself, when he said that “an entire nation out there (..) is responsible”.

Almost every Israeli scheme seems to involve killing Palestinians in large numbers, starving them or displacing them en masse.

This means that the Israeli war has always been a war against the Palestinian people. The Palestinians themselves know it. Shouldn’t the rest of the world also know it by now?

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

On September 18, 2024, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution that demanded that Israel immediately withdraw from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. The resolution used strong language, saying that “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and that it is “under an obligation” to end its “unlawful presence” in the OPT “as rapidly as possible.” The resolution was submitted by the State of Palestine, which was recognized as a bona fide part of the United Nations only in June of 2024 as part of the global disgust with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The result was predictable: while 43 countries abstained, 124 voted for the resolution and only 14 voted against it (with the United States and Israel at their head). It is now perfectly legal to say that Israel’s occupation of the OPT is illegal and that this occupation must end immediately.

The UNGA resolution follows the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024. This ICJ ruling argued that Israel’s continued seizure of the OPT is illegal and that it must be ended immediately. The language of the ICJ is very strong: “The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.” There is no ambiguity about this statement, and none in the UNGA resolution that followed.

Rains of Heaven

Going from one village to another in Palestine’s West Bank, I was shown broken water cistern after broken water cistern. Each time the story was the same. Palestinians, starved of water by the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territory (OPT) and by the Israeli military, try their best to harvest rainwater in cisterns. But each time the Israelis find out about this ancient human practice, the Israeli military shows up and destroys the cisterns. It has become part of the ritual of the Israeli occupation. After the 1967 war, the Israeli government issued Military Order 158 (November 1967) and Military Order 498 (November 1974) which forced Palestinians to seek permits from the Israeli military before they could build any water installation.

During one of these visits, an elderly Palestinian man asked me if I had read either the Torah or the Bible. I told him that I had read bits and pieces of the Bible, but not systematically. He then proceeded to tell me a story from Deuteronomy about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, where they had been enslaved. Egypt, they are told, was a land of milk and honey, while the land before them—Palestine—is a land that suffers from a lack of water. The Jews would have to rely upon the “rains of heaven” and not the rivers that irrigated Egypt. These rains of heaven, said the elderly Palestinian man, “are denied to us.”

Israelis who live in the illegal settlements in the West Bank consume on average 247 liters of water per person per day, while the Palestinians can access at most 89 liters per person per day (the World Health Organization or WHO minimum amount is 100 liters per person per day). It bears repeating to say that the Israelis live in illegal settlements. This illegality is not made in moral terms but in terms of international law. Several United Nations Security Council resolutions have said that Israel is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention as it extends its settlements in the West Bank: Resolution 446 (March 1979), Resolution 478 (August 1980), and Resolution 2334 (December 2016). The 2024 ICJ ruling and the new UNGA resolution underlie the illegality. We did not need more laws to clarify the situation, but it does help that the new statements are unequivocal.

Water in Gaza

A decade ago, the only time I was in Gaza, I was horrified by the lack of basic water supplies. Wadi Gaza, which runs through the Gaza Strip, is the culmination of rivers that stretch into the West Bank (Wadi al-Khalil) and rivers that run into the al-Naqab desert (Wadi Besor). It would be an act of foolishness to drink from Wadi Gaza or from the coastal aquifer, most of which was polluted by insufficient sewage services in Gaza long before this genocidal war. Most people in Gaza, even in 2014, bought water from expensive private tankers. There was no other choice.

If the situation in Gaza was objectionable a decade ago, it is now beyond belief. The average Palestinian in Gaza, who has been forcibly ejected from their homes (most of them bombed), now survives on an average of 4.74 liters of water per person per day (that is 95.53 liters less than the WHO-mandated minimum for a person to survive). Since October 2023, the daily use of water amongst the Palestinians of Gaza has declined by 94 percent. The scale of the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure is overwhelming (as shown by the UN Satellite Centre). In April 2024, only 6 percent of Rafah’s water and sanitation infrastructure showed signs of damage, but by June, the Israelis had destroyed 67.6 percent of all the infrastructure. It has been clearly demonstrated that the Israelis are targeting the basic elements of life, such as water, to ensure the annihilation of the Palestinians in the OPT.

And so, this is precisely why the UNGA voted overwhelmingly for Israel to exit from the OPT and cease its annexationist policies. The Israeli government responded with defiance, saying that the resolution “tells a one-sided, fictional story” in which there is no violence against Israel. However, what the Israeli government ignores is the occupation, which frames the entire conflict. A people who are occupied have the right to resist their occupation, which makes the violence against Israel important to register but not central to the argument. The ICJ and the UNGA say that Israel’s occupation must end. That point is not addressed by the Israeli government, which pretends that there is no occupation and that they have the right to annex as much land as possible even if this means ethnic cleansing. Cutting access to water, for example, is one of the instruments of that ceaseless, genocidal violence.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

With each ludicrously diabolical move, Israel’s security and military services are proving that they will broaden the conflict ignited when Hamas breached the country’s vaunted security defences on October 7.  Notions such as ceasefire and peace are terms of nonsense and babble before the next grand push towards apocalyptic recognition.

The pager killings in Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 17 that left almost 3000 people injured and 12 dead were just another facet of this move.  On September 18, a number of walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah were also detonated, killing 14.  (The combined death toll continues to rise.)

In keeping with the small script that always accompanies such operations, the coordinated measure to detonate thousands of deadly pagers had Mossad’s fingerprints over it, though never officially accepted as such.  It featured the use of the Apollo AR924 pager, adopted by Hezbollah as a substitute for smartphone technology long compromised by Israeli surveillance.

The group had ordered 5,000 beepers made by the Taiwanese Gold Apollo manufacturer in the early spring, most likely via BAC Consulting, a Hungarian-based company licensed to use the trademark.  According to a Reuters report, citing a “senior Lebanese source”, these had been modified “at the production level.”  Mossad had “injected a board inside the device that has explosive material that receives a code.  It’s very hard to detect it through any means.  Even with a device or scanner.”

The manner of its execution stirred sighs of admiration.  Here was Israel’s intelligence apparatus, caught napping on October 7, reputationally restored.  French defence expert Pierre Servent suggested that, “The series of operations conducted over the last few months marks their big comeback, with a desire for deterrence and a message: ‘we messed up but are not dead.’”  A salivating Mike Dimino, former CIA analyst and plying his trade at Defense Priorities, a US-based think tank, admired the operation as one of “classic sabotage” that would have taken “months if not years” to put into play and proved to be “[i]ntelligence work at its finest.”

While admired by the security types as bloody, bold machismo, this venture remains politically stunted.  However stunning a statement of power, it only promises temporary paralysis.  It’s true that Hezbollah is in disarray regarding its communications, the extent of the compromise, and pondering the nightmarish logistics of it all.  Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has every reason to feel rattled.  But the pretext for an escalation, the temptation to reassert virility and strength, has been set, thereby creating the broader justification for a move into Lebanon.

The broader war, the death, and the calamity, beckons, and an excited DiMino proposes that, “If you were planning a ground incursion into Lebanon to push Hezbollah N[orth] of the Litani, this is exactly the sort of chaos you’d sow in advance.”  An unnamed former Israeli official, speaking to Axios, confirmed that the modified pagers had been originally intended as a swift, opening attack “in an all-out war to try to cripple Hezbollah.”  Their use on September 17 was only prompted by Israeli concerns that their operation might have been compromised.

Nasrallah, in his September 19 speech, complemented the dark mood.  “Israel’s foolish Northern Command leader talks about a security zone inside Lebanese territory – we are waiting for you to enter Lebanese territory.”  He also promised that the only way 120,000 Israelis evacuated from the North could return safely “is to stop the aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”

Every resort to force, every attempt to avoid the diplomatic table, is another deadly deviation, distraction and denial.  It is also an admission that Israel remains incapable of reaching an accord with the Palestinians and those who either defend or exploit their dispossession and grief.

On a granular level, the wide flung nature of the operation, while audacious in its execution, also suggests an absence of focus.  The target range, in this case, was violently expansive: not merely leaders but low-level operatives and those in proximity to them.  The result was to be expected: death, including two children, and broadly inflicted mutilations.  In humanitarian terms, it was disastrous, demonstrating, yet again, the callousness that such a conflict entails.  Bystanders at marketplaces were maimed.  Doctors and other medical workers were injured.  Lebanon’s hospital system was overwhelmed.

Human Rights Watch notes that international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-traps precisely because such devices could place civilians in harm’s way.  “The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known,” opined Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at HRW, “would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction.”

Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, to which both Lebanon and Israel are parties, offers the following definition of a booby-trap: “any device or material which is designed, constructed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act.”

Quibbling over matters of international humanitarian law is never far away.  Over the dead and injured in rarified air, disputatious legal eagles often appear.  While the use of such devices “in the form of harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material” is prohibited by Article 7(2) of Amended Protocol II, the legal pedants will ask what constitutes specific design and construction.  Ditto such issues as proportionality and legitimate targeting.

Jessica Peake of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, is mercifully free of quibbles in offering her assessment: “detonating pagers in people’s pockets without any knowledge of where those are, in that moment, is a pretty evident indiscriminate attack” and also a violation of the rule of proportionality.

The calculus of such killings and targeting enriches rather than drains the pool of blood and massacre.  Its logic is not one of cessation but replication.  No longer can Israel’s military prowess alone be seen as a reassurance against any retaliation and whatever form it takes.  October 7 continues to cast its dispelling shadow.  Deterrence through sheer technological power, far from being asserted, has been further weakened.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jonathan Ofir

The most recent development marks a shocking advancement in Israel’s wholesale disregard for human life but it is not new, even if you would never learn that from reading the Western press.

The massive unfolding attack in Lebanon targeting personal electronics belonging to members of Hezbollah, which has so far killed at least 20 people and wounded roughly 3,000, is already beyond doubt Israel’s work. The attack that began on Tuesday has continued into a second day, with more reports of other personal communication devices exploding, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens of others at a funeral on Wednesday for people who had been killed in the first attack the day prior.

The ongoing attack, which can only be described as terrorist in nature, is unprecedented in its scope and method, but the nature of its indiscriminate attack is far from unique for Israel. In fact, Israel’s doctrine of inflicting massive harm to civilians is named after the area of Beirut, Dahiya, where this very attack was centered. The most recent development marks a shocking advancement in Israel’s wholesale disregard for human life but it is not new, even if you would never learn that from reading the Western press.

Western Media Spin

The New York Times team of Patrick Kingsley, Euan Ward, Ronen Bergman, and Michael Levenson covered the attack, and while they did name Israel as the culprit, it worked to include Israel’s blatantly false PR angle that it was a targeted attack.

The Timesreported:

According to American and other officials briefed on the attack, Israel hid explosive material in a shipment of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon. The explosive material, as little as one or two ounces, was inserted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from the Gold Apollo company in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. According to one official, Israel calculated that the risk of harming people not affiliated with Hezbollah was low, given the size of the explosive.

The Times also wrote that “the blasts appeared to be the latest salvo in a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that escalated after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7,” giving this an aura of mere military activity, rather than a blatantly imprecise and deadly attack on a civilian population. American whistleblower Edward Snowden, cited on this site yesterday, correctly summarized the focus and impact of the attack:

What Israel has just done is, via *any* method, reckless. They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera. Indistinguishable from terrorism.

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara provided a reality check, perhaps most pertinent for Western audiences:

For our viewers around the world, it is probably helpful to do some “role-play” here. Imagine if 1,200 people, active in the Pentagon, State Dept. and CIA, had pagers explode in their faces, arms, and abdominals. How would you think the U.S. would feel about that?

The Times notes Israel’s “long history of using technology to carry out covert operations against Iran and Iranian-backed groups” as if it were some impressive technological achievement. But really, in order to understand what Israel is doing here, we must look at its track record of indiscriminate attacks. And this is, in fact, not only historically relevant but strategically and geographically relevant as well.

The Path From Indiscriminate Attacks to Genocide

The name of the Dahiya Doctrine stems from the Dahiya quarter of Beirut that Israel targeted and leveled during the 2006 war, a quarter where many families affiliated with Hezbollah lived. In 2008, then military Chief of Northern Command Gadi Eisenkot (later chief of staff and centrist minister), coined the doctrine and outlined “what will happen” to any enemy that dares attack Israel:

What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on [the village] and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.

Israel applied this method already in its 2008-9 Gaza onslaught. The United Nations “Goldstone Report” of 2009 concluded that Israel had conducted a “deliberately disproportionate attack, designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population,” and noted that the Dahiya Doctrine “appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.” Just to reiterate: “Punish, humiliate, and terrorize.” That last word, “terrorize,” should give us all pause, especially in this particular context.

The recent Gaza onslaught has in its way been the implementation of this doctrine into full-blown genocide. This is not surprising, since the vein of deliberate harm to civilians as a logic of “warfare” has been in the DNA of this doctrine to begin with.

So now, Israel is blowing up pagers. The prospect of this being called an act of terror by Western media appears to be very low. That is still considered a radical notion, when it comes to Israel because terror is a political term that is only reserved for enemies of the West. For the readers of The New York Times, it is just a “latest salvo” and not a reflection on the nature of Israel itself.

Jonathan Ofir is an Israeli musician, conductor, and blogger/writer based in Denmark.

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – Israel’s deliberate cut-off of electricity to the Gaza Strip for almost a full year now has had catastrophic effects and long-lasting humanitarian repercussions, affecting every aspect of residents’ lives. The subjection of over two million individuals to deplorable living conditions by Israel, including cutting off their electricity, is a tool of its ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Cutting off electricity to a 2.3 million-person population spread over 365 square kilometres for almost a full year is a highly unprecedented measure in the history of conflicts and wars, as it is not only the product of military operations but also a political decision. Israeli officials have clearly stated that their goal is to annihilate the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced, on 7 October 2023, “a complete siege … no electricity, no water, no food, no fuel. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” Subsequently, on the same day, Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Yisrael Katz decided to cut off the Gaza Strip’s electricity supply, and the Minister of Defense decided to prevent the entry of any trucks carrying fuel.

Following these decisions, the 120 megawatt feeder lines from Israel to the Gaza Strip were disrupted on 8 October 2023, and this disruption has continued to the present day. As part of its genocidal war against Palestinians, Israel has also prohibited the entry of fuel into the Strip, shutting down the sole power plant in the enclave. The power plant produced a maximum of 80 megawatts until its fuel stock ran out on 10 October 2023, leaving the Strip completely dark.

Israel did not stop at these two measures to cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip; instead, it launched a concerted campaign over the course of several months to seize alternative energy sources that some residents and service facilities relied on. These attacks targeted solar energy systems and panels installed on building roofs as well as public and private facilities, such as bakeries, hospitals, restaurants, and shopping centres. This suggests that Israel has a deliberate strategy to destroy any source of electricity, even a small amount of it, in order to guarantee total blackout conditions for residents of the Gaza Strip.

Recently, the Israeli occupation army bombed a number of residences, as well as Internet and electricity charging stations, that depend on small solar panels. Dozens of homes were also bombed, apparently for this specific purpose, without any security or military necessity.

Prior to the ongoing genocide, the Gaza Strip had been subjected to an arbitrary and illegal 17-year-long blockade that caused an acute electricity crisis. The shortfall in electricity supply amounted to roughly 60%, and conditions worsened every summer and winter. A daily total of 450 to 500 megawatts is required by the Strip, and this amount increases to 600 megawatts during the winter. Still, the supply was limited to 200 megawatts at most, compelling the local electricity authorities to implement an electricity programme which, under ideal conditions, consisted of eight hours of power followed by eight hours of blackout.

Because of the unpredictable and intentional power outages, the Gaza Strip has experienced multiple debilitating crises, with hospitals and health facilities being forced to close multiple times due to damage to solar energy systems and electricity generators. The situation has been made worse by the lack of fuel and ongoing failure of the surviving generators, attributable to their constant use. Consequently, a number of hospital patients—including infants in incubators, injured individuals, and ventilator-dependent patients—have died, and continue to die, as a result of the power outage disrupting vital medical services. The outage has also caused the disturbance of medical laboratories, impeding the performance of essential tests, and causing supplies and medications to be stored improperly.

The power outage assists in Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war, as well. Following the decision to shut off the water supplies to the Gaza Strip during the first days of the Israeli military assault, the power outage also resulted in the cessation or obstruction of desalination plant operations, particularly in northern Gaza, and triggered the now-entrenched practice of using starvation as a means of systematically displacing residents from the northern parts of the Strip.

The lack of fuel and the power outage also made it more difficult for municipal crews to deliver water that they are able to extract from wells. Hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people have been forced to drink contaminated water during the ongoing genocide, and the per capita share of water in the enclave has dropped by 97% amid the extensive destruction of the Strip’s water infrastructure.

In contrast to a daily consumption rate of approximately 84.6 litres per person in 2022, the per capita share of water in the Gaza Strip has dropped to between three and 15 litres per day, according to a joint report released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Water Authority. The report states that approximately 65 sewage pumps and six wastewater treatment plants have shut down as a result of the power outage, resulting in numerous environmental issues and aiding in the spread of epidemics and contamination of the groundwater reservoir. Skin, respiratory, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases have spread as a result. Additionally, the shutdowns have disrupted sanitary landfills and solid waste collection; the rate of waste collection was estimated to be 98% prior to the genocide, and is currently less than 20%.

Due to Israel’s arbitrary blockade and decision to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid and essential materials like fuel into the Gaza Strip, even partial solutions—e.g. the entry of limited quantities of fuel provided by the United Nations to operate generators in some hospitals, water stations, and water wells—remain insufficient and subject to frequent interruptions. This has increased the psychological burden on Palestinians in the Strip and put hundreds of thousands of residents and patients in constant danger.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on 24 November 2023 that 75,000 litres of fuel entered Gaza from Egypt, following an Israeli decision on 18 November to allow the daily entry of small amounts of fuel for essential humanitarian operations. Notably, the Strip requires about 200,000 litres of fuel on a daily basis.

The power outage has also impacted all other aspects of life, including affecting the few remaining manufacturing jobs; irrigation operations for agricultural lands; damaging dozens of tons of aid that need to be refrigerated; disrupting ongoing attempts at distance learning; and eliminating thousands of remote job opportunities. The outage has resulted in catastrophic damage and the deaths of many residents, with long-term consequences that will last for years to come. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor emphasises that this situation has resulted in serious psychological scarring to the population, with 10s of thousands of young children growing up without ever seeing electricity.

Muhammad Ishaq Al-Ghazi, a researcher pursuing a master’s degree at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, spoke with the Euro-Med Monitor team. “The power outage has had a significant impact on our lives,” stated Al-Ghazi. “My academic career was affected as a result. I struggled with studying in the dark and had to walk three kilometres to see a friend who had a broken solar panel so I could pass exams.”

“We have returned to primitive life because of the power outage,” Kholoud Najib Al-Habashi, from the northern Gaza Strip, told the Euro-Med Monitor team. Al-Habashi spoke of her time spent baking over a wood fire: “There is no oven, so we are forced to knead by hand and bake on a tray directly over the fire rather than in an electric or gas pot. There is no refrigerator, no washing machine, and no nighttime lighting. Everything is primitive and exhausting.”

Thirteen-year-old Salem Hamid stated, “Since the start of the war, there has been no electricity. Except for Israeli lighting bombs and missile glow, the night descends into total darkness and terror. For hours, I have to gather cardboard and wood, so my mother can bake and cook for us over the fire.”

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Gaza Strip residents who are compelled to light wood fires in place of using cooking gas and electricity to cook and carry out daily tasks have already started to experience respiratory and vision issues that will likely have long-term or permanent effects on their health.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on 5 March 2024 against two Russian officers suspected of being responsible for airstrikes carried out by Russian forces under their command. These attacks targeted Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure, including several power plants and substations. The Court found that while some of these attacks were directed against civilian targets, others targeted military-grade facilities and inflicted collateral damage on civilians and their property that was obviously disproportionate to the anticipated military advantage.

Accordingly, the Court classified these acts as war crimes under the Rome Statute. The Court further concluded that the airstrikes constituted a “recurring pattern of acts” against civilians in accordance with state policy and that they caused the Ukrainian people great suffering, in accordance with the definition of “inhumane acts”. As a result, the Court also determined that these actions qualified as crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute.

The international community must move to protect Palestinians, just as it has Ukrainians. It must act quickly to end Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip; supply it with electricity and maintain these networks of electricity; rebuild other critical infrastructure that the Israeli bombing has destroyed; and guarantee that electricity is delivered to all facilities, starting with water and sanitation services and hospitals. This urgently requires the provision of generators and fuel.

The international community must uphold its obligations under international law to stop Israel from committing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, a crime that has been ongoing since 7 October 2023. It must use genuine pressure tactics to compel Israel to immediately cease all of its crimes, including genocide, and to abide by international law and the ruling of the International Court of Justice in order to safeguard Palestinian civilians in the Strip from further atrocities.

The International Criminal Court must act quickly to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant; broaden the scope of its investigation into individual criminal responsibility for crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, to include everyone involved; issue warrants for their arrest; hold them accountable; and categorically declare Israel’s ongoing crimes to be genocide.

As part of their international moral and legal obligations, all nations must put an end to all forms of military and financial support of, and political cooperation with, Israel. This includes an immediate stop to all arms sales, exports, and transfers to Israel, including export licenses and military aid.

All nations that cooperate with Israel in committing crimes by providing it with any kind of direct support or assistance (most notably, the United States), must be held accountable. Giving aid and engaging in contractual agreements with Israel relating to the military, intelligence, politics, law, finance, and the media, among other domains that might help its crimes continue, is enabling Israel to commit its atrocities against Palestinians. The relevant employees and decision-makers in these countries must be held accountable, as they are complicit and partners in the Israeli crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, including the crime of genocide.

The international community must move quickly to address the root cause of the 76-year-long suffering and persecution of the Palestinian people, which is the Israeli occupation and settler colonisation of Palestine. It must put an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the Gaza Strip; abolish the apartheid system that has been imposed on all Palestinians for decades; lift the illegal, 17-year blockade on the Gaza Strip and its inhabitants; and take decisive action to support the path of Palestinian liberation and Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

20 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Feroze Mithiborwala

They called us ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ when we said that Governments do infiltrate our phones, TVs & Laptops, spy on us & do far worse. Now in Lebanon, Israel has infiltrated & weaponised Pagers, Walkie-Talkies, Car Radios, Solar panels, to blow-up in People’s faces, in their very houses, cars and in grocery shops. No one with a mobile phone in their hands or pant pockets is safe anymore – period!

Today, entire civilian populations are under threat of this new form of “Electronic Gadget Terrorism,” as is evident by the terror that has been unleashed by diabolical Nazi Israel in Beirut and across Lebanon.

Now, none of us are safe! Governments who want to target Human Rights Activists, Lawyers, Journalists & Whistleblowers, all those who stand with oppressed nations, communities & people’s, all those who the State perceives is a threat – are all in danger, grave danger!

This is more so in countries that are closely aligned and interwoven with the Israeli & US-NATO ‘security’ apparatus.

The mobile phone in our hands or pockets is a potential bomb……..

To begin with, let’s start getting rid of, and boycott all western gadgets, mobiles, pagers, laptops, TVs, cars, radios, cameras, solar panels, toasters, microwave ovens, robots, etc etc…. – anything and everything that can be weaponised to blow up in our faces, our houses, in our neighborhood shops, or just whilst walking on the streets.

Gaza and Beirut have proved that Israel & the US are capable of the worst evil & diabolical plans possible to target humanity.

We must immediately call for a ban and boycott of all these ‘Weaponised Western Gadgets’ – that can be easily converted to ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WWG-WMD). We must begin to look for and use alternatives being produced by the nations of the Global South, the Global Majority, which in many ways are either on par, and for the most, are more advanced than their western equivalents.

For starters, dump your US made iPhone with a Chinese Huwaei….. and boycott ‘Made in Taiwan’ products as well!

Feroze Mithiborwala is the founder of India Palestine Solidarity Forum and its National General Secretary

19 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of mobile communication devices rigged with explosives by Israel detonated throughout Lebanon, killing dozens of people, including members of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization, and wounding thousands.

The mass terror bombings by Israel against the people of Lebanon are a flagrant war crime. They violate the laws of war regarding assassination, treachery and the prohibition of indiscriminate bombing.

“International humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps—objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use—precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.

“Fatima was in the kitchen on Tuesday when a pager on the table began to beep,” her aunt said. “She picked up the device to bring it to her father and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face and leaving the room covered in blood,” she said. “Fatima was trying to take courses in English,” Ms. Mousawi said. “She loved English.”

While these crimes were committed by the Israeli government and military, they were orchestrated with the help of the limitless financial, military and political support of the United States and other imperialist powers for Israel as part of their drive to subjugate and dominate the Middle East.

At Wednesday’s White House press briefing, the usually composed White House spokesman John Kirby could not help visibly sneering as he denied US responsibility for or foreknowledge of the terrorist attack. “We were not involved,” Kirby said, grinning from ear to ear.

Meanwhile, officials of the Democratic Party openly gloated about this act of mass murder. “I fully support efforts to target and neutralize any existential threat like Hezbollah,” wrote Democratic US Senator John Fetterman on X, after sharing a screenshot of the news report of the attack.

Israel’s attack on Lebanon aims to massively escalate its war with the country, in which hundreds of people have been killed since October of last year. Just hours before the start of the bombings, Israel’s security cabinet met to declare that it had “updated the objectives of the war” to include returning Israeli residents to northern Israel, a euphemism for escalating Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reported that the Army’s 98th Division, which includes commandos and paratroopers, is being transferred from Gaza to northern Israel.

“The ‘center of gravity’ is moving north, meaning that we are allocating forces, resources and energy for the northern arena,” Gallant said.

The transfer of Israeli forces to the north does not mean any let-up in the suffering of Gaza’s population, who are totally besieged and being systematically starved and denied access to water, electricity and medical care. Since October, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, according to the official death toll, while a study published in The Lancet suggested the real death toll could be 186,000 or more.

The attack on Lebanon is the latest in a series of provocations by Israel, supported by the United States, with the aim of provoking war not only against Lebanon but also against Iran.

In April, an Israeli strike killed a group of Iranian military officers meeting in Damascus, to which Iran responded with a strike on Israel with 300 missiles and drones, nearly all of which were intercepted. In July, Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr, senior member of Hezbollah, with a strike in Beirut, followed by the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh at a military guesthouse in Iran.

Israel’s terrorist attacks throughout Lebanon mark a new stage in the criminalization of imperialist foreign policy and set a precedent for the legitimization of terrorist attacks on both political leaders and the broader civilian population.

Hezbollah is one of the largest political parties in Lebanon and until 2022 held the dominant position in the country’s parliament. Many of those targeted were not soldiers but politicians, professionals and administrators. And with thousands of bombs detonating throughout the country, many bystanders with no connection to Hezbollah to begin with, including two children, were killed in the blasts.

A precedent is being set, by means of which the definition of war is being expanded to include what was previously defined as terrorism. The effect is to legitimize such prohibited methods as the booby-trapping of everyday objects with the aim of assassinating both individual members of the civilian population and causing mass indiscriminate killing and maiming.

This has implications far beyond the Middle East. Throughout the past 50 years, actions by the state of Israel have been used to set a precedent for US global policy. The most significant example is the doctrine of “targeted killing,” that is, state-sanctioned assassination.

In November 2000, Israel became the first state in the world to “openly acknowledge that it operated a policy of targeted killing,” wrote Nils Melzer, who served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, in 2009. Soon after, the United States moved “to openly adopt the method of targeted killing.”

The US conducted its first known drone strike outside a war zone, in Yemen in 2002. In 2011, US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, both US citizens, were killed in separate drone strikes in Yemen. In 2020, a US drone strike in Iraq killed Qasem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian military official, while on an official visit to Iraq.

As with the adoption of “targeted killing,” the war crimes now being committed by Israel will become the new baseline for even greater crimes by the United States and other imperialist powers.

Israel’s terrorist attack was denounced, entirely hypocritically, by the pseudo-left enablers of the Gaza genocide. “This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict,” wrote Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Far from conflicting with US policy in the Middle East, as Ocasio-Cortez claimed, Israel’s offensive against Lebanon is proceeding with the full support of the Biden-Harris administration.

In July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address to both houses of Congress in which he vowed to expand the genocide in Gaza into a war against Lebanon and Iran. Following Netanyahu’s address to Congress, he met with Vice President Kamala Harris, who vowed, “I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”

American imperialism is expanding its war throughout the Middle East as part of a global military offensive targeting Russia and China. At the very moment when thousands of explosives were going off throughout Lebanon, the US was finalizing plans, expected to come into effect later this month, to allow Ukraine to carry out virtually unlimited strikes on Russia using NATO weapons, threatening an escalation into global nuclear war.

The US-Israeli terrorist attack against Lebanon is a warning. As the US embarks upon wars all over the world in order to defend its global hegemony, it is willing to use the methods of mass murder and terrorism to achieve its aims.

19 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

The United Nations is warning about widespread human rights abuses in Burma as the military regime intensifies the killings and arbitrary arrests of tens of thousands of civilians since seizing power in a coup over three years ago. A new report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says many of those detained by the Burmese military are children taken from their parents, with dozens of minors dying in custody. “What it paints is an extremely disturbing picture of Burma descending into this human rights abyss. If you’re living there, it’s a complete living hell,” says Burmese scholar, dissident and human rights activist Maung Zarni. He also discusses his recent visit with faith leaders to the West Bank and the border of Gaza, drawing parallels between Burma’s and Israel’s human rights abuses. “Israel has taken the practices and policies of genocide to a whole new level,” says Zarni.

GUESTS

Maung Zarni

Burmese dissident, co-founder of the Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia, or FORSEA.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The United Nations is warning Burma is “plumbing the depths of a human rights abyss” as the military regime intensifies the killings and arbitrary arrests of tens of thousands of civilians since seizing power in a coup over three years ago. The gruesome findings are part of a new U.N. human rights report detailing how the Burmese military detained children who were taken from their parents. Dozens of those children have died in custody.

We end today’s show with Maung Zarni, a Burmese genocide scholar and human rights activist who’s been a vocal critic of the Burmese junta and Israel’s war on Gaza and the Israeli occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: In August, Maung Zarni traveled to the occupied West Bank and the Gaza border.

MAUNG ZARNI: Here at this Rafah crossing, sandwiched between Israel and Egyptian border, I feel like I am standing outside a giant concentration camp. When I see the tanks coming in and out, hearing airstrikes, I feel like I am once again visiting Auschwitz.

AMY GOODMAN: Maung Zarni, Burmese genocide scholar and human rights activist, joins us now from Kent, England, co-founder of the Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia, or FORSEA.

Welcome back, Zarni, to Democracy Now! It’s so important to have you with us. Talk about the groups you traveled to the Gaza border and to the West Bank with and your thoughts not only about what’s happening there, but comparisons to what’s going on, the horror that’s going on in Burma right now.

MAUNG ZARNI: Well, Amy, I am greatly indebted to the North American-based, particularly the U.S.-based Rabbis for Ceasefire and Christians for Ceasefire, as well as the Jerusalem-based liberation theologian group called Sabeel. And these three organizations facilitated a visit of the 28-member delegation. And most of the delegates are, you know, clergymen and clergywomen and people of faith. And I am, rather, a humanist, a human rights activist, but nonetheless I joined them, because I wanted to bear witness to what’s happening.

As you know, you have — you know, I’ve covered my own native country of Burma for 30 years and since we have known each other. And Burma and Israel, we regained our — Burma regained independence in 1948. Israel established itself as a sovereign state in 1948. They had what Golda Meir called a love affair. And these newly independent states after the Second World War are now undergoing a genocide trial or, you know, proceedings at the International Court of Justice. And so, you know, Burma is no stranger when it comes to mass atrocities.

What I found in Israel actually shocked me more than what I was prepared. You know, I have studied genocide for decades, and I’ve studied Nazi genocide, Cambodian genocide, my own country’s so-called Buddhist genocide of Rohingya people in western Burma. But Israel has taken the practices and policies of genocide to a whole new level. You know, what I found there — I’ve said this, as well, in other forums — a vast ecosystem of genocidal methodologies or methods.

That is to say that Israel has invented, very creatively, a system of depopulating the pre-1967 Palestine land using different methods, separating different pockets of subpopulation of Palestinians, from Gaza as open-air prison to other various parts of West Bank, you know, five- or six-tier citizenships with severely limited basic and fundamental rights, the severely — you know, severe restriction of life’s essentials, like access to food system, agricultural land, not just simply confiscating massive agricultural land, you know, across Israel. The chicken farms that Israeli companies run, and settlers, that have set up fantastic stone houses in communities fenced off, have chickens. Let me put this this way. Chickens in Israel, in Israeli companies’ farm, have far more access to water and electricity than Palestinian villages and people. And checkpoints, 810-kilometer-long wall — and it’s not just for security purposes. It is actually — the U.N. said it in 2005 — the wall, 810-kilometer-long wall, has been the prime driver behind mass deprivation — in other words, mass poverty of Palestinian people. And so, it’s rather frightening.

And Ramallah, you know, it’s thriving, the city, a bubble. But the locals tell me that the Israeli IDF and security agency will come in and do anything they want, and Palestinian Authority is completely helpless and that they cannot do nothing. They cannot protect the Palestinian people, even in Ramallah — forget about West Bank and other places.

Land confiscation. You know, we came very close to being tear-gassed by the IDF because we were supporting a farm family that have been evicted after their farm has been confiscated in Jerusalem, UNESCO World Heritage agricultural areas. And so, the Hebrew-speaking local colleagues in Jerusalem area who were with us told us that we need to vacate the place because the IDF is going to start firing tear gas and stun guns or grenades.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Zarni, finally, we want to turn to what’s going on in Burma. If you could respond to the new U.N. human rights report and their warning about what’s going on in Burma?

MAUNG ZARNI: Yeah. The new U.N. human rights report cover a one-year period since spring of 2023. What it says — what it paints is an extremely disturbing picture of Burma descending into this human rights abyss. You know, if you’re living there, it’s a complete living hell. You know, 3 million people are being displaced by a civil war between the army, on one hand, and various — you know, the pro-democracy or pro-ethnic liberation armed groups. You know, then we got hit by the typhoon over the last 10 days, and another 700,000 people, they’re displaced and dispossessed.

And so, the only problem is that in the past the Burmese military, the junta, has been the number one or sole perpetrator of egregious human rights crime, but since the coup three years ago, we have a mushrooming of armed organizations in the name of like a pro-democracy movement, and they join hands with different ethnic or ethnonationalist organizations. And so, there are organizations, such as Arakan Army, which represent the Buddhist Rakhine in western Myanmar. Now they are —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds, Maung Zarni.

MAUNG ZARNI: — [inaudible] permitting genocide. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us. Of course, we’ll continue to cover what’s happening in Burma and also in Gaza and the West Bank. Maung Zarni, Burmese dissident, human rights activist, scholar of genocide, co-founder of the Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia, speaking to us from Kent.

Very happy belated birthday to Sam Alcoff! That does it for our show. Democracy Now! produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Thanks for joining us.

19 September 2024

Source: democracynow.org

By Juan Cole

At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: the Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary stated foreign policy goal has been to rally its partners in the region to cooperate with the extremist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu while upholding a “rules-based” international order and blocking Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason. President Biden’s Achilles heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, while launching a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza in the wake of the horrific October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Biden also signed on to the Abraham Accords, a project initiated in 2020 by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and special Middle East envoy of then-President Donald Trump. Through them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco all agreed to recognize Israel in return for investment and trade opportunities there and access to American weaponry and a U.S. security umbrella. Not only did Washington, however, fail to incorporate Saudi Arabia into that framework, but it has also faced increasing difficulty keeping the accords themselves in place given increasing anger and revulsion in the region over the high (and still ongoing) civilian death toll in Gaza. Typically, just the docking of an Israeli ship at the Moroccan port of Tangier this summer set off popular protests that spread to dozens of cities in that country. And that was just a taste of what could be coming.

Breathtaking Hypocrisy

Washington’s efforts in the Middle East have been profoundly undermined by its breathtaking hypocrisy. After all, the Biden team has gone blue in the face decrying the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine and its violations of international humanitarian law in killing so many innocent civilians there. In contrast, the administration let the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completely disregard international law when it comes to its treatment of the Palestinians. This summer, the International Court of Justice ruled that the entire Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal in international law and, in response, the U.S. and Israel both thumbed their noses at the finding. In part as a response to Washington’s Israeli policy, no country in the Middle East and very few nations in the global South have joined in its attempt to ostracize Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Worse yet for the Biden administration, the most significant divide in the Arab world between secular nationalist governments and those that favor forms of political Islam has begun to heal in the face of the perceived Israeli threat. Turkey and Egypt, daggers long drawn over their differing views of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist movement that briefly came to power in Cairo in 2012-2013, have begun repairing their relationship, specifically citing the menace posed by Israeli expansionism.

The persistence of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in pressing Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. security partner, to recognize Israel at a moment when the Arab public is boiling with anger over what they see as a campaign of genocide in Gaza, is the closest thing since the Trump administration to pure idiocracy. Washington’s pressure on Riyadh elicited from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman the pitiful plea that he fears being assassinated were he to normalize relations with Tel Aviv now. And consider that ironic given his own past role in ordering the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In short, the ongoing inside-the-Beltway ambition to secure further Arab recognition of Israel amid the annihilation of Gaza has America’s security partners wondering if Washington is trying to get them killed — anything but a promising basis for a long-term alliance.

Global Delegitimization

The science-fiction-style nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East is starkly revealed when you consider the position of Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel. In early September, its foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned that any attempt by the Israeli military or its squatter-settlers to expel indigenous West Bank Palestinians to Jordan would be considered an “act of war.” While such anxieties might once have seemed overblown, the recent stunning (and stunningly destructive) Israeli military campaign on the Palestinian West Bank, including bombings of populated areas by fighter jets, has already begun to resemble the campaign in Gaza in its tactics. And keep in mind that, as August ended, Foreign Minister Israel Katz even urged the Israeli army to compel Palestinians to engage in a “voluntary evacuation” of the northern West Bank.

Not only is the expulsion of Palestinians from there now the stated policy of cabinet members like Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir; it’s the preference of 65% of Israelis polled. And mind you, when Israel and Jordan begin talking war you know something serious is going on, since the last time those two countries actively fought was in the 1973 October War during the administration of President Richard Nixon.

In short, Netanyahu and his extremist companions are in the process of undoing all the diplomatic progress their country achieved in the past half-century. Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic Shin Bet intelligence agency, warned in August that the brutal policies the extremists in the government were pursuing are “a stain on Judaism” and will lead to “global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies.”

Turkey, a NATO ally with which the U.S. has mutual defense obligations, has become vociferous in its discontent with President Biden’s Middle Eastern policy. Although Turkey recognized Israel in 1949, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the pro-Islam Justice and Development Party interactions had grown rocky even before the Gaza nightmare. Still, until then their trade and military ties had survived occasional shouting matches between their politicians. The Gaza genocide, however, has changed all that. Erdogan even compared Netanyahu to Hitler, and then went further still, claiming that, in the Rafah offensive in southern Gaza in May, “Netanyahu has reached a level with his genocidal methods that would make Hitler jealous.”

Worse yet, the Turkish president, referred to by friend and foe as the “sultan” because of his vast power, has now gone beyond angry words. Since last October, he’s used Turkey’s position in NATO to prohibit that organization from cooperating in any way with Israel on the grounds that it’s violating the NATO principle that harm to civilians in war must be carefully minimized. The Justice and Development Party leader also imposed an economic boycott on Israel, interrupting bilateral trade that had reached $7 billion a year and sending the price of fruits and vegetables in Israel soaring, while leading to a shortage of automobiles in the Israeli market.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party represents the country’s small towns and rural areas and its Muslim businesses and entrepreneurs, constituencies that care deeply about the fate of Muslim Palestinians in Gaza. And while Erdogan’s high dudgeon has undoubtedly been sincere, he’s also pleasing his party’s stalwarts in the face of an increasing domestic challenge from the secular Republican People’s Party. In addition, he’s long played to a larger Arab public, which is apoplectic over the unending carnage in Gaza.

The Alliance of Muslim Countries

Although it was undoubtedly mere bluster, Erdogan even threatened a direct intervention on behalf of the beleaguered Palestinians. In early August, he said, “Just as we intervened in Karabakh [disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia], just as we intervened in Libya, we will do the same to them.” In early September, the Turkish president called for an Islamic alliance in the region to counter what he characterized as Israeli expansionism:

“Yesterday, one of our own children, [Turkish-American human rights advocate] Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, was vilely slaughtered [on the West Bank]. Israel will not stop in Gaza. After occupying Ramallah [the de facto capital of that territory], they will look around elsewhere. They’ll fix their eyes on our homeland. They openly proclaim it with a map. We say Hamas is resisting for the Muslims. Standing against Israel’s state terror is an issue of importance to the nation and the country. Islamic countries must wake up as soon as possible and increase their cooperation. The only step that can be taken against Israel’s genocide is the alliance of Muslim countries.”

In fact, the present nightmare in Gaza and the West Bank may indeed be changing political relationships in the region. After all, the Turkish president pointed to his rapprochement with Egypt as a building block in a new security edifice he envisions. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made his first visit to Ankara on September 4th (following a February Erdogan trip to Cairo). And those visits represented the end of a more than decade-long cold war in the Sunni Muslim world over al-Sisi’s 2013 coup against elected Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, whom Erdogan had backed.

Despite its apparent embrace of democratic norms in 2012-2013, some Middle Eastern rulers charged the Brotherhood with having covert autocratic ambitions throughout the region and sought to crush it. For the moment, the Muslim Brotherhood and other forms of Sunni political Islam have been roundly defeated in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and the Persian Gulf region. Erdogan, a pragmatist despite his support for the Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas, had been in the process of getting his country the best possible deal, given such a regional defeat, even before the Israelis struck Gaza.

Netanyahu’s Forever War in Gaza

For his part, Egypt’s al-Sisi is eager for greater leverage against Netanyahu’s apparent plan for a forever war in Gaza. After all, the Gaza campaign has already inflicted substantial damage on Egypt’s economy, since Yemen’s Houthis have supported the Gazans with attacks on container ships and oil tankers in the Red Sea. That has, in turn, diverted traffic away from it and from the Suez Canal, whose tolls normally earn significant foreign exchange for Egypt. In the first half of 2024, however, it took in only half the canal receipts of the previous year. Although tourism has held up reasonably well, any widening of the war could devastate that industry, too.

Egyptians are also reportedly furious over Netanyahu’s occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor south of the city of Rafah in Gaza and his blithe disregard of Cairo’s prerogatives under the Camp David agreement to patrol that corridor. The al-Sisi government, which, along with Qatar’s rulers and the Biden administration, has been heavily involved in hosting (so far fruitless) peace negotiations between Hamas and Israel, seems at the end of its tether, increasingly angered at the way the Israeli prime minister has constantly tacked new conditions onto any agreements being discussed, causing the talks to fail.

For months, Cairo has also been seething over Netanyahu’s charge that Egypt allowed tunnels to be built under that corridor to supply Hamas with weaponry, insisting that the Egyptian army had diligently destroyed 1,500 such tunnels. Egypt’s position was given support recently by Nadav Argaman, a former head of Shin Bet, who said, “There is no connection between the weaponry found in Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor.” Of Netanyahu, he added, “He knows very well that no smuggling takes place over the Philadelphi Corridor. So, we are now relegated to living with this imaginary figment.”

In the Turkish capital, Ankara, Al-Sisi insisted that he wanted to work with Erdogan to address “the humanitarian tragedy that our Palestinian brothers in Gaza are facing in an unprecedented disaster that has been going on for nearly a year.” He underscored that there was no daylight between Egypt and Turkey “regarding the demand for an immediate ceasefire, the rejection of the current Israeli escalation in the West Bank, and the call to start down a path that achieves the aspirations of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” He also pointed out that such positions are in accord with U.N. Security Council resolutions and pledged to work with Turkey to ensure that humanitarian aid was delivered to Gaza despite “the ongoing obstacles imposed by Israel.”

To sum up, the ligaments of American influence in the Middle East are now dissolving before our very eyes. Washington’s closest allies, like the Jordanian and Saudi royal families, are terrified that Biden’s bear hug of Netanyahu’s war crimes and the fury of their own people could, in the end, destabilize their rule. Countries that, not so long ago, had correct, if not warm, relations with Israel like Egypt and Turkey are increasingly denouncing that country and its policies. And the alliance of U.S. partners in the region with Israel against Iran that Washington has long worked for seems to be coming apart at the seams. Countries like Egypt and Turkey are instead exploring the possibility of forming a regional Sunni Muslim alliance against Netanyahu’s geopolitics of Jewish power that might, in the end, actually reduce tensions with Tehran.

That things have come to such a pass in the Middle East is distinctly the fault of the Biden administration and its position — or lack of one — on Israel’s nightmare in Gaza (and now the West Bank, too). Today, all too sadly, that administration is wearing the same kind of blinkers regarding the war in Gaza that President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top officials once sported when it came to the Vietnam War.

Juan Cole, a TomDispatch regular, is the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan.

17 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org