Archives: Articles

By Mike Whitney

“Trump’s hawkish lineup is starting to look like a reunion for the worst of US interventionists. The man who said ‘no wars’ hired a cabinet that’s clearly thirsting for the next one.” —@ghida_fakhry

“It’s not Trump’s pro-Israel cabinet. It’s Israel’s pseudo-American cabinet.” —Alon Mizrahi @alon_mizrahi

“Awww fuck! It’s over before it even started!” —Nick@NickJ132388

If George W. Bush was elected to a third term in office, this is what his cabinet would look like. Rubio, Waltz, Stefanik, Hegseth. Not a peacenik among them. Not an antiwar candidate among them. Not even a non-interventionist among them. Every single pick is a hard-boiled, right-wing war-hawk that is committed to marching in lockstep with the world’s most notorious pariah-state, Israel.

Let’s start with Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense, the man whose job it is to oversee the War Department and act as the principal defense policymaker and adviser. Trump chose Fox television host Pete Hegseth, “a decorated Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Guantanamo Bay.” Hegseth has no administrative skills or experience, but he is a Trump loyalist who shares the president’s views on “woke” policies in the military. More importantly, Hegseth is dyed-in-the-wool Israel aficionado who thinks the interests of the Jewish state are inextricably linked to those of the United States. Check out this short excerpt from Pete Hegseth’s book, “American Crusade, Our Fight to Stay Free” (2020) that was posted on Michael Tracey Twitter site:

“Simply put: if you don’t understand why Israel matters and why it is so central to the story of Western civilization—with America being its greatest manifestation—then you don’t live in history. America’s story is inextricably linked to Judeo-Christian history and the modern state of Israel. You can love America without loving Israel—but that tells me your knowledge of the Bible and Western civilization is woefully incomplete…..

If you love America, you should love Israel. We share history, we share faith, and we share freedom. We love free people, free expression, and free markets. And whereas America is blessed with two big, beautiful oceans to protect it, Israel is surrounded on all sides by countries that either used to seek, or still seek, to wipe the nation off the map.

The battle wages on Israeli soil as well. With each trip I take to Israel for FOX Nation, and on my personal time, I discover a new way in which Islamists and their leftist enablers seek to deny Jewish history and heritage. Today, Islamists in Jerusalem are attempting to claim that the Holy Temple built by King Solomon and rebuilt by Herod never existed. Apparently, they want us all to believe that Jews—from Abraham to Jesus—never sacrificed, built, or worshipped on that particular piece of real estate. “Temple denial” is yet another tool by which they seek to erase the Jews and the Jewish state. If that isn’t delusional enough, on a recent trip to Bethlehem—the birthplace of Jesus—I discovered that Palestinians now claim that Jesus was not in fact Jewish but instead a Palestinian. Try that one on for size—or watch my two FOX Nation documentaries on the subject: Battle in the Holy City and Battle in Bethlehem.” Michael Tracey@mtracey

A Secretary of Defense doesn’t have to be impartial to fulfil his responsibilities to the president and the American people, but it does make one wonder how Hegseth’s pro-Israel zealotry will impact the way he implements US policy. If, for example, Hegseth was ordered to stop the delivery of all bombs and lethal weaponry to Israel while ceasefire negotiations with Hamas took place, would a Christian Zionist like Hegseth obey such an order or act according to his own deeply-felt religious convictions?

I can’t answer that, but the obvious conflict of interest should have been a red flag for Trump if his goal was actually “America First”.

Oh, and did we mention that Hegseth is also an Iran hawk, which appears to be a basic requirement for any position on the Trump team. This is from Axios:

Alongside his strong support for Israel, Hegseth has also expressed strong positions regarding Iran… He had called the Iranian revolutionary government an “evil regime”, and in 2020 said that if Iran wanted “to come back to the table for talks on their nuclear capabilities” it should do so “limping and begging.”…

“Sometimes we have moments, and I happen to believe we can’t kick the can down the road any longer in trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb,” Hegseth said in an appearance on Fox & Friends.

“What better time than now to say ‘we’re starting the clock, you’ve got a week, you’ve got X amount of time before we start taking out your energy production facilities. We take out key infrastructure, we take out your missile sites, we take out nuclear developments, we take out port capabilities.’” Trump appoints pro-Israel, Iran hawk Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, Axios

Does that sound like a reasonable approach to you or the fast-track to a regional war?

And how does this fit with all the non-interventionist gobbledygook that Trump was spewing before the election? Was it all for show? And, please, don’t tell me that Hegseth wasn’t fully vetted or that Trump was unaware of his political views before he picked him. That’s nonsense. Hegseth is a hard-nosed, prowar jingoist who recently dismissed public demands for a ceasefire as “extortion on behalf of Hamas” (say what??) and who thinks the only problem with Biden’s Middle East policy was that it wasn’t tough enough.’ And so it is with all Trump’s picks. They’re all ferociously devoted to Israel and they’re all gung-ho for a war with Iran.

Pete Hegseth on dual loyalty—Wow.

Here’s how the typically temperate Daniel McAdams summed up Hegseth:

President-elect Donald Trump’s designated Secretary of Defense is a certifiable lunatic. A cultist in the manner of Manson. Literally someone who needs to be in a mental hospital. Who craves an apocalyptic war to end all of mankind so that his twisted understanding of God will come down and slaughter all (including Jews) who do not convert to his cult’s beliefs. This is a truly dangerous person. This is the person running our military machine. The madmen have taken the asylum. Daniel McAdams @DanielLMcAdams

Yikes. Looks like Don Rumsfeld won’t be our worst Sec-Def after all.

Then there’s Marco Rubio or “Little Marco” as Trump used to affectionately call him during the 2016 campaign. Rubio—who Trump picked as Secretary of State—is another shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later warhawk whose views veer only slightly from those of John Bolton and Lindsay Graham. In a recent video by peace activist Medea Benjamin, Benjamin—who is shown standing outside Rubio’s senate office next to a giant flag of Israel—says the following:

We are here outside Marco Rubio’s office. You have probably heard that he has been picked by Trump to be the next Secretary of State. We have been to his office before, and we were always curious that there was an Israeli flag outside. And I thought maybe he would take the flag down to show his allegiance is 100% to the US government and not to the Israeli government. But, no, lo and behold, the flag is still here, which gives you a pretty good indication of where his allegiance is going to be as Secretary of State. Medea Benjamin@medeabenjamin

Imagine if Rubio placed a Russian flag outside his office, or a Palestinian flag? What do you think the reaction would be? Is it really appropriate for a US senator to display the banner of a foreign power in front of his taxpayer-provided office? Here’s more background on Rubio from Michael Tracey:

Marco Rubio would arguably be the most hardcore interventionist Secretary of State for an incoming administration in decades, perhaps rivaling Hillary Clinton. Definitely outpaces Colin Powell, who was in the relatively more “realist” faction of the G. W. Bush Administration

And here’s more on Rubio from the horse’s mouth, The Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

President-elect Donald Trump is filling out his national security team with pro-Israel hawks who favor maximum pressure on Iran… Reports Monday said Trump planned to name two Floridian allies to top jobs: Sen. Marco Rubio will be tapped to be secretary of state, and Rep. Michael Waltz will be his national security adviser.

Both men have said Israel should not be prevented from staging a direct attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. That stance echoes Trump who, before the election, urged Israel to “​​Do what you have to do.” Trump had criticized President Joe Biden for confining Israel to only hitting military sites, but not nuclear ones, in a retaliatory strike….

Trump has yet to formally name Rubio, but his pending appointments has been widely reported and the Republican Jewish Coalition, which has a longstanding relationship with Rubio, congratulated him.

“President Trump’s choice of Senator Rubio for this critical role sends a message loudly and clearly: The days of weakness and appeasement are over,” the RJC said in a statement on Monday night. “We know that with Senator Rubio leading the State Department, America will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and confront our enemies.”

Rubio came up in Florida politics in part because of the backing of billionaire auto dealership magnate Norman Braman, a past president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. He is known to be close to Miriam Adelson, the pro-Israel casino magnate who funneled $100 million into Trump’s campaign this year.….

In October, after Iran barraged Israel with missiles, and as Israel’s conflict with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah was escalating, he tweeted, “Israel should respond to Iran the way the U.S. would respond if some country launched 180 missiles at us. And they should do in Lebanon what we would be demanding our leaders do if terrorists were launching anti-tank rockets at us from a neighboring country, forcing 60000 Americans to evacuate their homes and farms for almost a year.”

In the 2016 election, she and her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, were close to deciding whether they would back Rubio or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as the Republican nominee. Then Trump pulled ahead of the pack and Sheldon Adelson decided to endorse the reality TV star.

Rubio has said for years that the United States should not stand in the way of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program. Trump taps Iran hawks Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz for top national security role s, The Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Funny how much influence people like Adelson have when it comes to selecting who is going to lead the country. And, it doesn’t stop there either because—as we can see—a hundred million bucks not only buys you a president but everyone in the president’s cabinet as well. Sounds like a bargain to me, although seriously corrupt too. It is convenient, however, when publications, like the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, explain exactly how the system works and then boast about how it serves their overall interests. What’s that saying about “the tail wagging the dog”?

Then there’s Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security advisor who is—surprise, surprise—another warmongering neocon who, in Trump’s words, will be “a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda, and a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!”

Peace?? Not bloody likely!

In a nutshell: Waltz opposed leaving Afghanistan, he thinks we haven’t been supportive enough of Ukraine, and he also thinks that Iran needs a good “punch in the nose”; which I would interpret as tacit support for military action. Here’s Michael Tracey’s take:

At the “America First” summit in DC, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) says he just returned from Ukraine and is now calling for the deployment of US military “advisors” directly into the war to operate US weapons systems alongside Ukrainian forces. “Let’s win this damn war!” he proclaims Michael Tracey @mtracey

Troops on the ground?? Is that what Waltz wants?

Sure sounds like it, but how does that fit with Trump’s elusive peace agenda? Here’s more from Tracey:

Mike Waltz, the incoming National Security Advisor, worked for Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Remember like a week ago when everybody was absolutely convinced there was some giant ideological chasm between Trump and the Cheneys? Michael Tracey @mtracey

Waltz says “punch Iran in the nose”

[https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1717566648624849222]

Here’s more from Caitlin Johnstone:

Like (John) Bolton, Waltz is a warmongering freak. Journalist Michael Tracey has been filling up his Twitter page since the announcement with examples of Waltz’s insane hawkishness, including his support for letting Ukraine use US weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, criticizing Biden for not escalating aggressively enough in Ukraine, advocating bombing Iran, opposing the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and naming Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela as “on the march” against the United States toward global conflict. The mainstream press are calling Waltz a “China hawk”, but from the look of things he’s a war-horny hawk toward all the official enemies of the United States. The Incoming Trump Administration Is Already Filling Up With War Sluts, Caitlin Johnstone@caitoz

And here’s more from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

Waltz has been among Israel’s most robust backers in the U.S. House of Representatives and has also said Israel should not hesitate to hit Iran’s nuclear sites and oil fields. Biden had discouraged such actions, fearing such attacks would trigger a full-scale regional war which would draw in the United States.

“So far…it’s important to note what hasn’t been hit in Iran,” Walz said in an Oct. 25 tweet, listing an Iranian oil facility and a nuclear facility. “This might be Israel’s last best chance to diminish Iran’s nuclear program and shut down their cash. Did Biden/Harris pressure Israel once again to do less than it should? Jewish Telegraphic Agency

What this excerpt shows, is that Trump’s picks are looking for an opportunity to attack Iran. The prevailing view seems to be that Biden was “soft” on Iran and that now is the time to take more assertive “muscular” action to ensure Israel’s security. As we noted earlier, all of Trump’s picks appear to share this view.

Still think Trump wants to end the foreign wars?

Trump also picked fiery Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (NY) as US ambassador to the United Nations

Here’s Tracey:

Elise Stefanik, Trump’s new pick for UN Ambassador, is in some ways more ideologically zealous than Nikki Haley, Trump’s previous occupant of that role. Stefanik was integral in launching the crusade to whip up the confabulated anti-Semitism panic over the past year, and was showered with Adelson awards for her services —all while successfully insinuating herself into the Trump political operation. Stefanik and Haley have no discernible substantive differences; Stefanik has vehemently denounced the Biden-Harris administration for insufficiently arming Ukraine and Israel, and allegedly kowtowing to China —she also denounces the Afghanistan withdrawal on principle. Nor are there any discernible policy differences between Stefanik and Liz Cheney, her predecessor as Chairwoman of the House GOP conference Michael Tracey

Looks like Adelson was a player in Stefanik’s career as well. Isn’t it amazing how much power Israeli billionaires have over American politics? The whole system is awash in the filthy money of foreign donors. We are a Third-world sh**hole country; no doubt about it. Here’s Caitlin Johnstone again:

Stefanik is best known for her congressional efforts to stomp out free speech on college campuses, making a lie of Trump’s lip service to the importance of First Amendment rights. She’s a hawkish swamp monster whose political career was primed in some of the most odious neoconservative think tanks in Washington, and opposes placing any limits on US military support for Israel. Earlier this year Stefanik actually flew to Israel to give a speech before the Israeli Knesset vowing to help stop the “antisemitism” of protesters against Israel’s genocidal atrocities at American universities. Caitlin Johnstone

Here’s a congratulatory note Stefanik got from the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt after she was picked by Trump:

Mazel Tov to @EliseStefanik on her nomination to be the next US Ambassador to the
@UN Rep. Stefanik has been a critical partner and absolutely fearless in fighting campus antisemitism. I’m excited to work with her to combat anti-Jewish hate & anti-Israel bias on the world stage. @JGreenblattADL

Naturally, if you are getting love letters from Jonathan Greenblatt, you’re playing on the wrong team, in this case, Team Genocide. Stefanik appears to be solidly in that camp.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but there’s enough here for readers to chew on for a while. What’s clear is that the much-ballyhooed announcement that Trump would not pick either Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley for cabinet positions was an obvious head-fake aimed at misleading his supporters. Trump’s backers were led to believe that ‘things had changed’ when in fact, the only thing that’s changed is that Trump has officially joined the family of Swamp creatures he pledged to remove.

We’ll let Caitlin Johnstone have the last word:

The only intellectually honest reason to support Trump is because you’re a garden variety Republican and you support standard Republican agendas like lower taxes on the rich and low tolerance for human diversity. There is no honest basis to support Trump on antiwar grounds, or because you want the swamp of corruption to be drained from Washington. This was obvious to anyone who paid attention the last time he was president, but it is glaringly obvious now from all the warmongering swamp monsters he’s been packing his cabinet with. This narrative so-called “MAGA Republicans” have about themselves as some new special breed of Republican who are meaningfully different from the Republicans of the past simply is not born out by any kind of material evidence. They’re not draining the swamp. They’re not fighting the deep state. They’re not ending the wars.They’re doing all the gross stuff Republicans have always tried to do while LARPing as brave rebels. I despise the entirety of the Republican Party; it’s one of the most evil things humanity has ever produced. Caitlin Johnstone@caitoz

Wish I’d said that!

15 November 2024

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Jonathan Cook

There has never been a harder time to do political and media analysis than right now. Each day, the western establishment unmoors itself further from reality. Its priorities are so inverted, so obscene, that the most appropriate response is ridicule.

The latest example was the reaction late last week to violent clashes in Amsterdam before and after a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local team Ajax.

The ridiculous framing from western politicians, assisted by mainstream media outlets, was that the visiting Israelis were “hunted down” in what supposedly amounted to a “pogrom” by Dutch street gangs, comprising mainly youths of Arab and Muslim heritage.

According to this official narrative, the violence on Amsterdam’s streets was further proof of a rising tide of antisemitism sweeping Europe and imported from the Middle East. More, the attacks were presented as having disturbing echoes of Europe’s Nazi past.

Outgoing US President Joe Biden claimed the Israeli fans faced “despicable” attacks that “echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted”.

Israel, of course, helpfully stoked this idea by promising “emergency flights” to “rescue” its football fans – seeking to evoke memories of its airlifts in the 1980s of Ethiopian Jews to escape famine and reports of persecution, or possibly of the 1975 airlift of US embassy staff from Saigon.

Nazi comparisons

Dutch politicians with their own ugly, racist agendas, as well as the country’s king, rushed to join Israel in fuelling the hysteria. Geert Wilders, the racist, far-right leader of the largest party in the Dutch parliament, said “multicultural scum” had carried out a “Jew hunt”.

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, gave her country’s official stamp of approval to portray events in Amsterdam as a potential “second Holocaust”, calling the scenes “horrific and deeply shameful”.

She added: “The outbreak of such violence against Jews crosses all boundaries. There is no justification whatsoever for such violence. Jews must be safe in Europe.”

This is the same Germany where videosdaily show Arab and Muslim demonstrators – in fact, anyone waving a Palestinian flag – being brutally assaulted by German police officers for protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Baerbock seems just fine with crossing those kinds of boundaries – whether it be eradicating the right to protest or fostering a political climate that authorises Islamophobic violence, not from random football hooligans but from functionaries of the German state.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exploited the opening offered by Baerbock to compare the violence in Amsterdam to the Nazi pogroms against Jews in 1938 known as Kristallnacht.

And, of course, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy took his cue from Washington, declaring he was “horrified”. He wrote on X: “I utterly condemn these abhorrent acts of violence and stand with Israeli and Jewish people across the world.”

Celebrating genocide

It is not support for violence, let alone for antisemitism, to point out that this portrayal of events was utterly divorced from reality.

Videos on social media showed the visiting Israeli fans wilfully provoking confrontation as soon as they arrived in Amsterdam.

In the days leading up to the match, they had torn down and burned Palestinian flags in the city centre. They had hunted down Dutch taxi drivers and passers-by suspected of being Arab or Muslim. They had chanted genocidal death threats against Arabs.

At the game itself, they raucously disturbed a minute’s silence in the stadium for the victims of Spain’s floods by singing, “There are no more schools in Gaza because we killed all the kids.”

Spain is apparently reviled by Israeli fans because, in line with international law but against Israel’s wishes, it has recognised Palestine as a state.

Video of the Israeli fans arriving home at Tel Aviv airport showed them unbowed. They chanted the same genocidal songs: “Let the IDF win and fuck the Arabs. Ole ole, ole ole ole. Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!”

Like Wilders, the Israeli fans had used their time in Amsterdam to vent their bigotry at “multicultural scum”.

Even after the match, when they felt the backlash from incensed local residents, it was clear that Israeli fans were initiating the violent clashes as much as getting caught up in them.

A video shot by a young Dutch Ajax fan following the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans as they rampaged through Amsterdam after the match went viral on social media. It shows a large gang of Israelis prowling through Amsterdam armed with batons, throwing stones and aggressively confronting local police.

Astonishingly, Dutch police are shown either absent or keeping their distance for much of the time as the Israelis look for trouble. Notably, not one Israeli fan has been arrested.

Islamophobic bile

The western media’s coverage of these events was as strangely deferential to these genocide-inciting thugs as the Dutch police’s handling of their violence.

Had visiting British fans behaved this way in Amsterdam, the police would have made mass arrests immediately.

Similarly, had British hooligans found themselves on the receiving end of violence in such circumstances, the British media would have shown little sympathy.

The clashes would rightly have been understood as ugly tribalism, a not-unfamiliar sight at football matches.

The difference here was that the clashes unleashed by the Israeli fans’ provocations had a much larger context than simple antipathy between rival teams. It was fuelled by tensions surrounding horrifying events taking place on the international stage.

There is nothing shocking or especially sinister about Dutch fans, especially those with Arab or Muslim heritage, responding with their own violence to Israeli youths – some of them presumably fresh from military service in Gaza – trying to export their own genocidal anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incitement to Amsterdam.

All the more so when the Israeli fans were amplifying the bigoted, Islamophobic bile of leading Dutch politicians.

It should have been even less surprising given the wider context: that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were celebrating in someone else’s city the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza, among Dutch citizens who don’t view Arab life as worthless or Muslims as “human animals”.

Sadly, that is exactly how the western establishment has viewed Palestinians over the past 13 months, as Israel has slaughtered them in the ever-shrinking concentration camp that is Gaza.

Paradoxically, it was left to an Israeli politician, Ofer Cassif, who belongs to the tiny Hadash party, the only joint Jewish-Arab party in the Israeli parliament, to bring some perspective.

He wrote on X: “[Israeli] fans go on a violent rampage, carry out beatings, tear up Palestinian flags in the streets as if they were an occupying force, and shout Nazi slogans in favour of the extermination of a nation [Palestinians], and then whine when the situation degenerates into complete chaos and violence returns to them like a boomerang.”

‘Victims of pogroms’

As ever, the establishment media dutifully regurgitated the official presentation of events in Amsterdam. Its reporting is best characterised as industrial-scale trolling.

Headlines like this one from the New York Times took it as read that the Israeli fans were victims of antisemitism who needed saving: “Antisemitic attacks prompt emergency flights for Israeli soccer fans.”

Other outlets uncritically reported unhinged statements from Dutch officials: “We failed Jewish community during football fan attacks as we did under the Nazis, says Dutch king.”

Or, as with this Reuters headline, the media used quotation marks to justify peddling disinformation: “Amsterdam bans protests after ‘antisemitic squads’ attack Israeli soccer fans.”

The BBC, which trumpets its dedication to accurate reporting with its Verify service, didn’t bother to verify images from Amsterdam it used to supposedly illustrate attacks on Israeli fans.

In fact, as the Dutch photographer who shot an image used by the BBC pointed out, it showed the exact opposite: Israeli youths beating up a local Dutch resident.

The misuse of these images – disinformation – was repeated by CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times and other major outlets, as all raced to bolster the fake news narrative being imposed by the western political class.

The photographer has since demanded apologies and corrections from media organisations that used her footage incorrectly and without authorisation. By Saturday, she had received only one – from the German news programme Tagesschau.

Wellspring of thuggery

The degree to which the establishment media intentionally sought to deceive audiences to promote a distorted official narrative was illustrated by Sky News’ coverage.

Initially, before the politicians had had a chance to frame events more conveniently for their agenda, Sky’s journalist in Amsterdam reported the violence as being initiated by the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans – a club already notorious for the aggressive anti-Arab racism of its supporters.

Her report was soon pulled, however, as Israel, Wilders, Baerbock, Biden and Lammy reformulated the narrative in terms of antisemitism and pogroms. A note from the channel’s editors claimed the video “didn’t meet Sky News’ standards for balance and impartiality”.

A new, heavily re-edited video was posted that played down the Israeli fans’ violence and foregrounded Dutch politicians claiming the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were victims of unprovoked, antisemitic attacks. A Maccabi fan was even given space to suggest the clashes recalled Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

In fact, there was a parallel with 7 October but not in the sense suggested by the Israeli fan or western politicians.

Media coverage of Hamas’ attack 13 months ago has consistently scrubbed out any of the preceding context: decades of illegal, violent Israeli military occupation of Gaza; a 17-year Israeli siege that denied the Palestinian population there the essentials of life; and many months of Israeli snipers executing and crippling Palestinians who tried to protest against their imprisonment.

The Amsterdam violence was similarly decontextualised.

The media’s uncritical acceptance of this new, overtly politicised narrative paved the way for Amsterdam’s mayor to then impose a martial law-style crackdown on protest.

Predictably, the city’s police then used the ban as a pretext to arrest anti-genocide protesters en masse in Amsterdam on Sunday when residents came out to denounce the provocations and genocidal incitement by Israeli fans over the preceding days.

Conveniently for western politicians and their accomplices in the establishment media, they have provided themselves with yet another opportunity to present protests in the West against Israel’s genocide as inherently dangerous to the safety of Jews.

European antisemitism can be snuffed out, so their logic goes, only by stamping out the right to protest against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian children.

There is a double deception being perpetrated here. That Jews were attacked in Amsterdam for being Jews rather than for being Israeli football thugs all too visibly trying to provoke confrontation.

And that the only proper response is to further accommodate not just Israeli football fans’ thuggery but the wellspring of that thuggery: Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.

Israelis, not Jews

Western politicians and the establishment media, meanwhile, have made it all too evident that they share the racist sentiments of Israel and its proudly racist, thuggish football emissaries.

Contrary to what western politicians and the media would have us believe, “taking offence” isn’t something reserved only for Israelis and for Zionist Jews. Other groups have sensitivities, too, even if western politicians and media systematically denigrate those sensitivities.

Lost once again in the political and media frenzy is the fact that people can feel angry towards Israel and its citizens, especially when they glorify the mass slaughter of Palestinian children, without hating Jews.

Israel, after all, has been carrying out a live-streamed genocide for 13 months, backed by almost its entire population. Anyone opposed to genocide – sadly, not enough of us, it seems – probably isn’t feeling too warmly towards Israel right now. That is a moral position. Confusing it with antisemitism is pure sophistry.

The sophistry is dangerous, to boot. It creates the very reality it claims to be trying to stop. It suggests there is some connection between being Jewish and supporting genocide. That truly is antisemitism.

In echoing Israel’s own mischievous conflations of Israeliness and Jewishness, western politicians and the establishment media have helped to intensify tribalisms that can only lead to damaging polarisation, violence and repression.

Some Europeans fete Israel, and are willing to indulge its genocide, because they wrongly imagine that this is the best way to protect Jews. Other Europeans, though small in number, end up blaming Jews for Israel’s genocidal actions.

Both of those sides are living in an entirely false and anti-democratic reality, one created for them by the deceptions of western politicians and the establishment media.

Those who reject either position – a sane, embattled majority – suffer constant gaslighting and find themselves lumped in with the genuine antisemites.

The BBC’s reporter in Amsterdam replicated precisely this type of confused narrative on Friday night, arguing that Israeli fans had been attacked for their “nationality”, while also echoing her colleagues in arguing that this amounted to antisemitism.

But “Jewish” is very obviously not a nationality (whatever Israel may claim), and loudly cheering on Israel’s Zionist ideology of Jewish supremacism over Middle Eastern, Arab populations is a political act – and at the moment, complicity in a monstrous genocide. It is not victimhood or “innocence”.

Burying the story

There are two, related reasons why the media have been so ready to whip up yet another antisemitism furore out of thin air.

The media have blown up this football hooliganism story into a major international scandal, with front pages concerned for the welfare of violent Israeli football fans, at the same time as they ignore the latest chapter in Israel’s horrifying, 13-month genocide in Gaza.

Israel is currently carrying out the so-called “Generals’ Plan“: bombing and starving Palestinian men, women and children in northern Gaza to force out the 400,000 of them who have been living amid its ruins.

Israel has said this population will never be allowed to return home. In other words, it is formally announcing that these Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed.

Any Palestinian who refuses to move into the concentration camp Israel has made of southern Gaza – one constantly bombed too – faces being executed as a “terrorist”.

One might imagine these horrors upon horrors would be a major news story. Not so. Nowadays, there is always some other story, however unimportant, to take precedence.

On Friday night the BBC dedicated not one second to the genocide in Gaza because the corporation, like the rest of the media, was too busy focusing on the suffering in Amsterdam of Israeli football hooligans. Those fans, remember, had threatened to murder Arabs and Muslims in Europe, to replicate what has been happening in Gaza.

The media’s priorities here are beyond obscene.

Stoking hatred

What the coverage is seeking to do is not just bury the Gaza genocide and turn Israel and Israelis into the victims even as they commit genocide.

It is also intended to stoke Islamophobic hatred towards Arabs and Muslims for being present in Europe, and for insisting that we not forget about Gaza. It is to import into the West the same racist assumptions and discourse that led to Israel’s genocide.

Western establishments have willed this outcome. They are enabling it through their rhetoric and actions.

What possible justification can there be for banning Russian teams and sportspeople from international competitions the moment Moscow invaded Ukraine, when Israeli teams like Tel Aviv Maccabi are still being welcomed in Europe after 13 months of genocide?

How is it possible that fans of Israeli teams not only find themselves embraced by western leaders but treated as victims when they parade their anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry – and their glorification of genocide – in European cities?

The Israeli national team is due to play France in a Uefa Nations League match in Paris on 14 November. Clashes are all too predictable. They could be easily averted by imposing a ban – similar to the Russian one – on Israeli involvement in international competitions.

What the coverage demonstrates so clearly is that the aim of leading western politicians, aided by the establishment media, is to recast Europe’s Arab and Muslim populations as a threat, as barbaric, as antisemitic, as impossible to integrate into a supposed western “civilisation”.

In other words, the transparent goal is to turn Europe’s Arab and Muslim communities into Europe’s Jews of the 1930s – reviled, distrusted and seen as a menace.

By supporting every monstrous Israeli crime, by pandering to Israel’s genocide-inciting football hooligans, western politicians and the media know they are bound to inflame tensions, especially with domestic populations of Arab and Muslim heritage. That is what they wish to do.

The aim is to promote the demonisation of Europe’s Arab and Muslim minorities.

Worthless lives

We know where European bigotry towards Jews led. To the gas chambers.

And increasingly we can see precisely where western politicians and the establishment media want to take their publics in endlessly promoting Israeli-style bigotry towards Arabs and Muslims.

Already western establishments have rationalised their active complicity in the genocidal murder of Palestinians in Gaza, and the destruction of south Lebanon, by supplying weapons and diplomatic immunity.

Already they have cast Israel’s blockade of aid and the mass starvation of the 2.3 million people of Gaza as “self-defence”, and as a “legitimate war” to eliminate Hamas.

Already they have insisted that the lives of Palestinians are so worthless, so insignificant, that they can be butchered in their tens of thousands – or, more likely, hundreds of thousands – in revenge for the deaths of just over 1,000 Israelis on 7 October 2023.

Already they have inverted reality to depict genocidal Israel as the innocent victim and the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed and maimed in its slaughterous rampage as the guilty party.

None of this has happened by accident. A mood is being cynically cultivated in the West, just as it was in parts of Europe in the 1930s, to suggest that some groups are sub-human, that some minorities must be expelled, or rounded up and disappeared.

That is the proper context for understanding what really happened in Amsterdam last week, as the police treated violent Israeli hooligans with kid gloves and the politicians and media recast the villains as victims.

If our politicians and media are really worried about Europe’s not-too-distant Nazi past, they would be far better advised to stop stoking an all-too-real new antisemitism: incitement against Arab and Muslim minorities.

The darkest days in Europe’s history are indeed back with us. But not because a bunch of Israeli football hooligans ended up receiving as much violence as they tried to dish out.

It is back because the West is all too ready to embrace Israel’s anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry. Day by day we inch ever closer to renewed pogroms.

Not against Jews or Israelis, who enjoy the support and protection of western politicians, media and police. Rather those in most danger are the “new Jews”, the Middle Eastern populations those same politicians, media and police constantly vilify, insult, incite against and assault.

Western racism never went away. Europe’s ruling class just found a new target, and a new scapegoat.

The dark clouds from Amsterdam are gathering across Europe. Authoritarianism and fascism are once again in the ascendant. It is those trying to keep us tethered to reality who will be first in the firing line.

Jonathan Cook is a British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.

15 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By M K Bhadrakumar

The election victory of Donald Trump in the November 5 election is being perceived in the West Asian region with growing anxiety as presaging the US aligning one hundred percent with the Zionist project for Greater Israel.

Although Trump has kept out vociferous neocons from his government positions, the same cannot be said for pro-Zionist figures. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims he has spoken three times with Trump already since the election and they “see eye-to-eye regarding the Iranian threat and all of its components.”

The “components” implies that Netanyahu hopes to get a blank cheque from Trump to accelerate the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, for annexation of West Bank, violent reprisals against Palestinians and, most important, to carry the war right into Iranian territory.

Three events in as many days this week show the first signs of a backlash building up. On Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei gave Tehran’s first official reaction to Trump’s election victory. Baqaei took a nuanced line saying, “What matters to us in this region is the United States’ actual behaviour and policies regarding Iran and the broader West Asia.”

Notably, Baqaei expressed “cautious optimism that the new [Trump] administration might adopt a more peace-oriented approach, reduce regional hostilities, and uphold its commitments.” (Tehran Times) Baqaei also refuted the recent allegation by Washington that Iran was involved in plots to assassinate Trump. He called the Biden Administration’s allegation as “nothing more than an attempt to sabotage relations” between Tehran and Washington by “laying traps to complicate the path for the next administration.”

Baqaei also held out an assurance to the incoming US administration that Tehran firmly adheres to a nuclear programme for peaceful purposes. He announced that Rafael Grossi, head of International Atomic Energy (IAEA) was due to arrive in Tehran  on Wednesday night.

Taken together, Baqaei’s remarks suggest that Iran hopes there’s still daylight possible between Trump and Netanyahu. The clincher here would have been the remark that Trump slipped into his victory speech with great deliberation on November 6 that “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Trump was on record during his election campaign that “I don’t want to do damage to Iran but they cannot have nuclear weapons.” Tehran’s consultations with Grossi responds to Trump’s concern. This is smart thinking. Iran’s non-provocative stance would mean there is no alibi for attacking Iran.

That said, however, the “known unknown” still remains — namely, Iran’s retaliation to the Israeli attack on October 26. On November 2, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a video released by Iranian state media, promised “a crushing response” to Israeli attack. Conceivably, the period till January 20 when Trump is sworn in, is going to be critical.

Meanwhile, this week witnessed that Iran and Saudi Arabia have given verve to their detente, which is now manifesting as Riyadh’s solidarity and open support for Iran in its growing confrontation with Israel.

Amidst the growing tensions in the region, the chief of staff of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces, Fayyad al-Ruwaili, visited Tehran on November 10 and met with his Iranian counterpart General Mohammad Bagheri. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke on the phone with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the phone in the context of a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – Arab League in Riyadh on November 11-12. Iran has extended an invitation to MbS to visit Tehran!

Two hugely significant highlights of the Riyadh summit have been, first, the Saudi prince’s inaugural address where he warned Israel against hitting Iran. This marked a historic turn by Riyadh toward Tehran-Israeli conflict, and away from US-supported normalisation with Jerusalem.

MbS told the summit that the international community should oblige Israel “to respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands.”

Again, Saudi Arabia accused Israel for the first time of committing “genocide” in Gaza. MbS told the leaders who gathered in Riyadh, that the kingdom renewed “its condemnation and categorical rejection of the genocide committed by Israel against the brotherly Palestinian people…”

Trump has been put on notice that he’s meeting a radically different geopolitical landscape in West Asia compared to his first term as president. The Trump transition team is keeping its cards close, offering NatSec Daily a boilerplate statement that Trump will take “necessary action” to “lead our country” and “restore peace through strength.” But warning bells are ringing.

The key pillars of Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy against Tehran — isolating Iran and ramping up economic pressure while  maintaining a credible threat of military force as deterrent — have become wobbly.

On the other hand, the massive Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel on October 1 and the colossal failure of the Israeli air strike on Iran twenty-six days later convey a loud message all across West Asia that Israel is no longer the dominant military power it used to be — and there is a new sheriff in town. Trump will have to navigate the fallout of both sides of this issue with diminished US diplomatic and geopolitical capital at his disposal.

Meanwhile, Tehran is also deepening its cooperation with Russia, which adds a giant new Ukraine-sized complexity to Trump’s Iran policy. While in Eurasia, the US has allies, Trump is navigating in West Asia pretty much alone.

The US’ stark isolation comes home dramatically by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement on Wednesday that Turkey, a NATO member country, has severed all ties with Israel. Erdogan disclosed this to journalists aboard his plane after visiting Saudi Arabia. A regional trend to ostracise Israel is visible now and it is destined to expand and deepen.

The summit in Riyadh witnessed the African Union joining hands with the Arab League and OIC to sign a tripartite agreement on Tuesday to establish a mechanism to support the Palestinian cause, which will be coordinated through the three organisations’ secretariats as a game changer to strengthen their influence in international forums. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan noted that the three organisations will now onward speak with one voice internationally.

Even as the summit concluded in Riyadh, Crown Prince Salman had a call on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin readout stated that the two leaders “reaffirmed their commitment to continue the consistent expansion” of Russian-Saudi ties and specifically “stressed the importance of continuing close coordination within OPEC Plus and stated the effectiveness and timeliness of the steps being taken in this format to ensure balance on the global energy market.”

On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Kremlin readout noted with satisfaction that “the principled approaches of Russia and Saudi Arabia with regard to the Middle East settlement are essentially identical.”

MbS’ initiative to re-invigorate his conversation with Putin can only be seen against the backdrop of the profound misgivings in Riyadh regarding the Trump-Netanyahu bromance and the spectre of a possible regional war haunting the region stemming out of Israel drawing encouragement from the seamless US support expected through the coming 4-year period for the Zionist cause.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. He introduces about himself thus: “Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

15 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – In a new ‘flour massacre’, the Israeli occupation army has killed dozens of Palestinians who were gathering in the Sudanese roundabout area, northwest of Gaza City. The victims were waiting for the arrival of humanitarian aid after roughly 50 consecutive days of a complete denial of aid.

Israeli army forces opened fire on dozens of Palestinian civilians waiting for aid trucks on the sea road northwest of Gaza City on Wednesday 13 November at around 10:00 am. The Israeli forces killed and injured dozens of them when they attempted to seek refuge inside a nearby house, and then bombed the building, destroying it. Many more individuals are now missing and presumably trapped beneath the debris.

According to an eyewitness, the Israeli army targeted a group of civilians who had been enduring weeks of famine as a result of the occupation army blocking the entry of food and aid supplies into the Gaza City and North Gaza. When they went to get flour, the army opened fire on them with shells and bullets, forcing them to take cover in a two-storey residential house nearby. As soon as they reached the building, the Israeli army bombed it. Screams from those still inside the targeted house were heard, but the victims’ cries for help could not be answered, as the area was inaccessible to ambulance and civil defence personnel.

Initial reports indicate that there were around 200 people gathered in the area at the time of the attack, 70 of whom were killed and injured. Many more are still unaccounted for and likely stuck beneath the rubble, and no rescue efforts have been conducted as the Israeli army has effectively shut down Palestinian civil defense and ambulance services after threatening, confiscating, shelling, and burning fire trucks and ambulances in the northern Gaza Strip for 23 days now.

The international community must take immediate action to ensure that rescue and civil defense teams can safely work and transport victims to hospitals, since there may be survivors of yesterday’s attack.

After 41 days of Israel’s ground invasion of northern Gaza, the situation has descended into an unprecedented catastrophe, with the occupation army still bombing and destroying hundreds of homes, killing and injuring thousands, and forcing 10s of thousands to flee the area.

The ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which uses starvation as one of its main tools of implementation, must be stopped. Additionally, efforts must be made to quickly and efficiently bring in life-saving supplies via land routes and crossings to the entire Gaza Strip, particularly Gaza City and the northern part of the Strip. This will allow municipal crews to repair and restore water, sanitation, and health services, as well as provide safe and sufficient food for the entire population, including baby formula, which is nearly nonexistent in the northern Strip. The restoration of local production systems and the entry of commercial goods must also be allowed. The international community is both legally and morally obligated to take swift action to preserve the lives of the Gaza Strip’s roughly 2.3 million residents.

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

15 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Human Rights Watch

• Israeli authorities have caused massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times. Rather than ensuring civilians’ security, military “evacuation orders” have caused grave harm.
• Governments should adopt targeted sanctions and other measures, and halt weapons sales to Israel. The International Criminal Court prosecutor should investigate Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of the right to return as a crime against humanity.

(Jerusalem) – Israeli authorities have caused the massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report is being published at the time of an ongoing Israeli military campaign in northern Gaza that has most likely created a new wave of forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months. Israeli forces have carried out deliberate, controlled demolitions of homes and civilian infrastructure, including in areas where they have apparent aims of creating “buffer zones” and security “corridors,” from which Palestinians are likely to be permanently displaced. Contrary to claims by Israeli officials, their actions do not comply with the laws of war.

“The Israeli government cannot claim to be keeping Palestinians safe when it kills them along escape routes, bombs so-called safe zones, and cuts off food, water, and sanitation,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Israel has blatantly violated its obligation to ensure Palestinians can return home, razing virtually everything in large areas.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 39 displaced Palestinians in Gaza, analyzed Israel’s evacuation system, including 184 evacuation orders and satellite imagery confirming the widespread destruction, and verified videos and photographs of attacks on designated safe zones and evacuation routes.

The laws of armed conflict applicable in occupied territory permit displacement of civilians only exceptionally, for imperative military reasons or for the population’s security, and require safeguards and proper accommodation to receive displaced civilians. Israeli officials claim that, because Palestinian armed groups are fighting from among the civilian population, the military has lawfully evacuated civilians to attack the groups while limiting civilian harm. Human Rights Watch research shows this claim to be largely false.

There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, Human Rights Watch found. Israel’s evacuation system has severely harmed the population and often served only to spread fear and anxiety. Rather than ensure security for displaced civilians, Israeli forces have repeatedly struck designated evacuation routes and safe zones.

Evacuation orders have been inconsistent, inaccurate, and frequently not communicated to civilians with enough time to allow evacuations, or at all. The orders did not consider the needs of people with disabilities and others who are unable to leave without assistance.

As the occupying power, Israel is obliged to ensure adequate facilities to accommodate displaced civilians, but the authorities have blocked all but a small fraction of the necessary humanitarian aid, water, electricity, and fuel from reaching civilians in need in Gaza. Israeli attacks have damaged and destroyed resources that people need to stay alive, including hospitals, schools, water and energy infrastructure, bakeries, and agricultural land.

Israel is also obliged to ensure the return of displaced people to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area have ceased. Instead, it has left swathes of Gaza uninhabitable. Israel’s military has intentionally demolished or severely damaged civilian infrastructure, including controlled demolitions of homes, with the apparent aim of creating an extended “buffer zone” along Gaza’s perimeter with Israel and a corridor which will bifurcate Gaza. The destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people.

Israel should respect the right of Palestinian civilians to return to the areas in Gaza from which it has displaced them. For almost eight decades, Israeli authorities have denied the right to return of the 80 percent of Gaza’s population who are refugees and their descendants who were expelled or fled in 1948 from what is now Israel, in what Palestinians call the “Nakba,” or the catastrophe. This ongoing violation looms over the experience of Palestinians in Gaza, with many of those interviewed speaking of living through a second Nakba.

From the first days of the hostilities, senior officials in the Israeli government and the war cabinet have declared their intent to displace the Palestinian population of Gaza, with government ministers stating that its territory will decrease, that blowing up and flattening Gaza is “beautiful,” and that land will be handed to settlers. In November 2023, Israeli Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Avi Dichter said, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”

Human Rights Watch found that forced displacement has been widespread, and the evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy. Such acts also constitute crimes against humanity.

The Israeli authorities’ organized, violent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, who are members of another ethnic group, is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors. Such actions of the Israeli authorities amount to ethnic cleansing.

Victims of serious abuses in Israel and Palestine have faced a wall of impunity for decades. Palestinians in Gaza have been living under an unlawful blockade for 17 years, which constitutes part of the continuous crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities have been committing against Palestinians.

Governments should publicly condemn Israel’s forced displacement of the civilian population in Gaza as a war crime and crime against humanity, and pressure it to immediately halt those crimes and comply with the International Court of Justice’s multiple binding orders and with the obligations laid out in its July advisory opinion.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor should investigate Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of the right to return as a crime against humanity. Governments should also publicly condemn efforts to intimidate or interfere with the court’s work, officials, and those cooperating with the institution.

Governments should adopt targeted sanctions and other measures, including reviewing their bilateral agreements with Israel, to press the Israeli government to comply with its international obligations to protect civilians.

The United States, Germany, and other countries should immediately suspend weapons transfers and military assistance to Israel. Continuing to provide arms to Israel risks complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other grave human rights violations.

“No one can be in denial about the atrocity crimes the Israeli military is committing against Palestinians in Gaza,” Hardman said. “Transfer of additional weapons and assistance to Israel by the United States, Germany, and others is a blank check for further atrocities and increasingly puts them at risk of complicity.”

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

The US State Department determined Tuesday that Israel is not violating international human rights law by withholding food to Gaza, effectively endorsing Israel’s policy of deliberately seeking to exterminate the population of Gaza through starvation.

Multiple US laws, including Section 502B and 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act and the “Leahy Law,” prohibit the government from arming militaries that the State Department deems to be committing “gross violations of human rights.” A National Security Memorandum, dubbed NSM-20, issued by the Biden administration declared that “the United States must maintain an appropriate understanding of foreign partners’ adherence to international law.”

On October 13, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a letter to the Israeli government warning that unless Israel massively increased the provision of food to Gaza, “these measures may have implications for US policy under NSM-20,” implying that Israel was in danger of being deemed as having violated human rights law and would not receive further military aid.

The letter demanded that Israel enable “a minimum of 350 trucks per day to enter Gaza.” As of Tuesday, only 400 trucks had entered the territory for the entire month, meaning that the amount of food allowed into Gaza is just one-tenth of that officially demanded by the US.

[https://twitter.com/Andre__Damon/status/1856419693835231481]

Pressed by reporters, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel declared, “We have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law” and by implication international law.

Under conditions in which Israeli officials have made clear that they are implementing a deliberate policy of starvation as a method of war and collective punishment, this assessment constitutes an open embrace by the US government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mass starvation policy.

The letter by Blinken and Austin was intended as a diplomatic smokescreen, aimed at obscuring the fact that the United States had in fact endorsed Israel’s policy of deliberate starvation of the population of Gaza. But in issuing their ultimatum, the US officials created the circumstances for what happened today: the explicit and public endorsement by the US government of mass starvation as a weapon of war.

On October 12, CNN reported that the Netanyahu government had adopted a “version of” the so-called “Generals’ Plan” proposed by retired IDF General Giora Eiland, which calls for completely cutting off all food to northern Gaza and treating all civilians there as enemy combatants, subject to killing by Israeli forces. CNN reported:

A former senior military official who is aware of the Israeli government and security leadership’s thinking—though not directly involved in decision-making—told CNN that the cabinet had adopted “a version of” Eiland’s proposal, which has come to be known as “The Generals’ Plan.” Eiland told CNN the claim was “quite true.”

On November 5, IDF Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told reporters that the IDF would not allow food to enter northern Gaza because there are “no more civilians left.”

In reality, between 50,000 and 75,000 people are estimated to remain in northern Gaza, according to the United Nations. These civilians, officially designated enemy combatants by the Israeli government, are being subjected to deliberate and explicit starvation and mass killing.

The declaration by the State Department that Israel is not committing human rights violations by its deliberate mass starvation policy in fact makes official the contents of a private discussion between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Netanyahu on October 22.

The Washington Post reported:

US officials told Netanyahu there is a “perception” that Israel is pursuing a strategy of “isolating the north, telling people that if they don’t leave they’re effectively targets and denying food to go in,” said the official.

In response to this blunt declaration, Blinken issued a communique declaring the United States’ blanket support for Israel: “The Secretary reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security” and pledged to continue “ongoing efforts by the United States and its partners” to support Israel.

As a result of Israel’s mass starvation policy, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic. According to the US’s self-imposed deadline to assess Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law, a group of international human rights organizations issued a statement declaring:

That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago. The principals of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee now assess that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” The findings of this scorecard underscore Israel’s failure to comply with US demands and international obligations. Israel should be held accountable for the end result of failing to ensure the adequate provision of food, medical, and other supplies to reach people in need.

This deliberate policy of mass starvation is accompanied by continuous Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. In its latest update, the UN Human Rights Office reported:

Between the afternoons of 5 and 12 November, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 274 Palestinians were killed and 729 were injured. Between 7 October 2023 and 12 November 2024, at least 43,665 Palestinians were killed and 103,076 were injured.

The open embrace by the Biden administration of Israel’s mass starvation policy has far-reaching implications. The world’s leading self-proclaimed “democracies” are openly embracing the deliberate starvation of civilian populations as a method of war, setting a precedent not only for the waging of future wars, but also for domestic repression against internal political opposition among broad sections of their own populations.

13 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

If you go to the bluff at Kings Park in Perth, Australia, you can overlook the Swan River and enjoy a remarkable view. Across the bay, there is a phalanx of steel and glass buildings that rise to the skies. Each of these buildings carries a sign that glistens in the sharp sun: BHP, Rio Tinto, Chevron, Deloitte, and others. Kings Park no longer survives merely with the patronage of the British King, who continues to claim sovereignty over Australia. Part of it is now named Rio Tinto Kings Park, needing the corporate profits from this enormous mining company to sustain its charms. Down one of the avenues of the park there are trees set apart by a few meters, and at the base of these trees are small markers for dead soldiers from past wars; these are not graves but remembrances that are crowned by Australian flags. The park brings together the three crucial pieces of Western Australia, this province of which Perth is the capital which is the size of Western Europe: the British monarchy, the mining companies and its affiliates, and the role of the military.

Of Kings

A few days before I arrived in Canberra, an aboriginal senator, Lidia Thorpe, interrupted the celebration of King Charles III to say, “You are not my king. This is not your land.” It was a powerful demonstration against the treatment of Australia ever since the arrival of English ships to the country’s east in January 1788. In fact, the British crown does claim title to the entirety of the Australian landmass. King Charles III is head of the 56-country Commonwealth and the total land area of the Commonwealth takes up 21 percent of the world’s total land. It is quite remarkable to realize that King Charles III is nominally in charge of merely 22 percent less than Queen Victoria (1819-1901).

The day after Senator Thorpe’s statement, a group of aboriginal leaders met with King Charles III to discuss the theme of “sovereignty.” In Sydney, Elder Allan Murray of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council welcomed the King to Gadigal land and said, “We’ve got stories to tell, and I think you witnessed that story yesterday in Canberra. But the story is unwavering, and we’ve got a long way to achieve what we want to achieve and that’s our own sovereignty.” When Captain James Cook (1770) and Captain Arthur Phillip (1788) arrived on this Gadigal land, they were met by people who had lived in the area for tens of thousands of years. In 1789, a smallpox epidemic brought by the British killed 53 percent of the Gadigal, and eventually—through violence—they reduced the population to three in 1791. It is accurate, then, for Elder Murray to have said to the press after King Charles III left that “The Union Jack was put on our land without our consent. We’ve been ignored.” What remained were barrangal dyara (skin and bones, as the Gadigal would have said). Given the value of the land in Sydney, the Gadigal clan would today be one of the richest groups in the world. But apart from a few descendants who do not have title to the land, the ghosts of the ancestors walk these streets.

Of Minerals

Australia is one of the widest countries in the world, with a large desert in its middle section. Underneath its soil, which has been walked on by a range of Aboriginal communities for tens of thousands of years, is wealth that is estimated to be $19.9 trillion. This estimate includes the country’s holdings of coal, copper, iron ore, gold, uranium, and rare earth elements. In 2022, Australia’s mining companies—which are also some of the largest in the world—extracted at least 27 minerals from the subsoil, including lithium (Australia is the world’s largest producer of lithium, annually providing 52 percent of the global market’s lithium).

On May 24, 2020, Rio Tinto’s engineers and workers blew up a cave in the Pilbara area of Western Australia to expand their Brockman 4 iron ore mine. The cave in the Juukan Gorge had been used by the Puutu Kunti Kurrama people for 46,000 years and had been kept by them as a community treasure. In 2013, Rio Tinto approached the Western Australian government to seek an exemption to destroy the cave and to extend the mine. They received this exemption based on a law called the Aboriginal Heritage Act of 1972, which had been drafted to favor mining companies. Rio Tinto, with substantial operations in Western Australia and around the world, has a market capitalization of $105.7 billion, making it—after BHP (market cap of $135.5)—the second largest minerals company in the world (both Rio Tinto and BHP are headquartered in Melbourne). Hastily, BHP began to reconsider its permission to destroy 40 cultural sites for its South Flank iron mine extension in the Pilbara region (and after its investigation and conversation with the Banjima community) decided to save 10 sites.

Craig and Monique Oobagooma live in the northernmost homestead in Australia near the Robinson River. They are part of the Wanjina Wunggurr, whose lands are now used for the extraction of uranium and other metals and minerals. The uranium mines in the north are owned and operated by Paladin Energy, another Perth-based mining company that also owns mines in Malawi and Namibia. There is also a large military base in nearby Yampi. Craig told me that when he walks his land, he can dig beneath the soil and find pink diamonds. But, he says, he puts them back. “They are sacred stones,” he says. Some parts of the land can be used for the betterment of his family, but not all of it. Not the sacred stones. And not the ancestral sites, of which there are only a few that remain.

Of Militaries

In 2023, the governments of Australia and the United Kingdom signed an agreement to preserve “critical minerals” for their own development and security. Such an agreement is part of the New Cold War against China, to ensure that it does not directly own the “critical minerals.” Between 2022 and 2023, Chinese investment in mining decreased from AU$1809 million to AU$34 million. Meanwhile, Australian investment in building military infrastructure for the United States has increased dramatically, with the Australian government expanding the Tindal air base in Darwin (Northern Territory) to hold U.S. B-1 and B-52 nuclear bombers, expanding the submarine docking stations along the coastline of Western Australia, and expanding the Exmouth submarine and deep space communications facility. All of this is part of Australia’s historically high defense budget of $37 billion.

In Sydney, near the Central Train station, I met Euranga, who lived in a tunnel which he had painted with the history of the Aboriginal peoples of Eora (Sydney). He had been part of the Stolen Generation, one in three Aboriginal children stolen from their families and raised in boarding schools. The school hurt his spirit, he told me. “This is our land, but it is also not our land,” he said. Beneath the land is wealth, but it is being drained away by private mining companies and for the purposes of military force. The old train station nearby looks forlorn. There is no high-speed rail in vast Australia. Such a better way to spend its precious resources, as Euranga indicated in his paintings: embrace the worlds of the Aboriginal communities who have been so harshly displaced and build infrastructure for people rather than for wars.

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

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Arab and Muslim American voters did not remove Democrats from office, nor did they cost Kamala Harris the Oval Office. They merely sent a strong message that Palestine matters, not only to Arabs and Muslims but to many Americans as well.

The ones who cost the Democrats the elections are the Democrats themselves. Their humiliating defeat on November 5 was due largely to their undeniable role in the Israeli war and genocide in Gaza.

Peter Beinart put it best in his November 7 op-ed in the New York Times, entitled “Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party.”

“Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by U.S. taxpayers and live-streamed on social media,” according to Beinart, has “triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation”. The writer correctly indicates that the core of this activism was “Black Americans and the young”.

Undeniably, for the first time in US election history, Palestine has become a domestic American political issue – a nightmare realization for those who labored to maintain US foreign policy in the Middle East as an exclusive Israeli domain.

Aside from Arab voters, black voters and voters from other minority groups who prioritized Palestine, many white Americans felt the same way. This claim is particularly important as it suggests that American voters are challenging the identity politics paradigm, and are now thinking around common struggles, values and morality.

“Democrats may no longer be able to rely on young voters to boost numbers, as Harris appears on track to have the lowest support among voters aged 18-29 in this century,” a report in the British Independent newspaper noted. Knowing the relatively strong support for Palestine among young Americans, US politicians have much to worry about in coming elections.

We already know that support for Palestine is overwhelmingly strong among young Democrats. A poll conducted by Gallup in March 2023 indicated that, for the first time, Democrats’ “sympathies .. now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49% versus 38%.”

Even more astonishing, the overall US Democratic constituency is more pro-Palestine than Israel. According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center last April, the overall young American population “are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinian people than the Israeli people.” While a third of adults under 30 sympathized “entirely or mostly” with Palestinians, only 14% sympathized with the Israelis.

These numbers did not seem to matter to the Democrats who continued to take for granted the votes of youth and other minority groups. They made a grave mistake.

The Biden Administration has played a central role in funding and sustaining the Israeli war machine, thus facilitating the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Millions of Americans took notice and acted upon their sense of collective rage to punish the Democrats for what they had done to the Palestinian people.

According to a report prepared for Brown University’s Costs of War project, the Biden Administration has granted Israel a record of at least $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel in the first year of the war. Additionally, according to a report published on October 4 by the non-profit investigative newspaper ProPublica, “the US has shipped more than 50,000 tons of weaponry” to Israel since October 7, 2023.

Merely hours after the US presidential election results were announced, the Israeli Ministry of Defense signed a deal “to acquire 25 F-15IA combat jets from U.S. manufacturer Boeing for $5.2 billion, with an option to get 25 more,” according to Defense News. In other words, Biden remains unrepentant.

Biden, Harris and others may twist the logic to justify their support for Israel in any way they wish. However, there can be no denying that their administration has played a leading role in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. For this, they were duly and deservedly penalized by American voters.

The understandable euphoria among many of Palestine’s supporters in the US notwithstanding, we must not harbor any illusions. Neither President-elect Donald Trump nor his entourage of right-wing politicians will be the saviors of Palestine.

We must recall that it was Trump’s first term in office that paved the road to the complete marginalization of the Palestinians. He did so by granting Israel sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem, recognizing the illegal settlements as legitimate, waging financial warfare against Palestinians, and attempting to destroy the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, among other actions.

If Trump returns to his old destructive policies in Palestine, another war will certainly start.

This means that the pro-Palestine camp, which has managed to convert solidarity into decisive political action, must not wait for the new US administration to adopt a more sensible political line on Palestine. Judging by the history of Republican support for Israel, no such sensibility should be expected.

Thus, it is time to build on the existing solidarity among all American groups that voted against genocide in the latest elections. This is the perfect opportunity to translate votes into sustained action and pressure so that all aspects of the US government may hear and heed the deafening chants of ‘ceasefire now’, and ‘free, free Palestine.’

This time around, however, these chants are backed by solid evidence that American voters are capable of destabilizing the entire political paradigm, as they did on November 5, 2024.

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

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

When Donald Trump takes office on January 20th, all his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and almost as quickly end Israel’s war on its neighbors will be put to the test. The choices he has made for his incoming administration so far, from Marco Rubio as Secretary of State to Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor,  Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador make for a rogues gallery of saber-rattlers.

The only conflict where peace negotiations seem to be on the agenda is Ukraine. In April, both Vice President-elect JD Vance and Senator Marco Rubio voted against a $95 billion military aid bill that included $61 billion for Ukraine.

Rubio recently appeared on NBC’s Today Show saying, “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong when standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we’re funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion… I think there has to be some common sense here.”

On the campaign trail, Vance made a controversial suggestion that the best way to end the war was for Ukraine to cede the land Russia has seized, for a demilitarized zone to be established, and for Ukraine to become neutral, i.e. not enter NATO. He was roundly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats who argue that backing Ukraine is vitally important to U.S. security since it weakens Russia, which is closely allied with China.

Any attempt by Trump to stop U.S. military support for Ukraine will undoubtedly face fierce opposition from the pro-war forces in his own party, particularly in Congress, as well as perhaps the entirety of the Democratic party. Two years ago, 30 progressive Democrats in Congress wrote a letter to President Biden asking him to consider promoting negotiations. The party higher ups were so incensed by their lack of party discipline that they came down on the progressives like a ton of bricks. Within 24 hours, the group had cried uncle and rescinded the letter. They have since all voted for money for Ukraine and have not uttered another word about negotiations.

So a Trump effort to cut funds to Ukraine could run up against a bipartisan congressional effort to keep the war going. And let’s not forget the efforts by European countries, and NATO, to keep the U.S. in the fight. Still, Trump could stand up to all these forces and push for a rational policy that would restart the talking and stop the killing.

The Middle East, however, is a more difficult situation. In his first term, Trump showed his pro-Israel cards when he brokered the Abraham accords between several Arab countries and Israel; moved the U.S. embassy to a location in Jerusalem that is partly on occupied land outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders; and recognized the occupied Golan Heights in Syria as part of Israel. Such unprecedented signals of unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s illegal occupation and settlements helped set the stage for the current crisis.

Trump seems as unlikely as Biden to cut U.S. weapons to Israel, despite public opinion polls favoring such a halt and a recent UN human rights report showing that 70% of the people killed by those U.S. weapons are women and children.

Meanwhile, the wily Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is already busy getting ready for a second Trump presidency. On the very day of the U.S. election, Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who opposed a lasting Israeli military occupation of Gaza and had at times argued for prioritizing the lives of the Israeli hostages over killing more Palestinians.

Israel Katz, the new defense minister and former foreign minister, is more hawkish than Gallant, and has led a campaign to falsely blame Iran for the smuggling of weapons from Jordan into the West Bank.

Other powerful voices, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a “minister in the Defense Ministry,” represent extreme Zionist parties that are publicly committed to territorial expansion, annexation and ethnic cleansing. They both live in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

So Netanyahu has deliberately surrounded himself with allies who back his ever-escalating war. They are surely developing a war plan to exploit Trump’s support for Israel, but will first use the unique opportunity of the U.S. transition of power to create facts on the ground that will limit Trump’s options when he takes office.

The Israelis will doubtless redouble their efforts to drive Palestinians out of as much of Gaza as possible, confronting President Trump with a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in which Gaza’s surviving population is crammed into an impossibly small area, with next to no food, no shelter for many, disease running rampant, and no access to needed medical care for tens of thousands of horribly wounded and dying people.

The Israelis will count on Trump to accept whatever final solution they propose, most likely to drive Palestinians out of Gaza, into the West Bank, Jordan, Egypt and farther afield.

Israel threatened all along to do to Lebanon the same as they have done to Gaza. Israeli forces have met fierce resistance, taken heavy casualties, and have not advanced far into Lebanon. But, as in Gaza, they are using bombing and artillery to destroy villages and towns, kill or drive people north and hope to effectively annex the part of Lebanon south of the Litani river as a so-called “buffer zone.” When Trump takes office, they may ask for greater U.S. involvement to help them “finish the job.”

The big wild card is Iran. Trump’s first term in office was marked by a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. He unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal, imposed severe sanctions that devastated the economy, and ordered the killing of the country’s top general. Trump did not support a war on Iran in his first term, but had to be talked out of attacking Iran in his final days in office by General Mark Milley and the Pentagon.

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, recently described to Chris Hedges just how catastrophic a war with Iran would be, based on U.S.military wargames he was involved in.

Wilkerson predicts that a U.S. war on Iran could last for ten years, cost $10 trillion and still fail to conquer Iran. Airstrikes alone would not destroy all of Iran’s civilian nuclear program and ballistic missile stockpiles. So, once unleashed, the war would very likely escalate into a regime change war involving U.S. ground forces, in a country with three or four times the territory and population of Iraq, more mountainous terrain and a thousand mile long coastline bristling with missiles that can sink U.S. warships.

But Netanyahu and his extreme Zionist allies believe that they must sooner or later fight an existential war with Iran if they are to realize their vision of a dominant Greater Israel. And they believe that the destruction they have wreaked on the Palestinians in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the assassination of their senior leaders, has given them a military advantage and a favorable opportunity for a showdown with Iran.

By November 10, Trump and Netanyahu had reportedly spoken on the phone three times since the election, and Netanyahu said that they see “eye to eye on the Iranian threat.” Trump has already hired Iran hawk Brian Hook, who helped him sabotage the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018, to coordinate the formation of his foreign policy team.

So far, the team that Trump and Hook have assembled seems to offer hope for peace in Ukraine, but little to none for peace in the Middle East and a rising danger of a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Trump’s expected National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is best known as a China hawk. He has voted against military aid to Ukraine in Congress, but he recently tweeted that Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear and oil facilities, the most certain path to a full-scale war.

Trump’s new UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, has led moves in Congress to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, and she led the aggressive questioning of American university presidents at an anti-semitism hearing in Congress, after which the presidents of Harvard and Penn resigned.

So, while Trump will have some advisors who support his desire to end the war in Ukraine, there will be few voices in his inner circle urging caution over Netanyahu’s genocidal ambitions in Palestine and his determination to cripple Iran.

If he wanted to, President Biden could use his final two months in office to de-escalate the conflicts in the Middle East. He could impose an embargo on offensive weapons for Israel, push for serious ceasefire negotiations in both Gaza and Lebanon, and work through U.S. partners in the Gulf to de-escalate tensions with Iran.

But Biden is unlikely to do any of that. When his own administration sent a letter to Israel last month, threatening a cut in military aid if Israel did not allow a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza in the next 30 days, Israel responded by doing just the opposite–actually cutting the number of trucks allowed in. The State Department claimed Israel was taking “steps in the right direction” and Biden refused to take any action.

We will soon see if Trump is able to make progress in moving the Ukraine war towards negotiations, potentially saving the lives of many thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. But between the catastrophe that Trump will inherit and the Warhawks he is picking for his cabinet, peace in the Middle East seems more distant than ever.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, with an updated edition due in February 2025.

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jordan Shilton

Israel carried out four major air strikes on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut yesterday, as well as a series of strikes on bridges and other infrastructure on the Lebanon-Syria border. Coming as the Zionist regime continues to starve Gaza and the US military once again struck targets in Yemen, the attacks show that there is no let-up in the drive by Washington’s attack dog to redraw the map of the Middle East.

The four strikes targeted the suburbs of Haret Hreik and Burj al-Barajneh. The strikes flattened six residential buildings, but no official casualty figures were initially reported. After at least 78 people were killed in Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raids on Tuesday, the official death toll in Lebanon since October 8 stands at 3,365, with 14,344 wounded.

Defence Minister Israel Katz, who replaced Yoav Gallant after his firing by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, vowed to continue to escalate the conflict in Lebanon. In a visit to the IDF’s Northern Command, Katz declared, “We will not make any ceasefire, we will not take our foot off the gas, and we will not allow any arrangement that does not include the achievement of the war’s goals.”

These include the disarming of Hezbollah, the pushing of its forces north of the Litani River, and the return of residents to towns and villages on Israel’s northern border, he added. The Defence Minister asserted that Israel would retain “the right to enforce” any ceasefire deal, i.e., the “right” to launch attacks inside Lebanon at will after a ceasefire is concluded.

On the ground, the IDF reported six casualties following a gun battle with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The clash reportedly occurred as Israeli forces sought to advance to the second line of villages inside the border.

Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the air strikes near the border caused “significant damage” to infrastructure. According to the IDF, the attacks were aimed at smuggling routes used by Iran to transfer weaponry to Hezbollah. They come less than three weeks after Israel’s air strikes on Iran on October 26, which targeted military sites and were described by the World Socialist Web Site as a “dress rehearsal” for a region-wide war.

US Central Command also announced Wednesday that it struck numerous sites in Yemen on Saturday and Sunday, reportedly destroying weapons supplied to the Houthis by Iran.

American imperialism has backed Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and subsequent war on Lebanon to the hilt, seeing them as components of its preparations for a region-wide war targeting Iran. Washington is pursuing the goal of consolidating its hegemony over the oil-rich region as part of a renewed redivision of the world, which encompasses the war on Russia in Ukraine and advanced preparations for war with China in the Asia-Pacific.

If Katz’s pledge to intensify the war in Lebanon is fulfilled, the likelihood that the conflict will spread throughout the energy-rich region will become ever greater. President-elect Donald Trump, who drastically escalated tensions with Tehran during his first term in office by abrogating the nuclear accord with Iran, has nominated Marco Rubio, a vocal anti-Iran hawk, as his secretary of state. At a campaign rally last month, Trump urged Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear sites at a time when the bourgeois-clerical regime in Tehran was warning that such a decision would lead to all-out war. In the end, Netanyahu chose the more limited, but nonetheless provocative, attack on October 26 that struck military sites.

Mike Huckabee, a staunch defender of the Zionist state’s expansionist plans, is set to be Trump’s ambassador to Israel. The second Trump administration is expected to give Netanyahu a free hand to expand settlements in the West Bank and intensify the genocide in Gaza. As Huckabee put it in 2017, “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”

Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza Wednesday, where 26 people were reported killed in a series of strikes throughout the day. One targeted the al-Mawasi district in the southwest, an ostensible “safe zone” where many displaced people are sheltering. Another strike on the Maghazi refugee camp killed five.

The UN’s World Food Programme noted on X that markets across the enclave are “in decay,” adding that basic staples “barely exist.” It stated, “Fresh foods, eggs and meat barely exist and the prices of any food available have reached record highs.” The UN’s aid coordination office OCHA added that all attempts to gain Israeli approval for the delivery of supplies to northern Gaza since the beginning of November have been rebuffed.

In early October, Netanyahu’s far-right regime adopted what is known as the “Generals’ Plan,” which calls for the denial of all food aid to northern Gaza and the treating of all civilians who remain as enemy combatants.

On Tuesday, the Biden administration defended Israel against criticism from aid organisations pointing to the abysmally low level of deliveries entering the enclave. Even though the Zionist regime is allowing just one-tenth of the 350 aid trucks into Gaza per day called for by the Biden administration last month, the State Department asserted Tuesday that Israel was not violating international humanitarian law by withholding food aid, and refused to place any restrictions on Washington’s massive weapons deliveries.

The UN Security Council held a briefing the same day on the threat of famine in northern Gaza. It was requested by Guyana and Switzerland following a November 8 alert from the Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC) stating that there is “a strong likelihood that famine is imminent within areas of the northern Gaza Strip.” An earlier October 17 snapshot from the agency revealed that the entirety of Gaza is at risk of famine between November and April 2025 “under a worst-case scenario that has a reasonable chance of occurring.”

“We are witnessing acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes,” Joyce Msuya, interim head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Tuesday’s Security Council meeting. She described Israel’s ongoing siege of northern Gaza as “an intensified, extreme, and accelerated version of the horrors of the past year.”

Head of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Rein Paulsen told the Security Council that the number of people facing “catastrophic food insecurity,” the highest classification on the IPC’s food insecurity scale, would treble from the current level of 133,000 in the coming months. “Men, women, boys and girls are effectively starving as the conflict rages, with humanitarian organizations blocked from delivering assistance to those in need,” Paulsen continued. “By the time famine has been declared, people are already dying of hunger, with irreversible consequences that can last generations.”

An FAO release on the briefing noted that local food production has “collapsed”: “nearly 70 percent of croplands—which contributed up to one-third of daily consumption—have been destroyed; over 70 percent of olive trees and orchards have been burned to the ground; agricultural infrastructure has been decimated; and 95 percent of cattle and more than half of sheep and goat herds, have died.”

None of these horrors move the imperialist barbarians represented in the Security Council. They are dead set on continuing with their support for Israel’s genocide and vicious attacks on anyone who protests it at home. The only social force capable of putting an end to this savagery is the international working class, mobilised on the basis of a socialist and internationalist programme for the abolition of capitalism, the root cause of genocide and imperialist war.

14 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org