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By Sumanta Banerjee

The  Sangh  Parivar  is  creating  a  hullaballoo  with  its  campaign demanding  that  every  ancient  mosque  must be  subjected  to  archaeological  examination  in  order  to  confirm  their  claim  that  stones  embedded  there    bear  ancient  Hindu signs  or  symbols  –  so  that  the  Parivar  can  reclaim  the  Muslim  mosques  and  turn  them  into  Hindu  temples.  Thanks  to  a  court  ruling  following  the  findings  of  the  archaeological  survey,  its  followers  have  gained  the  right  to  enter  the  precincts  of  the  Gyanvapi  mosque  in  Varanasi  and  offer  prayers  there  according  to  Hindu  rituals. They  now  also  want  to  possess  the  uzzukhana  (the  tank  where  the  Muslims  wash  their  hands  before  offering  prayers),  claiming  that  there  is  a  Shiva ling  (a  phallic  stone  structure  worshipped  as  the  symbol  of  Shiva)  lying  under  the  waters.

This  looks  like  the  first  step  in  the  occupation  of  the  mosque  –  reminisicent  of  the  `salami tactics’  of  gradually  encroaching  and  carving  out  spaces  in  its  premises,   which  was  adopted  by  the  Hindutva  outfits  in  Ayodhya,  initially  by  smuggling  the  stone  idol  of  Ram  Lalla   into  the  Babri  Masjid  in  1949,   then  forcing  the  administration to  open  its  gates  to  allow  the  entry  of  Hindu  pilgrims,  and   gradually  stirring  up  an  agitation that  led  to  its  destruction  in  1992.  The  Sangh  Parivar’s  next  target  is  the  Muslim  Shahi  Idgah  in  Mathura,  which  it  claims  was  built  on  the  site  of  some  ancient  Hindu  temple.  It  is  demanding  an  archaeological  survey  of  its  interior  precincts.  By  all  indications,  the  survey  may  come  up  with  similar  findings  that  confirm  the  relics  of  Hindu  religious  stone  images  embedded  there.  If  so,  the  judiciary  may  come  up  with  a  similar  order  allowing  Hindus  to  pray  inside  the  mosque,  thus  allowing  them  to  gradually  occupy  the  premises  and  remodel  them  into  a  Hindu  temple.

In  order  to  justify  its  claim  on  the   Muslim  mosques  and  their  re-possession  by  the  Hindus,  the  Sangh  Parivar  keeps  on  reiterating  that  they  were  built  on  original  Hindu  sites  of  prayer  which  were  destroyed  by  the  ancestors  of  the  present  Muslim  clergy  who  now  conduct  Islamic  prayers  there.  So,  they  must  now  be  restored  to  the  Hindus,  who  should  be  entitled  to  demolish  the  mosques  and  build  Hindu  temples  there .   But  is  the  Sangh  Parivar  ready  to  restore  to  the  Buddhist  community  their  religious  sites  that  the  Hindu  rulers  occupied  in  the  past,  and  still  remain  Hindu  enclaves  ?

History  of  Hindu  persecution  of  Buddhists

The  historical  record  of  the  persecution  of  Buddhists  by  Hindu  rulers  in  the  past,  surpasses  the  reports  of  Muslim  atrocities  on  Hindus  during  the  Moghul  regime  which  succeeded  them.  The  earliest  record  of  anti-Buddhist  offensive  by  Hindu  rulers  can  be  traced  back  to  185  BC,  when  the  Hindu  Brahmin  king  Pushyamitra  Shunga  ruling  Pataliputra  launched  a  massive  onslaught  on  Buddhists  and  their  temples.  He  destroyed  the  Kukkutaramas  monastery  that  was  built  by  emperor  Ashoka  in  the  south-eastern  end  of  Pataliputra.  Still  later,  at  the  beginning  of  the  7^th  century,  a  Hindu  king  of  Bengal,  Sasanka  invaded  Bodh Gaya (the  centre  of  Buddhism,  situated  in  what  is  today  known  as  Gaya,  a  district  in  Bihar),  and  brought  down  the  Bodhi-druma  (the  sacred  tree  under  which  Gautam  Buddha  prayed  and  attained  enlightenment). He  removed  a  statue  of   Buddha  from  that  site. These  events  were  recorded  by  the  famous  Chinese  traveler  Hsuan  Tsang  who  visited  India  at  that  time. They  were  also  confirmed  by  the  compilers  of  a  contemporary  Buddhist  text  entitled  Manjusree-moolakalpa.      

To  come  to  the  later  period,  in  1794  Jagat  Singh,  minister  of  the  king  of  Varanasi,  Raja  Chet  Singh,  began  digging  up  two  pre-Ashokan  stupas  at  Sarnath  to  get  stones  for  construction  material  to  build  a  Hindu temple.  In  the  course ,  the  Buddhist  structure  Dharmarajika  was  totally  demolished.  It  was  built  by  emperor  Ashoka  in  3^rd  century  BC,  to  enshrine  the  remains  of  Buddha.  It  stored  a  box  containing  a  green  marble  casket  that  was  said  to  preserve  Buddha’s  relics.  The  soldiers  of  Jagat  Singh  who  destroyed  the  structure,  threw  the  casket  into  the  river  Ganges.  They  however  spared  the  box  –  which  was  later  recovered  by  British  archaeologists  from  the  site,  who  transferred  it  to  the  Indian  Museum  in  Calcutta,  where  it   is  still  preserved.   The  other  Buddhist  structure,  known  as  Dhamekstupa  (which was  also  built  by  Ashoka  at  around  the  same  time),  was  partially  damaged  during  Jagat  Singh’s  anti-Buddhist  offensive.  It  was  later  restored  by  the  British  archaeologists  and  still  stands  there.

There  are  several  Hindu  temples  which  were  built  on  the  debris  of   Buddhist  stupas  and  temples  which  were  destroyed  by  Hindu  rulers.  Most  important  among  them  is  the  Badrinath  temple  in  the  Himalayas,  which  draws  crowds  of  Hindu  pilgrims  every  year.  Investigations  by  later  day  historians  like  the  late  Rahul Sanskrityayan  (in  his  Hindi  book  Himalaya  Parichay)  and  others  have  revealed  that  the  structure  known  as  Badrinath  temple  was  originally  a  religious  shrine  worshipped  by  Buddhists  till  the  eighth  century,  when  it  was  converted  by  the  Hindu  preacher  Adi  Sankara  into  a  Hindu  temple,  ousting  the  Buddhist  followers  from  its  premises.

It  is  in  this  context  of  historical  controversies  over  claims  by  the  Hindu  clergy  on  ancient  Buddhist  sites,    a  Samajwadi  Party  leader  Swami  Prasad  Maurya  has  quite  rightly  called  for  an  archaeological  survey  of  Hindu  temples  to  determine  whether  they  were  built  on  Buddhist  structures.  (Re:  Indian  Express.  August  4,  2023).  Since  the  Supreme  Court  has  conceded  to  the  demand  of  the  Hindu  clergy  to  carry  on  such  surveys  in  Muslim  mosques  (which  they  claim  to  be  built  on  the  ruins  of  Hindu  temples),  its  verdict  can  be  taken  up  as  a  judicial  precedent  for  allowing  similar surveys  in  Hindu  temples  (which  are  allegedly  built  on  the  ruins  of  Muslim  mosques).

Imagine  a  Buddhist  backlash  demanding  the  demolition  of  Hindu  temples  built  on  their  sacred  sites  –  a  la  the  Hindu  demolition  of  the  Babri  Masjid  !   But  the  leaders  of  the  Indian  Buddhist  minority  community,  being  more  civilized  and   culturally  well-behaved  than  the  Hindu  Sangh  Parivar  leaders  and  their  goons,  will  never  follow  the  Hindu  historical  tradition  of  vandalizing  temples  of  other  faiths.  Practitioners  of   Buddhism   are  spread  from  the  north-east  to  the  followers  of  Babasaheb  Ambedkar  in  other  parts  of  India.  If  they  can  come  together  and  set  up  an  organization –  similar  to  those  formed  by  Muslims  and  Christians,  which  operate  as  pressure  groups  in  the  political  scene  –  they  can approach  the  Supreme  Court  to  restore  their  claim  to  their  original  religious  sites  through  the  non-violent  means  of  judicial  intervention.  But  then,  in  the  event  of  such  an  appeal  by  them  in  the  near  future,  we  have  to  keep  our  fingers  crossed  about  the  verdict  –  knowing  how  our  judges  are  inclined  to  nod  in  favour  of  the  Sangh  Parivar –the  most  atrocious  example  being  the  Ramjanambhumi  judgment.

Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).

29 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

The Palestinian city of Rafah is not just older than Israel, it is as old as civilization itself.

It has existed for thousands of years. The Canaanites referred to it as Rafia, and Rafia has been almost always there, guarding the southern frontiers of Palestine, ancient and modern.

As the gateway between two continents and two worlds, Rafah has been at the forefront of many wars and foreign invasions, from ancient Egyptians to the Romans, to Napoleon and his eventually vanquished army.

Now, it is Benjamin Netanyahu’s turn. The Israeli Prime Minister has made Rafah the jewel of his crown of shame, the battle that would determine the fate of his genocidal war in Gaza – in fact the very future of his country. “Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are essentially telling us: ‘Lose the war’,” he said at a press conference on February 17.

Currently, there are anywhere between 1.3 to 1.5 million people in Rafah, an area that, before the war started, had a population of merely 200 thousand people.

Even before the start of this genocidal war, Rafah was still considered crowded. We can only imagine what the situation is right now, where hundreds of thousands of people are scattered in muddy refugee camps, subsisting in makeshift tents that are unable to withstand the elements of a harsh winter.

The Mayor of Rafah says that only 10 percent of the needed food and water is reaching the population in the camps, where the people are suffering from extreme hunger, if not outright starvation.

These families are beyond traumatized as they have lost loved ones, homes and have no access to any medical care. They are trapped between high walls, the sea and a murderous military.

An Israeli invasion of Rafah will not alter the battlefield in favor of the Israeli army, but it will be horrific for the displaced Palestinians. The slaughter will go beyond everything we have seen, so far, anywhere in Gaza.

Where will up to 1.5 million people go when the Israel tanks arrive? The closest so-called safe area is al-Mawasi, which is already overcrowded and too small, to begin with. The displaced refugees there are also experiencing starvation due to Israel’s prevention of aid and constant bombing of convoys.

Then, there is northern Gaza, which is mostly in ruins; it has no food to the extent that, in some areas, even animal feed, which is now being consumed by humans, is no longer accessible.

If the international community does not finally develop the will to stop Israel, this horrific crime will, by far, prove worse than all the crimes that have already been committed, resulting in the death and wounding of over 100,000 people.

Even with the invasion of Rafah, Israel would achieve no military or strategic victory. Netanyahu simply wants to satisfy the calls for blood emanating from throughout Israel.  After all of this, they are still seeking revenge. “I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza,” Israel’s Minister of social equality, May Golan, said at a Knesset session on February 21.

But, still, there will be no victory in Rafah, either.

At the start of the war, Israel said Hamas was concentrated mostly in the north. The north was duly destroyed, though the Resistance carried on unabated. Then they claimed that the Resistance headquarters was under Shifa Hospital, which was bombed, raided and destroyed. Then they claimed Bureij, Maghazi and central Gaza were the main prize of the war. Then, Khan Younis was declared the ‘capital of Hamas’. And on and on …

Aside from the mass destruction and the killing of hundreds of civilians daily, Israel has won nothing; the Resistance has not been defeated, and the alleged ‘Hamas capital’ has conveniently shifted from one city to another, even from one neighborhood to another.

Now, the same ridiculous claims and unsubstantiated allegations are being made and leveled against Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population ran to, in total despair, to survive the onslaught.

Israel had initially hoped that Gazans would rush in their hundreds of thousands to the Sinai Desert. They did not. Then Israeli leaders, like far-right Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, began speaking of “voluntary migration” as the “right humanitarian solution”. Still, the Palestinians stayed. Now, they have all agreed on the invasion of Rafah, a last-ditch effort to orchestrate another Palestinian Nakba.

But another Nakba will not happen. Palestinians will not allow for it to happen.

Ultimately, Netanyahu’s and Israel’s political madness must come to an end.

The world cannot persist in this cowardly inaction.

The lives of millions of Palestinians are dependent on our collective push to bring this genocide to an immediate end.

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

29 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation was ultimately a religious act, one that radically delineates good and evil and calls us to resist.

Aaron Bushnell, when he placed his cell phone on the ground to set up a livestream and lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C., resulting in his death, pitted divine violence against radical evil. As an active duty member of the U.S. Air Force, he was part of the vast machinery that sustains the ongoing genocide in Gaza, no less morally culpable than the German soldiers, technocrats, engineers, scientists and bureaucrats who oiled the apparatus of the Nazi Holocaust. This was a role he could no longer accept. He died for our sins.

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” he said calmly in his video as he walked to the gate of the embassy. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

Young men and women sign up for the military for many reasons, but starving, bombing and killing women and children is usually not amongst them. Shouldn’t, in a just world, the U.S. fleet break the Israeli blockade of Gaza to provide food, shelter and medicine? Shouldn’t U.S. warplanes impose a no fly zone over Gaza to halt the saturation bombing? Shouldn’t Israel be issued an ultimatum to withdraw its forces from Gaza? Shouldn’t the weapons shipments, billions in military aid and intelligence provided to Israel, be halted? Shouldn’t those who commit genocide, as well as those who support genocide, be held accountable?

These simple questions are the ones Bushnell’s death forces us to confront.

“Many of us like to ask ourselves,” he posted shortly before his suicide, “‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

The coalition forces intervened in northern Iraq in 1991 to protect the Kurds following the first Gulf War. The suffering of the Kurds was extensive, but dwarfed by the genocide in Gaza. A no-fly zone for the Iraqi air force was imposed. The Iraqi military was pushed out of the northern Kurdish areas. Humanitarian aid saved Kurds from starvation, infectious diseases and death from exposure.

But that was another time, another war. Genocide is evil when it is carried out by our enemies. It is defended and sustained when carried out by our allies.

Walter Benjamin — whose friends Fritz Heinle and Rika Seligson committed suicide in 1914 to protest German militarism and the First World War — in his essay “Critique of Violence,” examines acts of violence undertaken by individuals who confront radical evil. Any act that defies radical evil breaks the law in the name of justice. It affirms the sovereignty and dignity of the individual. It condemns the coercive violence of the state. It entails a willingness to die. Benjamin called these extreme acts of resistance “divine violence.”

“Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope,” Benjamin writes.

Bushnell’s self-immolation — one most social media posts and news organizations have heavily censored — is the point. It is meant to be seen. Bushnell extinguished his life in the same way thousands of Palestinians, including children, have been extinguished. We could watch him burn to death. This is what it looks like. This is what happens to Palestinians because of us.

The image of Bushnell’s self-immolation, like that of the Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức in Vietnam in 1963 or Mohamed Bouazizi, a young fruit seller in Tunisia, in 2010, is a potent political message. It jolts the viewer out of somnolence. It forces the viewer to question assumptions. It begs the viewer to act. It is political theater, or perhaps religious ritual, in its most potent form. Buddhist monk, Thích Nhất Hạnh said of self-immolation: “To express will by burning oneself, therefore, is not to commit an act of destruction but to perform an act of construction, that is, to suffer and to die for the sake of one’s people.”

If Bushnell was willing to die, repeatedly shouting out “Free Palestine!” as he burned, then something must be terribly, terribly wrong.

These individual self-sacrifices often become rallying points for mass opposition. They can ignite, as they did in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, revolutionary upheavals. Bouazizi, who was incensed that local authorities had confiscated his scales and produce, did not intend to start a revolution. But the petty and humiliating injustices he endured under the corrupt Ben Ali regime resonated with an abused public. If he could die, they could take to the streets.

These acts are sacrificial births. They presage something new. They are the complete rejection, in its most dramatic form, of conventions and reigning systems of power. They are designed to be horrific. They are meant to shock. Burning to death is one of the most dreaded ways to die.

Self-immolation comes from the Latin stem immolāre, to sprinkle with salted flour when offering up a consecrated victim for sacrifice. Self-immolations, like Bushnell’s, link the sacred and the profane through the medium of sacrificial death.

But to go to this extreme requires what the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr calls “a sublime madness in the soul.” He notes that “nothing but such madness will do battle with malignant power and spiritual wickedness in high places.” This madness is dangerous, but it is necessary when confronting radical evil because without it “truth is obscured.” Liberalism, Niebuhr warns, “lacks the spirit of enthusiasm, not to say fanaticism, which is so necessary to move the world out of its beaten tracks. It is too intellectual and too little emotional to be an efficient force in history.”

This extreme protest, this “sublime madness,” has been a potent weapon in the hands of the oppressed throughout history.

The some 160 self-immolations in Tibet since 2009 to protest Chinese occupation are perceived as religious rites, acts that declare the independence of the victims from the control of the state. Self-immolation calls us to a different way of being. These sacrificial victims become martyrs.

Communities of resistance, even if they are secular, are bound together by the sacrifices of martyrs. Only apostates betray their memory. The martyr, through his or her example of self-sacrifice, weakens and severs the bonds and the coercive power of the state. The martyr represents a total rejection of the status quo. This is why all states seek to discredit the martyr or turn the martyr into a nonperson. They know and fear the power of the martyr, even in death.

Daniel Ellsberg in 1965 witnessed a 22-year-old anti-war activist, Norman Morrison, douse himself with kerosene and light himself on fire — the flames shot 10 feet into the air — outside the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at The Pentagon, to protest the Vietnam War. Ellsberg cited the self-immolation, along with the nationwide anti-war protests, as one of the factors that led him to release the Pentagon Papers.

The radical Catholic priest, Daniel Berrigan, after traveling to North Vietnam with a peace delegation during the war, visited the hospital room of Ronald Brazee. Brazee was a high school student who had drenched himself with kerosene and immolated himself outside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Syracuse, New York to protest the war.

“He was still living a month later,” Berrigan writes. “I was able to gain access to him. I smelled the odor of burning flesh and I understood anew what I had seen in North Vietnam. The boy was dying in torment, his body like a great piece of meat cast upon a grill. He died shortly thereafter. I felt that my senses had been invaded in a new way. I had understood the power of death in the modern world. I knew I must speak and act against death because this boy’s death was being multiplied a thousandfold in the Land of Burning Children. So I went to Catonsville because I had gone to Hanoi.”

In Catonsville, Maryland Berrigan and eight other activists, known as the Catonsville Nine, broke into a draft board on May 17, 1968. They took 378 draft files and burned them with homemade napalm in the parking lot. Berrigan was sentenced to three years in a federal prison.

I was in Prague in 1989 for the Velvet Revolution. I attended the commemoration of the self-immolation of a 20-year-old university student named Jan Palach. Palach had stood on the steps outside the National Theater in Wenceslas Square in 1969, poured petrol over himself and lit himself on fire. He died of his wounds three days later. He left behind a note saying that this act was the only way to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which had taken place five months earlier. His funeral procession was broken up by police. When frequent candlelit vigils were held at his grave at Olsany cemetery, the communist authorities, determined to stamp out his memory, disinterred his body, cremated it and handed the ashes to his mother.

During the winter of 1989, posters with Palach’s face covered the walls of Prague. His death, two decades earlier, was lionized as the supreme act of resistance against the Soviets and pro-Soviet regime installed after the overthrow of Alexander Dubček. Thousands of people marched to the Square of Red Army Soldiers and renamed it Jan Palach Square. He won.

One day, if the corporate state and apartheid state of Israel are dismantled, the street where Bushnell lit himself on fire will bear his name. He will, like Palach, be honored for his moral courage. Palestinians, betrayed by most of the world, already look to him as a hero. Because of him, it will be impossible to demonize all of us.

Divine violence terrifies a corrupt and discredited ruling class. It exposes their depravity. It illustrates that not everyone is paralyzed by fear. It is a siren call to battle radical evil. That is what Bushnell intended. His sacrifice speaks to our better selves.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper.

1 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

On Thursday morning, Israeli infantrymen, snipers, tanks and drones opened fire on a crowd of starving Palestinians in Gaza City as they lined up to receive flour from aid trucks, killing at least 112 and injuring more than 700.

Doctors reported that many victims arrived at hospitals with gunshots to their torsos and heads, indicating that they were deliberately targeted by Israeli troops, who were shooting to kill.

Images from the scene showed bags of flour drenched in blood, leading many to refer to the killings as the “flour massacre.” The hundreds of victims overwhelmed local hospitals, which were already without medical supplies and power and were only able to provide first aid.

This was a deliberate and conscious massacre by the fascistic Netanyahu regime, as part of a systematic campaign to kill as many Gazans as possible and drive the rest from their land.

Thursday’s massacre is just a foretaste of what Israel has in store as it prepares its full-scale assault on Rafah, where over 1 million people are seeking shelter after being displaced from northern Gaza.

While Israeli troops pulled the trigger, they were using bullets and tank rounds paid for and supplied by the United States. Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate Joseph Kishore stated in response to the massacre, “It is not only Netanyahu and his fascistic ministers who are responsible but the Biden administration, which has fully backed Israel as part of the militaristic and imperialist agenda of the American ruling class.”

The guilt does not stop at the White House. The entire US media establishment is complicit in covering up this atrocity. Every mainstream US media outlet rushed to promote and propagate Israel’s absurd cover story: that Palestinian aid drivers caused the massacre by plowing into the crowd, despite widespread footage of Israeli troops shooting at the unarmed civilians.

Every US media account equated the plain and obvious truth, that Israeli troops massacred a crowd of hungry people, with an equally plain and obvious lie, that the troops had nothing to do with the death toll, claiming that these represented “conflicting accounts.”

“Chaotic aid delivery turns deadly,” read a headline in the Washington Post. “112 killed in Gaza food line. Israel blames Palestinian aid drivers.”

Biden, responding to the murders, offered the usual banalities about a “tragic and alarming incident” and called for “expanding the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.”

These platitudes are meant to cover up the actual US policy of unconditional support for the Netanyahu regime no matter what it does. There are, as US officials have repeatedly made clear, no “red lines” for how many people Israel is allowed to kill. The Israeli regime can starve, massacre and displace the entire population of Gaza, as far as Biden, Blinken and their fellow enablers of genocide are concerned.

Thursday’s act of mass murder is only the latest and deadliest in a series of massacres by Israeli troops during the distribution of food. These targeted operations are part of a deliberate policy to starve the civilian population of Gaza to death.

In a statement, the Euro-Med Monitor warned, “Israeli shooting towards starving people receiving aid has become a regular practice. In recent weeks, Israeli forces have directly attacked and killed dozens of people in Gaza City, including on Salah al-Din Street and in the vicinity of Kuwait Roundabout.”

Israel’s genocidal policy is having its intended effect. In a statement to CNN, Melanie Ward, CEO of Medical Aid to Palestine, said that as a result of Israel’s systematic blockade of food supplies, “This is the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded. That means children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen.”

On Thursday, the official death toll of the Gaza genocide reached 30,000, according to the region’s health ministry. With a further 7,000 missing, the real death toll is likely closer to 37,000.

The combined number of dead, missing and wounded exceeds 100,000, making up 4 percent of the population of Gaza, effectively marking one of the most rapid depopulation events in modern history.

“Life is draining out of Gaza at a terrifying speed,” wrote Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.

Millions of people all over the world are shocked and horrified by Thursday’s massacre, which is the culmination of nearly five months of bombings, mass executions, starvation and mass displacement by Israel.

For months, workers and young people have participated in demonstrations all over the world calling for an end to the genocide. But in the face of these protests, the US and other imperialist governments have only doubled down on their support for Israel.

US imperialism is unshakably committed to its support of the Gaza genocide because it is a critical component of the broader war the imperialist powers are waging in the Middle East. Seeking to dominate and subjugate Iran as part of an effort to control the oil-rich region, the United States has carried out waves of attacks in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, while Israel has carried out strikes inside Lebanon and Syria.

The imperialist onslaught against the Middle East is one component of the global eruption of imperialist war, which is taking ever bloodier forms. This week, French President Emmanuel Macron raised the prospect of deploying NATO troops to fight Russia in Ukraine—in effect proposing a direct shooting war between nuclear-armed opponents—a conflict which could trigger a nuclear exchange whose death toll would be in the millions or even billions.

The fight against the Gaza genocide must be waged as a struggle against the imperialist governments that are enabling it and dragging the world into the inferno of world war. This requires the fusion of the growing movement against the Gaza genocide with the movement of the working class in the struggle for socialism.

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

1 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

After nine days under the rubble a family emerged relatively well, though skin and bones, but in a daze, not believing they are still alive.

They were finally rescued by the civil defense team in Al Zaitoun neighborhood in east Gaza team after Israeli warplanes pulverized their home, reducing it into rubble and wreckage.

The 10-year-old Ahmed Naim and four members of his family were finally pulled out in an extremely delicate operation after a grueling rescue under heavy Israeli bombardment of the neighborhood.

Although tired and hungry, the family finally made it above ground and saw the light but little Ahmad had to be rushed to hospital because of his emaciated condition. He was quickly wrapped in foil.

https://twitter.com/swilkinsonbc/status/1763244670610452628

The Naim family is one of the lucky ones with many wondering how did they make it alive after nine days of no water or food, trapped between the wreckage in long blacks days and nights.

In this Israeli onslaught that began soon after 7 October on the people of Gaza thousands are missing all over the Strip because of the 24-hour bombardment that amounts to a plausible genocide as termed by the International Court of Justice.

The Gaza authorities estimate the number of those killed and remain under the rubble is thought to be at least 8000 though the figures are deemed to be higher because of the extent of the bombing that amount to three or four times to that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs.

Very few of the families and individuals are brought out from under the rubble because of the intensity of the shelling and the fact there are no equipment and excavators in Gaza to remove such huge debris.

Israel restarted its onslaught on Al Zaitoun neighborhood on 19 February when Israeli tanks and troops entered back into the area. This is the second concerted attack the neighborhood is being subjected to.

Previously, fighting here took its toll on Israeli soldiers who had to withdraw and regroup after facing intense battles with Palestinian fighters from Izz Al Din Al Qassam and Saraya Al Quds.

This second military campaign means the Israeli soldiers hadn’t combed the area from the Palestinian resistance as previously thought. They are today having another go in fighting them because they also regrouped through the videos of fighting they are putting out.

As well, the Israeli army is admitting daily to the deaths of their soldiers and comments of the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. He admits this Gaza battle is the toughest Israel faced since its 75-year existence and is calling for the enlisting of 7000 more soldiers.

The Israeli army was hoping to move to a third stage of the war which it started on Khan Younis last December but it is still bogged down there and meeting stiff resistance in this southern city and its surroundings. Now, the Israeli army states Khan Younis is the real hub for Hamas fighters.

However, the current fighting in eastern part of Al Zaitoun neighborhood means there is a still long way to go and the resistance, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have the ability to continue fight all over the 365-kilometer Strip now will into the sixth month.

Primitive equipment

After the rescue of the distraught persons, the Palestinian Civil Defense Dept., said in a statement, their effort of rescuing the Naim family was only successful after nine days because of their limited resources and primitive hand equipment.

“After such a long time spent under the soil and rubble, the bodies of the family members were almost skeletons,” Civil Defense officials added.

The video put out by the Civil Defense Unit, shows the rescue team carefully removing the young Ahmad from under the rubble using a rope because of the extent of the wreckage whilst seeking to calm him down at the same time.

Dr Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based writer

2 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Layan Fuleihan

Israel is threatening to carry out a full-scale invasion of Rafah, a tiny section of Gaza where 1.5 million Palestinians are now packed, on March 10. Ahead of the deadline, a global day of protest is scheduled for March 2.

For the past five months, in every part of the globe, millions of people have participated in protest actions. They have been part of one of the largest social movements in living memory, in support of the Palestinian people and against the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza. Now, Israel is threatening to carry out the worst massacre yet: a full-scale invasion of Rafah starting March 10. In response, this solidarity movement is preparing to mobilize in huge numbers in a global day of action on March 2.

Supporters of the Palestinian cause have long argued that Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its 17-year land, air, and sea blockade of Gaza, have turned the enclave into an open-air prison. Over 2 million Gazans are packed into a tiny area closed off to the outside world. As the Israeli military rampaged through the four other governorates of Gaza, 1.5 million Palestinians were driven into Rafah, making the open-air prison even tinier.

This is an area half the size of San Francisco. It is now twice as densely populated as New York City. There is nowhere to hide and nowhere left to flee as the U.S.-supplied Israeli air force bombards Rafah in preparation for a catastrophic ground offensive. With 70 percent of all residential housing in Gaza destroyed and 576,000 Gazans facing outright famine, Israel’s mandatory evacuation orders are nothing more than an empty gesture. Israeli officials know well that the over one million displaced Gazans are not in a physical condition to flee once again.

For the past five months, Israel has massacred Palestinians with bullets, missiles, and bombs, and now are escalating the use of another weapon: hunger. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the 500,000 Palestinians remaining in northern Gaza now face starvation. The UN agency also reported that there have been no aid deliveries to the north of Gaza since January 23. Along the border between Rafah and Egypt, Israel routinely halts all but a few token aid shipments. Meanwhile, its soldiers have facilitated “protests” by far-right activists against aid delivery along the border, giving the authorities cover to deny entry to trucks carrying vital supplies.

A new study by scholars at Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine gives us a horrific preview of what the consequences of an invasion of Rafah under these dire circumstances would look like. Researchers found that up to 86,000 Palestinians would die in the onslaught over the course of six months. Many of these would be so-called excess deaths—people dying of starvation, preventable disease, and other causes present only because of the war.

Fearing the unprecedented global outrage that would come with an all-out Rafah invasion, some politicians like EU foreign affairs head Josep Borrell have felt compelled to state their opposition. This is an important crack in the alliance between Western powers and Israel. If Israel instead becomes mainly a liability that damages U.S. standing in the world by virtue of its extreme abuses, then it could be abandoned by its sponsors just like the South African apartheid regime was at the end of the 1980s.

However, the true will of these politicians to protect Palestinians in Rafah should also be questioned. Joe Biden, for example, says that he would only support an invasion if there were “a credible plan” to protect civilians. One must ask how civilian life could ever be protected when bombing an area with 60,000 people per square mile, hundreds of thousands of whom have only the cloth of a tent to shield them. The only way to protect Palestinian civilians would be to demand Israel end its assault on Gaza and cut off military aid. This financial support totals $3.8 billion a year from the United States and has only increased during these months of escalated genocide. Instead, Biden and the politicians in Congress are trying to send an additional $14 billion more to Israel. Far from dissuading Israel, the U.S. wants to send money so that Israel can take its war even further.

Negotiations Without Negotiating

Even though the Israeli forces have been unable to defeat the Palestinian resistance after over four months of full-scale assault, the Netanyahu government is already hatching schemes to impose a permanent military dictatorship on the occupied Gaza territory. On February 23, Netanyahu presented a plan that envisions total Israeli control over Gaza indefinitely, with the help of unnamed “local officials.” The Israeli military would have total freedom of movement throughout Gaza to terrorize Palestinians at will. The Biden administration’s counterproposal to install a version of the deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority in Gaza is still a total negation of Palestine’s right to self-determination.

Israeli officials, including members of far-right parties serving in Netanyahu’s cabinet, have openly articulated their dream of the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and their replacement by Jewish-only settlements. A conference held in December attended by 11 members of the Israeli cabinet and 15 members of Parliament even went so far as to propose a map of where 21 of these settlements would be located.

Meanwhile, in the latest round of negotiations Israel has still refused to meet any of the demands of the Palestinian resistance groups. The latest proposal sent to Hamas outlines a plan for a temporary and partial pause that provides no framework for permanent ceasefire and maintains Israeli control over large parts of the territory—non-starters in any serious talks. In this context, Biden’s promise of a ceasefire by next Monday appears to be an attempt to increase pressure on Hamas to accept the obviously unacceptable proposal and evade condemnation from his own constituents.

The U.S.-Israeli position has never experienced a defeat in the arena of public opinion as it is experiencing now, and the pressure of mass mobilizations has been a major factor in this defeat. As the threat of a full-scale invasion of Rafah grows closer, it is clear to activists that this is a moment when mobilization can have an even more critical impact, and pressure on the defenders of genocide can prevent this nightmare from becoming a reality. The Palestinian people have displayed the most courageous resistance and determination in the face of the brutal U.S.-Israeli genocidal assault. Generation after generation, Palestinians have kept up the fight to return to their homeland. Now, the people of the world stand with them like never before. The March 2 global demonstrations will be a powerful expression of this sentiment.

Layan Fuleihan is a popular educator and organizer. She is the Education Director of The People’s Forum and an editor of 1804 Books in New York City.

2 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

The Israeli genocide in Gaza will be remembered as the moral collapse of the West.

As soon as the Israeli war began, following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7, every moral or legal frame of reference that Washington and its western allies supposedly held dear was suddenly dropped. Western leaders rushed to Israel, one after the other, offering military, political and intelligence support – along with a blank check to rightwing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals to torment the Palestinians.

The likes of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, went as far as joining Israel’s first war council meeting, so that he could take part in the discussion which directly resulted in the Gaza genocide.

“I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew,” he said on October 12. The interpretation of these words is disturbing, no matter how it is spun, but it also ultimately means that Blinken has lost all credibility as an American, as a politician or even as a fair-minded human being.

His boss, President Joe Biden, as if in an infinite loop, has been, for years, repeating that “You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist”. Indeed, he has lived up to his maxim, declaring, time and again, “I am a Zionist”. Indeed, he is.

Like many other US and western officials and politicians, the US President abandoned international and humanitarian laws altogether, even the law of his own country. The Leahy Law “prohibits the US Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity.” Instead, he, like Blinken, subscribed to tribal affiliation and ideological notions, which simply added fuel to the fire.

Though “protected persons” under international law, Palestinians seem dispensable, in fact, irrelevant to the point that their collective death appears critical for Israel to regain its ‘deterrence’, and to protect itself, in the words of Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, against the “human animals” of Gaza.

If there is a stronger word than hypocrisy, one would have used it. But, for now, it would have to suffice.

At the beginning of the war, many rightly drew a parallel between the West’s reaction to Gaza and their enraged response to the war in Ukraine. However, as the death toll grew, this comparison seemed inadequate. Over 12,000 children have been killed in Gaza in 140 days of war, compared to 579 in the two-year Russia-Ukraine war.

Yet, when the EU Foreign Policy Chief, Josep Borrell, was asked, point blank, in an Al-Jazeera interview on November 20 about the violations of international law in Gaza, he offered two completely different answers. “I am not a lawyer,” he said, when the legality of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza were questioned. When the interviewer shifted to talk about Al-Aqsa Flood, Borrell had no qualms about the issue. “Yes, we consider that a war crime, for killing civilians in this apparent way without any reason,” he said.

This episode has not been repeated often in the US media, simply because few mainstream media journalists are bothered or, more accurately, dare to question Israel’s grisly behavior in the Gaza Strip.

However, when such opportunities arose, the flagrant hypocrisy was impossible to hide. Marvel, for example, at Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US State Department, in response to rape allegations in both Gaza and Israel. When he was asked, on February 18, about allegations of rape by Israeli soldiers of Palestinian women in Gaza, his answer was that the US has urged Israel to “thoroughly and transparently investigate credible allegations”.

Compare this to his response to a question about unverifiable allegations of sexual assaults made by Palestinians against Israelis, although debunked even by Israel’s own media. “They’ve committed rape. We have no reason at all to doubt those reports,” he said at a press conference on December 4.

Such examples are produced daily by hundreds of western leaders, top officials and media organizations. Even now, when the death toll has broken all records of brutality in recent human history, they still speak of Israel’s “right to defend itself”, willfully ignoring the fact that Israel has forfeited this right as soon as it engaged in this prolonged aggression, starting in 1948.

Indeed, international law on the rules of wars and military occupation is situated within a framework – notably laid out by the Fourth Geneva Convention – that exists to defend the rights of the occupied, not the right of the Occupier.

This time-honored truth is obvious to the vast majority of humanity, save Washington and a few others.

As dozens of envoys from around the world testified before the International Court of Justice from February 19 to 26, protesting Israel’s horrific violence, protracted occupation and racial system of apartheid, the US sent its envoy to the highest Court in the world to lobby for something else entirely.

With the ironic title of “Acting legal adviser for the US State Department”, Richard Visek bizarrely urged the ICJ to ignore international law altogether. “The Court should not find that Israel is legally obligated to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from Occupied Territory,” he said.

For far too long, but especially since October 7, Western governments, starting with the US, have violated every last set of ethics, morality and laws that they themselves developed, drafted, promoted, even imposed on the rest of the world for many decades. Currently, they are practically dismantling their own laws, and the very ethical standards that led to their formation.

Now that some western leaders have begun to feel increasingly uncomfortable as the enormity of the Gaza genocide unfolds, a few, though bashfully, are declaring that Netanyahu may be ‘going too far’. Even so, not even an outright admission of responsibility would erase the fact that they are active participants in Netanyahu’s killing campaign.

When all is said and done, the blood of the horrifyingly high number of Palestinian victims will be shared equally between Tel Aviv, Brussels, London, Sidney and all other genocide apologists. A crime of this magnitude will never be forgotten or forgiven.

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

2 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Left to its own devices, Israel would never grant Palestinians their freedom.

In the past, some, whether ignorantly or not, claimed that peace in Palestine can only be achieved through ‘unconditional negotiations’.

This mantra was also championed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he cared enough to pay lip service to the ‘peace process’ and other US-originated fantasies. Back then, he spoke about his readiness to hold unconditional negotiations, though constantly arguing that Israel does not have a peace partner.

All of this was, of course, ‘doublespeak’. What Netanyahu and other Israelis were, in fact, saying is that Israel should be freed from any commitment to international law, let alone international pressure. Worse, by declaring that Israel has no Palestinian peace partner, the Israeli government has essentially canceled the hypothetical and ‘unconditional negotiations’ before they even took place.

For years – in fact, for decades – Israel was allowed to perpetuate such nonsense, empowered, of course, by the total and unconditional support of Washington and its other Western allies.

In an environment where Israel receives billions of dollars of US-Western aid, and where it grew to become a thriving technological hub, let alone one of the world’s largest weapons exporters, Tel Aviv simply had no reason to end its occupation or to dismantle its racist apartheid in Palestine.

But things must change now. The genocidal Israeli war in Gaza should completely alter our understanding, not only of the tragic reality underway in Palestine, but of past misunderstanding as well. It should be made clear that Israel never had any intentions of achieving a just peace, ending its colonialism in Palestine, that is, the expansion of illegal settlements or granting Palestinians an iota of rights.

To the contrary, Israel has been planning to carry out a genocide against the Palestinians all along.

Israel has already carried out terrible war crimes against Palestinians, during the Nakba in 1947-48, and in successive wars, ever since. Each crime, large or small, was always accompanied by a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Over 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed when Israel was established on the ruins of Palestine 76 years ago. An additional 300,000 were ethnically cleansed during the Naksa, the war and ‘setback’ of 1967.

Throughout the years, mainstream Western media did its best to completely hide the Israeli crimes, or minimize their impact, or blame someone else entirely for them. This process of shielding Israel remains in place to this day, even when tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October 7 and when the majority of Gaza, including its hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, civilian homes and shelters have been erased.

Considering all of this, anyone who still speaks of ‘unconditional negotiations’ – especially those conducted under the auspices of Washington – is, frankly, only doing so to help Israel escape international legal and political accountability.

Luckily, the world is waking up to this fact and, hopefully, this awakening will mature sooner rather than later, as Israeli massacres in Gaza continue to claim hundreds of innocent lives every single day.

This collective realization that Israel must be stopped through international measures is also accompanied by an equally critical realization that the US is not an honest peace broker. In fact, it never was.

To appreciate the ruinous role of the US in this so-called conflict, just marvel at this fact. While practically every country that participated with a legal opinion and a political position in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) public hearings from February 19 to the 26, formulated its position based on international law, the US did not.

“The Court should not find that Israel is legally obligated to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from occupied territory,” the acting legal adviser for the US State Department, Richard Visek, embarrassingly said on February 21.

76 years after the Nakba and following 57 years of military occupation, the US legal position remains committed to defending the illegality of Israel’s conduct throughout Palestine.

Compare the above stance to the rounded, courageous and legally grounded position of almost every country in the world, especially of the over 50 countries which requested to speak at the ICJ hearings.

China, whose words, and actions seem far more consistent with international law than many Western nations, especially now, went even further. “In pursuit of the right to self-determination, Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is (an) inalienable right well founded in international law,” Chinese representative Ma Xinmin told the ICJ on February 22.

Unlike the cliched and non-committal position of the likes of UK Foreign Minister, David Cameron, on the need to start an “irreversible progress” towards an independent Palestinian state, the Chinese position is arguably the most comprehensive and realistic articulation.

Ma linked self-determination to liberation struggle, to sovereignty, to the inalienable rights of people, which are all consistent with international laws and norms. In fact, it is these very principles that have led to the liberation of numerous countries in the Global South.

Considering that Israel has no intention to free Palestinians from the grip of apartheid and military occupation, the Palestinian people have had no other option but to resist.

The question now is, will the international community continue to defy the US position in words only, or will it formulate a new approach to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, thus bringing it to an end by any means necessary?

In his statement to the ICJ on February 19, British barrister Philippe Sands, who is a member of team Palestine, offered a roadmap on how the international community can force Israel to end its occupation: “The right of self-determination requires that UN Member States bring Israel’s occupation to an immediate end. No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No contribution to forcible actions. No money. No arms. No trade. No nothing.”

Indeed, it is now time to turn words into actions, especially when thousands of children are being killed for no fault of their own but for being born Palestinian.

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

2 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Fra Hughes

800 years the Irish have fought a genocidal British occupation .

Eight centuries of ethnic cleansing,land clearances,massacres,starvation,colonisation and a brutal military oppression.

Sucessive generations of Irish men and women ,boys and girls have fought clandestinely and openly to liberate Ireland from foreign imperialist control.

Ireland was Britains first conquest.

The British Empire went on to occupy and at times colonise approximately three quarters of the worlds land mass and citizenry.

Australia,Canada,NewZealand, North America,South Africa, Egypt, India,China to name just a few.

The only difference between the British occupation of Ireland and the Zionist occupation of Palestine is one of time and scale.

Ireland endured a British imposed Famine.

In 1847 the ‘potatoe blight’ destroyed a large percentage of the harvest leading to a shortage of a basic food staple and a subsequent increase in prices.

Ireland having been invaded centuries before was now a land of tenants ruled by absentee land lords.Sections of British aristocracy owned large swaves of Irish land stolen through military occupation.

The Irish were disposessed of their homes and farms and forced to become almost indentured slaves ,tilling the land and raising cattle only for the profits of their labour to be extracted for the largess of a foreign occupier who enacted laws to oppress the indugenous population while protecting the invader.

One law for the occupied a separate law for the occupier.

Two million died or emigrated.This is why there are Irish communitues all over the globe.

54 million North Americans claim to be of Irish descent.

The Irish people wers deliberately starved.

Hunger and famine were used as a weapon of war to end ‘ The Irish Question’ at the heart of British politics.

Those who resisted occupation were murdered imprisoned or deported as Felons to Australia, the Americas and the Carribean.

Massacres,land theft,colonisation,famine,imprisonment,ethnic cleansing.These were the weapons of the oppressor.

This is the fate of all people who live under occupation.

This is Irelands history.A legacy of suffering before partial liberation.

People in Ireland support the people of Palestine.That is a fact.

There is a moral imperative on all people who are suffering or have suffered under  foreign occupation or colonisation to support each other.

Ireland gained partial independence in1922 when Britain partially withdrew from 26 of Irelands 32 counties.

This resulted in the Irish civil war were those opppsed to partition were then attacked with British guns and British artillary being operated by their former comrades.

Fratricide, imprisonment torture and summary executions once used as tactics of war  by the oppressor were adopted  by pro partition Irishmen onto the inheritors of the ideals of a fully independent soverign Irish Republic.

In 1969 a new generation of oppressed Irish people in the British  created state of   Northern  Ireland fought to reunify the country.After 30 years of

Struggle a prece deal was agreed between the protangonist.The Irish Republican Movement The British Government The Irish Government and the counter revolutionary death squads armed and directed by British intelligence alongside their locally recruited merecenary forces.

Through out all those years of armed political resistance the Irish Republican Movement supported their comrades in Palestine.

From the Fayedeen through the PLO to the PA.

Now in N Ireland history has been made by the selection for the first time in the countries history an Irish Republican is now First Minister

A party that I have supported all my life is now in government.

Irish reunification is only now a matter time.

Sadly the Irish Republican Movement in the form of Sinn Fein is no longer a radical Republican party.

It is a shallow shadow of its former glory.

Now a Nationalist constitutional party it has embraced the establishment and the trappings of power and although still endorsed by many it has abandoned its revolutionary roots and embraced neo liberalism.

There is a growing chorus in Ireland demanding that Irish politicians do not observe the traditional St Patricks day celebrations at the White House on March 17 2024.

While Shame Fein party members and elected representatives north and south attend and even organise/ control some of these rallies calling for a ceasefire they have publicly asserted their intention to go to Washington .

While Shame Fein and other corporate endorsed Irish politicians drown there shamrock alongside genocide Joe, while posing for selfies,Palestinians will be drowning in their own blood or suffocating slowly to death under the rubble, as the death toll rises under the bombardment of American imperialist bombs remember the treachery of Sinn Fein.

It is not the bombs of our enemies that hurt us the most but the duplicity of our friends and the treachery of their deeds.

Fra Hughes is a Belfast based Palestine solidarity activist

3 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Maung Zarni

On 17 February, Johan Galtung finally achieved his own personal peace.

Galtung died in a hospital in an Oslo suburb, in his native Norway in that wintery morning at 8 am, according to a special note from his devoted friend and closest associate Antonio Rosa who informed us the members of Transcend, Galtung’s peace activist network globally.

Tragically, the just peace for the oppressed which he so brilliantly explained in his decades-long scholarly works has remained ever elusive in the World Order managed primarily by corporate Men and Women of Profits, or “masters of mankind,” as Adam Smith called the 18th century English merchants with their outsized influence on the British state, and the corporate-subservient politicians who don’t view peace as an essential value for in running a state or formulating policies, much less “a way of life,” as Galtung would put it.

Exhibit A: What I call US-Israel joint genocide in Gaza, and the latter’s continuing colonial occupation of Palestine, which the western media misleadingly characterises as “conflict” or “war”. (Other examples abound, including Sudan, Syria, Myanmar, India, USA, and so on).

The old colonial Britain sowed, wittingly or not, the seeds of violence on the soil of Palestine, and the new imperial power of USA, which supplanted the former, picked up where the British Raj left off. Colonialism and imperialism were major topics which had concerned Galtung, who tasted the 5-years of life under the Nazi occupation of his native Norway, as much as me.

I am sharing my reflection on this intellectual and moral giant with whom I had the privilege of learning from and working with in the context of my own country Burma’s unceasing civil war, a legacy of 120-years of the British imperialist rule.

“America? I love the Republic, but I hate the Empire,” said Johan Galtung, in his typically calm and confident voice responding to a question from the audience at his public lecture at St Antony’s College, Oxford. The year was 2007. This time Galtung was sharing his thoughts on the sustainability of the empire which, at the end of the Second World War, supplanted the British Empire and turned it into its poodle, namely the United States.

His lecture was on what he predicted as the coming fall of the United States as the global hegemon or Empire.

My friend and teacher in agrarian studies Barbara Harriss-White, then Head of Oxford University Department of International Development organized and hosted the renowned sociologist of peace and practitioner in the art of mediation, as the department’s distinguished speaker for its annual public lecture. Previous annual lecture was delivered by Noam Chomsky. I was an instigator behind Galtung’s lecture.

First a brief but relevant detour about my link to Galtung.

In the summer of 2003, I first met Professor Galtung in the home of my adopted American sister Marilyn Langlois, at Richmond Point, by San Francisco Bay, a short drive from where US oil giant Chevron, her late scientist father’s employer, is headquartered.

Both of us came from families – one Burmese and the other American – with ties to violence, corporations and/or militarism, which may help explain our shared concern for peace and our high regards for Galtung, “the father of peace studies”. [On violence, Marilyn’s maternal aunt from Berkeley was Oppenheimer’s secretary at the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos during the World War II. And my extended family back in Mandalay have served in what has become a genocidal military of Burma over 3-generations since its inception under WWII Japan’s Fascist patronage].

As Barbara entertained suitable invitees for the post-Chomsky annual lecture for that year, I suggested “What about Galtung?” It was an easy sell, given how cross-cutting and influential Galtung’s work had been. During his long life of 93-years, Galtung had authored over 150 books in fields as diverse as peace and peace-making, security politics, violence, alternative defence, macro history, mathematics, peace journalism, future research, social science methodology, world order issues, economics and theory of science.

The public event was held at the main lecture theatre at St Antony’s College, Oxford. St Antony’s has a reputation among overseas students as an Establishment place, or more accurately, a recruiting ground for UK’s security services.

Provocatively titled something like the end of US Empire, Galtung’s lecture attracted the attention of some of the Establishment intellectuals from the college, including Timothy Garton Ash, Director of European Studies, who walked in the corridors of Euro-American powers. Several years later he appeared on Democracy Now! With Amy Goodman to explain his “the fall of US Empire” prediction.

I don’t remember exactly what the diabolical question which Garton Ash asked which solicited Galtung’s “America?, I love the Republic, but I hate the Empire” response.

But suffice it to say, Galtung was not simply a technocratic theorist or expert on mediation in conflicts. His scholarship, public engagement and mediation efforts were transparently and uniformly anchored in his deeply held anti-imperialism, East or West.

In the lecture, Galtung boldly predicted the end of the US Empire. Ever the mathematician, he even came up with which decade (s), Pax Americana would end. In that connection, he reminded, with apparent pride, the audience that he was one of a handful of Soviet observers who predicted the fall of the USSR.

Galtung was born in the inter-war years in Norway, and had a taste of the Nazi occupation with the Quisling regime as its local Yo-Yo, which “invited” Hitler in. At 12, he saw his father arrested by the Gestapo in Norway.

Those in the Cold War West had typically characterised only the USSR, or “the evil empire,” as Ronald Reagan put it in his speech in West Berlin several years before the wall eventually came down in November 1989. They were generally taken aback when someone portrays the United States as a similarly evil empire, with millions of corpses on its track – not even in the closet.

The late Harold Pinter, the British Nobel Laureate in Literature, who, from his death bed, devoted half of his acceptance lecture Art, Truth and Politics to urging the world to start taking stock of the worldwide crimes of the United States while lamenting the absence of such stocktaking.

Indeed, towards other states, the United States typically conducts itself as a neo-totalitarian global hegemon, especially post-Cold War, with its signature “my way or highway” approach in world affairs, for instance, in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza wherein even the fractured world come together to end the carnage.

As late as 21 February, 4 days after Galtung’s passing, the United States vetoed, for the 3rd time in 3 months, the Security Council resolution which called for the immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and to let the population on the verge of starvation eat – and live.

Galtung’s razor-sharp insights from 1960’s about the two types of violence, direct (person A physically harms person B, for instance) and indirect, that is built-in to the social/structural relations, remain perfectly applicable to the Gaza under Israel’s officially declared “total siege”. On the act of starving populations, Galtung writes, “the important point here is that if people are starving when this is objectively avoidable, then violence is committed, regardless of whether there is a clear subject-action-object relation, as during a siege yesterday …. (p.171).”

A decade before the president of the World Bank Dr Robert Mc Namara, the failed head of the Pentagon during the Vietnam War, announced “poverty” as the bank’s priority policy at the conference held in Nairobi – because American strategists identified “mass poverty” as the contributing factor behind the appeal of egalitarian ideologies such as socialism and communism – Galtung was developing his idea of multiple experiences of poverty as “structural violence”. In 1969, he published his seminal essay, framing, in effect, poverty as “structural violence”.

The American officials still don’t get it when they talk about poverty (as income).

[For the advanced understanding of poverty see my old friend and housemate Sabina Alkire’s work on poverty as multiple dimensional beyond income @ Alkire-Foster Method | OPHI . So I was really delighted that Sabina had co-hosted a sumptuous Burmese for Johan and Fumiko during their brief stay in town for the QEH lecture. I cooked the meal, and Sabina baked the desert.]

In a similar vein, Washington again mis-identified “poverty” – not its ruthless, exploitative, and racist foreign policies – in the Middle East (and the greater Islamic world) as a driver of “terrorism” after 9/11.

In his paper entitled “Violence, Peace and Peace Research”, published in the Journal of Peace Research in 1969, Galtung introduced this concept of structural violence as “a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.”

Galtung explained how this violence – “without the actors” – operate to harm people in society. He writes:

“there may not be any person who directly harms another person in the structure. The violence is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances. Resources are unevenly distributed, as when income distributions are heavily skewed, literacy/education unevenly distributed, medical services existent in some districts and for some groups only, and so on.’ Above all the power to decide over the distribution of resources is unevenly distributed. The situation is aggravated further if the persons low on income are also low in education, low on health, and low on power – as is frequently the case because these rank dimensions tend to be heavily correlated due to the way they are tied together in the social structure.”

On the real-life application of Galtung’s conceptual frameworks to economics and the decades-old “conflict” in the Palestine, Sydney University Professor Emeritus Stuart Rees wrote an eloquent tribute entitled “Death of a Giant for Peace: The Johan Galtung Legacy”, published on 29 February.

In his final months, Galtung must have been pained by what he witnessed virtually the total siege of Gaza’s 2.3 million people that Israel has been perpetrating both types of violence on population under siege, or “a nation under occupation”, as the father of the term genocide Raphael Lemkin would put it.

Post-Galtung world has most certainly witnessed Israel’s deadly mix of direct slaughter by sub-machine gun fire and the slow slaughter by starvation. Fortunately for Galtung, his death spared him the deep pain of knowing that the IDF tanks and soldiers, fired on Gazans who rushed to a rare aid convoy in order to get “flour” to feed families on the verge of famine. Israel’s direct and deliberate violence killed over 100 instantly, while having left 700 half-starved Gaza wounded.

As the world’s condemnations of genocidal violence got louder, all that the United States as the most influential financier of Israeli state terrorism is prepared to do is to offer the air-dropping of aid – not demand immediate ceasefire, for the besieged population of children, women, the wounded. Gazans will thus live another day, before the next round of Israel’s aerial bombardment or tank and artillery fire.

Galtung certainly saw through the fog of liberal propaganda – that US is a benign “empire of liberty” – that has, perhaps until 7 October, pervaded the views of the educated classes in USA and the Anglo-phone world, as well as the post-Holocaust Europe. As Galtung Q and A with Oxford’s Timonthy Garton Ash indicated he did not suffer such fools who bought into the Pavlovian view of benevolent Pax Americana with its “soft power”, spreading “European values of Enlightenment” such as democracy, human rights and liberal humanism globally.

Through his penetrating eyes, he saw the ugly workings of the United States, the one which, in reality, was operating behind “a million bayonets”. That was how George Orwell characterized his employer, the British Empire, in his 1st ever novel “Burmese Days.”

Certainly, Galtung did not fail to see the fact that, with unmatched war budget – officially “defence spending” – approaching one trillion $ per year, Washington maintains 750 military bases in 80 countries worldwide, including in his wife Fumiko Nishimura’s native Japan. Besides, Galtung would most definitely know that his native Norway was (and still is) a supplier, among other things, of certain Made-in-Norway components to US F-16 fighter-bombers. His fellow Norwegian humanitarian and professor of medicine Dr Mads Gilbert was openly exposing Norway’s role in the United States direct violence around the world. At the Students Peace Conferences held at the University of Tromso in the early 2000’s, I heard Professor Gilbert speak on the Norwegian contributions to global violence while giving out Nobel Peace prizes annually.

In our numerous conversations and exchanges, Galtung talked, with detectable distaste, of the political class that reign in his country as simply subservient to the diktats of the United States.

As if the political representatives on the Nobel Committee in Oslo reciprocated Galtung’s disdain for the Norwegian subservience to Washington, they had ignored the repeated nominations of Galtung for the prize while peace activists and scholars around the world sought out Galtung, the guru, his ideas as well as his company.

Galtung exuded eternal optimism and bubbling energy, “eternal sunshine,” to put it poetically. A situation as dire and seemingly intractable as Palestine, Galtung would talk about his positive vision wherein all the Arabs and the Israeli can live in peace and equality. Not only was Galtung intellectually towering, but he was also a physically towering figure, with characteristic disarming laughs and smiles.

The last time I saw him was when he was holding Tun Mahathir Global Peace Chair at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur in 2014. Alongside the moral and intellectual giants, including Gideon Levy of Israel, Denis Halliday of Ireland (who resigned from his position as UN Coordinator in Saddam’s Iraq, to protest the US sanctions that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children), Galtung spoke at the Conference which the former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad organized and hosted designed to mobilize public opinion to “criminalize war” – all wars.

We were in Rangoon together in the fall of 2005. It was during my short-lived, unsuccessful attempt at Track II mediation in my country of birth where we had reached a stalemate between Aung San Suu Kyi leadership and the ruling military regime. I arranged a one-on-one meeting for him to talk to the 3^rd ranking Burmese general, who headed the country’s military intelligence services, about the possibilities of peace from TRANSCEND perspective.

The then British Ambassador Vicky Bowman put the Galtungs up in the ambassador’s residence colonially named “Balmoral” across the old War Office on Shwedagon Pagoda Road. At her arrangement, Galtung was also meeting with the country’s peace NGOs, run by a group of national minority representatives.

The Burmese military junta wanted to know if “the professor is our friend?” But Galtung was no friend of any party in conflict, little did they know. He was there to help mediate the conflict. The generals were seriously disturbed that Galtung would go and talk to the ethnic equality rights advocates. His mission was to talk everyone in the conflict. So, he naturally spent a day with those who wanted to rebuild the post-independence Burma of multiple ethnic nations as a “federalist” entity where every group had equal representation and an equal say in the way the country was governed. Paying lip service to “federalism”, the junta viewed any version of Burma other than effectively “unitary state”, as a formula for its disintegration.

Although 30-odd years senior to me in age and wisdom, I remember well how appreciative, eager and even respectful Galtung was in our interactions which involved him learning the specificities of Burma’s conflicts, which he wished to help resolve. Like all great educators, Galtung was not a one-way street “know-it-all” guru. Despite him being feted internationally as the “guru”, he was a lifelong learner and was humble enough to know that he still needed to learn from others, something that deeply impressed me.

Galtung made unparalleled intellectual and practical contributions to the advancement of our understanding of peace, its social objectives and the conditions for peace, in terms of our global understanding of such an elusive goal. The Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee’s refusal to recognize Galtung’s contributions to world peace and peace activism, or understanding of peace, as such, was both disappointing and disgraceful. That is, if we even take a glance at the list of the committee’s ignominious choices for this most prestigious recognition. Henry Kissinger, Likud’s Menachem Begin (whom Einstein called “terrorist” “Fascist”), Aung San Suu Kyi, Abiy Ahmed, or Barak Obama (with the daily “kill-list” over his White House breakfast table).

The neighbouring Sweden’s Right Livelihoods Foundation did at least honour the Scandinavian guru of peace with its Right Livelihoods Award in 1987. He was in good company with the likes of Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! of USA, the US National Intelligence Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, and the renowned Buddhist teacher and activist Sulak Sivaraksa of Thailand, among others.

A quick Google search will cough up the incredible quantity of Galtung’s writings as well as practical contributions to peace and conflict research, including the establishment of scholarly journals and institutions including Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), which he founded in 1959 and directed until 1969. After OPRI, he held the world’s first endowed chair in peace studies at his alma mater, the University of Oslo for the following decade. (see the official obituary issued by OPRI here).

Besides his intellectual legacy as “the father of peace studies,” to many of us around the world, who see (just) peace, not simply as a political objective, but as a value to live and act upon, Galtung had gifted us with TRANSCEND Media Services, which collate important and thoughtful writings on peace and world affairs from variously anti-imperialist perspectives.

Naturally, on 17 February afternoon Antonio Carlos da Silva Rosa, Galtung’s friend and Portugal-based Editor and Compiler of TRANSCEND News circulars, sent out the sad news that Galtung died at 8 am at a hospital in Oslo.

I wrote on my social media platform after reading Antonio’s sad and brief announcement.

I know that many of his friends, students, colleagues and acquaintances worldwide who had the privilege and honour of knowing Johan Galtung share my sentiment. One practical way to honour this great man would be to ensure that we keep his TRANSCEND network, with all its various components, alive through our own intellectual and financial contributions.

Dr Maung Zarni is a scholar, educator and human rights activist with 30-years of involvement in Burmese political affairs, Zarni has been denounced as an “enemy of the State” for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide.

4 March 2024

Source: forsea.co