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By Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja

Palestinains in Search of Humanity

Once a people or a nation colonized by European imperialists, it remains colonized and subjugated by the Masters forever. The contemporary oil-producing Arab world represents that historic reality. The Israeli planned onslaught on Gaza for over six months and its catastrophic consequences of crimes against humanity and alleged genocide – all have imprints of complicity of modern Arab -Muslim leaders.

Are the global institutions of peace, security and conflict management fast becoming obsolete in a real crisis situation? And global humanity is captive of the US-Israel’s intransigence and plans never experienced in history. Why should the global community allow arbitrary terror of killing and expulsion of 2.5 million people of Gaza? Philip Giraldi (Global Research: 2/21/24), “The United States Vetoes Yet Another UN Humanitarian Ceasefire Over Gaza” …. several interesting developments relating to Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza and its people, but one might well question the motives of at least one of the principal players in the drama, namely Joe Biden’s United States Government.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/united-states-vetoes-another-un-humanitarian-ceasefire-gaza/5850155:

How the War Dehumanized the Arab-Muslim World? The Arab-Muslim world is a world of bewildered fantasy – no strength, no power to think intelligently,no policies to defend Islam, dubious spectators watching Western military actions-reactions to assign a finished answer to the Palestinian movement for national freedom. If the people of Palestine had white anglo-saxon ethnicity like the Ukranians or the EU, the US-West European leaders would have rushed to help the victims and bomb the aggressor. Even drinking water, medicines, foods, shelters and clean oxygen are not allowed by the Israeli occupation forces. What is next after another inexplicable shocking cataclysm in the making seen on the political horizon?

Were Ancient Warriors More Civilized and Humane than Israel and America?

Those bombing and destroying the Earth and its life cycle are not normal human beings. Were the ancient people of stone-age more intelligent and responsible for not having destroyed the earth and environment in wars and kept mankind in safety and unity?

American supplied weaponry massacred more than 34,500 innocent people of Gaza, 14,000 children, 9,500 women; and Israel bombed and destroyed the habitats and its citizens for no other reason except intransigence and animosity against Arabs and Muslims.The Earth belongs to all humanity and is a living entityand rotates itself at a speed of 1000 miles per hour at equator and orbits Sun at average speed of 67062 MPH. Earth is a trust to humanity and trust includes accountability.The Earth sustains all forms of living things(known and unknown), the essential foundation of our very existence. Pathologically wicked leaders and nations claiming to be most powerful start acting like God to challenge the sanctity and limits of the Laws of God; historically, they become an object of unthinkable natural calamities- earthquakes, wildfires, floods, deaths and destruction. “Say! Travel through the earth; And see what was the end of those who rejected Truth.” spell out the annals of human history. Those bombing and causing catastrophic events to destroy the planet Earth and mankind and all of its treasures and enrichments are not normal human beings.

There are No Arab-Muslim Leaders to Protect People of Gaza and Palestine

Steven Cook (“Arab Countries Have Israel’s Back—for Their Own Sake.” Foreign Policy: 4/18/24) explains that “Last weekend’s security cooperation in the Middle East doesn’t indicate a new future for the region.” Historically, wicked and aggressive people enjoin friendship and apathy for vicious plans against mankind. President Joe Biden pretended to support the Two States solution in the Middle East. He turned out to be an  imposter when vetoed Palestine full membership at the UNSC. Israelis friendly Arab leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and others were silent spectators, not challenging the wicked actions professed by the US diplomacy. They were submissive to the Master, not safeguarding the interest of their own people. Many Arab leaders including the Saudi and the UAE princes have investments in Israel via Jared Kushner- son-in-law of Donald Trump. America and Israel view all the Arab States as vulnerable to besiegement and political supremacy. Several centuries earlier, the Arabs were described as:

“Thus have We made of you

An Ummah justly balanced,that ye might be witnesses over other nations……to Those guided by God. (Quran: 2: 143)

Living in the fantasy of time and power, Arab-Muslim states have no armies or leaders to protect the on-going civilians bloodbath in Gaza and the national interest of Palestine.America and Israel have working plans to conquer more Arab lands -Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and others to resettle the Palestinians and put a finished answer on Palestine as a future State. Would the Arab-Muslim leaders rethink outside the imperial box to plan for a navigational change in relationships with the US and its military hegemony? The time, history and future generations of conscientious people will curse the so-called tribal agents for their wickedness and greed to be kings and queens and princes and nothing else to make their presence in the global arena of emerging conflicts. Please see:“How Did Arab Leaders Betrayed Islam and Defied the Logic of Political Change, Peace and Security.” https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2023/10/07/how-did-arab-leaders-betrayed-islam-and defied-the-logic-of-political-change-peace-and-security.php

While the Arab leaders make melodramatic and misleading claims of security and peace with Israel and the West, the region is a highly militarized and destabilized landscape of continuous conflicts. To subdue and humiliate the “camel jockeys” of the oil producing Arab world, now the US exports wars, weapons and poisonous thoughts to divide and conquer the Arabian Peninsula.To change the future, America and Israel needed a just and a strong political challenge to stop the war on Gaza but it was nowhere to be seen on the Arabian leadership horizon. For too long, Arab leaders breathe oxygen in moral and intellectual decadence and a delusional fantasy of oil-run economic prosperity. Israeli and the US strategic plans are working, while the Arab-Muslim leaders never thought of proactive critical thinking about the future except transitory oil-fed happiness and sports and erecting hi-rise buildings defying conventional wisdom.

Would the current so called Arabian princes, kings and ameers be

phased-out by the new young conscientious generations of political activists? The time and opportunities call for new Arab leadership of educated and honest people, rethinking and new ideas to reject violence and vengeance as contrary to the nature of humanity, peace and intellect. To avoid most dreadful tragedies in the making, the new educated and responsible generations of Arab-Muslim leaders would reject tyranny of war as a means to solve political problems and take a firm stand with moral and intellectual strength to persuasive communication and dialogue for peace, security and conflict resolution.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution (2019); and a forthcoming book is entitled: Global Humanity, Peace and Conflict Resolution beyond the Lens of Human Consciousness.

22 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

The western discourse on the circumstances behind the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 75 years ago, is hardly convincing.

Yet, that over-simplified discourse must be examined in order for the current decline of the organization to be appreciated beyond the self-serving politics of NATO’s members.

The history records page of the US State Department speaks of the invention of NATO in a language suitable for a US high school history book.

“After the destruction of the Second World War, the nations of Europe struggled to rebuild their economies and ensure their security,” it reads, which compelled the US to take action: “(integrating) Europe as vital to the prevention of communist expansion across the continent.”

This is the typical logic of NATO’s early doctrine. It can be gleaned from most of the statements made by Western countries that established and continue to dominate the organization.

The language oscillates between a friendly discourse – for example, Harry Truman’s reference to NATO as a ‘neighborly act’ – and a threatening one, also Truman’s tough language against “those who might foster the criminal idea of having recourse to war.”

The reality, however, remains vastly different.

Indeed, the US did emerge much stronger, militarily and economically after WWII. That was reflected in the Marshall Plan, an ‘Economic Recovery Plan’, which was a strategic, not a charitable act. It engineered the economic recovery of selected countries who would become the US’ global allies for decades to come.

Upon its establishment, then Canadian Secretary of State Lester Pearson referred to the NATO ‘community’ as part of the ‘world community’, linking the strength of the former to “preserving the peace” for the latter.

As innocuous as such language may seem, it introduced a paternal relationship between the US-dominated NATO and the rest of the world. Thus, it allowed the powerful members of the organization to define, on behalf of the rest of the world – and often outside the umbrella of the United Nations – such notions as ‘peace’, ‘security’, ‘threat’, and, ultimately, ‘terrorism’.

A case in point is that the first major conflict instigated by NATO did not target external threats to Europe or US territories, but took place thousands of miles away, on the Korean Peninsula.

The west’s political discourse wanted to view the civil war in the Peninsula, prior to NATO’s intervention as an example of “communist aggression”. This ‘aggression’ supposedly forced NATO’s hands to react. Needless to say, the Korean War (1950-53) was a destructive one.

The 75 years since then proved the flimsiness of that argument. The Soviet Union has long been dismantled, and North Korea has been desperately fighting to break out of its isolation. Yet, a fractious state of no war-no peace remains in place. It could turn into an outright war at any time.

However, what the war has achieved is something entirely different. The constant state of non-peace provides a justification for the permanent US military presence in the region.

Similar outcomes followed most of NATO’s other interventions: Iraq (1991 and 2003), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Libya (2011) and so on.

Yet, the ability to start or exacerbate conflicts, and the inability, or perhaps unwillingness to permanently end wars, is not the real crisis at NATO, 75 years after its establishment.

In an article marking the anniversary, UK Secretary of Defense, Grant Shapps wrote in the Daily Telegraph that NATO must accept that it is now in a “pre-war world”.

He lashed out at those NATO members who were “still failing” to meet the minimally required spending on defense, which equals to two percent of total national GDPs. “We cannot afford to play Russian roulette with our future,” he wrote.

Shapps’ anxieties are often expressed by other top NATO leaders and officials, who are either warning of an imminent war with Russia or criticizing each other for the dwindling influence of the once-powerful organization.

Much of that blame was placed on former US President Donald Trump, who outright threatened to leave NATO during his only term in office.

Trump’s disparaging comments and threats, however, were hardly the instigator of the crisis. They were symptoms of growing problems, which have continued for years after Trump’s dramatic exit from the White House.

NATO’s crisis can be summarized as this:

First, the geopolitical formations that existed following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact no longer exist.

Second, the main aspect of the new global competition cannot be reduced to military terms. Rather, it is economic.

Third, Europe is now largely dependent on energy sources, trade and even technological integration with countries that the US perceives as enemies: China, Russia and others.

Therefore, if Europe allows itself to subscribe to the US polarized language on what constitutes enemies and allies it will pay a heavy price, especially as EU economies are already struggling under the weight of continued wars and constant disruption of energy supplies.

Fourth, fixing all of these challenges and more through the dropping of bombs is no longer an option. The ‘enemy’ is far too strong, and the changing nature of warfare makes traditional war largely ineffectual.

Though the world has greatly changed, NATO remains committed to a political doctrine from a bygone era. And even if the two percent threshold is met, the problem will not go away.

It is time for NATO to re-examine its 75-year-old legacy, and be courageous enough to change directions altogether – instead of opting for a state of non-peace, actually seeking real peace.

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

22 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ellen Isaacs

The massive movement in the US and around the world against Israel’s genocide has been inspiring in its breadth and militancy. It has played an important role in exposing this atrocity to millions in the US, who see very little on American media, and the close relations between universities, Zionism and the US gov. We must give kudos to the students who are fighting the new McCarthyism at Columbia and Yale, among many others, and who have suffered arrests and suspensions. Some politicians have been pressured to at least express distaste at Israel’s brutality. However, it would be a mistake to think that there is any chance that the US will divorce from Israel or limit its military support, no matter which party is in office, even if it would prefer that Israel mitigate its behavior.  As Biden has said, if Israel didn’t exist we would have to invent it. or as other US spokespeople have said, our defense of Israel is ironclad.

I think we must take them at their word because Israel is vital to US interests. Israel was established as a Zionist outpost by Britain after WWI just as oil was coming to be the main fuel of industry and instruments of war. Lying at the crossroads of oil producing, containing and transiting countries in the Mideast, many with unexplored deposits, its control was essential to maintaining imperial interests. Having a population with European background and values was thought essential to maintaining Western influence and resource access.

After WW2, the US replaced Britain as the main upholder of Israeli power and Israel is now more important than ever as the West’s only remaining stalwart ally in the area. Iran was lost with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and is now an enemy. In return for favors like no longer being called terrorist by the US, Israel has signed treaties with the UAE, Morocco, Sudan and Bahrain. The biggest prize was to be Saudi Arabia, which has lately been waffling in its loyalties between US and China and recently signed a pact with Iran at China’s behest. Other US allies like Egypt lack the stability and military clout of Israel. Only Israel has a stable pro-western government no matter what party is in office and massive military and nuclear power. US aid was increased in the 1970s, and Israel became the highest recipient in the world since the 80s.

This region remains of paramount importance to the US empire. It is still the fount of much of the world’s petroleum, both flowing and unexplored. Yemen is thought to contain the world’s greatest unexplored oil deposits. The shipping lanes through the Red Sea and Persian gulf, that pass the narrow straits at their southern ends and through the Suez canal at the north of the Red Sea, are vital. 20% of the world’s petroleum passes through the Persian Gulf. 40% of all Asia to Europe trade passes thru the Suez Canal, including 12% of all international trade, 12% of seaborne oil, and 8% of liquefied gas ^2,3 So far $200 billion worth of goods has had to be diverted away from the Canal and go around the Horn of Africa because of Houthi attacks.

In the overall picture of inter-imperialist rivalry, China is the biggest competitor of the US. China now gets 40% of its oil from the gulf and is Iran’s biggest customer, invests in Saudi energy, and has interest in building a pipeline thru Iran.³ As we all know, China is massively extending its worldwide influence through the Belt and Road initiative to boost trade, diplomatic relations and exports. Its worldwide meeting in 2023 involved 0ver 130 countries, including Egypt, and 18 other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In the last few years China has begun aiming at increasing its strategic and political influence to rival the US in Asia, Africa, the Mideast and South America, and It also has created two huge banks to rival the dollar and US investments.

China has not yet taken any aggressive positions in the current war except calling for a ceasefire. It wants to be seen as an ally of Arabs and so is not anti-Hamas and is critical of Israel. China has at least $112 billion invested in Israel and $30 billion in the Arab world and exports over $13 billion in goods to Israel, so at the moment China wants stability. China is, however, massively increasing its nuclear arsenal and naval power and maintaining a 2 million man army for the inevitable clash with the US.

As of now, Israel has already attacked Iran directly in a limited way and the US says it did not help. However, when and if Israel is attacked in response, the US will come to its defense. Meanwhile the massacre and starvation in Gaza continues and violence in the West Bank  is escalating.

What can we do who are far away? We face a continuation of the conflict in Gaza with no good end in sight. There is no possibility of two states as we consider a state to have the right and possibility to defend itself and Israel would never allow this. Nor is there enough territory left under Palestinian control to make up a contiguous state. Israel cannot bear the current situation in which Palestinians in the overall territory outnumber Jews. In Gaza the population will be decimated and maybe forced into exile or confined to a much smaller area under some form of Israel-friendly control. Or maybe massive general conflict will ensue. Without a unified class-conscious movement uniting all Palestinians and uniting them with such movements in other countries, I see no chance their lot will be improved.

So the question remains, what can we do? I would say that our duty is to weaken the power of US and European imperialism as much as we can. That does not mean relying on influencing or changing politicians but building ever wider movements on campuses and in industries and communities that strike at the heart of capitalist power and indoctrination. We must organize our fellow students and workers to fight against imperialist wars, against racism, against deficiencies in social services. That could mean professional society resolutions, bans on investments or military support by universities, fighting racism and police brutality, demanding better wages and social services – in whatever way we can unite, build leadership from below, expose the nature of capitalism and ready ourselves to lead the eventual struggle to end capitalism, with our fellow students and workers around the world. We have many ongoing and recent struggles to inspire us and a world that needs to be won.

Ellen Isaacs is a physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org.

22 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Peter Symonds

Deadly Israeli air strikes on the southern Gazan city of Rafah continue on virtually a daily basis amid growing signs that the fascistic regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is about to give the green light for a ground assault. This will have disastrous consequences for the more than 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into the area without the essentials of life.

Palestinian health officials said on Sunday that two Israeli strikes overnight on the city had killed 22 people, including 18 children. As reported by the Kuwaiti Hospital in Gaza, the first strike killed a man, his wife and their three-year-old child. The second killed 17 children and two women from the same extended family.

Mohammed al-Beheiri told the Associated Press that his daughter, Rasha, and her six children, the youngest 18 months old, were among the dead. “These children were sleeping. What did they do? What was their fault?” a relative, Umm Kareem, said. The bodies of a woman and three children were still buried under the rubble.

Those killed are the latest casualties in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of more than 34,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 77,000. At least two-thirds of those killed are children and women.

The bulk of the population of Rafah are refugees driven from other parts of Gaza by the Israeli military onslaught and clinging precariously to life amid acute shortages of food, clean water, medicines, shelter and other essentials.

Netanyahu, who has repeatedly declared the Israeli military would carry out a ground offensive into Rafah, strongly suggested on Sunday that the operation was imminent—again under the false banner of releasing the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in its military operation on October 7.

“In the coming days,” he said, “we will increase the political and military pressure on Hamas because this is the only way to bring back our hostages and achieve victory. We will land more and painful blows on Hamas — soon.”

Netanyahu’s comments follow a high-level meeting last Thursday of US officials, including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan with their Israeli counterparts which gave the go-ahead for the ground operation. As the official read-out declared: “The two sides agreed on the shared objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah.”

The reported “concerns” expressed by US participants over “various courses of action in Rafah,” Israeli promises to “take these concerns into account,” are meaningless. Any major Israeli ground operation into crowded Rafah is going to lead to large civilian casualties, and will vastly compound the humanitarian disaster already taking place—as the “two sides” well know.

A report by UN agencies on the food situation facing Palestinians in Gaza released last week found that virtually everyone in Gaza is struggling to get enough food. Around 677,000 people or nearly a third of the population are experiencing the highest level of hunger.

Currently the most desperate situation is in northern Gaza where the report warned of famine between now and May—that is, an extreme lack of food in 20 percent of households, acute malnutrition in 30 percent of children, and people dying every day of hunger. That terrible situation will inevitably be replicated in Rafah in the wake of an Israeli ground offensive.

Egyptian officials are also expressing concern over an Israeli ground offensive into Rafah which lies on the border with Egypt. As reported by the Israeli i24News, Mohammed al-Arabi, head of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs and former foreign minister, told a Saudi newspaper that Israel was seriously considering a military intervention in Rafah.

Fearful of the domestic political consequences of a Palestinian bloodbath, Al-Arabi declared that Egypt’s goal is to restrain Israel through diplomatic means. He was echoed by Tarek Redouan, head of Egypt’s parliamentary human rights committee in the Egyptian parliament, who warned that any Israeli incursion into Rafah would inflame regional tensions.

Like bourgeois governments throughout the Middle East, the brutal regime of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi fears that, notwithstanding its token expressions of concern and futile diplomatic gestures, its complicity in Israel’s barbaric war in Gaza and impending invasion of Rafah will fuel anger and political opposition at home.

Even as it prepares for land operations in Rafah, the Israeli military is continuing its brutal attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian teenagers at a checkpoint near the West Bank town of Hebron on Sunday, claiming they had been attacked. A 43-year-old Palestinian woman was shot dead by Israeli troops in the northern West Bank near Beka’ot settlement.

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported yesterday that its rescue service had recovered the bodies of 14 people killed in an Israeli raid into the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank that commenced on Thursday. While the Israeli military claimed to have killed 14 “militants,” only three were connected to the Islamic Jihad group. Another was a 15-year-old boy.

At least 469 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza is already part of a widening regional conflict with Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and air strikes against leading Hamas and Hezbollah figures in Lebanon and Syria. Israel’s April 1 air strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus that prompted Iranian retaliation that was seized on and condemned by Israel, the US and its allies has further heightened tensions throughout the Middle East.

Approval for a $26 billion aid package to Israel was passed by the US House of Representatives on Saturday, along with military and economic assistance to Ukraine in the US-NATO war against Russia. While the Israeli package includes around $9 billion in unspecified humanitarian assistance, its prime purpose is to bolster the Israeli military and replenish its military stocks.

Biden has already declared that he will sign the legislation into law as soon as it lands on his desk. The Pentagon has announced that weapons and munitions from its stockpiles in the US and Europe will be dispatched within days—some of which will inevitably be rained down on civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East.

22 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

As the Israeli army left Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis they executed people and dumped them in two hastily made mass graves

The true extent of the Israeli genocide in Gaza is slowly being unveiled on a daily basis. Gaza has indeed become a graveyard for Palestinians who are killed by Israeli soldiers.

The unveiling of the latest massacres, among the many thousands made over the past seven months by Israeli warplanes and tanks, is being discovered outside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where Israeli troops have been in deep fighting there over the last four months.

Palestinian civil defense teams discovered hundreds of bodies buried by the Israeli army in two mass graves outside the Nasser Hospital in the city located in the southern past of the Gaza Strip.

At least 400 bodies were found in a decomposed state hastily buried by Israeli bulldozers. Most of these were children with their hands tied behind their back according to news reports. The media and social media has been inundated with this heinous discovery.

This has been a developing story starting, Sunday but the exhumation of the bodies are likely to continue for days to come.

Palestinians were shocked to discover their relatives were among those that were buried in the mass graves. Initially, 200 bodies were discovered that included women and children that were killed before the Israelis withdrew from the area on 7 April.

It was a gruesome find. “We found corpses without heads, bodies without skins, and some had their organs stolen,” reported the Director-General of the Government Media Office in a statement, Ismael Al Thawabteh.

Rescuers said they found bodies in plastic bags with Hebrew writings written on them. They said many of these bodies had their hands tied, suggesting they were executed before being buried in the mass graves.

Al Thawabteh said there are still 700 bodies unaccounted for. Israeli troops had withdrawn and the search is still going on.

“We believe that there are hundreds of martyrs that are still missing after they were executed and buried by the Israeli occupation forces in mass graves,” the Turkish TRT quoted him saying. But the figures continue to vary because of the chaotic and bloody situation in south Gaza.

Reports from the Palestinian News Agency Wafa suggest a total of nearly 2000 people are still unaccounted for in Khan Younis after the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army.

Dr Asmar is an Amman-based writer covering Middle East Affairs

22 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Arwa Mahdawi

The University of Southern California canceled its valedictorian’s planned speech after pro-Palestinian posts. It’s no surprise

If you want to get ahead in life then I have some advice: keep your mouth shut about Palestine. Or, if you must say something, then make sure it is nuanced like – I’m just paraphrasing a former Mossad agent here – no Palestinian over the age of four is an innocent civilian and they all deserve to be starved to death. Certainly make sure you don’t use controversial words like “genocide” or “occupation”, even if those are accurate descriptions according to international law and UN human rights experts. Best to avoid considering Palestinians as humans altogether, rather think of them as Israel’s defense minister does – “human animals” – if you want to avoid unpleasantness.

Asna Tabassum, a first-generation south Asian American Muslim from near Los Angeles, is the latest person to learn this lesson the hard way. Tabassum, who is graduating from the University of Southern California (USC) with a major in biomedical engineering and a minor in resistance to genocide, was recently named her class valedictorian and due to give a speech at her May graduation. Giving a valedictorian address, in which a student reflects on shared experiences and imparts wisdom about the future, is a major honour. It would have been a high point in Tabassum’s academic life.

“Funnily enough, conservative free speech warriors don’t seem particularly concerned about censorship when it comes to Palestine

Then on Monday, USC abruptly cancelled her speech. Instead of being recognized for her academic achievements, Tabassum found herself in the middle of a controversy which brings together some of the most emotive issues of the moment: the war on college campuses, the anti-Palestinian assaults on free speech, and the one-sided nature of “cancel culture”.

USC, I should note, didn’t specifically mention Palestine or Israel when they took the unprecedented decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech. Instead Andrew Guzman, provost and senior vice-president for academic affairs, cited safety concerns.

“[O]ver the past several days, discussion relating to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor,” Guzman explained. “The intensity of feelings … has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement. We cannot ignore the fact that similar risks have led to harassment and even violence at other campuses.”

It’s not clear whether Guzman was talking about Tabassum’s safety or the safety of other students. USC declined my request to clarify their official statement. But here’s a somewhat more straightforward description of what appears to have happened: campus pro-Israel groups trawled through Tabassum’s social media history in order to find posts that were sympathetic to Palestine and then proceeded to smear her with bad-faith accusations of antisemitism. Instead of standing up for a student that USC had recognized as exemplary, the university caved into pressure to silence her. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called the decision to cancel the speech “cowardly” and the reasoning around safety concerns “disingenuous”.

What exactly did Tabassum say on social media? The issue appears to be a link on her Instagram page – which the student says she posted five years ago – to a slideshow written by someone else urging people “to learn about what’s happening in Palestine”. Part of this document – which, again, is not written by Tabassum –describes Zionism as “a racist settler-colonial ideology that advocates for a Jewish ethnostate built on Palestinian land”. Another part of the presentation argues that the only way towards justice is the abolition of the state of Israel and the creation of one Palestinian state where “both Arabs and Jews can live together without an ideology that specifically advocates for the ethnic cleansing of one of them”.

It’s perfectly valid to debate, and take offence, at the substance of the content Tabassum linked to. But cancelling her speech under the vague pretext of “safety” is disingenuous. Let’s be very clear: if Tabassum were pro-Israel and her Instagram linked to any of the very many genocidal things that the Israeli government had said about Palestinians, there is little chance her speech would have been cancelled. Jared Kushner, let’s not forget, was just at Harvard advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. (Kushner said that he thought Israel should move civilians out of Gaza into the desert while it “cleans up” the strip. He added that the Palestinians should absolutely not have their own state and mused that waterfront property in Gaza could be very valuable.)

As Tabassum has noted, if this was about her safety, USC could have just hired security guards. Rather, she said in a statement, cancelling her speech seems to be about silencing her voice lest she – who, again, is a student minoring in the resistance to genocide program USC offers – say anything about the continuing genocide in Gaza.

“I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred,” Tabassum said in the statement. “I am surprised that my own university – my home for four years – has abandoned me.”

I am not surprised. While Palestine has always been a fraught issue, the suppression of pro-Palestinian voices has gone into overdrive after the Hamas attack on 7 October. Speak up about the genocide in Gaza, and you are likely to lose a job, an opportunity, or find yourself smeared as an extremist. In November, the artist Ai Weiwei, who had a show in London cancelled after tweeting about the war in Gaza, wryly noted that censorship in the west was “sometimes even worse” than what he faced growing up in Mao Zedong’s China. “Today I see so many people by giving their basic opinions, they get fired, they get censored,” he told Sky News. “This has become very common.”

People who support the attacks on Gaza seem free to say the most depraved and racist things possible about Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians without facing any consequences whatsoever. The comedian Sarah Silverman, for example, shared (and later deleted) an online post arguing that it was OK to cut off water to the entire population of Gaza, which is very much a war crime. Her career has faced no consequences. A long list of American politicians have openly called for Palestinians to be slaughtered without seeing any real pushback to their speech. The British TV presenter Rachel Riley recently falsely blamed Palestinians for the stabbing attack in Sydney and has faced no career consequences at all.

The proliferation of dehumanizing language about Muslims and Palestinians has had violent consequences: there has been a rise in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes across the US, including reported offenses on college campuses. There has also been a rise in antisemitism: a very real problem that shouldn’t be minimized or tolerated. What also shouldn’t be tolerated are the dangerous attempts by pro-Israel extremists to label any remotely pro-Palestinian speech, or any criticism of Israel’s actions, as automatically antisemitic.

Conflating the actions of the Israeli state with the Jewish people is dangerous and wrong, and yet this is precisely what many pro-Israel voices are doing in an attempt to suppress any support of Palestine. And this strategy is working. In the current climate, a US politician can call for Gaza to be “nuked” without being censured. Dare to do so much as wear a keffiyeh (a traditional Palestinian scarf) on a college campus, however, and pro-Israel voices will go on primetime television and accuse you of being a Nazi. Jonathan Greenblatt, the executive director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), recently told Morning Joe (and faced no pushback from the hosts) that wearing a keffiyeh was the same as wearing a swastika.

Even those who don’t give a damn about Palestinians should care about the suppression of free speech and the attempts to eradicate any mention of the P-word on college campuses. Certainly you’d think conservatives would care: the right are constantly going on about censorship in universities and campus safety. It’s a nonstop talking point on Fox News. Funnily enough, however, these free speech warriors don’t seem particularly concerned about censorship when it comes to Palestine.

What’s left out of these nonstop discussions of campus safety is this: there isn’t a single safe campus left in Gaza. Israel, with the unconditional aid of the US, has destroyed almost every kindergarten, school, and university in Gaza. It has killed at least 100 Palestinian academics. It has decimated every cultural institution. There are over 13,000 dead children in Gaza who will never have the opportunity of an education. You should not be able to talk about campus safety without mentioning the fact that, thanks to US-backed Israeli air strikes, every campus in Gaza is now a graveyard.

17 April 2024

Source: theguardian.com

By Edward Curtin

Like all living creatures, people need to eat to live.  Some people, eaten from within by a demonic force, try to deny others this basic sustenance.  All across the world people are starving because the powerful and wealthy create economic and political conditions that allow their wealth to be built on the backs of the world’s poor.  It is an old story, constantly updated.  It is one form of official terrorism.

From the Irish famine with its terrible aftermath created by the imperialist British government in the nineteenth century that caused the death of between one and two million Irish and the forced emigration of more than a million more between 1846 and 1851 alone, to today’s savage Israeli genocide and forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, the stories of politically motivated famine are legion.

In their wake, as the historian Woodham-Smith wrote in 1962 of the Irish famine, it “left hatred behind. Between Ireland and England the memory of what was done and endured has lain like a sword.”  This Irish bitterness toward the English was strong even in my own Irish-American childhood in the northern Bronx more than a century later.  Ethnic cleansing has a way of leaving a livid legacy of rage toward the perpetrators, especially in the Irish case when talk of of one’s ancestors’ perilous forced emigration on the Coffin Ships was ever broached.

Today’s Israeli government leaders must be historically ignorant or suicidal, for the Irish rage at the British led to the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the eventual establishment of the Republic of Ireland, where today in Dublin, its capital, huge throngs march in support of the Palestinian people and their fight against Israel. Do the Israeli leaders think that they can evade the lessons of history, lessons that oppressed people everywhere learned from the irrepressible Irish rebels?  Like their arrogant British imperialist counterparts, they have self-anointed themselves a chosen people so they can inflict death and suffering on the unchosen ones, the animal people, those disgusting creatures not deserving of life, land, or liberty.

But starve, torture, and slaughter people enough and the flaming sword of revenge will exact a heavy price.  Dark furies will descend.

Dehumanize people enough, take their land, and the day always comes when the wretched of the earth rise up against their racist colonialist settlers.

Deny the bread of life to people long enough so that they watch their emaciated children die in their arms or search for their body parts beneath the bombed rubble and you will find that the terrified have become terrifying.

Frantz Fanon wrote accurately about the link between bread and land: “For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”

Without bread to eat, as Marx and Victor Hugo told us in their different ways, the desperate become desperadoes.

The poet Patrick Kavanaugh, in his haunting long poem, “The Great Hunger,” concluded it thus: “The hungry fiend/Screams the apocalypse of clay/In every corner of this land.”  Lines that with a slight difference pertain to every land where famine is used as a weapon of war.

But why is this so?  What is this demonic force that drives some human animals to oppress others?

I think we can agree that humans have animal needs of hunger, thirst, sex, etc. that need to be satisfied, but that we also are symbolic creatures – angels with anuses as Ernest Becker has said so pungently in his classic book, The Denial of Death.  We live in a world of symbols, not merely matter.  Unlike other animal species, we have made death conscious and must deal with that consciousness one way or another.  We have beliefs, ideas, symbol systems and get our sense of self-worth symbolically.  Of course, the anuses are the problem because they remind us that despite all our highfalutin fantasies of omnipotence of the symbolic sort, what goes in one hole comes out the other and like those backdoor hole deposits we too are destined for underground holes in the earth.

But this is unacceptable.  The thought of it drives many savagely crazy – individuals, groups, and nations.  So, as Becker writes, “An animal who gets his feeling of worth symbolically has to minutely compare himself to those around him, to make sure he doesn’t come off second best.”  Herein lies the root of competition and the desire to be successful and hoist the symbolic trophies that declare us winners.  And if there are winners, there must be losers.  If I win and you lose, then I can feel superior to you and “good about myself,” at least in the realm where we compete.  Equality is a problem for humans, whom Nietzsche termed “the disease called man.”  This sense of competition can be relatively harmless or deadly.

History is replete with the latter type, where the fear of not being immortal leads to the extermination of others, as if to say: “See, we are number one.”  You die but we live.  This is the case with the present Israeli policy of genocide of the Palestinians through famine, bombs, and guns.  The chosen enemy is always considered dirt, pigs, reduced to animal status not worthy to exist, and in a transference of existential trepidation emanating from a deep sense of insecurity masked as triumphalism, must be eliminated because their very existence threatens the oppressors God-like sense of themselves.

There is physical hunger and there is symbolic hunger.  Each needs satisfaction.  In a just and equitable world, the hunger for bread would be easy to satisfy.  It is the symbolic hunger for an answer to death that poses the deeper problem and causes the former.  For in a world where people could recognize their fears and deep-seated anxieties and stop transferring them to others, the bread of truth might reign.  We might stop slaughtering and starving others to purge ourselves of the self-hate and insecurity that drives us to feel the love of our fellow victimizers but the hate of our victims.  No one would be Number One.  All would be chosen and feast as equals at the table of the bread of life.

If only the Israeli and U.S. government leaders were wise enough to read, they might read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and turn from the path of their joint obsession to obliterate the world for a trophy that they will never hoist.  Ishmael might reach them with his words: “For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”  And they might seek peace, not an expansion of war.

If only. . . . but I dream, for they have chosen war, and the dark furies lay in wait.

Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years.

19 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

The New York Times coverage of the Israeli carnage in Gaza, like that of other mainstream US media, is a disgrace to journalism.

This assertion should not surprise anyone. US media is driven neither by facts nor morality, but by agendas, calculating and power-hungry. The humanity of 120 thousand dead and wounded Palestinians because of the Israeli genocide in Gaza is simply not part of that agenda.

In a report – based on a leaked memo from the New York Times – the Intercept found out that the so-called US newspaper of record has been feeding its journalists with frequently updated ‘guidelines’ on what words to use, or not use, when describing the horrific Israeli mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7.

In fact, most of the words used in the paragraph above would not be fit to print in the NYT, according to its ‘guidelines’.

Shockingly, internationally recognized terms and phrases such as ‘genocide’, ‘occupied territory’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and even ‘refugee camps’, were on the newspaper’s rejection list.

It gets even more cruel. “Words like ‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo, leaked and verified by the Intercept and other independent media.

Though such language control is, according to the NYT, aimed at fairness for ‘all sides’, their application was almost entirely one-sided. For example, a previous Intercept report showed that the American newspaper had, between October 7 and November 14, mentioned the word ‘massacre’ 53 times when it referred to Israelis being killed by Palestinians and only once in reference to Palestinians being killed by Israel.

By that date, thousands of Palestinians had perished, the vast majority of whom were women and children, and most of them were killed inside their own homes, in hospitals, schools or United Nations shelters. Though the Palestinian death toll was often questioned by US government and media, it was later generally accepted as accurate, but with a caveat: attributing the source of the Palestinian number to the “Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza”. That phrasing is, of course, enough to undermine the accuracy of the statistics compiled by healthcare professionals, who had the misfortune of producing such tallies many times in the past.

The Israeli numbers were rarely questioned, if ever, although Israel’s own media later revealed that many Israelis who were supposedly killed by Hamas died in ‘friendly fire’, as in at the hands of the Israeli army.

And even though a large percentage of Israelis killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7 were active, off-duty or military reserve, terms such as ‘massacre’ and ‘slaughter’ were still used in abundance. Little mention was made of the fact that those ‘slaughtered’ by Hamas were, in fact, directly involved in the Israeli siege and previous massacres in Gaza.

Speaking of ‘slaughter’, the term, according to the Intercept, was used to describe those allegedly killed by Palestinian fighters vs those killed by Israel at a ratio of 22 to 1.

I write ‘allegedly’, as the Israeli military and government, unlike the Palestinian Ministry of Health, are yet to allow for independent verification of the numbers they produced, altered and reproduced, once again.

The Palestinian figures are now accepted even by the US government. When asked, on February 29, about how many women and children had been killed in Gaza, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said: “It’s over 25,000”, going even beyond the number provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry at the time.

However, even if the Israeli numbers are to be examined and fully substantiated by truly independent sources, the coverage of the New York Times of the Gaza war continues to point to the non-existing credibility of mainstream American media, regardless of its agendas and ideologies. This generalization can be justified on the basis that NYT is, oddly enough, still relatively fairer than others.

According to this double standard, occupied, oppressed and routinely slaughtered Palestinians are depicted with the language fit for Israel; while a racist, apartheid and murderous entity like Israel is treated as a victim and, despite the Gaza genocide, is, somehow, still in a state of ‘self-defense’.

The New York Times shamelessly and constantly blows its own horn of being an oasis of credibility, balance, accuracy, objectivity and professionalism. Yet, for them, occupied Palestinians are still the villain: the party doing the vast majority of the slaughtering and the massacring.

The same slanted logic applies to the US government, whose daily political discourse on democracy, human rights, fairness and peace continues to intersect with its brazen support of the murder of Palestinians, through dumb bombs, bunker busters and billions of dollars’ worth of other weapons and munitions.

The Intercept reporting on this issue matters greatly. Aside from the leaked memos, the dishonesty of language used by the New York Times – compassionate towards Israel and indifferent to Palestinian suffering – leaves no doubts that the NYT, like other US mainstream media, continues to stand firmly on Tel Aviv’s side.

As Gaza continues to resist the injustice of the Israeli military occupation and war, the rest of us, concerned about truth, accuracy in reporting and justice for all, should also challenge this model of poor, biased journalism.

We do so when we create our own professional, alternative sources of information, where we use proper language, which expresses the painful reality in war-torn Gaza.

Indeed, what is taking place in Gaza is genocide, a horrific slaughter and daily massacres against innocent peoples, whose only crime is that they are resisting a violent military occupation and a vile apartheid regime.

And, if it happens that these indisputable facts generate an ’emotional’ response, then it is a good thing; maybe real action to end the Israeli carnage of Palestinians would follow. The question remains: why would the New York Times editors find this objectionable?

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

19 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

On April 18 the US and UK imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran. On April 17 European Union leaders had talked aggressively about ramping up sanctions on Iran. This has happened in the wake of Iran’s April 13 attack on Israeli targets, which in turn was in response to the April 1 attack on an Iranian consulate building in Syria which killed 7 Iranian commanders and which is believed very widely, by almost everyone, to be an Israeli attack.

However while increasing sanctions on Iran, the USA and the UK have not mentioned that the Iran attack itself was in response to an Israeli attack which had killed several Iranian commanders including a very senior one. In all fairness, the USA, the UK and the European Union should have been equally critical towards both attacks, in fact more towards the first one rather than the response to it. However they chose to impose sanctions only on Iran, while ignoring the attack on Iran personnel and consulate building.

The damage suffered by Iran was clearly higher. It cannot be said that the Iran attack inflicted disproportionate damage. Was this only because of interception success by Israel and its allies? Several analysts feel that Iran had in fact deliberately avoided what could prove to be a highly fatal attack. This is the stand taken, for example, in an article published in Politico under the title ‘Iran’s Attack Seems like it was Designed to Fail, so what Comes Next?’(14 April, 2014).

In this article, author Michael Hirsh has quoted Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group as stating about the Iranian response, “They (Iran) could have used a much higher number of projectiles, synchronized drones and missiles in a way that could have swarmed the air defense systems, and could have fired their new hypersonic missiles.” The fact that they did not resort to such ways of inflicting more definite and higher harm available to them indicates, this expert has argued, that “they (the Iran side) clearly wanted something spectacular but not fatal.”

In addition, Iran hastened to announce to the international community that from their side the matter concludes here.

Hence the response of Iran can hardly be called so dangerous or escalatory as to call for further sanctions, to add to the many that already exist.

In addition despite the desperate need for peace, there are several other signs of escalation.

On April 15 Israeli opposition leader and former Premier Yair Lapid said that under Netanyahu “Jewish terrorist violence” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank was “out of control”. Should not such violence be seen as escalatory?

Meanwhile, to mention another worrying front, conditions continue to be very tense on the Israel-Lebanon border too. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a non-profit, between October 7 2023 and March 15 2024, militias like Hezbollah in Lebanon on one side and Israel on the other side exchanged at least 4,733 attacks, among them 3,952 (83%) by the Israeli side. However other estimates mention a higher number of Hezbollah attacks. Israel has evacuated 61,000 people belonging to 43 communities in the Upper Galilee region. According to ACLED, Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 357 people since October 7 2023, while on the Israeli side 22 lives have been lost.

On April 18 the leader of Yemen’s Iran- aligned Houthis, who had been attacking shipping in the Red Sea said that the group had carried out operations in the Indian Ocean and towards southern Israel. This leader Abdul Malik al Houthi said that so far 98 ships had been targeted in attempts to prevent ships heading to Israel from sailing through the Red Sea. He said such attacks would continue till the Israel offensive is Gaza is stopped.

On April 18 Ahmad Haghtalab, Iranian Guards Commander in-charge of nuclear security, said that Iran could review its ‘nuclear doctrine’ following increasing Israeli threats.

Hence it is clear that there are deeply worrying escalations at several levels in the Middle-East. All this, it should be remembered, is in addition to the extreme distress of the people of Gaza (where well over a hundred thousand people have been killed, are missing or seriously injured in the course of the six month conflict) which is almost beyond words. Those doctors and humanitarian workers who have been familiar with several conflicts have stated that they have seldom seen such extreme hunger and such terrible injuries inflicted on helpless people. There is urgent need for non-partial response and attitudes on the part of the international community which is difficult to find. On the one hand human distress is being aggravated and on the other hand the chances of escalation and a bigger conflict are increasing. Several western analysts have stated that the 1 April attack on Iranian consulate was aimed at escalation in such a way that the USA gets more directly involved, but despite this sanctions were introduced against Iran, not Israel. Hence it is important for many more countries and forces of peace to come forward for a non-partisan approach to resolving the crisis and for peace.

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

19 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rev. Deborah McEachran and Rev. Dr. Eliezer Valentín-Castañón

Cuba is going hungry. The costs of food and other basic necessities are skyrocketing. Rolling blackouts periodically plunge the island into darkness. Parents struggle to find milk for their children. For the first time in history, the government has asked the UN for food aid.

The people of Cuba are facing their worst humanitarian crisis in decades. But Maryland Senator Ben Cardin has the power to help. We, as faith leaders concerned for our siblings in Cuba, urge him to act.

When President Obama took office, he recognized that U.S.-Cuba policy needed a change. For over half a century, the powerful United States has imposed a strict embargo (considered by many to be a blockade) on the small island nation. The main consequence of this policy has been the suffering of everyday Cubans. A fettered economy, deteriorating infrastructure, lack of access to food and medicine—the costs of the blockade are borne by the entire Cuban people.

President Obama began a process of easing these harsh restrictions and thawing relations between our two nations. The people of Cuba were overjoyed; for once, their future looked bright.

Then came President Trump. In short order, Trump undid virtually all of the progress that Obama had made. In his last week in office, Trump even added Cuba to the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, a designation that top Democrat and Republican officials have called “bogus” and “a fiction,” and that effectively cuts investment-starved Cuba off from the international financial system.

When Biden became president, hopes of a return to the Obama approach were rekindled. After all, Biden had been Vice President at a time when easing restrictions yielded immediate benefits for Cuban civilians while winning the support of U.S. voters. But instead, Biden has kept almost all of the Trump policies in place, and the Cuban people are now paying the price.

The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump’s sanctions has ignited such a crisis that over 4 percent of the Cuban population has left the country in search of a better life in the United States in the past two years alone.

U.S.-Cuba policy is stuck in the Trump era. But as Senator Cardin prepares to retire, he has a chance to chart a new path.

Last year, Cardin assumed the powerful position of Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, taking over from the hardline pro-blockade New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who had to step down after being indicted on bribery-related charges.

That’s why we recently joined over thirty Maryland-based organizations, and dozens of community leaders, in sending a letter urging Senator Cardin to help end the blockade. As Senator Menendez used his position to block any measure of relief for the Cuban people, Senator Cardin can promote reform, supporting and advancing legislative efforts such as those that would repeal the Torricelli and Helms-Burton acts, and could wield his role to pressure Biden to take unilateral action, such as removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

Uniting churches, immigrant rights organizations, University of Maryland academics, Young Democrat clubs, and over a dozen ordained ministers and rabbis, we wrote: “As you are soon to depart from Congress, your actions in the coming year may define how you are remembered. It is our hope that your legacy will be as someone who is willing to transcend the inertia of the status quo and do what is right; for the people of Cuba, the United States, and the world.”

This is not a fringe demand. As our letter notes, poll after poll after poll show that most Democrats and Republicans alike support an end to the blockade. That’s to say nothing of the rest of the world; last year, the United Nations General Assembly voted to condemn the blockade by a vote 187 to 2. It was the 31st time the resolution has passed nearly unanimously.

Whatever we may make of the Cuban government, and whatever share of the responsibility it holds for the state of the Cuban economy, nothing justifies the United States intentionally starving the Cuban people. Our faiths demand that we stand up to such injustice, and build a world that respects the inherent dignity of all people.

Senator Cardin has a window of opportunity to help right a historic wrong, ease the suffering of millions, and define his legacy as a true forward-thinking leader. But that window is closing fast. It’s time for him to act.

Rev. Deborah McEachran is Pastor of the Hunting Ridge Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.

Rev. Dr. Eliezer Valentín-Castañón is the Frederick District Superintendent of the United Methodist Church’s Baltimore-Washington Conference.

19 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org