Archives: Articles

By Jean Shaoul

Israeli police arrested 21 protesters, including two organisers, in Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Square Saturday night. Thousands had taken to the streets in towns and cities across Israel against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, demanding early elections and a deal to release the remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Police claimed the protest was an “illegal gathering” in Democracy Square, near the Israeli military’s headquarters.

Far from dispersing the demonstration, police action brought more people out as news of the arrests spread on social media. Police then used water cannon in a bid to disperse the protesters, many carrying posters of their loved ones still held captive in Gaza and torches, not anti-government slogans, while mounted police attacked the crowds.

Among those drenched by the police was a hostage freed from Gaza, while an elderly man collapsed and had to be taken to hospital after being struck on the head by a mounted police officer with his reins. Several protesters were injured and required medical attention. The following day the police issued a statement saying the protesters had ignored officers’ warnings, blocked roads, and clashed with police “despite repeated negotiation efforts.”

In Jerusalem, there was a march of about 1,000 people to Paris Square. There were also demonstrations in the southern city of Beer Sheva, the northern port city of Haifa and Caesarea, outside Netanyahu’s private residence. Speaking in Haifa, Yaakov Godu, father of one of the victims of the October 7 attack, said that Netanyahu “and his deranged messianic envoys are turning the families of the hostages into enemies.”

It was the first time since the start of Israel’s genocidal war ended nine-months of protests against Netanyahu’s plans to give his fascist government dictatorial powers that the police used water cannon in Kaplan Square. It was used more extensively than during those demonstrations.

The Zionist organisers of the anti-government demonstrations called off the weekly rallies in the wake of the October 7 war as the former generals, intelligence chiefs and politicians who had all served under Netanyahu at one time or another, called for wartime unity.

Former military chiefs of staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet in return for his suspending all non-emergency legislation, including the controversial judicial “reforms,” while other leaders took prominent roles in the civilian relief effort. This was vital for Netanyahu as polls show that support for the government plummeted after October 7, with the overwhelming majority holding him personally responsible for the supposed military-intelligence failure that led to the attack on the southern kibbutzim and Supernova music festival.

Polls have still shown widespread support for the war, despite the global mass protests against Israel’s genocidal war. Last week’s survey by the Israel Democracy Institute indicated that the majority of Jewish Israelis oppose a detailed political agreement to end the war and two-thirds oppose humanitarian aid to Gaza. Nevertheless, opposition to Netanyahu is growing, with all the polls showing that his right-wing bloc would lose an election if held now. Netanyahu, on trial for corruption, is seeking to delay giving evidence when he is set to face embarrassing questions in a corruption trial.

According to a poll by the Institute for National Security Studies, only a bare majority now think Israel can achieve all or most of its war aims, while a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute earlier this month found that only 39 percent think there is a high or very high likelihood of the “absolute victory” promised by Netanyahu.

Dissent and discontent have fed into the weekly protests by Israelis, with some opposing the government’s refusal to prioritise the hostages’ release, many of whom are feared dead, and calling for a deal with Hamas to secure this, while an expanding and vocal anti-government opposition is calling for fresh elections to the Knesset.

There is as yet only a small group protesting against the war itself, supporting a ceasefire and opposing Israel’s occupation, although there are signs this is growing. Sofia Orr has served notice that she has refused to report for mandatory military service in protest against the war on Gaza. The 18-year-old is likely to become the first woman to be jailed for refusing military service. She has refused to give in despite facing threats on social media and being called a traitor.

Last December, Tal Mitnick became the first conscientious objector, when he refused his mandatory draft to join the IDF, for which he was sentenced to 30 days in custody, a sentence that has since been renewed twice.

That the police turned on the hostages’ families and attacked a peaceful protest that was not significantly larger than previous Saturday evening protests and was not against the war per se—indicates that Netanyahu and his gang of fascists are determined to crackdown on all dissent as the declared March 10 deadline for a ground offensive on Rafah approaches. Netanyahu is also determined to show he is in charge and fend off any challenge from his Zionist opponents.

In January, Tel Aviv police refused to allow an Arab-Jewish protest to take place in the city, claiming that it could lead to violence. It followed other bans on anti-war demonstrations in Israel’s predominantly Palestinian towns and cities. The police ban came after the High Court barred National Security Minister and Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, notorious for repeatedly pushing police to act aggressively against last year’s anti-government protesters, from giving police orders regarding their conduct during protests. Saturday’s events illustrate his determination to use the police in pursuit of his and the government’s broader political objective: Jewish Supremacy over the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean.

At the weekend, Netanyahu went on CBS News’ Face the Nation to pledge an assault on Rafah, whether or not there is progress in negotiations with Gaza’s authorities. He said that Israel will only see a “total victory” once the IDF begins its invasion of Rafah, the last refuge of some 1.4 million Palestinians forced south from their homes in the north of the Strip. “If we have a deal, it will be delayed somewhat, but it will happen,” he said. “If we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it anyway.”

It was Gantz, Netanyahu’s rival and partner in war crimes, who first announced the March 10 deadline. For the war to take this deadly turn during Ramadan is a provocation which Netanyahu et al calculate is guaranteed to set the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem alight—providing the opportunity to open up a second front. Secure in the support of Washington and the major European powers, Netanyahu is positioning himself as Israel’s wartime strongman, above the law, and not answerable to anyone. He recently declared in a televised address that the war would continue regardless of the decisions the International Court of Justice reached on charges of genocide moved by South Africa. “No one will stop us—not The Hague, not the Axis of Evil and no one else. It is possible and necessary to continue until victory and we will do it.”

Netanyahu’s dictatorial course could not be successfully challenged under the leadership of his Zionist rivals before the war began. Now that it has, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives and unimaginable suffering for the Palestinians Israeli workers and youth are also paying a price.

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

27 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ann Wright

In the past three months, two people in the United States have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change U.S. policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire.

Six years ago in 2018, after returning from a Veterans For Peace trip to Vietnam, I wrote an article called “Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In an Attempt to Stop A War?”

Now, six years later, in the past three months, two people in the United States have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change U.S. policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire and stop U.S. funding to the State of Israel that would be used to kill in the Israeli genocide of Gaza. An yet unidentified woman, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, set herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 1, 2023. Three months later authorities have yet to release the name of the woman. Her condition was unknown as of mid-December.

This week, on Sunday, February 25, 2024, active duty U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while he was stating “Free Palestine and stop the genocide.” Bushnell died from his injuries.

Content Warning: Viewers may find the following video disturbing. It shows the moments leading up to and including Bushnell’s final act. The moment of self-immolation itself has been blurred.

As I mentioned in the article in 2018, many in U.S. admire young men and women who join the military and profess to be willing to give up their lives for whatever the U.S. politicians or government decide is best for another country—“freedom and democracy” for those who don’t have the U.S. version of it, or overthrowing self-rule that is not compatible with the U.S. administration’s view. Actual U.S. national security seldom has anything to do with U.S. invasions and occupations of other countries.

But, what about a private citizen giving up his or her life to try to stop the politicians or government from deciding what is best for other countries? Could a “mere” citizen be so concerned about politicians’ or government actions that she or he is willing to die to bring public attention to those actions?

One well-known and several little-known actions of private citizens from five decades ago provide us with the answers.

While on a Veterans for Peace trip to Vietnam in 2014 and while on another VFP delegation in March 2018, our delegation saw the iconic photo of a well-known Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire in June1963 on a busy street in Saigon to protest the Diem regime’s crackdown on Buddhists during the early days of the American war on Vietnam. That photo is seared into our collective memories.

The photos show hundreds of monks surrounding the square to keep the police out so that Quang Duc could complete his sacrifice. The self-immolation became a turning point in the Buddhist crisis and a pivotal act in the collapse of the Diem regime in the early days of the American war on Vietnam.

But, did you know that several Americans also set themselves on fire to attempt to end U.S. military actions during those turbulent war years in the 1960s?

I didn’t, until our VFP delegation saw the portraits displayed of five Americans who gave their lives to protest the American war on Vietnam, among other international persons who are revered in Vietnamese history, at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi. Though these American peace persons have fallen into oblivion in their own nation, they are well-known martyrs in Vietnam, 50 years later.

Our 2014 delegation of 17—six Vietnam veterans, three Vietnam-era vets, one Iraq-era vet, and seven civilian peace activists—with four Veterans for Peace members who live in Vietnam, met with members of the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society at their headquarters in Hanoi. I returned to Vietnam in March 2018 with another Veterans for Peace delegation. After seeing one particular portrait again—that of Norman Morrison—I decided to write about these Americans who were willing to end their own lives in an attempt to stop the American war on the Vietnamese people.

What distinguished these Americans to the Vietnamese was that, as American soldiers were killing Vietnamese, there were American citizens who ended their own lives in order to try to bring the terror of invasion and occupation for Vietnamese citizens to the American public through the horror of their own deaths.

The first person in the United States to die of self-immolation in opposition to the war on Vietnam was 82-year-old Quaker Alice Herz who lived in Detroit, Michigan. She set herself on fire on a Detroit street on March 16, 1965. Before she died of her burns 10 days later, Alice said she set herself on fire to protest “the arms race and a president using his high office to wipe out small nations.”

Six months later on November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, a father of three young children, died of self-immolation at the Pentagon. Morrison felt that traditional protests against the war had done little to end the war and decided that setting himself on fire at the Pentagon might mobilize enough people to force the United States government to abandon its involvement in Vietnam. Morrison’s choice to self-immolate was particularly symbolic in that it followed President Lyndon Johnson’s controversial decision to authorize the use of napalm in Vietnam, a burning gel that sticks to the skin and melts the flesh.

Apparently, unbeknownst to Morrison, he chose to set himself on fire beneath the Pentagon window of then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Thirty years later in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy in Lessons of Vietnam, McNamara remembered Morrison’s death:

Antiwar protests had been sporadic and limited up to this time and had not compelled attention. Then came the afternoon of November 2, 1965. At twilight that day, a young Quaker named Norman R. Morrison, father of three and an officer of the Stony Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore, burned himself to death within 40 feet of my Pentagon window. Morrison’s death was a tragedy not only for his family but also for me in the country. It was an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth.

I reacted to the horror of his action by bottling up my emotions and avoided talking about them with anyone—even with my family. I knew (his wife) Marge and our three children shared many of Morrison’s feelings about the war. And I believed I understood and shared some of his thoughts. The episode created tension at home that only deepened as the criticism of the war continued to grow.

Before his memoir In Retrospect was published, in a 1992 article in Newsweek, McNamara had listed people or events that had had an impact on his questioning of the war. One of those events,McNamara identified as “the death of a young Quaker.”

One week after Norman Morrison’s death, Roger LaPorte, 22, a Catholic Worker, became the third war protester to take his own life. He died of burns suffered through self-immolation on November 9, 1965 on the United Nations Plaza in New York City. He left a note that read, “I am against war, all wars. I did this as a religious act.”

The three protest deaths in 1965 mobilized the anti-war community to begin weekly vigils at the White House and Congress. And every week, Quakers were arrested on the steps of the Capitol as they read the names of the American dead, according to David Hartsough, one of the delegates on our 2014 VFP trip.

Hartsough, who participated in anti-war vigils 50 years earlier, described how they convinced some members of Congress to join them. Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.) became the first member of Congress to do so. After the Quakers were arrested and jailed for reading the names of the war dead, Brown would continue to read the names, enjoying congressional immunity from arrest.qz

Two years later, on October 15, 1967, Florence Beaumont, a 56-year-old Unitarian mother of two, set herself on fire in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Her husband George later said, “Florence had a deep feeling against the slaughter in Vietnam… She was a perfectly normal, dedicated person, and felt she had to do this just like those who burned themselves in Vietnam. The barbarous napalm that burns the bodies of the Vietnamese children has seared the souls of all who, like Florence Beaumont, do not have ice water for blood, stones for hearts. The match that Florence used to touch off her gasoline-soaked clothing has lighted a fire that will not go out—ever—a fire under us complacent, smug fat cats so damned secure in our ivory towers 9,000 miles from exploding napalm, and THAT, we are sure, is the purpose of her act.”

Three years later, on May 10, 1970, 23-year-old George Winne, Jr., son of a Navy captain and a student at the University of California, San Diego, set himself on fire on the university’s Revelle Plaza next to a sign that said “In God’s name, end this war.”

Winne’s death came just six days after the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University student protesters, killing four and wounding nine, during the largest wave of protests in the history of American higher education.

At our 2014 meeting at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society office in Hanoi, David Hartsough presented Held in the Light, a book written by Ann Morrison, the widow of Norman Morrison, to Ambassador Chin, a retired Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations and now an official of the Society. Hartsough also read a letter from Ann Morrison to the people of Vietnam.

Ambassador Chin responded by telling the group that the acts of Norman Morrison and other Americans in ending their lives are well remembered by the people of Vietnam. He added that every Vietnamese school child learns a song and poem written by Vietnamese poet Tố Hữu called “Emily, My Child” dedicated to the young daughter that Morrison was holding only moments before he set himself on fire at the Pentagon. The poem reminds Emily that her father died because he felt he had to object in the most visible way to the deaths of Vietnamese children at the hands of the United States government.

Sparking Revolutions

In other parts of the world, people have ended their lives to bring attention to special issues. The Arab Spring began on December 17, 2010 with a 26-year-old street Tunisian vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire after a policewoman confiscated his food street vending cart. He was the only breadwinner for his family and had to frequently bribe police in order to operate his cart.

His death sparked citizens throughout the Middle East to challenge their repressive governments. Some administrations were forced from power by the citizens, including Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled with an iron fist for 23 years.

Or Being Ignored as Irrational Acts

In the United States, acts of conscience such as taking one’s own life for an issue of extraordinary importance to the individual are viewed as irrational and the government and media minimize their importance.

For this generation, while thousands of U.S. citizens are arrested and many serve time in county jails or federal prisons for protesting U.S. government policies, in April, 2015, young Leo Thornton joined a small but important number of women and men who have chosen to publicly end their lives in hopes of bringing the attention of the American public to change specific U.S policies.

On April 13, 2015, Leo Thornton, 22 years old, committed suicide by gun on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. He had tied to his wrist a placard that read “Tax the 1%.” Did his act of conscience have any effect on Washington—the White House or the U.S. Congress? Unfortunately, not.

The following week, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed legislation that would eliminate the estate tax applying only to the top 1% of estates. And no mention of Leo Thornton, and his decision to end his life over inequitable taxation, appeared in the media to remind us that he ended his life in opposition to another piece of favorable legislation for the rich.

Then years ago, in October 2013, 64-year-old Vietnam veteran John Constantino set himself on fire on the Washington, D.C. National Mall—again for something he believed in. An eyewitness to Constantino’s death said Constantino spoke about “voter rights” or “voting rights.” Another witness said he gave a “sharp salute” toward the Capitol before he lit himself on fire. A neighbor who was contacted by a local reporter said Constantino believed the government “doesn’t look out for us and they don’t care about anything but their own pockets.”

The media didn’t investigate any further into the rationale for Constantino’s taking his own life in a public place in the nation’s capital.

Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

27 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jacob Crosse

In a fatal Sunday afternoon protest, livestreamed and conducted in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C., Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active duty Air Force member, declared his opposition to participating in the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. He then proceeded to douse himself in an accelerant and light himself on fire. His last words were “Free Palestine.”

Video of Bushnell’s deadly protest quickly spread on social media. In the just over three-minute video, Bushnell, wearing his combat fatigues, begins by introducing himself and declaring, “I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide.” As he continues to walk in his uniform, he calmly explains, “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

Bushnell, with a container of liquid in his left hand, continued to walk for about 30 seconds until he reached the front of the Israeli embassy. After placing his camera down—with it facing towards the front of the embassy—Bushnell walked up to the gate and drenched himself with a liquid, declaring, “Free Palestine!” He then pulled out a lighter and attempted to ignite himself.

Off-camera, a man’s voice is heard asking, “Can I help you, sir?” For approximately 15 seconds, Bushnell was not able to light the accelerant, yet the voice off-camera made no attempt to get the lighter from Bushnell. Once the fire did catch, Bushnell was quickly drenched in flames. As the fire consumed Bushnell, he screamed repeatedly, “Free Palestine!”

As Bushnell was burning, several voices were heard off-camera. One person yelled, “Man on fire!” while another was heard repeatedly yelling, “Get on the ground!” As sirens blared and tires screeched, Bushnell eventually collapsed on the ground. Nearly a minute after ignition, a police officer is observed using a fire extinguisher on Bushnell’s now charred and immobile body.

Despite the fact that Bushnell obviously presented no threat to anyone but himself, an armed agent is observed on the tape pointing a gun at Bushnell as he continued to burn on the ground for the remainder of the video. The police agent (it is unclear as of this writing if he is with the Israeli embassy or the US Secret Service) continued to point his weapon at Bushnell even as one the police officers is heard yelling, “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers.”

In his last social media post, Bushnell wrote, “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

On his LinkedIn account, Bushnell listed that he had been full-time with the US Air Force since May 2020, with his last assignment being a “DevOps Engineer” in San Antonio, Texas. Bushnell wrote that he was looking to “transition out of the US Air Force into software engineering.”

In January, the Intercept reported that since November of 2023, the US Air Force had deployed officers specializing in “targeting intelligence” specifically for airstrikes and long-range artillery weapons to Israel. While it is unclear as of this writing if Bushnell received orders to deploy, there is no question that he was deeply troubled by the US military’s role in the ongoing slaughter.

Bushnell was influenced by anarchist politics. On the day of his self-immolation, the young man emailed anarchist publications, such as crimethinc, alerting them that he planned to “engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people.” He provided links to the livestream and recorded footage of the “event” and asked that the “footage is preserved and reported on.”

In a statement issued on Monday, Serve The People Akron, based out of Akron, Ohio, released a statement confirming that Aaron “was a valued member of our organization and the community who immediately jumping to help the unhoused and any project that came up. He was dependable and persistent and the mutual aid work he did in a city that still new to him. We will be forever grateful for the effort he put in to make Akron a better place.”

Several memorials and vigils have already been planned and held in honor of Bushnell. On Monday outside of the Israeli embassy in the same place the young man set himself on fire, dozens of protesters held a memorial service. On a large canvas, attendees wrote phrases in English and Arabic in support of Bushnell. One message read, “Dear Aaron, We are sorry the world has failed you, just like it has failed the people of Gaza. May you rest in peace.”

Bushnell’s death is a tragic event and an indictment of all the governments and political tendencies responsible for the slaughter. Chief among them are the Israeli and US governments, followed by their NATO allies. However, a special place is reserved for those that continue to proffer illusions in the perpetrators and facilitators of genocide. In the United States, this includes the Democratic Socialists of America, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the forces behind the “Uncommitted” charade, who continue to prop up the Biden administration and the Democratic Party.

Despite widespread opposition to the mass murder and starvation of Palestinians, major media outlets, including the New York Times, NPR, Reuters, CNN and Washington Post, did not report on the protest for several hours and when they did, the headlines were deliberately vague in order to mask the political content of Bushnell’s devastating demonstration.

“Airman Dies After Setting Himself On Fire Outside Israeli Embassy in Washington” was the headline in the New York Times. “U.S. airman dies after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy” read the NPR headline. The Post similarly declared, “Airman dies after setting himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy in D.C.” CNN and Reuters both went with the equally useless, “US airman sets himself on fire outside Israeli embassy in Washington.”

This self-censorship by the capitalist press is of a piece of their conduct since the outset of the US-backed Israeli slaughter in Gaza. Since the first week in October, American press outlets have blasted out Israeli propaganda, while blacking out daily protests against US involvement in the war. At the same time, the Biden administration and the entire US political establishment slanders tens of thousands of students and demonstrators as “antisemitic” for exercising their First Amendment rights to oppose genocide.

Continuing their filthy role, major media outlets that have begun to report on the incident are using the catch-all term of “mental illness” in order to cover up the political content of Bushnell’s extreme protest and portray it as the product of defects in his psyche, not the sickness of American society and the mass revulsion produced by the foreign policy of American imperialism.

But from all accounts, Bushnell was not suffering from any mental illness, and he is not even the first American to self-immolate in response to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. On December 1, 2023 a woman protester, whom Atlanta police have refused to identify, drenched herself in gasoline and lit herself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia. The woman was carrying a Palestinian flag at the time.

These extreme protests are a reaction to the barbaric violence that US society inflicts on workers and their families around the world. Decades of endless war have brutalized American society. Attempts by the population to effect change through the ballot box are denied as the big business parties, with the media in tow, do everything in their power to ban socialist and left-wing viewpoints. For decades the two parties have funneled society’s resources away from social programs and into war, including over $1 trillion last year.

Decades of imperialist war in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have led to over 40 million refugees and nearly 10 million deaths. US imperialist violence does not stay outside its borders, no matter how many rolls of concertina wire are deployed along the US-Mexico border. It pervades every aspect of US society, from a soldier suffering from PTSD massacring adults and children at a bowling alley in Maine, to daily police killings that have topped over 1,000 a year in the US for over a decade.

The lives and bodies of workers and young people, whether Palestinian or American, are worth nothing to the ruling class unless they can be turned into soldiers or profit. The bipartisan embrace of genocide in Gaza, which has been supported by the political establishments of the US, Israel and other imperialist countries, is the end of the line for capitalist politics in America.

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

27 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Sumanta Banerjee

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

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

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

History  of  Hindu  persecution  of  Buddhists

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

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

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

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

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

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

29 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The world cannot persist in this cowardly inaction.

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

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

29 February 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

1 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Primitive equipment

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

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

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

Dr Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based writer

2 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Layan Fuleihan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Negotiations Without Negotiating

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

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

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

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

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

2 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 March 2024

Source: countercurrents.org