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By Gabriel Rocha Gaspar

28 Feb 2024 – “Brazilian diplomatic tradition relies on solving problems. The ‘incident’ with Israel takes the opposite direction and affects not only the image of our country but also the course of subjects that actually matter for the population in an electoral year.” With these words, the host of Brazil’s most renowned talk show, Roda Viva, closed last Monday’s edition, which had the Minister of Institutional Relations Alexandre Padilha as a guest. It was an exceptionally editorialized closing; normally Roda Viva’s hosts simply say, “Goodbye,” when the show runs out of time.

The “incident” the journalist refers to is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s speech during the African Union Summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, where the Brazilian president compared the current genocide in Gaza to Hitler’s mass extermination of Jews during the Second World War. And of course, it includes Israel’s subsequent attempt to humiliate Brazilian diplomacy by declaring Lula persona non grata and inviting Ambassador Frederico Meyer to the official Holocaust Memorial for public scolding.

Basically, the host (or his bosses) was stating that Lula was irresponsible, jeopardizing both Itamaraty’s diplomatic tradition and the electoral potential of the so-called democratic camp in the municipal elections that will take place later this year throughout the country. His speech summarizes what has been the most “progressive” social-democrat reaction of Brazilian corporate media to Lula’s strong statement. More reactionary outlets simply dropped openly genocidal rhetoric and inflated over one hundred congressmen to file an impeachment request against the president.

Behind a mundane preoccupation with Brazil’s electoral normality, there lies a pure and simple hierarchization of human life. But, for now, let’s stick to their arguments: more than a conceptual mistake, Lula’s speech was supposedly a tactical error, since it happened at the same time as former president Jair Bolsonaro was getting more and more cornered for his flagrant participation in a plot to overturn the 2022 elections and remain in power via a coup.

Why should Lula revive a moribund “bolsonarismo,” when Finance Minister Fernando Haddad’s neoliberal agenda managed to cool down the markets and grow above expectations? Why should he ignite a Congress that’s overcrowded with all kinds of fascists? Why should he offer a deviant talking point for the opposition on the eve of the elections, in a country where evangelical fanaticism is on the rise? And more than that, why should he do that right before an immense protest in São Paulo that Bolsonaro convened in his own defense? If over 100,000 supporters of the former president managed to fill Paulista Avenue, blame shall not be put on the persistent inaction of our political and media classes, inaction grounded in the 1985 general amnesty that acquitted all crimes committed by the dictatorship that had ravaged the country since 1964. No, shame on Lula, whom they see as a Bolsonaro in red.

Behind the hegemonic reaction, there is a fetishist reliance on an imaginary normality that must be achieved and maintained using one single tool: moderation. It’s what Tariq Ali would call the extreme center, a pseudo-responsible political posture based on the Thatcherian idea that there’s no alternative to neoliberalism, the “natural” course of “human evolution”. It’s a brutal inversion of Lenin’s advice, that we should be flexible when it comes to tactics, and inflexible in terms of principles.

Lula’s statement was based on principles: antiracist, anticolonialist, humanist. What Israel is doing to Gaza is definitely comparable to the lowest standards humankind has ever reached, including the Holocaust. It’s the mass extermination of a whole population whose overwhelming majority is comprised of women and children specifically because it’s been subjected to systematic assassination for seventy years. Genocide must be stopped now, and Israel’s Prime Minister will not do so—not only because he’s ever been ideologically committed to it, but also because his survival depends on the annihilation of the Palestinian people. He is far too compromised, judicially, economically, and politically to suddenly change course.

The brakes must be pulled from the outside. And that should be a global priority, otherwise, everyone will have to deal with the moral, political, and humanitarian consequences of having idly watched a genocide unfold in real time. The world had no idea of the extent of the Holocaust until the Red Army liberated the extermination camps of Eastern Europe. One could claim ignorance then. Not now. As we couldn’t during the immigration crisis of 2015, the ongoing Yanomami extermination in Brazil, or the death policy applied by fascistic governments, especially in the United States and Brazil, during the harsher years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now everybody is watching.

If the Israeli government has its way and manages to achieve the Zionist Final Solution, it will effectively succeed where Hitler failed. Lebensraum, living space for the development of the “Aryan race,” was what Hitler sought with the total disappearance of what he called Judeo-Bolshevism from the East of Europe. Lebensraum is what the state of Israel is trying to establish by ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip. Lula’s comparison is conceptually accurate.

But more than that, it’s the only antiracist position possible. Because every colonial project, including Israel’s, is racist by definition. Holocaust, in the Zionist discourse, is an ideological tool, as made clear by Jewish political scientist Norman Finkelstein, another persona non grata in Israel. Divorced from the actual holocaust and turned into a historical exceptionality beyond any comparison, Holocaust becomes a carte blanche for its own reenactment. By clearly making the comparison, Lula echoes Aimé Césaire and deconstructs in two simple sentences the exceptionalism that justifies Israel’s colonial endeavor.

As the late theoretician of Négritude would say, “[I]t would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the [B]lacks of Africa.”

The Brazilian corporate media and political class show how unchanged the last century’s bourgeois remains in the 21st century: even municipal elections in the country have heavier moral weight than the complete and systematic extermination of a non-white population.

Gabriel Rocha Gaspar is a Marxist Brazilian activist and journalist, with a master’s degree in literature from the Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 University.

4 March 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Walden Bello

In these worst of times, still there is hope.

22 Feb 2024 – When the first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001, it was meant as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Davos was the world of the One Percent. Porto Alegre was the world of the rest of us. Today Kathmandu, the site of the Sixteenth World Social Forum, is the world of the rest of us.

The World Social Forum was meant to convey our resistance to global capitalism and its depredations. It was also meant to be an affirmation of solidarity of all people and networks struggling for social justice and peace. It was also an opportunity to get together to plan for the future, a future where, as the WSF slogan put it, another world is possible.

In his novel about lives entwined with the French Revolution, the novelist Charles Dickens said it was the best of times and the worst of times.

These days are certainly the worst of times. Climate catastrophe threatens the planet. Neoliberalism has failed resoundingly, but it remains even more entrenched as ideology and policy. We are witnessing the rise of fascism globally—indeed, just south of Nepal, we have seen fascism raise its ugly head in India. We are witnessing two genocides. One is taking place in Myanmar, where the military elite is desperately hanging on to power by indiscriminately killing all opposition, a task that is impossible since the resistance now controls 60 percent of the country. The greater genocide is taking place in Gaza, where already the Israelis have killed some 29,000 Palestinians, 70 percent of whom are women and children.  Now they are poised to enter the city of Rafah, promising more slaughter, more sorrow.

I have not had a good night’s sleep since the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Indeed, one cannot enjoy one moment of personal happiness while massive carnage is taking place somewhere in the world. This ability to empathize with others’ sufferings is the basis of human solidarity. It stems from our common humanity.

We ask ourselves, why is Israel so committed to totally destroy the Palestinians as a people? We ask, why is the United States so committed to providing the weapons and ammunition to enable genocide? We ask, why is Europe, which once told us in the global South that it was the pinnacle of civilization, supporting barbarism?

Yes, this is the worst of times. But is it the best of times? That depends on each and every one of us. Are we willing to take on the great challenges of the times?

Are we willing to exert all efforts to save the planet from the climate catastrophe that global capitalism has created?

Will we continue to wage the political and ideological struggle to uproot and dismantle neoliberalism?

Are we willing to put our bodies on the line against the advance of fascism?

Are we going to give everything to the struggle to stop genocide in Gaza and elsewhere?

Let me end by quoting from an interview I made with Usamah Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, that I did in Beirut in 2004. I asked him if he did not fear for his life given his being a high-profile leader of the organization. Here was his answer:

I am on two [assassination] lists, one with six names and another with 12 names. But I am living my own life normally. I eat breakfast with my children, I always try to do this because this is when I can talk to them and ask them about their day and their plans. I visit my friends and my friends visit me. I just recently went out with my children to swim in the sea. You just die once, and it can be from cancer, in a car accident, or by assassination. Given these choices, I prefer assassination. 

The spirit reflected in Hamdan’s answer is, in my view, the reason why Palestinians, even in the face of genocide, will triumph in the end. Let us gather strength from that spirit. Palestine needs us. But we also need Palestine. And let us thank Palestine for leading the way, for lighting the way for the rest of the world.

Walden Bello is the co-founder of and current senior analyst at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South, the International Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, and National Chairperson of Laban ng Masa, a progressive coalition of organizations and individuals in the Philippines.

4 March 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Amnesty International

26 Feb 2024 – One month after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip from the risk of genocide by ensuring sufficient humanitarian assistance and enabling basic services, Israel has failed to take even the bare minimum steps to comply, Amnesty International said today.

The order to provide aid was one of six provisional measures ordered by the Court on 26 January and Israel was given one month to report back on its compliance with the measures. Over that period Israel has continued to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met.

Israeli authorities have failed to ensure sufficient life-saving goods and services are reaching a population at risk of genocide and on the brink of famine due to Israel’s relentless bombardment and the tightening of its 16-year-long illegal blockade. They have also failed to lift restrictions on the entry of life-saving goods, or open additional aid access points and crossings or put in place an effective system to protect humanitarians from attack.

“Not only has Israel created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but it is also displaying a callous indifference to the fate of Gaza’s population by creating conditions which the ICJ has said places them at imminent risk of genocide. Time and time again, Israel has failed to take the bare minimum steps humanitarians have desperately pleaded for that are clearly within its power to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” said Heba Morayef, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“As the occupying power, under international law, Israel has a clear obligation to ensure the basic needs of Gaza’s population are met. Israel has not only woefully failed to provide for Gazans’ basic needs, but it has also been blocking and impeding the passage of sufficient aid into the Gaza Strip, in particular to the north which is virtually inaccessible, in a clear show of contempt for the ICJ ruling and in flagrant violation of its obligation to prevent genocide.”

“The scale and gravity of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s relentless bombardment, destruction and suffocating siege puts more than two million Palestinians of Gaza at risk of irreparable harm.”

The supplies entering Gaza before the ICJ order have been a drop in the ocean compared to the needs for the last 16 years. Yet, in the three weeks following the ICJ order, the number of trucks entering Gaza decreased by about a third, from an average of 146 a day in the three weeks prior, to an average of 105 a day over the subsequent three weeks. Before 7 October, on average, about 500 trucks entered Gaza every day, carrying aid and commercial goods, including things like food, water, animal fodder, medical supplies and fuel. Even that quantity fell far short of meeting people’s needs. In the three weeks after the ICJ ruling, smaller quantities of fuel, which Israel tightly controls, made it into Gaza. The only crossings that Israel has allowed to open were also opened on fewer days, further demonstrating Israel’s disregard for the provisional measures. Aid workers reported multiple challenges, but said that Israel was refusing to take obvious steps to improve the situation.

In the case it submitted to the ICJ, South Africa argued that Israel’s deliberate denial of humanitarian aid to Palestinians could constitute one of the prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention by “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

“Now even the fodder is becoming scarce”

Across the Gaza Strip, the engineered humanitarian disaster grows more horrifying each day. On 19 February, humanitarian agencies reported that acute malnutrition was surging in Gaza and threatening children’s lives, with 15.6% of children under two years acutely malnourished in northern Gaza and 5% of children under two years in Rafah in the south. The speed and severity of the decline in the population’s nutritional status within just three months was “unprecedented globally”.

Hamza, a resident of northern Gaza, whose wife Kawthar gave birth to their fourth child on 17 February, told Amnesty International on 20 February that his family of six was barely able to secure half a meal per day amid severe shortages of food and water. After flour and corn supplies ran out, they resorted to grinding barley and animal feed to make bread. “Now even the [animal] fodder is becoming scarce,” he said.

His wife gave birth at the already no-longer-operational Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia. She had no breast milk after delivery and has struggled to feed her newborn baby.

The scale and gravity of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s relentless bombardment, destruction and suffocating siege puts more than two million Palestinians of Gaza at risk of irreparable harm.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International

“After an anxious search around the hospital, a woman gave us a small quantity of milk which we fed the baby through a syringe. My aunt managed to find us some milk today, I don’t know how, and she didn’t say how much it cost her. There is no rice, no meat. I went to the market yesterday to look for food and came back home empty handed: no meat, no chickpeas, nothing.”

The looming threat of a full-scale ground assault on Rafah in southern Gaza, where over 1.2 million civilians are currently sheltering, would have further devastating consequences for the humanitarian situation.

The limited supplies trickling into Gaza are entering through two crossings along the perimeter with Israel and on the border with Egypt. The two operational crossings – Rafah, on the border with Egypt, and Karem Abu Salem, on the perimeter with Israel – are both in southern Gaza. A ground operation in the area near where the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem crossings let trucks into southern Gaza risks cutting off the flow of aid entirely and destroying the last remaining vestiges of the aid system.

“All around me people are broken”

Amnesty International spoke to ten workers from five humanitarian agencies or organizations in mid and late-February who described horrifying conditions in Gaza, as well as ongoing, severe access restrictions. All said their ability to get aid into and around Gaza had either remained the same or gotten worse since the ICJ ruling.

Humanitarians highlighted Israel’s failure to take obvious steps, such as opening all available access points and crossings to enable them to transfer aid more rapidly and on a larger scale to areas in need or to ensure that humanitarian operations did not come under military attack.

A UN Security Council resolution passed in December 2023 demanded that parties “allow and facilitate the use of all available routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings” to ensure vital assistance reaches civilians “through the most direct routes.” Despite this legally binding resolution, Israel has refused to open further crossings to facilitate humanitarian access.

Fathia, a mental health support practitioner, told Amnesty International of the challenges she faces with her family and work. She described the difficulty of trying to get her 78-year-old mother who has developed a form of dementia since they were displaced to understand why they don’t have enough food.

“My sons are hardly earning any money and we can’t find or afford even basic food. There is nothing and the little there is unaffordable. My mother cannot comprehend this; she thinks we are neglecting her. I have come to the point that I wish my own mother died rather than see her suffer thinking we are neglecting her. All around me people are broken because they can’t feed their children, their families, and I am unable to offer them any useful advice or support because I, myself, am broken,” she said.

Israeli protesters demanding the government stops allowing aid into Gaza until the hostages are freed have repeatedly blocked access to the Karem Abu Salem crossing, forcing it to close repeatedly, sometimes for multiple days. Such disruptions do not relieve Israeli authorities of their obligation to take necessary measures to maintain unhindered flow of aid.

Only an immediate and sustained ceasefire can save lives and ensure that the ICJ’s provisional measures, including the delivery of lifesaving aid, can be implemented.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International

Other access points and crossings exist. Some were closed by Israel after 7 October. Others have been kept closed for years by Israel. Israel tightly controls what enters and exits Gaza, including people and goods, as part of its illegal blockade, which has become significantly more suffocating in recent months.

The situation is particularly dire in the north of the Strip, which Israel has effectively cut off from the rest of Gaza. Between 1 January and 12 February, OCHA reported Israel had denied permission to more than half of the requests by humanitarians to access the north. On 6 February, OCHA reported Israel had granted none of the UN’s 22 requests to open checkpoints early, including to access areas north of Wadi Gaza.

On 21 February, one of the aid workers interviewed said: “There’s basically no access [to the north]. We had the ceasefire in November where we pushed a lot of trucks north. Other than that we have not been able to get trucks north at any scale. In 2024, it has been even less. Some people are already starving.”

Blocking and delaying life-saving supplies while people starve

Israel continues to tightly restrict the import of essential supplies to Gaza. All imports to Gaza must be pre-approved by Israeli authorities. In February, humanitarians continued to describe frequent, unpredictable and “arbitrary” rejections and limitations.

Israeli officials repeatedly blame humanitarian organizations for any gaps in aid delivery, alleging they are incapable of dispatching and distributing more aid, or due to looting in Gaza. But humanitarians described an array of ways in which Israeli authorities impede their work. They offered a list of basic steps Israel has failed to take to facilitate aid delivery: from allowing in sufficient and essential supplies, which they regularly reject; to opening checkpoints earlier, which authorities have repeatedly refused; to respecting basic security guarantees for aid convoys, aid workers and aid offices, which have instead come under recurrent attack.

In addition to goods, Gaza desperately needs fuel to allow people to purify water, process food and run medical equipment, like incubators. Since 11 October, Gaza has been under an electricity blackout as a result of Israel cutting off Gaza’s electricity supply. Israel also completely blocked the import of fuel from early October until 18 November 2023. While it has now allowed some fuel to enter Gaza, the quantities remain jarringly insufficient. As of late-February, Israeli authorities also continued to regularly reject humanitarian requests to bring in other power sources, like solar panels, generators and batteries.

“No human beings should be forced to suffer the inhumane conditions Gazans are being subjected to. Instead of lifting their brutal blockade, Israeli authorities are planning to escalate their attacks with a deadly military operation into Rafah that will have horrific consequences for civilians and risks cutting off the only lifeline for aid entering Gaza. Only an immediate and sustained ceasefire can save lives and ensure that the ICJ’s provisional measures, including the delivery of lifesaving aid, can be implemented,” said Heba Morayef.

“Instead, the USA has, for a third time, vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, effectively greenlighting more killings and mass suffering of Palestinians. Countries with influence over the Israeli government, including the USA, UK, Germany and other allies must not stand by and watch as Palestinian civilians die preventable deaths due to bombardment, lack of food and water, the spread of diseases and lack of healthcare. In light of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, these states’ support for Israel’s actions, including its flouting of the ICJ’s ruling, is indefensible and could violate their obligation to prevent genocide.”

Amnesty International is also calling on states to ensure that UNRWA receives adequate funding to continue its operations after a number of states suspended funding to the organization based on allegations that some of its members took part in the 7 October attack. UNRWA has long served as a sole lifeline for Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East offering indispensable humanitarian aid, shelter and education.

All states must uphold their obligation to prevent genocide by taking urgent steps to ensure Israel complies with the ICJ’s provisional measures, including by pressing Israel to rapidly open up access to Gaza and end its brutal blockade once and for all. All states must also immediately end the transfer of arms to Israel, as recently asked by 24 UN Experts.

Background

Today’s humanitarian catastrophe in the occupied Gaza Strip is the result of Israel’s 16-year-long blockade and its further intensification and recurrent devastating military operations. Since 2007 Israel has maintained control of Gaza’s air space, land borders and territorial waters, tightly restricting the movement of basic goods and people in and out of the Strip, fuelling a humanitarian disaster. Israel has forced Gaza’s population to live in increasingly dire conditions, which have, since October 2023, deteriorated with such speed and severity that the entire population now faces an engineered famine.

Israel’s blockade is a form of collective punishment and is a war crime. It is one of the key ways in which Israel maintains its system of apartheid against Palestinians, which is a crime against humanity.

On 7 October 2023, Hamas and other armed groups launched indiscriminate rockets, sent fighters into southern Israel and committed war crimes. According to Israeli authorities, at least 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 people, mostly civilians, including 33 children, were taken as hostages by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza. As of 1 December, 113 hostages held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza had been released.

4 March 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Jessica Corbett

“The Global South strikes again against the morally and politically decayed West,” said one supporter of the case.

1 Mar 2024 – Nicaragua today launched a case against Germany at the International Court of Justice, accusing the nation responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust of helping Israel commit genocide in the Gaza Strip over the past five months.

Germany has provided financial, military, and political support to Israel and halted contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in response to unverified Israeli allegations that a dozen employees were involved in the Hamas-led attack that sparked the war on October 7.

Nicaragua’s application to the ICJ argues that Germany “has not only failed to fulfill its obligation to prevent the genocide committed and being committed against the Palestinian people… but has contributed to the commission of genocide in violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

“Although the United States richly deserves it too, it would be difficult for Nicaragua to successfully sue the United States… because of its disingenuous reservation to Article 9 of the Genocide Convention denying such jurisdiction to the World Court.”

Germany has also “failed to comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, derived both from the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Protocols of 1977 and from the intransgressible principles of international humanitarian law,
by not respecting its obligations to ensure respect for these fundamental norms in all circumstances,” the document states.

The application further accuses Germany of failing to “comply with other peremptory norms of general international law” by rendering aid or assistance “in maintaining the illegal situation of the continued military occupation of Palestine including its ongoing, unlawful attack in Gaza,” as well as “not preventing the illegal regime of apartheid and the negation of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people.”

Nicaragua is seeking emergency action from the ICJ, which has already taken a genocide case against Israel led by South Africa. The U.N. court issued provisional measures for that case in January—though rights groups said this week that Israeli forces are ignoring them—and last month reiterated Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention.

“When emergency measures are requested, the ICJ usually sets a date for a hearing within weeks of a case being filed,” noted Deutsche Welle. The German public broadcaster also reported that there was no comment from Berlin.

While the case against Germany was widely welcomed by Palestinian rights advocates around the world, many also pointed out that—as Michael Paarlberg an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, put it—Nicaragua is “maybe not the best plaintiff for making charges of human rights violations.”

In its latest annual report on Nicaragua, Human Rights Watch states that “the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, deepened its systematic repression against critics, journalists, and human rights defenders. Dozens of people arbitrarily detained remain behind bars.”

As the U.N. Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua released its own report Wednesday, its chair, Jan Simon, said that Ortega, Murillo, and other top officials “should be held accountable by the international community, as should Nicaragua as a state that goes after its own people, targeting university students, Indigenous people, people of African descent, campesinos, and members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations.”

Nicaragua’s filing at the World Court, as it’s also called, comes as Israeli forces have killed over 30,200 Palestinians in Gaza and injured 71,000 more. Most of the Hamas-governed enclave’s 2.3 million residents are displaced. They face devastated civilian infrastructure and limited supplies of food, water, and medicine, as Israel restricts humanitarian aid. Children are starving to death.

The Central American country’s move follows lawyers in Germany who represent Palestinian families suing top German officials, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for “aiding and abetting” Israel’s genocide in the federal court last week.

University of Illinois College of Law professor Francis Boyle told Jordanian-Palestinian writer Sam Husseini that Nicaragua’s application “could lead to World Court lawsuits… for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, an emergency hearing by the World Court, another round of oral arguments, and new provisional measures of protection for the benefit of the Palestinians.”

New provisional measures would go to the U.N. Security Council—where the U.S. has veto power—for enforcement, he said, and, “if that does not succeed, to the United Nations General Assembly for enforcement under the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950),”

“It is telling that Nicaragua is doing this because they won a resounding World Court lawsuit against the United States from 1984 to 1986 for illegally mining their harbors,” Boyle added. He also explained why the United States isn’t expected to face an ICJ case, despite giving Israel nearly $4 billion in annual military aid.

“Although the United States richly deserves it too, it would be difficult for Nicaragua to successfully sue the United States for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinians because of its disingenuous reservation to Article 9 of the Genocide Convention denying such jurisdiction to the World Court,” he said.

However, there is a U.S. genocide complicity case in the federal court system. The Center for Constitutional Rights has sued U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on behalf of groups and Palestinians in Gaza and the United States. After a district-level dismissal, an appeal hearing is expected in June.

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

4 March 2024

Source: transcend.org

By David Cortright

A Vietnam veteran on the political legacy of self-sacrifice and the necessity of war resistance.

The self-immolation of twenty-five-year-old active-duty U.S. airman Aaron Bushnell at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., earlier this week was an extreme act of protest against the war in Gaza—a desperate plea to “free Palestine,” as he screamed while flames engulfed his body.

Whatever was in Bushnell’s mind, he clearly hoped to compel us to act to end the bloodshed.

The incident evokes haunting memories of Vietnam, especially for those of us who served during that war and spoke out against it. The fact that Bushnell wore his uniform and called attention to his military service indicates he believed his status as a soldier would lend greater weight and significance to his protest. I feel only sadness that he was compelled to take such drastic action alone.

We don’t know what was in Bushnell’s mind when he decided to take his life, but clearly he hoped that his self-sacrifice would shake us out of our complacency and compel us to act to end the bloodshed.

Bushnell may have been aware of acts of self-immolation that occurred during the Vietnam War. The most famous was the immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in June 1963 in downtown Saigon near the Presidential Palace. Quang Duc sat in a lotus position and set himself on fire after being doused with gasoline. He burned to death without flinching. He and others were protesting persecution of the Buddhist community by the U.S.-supported Diem government. Five other Buddhist monks self-immolated in the following weeks, leading to the overthrow of the Diem regime. The shocking scene of Quang Duc’s immolation was immortalized in Malcolm Brown’s award-winning iconic photograph. The ghastly video of Bushnell burning himself may be the modern equivalent.

Other self-immolations have also occurred in the United States. In December, another protester of the war in Gaza, about whom little information has been released, self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. In March 1965 eighty-two-year-old activist Alice Jeanette Herz set fire to herself on a street in Detroit, calling attention to her antiwar message and urging others to work for peace. A few months later, thirty-one-year-old Quaker pacifist Norman Morrison self-immolated at the Pentagon, near the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who later admitted the act was “an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth.” A week after Morrison’s death, Roger Allen LaPorte committed a similar act of self-immolation in front of the United Nations building in New York. In May 1970 graduate student and former ROTC cadet George Winne died of self-immolation on the campus at of the University of California San Diego. These were acts of supreme sacrifice, like Bushnell’s, to call attention to the brutality of war. They were intended to motivate others to speak out for peace.

I was one of many active-duty American soldiers who publicly opposed the Vietnam War and participated in the antiwar movement. I was not politically aware when I enlisted in 1968. I volunteered for the Army band to avoid being drafted into the infantry; I was hoping to skate by and get on with my life. My worldview turned upside down, however, when I realized what was happening in Vietnam. This was not a noble struggle against communism, as politicians said, but a war against the people of Vietnam. I was angry at being deceived. I was horrified to learn that the United States was bombing and destroying Vietnamese villages, that we were killing so many innocent civilians, including women and children.

Those of us who protested as soldiers recognized that we might be punished for our dissent. But we felt compelled to act.
I could not accept being part of such a policy and began to organize for peace while on active duty. I circulated petitions against the war in the barracks and joined other soldiers in marching in peace demonstrations. Those of us who protested as soldiers recognized that we might be punished for our dissent, and many of us were. But we felt compelled to act. We could not remain silent. We hoped that because we were soldiers, politicians and the media might take notice and perhaps show more respect for our antiwar message.

The GI peace movement extended throughout the military. Underground newspapers published by and for active service members appeared at nearly every major military base in the military and aboard dozens of ships. Dozens of countercultural antiwar coffeehouses were established outside major military bases. Military desertion and AWOL rates reached all-time highs. In Vietnam soldiers increasingly defied orders and refused to engage in combat, and the effectiveness of the U.S. military declined precipitously. Throughout the military morale reached rock bottom.

Those of us who dissented and resisted the war took risks because we could not participate in an unjust policy. We were motivated most of all by a desire to stop the killing and save lives. We felt responsible for the massive death and destruction our government was imposing on the people of Southeast Asia.

I’ve thought a great deal about my feelings then as I see the news now of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, the massive bombing of densely populated neighborhoods and the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, including many women and children. The situation today is different, of course. Israel is the main culprit in mounting the siege, but U.S. intelligence sharing is significant for Israel’s ability to wage war, and Special Forces units are reportedly in Israel providing technical support. Israeli troops are using American-made weapons, and our government is helping to fund the war. Without U.S. support Israel could not continue perpetrating its campaign of collective punishment against Gazans. We are enabling Israel’s actions and are therefore partly responsible. The Biden administration can and must do more to pressure Israel to end the carnage.

Like any state, Israel does have a right to defend itself. But the killing of noncombatants is never permissible regardless of the cause, and this is true for Israel as it is for Hamas or any other group. And waging war to counter terrorism—atrocities committed against civilians—is a fool’s errand, a trap that entangles the warring state in prolonged costly and debilitating wars of counterinsurgency and military occupation while sowing seeds of hatred and violence that will endanger its security.

Millions of people in the United States and around the world are active in the movement against war in Gaza, demanding a ceasefire and negotiations for a political solution. Despite the many protests and massive pressure against the war, however, the killing continues, and U.S. aid is still flowing to the Israeli military. Many young activists today are becoming frustrated and angry at their inability to stop the war.

Similar feelings of frustration and anger emerged during the Vietnam War, which continued despite massive protests against it. The movement against U.S. aggression in Indochina was the largest, most sustained and intensive antiwar campaign in American history. For a decade, as the U.S. war escalated, reached its furious peak, and then gradually diminished, millions of citizens in the United States and around the world campaigned continuously to bring the war to an end. During that era, as Tom Hayden writes in Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement (2017), “Americans took to the streets in numbers exceeding one hundred thousand on at least a dozen occasions, sometimes reaching half a million.” From the first major protests and teach-ins in 1965 to the Indochina Peace Campaign against funding the war in the 1970s, opponents of the war engaged in public education campaigns, mass marches, picketing, prayer vigils, boycotts, student strikes, draft resistance, legislative lobbying, media and advertising, electoral campaigns, and more. Antiwar protest emerged from every sector of society and in every part of the country, including among many of us in the military.

It was disheartening to go to protests and engage in continuous action against the war and see little or no response from the Nixon administration. I remember vividly the November 1969 mass mobilization against the war in Washington, D.C. Half a million people converged on the Washington Monument to demand an end to the war. That rally and the preceding Vietnam Moratorium mobilizations gave the antiwar movement renewed momentum and generated enormous excitement and energy.

I was based at Ft. Hamilton in New York at the time and drove down to Washington for the rally. On the ride back that evening, every car on the New Jersey Turnpike seemed to be filled with protesters. The rest stops along the way felt almost like mini rallies. The whole day had been an empowering experience, but then we turned on the radio news and heard Nixon saying he paid no attention to the rally and would not be influenced by antiwar protest.

Our spirits sank at the thought that so large a demonstration could not move or influence him. How could the government ignore such a large outcry for peace? Little did we know at the time that the White House was in fact extremely concerned about the movement. Our protests had more power than we knew.

Years later, when Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and his senior aide, H. R. Halderman, published their memoirs, we learned that the Moratorium events and the Washington mobilization had the effect of preventing a threatened escalation of the war. The story of this little-known episode is presented masterfully in Stephen Talbot’s 2023 television documentary, The Movement and the “Madman.” The White House had delivered an ultimatum to the Vietnamese, threatening the possible use of nuclear weapons (the so-called “madman theory”) if North Vietnam did not end the war on American terms. When Hanoi balked, Nixon canceled the planned attacks, fearful that further escalation might lead to even greater antiwar disruption and social disorder.

The history of the Vietnam War shows that antiwar dissent limited U.S. options and helped to end the war. Public opinion against the war was a key variable in the strategic calculations of both the Johnson and Nixon administrations, as historian Melvin Small has argued. Political leaders made decisions about the conduct of the war based on their assessment of political impacts at home and the effects on antiwar dissent. This was “irrefutable evidence” of the movement’s impact, Small wrote.

It’s doubtful that Bushnell was aware of this antiwar history, because few people are. In our individualist culture, we learn about the historical achievements of leaders and individuals, not the social movements that support them. We learn about the civil rights movement, although often telescoped to the role of Dr. King alone, with limited reference to the many who worked with him in the struggle for freedom. We know little of social movements generally and even less about their strengths and weaknesses and how movements influence policy.

One of the great challenges of social movement organizing is to overcome the feelings of powerlessness that many activists have when their mobilizing efforts do not achieve the results they demand. When change does not come quickly or as completely as desired, activists can become demoralized. They may fall prey to the debilitating belief that nothing can be done, that protest and organizing are futile.

Political change often occurs in unexpected ways, and history clearly shows that movements matter.
Part of the problem is that political change often occurs in unexpected and sometimes unrecognized ways. The process is often slow and incremental, with modest changes that fall short of activist demands. “It is always too soon to calculate effect,” Rebecca Solnit has observed. We can never know how our actions today may influence events tomorrow. When we apply pressure, we can’t predict how political establishments will respond, but partial steps can be significant and may lead to more substantive change.

History clearly shows that movements matter, and activist pressures can exert policy influence. Scholarly analysis shows that social movements are able to achieve change if they can build large coalitions, employ wise strategies, have compelling and unifying narratives, and are persistent in applying pressure for change.

It’s tragic that Bushnell felt it necessary to take his life in an extreme manner in order to be heard. His death sends a message for us to take continued action against the war and in support of Palestinian rights, to pressure our government to insist that Israel end the bloodshed. Our success in achieving these goals will depend on building an ever larger and more persistent movement of millions of people determined to work for peace.

28 February 2024

David Cortright is a Vietnam veteran, peace activist, and professor emeritus at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. His many books include Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War.

Source:: www.bostonreview.net

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Voices from Gaza speak about their hunger and ask why has the world turned their backs on them?

Gaza continues to starve. The north of Gaza is experiencing the worst famine thanks to the Israeli blockade and the fact the Biden administration is turning a blind eye and continues to fund the deadly war on Gaza.

The Strip is being attacked from the air, sea and on the ground. The Israeli government is determined to starve the Palestinian population into submission – more like death – in pursuit of Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance fighters.

Meanwhile the world looks on! But since it is the Americans who are mainly funding the war, it should be the White House that should tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant enough is enough!

The social media has been inundated with news of the ongoing starvation campaign of Gaza with many tags on the X platform including #Gaza, #GazaGenocide, #Gaza Genocide, #gazahunger, #SaveGazaFrom Hunger, #Palestine, #FreePalestineFromIsraelNOW.

There is much videos about people starving and dying because of the incessant hunger. These include those posted by Palestinians in the north of Gaza.

‘I haven’t eaten in a week’

“….do you know it has been a week since I last eaten…a whole week without eating anything,” a young man bellows in the videoclip.

“…the price of a bag of flour costs $500 but it’s not available…I’ve been eating hay and barley,” but there is nothing left anymore with his eyes watering.

“…there are no human rights, no women rights, no children rights, no religious rights and no Arab countries have been allowed to send supplies into the Gaza Strip, especially into Gaza City,” he says with a sense of horror.

“…here people have stayed weeks at a time without eating. Can you imagine your mother or your brother without food. This city is under total siege.

If you the occupier [Israel] have a problem with the [Palestinian] resistance, what does that have to do with us, why are you doing this to us. Presently, there is no food and drinks in Gaza City, there are no rights here…”

‘We are eating animal feed but that has run out’

“For the people who don’t know, we, in north Gaza, have been in the last five months without rice, without flour, without vegetables, without any foodstuffs” a young woman says in another videoclip.

“No supplies have been able to reach here, even in the markets there is nothing, we reverted to eating fodder, bird seeds and cat food…

But despite this we said its ok, at least there is something we can eat to block our hunger, despite the fact its taste is bad, and gives us a bellyache. There was simply alternative despite the fact it was animal feed.

I remember what our parents used to say that nobody sleeps hungry, nobody starves to death in his country. But today, every night we sleep hungry. I never thought one day we will go hungry or sleep on an empty stomach.

What have we done to deserve this, what have the children done to deserve this. If we are not killed by the strikes, we will be starved to death.”

‘I have five children to feed’

“It’s been five days now since I last eaten but I can’t find any food. People say they have been grinding animal feed to stay alive but I have not been able to find such fodder to grind,” a man with a large family says.

“I have no way of feeding myself, I have five children but I can’t feed them…

I can’t leave this place, we are under harsh conditions, I am not able to walk down the street, how am I supposed to provide for them.

I hit my kid every night so he could get to sleep, this make me feel bad but what can I do? Just who is going to stand with us.”

‘Final death warning’

“This is the final warning. This is literally the final warning. Journalists in the north [of Gaza] sent us what they are eating and how they can’t find anything to grind to eat,” says another man in a desperate tone.

“The situation is disastrous in a way that the human mind can’t imagine or understand.

We never imagined we would get here as an Islamic and Arab nation to see our people and brothers dying of hunger and we can’t do anything about it. What are you? Who are you?

The people of Jordan and Egypt are not able to pressure for aid to enter the Gaza Strip?

There is in Rafah 1.4 million people on the border of Egypt. They can’t pass over even a bottle of water or even let it enter. What more do you want to see?

Do you have no God, religion, worship, no traditions, no customs, nothing. What are you made of? Who will stay? Who will not offer his soul, his blood, his money, his land, everything he owns for Gaza?”

Dr Marwan Asmar is a writer based in Amman, Jordan

25 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Press Release

NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 23: Indians for Palestine, a group of concerned citizens, convened a public meeting on Friday, February 23 to understand the implications of the crucial ruling of the ‘The International Court and Justice for Gaza’ (ICJ), and extend solidarity and support to Palestine. It was a public meeting between representatives of political parties, the media, the legal fraternity, the international diplomatic community, activists, students, and the public. Among the speakers were lawyer Anand Grover, former ambassador K.P. Fabian, journalist Siddharth Varadarajan, and political leaders including Dipankar Bhattacharya, Asaduddin Owaisi, Amarjeet Kaur and Subhashini Ali. The overflowing meeting Hall showcased the strength of the solidarity of Indians with the people of Palestine, with the resounding slogans of “Ceasefire Now!”.

The session began with an introductory note by the moderators, Jean Drèze and Ayesha Kidwai. This was followed by a recording of Arwa Abu Hashhash, a Gazan citizen and representative of the Union of Palestinian Working Women’s Committee and the Palestinian People’s Party, who said language is incapable of describing the horror of the massacre that is taking place in the Gaza strip today. She emphasized that every single action of solidarity matters. Adnan Abu Al Haija, the Palestinian ambassador, highlighted how none of the resolutions passed by the United Nations have been implemented. He acknowledged the solidarity expressed by South Africa, Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Ireland, Belgium, and Spain.

It was noted that the daily death rate in Gaza is higher than any other major 21st-century conflict. The total deaths have has surpassed 29,000. This does not even include the irreversible long-term impacts of this massacre on the population of Gaza: deepening of poverty, severe crisis in water availability, the shutdown of healthcare systems, and chronic and intergenerational trauma.

Anand Grover stated that South Africa’s courage is missing from other countries, especially India. KP Fabian said that standing with Palestine means standing for justice, and pointed out how the international community was allowing the genocide to continue despite the extensive broadcasting of the horrors. Siddharth Varadarajan highlighted the complicity of the current Indian government with Israel’s ongoing genocide. He pointed out how Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India Limited have sent 20 Hermes-900 drones to Israel in early February.

Salman Khurshid (INC) endorsed the stance of Indians for Palestine and called for an immediate ceasefire. Amarjeet Kaur (AITUC) stated that while the Modi government may be with Israel, the Indian people stand with Palestine as indicated by the dock workers who refused to load weaponized cargo being sent to Israel. Subhashini Ali (CPIM) said that this war is not of religion, but of imperialism and that a post-colonial country like India should stand with Palestine; the struggle for Palestine is a struggle for India’s democracy. Dipankar Bhattacharya (CPIML-Liberation) said that the Modi government is implementing the Israeli blueprint against farmers and dissenters. Representatives of all parties endorsed the call for an immediate ceasefire.

It was in this context that Indians for Palestine had convened the public meeting. They called upon the Indian government to publicly endorse the latest ruling of the ICJ and stand against the violation of the human rights of the Palestinians in Gaza.

25 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

If only we could say that Peter Dutton, Australia’s federal opposition leader and curator of bigoted leanings, was unusual in assuming that granting humanitarian visas to Palestinians might be problematic.  But both he, and his skew-eyed spokesman on home affairs, James Patterson, have concluded that votes are in the offing.  Refugees may be accepted from the Ukrainian-Russian War, as long as they are Ukrainian, but anything so much as a whiff of a Palestinian fleeing the Israel-Hamas conflict is bound to be concerning.  Ukrainians are noble victims; the latter might be terrorist sympathisers or Hamas militants.

This view started being floated in November last year, when Dutton began warning the public that visitor visas for Palestinians could result in a calamity.  (At that point, 860 visas had been issued to Palestinians.)  “The inadequacy of these checks could result in a catastrophic outcome in our country,” he foamed.  “Taking people out of a war zone without conducting the checks, particularly those that are available to us in the US, is reckless.”

No concern was voiced about the possibility that Israelis, who had also been offered 1,793 visas, might pose a problem to the heavenly idyll of Australian security.  It is also worth mentioning that Dutton, when home affairs minister, approved over 500 visas a week to Syrians fleeing the civil war.  Ditto the granting of 5,000 visas to Afghans the month the Taliban resumed control of Kabul in the aftermath of retreating Western armies.

Dutton’s arithmetic is that of the typical copper: simple, direct, amateurish.  Among the Palestinians, “one person, or could be 10 people, I don’t know” might be of concern.  His concerns are feverishly listed: “Have interviews been conducted, do we know people’s ideologies, do we know their interest in the west, why they want to come to Australia.”  This template would be applicable to every group of visitors or migrants seeking to come to Australia at any one point.  No one is likely to say on their visa application: “I come to see your new country and hope to commit atrocities.”

Given the number of conflict zones on Planet Earth, Dutton was offering an obtuse statement calculated to boost flagging popularity.  It was also timed within a matter of hours after the declaration of a four-day ceasefire in Gaza.  While proving, at times, sketchy in her role as Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil was close to the mark in stating that, “Dutton is a reckless politician who will do and say anything to score political points – even if it puts the national security of Australians at risk.”

But Dutton did not want to be dismissed as a paranoid former police officer who sees criminals everywhere and innocence as a constipated afterthought.  “The prime minister here needs to hit the pause button – I’m not saying people shouldn’t come at some point – but people should come when all the checks are conducted.”

Again, a strange sentiment, given that visa applicants tend to face a series of tests that are more demanding than most when seeking to visit the Down Under Paradise where perfection is assumed.  “If a visa applicant is assessed as posing a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community, their visa may be considered for refusal,” were the dull words of a government spokesperson.

With the arrival of irregular migrants on the shores of Western Australia this month, cockeyed bigotry again assumed its role on the podium of Australian politics.  Seeking to tie the arrivals as connected with shoddy security credentials, the opposition fanned out the implications of granting up to 2,000 visas for Palestinians, a fact seen as particularly galling to the shadow home affairs minister.  “In the middle of an unprecedented antisemitism crisis, the government should be taking much greater care in granting visas to people from a war zone run by a terrorist organisation,” bleated Patterson.  “How can they possibly assure themselves there is not one Hamas supporter among them?  And how will it help social cohesion if they manage to slip through?”

By this logic, no one should ever leave a war zone, an area of devastation, a territory blighted by terror.  You just might be a regime supporter, a sympathiser, despite suffering possible harm, even death.  But there is an inadvertent slant coming through in Patterson’s mangled world view: Palestinians, having been maimed, murdered and traumatised, might wish to take out their grievance on a foreign power, possibly one sympathetic to Israel.  Ignore the survival imperative, the desire to find, rather than abandon, security; focus, instead, on the motivation for vengeance. Even this view suffers for one obvious point: those wishing to avenge their families and friends are bound to wish to stay in Gaza and the West Bank, rather than flee and plot from afar.

With the current arrivals from Gaza – some 340 or so have managed to drip themselves from the Palestinian territories – the bedwetting fantasies of terror being induced by the opposition seem absurd and callous.  But absurdity is a proven calculus for electoral success – at least sometimes.

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

25 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ralph Nader

There has been so much reporting since October 7, but we are still missing answers for key issues.

Last October 27, I suggested subjects the mainstream media needed to cover relating to the saturation bombing of Gaza and its defenseless civilian families and infrastructure. Looking at these topics now, four months later, despite massive reporting, the attention to these subjects is still thin and more deserving of reporting than ever.

1. How did Hamas, with tiny Gaza surrounded by a 17-year Israeli blockade, subjected to unparalleled electronic surveillance, with spies and informants, and augmented by an overwhelming air, sea and land military presence, manage to get the weapons and associated technology for their October 7^th surprise raid? Readers still do not know how and from where these weapons entered Gaza year after year.

2. What is the connection between the stunning failure of the Israeli government to protect its people on the border and the policy of P.M. Netanyahu? Recall the New York Times (October 22, 2023) article by prominent journalist, Roger Cohen, to wit: “All means were good to undo the notion of Palestinian statehood. In 2019, Mr. Netanyahu told a meeting of his center-right Likud party: ‘Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy.’” (Note: Israel and the U.S. fostered the rise of Islamic Hamas in 1987 to counter the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)). Readers still need more information about the context of Netanyahu’s declared support for Hamas over the years and his connection to the buildup of Hamas funding and weaponry.

3. Why is Congress preparing to appropriate over $14 billion to Israel in military and other aid without any public hearings and without any demonstrated fiscal need by Israel, a prosperous economic, technological and military superpower with a social safety net superior to that of the U.S.? USDA just reported over 44 million Americans struggled with hunger in 2022. This, in the midst of a childcare crisis. Should U.S. taxpayers be expected to pay for Netanyahu’s colossal intelligence/military collapse? As an elderly Holocaust survivor told the New York Times “It should never have happened” in the first place.

4. Why hasn’t the media reported on President Biden’s statement that the Gaza Health Ministry’s body count (now over 7000 fatalities) is exaggerated? Indications, however, are that it is a large undercount by Hamas to minimize its inability to protect its people. Israel has fired over 8,000 powerful precision munitions and bombs into Gaza so far. These have struck many thousands of inhabited buildings – homes, apartments buildings, over 120 health facilities, ambulances, crowded markets, fleeing refugees, schools, water and sewage systems, and electric networks – implementing Israeli military orders to cut off all food, water, fuel, medicine and electricity to this already impoverished densely packed area the size of Philadelphia. For those not directly slain, the deadly harm caused by no food, water, medicine, medical facilities and fuel will lead to even more deaths and serious injuries.

Note that over three-quarters of Gaza’s population consists of children and women. Soon there will be thousands of babies born to die in the rubble. Other Palestinians will perish from untreated diseases, injuries, dehydration, and from drinking contaminated water. With crumbled sanitation facilities, physicians are fearing a deadly cholera epidemic.

Israel bombed the Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border. Only a tiny trickle of trucks are now allowed there by Israel to carry food and water. Fuel for hospital generators still remains blocked.

The undercount of fatalities/injuries is far greater now. The official figure is about 30,000 lives lost, with hundreds dying every day under the rubble. There is too little media interest in more realistic estimates. Undercounting lessens the pressure on Washington officials’ co-belligerents in the White House to call for a permanent ceasefire.

5. Why can’t Biden even persuade Israel to let 600 desperate Americans out of the Gaza firestorm?

6. Why isn’t the mass media making a bigger issue out of Israel’s long-time practice of blocking journalists from entering Gaza, including European, American and Israeli journalists? The only television crews left are Gazan-residing Al Jazeera reporters. Israeli bombs have already killed 26 journalists in the Gaza Strip since October 7^th. Is Israel targeting journalists’ families? The Gaza bureau chief of Al Jazeera, Wael Al-Dahdouh’s family was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday. Israeli commanders now have killed over 100 journalists in addition in some cases to their entire families and continue to block foreign journalists except for a few brief “guided tours” in Israeli armored vehicles.

7. Why isn’t the mainstream U.S. media giving adequate space and voice to groups advocating a ceasefire and humanitarian aid? The message of Israeli peace groups’ peaceful solutions are drowned out by the media’s addiction to interviews with military tacticians. Much time and space are being given to hawks pushing for a war that could flash outside of Gaza big time. Shouldn’t groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the Arab-American Institute, Veterans for Peace and associations of clergy have their views and activities reported? Still being underreported are the activities all over the country of the Veterans for Peace and large labor unions demanding a permanent ceasefire and humanitarian aid.

8. Why is the coverage of the war overlooking the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations Charter and the many provisions of international law that all the parties, including the U.S., have been violating? (See the October 24, 2023 letter to President Biden). Under international law, Biden has made the U.S. an active “co-belligerent,” of the Israeli government’s vocal demolition of the 2.3 million inhabitants in Gaza, who are mostly descendants of Palestinian refugees driven from their homes in 1948. (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). Coverage has expanded to include the U.S. vetoes on the Security Council and to global reporting on the International Court of Justice proceedings on South Africa’s calling for the Court to address Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

9. What about revealing human-interest stories? For example: How do Israeli F-16 pilots feel about their daily bombing of the completely defenseless Gazan civilian population and its life-sustaining infrastructures? The reporting on the military orders given to Israeli soldiers in Gaza who are slaying indiscriminately thousands of innocents of all ages and snipers attacking people and children in hospitals is inadequate. Why are no Hamas fighters taken as prisoners of war? Is there an order of “take no prisoners” even after capture? What are the courageous Israeli human rights and refuseniks thinking and doing in a climate of serious repression of their views as a result of Netanyahu’s defense collapse on October 7^th? The open letter to President Biden on December 13, 2023, by 16 Israeli human rights groups appeared as a paid notice in the New York Times but received very little notice to its clarion call to stop the catastrophe in Gaza. (See the letter here).

10. Where is the media attention on the statements from Israeli military commentators, who, for years have declared high-tech US-backed, nuclear-armed Israel to be more secure than at any time in its history? Israel is reasserting its overwhelming military domination of the Middle East region, fully backed by U.S. militarism. The Israeli government is putting ads in U.S. newspapers wildly exaggerating long-subdued Hamas as an “existential” threat. Without Netanyahu strangely failing to keep the border guarded on October 7, 2023, what followed would not have happened!

Historians remind us that in a grid-locked conflict over time, it is the most powerful party’s responsibility to lead the way to peace.

Establishing a two-state solution has been supported by many Palestinians. All the Arab nations, starting with the Arab League peace proposal in 2002, support this solution as well. It is up to Israel and the U.S., assuming annexation of what is left of Palestine is not Israel’s objective. (See, the March 29, 2002 New York Times article: Mideast Turmoil; Text of the Peace Proposals Backed by the Arab League).

More media attention on this subject matter is much needed.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012).

25 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jordan Shilton

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced Tuesday the suspension of all humanitarian aid to the northern parts of the Gaza Strip. The estimated 400,000 people still languishing in Gaza City and the surrounding areas have barely received any aid for months due to Israel’s blockade. Reports have surfaced of families surviving on animal feed.

Deliveries only resumed Sunday after a three-week pause prompted by the bombing of an UNRWA truck by Israel. The WFP statement announcing the latest suspension observed, “The plan was to send 10 trucks of food for seven straight days, to help stem the tide of hunger and desperation and to begin building trust in communities that there would be enough food for all.

“On Sunday, as WFP started the route towards Gaza City, the convoy was surrounded by crowds of hungry people close to the Wadi Gaza checkpoint. First fending off multiple attempts by people trying to climb aboard our trucks, then facing gunfire once we entered Gaza City, our team was able to distribute a small quantity of the food along the way. On Monday, the second convoy’s journey north faced complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order. Several trucks were looted between Khan Younes and Deir al Balah, and a truck driver was beaten. The remaining flour was spontaneously distributed off the trucks in Gaza City, amidst high tension and explosive anger.”

After predicting in December that inhabitants would face a famine by May if the situation did not radically improve, the agency reported “unprecedented levels of desperation” for residents in the north this week. A report released by the WFP and UNICEF Monday revealed that one in six children in the northern Gaza Strip under the age of two are acutely malnourished.

This horrendous situation is the deliberate outcome of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza, which has already claimed the lives of well over 30,000 people. The official death toll rose above 29,300 Wednesday, with another 7,000 people declared missing and presumed dead. Since the beginning of the bombardment last October, Israel has intentionally prevented aid from reaching Gaza, using food as a weapon of war.

In November, Giora Eiland, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, published an article in which he advocated the use of starvation and disease to decimate the population. He wrote, “The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers.”

As the World Socialist Web Site noted at the time, this policy is akin to the strategy of the Nazis during World War II towards the Jews, who were left to rot in the ghettos, where many died of starvation and disease before the survivors were shipped to concentration camps.

While the levels of hunger and disease in the north are especially extreme, the situation facing Gaza’s entire population is horrific. World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described Gaza Wednesday as a “death zone.” He added, “The health and humanitarian situation in Gaza is inhumane and continues to deteriorate.”

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese referred to a “total collapse of civil order” across the enclave. Noting the WFP’s decision to suspend aid to the north, she added, “Imagine as a parent having to fight to get food for your child who is dying of hunger. … Shame on all of us for allowing this betrayal of humanity.”

Al-Jazeera spoke to a mother living in the playground of an UNRWA school in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza who is being forced to feed her eight-person family on fried pancakes made from ground animal feed. She said, “This food is insatiable. My little one wakes up at night screaming from hunger because only bread fills the children’s stomachs.

“Today I found this corn flour, and maybe I won’t find it tomorrow … the situation is getting worse day by day, our situation is very miserable.”

At the al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, a joint mission by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), WHO and Palestinian Red Crescent uncovered “appalling conditions” while evacuating the most seriously injured patients after a weeks-long siege by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). OCHA official Jonathan Whittall remarked, “There are 150 patients in one of these buildings. They have no food and water, no electricity. There’s very few doctors and nurses that are remaining inside this hospital…

“There are dead bodies in the corridors. Patients are in a desperate situation. This has become a place of death, not a place of healing.”

Amid this misery, Israel’s daily bombardments continue. A strike on a family home in Rafah Tuesday night killed a human rights lawyer with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Nour Naser abu al-Nour, and seven members of her family. The organisation said she played a role in documenting human rights abuses and fighting injustice. Strikes on the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City and Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip killed at least 12 people Wednesday, including a journalist and his wife.

The catastrophe confronting the Palestinians in Gaza continues to worsen due to the unrestrained support extended to Israel by US imperialism and its European allies. On Tuesday, as the reports of mass starvation were pouring out of Gaza, Washington used its veto in the UN Security Council to block a resolution calling for a ceasefire. The vaguely worded text proposed by the US instead of the original text submitted by Algeria called for a ceasefire “as soon as is practicable,” i.e., at the discretion of Israel’s far-right government that has repeatedly declared its intent to conduct a genocide against the Palestinians.

War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz reiterated Wednesday Israel’s readiness to launch an all-out offensive on Rafah during Ramadan. At least 1.4 million people are crammed into the city, which was home to just 280,000 prior to Israel’s bombardment. A ground offensive would force the Palestinians from their last refuge in Gaza, realising Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse the enclave in order to establish Jewish settlements and direct security control.

The imperialist powers’ endorsement of this savagery is linked to their pursuit of a region-wide war targeting Iran and its allies. The Middle East is rapidly emerging as one front in the imperialist powers’ redivision of the world, which is being driven by the intractable contradictions of the capitalist profit system. Further US air strikes against the Houthis in Yemen were reported Wednesday, while Israel carried out a strike on Damascus that was allegedly aimed at a senior Hezbollah official. Washington is determined at all costs to consolidate its dominance over the energy-rich Middle East against its rivals, above all, China and Russia even at the cost of a regional bloodbath.

The only social force capable of bringing an end to the misery of Gaza’s population and stopping the descent of the Middle East into war is the international working class. Mobilising the mass opposition to Israel’s genocide that has been expressed by millions of people in demonstrations around the world over recent months, workers must fight to halt all military supplies and production destined for Israel. The urgent task is the building of an international anti-war movement to stop the genocide and the imperialists’ escalation of a third world war by advancing a socialist programme to put an end to crisis-ridden capitalism.

Originally published by WSWS.ORG

22 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org