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By Marcy Winograd

[CODEPINK and other peace activists outside the German Consulate in Los Angeles/Ryan Wentz — CODEPINK]

From coast to coast, CODEPINK delegations protested at German diplomatic missions in support of Nicaragua’s case against Germany at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for complicity in Israel’s genocide that has killed or maimed over 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

On the first day of ICJ proceedings, April 8, 2024, in Nicaragua v. Germany, pickets and letter deliveries took place in DC, NYC, LA, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Houston, Miami and Seattle. Demonstrators echoed Nicaragua’s requests of the World Court to order Germany and the United States to stop supplying weapons to Israel. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US supplies 69% of Israel’s arsenal; Germany supplies 30% of the weaponry.

Benjamin Alvarez Gruber, US correspondent for Deutsche Welle (DW), state-owned German state-television, covered the story at the DC German embassy, where CODEPINK organizers Medea Benjamin, Julia Norman and Palestinian American Motaz Salim led the delegation. Participants headed into the embassy office to deliver a “stop the arms, restore UNRWA aid” letter from CODEPINK. “We were fed a lot of formality,” said Norman, summarizing the embassy’s response for the crowd, “there needs to be a lot of investigations … investigations take a lot of time … there’s no way to prove yet that war crimes are occurring.”

“Shame, shame,” cried the crowd outside the embassy.

Norman continued, “While there was a sense of grief in that room, there was no sense of urgency.”

This despite the threat of mass starvation looming over Gaza as a result of Israel’s refusal to allow food, water and medicine into the densely populated coastal strip.

“It also leads me to believe that they are in total support of what’s going on,” Salim added.

In Los Angeles, an angry defender of Israel’s genocide confronted a protester before the action began, and when it looked like an assault might be imminent, building security called the police. Five officers responded, lining up patrol cars in front of the consulate building, as fifty picketers-some driving three hours to participate in the protest — chanted in front of the office building housing the German consulate on the fifth floor. Palestinian American Mirvette Judeh, whose family is from the West Bank, told the crowd it was the power of the people’s protests that propelled 40 members of Congress, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to sign a letter to President Biden calling for a halt to weapons shipments to Israel. When it came time to deliver the CODEPINK letter to German Consul General Andrea Sasse, the building security guard allowed only one member of the delegation, Judeh, up to the fifth floor.

While the doors to the consulate had earlier swung open to visitors, Mirvette said they were shut tight when she arrived with the letter for the German Consul General. She knocked. The door opened. “I said could I speak to someone about Germany needing to stop funding the genocide and ethnic cleansing, and providing weapons and support to Israel, and they said, ‘If you keep talking, we’re not going to deliver the letter.’

Later the Israel defender returned with three menacing others spewing four-letter words, itching for a fight and videotaping protesters.

Three Dubai women visiting relatives in San Diego drove three hours to participate in the protest. “We are forbidden from protesting in Dubai,” said the women, CODEPINK Instagram followers anxious to participate in another action.

In San Francisco, twenty picketers gathered in front of the German consulate in the city’s posh neighborhood of Pacific Heights, where CODEPINK participants took turns reading the letter, discussing the genocide, and attempting to go inside the consulate to deliver the letter. “The security guard asked the consulate staff if we could come in and the staff declined to allow that, but the guard took the letter inside for us and we confirmed that the staff received it and would pass it along to the Consul,” said Cynthia Papermaster, organizer of the delegation.

In Chicago, a 10-member delegation of Muslims and Jews met for over an hour with Michael Ahrens, German Consul General, who began the meeting saying Israel had a right to defend itself but listened intently and took notes while participants told heartbreaking stories from both Gaza and the West Bank.

In New York City, the German mission’s First Secretary Daniel Drescher came down to the street to meet with the CODEPINK delegation and receive their letter. Participant Leigha Gillespea spoke of the harm resulting from Germany’s UNRWA defunding, which was based on testimony now debunked as false confessions made under Israeli torture.

The German mission diplomat said no funding had actually been cut because this year’s budget had already been allocated. Gillespea retorted, “Then why did you announce that you were cutting the funding instead of merely investigating the allegations?”

Delegation organizer Robert Jereski said, “He had no sound answer and clearly understood the damage that Germany’s contribution to the campaign against UNRWA had done. He also had no answer to the disparate response of Germany to Israel’s bald allegations against UNRWA and the ICJ’s finding of plausible genocide, especially where the former had no proof while the decision of the highest court was replete with evidence.”

Imam Catovic, a former diplomat originally from Bosnia, who joined the Code Pink picket, urged the First Secretary to recognizee that Germany’s own history makes it particularly well placed to condemn genocide whenever and wherever is takes place, and that Germany’s guilty conscience should not cloud judgement about what is right, echoing the position of the Jewish activists present that Germany’s policies do not align with Jewish values or safety. They all underscored that a demand to end Palestine suffering is not antithetical to Jewish safety but in fact a requirement for the safety of all people.

In Seattle, a contingent delivered the CODEPINK letter to the honorary consulate, where a staffer welcomed antiwar activists into the office, only to have the Honorary Consul General Uli Fischer,, formerly in the German Air Force and a retired Boeing employee, refuse to meet with them. Nevertheless, participants said they could see through a crack in the door that the Consul General was reading the letter also signed by Veterans for Peace and the Seattle Antiwar Coalition.

In Boston, activists with Massachusetts Peace Action delivered the letter to the German consulate.

The pickets, rallies, and petition deliveries were part of an international call for solidarity with Palestinian-Germans who risk beatings and arrest when they protest Germany’s complicity in Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. Without US and German weapons, Israel’s genocide might well come to an end, sparing the lives of over a million Palestinians uprooted from their homes to struggle with mass starvation.

Marcy Winograd volunteers as the Coordinator of CODEPINK CONGRESS and a co-producer of CODEPINK Radio. She also co-coordinates CODEPINK’s World Court Campaign to support South Africa’s case against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

10 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

https://twitter.com/OnlinePalEng/status/1777035462529417606

This is Israeli destruction. It is indeed graphic content people being killed and immersed in the rubble and debris of their homes. In this war, we’ve become used to seeing human limbs amidst the rubble, the odd arm, foot, face etc. We have become desensitized.

In one case however, the fingers of the hand in between the cracked stones and the edges of cement with a green supple is truly horrifying of what people are going through and experiencing in Gaza. They are being killed while holding the most precious things cherished by them.

Sadly, this could serve as a top image to be shown in the galleries, real content not those drawn by ordinary painters as pure art. This should be termed as “hateful art” or “destructive art” meted out by a godless Israeli war machine.

The people under the rubble might be over 10,000 or more. Nobody really knows. The latest number stands at 7000 but it has not be updated since November according to the New York Times. There has been no accurate figures because of the extent of daily bombing and destruction by Israeli warplanes and tanks from the air, sea and on-ground.

This is a war against unarmed civilians.

Gaza, all of its 364-kilometer has long become a landscape of debris with thousands of countless bodies. These are mainly women and children whose homes has been struck by Israeli one-ton bombs unashamedly supplied by the Americans through their aid program to Israel.

Of the Palestinian lucky few, they have been dug from under the rubble through ordinary hands and simple tools plowing through the debris. Here, there are no cranes, trucks or bulldozers to remove the rubble. There were international calls to bring in crews from Egypt and Jordan back in November but these fell on deaf ears.

But realistically even if heavy equipment were brought in to remove the mass rubble, it would be an near-impossible task. Where would such equipment move between the piles of debris along dug up roads and crater squares of fall down homes, buildings and apartments and would they be able to search for survivors?

Plus, and up until recently, the Israeli war machine have been involved in an around-the-clock bombing with the death toll going up.

If you are bombed below ground in Gaza, the chances were, over the past six months, is that you are still there, dying in a slow painful procedure thanks to the Israelis who have said facetiously everyone in Gaza is a Hamas operative even babies, kids and toddlers.

Last January it was estimated there was 15 million tons of debris in Gaza. But the figure has been long revised by the World Bank. Today Gaza stands on 26 million tons of wreckage and debris.

The United Nations is appalled. “Tragically, an unknown number of people lie under the rubble said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.  And we will not be able to find out the exact number of the people buried underground until there is a complete ceasefire which many take months and years.

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

10 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Can it get any busier?  The World Court, otherwise known as the International Court of Justice, has been swamped by applications on the subject of alleged genocide. The site of interest remains the Gaza Strip, the subject of unremitting slaughter since the October 7, 2023 cross-border attacks by Hamas against Israel.  The retaliation by Israel has been of such brute savagery as to draw the attention of numerous states, including those not directly connected to the conflict.

Given that genocide is a crime of universal jurisdiction abominated by international law, and given the broad application of the UN Genocide Convention intended to suppress and punish it, countries not normally associated with the tormented and blood-drenched relationship between Israel and the Palestinians have taken a keen interest.  South Africa got matters moving with its December application last year seeking a judicial determination that Israel was committing genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, Pretoria has convinced the court to issue two interim orders, one on January 26, and another on March 28.  While the court has yet to decide the issue of whether Israel is culpable for genocide in waging in Gaza, the interim binding orders demand a lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid, the prevention of starvation and famine, and observing the UN Genocide Convention.  These all hint strongly at the unconscionable conduct on the part of the IDF against the civilian populace.

The implications of such findings also go to Israel’s allies and partners still keen to supply it with weapons, weapons parts, and support of a military industrial nature.  Germany has been most prominent in this regard.  In 2023 30% of Israel’s military equipment purchases totalling US$326 million came from Berlin.  The Scholz government has also been a firm public supporter of Israel’s offensive.  “There is only one place for Germany at this time, and that is by Israel’s side,” proclaimed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to German lawmakers on October 12 last year.  Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock curtly stated that “It was not the job of politicians to tell the guns to shut up.”

Baerbock’s remarks were all the more jarring given the 2006 views of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was then serving as Germany’s foreign minister.  With puffed up confidence, he claimed then that Europeans and Germans had played a seminal role in ending the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in “silencing of the guns.”

Cognisant of such a stance, Nicaragua is now taking the South African precedent further by alleging that Germany is complicit in a genocidal enterprise.  While its own human rights record is coarse – the government of Daniel Ortega boasts a spotty record which involves, among other things, the killing of protesters – Nicaragua has form at the ICJ.  Four decades ago, it took the United States to the world court for assisting the counterrevolutionary Contras in their attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government.

Its 43-page submission to the court insists that Germany is responsible for “serious violations of peremptory norms of international law taking place” in Gaza in its failure to prevent genocide “against the Palestinian people” and “contributed” to its commission by violating the Genocide Convention.  It further alleges that Germany failed to comply with humanitarian law principles derived from the Geneva Conventions of 1949, its protocols of 1977 and “intransgressible principles of international law” in failing to “ensure respect for these fundamental norms in all circumstances”.

The application also compacts Israel’s attack on Gaza with “continued military occupation of Palestine”, taking issue with Germany’s alleged “rendering aid or assistance” in maintaining that status quo in the Occupied Territories while “rendering aid or assistance and not preventing the illegal regime of apartheid and the negation of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people.”

Stretches of the Nicaraguan case would make troubling reading.  It notes that “by sending military equipment and now defunding UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] which provides essential support for the civilian population, Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide” and had failed, in any case, “in its obligation to do everything possible to prevent the commission of genocide”.

Such conduct was all the more egregious “with respect to Israel given that Germany has a self-proclaimed privileged relationship with it, which would enable it to usefully influence its conduct.”

With these considerations in mind, the application by Nicaragua argues that Germany is obligated to “immediately” halt its military support for Israel “that may be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes”.  Germany is further asked, not merely to “end its assistance to Israel” but “cooperate to uphold international law and to bring the perpetrators of these atrocities to justice.”

On April 8, the ICJ opened preliminary hearings.  Alain Pellet, representing Nicaragua, argued that “Germany was and is fully conscious of the risk that the arms it has furnished and continues to furnish Israel” could be used in the commission of genocidal acts.  Another legal representative, Daniel Mueller, called the provision of humanitarian airdrops to “Palestinian children, women and men” a “pathetic excuse” given the furnishing of “military equipment that is used to kill and annihilate them”.  Nicaragua’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Carlos José Argüello Gómez, derided Berlin’s seeming inability “to be able to differentiate between self-defence and genocide.”

Berlin’s defence follows on April 9.  A sense of its bitter flavour can be gathered from one of its top legal briefs, Tania von Uslar-Gleichen.  “Germany completely rejects the accusations.  We never did violate the Genocide Convention nor humanitarian law either directly or indirectly.”  Berlin was “committed to the upholding of international law”.

If the defence fails to sway the judges, the case may well chart a line about third party responsibilities on preventing genocide in international humanitarian law.  At this point, the momentum towards some clarity on the point seems inexorable.

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

9 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

 

By Phil Pasquini

Today, the Republic of Nicaragua, a longtime staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, presented its request for Provisional Measures to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague against The Federal Republic of Germany, soliciting the court to halt Germany from supplying weapons to Israel and to restore humanitarian aid to Gaza.

At the same time, Code Pink held rallies presenting letters to eight German consulates in the US and the German Embassy in Washington in support of The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine (ICSGP) as part of their campaign “…to help the Palestinians in Germany to turn up the pressure on the German government in stopping the genocide.”

As a point of reference, Provisional Measures may be issued by “International courts and tribunals…as temporary, urgent orders to protect the rights of parties involved in a dispute, before a final judgment is reached.”

The two-day ICJ public hearing before the court will consist of oral arguments concerning “…alleged violations by Germany of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols, intransgressible principles of international humanitarian law and other norms of general international law in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly the Gaza Strip.”

Nicaragua cited the “extreme emergency” situation in Gaza for the court to review Germany’s “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide…” with “extreme and irreparable prejudice now being suffered by the Palestinian people – in particular the Gazan population.”

Nearly all the weapons being used by the Israeli military to destroy Gaza are being supplied by the US, (69%) and Germany (30%) according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. By providing weapons for use in Gaza, all countries involved are complicit in the ongoing genocide.

Prior to formally presenting the letter to the German consul general, the group took turns reading sections of it aloud at the consulate’s locked front gate to those assembled and those with business at the busy consular building and passersby. The letter addressed support for Nicaragua’s request before the ICJ and called for the resumption of UNRWA humanitarian aid to Gaza whose work has been suspended due to accusations by Israel that UNRWA employees had “confessed” to having collaborated with Hamas. UNRWA has reported, however, that the “confessions” instead had been made due to the use of “torture, waterboarding, beatings and threats to the workers families.”

Cynthia Papermaster of Code Pink presented the group’s letter to a security guard at the consulate who in turn forwarded it to the consulate receptionist. An immediate response was received through the consulate’s street intercom to Papermaster who was assured that it would be forwarded to the consul general for his review.

Over this past weekend it was widely reported that a letter dated April 5 and signed by 40 members of Congress including Nancy Pelosi has called the transfer of additional offensive weapons by the Biden administration to Israel as “unjustifiable.”

The letter was addressed to both President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and in it the signatory expressed their “…shared concern and outrage regarding the recent Israeli airstrike which killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, including an American citizen. We strongly urge you to reconsider your recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike is completed. If this strike is found to have violated US or international law, we urge you to continue withholding these transfers until those responsible are held accountable. We also urge you to withhold these transfers if Israel fails to sufficiently mitigate harm to innocent civilians in Gaza, including aid workers, and if it fails to facilitate – or arbitrarily denies or restricts – the transport and delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”

Report and photo by Phil Pasquini

9 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

“We have been waiting for six months but we have seen nothing, nothing. We are all dying, just constant funerals day after day”

After six full months of genocide the Israeli army has nowhere near achieved its objectives to eradicate Hamas and bring back the hostages. If anything, many of them are feared to be dead through the merciless of the Gaza Strip.

The only objective achieved by Israel is to have bombed the whole of the Gaza into a primal age, mass debris and destruction everywhere where thousands continue to lie dead under the wreckage. The Israeli war on Gaza is mass genocide and ethnic cleansing of ordinary Palestinian civilians that were trying to live ordinary lives.

Without a flinch the Israeli army has killed over 33,000 people, injured over 75,000 and destroyed over 366,000 housing units.

https://t.me/QudsNen/101102

A displaced Palestinian woman recounts the horrors she has endured during the ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza, urging an end to the Israeli genocide as reported by Al Quds Press.

“We are in a state of terror and fear,” she says in a videoclip.

“We can’t bear this anymore, I swear to God, we can’t bear it anymore. For the sake of God, find a solution and put an end to this situation, just for the sake of our children,” she echoes to anyone who cares to listen.

“We keep hearing about the fact there is going to be a truce and a ceasefire, but we keep waiting helplessly from Monday till Thursday, Monday till Thursday, but we haven’t seen anything till now,” the displaced lady adds. She is among the 1.9 million Palestinians out of a Gazan population of 2.3 million, who were forced to leave their homes.

“We have been waiting for six months but we have seen nothing, nothing. We are all dying, just constant funerals day after day,” adding this what has become of us.

“My daughter’s hair falls off every day out of fear. What has she done to deserve this?”

“They [Israeli army] told us to go to the Gaza Valley for our safety, so we came here for safety, but we don’t see any safety here, there is no security. Where is the safety they keep telling us about, there is no safety here. Its God we should trust in, His is the best purveyor,” she hammers in determination.

“Where is America, where are the countries, where are they! We don’t see anyone standing with us at all. No one is with us, but we have all God. He is the best provider,” she narrates.

“They are just bringing us two planes dropping aid on top of our heads. But we don’t want this at all, we don’t. What we want is a ceasefire. This is what we want.”

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

9 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By P.S Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal

“Ruke na jo jhuke na jo

Mite na jo dabe na jo

Hum wo inkalab hai

Julm ka jawab hai

Har garib har shahid

Ka ham he to khawab hai

Ruke na jo…’’

(1^st verse in the old number from ‘Joi Bangladesh’ – a film released in 1971 in India. AAP’s Sanjay Singh and colleague sang this number.)

For the first time in five years, Delhiites were witness to a mass rally at the National Protest Site, Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. About 3000 people participated. Such a large crowd we had seen at Jantar Mantar in June 2017 when people protested against Junaid Khan’s killing. Similar massive protest took place in New Delhi after Operation Blue Star when about 3000 people had assembled!

We attended yesterday’s protest in solidarity. We met two old comrades – who like us were not AAP members; both Gautam and J.P are non party activists. We also met a volunteer who – like us – had been attending Anna Hazare’s protest at Jantar Mantar. Before leaving we had tea and biscuits at our old ‘adda’ – a tea shop on Jantar Mantar pavement.

This protest and the I.N.D.I.A bloc public meeting at Ram Lila Maidan, Delhi a week earlier appear to be a harbinger of a silent wave about to sweep the B.J.P. The protesters at this gathering were relaxed; there was no fear on their faces. On the dais bhajans and revolutionary songs were sung by AAP leaders. The mood of the nation can be gauzed from the rendition of this old song:

“ruke na jo jhuke na jo…”

P.S Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal, Members, PIL Watch Group. Photographs by Shobha.

8 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Norwegian Dr Mads Gilbert says the Israeli army want to eradicate the Palestinian people by destroying their ‘knowledge system’ as in their schools, universities and culture.

https://twitter.com/drmadsgilbert?lang=en

“Did you know the Israeli occupation army has bombed every university in Gaza,” Dr Mads Gilbert, a physician from Norway and a social activist, asks on the X platform.

“All of the universities have been bombed by the Israeli occupation without almost any protests from the western universities, from the western ministries of education and their governments,” he pointed out.

According to the latest OCHA report, he says because of the mass bombings of Gaza 625,000 students have no education while the Israeli army has killed 5,479 students and 261 teachers and professors. This is while 80% of UN and public schools (396 out of 495) have been partially and/or completely destroyed and presently can’t functions.

“…What the Israeli army has done is to eradicate the teaching, training education system and the research system in Gaza and systematically bombed archives, the health information system and all the sources and information about the situation in Palestine.”

Dr Gilbert, an anesthetist and head of emergency medicine department at the University Hospital of North Norway, had long association with Gaza and taught at many of its universities including Al Aqsa and Islamic Universities.

He points out what the Israelis are doing is “epistemicide” and eradicating the people on-the-ground in Gaza including the eradication of knowledge of the indigenous people.

The Israelis want to “crush the universities and schools, crush their [Palestinian] archives, their knowledge, their understanding, their history, their books, their culture, their music” and this is “to get rid of the whole Palestinian people and their history,” Dr Gilbert points out.

“We should not for one single second accept this, and we should demand for our universities to boycott Israeli universities that take part in the eradication of the Palestinian educational systems and their history.”

We should demand from our [western] institutions to they stand up and demand the right to knowledge the right to teaching, the right to have your own history and that means simple boycott of Israeli universities and that don’t protest against the occupation and the destruction in Gaza.

Finally, “if you are a student and university teacher ask yourself: What can you do in your institution to support Palestine and Gaza?

Dr Marwan Asmar is a writer based in Amman covering Middle East affairs

7 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Press Release

CODEPINK’s Ann Wright, Medea Benjamin and hundreds of other human rights activists with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition are due to set sail on multiple vessels in mid-April to carry 5,500 tons of aid for Gaza. Their mission, aside from delivering the much-needed humanitarian aid, is to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza amid dire conditions, including widespread hunger and lack of medical attention intentionally caused by Israeli policies. Time is running out for many in Gaza as Israel threatens an all-out attack on Rafah and experts warn hunger and disease could soon surpass casualties from bombings.

“I have been walking the halls of Congress every day since October, going to rallies every weekend, writing letters of outrage to President Biden every night–and nothing has worked to stop Israel from murdering thousands upon thousands of innocent people. What more can I do? I can go on this flotilla to try to break the criminal siege that Israel has imposed on Gaza,” said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin.

“President Biden waited six months, waited until 33,000 had been killed, mostly women and children, before picking up the phone and demanding that Netanyahu reduce civilian harm, allow more aid in, and protect aid workers,” said CODEPINK Ret. Army Colonel and former U.S. Diplomat Ann Wright. “But even if Israel allows more humanitarian aid in, it is still bombing Gaza with U.S. bombs, shooting innocent people and imprisoning the 2.2 million people that live in Gaza. Getting humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza is urgent, but it is not sufficient. We must end Israel’s unlawful, deadly blockade as well as Israel’s overall control of Gaza.  That’s why we need this flotilla, filled with unarmed civilians, human rights observers from 30 countries, to challenge Israel’s brutal grip on the Gaza strip.”

Israel’s longstanding neglect of its responsibility as an occupying power to safeguard the health and wellbeing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has escalated into genocidal actions, including using starvation as a weapon of war. Israeli leaders have openly declared intentions to collectively punish Gaza’s population. The Freedom Flotilla opposes Israel’s authority over aid and will refuse any inspection of our cargo. For safety and effective aid distribution, the flotilla will deploy numerous international humanitarian observers from diverse backgrounds and countries.

Despite air drops of food and temporary docks, Israel continues to block thousands of aid trucks from entering Gaza through land crossings. The International Court of Justice’s rulings on January 26 and March 28 emphasize Israel’s obligation to ensure the safety and security of Palestinians in Gaza, including facilitating humanitarian assistance without obstruction.

“The International Court of Justice’s preliminary measures ordered against Israel are very clear,” comments Ismail Moola of South Africa’s Palestine Solidarity Alliance, which is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. “The court’s ruling requires the whole world to play their part to stop the genocide unfolding in Gaza, including unobstructed access to vital aid. While our governments fail to lead in these urgently required humanitarian responses, people of conscience and our grassroots organizations must act to take leadership. When governments fail, we sail!”

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is a non-partisan international coalition of campaigns that stand for freedom and human rights in Palestine. They have sailed since 2010 with the goal of breaking the blockade of Gaza, and in solidarity with Palestinians cries for freedom and equality. Their non-violent direct action missions support the dignity and humanity of Palestinians, working with civil society partners, rather than any party, faction or government.

6 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

Sabah, Libya, is an oasis town at the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. To stand at the edge of the town and look southward into the desert toward Niger is forbidding. The sand stretches past infinity, and if there is a wind, it lifts the sand to cover the sky. Cars come down the road past the al-Baraka Mosque into the town. Some of these cars come from Algeria (although the border is often closed) or from Djebel al-Akakus, the mountains that run along the western edge of Libya. Occasionally, a white Toyota truck filled with men from the Sahel region of Africa and from western Africa makes its way into Sabah. Miraculously, these men have made it across the desert, which is why many of them clamber out of their truck and fall to the ground in desperate prayer. Sabah means “morning” or “promise” in Arabic, which is a fitting word for this town that grips the edge of the massive, growing, and dangerous Sahara.

For the past decade, the United Nations International Organization of Migration (IOM) has collected data on the deaths of migrants. This Missing Migrants Project publishes its numbers each year, and so this April, it has released its latest figures. For the past ten years, the IOM says that 64,371 women, men, and children have died while on the move (half of them have died in the Mediterranean Sea). On average, each year since 2014, 4,000 people have died. However, in 2023, the number rose to 8,000. One in three migrants who flee a conflict zone die on the way to safety. These numbers, however, are grossly deflated, since the IOM simply cannot keep track of what they call “irregular migration.” For instance, the IOM admits, “[S]ome experts believe that more migrants die while crossing the Sahara Desert than in the Mediterranean Sea.”

Sandstorms and Gunmen

Abdel Salam, who runs a small business in the town, pointed out into the distance and said, “In that direction is Toummo,” the Libyan border town with Niger. He sweeps his hands across the landscape and says that in the region between Niger and Algeria is the Salvador Pass, and it is through that gap that drugs, migrants, and weapons move back and forth, a trade that enriches many of the small towns in the area, such as Ubari. With the erosion of the Libyan state since the NATO war in 2011, the border is largely porous and dangerous. It was from here that the al-Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar moved his troops from northern Mali into the Fezzan region of Libya in 2013 (he was said to have been killed in Libya in 2015). It is also the area dominated by the al-Qaeda cigarette smugglers, who cart millions of Albanian-made Cleopatra cigarettes across the Sahara into the Sahel (Belmokhtar, for instance, was known as the “Marlboro Man” for his role in this trade). An occasional Toyota truck makes its way toward the city. But many of them vanish into the desert, a victim of the terrifying sandstorms or of kidnappers and thieves. No one can keep track of these disappearances, since no one even knows that they have happened.

Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated Io Capitano (2023) tells the story of two Senegalese boys—Seydou and Moussa—who go from Senegal to Italy through Mali, Niger, and then Libya, where they are incarcerated before they flee across the Mediterranean to Italy in an old boat. Garrone built the story around the accounts of several migrants, including Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou (from Côte d’Ivoire, now an activist who lives in Caserta, Italy). The film does not shy away from the harsh beauty of the Sahara, which claims the lives of migrants who are not yet seen as migrants by Europe. The focus of the film is on the journey to Europe, although most Africans migrate within the continent (21 million Africans live in countries in which they were not born). Io Capitano ends with a helicopter flying above the ship as it nears the Italian coastline; it has already been pointed out that the film does not acknowledge racist policies that will greet Seydou and Moussa. What is not shown in the film is how European countries have tried to build a fortress in the Sahel region to prevent migration northwards.

Open-Air Tomb

More and more migrants have sought the Niger-Libya route after the fall of the Libyan state in 2011 and the crackdown on the Moroccan-Spanish border at Melilla and Ceuta. A decade ago, the European states turned their attention to this route, trying to build a European “wall” in the Sahara against the migrants. The point was to stop the migrants before they get to the Mediterranean Sea, where they become an embarrassment to Europe. France, leading the way, brought together five of the Sahel states (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) in 2014 to create the G5 Sahel. In 2015, under French pressure, the government of Niger passed Law 2015-36 that criminalized migration through the country. G5 Sahel and the law in Niger came alongside European Union funding to provide surveillance technologies—illegal in Europe—to be used in this band of countries against migrants. In 2016, the United States built the world’s largest drone base in Agadez, Niger, as part of this anti-migrant program. In May 2023, Border Forensics studied the paths of the migrants and found that due to the law in Niger and these other mechanisms the Sahara had become an “open-air tomb.”

Over the past few years, however, all of this has begun to unravel. The coup d’états in Guinea (2021), Mali (2021), Burkina Faso (2022), and Niger (2023) have resulted in the dismantling of G5 Sahel as well as the demand for the removal of French and U.S. troops. In November 2023, the government of Niger revoked Law 2015-36 and freed those who had been accused of being smugglers.

Abdourahamane, a local grandee, stood beside the Grand Mosque in Agadez and talked about the migrants. “The people who come here are our brothers and sisters,” he said. “They come. They rest. They leave. They do not bring us problems.” The mosque, built of clay, bears within it the marks of the desert, but it is not transient. Abdourahamane told me that it goes back to the 16th century, long before modern Europe was born. Many of the migrants come here to get their blessings before they buy sunglasses and head across the desert, hoping that they make it through the sands and find their destiny somewhere across the horizon.

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

6 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jordan Shilton

In the aftermath of Monday’s targeted killing of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers by the Israel Defence Forces, the White House and media outlets internationally have gone into overdrive to convince everyone that a significant shift in Israel’s policy towards Gaza’s Palestinians is taking place. Friday’s announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an additional border crossing for aid deliveries to the north of the Gaza Strip will be opened and temporary deliveries will be allowed to depart Israel’s Ashdod port was widely reported as a newfound humanitarian commitment to 2.3 million starving Gazans.

In reality, the move is a face-saving gesture aimed at quelling an eruption of popular outrage around the world to Israel’s barbaric war crimes, while allowing US imperialism to hypocritically posture as a restraining force in the ongoing genocide. Netanyahu’s announcement was closely coordinated with Washington, coming just hours after a phone call between Biden and Netanyahu. Media reports presented the call as tense, with Biden supposedly urging the adoption of “specific, concrete and measurable” steps to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. However, leading Biden administration officials, including National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, made clear that there would be no change to the supply of weaponry to Israel and that Washington’s support was “iron clad.” Referring to Netanyahu’s announcement later Friday, Biden bluntly told a reporter, “I asked them to do what they’re doing.”

The opening of an extra border crossing and a temporary maritime route into Gaza is a moot point if there are no aid workers to deliver desperately needed food and medical supplies. The Israel Defence Forces stopped all aid deliveries to northern Gaza by the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) last week. Following the massacre of the aid workers, WCK, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have suspended aid operations in Gaza. WCK was supposed to have played a central part in the maritime aid corridor from Cyprus that was touted by the Biden administration in March, when it announced plans to construct a floating dock off the enclave’s coast. The Cypriot government stated Monday that a ship organised by WCK returned from Gaza without offloading the 332 tons of humanitarian aid it was carrying.

Data from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli government agency that controls access to Gaza, reveal that WCK was responsible for 60 percent of non-governmental aid deliveries in Gaza before it suspended its operations. ANERA reportedly delivered an average of 150,000 meals each day since October. The UAE has supplied 25 percent of all aid from foreign countries.

Other aid organisations still operating have underscored that it is more or less impossible to maintain their activities. “We go on a mission where we are told we would be safe and then we are delayed for hours, our staff is interrogated, they are put in harm’s way or they are killed and that’s not acceptable,” commented Tess Ingram, a spokeswoman for UNICEF, the UN children’s agency.

Even if one accepts Israel’s propaganda about aid deliveries under Netanyahu’s latest announcement, they will continue to fall well short of what is required. Israel Army Radio reported that 350 aid trucks could now reach Gaza each day, up from the current level of 200. This would amount to just 70 percent of the 500 aid trucks that arrived in Gaza each day prior to Israel’s assault. The claim that 200 trucks are currently arriving each day is rejected by independent sources, with Oxfam stating that an average of 105 trucks reach Gaza daily.

Since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal onslaught, government officials have made no secret about their intention to ethnically cleanse Gaza and use starvation as a weapon of war. From Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s infamous remark describing Palestinians as “human animals,” to former Israeli National Security Council head Giora Eiland’s statement that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers,” and Finance Minister Bezalil Smotrich’s demand for “the voluntary emigration of the Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world,” the Zionist regime has left no doubt about its determination to kill a large portion of Gaza’s population and forcibly expel the rest.

In this context, the most plausible explanation is that the massacre of the WCK workers was a carefully considered decision taken at the highest levels of the Israeli state in consultation with Washington aimed at sabotaging aid supplies into Gaza and thereby escalating the genocide. The three clearly marked vehicles were struck separately along a 2.4-kilometre stretch of road. Biden and Netanyahu are now trying to manage the diplomatic fallout.

According to OXFAM, the approximately 300,000 people believed to be stranded in northern Gaza have been surviving on just 12 percent of the recommended daily calorie intake since January. The 245 calories consumed on average equate to less than a can of fava beans. For the Gaza Strip as a whole, aid deliveries allowed in by Israel since the start of its bombardment account for just 41 percent of the recommended calories required by the entire population. The aid organisation’s 3 April press release noted, “The Israeli government has known for nearly two decades exactly how many daily calories are needed to prevent malnutrition in Gaza, calculating this according to both age and gender within its Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Line document. Not only did it use a higher calculation of 2,279 calories per person, it also took into account domestic food production in Gaza, which the Israeli military has now virtually obliterated.”

Figures from the UN and Palestinian Red Crescent Society estimate that 50,000 children are acutely malnourished. Malnourishment has claimed the lives of 31 children so far, with the figure expected to rise as famine sets in. Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar stated what is becoming increasingly obvious to millions of people around the world, “Israel is making deliberate choices to starve civilians. Imagine what it is like, not only to be trying to survive on 245 calories day in, day out, but also having to watch your children or elderly relatives do the same. All whilst displaced, with little to no access to clean water or a toilet, knowing most medical support has gone and under the constant threat of drones and bombs.”

The bombs supplied to Israel by US imperialism and its European allies continue to rain down on Gaza. AT least 54 Palestinians were confirmed dead in the previous 24 hours Friday, taking the official death toll to 33,091. A strike that demolished a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza later in the day killed three. According to UNRWA’s latest figures, 62 percent of all residences in Gaza have either been destroyed or damaged since the genocide began.

Amid such horrific crimes, the imperialist powers remain fully committed to participating in the “final solution” of the Palestinian question. American imperialism supports the genocide as part of a broader plan to wage a region-wide war with Israel’s support against Iran with the aim of consolidating its dominance over the energy-rich Middle East.

At a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council Friday, both the United States and Germany voted against a resolution calling for a halt of arms sales to Israel. The non-binding declaration, which passed by 28 votes to 6 with 13 abstentions, also urged that Israel be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Washington and Berlin cannot support such propositions because any genuine war crimes tribunal would have to include President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, Chancellor Scholz, and Foreign Minister Baerbock alongside Netanyahu in the dock. While the Biden Administration has delivered over 100 shipments of high-powered weaponry to Israel since October, Germany increased its weapons shipments ten-fold to Israel after Netanyahu’s fascistic government launched the genocide. On Monday and Tuesday next week, the International court of Justice in The Hague will hold hearings in a case brought by Nicaragua accusing Germany of complicity in genocide due to its arms shipments to Israel and declarations by government officials of unconditional support for the Zionist regime as it massacred civilians.

6 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org