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By Joseph Camilleri

Over the last fifteen months the world has watched in disbelief Israel’s horrifying military assault on the people of Gaza and its escalating use of force in the West Bank, Lebanon, and now Syria.

The inescapable question is: how do we explain this descent into barbarism? To begin to answer it, we must first put together several key pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, dreary and distasteful though the exercise may be.

The mounting human toll is indescribable. The latest figures released by the Health Ministry in Gaza indicate at least 45,129 people killed (including 17,492 children) and 107,338 wounded. Many thousands more are believed buried under the rubble.

UNRWA reports some 1.9 million displaced out of a population of 2.2 million, with some 380,000 displaced people currently sheltering in over 100 UNRWA school buildings across the Gaza strip. Shelter, however, remains illusory, as schools, hospitals and refugee camps come under relentless fire. And now we see the rising prospect of death through starvation and disease.

According to a report just published by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) “the signs of ethnic cleansing and the ongoing devastation – including mass killings, severe physical and mental health injuries, forced displacement, and impossible conditions of life for Palestinians under siege and bombardment – are undeniable.” All of which leads MSF to conclude that “genocide is taking place in Gaza.”

Nor has the West Bank been spared Israel’s unrelenting use of force. Between January 2023 and November 2024, Israeli attacks have resulted in close to 1,000 Palestinian fatalities and 16,000 injuries.

Following the escalation of hostilities with Hezbollah in September, Lebanon has been subjected to intensive bombardment and land incursions. As of early December, the death toll reached 4,000 Lebanese, with those injured numbering well over 16,600. With this has come mass displacement, destruction of entire villages, farmland and livestock and disruption of essential services, including healthcare facilities, water systems, and schools.

The fall of the Assad regime has provided the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with the opportunity to launch hundreds of military strikes aimed at Syria’s strategic military assets. In violation of existing agreements, Israeli forces have moved into the demilitarized buffer zone between the Israel-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria, occupying several villages.

It is, however, the exchange of fire with Iran that has brought the present conflict to new heights. On April 1, 2024, the IDF struck an Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing an Iranian commander and his deputy. Two weeks later, Iran retaliated by launching 300 missiles and drones towards Israel, many of which, but by no means all, were foiled by a US-led regional coalition.

Military hostilities continued with an explosion in Tehran which killed visiting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyyah. Weeks later Israel launched an air offensive into Lebanon killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Iran responded by firing some 180 ballistic missiles towards Israel. Then came a series of precise and targeted Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s air defence batteries and radar, missile and drone factories, and military launching sites.

How is this mayhem to be explained? What is it that has driven the State of Israel to unleash such a catastrophic use of firepower?

The official explanation offered by the Israeli political-military establishment is simple enough. Israel is exercising its right to defend itself in the wake of the Hamas attack on 7 October.

The actions of Hamas that led to the deaths of many Israelis and the taking of over 200 hostages were abominable, and those responsible had to be brought to account. But the events of 7 October offer no justification and certainly no explanation for what has ensued.

Why is it that Israel’s response has been so brutal, so lacking in humanity, seemingly incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets? Why has it lasted so long, spread far beyond the Palestinian territories to engulf Lebanon, Syria, and even Yemen and Iraq?

Another explanation on offer is that the Netanyahu government, dependent as it is on a precarious coalition that includes extremist elements with strong fascist tendencies, has been consumed by a lust for blood, a desire to wipe out the Palestinian adversary once and for all, and so bring the Zionist project to its final and irreversible conclusion.

There is something to be said for this explanation. Zionism was born historically as a reaction to the longstanding oppression and persecution endured by Jewish minorities in Europe. In this sense, Christian antisemitism has much to answer for.

But once it was given the all-clear by the imperial power, Britain, the Zionist project soon assumed a profile which, notwithstanding subtle variations over time, is best characterised as settler colonialism.

A report published by Amnesty International in February 2022 sets out how the State of Israel has over several decades built an Apartheid system of oppression and domination involving massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians.

Perhaps, the Hamas attack generated a fear that this system of oppression was now under serious threat. Alternatively, the governing elite may have concluded that this was a never to be repeated opportunity not just to eliminate the Hamas virus once and for all, but to extinguish any prospect of Palestinian self-determination and the creation of a Palestinian state.

The historical context no doubt offers useful insights, but of itself is not an adequate or comprehensive explanation. There is a missing link, and that link is Iran.

The Israeli establishment has developed an obsessive fear of Iran, precisely because of its perceived capacity to support in military, political and other ways the many groups that are deeply hostile to the Zionist project, not least Hamas and Hezbollah.

It was therefore critically important to counter the Iranian threat, first by administering a crippling blow on Hamas and Hezbollah, which explains the savage forays into Gaza and Lebanon, but also on Syria’s military assets, given its longstanding connection with Iran. Much the same can be said for Israel’s hostility to Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.

This said, Israel would not have been able to move as ferociously as it has without US support, which it has had in full measure throughout.

Why has the United States refused to apply any meaningful brakes on Israel’s military fury? Why has it continued to provide vital economic support and military protection, in the face of war crimes and plausibly the crime of genocide?

Because successive US administrations have regarded Israel as an irreplaceable asset in their determined effort to maintain geopolitical dominance in the Middle East, a region they consider to be of paramount economic and strategic importance. Iran stands as the principal threat to that objective, especially as it develops closer links with Russia, China and other members of the rapidly expanding BRICS bloc.

Here then was an unparallelled opportunity to use Israel as the proxy that would deliver the coup de grâce to Iran’s geopolitical ambitions and to the effectiveness of the axis of resistance.

At face value, it would appear that the imperial power and its sub-imperial protégé have triumphed. But not all is at it seems. In the course of the last fifteen months Israel has become a pariah state.

UN General Assembly resolutions, driven by an increasingly assertive Global South, have sharpened their denunciation of Israel’s conduct and by ever larger majorities. The UN Secretary-General and every relevant UN agency have condemned with unusual vigour Israel’s flouting of international law and the basic standards of civilised conduct.

To this must be added the adverse judgments of the International Court of Justice and the recent decision of the International Criminal Court to issue warrants of arrest for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Many US allies in Europe and elsewhere, including Australia, are increasingly uneasy with America’s unquestioning support of Israel and are now prepared to break ranks with the US when voting on UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.

Especially telling has been the shift in public opinion in much of the Western world, where support for the Palestinian cause has gathered pace, and is steadily gaining prominence in university campuses and in the electoral arena.

The fluidity of Middle East and global politics is now on full display. So is the uncertainty that pervades the future of US politics.

Nothing that has happened since October 2023 is likely to enhance Israeli security. The State of Israel remains imprisoned in a decidedly hostile neighbourhood. As for Israel’s economy, it is already paying a high price for its skyrocketing defence expenditure.

The goal of Palestinian self-determination may seem distant, but the Zionist project is more fragile than many would care to think.

Joseph Camilleri is Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, Convener of Conversation at the Crossroads, and Co-Convener of SHAPE (Saving Humanity and Planet Earth). He is also a member of the JUST International Advisory Panel (IAP).

22 December 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin

As President Biden greenlights another $8 billion in weapons to Israel in his last days in office and Secretary Blinken gives a parting New York Times interview in which he denies that a genocide is taking place in Gaza, many pro-Palestine activists are anxiously counting down the days until “Genocide Joe” and his crew exit the White House. But what will activists have to contend with under the Trump presidency?

Donald Trump proved his pro-Israel agenda in his first term, by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, supporting West Bank settlements, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and enacting the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states, while disregarding the plight of Palestinians. Recently, Trump has said that the U.S. should let Israel “finish the job,” warned that there will be “all hell to pay” if the hostages aren’t released by the time he takes office, and threatened to blow Iran to smithereens.

Trump has signalled his intentions this time around by the people he has selected for key positions. Mike Huckabee, his pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, is a religious fanatic who doesn’t think Israeli settlements are illegal and says “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria [the territory’s biblical name, revived in Israeli propaganda].” He even insists there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to the UN, used her position in Congress to stifle free speech on college campuses and advocates deporting pro-Palestinian protesters who have student visas.

What about Congress? While the 118th Congress was overwhelmingly pro-Israel, the new one, with both the Senate and the House under Republican control, will be even more aggressively biased. Members want to pass a host of horrific bills that will further cement U.S. ties to the Israeli government, punish international actors that dare try to hold Israel accountable, and repress the domestic movement for Palestinian rights. This legislation includes a bill that equates criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, a bill that gives the Treasury Department the power to investigate non-profit groups for links to “terrorism” and then shut them down, a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court for issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, a bill to make permanent the U.S. ban on funding the relief agency UNRWA, and a bill to cancel trade agreements with South Africa because of its genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

And of course, we can’t leave out the challenges posed by three powerful forces: AIPAC, Christian Zionists and military contractors. Best known is the lobby group AIPAC, which used its financial muscle in the recent elections to knock out two of the most pro-Palestinian members of Congress, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, leaving others terrified of becoming AIPAC targets. Lesser known but enormously powerful are the tens of millions of Christian Zionists, who are driven by the radical belief that Israel is key to Jesus’ return to Earth after a bloody final battle of Armageddon in which only those who accept Jesus as their savior will survive. Christian Zionists—already numerous in Congress, the White House and even the military—will be emboldened by Trump.

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The third powerful lobby group are the military contractors, which has more lobbyists than members of Congress. Thanks to the $18 billion that Congress allocated for Israel in 2024, weapons stocks have soared over the past year, dramatically outperforming the major stock indexes.

But there are countervailing forces as well. The American public has become more and more sympathetic to Palestinians. A November opinion poll showed that, despite the pro-Israel bias of our government and corporate media, most Americans (63 percent) want a ceasefire and 55 percent think the U.S. should not provide unrestricted financial and military assistance to the Israeli government.

This is especially true among young people and among Democrats. And with a Republican in the White House, more Democrats in positions of power should be willing to oppose Israel’s actions since they will no longer be defying their own party’s president. And it’s not just Democrats. Many Trump supporters oppose U.S. involvement in overseas wars, and Trump himself, on the campaign trail, repeatedly claimed that he wants to bring peace to the Middle East.

Worldwide, more countries are not only voting for a ceasefire at the UN, but taking concrete measures to hold Israel accountable. The long list of countries and parties that have either submitted or announced their intention to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice include Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Jordan, Libya, Maldives, Mexico, Namibia, Nicaragua, Palestine, Spain, Türkiye and the Arab League. Countries that have either banned, limited or announced their intention to embargo arms to Israel include Italy, Spain, the UK, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands, Türkiye, Russia and China.

In the coming year, the Palestine solidarity movement must find and expand the cracks in the pro-Israel war machine. It must strengthen the spine of Democrats who live in fear of AIPAC and  reach out to Republicans who oppose funding foreign conflicts. The same arguments many Republicans make about defunding Ukraine must be applied to Israel. Activists must expand campaigns against companies supporting Israel’s genocide, as well as efforts at the state, city, labor, university, faith-based and sectoral level to condemn Israel’s actions and promote divestment. The recent resolution by the American Historical Association condemning “scholasticide” is a good example.

While activists are bracing for a torrent of Trump policies that will create even more global and domestic chaos, including increased attacks on pro-Palestine organizations and individuals, the U.S. movement must be as resolute as the Palestinians themselves, who have demonstrated that, no matter what Israel does to destroy them, they remain determined to resist. The year 2025, with Donald Trump in the White House, will not be a time for despair or retreating in fear, but a time for action.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

8 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Phil Pasquini

In reaction to Israel’s continued and purposeful efforts to destroy the health care system in Gaza, activists across the country this past week have been protesting and calling for international intervention to end the intentional destruction of this vital lifeline. The deliberately planned destruction by Israeli forces of hospitals, accompanied by the killing and kidnapping of health care workers, doctors, nurses and others along with attacks against ambulances has resulted in a death toll of around an estimated 1,000 medical professionals since last September.

Of particular concern is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was kidnapped and later imprisoned while preparing to evacuate the hospital as directed by the Israeli army in December of last year.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) based in Geneva on January 3 reported that Dr. Abu Safiya, presently detained at Sde Teyman military base in southern Israel, has been suffering from deteriorating health and noted that there were “alarming indications of torture and ill-treatment since his detention in late December.”

Euro-Med further warned of their concern by stating that there is a “ grave risk to his life, following patterns of deliberate killings and deaths under torture previously suffered by other doctors and medical staff arrested from Gaza since October 2023.” Their concern is partly based on former Israeli detainees who have given testimony that during their confinement in prisons and detainment centers operated by the Israeli army, they faced “severe torture and solitary confinement.”

Doctors Against Genocide along with members of Code Pink’s Flood Congress for Palestine campaign and other human rights activists on January 8 gathered at legislative office buildings across Capitol Hill demanding of legislators as their constituents that Dr. Abu Safiya be released immediately due to concerns about his present medical condition while being illegally held and tortured.

Together the groups composed of activists and doctors in white coats visited several dozen Senate and Congressional legislators’ offices in asking each representative to issue a statement demanding the immediate release of Dr. Abu Safiya along with all the health care workers illegally detained, in violation of the Geneva Convention, who are presently imprisoned by Israel. They are also calling on legislators to cosponsor the forthcoming UNRWA Funding Emergency Restoration Act and to respect numerous worldwide human rights organizations that have concluded “Israel is committing genocidal acts against the Palestinian people.”

In addition, they are demanding that the representatives “take decisive action to stop the U.S. from arming Israel” in saying that “The U.S. has both the responsibility to protect and the responsibility to prevent genocide. Inaction in the face of such atrocities constitutes complicity, which is a legally punishable crime under U.S. federal law on genocide and the Genocide Convention.” They are also asking for immediate humanitarian relief for all Gazans and to hold Israel accountable for all its actions in Gaza.

Each visit to the eight Democrats Senate offices this reporter witnessed followed the same script of staff listening to the statements of the activists as they pressed their concerns for immediate action and asked to meet one on one in person with their respective representative. In every instance, they were assured that their concerns would be passed on to the representative and that they should request a meeting by email.

One doctor when speaking to a staff member spoke of the oath, he took to preserve life and that as a Jew felt compelled morally and ethically to speak out against the genocide by Israel. Another activist expressed her frustration with the billions of taxpayer dollars given to Israel for its genocide in Gaza when the funds are need domestically to address many pressing issues including that of the climate crisis. This while a TV in the senator’s office was showing a reporter in Los Angeles where uncontrollable wildfires are raging, destroying thousands of homes.

Report and photo by Phil Pasquini

9 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

From early December 2024 to early January 2025, the body temperature of eight babies fell below any acceptable amount and they froze to death. This condition is known as hypothermia. The most recent of these children to die, Yousef, was sleeping beside his mother because, as she told Al Jazeera, of the very cold weather. Temperatures in Gaza have fallen to just above freezing, which in the context of a lack of housing, blankets, and warm bedclothes is deadly. Body heat is the only protection, which is minimal for an infant. Yousef’s mother said, “He slept next to me and in the morning I found him frozen and dead. I don’t know what to say. No one can feel my misery. No one in the world can understand our catastrophic situation.”

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1876597212832268389]

Each of these stories is incomprehensible. The al-Batran family in Deir al-Balah are living in a tent made of blue plastic. Their bedding is only acceptable to them because their entire household has been destroyed, and they have not received any relief. Twin brothers Ali and Jumaa were born during this ugly genocidal bombardment in November 2024, but then one after the other succumbed to hypothermia. When the father felt Jumma’s head, it was as “cold as ice.”

By early January 2025, studies by the United Nations and the Palestinian government showed that at least 92 percent of housing units in Gaza had been destroyed. Most Palestinians who remain in northern Gaza have no homes in which to shelter. They are living in makeshift tents, not even having access to the United Nations tents that are sparsely available. Because there are now no hospitals open in northern Gaza, children are being born in these tents, and they are not receiving any medical care. “The health sector is being systematically dismantled,” Dr. Rik Peeperkorn of the World Health Organization told the United Nations Security Council on January 3. In the so-called “safe zone” of al-Mawasi, near Khan Younis, three babies died of hypothermia, mocking the idea that this is indeed a safe zone. Mahmoud al-Faseeh, the father of Sila Mahmoud al-Faseeh (who died in her third week), told Al Jazeera, “We sleep on the sand and we don’t have enough blankets and we feel the cold inside our tent.” The story is the same up and down Gaza’s length: the cold has come at night, ceaseless rain has made everything damp, the tents are inadequate, the blankets are thread worn, and the infants—the most vulnerable—have begun to die.

The map of such suffering is not restricted to Gaza or to the Palestinians. Such stories of a parent walking to find their child beside them in an inadequate tent, with no blankets because of the lack of relief in a war zone, are sadly not unique. The children frozen in the Kabul slum of Chaman-e-Babrak in 2012 had names that are utterly forgotten outside their families. These were victims of a war that trudged on and threw these rural Afghans into cities where they lived in glorified plastic bags. Similarly, there is little memory of the precious infants who froze to death in the unnamed camps north of Idlib, Syria, along the Turkish border. The parents of these children went from tent to tent over a decade, trying desperately to find a stable life. Some of their children froze to death; other families perished as their dangerous heaters in these plastic tents set their entire families on fire.

Wars on Civilians

War zones are no longer places where combatants fight each other. They have become charnel houses for civilians, and entire populations taken hostage and brutalized. In May 2024, before the full toll of the Israeli genocide had been measured, the UN Secretary-General provided a report to the Security Council on civilian deaths. The data is stunning:

The United Nations recorded at least 33,443 civilian deaths in armed conflicts in 2023, a 72 percent increase as compared with 2022. The proportion of women and children killed doubled and tripled, respectively, as compared with 2022. In 2023, 4 out of every 10 civilians killed in conflicts were women, and 3 out of 10 were children. Seven out of 10 recorded deaths occurred in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, making it the deadliest conflict for civilians in 2023.

The number regarding the Occupied Palestine Territory includes the Israeli violence from October to December 2023, but not the violence that intensified across the entirety of 2024. Those numbers will come later this year.

A look backward at the post-9/11 Western wars on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen shows the bleakness of the general attitude toward civilians in these parts of the world. The direct deaths from the bombs and the gunfire have been calculated to be nearly one million, an enormous underestimation but still a very large number. Adding in excess deaths, including from starvation and hypothermia, the toll is calculated to be nearing five million, also an underestimation but at least indicative of the impact on these parts of the world.

On August 29, 2021, two U.S. MQ-9 Reapers hovered over a white Toyota Corolla that had pulled into a parking area of a multi-family home in Kabul’s working-class Khwaja Burgha neighborhood. The U.S. drone operators, who had tracked the car for the past eight hours, watched as a man left the car, as a group of people came to greet him, and as one person took out a black bag from the rear seat of the car. At that point, the U.S. decided to fire a hellfire missile at the man and the people around him. They were all killed. It turned out that the man, Zemari Ahmadi, was not a member of the enemy group ISIS-K, but was an employee of a California-based non-governmental organization called Nutrition and Education International (NEI). The people who came to greet him from inside the house were his children, grandchildren, and their cousins. The black bag, which the U.S. claimed might have had explosives, carried a laptop from NEI, and another bag carried water bottles. The secondary explosion that the operators saw on their video feed was not from a bomb but from a propane tank in the carport.

The list of people killed by the United States on that day should give one pause because of the youth of so many of them: Zemari Ahmadi (age 43), Naser Haidari (age 30), Zamir (age 20), Faisal (age 16), Farzad (age 10), Arwin (age 7), Benyamen (age 6), Malika (age 6), Ayat (age 2), and Sumaya (age 2). This is the last U.S. drone strike before the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not one U.S. soldier was charged with the murder, let alone found guilty. Not one Israeli soldier will be charged or found guilty of the deaths of the Palestinian children in Gaza. This is the impunity that defines the assault on civilians, including those little Palestinian babies freezing to death in their blue tents, lying beside desperate parents.

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

9 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

Israel and the U.S. government will continue the genocide in Gaza for many months until the Palestinians are annihilated or driven from their homeland and Greater Israel is consolidated.

Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of Israel Avi Dichter was probably offering conservative estimates when he said “I think that we are going to stay in Gaza for a long time. I think most people understand that [Israel] will be years in some kind of West Bank situation where you go in and out and maybe you remain along Netzarim [corridor].”

Mass extermination takes time. It is also expensive. Fortunately for Israel, its lobby in the U.S. has a stranglehold on Congress, our electoral process and the media narrative. Americans, although 61 percent support ending weapons shipments to Israel, will pay for it. And those that express dissent will be frog-marched into Zionist black holes where their voices are silenced and their careers jeopardized or destroyed. Donald Trump and the Republicans have an open disdain for democracy, but so do the Democrats and Joe Biden.

The U.S. provided $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel from October 2023 to October 2024, a substantial increase from the already $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. gives Israel annually. This is a record for a single year. The State Department has informed Congress that it intends to approve another $8 billion in purchases of U.S.-made arms by Israel. This will provide Israel with more GPS guidance systems for bombs, more artillery shells, more missiles for fighter jets and helicopters, and more bombs, including 2,800 unguided MK-84 bombs, which Israel has a habit of dropping on densely packed tent encampments in Gaza. The pressure wave from the 2,000-pound MK-84 pulverizes buildings and exterminates life within a 400-yard radius. The blast, which ruptures lungs, rips apart limbs and bursts sinus cavities up to hundreds of yards away, leaves behind a 50-foot-wide and 36-foot-deep crater. Israel appears to have used this bomb to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, in Beirut on September 27, 2024.

The genocide, and the decision to fuel it with billions of dollars, marks an ominous turning point. It is a public declaration by the U.S. and its allies in Europe that international and humanitarian law, although blatantly disregarded by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and a generation earlier in Vietnam, is meaningless. We will not even pay lip service to it. This will be a Hobbesian world where nations that have the most advanced industrial weapons make the rules. Those who are poor and vulnerable will kneel in subjugation. The genocide in Gaza is the template for the future. And those in the Global South know it.

The “wretched of the earth” who lack sophisticated weapons, who do not have modern armies, artillery units, missiles, navies, armored units and warplanes, will strike back with crude tools. They will match individual acts of terror against massive campaigns of state terror.

Are we surprised we are hated? Terror begets terror. We saw this in New Orleans where a man who was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed 14 people when he drove his pickup truck into a crowd on New Year’s Day. We will see more of it. But let’s be clear. We started it. The moral void of the suicide bomber is birthed from our moral void.

Israel’s frustration at the dogged resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen and Lebanon increases the bloodlust. Members of Israel’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee sent a letter to Minister of Defense Israel Katz, calling on the government to intensify the siege of Gaza.

“Effective control of the territory and the population is the only means towards cleansing enemy lines from the strip, and naturally towards decisive victory, rather than treading [water] in a war of attrition, where the side that is most worn is Israel,” they write. “Therefore we end up inserting our soldiers again and again into neighborhoods and alleys that were already conquered by them many times.”

Israel, the letter reads, must carry out “remote elimination of all energy sources, that is fuel, solar panels and any relevant means (pipes, cables, generators etc.)” It should ensure the “elimination of all food sources including warehouses, water and all relevant means (water pumps etc.)” and it must facilitate the “remote elimination of anyone who moves in the area and does not exit with a white flag during the days of the effective siege.”

The letter concludes that “after these actions and the days of siege upon those who remain, [the] IDF must enter gradually and conduct a full cleansing of the enemy nests…. This should be done in the northern Gaza Strip, and similarly in any other territory: encirclement, evacuation of the population to a humanitarian zone, and effective siege until surrender or full elimination of the enemy. This is how every army acts, and so must the IDF act.”

In short, exterminate the brutes.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old U.S. military veteran who plowed his pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans killing 14 people and injuring 35 others, spoke to us in the language we use to speak to the Arab world. Indiscriminate death. The targeting of innocents. The callous indifference to life. The thirst for revenge. The demonization of others. The belief that fate or God or western civilization has decreed that we have a right to impose our vision of the world with violence. Jabbar, who posted videos online in which he professed his support for Islamic State, is our murderous doppelgänger. He will not be the last.

“When a society is dispossessed, when the injustices thrust upon it appear insoluble, when the ‘enemy’ is all-powerful, when one’s own people are bestialised as insects, cockroaches, ‘two-legged beasts,’ then the mind moves beyond reason,” Robert Fisk writes in The Great War for Civilization. “It becomes fascinated in two senses: with the idea of an afterlife and with the possibility that this belief will somehow provide a weapon of more than nuclear potential. When the United States was turning Beirut into a NATO base in 1983, and using its firepower against Muslim guerrillas in the mountains to the east, Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Baalbek were promising that God would rid Lebanon of the American presence. I wrote at the time — not entirely with my tongue in my cheek — that this was likely to be a titanic battle: U.S. technology versus God. Who would win? Then on 23 October 1983 a lone suicide bomber drove a truckload of explosives into the U.S. Marine compound at Beirut airport and killed 241 American servicemen in six seconds…I later interviewed one of the few surviving marines to have seen the bomber. ‘All I can remember,’ he told me, ‘is that the guy was smiling.’”

These acts of terrorism, or in the case of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Yemen armed resistance, are used to justify endless mass killing. This Via Dolorosa leads to a global death spiral, especially as the climate crisis reconfigures the planet and international bodies, such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, become hollow appendages.

We are sowing the Middle East with dragon’s teeth and, as in the ancient Greek myth, these teeth are rising from the soil as enraged warriors determined to destroy us.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, worked for nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, National Public Radio and other news organizations in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans.

7 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Over the past 14 months, I have received hundreds of messages from family members throughout the Gaza Strip. The nature of the messages often conveyed a sense of urgency and panic but, at times, contentment in God’s will.

Some of those who wrote these notes have been killed in Israeli strikes, like my sister, Dr. Soma Baroud; others lost children, siblings, cousins, neighbors and friends. It may seem strange that none of those who communicated with me throughout the war have ever questioned their faith, and have often, if not always, begun their messages by checking on me, and my children.

The samples of the messages below have been edited for length and clarity.

Ibrahim: 

“How are you? We are all fine. We had to leave Shati (refugee camp). The Israelis arrived at the camp yesterday. Our whole neighborhood has been destroyed. Our home, too, was destroyed. Alhamdulillah – praise be to God.”

Soma: 

“How are you? And how are the kids? Times like these make me realize that no material wealth matters. Only the love of one’s family and community matters most. We had to flee Qarara (east of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza); the boys fled further south, and I am in Deir Al-Balah with my daughter and grandson. I don’t know what happened to H (her husband). The army bulldozers began destroying the neighborhood while we were still inside. We ran away in the middle of the night.”

A’esha: 

“E (her husband) was killed on the first day of the invasion. A (her son) disappeared after he learned that his father was killed. He said he wanted to avenge his father. I am worried. I don’t know what to do.”

Salwa: 

“Cousin, A’esha’s son, A, was killed (he was 19). He was fighting in Jabaliya. She is somewhere in Rafah with her surviving kids. Her newborn has a congenital heart defect. Do you know of any charity that can help her? She lives in a tent without food or water.”

Ibrahim: 

“We escaped to Al-Shifa (hospital in Gaza City). Then, the Israelis invaded. They took all the men outside and had us stand in line. They spared me. I don’t know why. All the men were executed. Nasser’s son (his nephew) was killed in front of me. We are still trapped at Al-Shifa.”

Soma: 

“My husband was killed, brother. That poor soul had no chance. His illness had prevented him from running away on time. Someone says he saw his body after he was shot by a drone. He was hit in the head. But when we went back to the place, we couldn’t find him. There was a massive heap of rubble and garbage. We dug and dug day and night, to no avail. I just want to give him a proper burial.”

A’esha: 

“Did Salwa message you about the charity? My baby is dying. I named her Wafa’ after her auntie (26, who was killed in the first few weeks of the war along with her son Zaid, 5 and husband, Mohammed in Gaza City). She can barely breathe. Some people are allowed to leave Gaza through Rafah. They say the UAE accepts some of the wounded and sick. Please help me.”

Walid: 

“Have you heard anything about the ceasefire? We ran away back to the center of Gaza, after we were forced to flee south. They (the Israeli army) said ‘Go to the safe zones.’ Then, they killed the displaced inside their tents. I saw my neighbors burning alive. I am too old (he is 75). Please tell me that the war is about to end.”

Ibrahim: 

“How are you, cousin? I just wanted to tell you that Nasser (his brother) was killed. He was standing in line waiting for a loaf of bread in Zeitoun. After the martyrdom of his sons, he became responsible for the grandchildren as well. They (the Israelis) bombed the crowd as they waited for the aid trucks. The explosion severed his arm. He bled to death.”

Soma: 

“I was in Nuseirat when the massacre happened. (278 people were killed and over 800 wounded on June 8). I walked through the area not knowing the extent of the bloodbath. I was on my way back to Qarara to check on the kids. Bodies were strewn everywhere. They were mostly mutilated, though some were still groaning, desperately grasping onto life. I wanted to help, but I could do nothing. I kept walking from one body to the next, holding hands and looking into dying eyes. I worked in the emergency room for many years. But at that moment I felt helpless. I felt that I, too, had died on that day.”

(Dr. Soma was killed in an Israeli strike targeting her car on October 9. She had just left the hospital, where she worked, to check on her sons.)

Ibrahim: 

“My condolences, cousin, for the martyrdom of your sister. She will always remain the pride of our family.”

A’esha: 

“Wafa’ died this morning in our tent in Al-Musawi. There was no medicine. No food. No milk. My only solace is that she is now an angel in Paradise.”

Walid: 

“How are you, cousin? We are okay. We lost everything, but we are still standing. Alhamdulillah. Do you know when the war will be over? Maybe another week, or two? I am just too old, and so, so tired.”

___________________________________________________

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

6 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Another Palestinian baby died Sunday from the extreme cold in Gaza, marking the eighth infant to freeze to death in recent nights, as the ongoing Israeli siege worsens the harsh winter conditions, making life uninhabitable.

Yousef Kaloub died of hypothermia in the so-called “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, according to local sources.

“I am the mother of Yousef. I lost him. They didn’t give a single moment to feel happy with my baby,” the infant’s mother says in a video.

“He died because of the very cold weather. He slept next to me and in the morning I found him frozen and dead. I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“No one can feel my misery. No one in the world can understand our catastrophic situation. Yousef was fine. He was born healthy … I lost Yousef forever.”

His grieving father, seen at the hospital morgue, has lost two children to hypothermia this winter.

Seven Palestinian babies froze to death in the past few nights in Gaza in December, including three who died of hypothermia in al-Mawasi and twins from the al-Batran family, a displaced family from Beit Lahiya.

“There are no tents or shelters. May God hold accountable everyone who caused this catastrophe.. what was his fault for dying from the cold and freezing?” the twins’ father asks in one clip.

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, said he has warned for months that “more than a million Palestinians lack shelter” for winter conditions.

“Now babies are freezing to death,” Rajagopal added, noting that this is another “achievement” of Israel’s so-called “most moral army in the world”.

Palestinian nurse Ahmed al-Zaharneh, who was among the crews working at the European Gaza Hospital, also died the same month because of “extreme” weather conditions, according to the Health Ministry.

The Ministry said, “His body was found inside his tent in al-Mawasi area, west of the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza.”

“This incident comes in light of the difficult humanitarian conditions that displaced citizens are experiencing, as the suffering of Gaza residents increases due to low temperatures and the lack of heating means in tents,” the Ministry added.

The deaths highlight the dire conditions in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into makeshift tents, fleeing Israeli shelling from various parts of the strip.

Gaza’s Government Media Office stated that 110,000 out of 135,000 tents used by displaced Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip are now out of service and have “completely deteriorated”.

The Office accused the Israeli military of “causing a tragic humanitarian crisis” that is once again putting the lives of thousands of civilians at risk as the freezing winter sets in.

“This catastrophic humanitarian situation is a direct result of the genocide committed by the ‘Israeli’ occupation army, which has completely destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes of these citizens, forcing them to resort to living in tents that lack the minimum requirements for a decent life,” the statement said.

6 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian territory – The Israeli government bears full responsibility for the life of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, amid alarming indications of torture and ill-treatment since his detention in late December.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has received information that Dr. Abu Safiya’s health has deteriorated due to the torture he endured during his detention, particularly while being held at the Sde Teyman military base in southern Israel. Euro-Med Monitor warns of the grave risk to his life, following patterns of deliberate killings and deaths under torture previously suffered by other doctors and medical staff arrested from Gaza since October 2023.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented testimonies confirming that Israeli soldiers physically assaulted Dr. Abu Safiya immediately after he left the hospital on Friday, 27 December 2024. He was then directly targeted with sound bombs while attempting to evacuate the hospital in compliance with orders from the Israeli army.

According to testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli army subsequently transferred Dr. Abu Safiya to a field interrogation site in the Al-Fakhura area of Jabalia Refugee Camp. There, he was forced to strip off his clothes and was subjected to severe beatings, including being whipped with a thick wire commonly used for street electrical wiring. Soldiers deliberately humiliated him in front of other detainees, including fellow medical staff. He was later taken to an undisclosed location before being transferred to the Sde Teyman military camp under Israeli army control.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has also received information from recently released detainees at the Sde Teyman military camp, confirming that Dr. Abu Safiya was subjected to severe torture, leading to a significant deterioration in his health. This occurred despite him already being injured by Israeli air strikes on the hospital, where he worked tirelessly until the facility was stormed and set ablaze by Israeli forces.

The Israeli army has attempted to mislead the public regarding Dr. Abu Safiya’s detention and torture. Pro-Israeli media outlets circulated a misleading promotional video portraying his treatment as humane, even though he was tortured and humiliated immediately after filming.

Euro-Med Monitor warns of the severe implications of Israel’s denial of Dr. Abu Safiya’s detention, describing this as a deeply troubling indicator of his fate and detention conditions. This denial also reflects a blatant disregard for binding legal standards.

Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHRI) submitted a request on behalf of Dr. Abu Safiya’s family to obtain information and facilitate a lawyer’s visit on 2 January 2024. However, the Israeli authorities claimed to have no record of his detention, stating they had no indication of his arrest.

Euro-Med Monitor expresses deep concern that Dr. Abu Safiya may face execution during his detention, similar to the fate of Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, head of the orthopaedics department at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, who was killed under torture at Ofer Detention Centre on 19 April 2024. Dr. Al-Bursh had been detained along with colleagues from Al-Awda Hospital in December 2023.

Likewise, Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi, head of the obstetrics department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, was killed due to torture at an Israeli Shin Bet interrogation centre in Ashkelon, one week after his detention in November 2023. Israeli authorities concealed his death for more than seven months.

Dozens of doctors and medical staff remain subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance in Israeli prisons and detention centres, where they face severe torture and solitary confinement, according to testimonies from former detainees.

The detention of Dr. Abu Safiya must be understood within the context of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has persisted for nearly 15 months. His arrest, torture, and potential execution form part of a broader strategy aimed at destroying the Palestinian people in Gaza—both physically and psychologically—and breaking their will.

This strategy includes not only the deliberate destruction of the health sector and the disruption of medical staff operations, particularly in northern Gaza, but also an attack on the symbolic and humanitarian role represented by Dr. Abu Safiya. Despite the grave crimes committed against Kamal Adwan Hospital, its staff, and patients, especially in the past two months, Dr. Abu Safiya remained unwavering in his dedication to providing essential medical care and fulfilling his medical duties.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor calls on all concerned states, international entities, and UN bodies to take immediate and effective measures to secure the unconditional release of Dr. Abu Safiya. His fundamental rights to life, physical safety, and dignity must be protected, shielding him from torture or any cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Euro-Med Monitor also urges international and local human rights organisations to be granted full access to visit Dr. Abu Safiya, monitor his health condition, provide necessary medical treatment, and ensure he is free from human rights violations until his release.

Furthermore, Euro-Med Monitor reiterates its call for the United Nations to deploy an international investigative mission to examine the grave crimes and violations faced by Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. It calls for the immediate release of those detained arbitrarily, for international and local organisations to be granted visitation rights, and for detainees to have access to legal representation.

Euro-Med Monitor expresses regret over the continued inaction of Ms. Alice Jill Edwards, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, who has failed to address these atrocities. It condemns her bias and deliberate negligence in fulfilling her mandate and calls for her dismissal. A new Special Rapporteur who is neutral and committed to universal human rights principles must be appointed.

Additionally, Euro-Med Monitor urges the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to conduct immediate and thorough investigations into crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza. It calls for direct engagement with victims and families, as well as for reports to be submitted to pave the way for investigative committees, fact-finding missions, and international courts to prosecute Israeli crimes, hold perpetrators accountable, and compensate victims in line with international law.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor renews its call for relevant states and entities to fulfil their legal obligations to halt the genocide in Gaza. This includes imposing a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, holding it accountable for its crimes, and taking effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians. Immediate steps must also be taken to prevent forced displacement, ensure the return of residents, release arbitrarily detained Palestinians, and facilitate the urgent entry of life-saving humanitarian aid into Gaza without obstacles. Finally, Euro-Med Monitor demands the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the entire Gaza Strip.

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

4 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Ocupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- Eight far-right Israeli lawmakers have called on Defense Minister Israel Katz to order the destruction of all sources of water, food, and energy in northern Gaza, as well as the killing of anyone “without a white flag.”

The members of the Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee called on the defense minister to order the destruction of all sources of water, food and energy in northern Gaza.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the eight coalition members said the Israeli military’s strategy was ineffective in defeating Hamas, demanding the army purge northern Gaza of residents by use of sieges and infrastructure destruction.

Their proposals include treating any man, woman and child remaining in the area without a white flag as a legitimate target to be killed. The lawmakers include figures from the ruling Likud party and its coalition allies Religious Zionism, Jewish Power and Shas.

They accused the military of not carrying out the forced expulsion of Palestinians “properly” from the besieged northern Gaza.

The lawmakers insisted that the Israeli army should impose a total blockade, destroy essential infrastructure and carry out what they described as a “complete cleansing” of the region.

They also suggested that such draconian tactics be applied across other parts of Gaza. “This must be done not only in the northern Gaza Strip, but also in every other region,” the letter said.

[https://twitter.com/EpshtainItay/status/1874845322259709981]

The group lambasted Israeli army officials for not providing clear explanations during committee sessions as to why such measures had not yet been adopted or what the army’s strategy entails.

The Israeli lawmakers’ demands simply echo the “Generals’ Plan”, which was conceived by retired Major-General Giora Eiland and aims to empty northern Gaza of its 400,000 residents to make way for a “closed military zone”.

The plan, which was launched in an Israeli TV campaign in September, called for the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, warning that those that remain will face starvation. Israel has implemented the plan despite condemnations from human rights organisations.

Northern Gaza has been under military siege and relentless assault since October 5. The health system has completely collapsed, residents are being forced to flee south and west under horrific conditions, and those who remain are being massacred and starved.

4 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israel has confirmed the kidnapping of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza. The Israeli military told ABC News that Abu Safiya is being held over “terrorist activities” and is currently under investigation.

Dr. Abu Safiya is detained at Sde Teiman, an infamous detention camp in a military base in the occupied Negev Desert, according to Israeli media. The facility, established after October 7, has housed numerous detainees, including children and the elderly, amid reports of severe abuse and torture.

UN Special Rapporteurs Tlaleng Mofokeng and Francesca Albanese have called for Abu Safiya’s immediate release from his arbitrary detention. They condemned Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system as violations of international law and acts of genocide.

The UN experts highlighted that over 1,750 Palestinian medical professionals have been killed during the genocide, with many others detained.

Abu Safiya, a symbol of resilience in Gaza, has faced immense personal tragedy caused by the Israelis, including the killing of his son and his own injury while treating patients. Despite these hardships, he remained committed to his role, refusing to leave his hospital even as Israeli forces raided it last week.

The UN experts have urged Israel to halt its attacks on Gaza’s medical infrastructure and ensure accountability for war crimes. Mofokeng and Albanese also appealed to global medical organizations to pressure Israel by cutting ties.

As international criticism mounts, Abu Safiya’s kidnapping underscores the dire situation for Gaza’s healthcare workers under Israeli occupation.

Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnes Callamard, stated that the rights group is “extremely alarmed by the latest information” regarding the whereabouts of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital. She emphasized that he should be considered a victim of enforced disappearance.

4 January 2025

Source: countercurrents.org