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By Aaron Maté

As the death toll in Gaza tops 20,000, Israeli-US lies about Al-Shifa hospital are newly exposed.

22 Dec 2022 – In a news conference this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken lashed out at global criticism of US support for Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza.

“I hear virtually no one saying, demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that,” Blinken complained.  “How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor, and only demands made of the victim?”

Blinken’s statement is an outright endorsement of state terrorism. Its underlying logic affirms that Israel is free to massacre Palestinian civilians until the armed resistance in their midst offers up a “surrender.”

The chief US diplomat’s indigitation at the supposed absence of any “demands” on Hamas is also based on a false premise. As Blinken is well aware, the multiple UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions that his government has vetoed demanded that Hamas grant the unconditional release of all hostages. But because these resolutions also demanded that Israel end its attack on Gaza and allow the unfettered delivery of humanitarian aid, the US has blocked them.

Committed to defending Israeli violence at all costs, Blinken is accordingly willing to cast Hamas as the “aggressor” and Israel – an occupying power that has now reportedly murdered a well over 20,000 people in Gaza – as the “victim.”

Even if we were to pretend that history began on Oct. 7^th, and forget that the Hamas militants who attacked Israel on that day were caged inside the world’s largest concentration camp under the world’s longest-running military occupation, Blinken’s statement would be just as mendacious. Hamas’ atrocities came in a one-day guerilla operation against Israel. That does not give Israel the right to wage a nearly-three month military campaign that is causing historic levels of carnage and destruction.

With Israel routinely blocking life-saving aid, a new United Nations report finds that more than 500,000 people in Gaza – one-quarter of the entire population – are starving. “It doesn’t get any worse,” says Arif Husain, chief economist for the World Food Program. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.”

Israel has drastically reduced aid by insisting that it inspect every shipment going into Gaza, even goods that arrive through Egypt. This means that before entering Gaza at Egypt’s Rafah crossing, aid trucks must first drive for an inspection in the Israeli border town of Kerem Shalom before returning to Rafah. While claiming to be working strenuously on the aid deliveries, the Biden administration has played its traditional role of enforcing Israel’s dictate. As one US official told the New York Times of the Biden administration’s latest stonewalling of a UNSC resolution, “Washington would not approve a measure that removed Israel from the inspection process.”

When it comes to military tactics, Israel’s wanton recklessness was newly underscored when its forces killed three unarmed Israeli hostages after mistaking them for being Palestinian civilians. Had they been the latter, as Israeli troops believed when they shot them, the murders would have been routine and likely unnoticed.

Meanwhile, even President Biden has been forced to admit that Israel is carrying out an “indiscriminate bombing” of the besieged enclave. “By some measures, destruction in Gaza has outpaced Allied bombings of Germany during World War II,” the Associated Press reports. Whereas the Allies destroyed about 10% of buildings across Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1945, in Gaza that figure stands at 33%.

“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” US military historian Robert Pape observes. “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.” The campaign has relied on the steady provision of US weapons. According to a recent US intelligence assessment, almost half of the munitions that Israel has dropped on Gaza have been unguided or “dumb” bombs, which are known for their inaccuracy and wholesale destruction.

In the war’s first weeks, “Israel routinely used one of its biggest and most destructive bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians,” a New York Times analysis concludes. Although Washington has given free rein to use its 2,000-pound bombs, they “are almost never dropped by U.S. forces in densely populated areas anymore.” Their lethality extends to 1,000 feet from impact, a large-scale death sentence for what CNN notes is a Gaza population “packed together much more tightly than almost anywhere else on earth.”

Under Israel’s US-backed indiscriminate bombardment, Gaza’s official death toll has passed 20,000, an unusual if not unprecedented figure for a 21^st century war that is less than three-months old. Given that only one side has a military and air power, it was also entirely predictable. The 20,000 figure is also assuredly an undercount. “We don’t know how many are buried under the rubble of their homes,” notes the World Health Organization’s Director General. Health data expert Benjamin Q. Huynh adds that there is “no evidence” that Gaza’s health ministry has inflated the Palestinian death toll. Beyond those buried under the rubble, an additional reason why the “true death toll is probably higher than what’s being reported,” he observes, is a “diminished capacity from the hospital system.”

The Israeli attacks on Gaza’s hospital system have targeted more than two dozen health facilities in Gaza, another milestone in the conduct of modern warfare.

When it comes to last month’s Israeli assault on Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, a new report in the Washington Post concludes what was obvious from the start: Israeli-US claims of a Hamas “command and control” center there were yet another pro-war fabrication.

After seizing the hospital, Israel claimed that five buildings were used by Hamas, and sat above tunnels that were used to direct the group’s militant activity. But according to the Post, rooms that were connected to the tunnel network underneath the hospital “showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas.” Additionally, neither al-Shifa’s hospital wards or the five hospital buildings were accessible to the tunnels. Accordingly, the Post concludes, “the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center.”

The Biden administration was equally complicit in Israel’s al-Shifa deception, aided as usual by reliable media stenographers. Before Israel attacked al-Shifa on Nov. 15^th, White House spokesperson John Kirby assured reporters that he could “confirm” that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were using al-Shifa’s tunnels “to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages.” One day after Israel launched the assault, President Biden doubled down. “Here’s the situation: You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital,” Biden said on Nov. 16th, “And that’s a fact. That’s what’s happened.”

Biden’s grasp of this “fact” is as reliable as his false claim to have seen photographs of beheaded babies, which he nonetheless continues to repeat despite Israeli and US admissions that no such photographs exist.

Anonymous US officials also informed the New York Times that “they are confident that Hamas has used tunnel networks under hospitals, in particular Al Shifa, for command and control areas as well as for weapons storage.” The Times additionally cited “senior Israeli intelligence officials,” who “allowed the Times to review photographs that purported to show secret entrances to the compound from inside the hospital.” In other words, these Israeli officials “allowed” the Times to launder their lies.

As Israeli forces attacked al-Shifa, anonymous US intelligence officials informed the Wall Street Journal that they had “independently” obtained “intercepted communications of fighters inside the compound.” Predictably, the Journal’s sources “declined to provide more details about the U.S. intelligence on Al-Shifa,” citing the familiar excuse of protecting “sources and methods.” The claim of sourcing “intercepted communications” happens to be a tried and tested method of US war propaganda, deployed to sell the fabrications about Iraq WMDs or claims of chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government.

Although the Journal acknowledged that the US “hasn’t been able to determine details of Hamas’s alleged operations at Al-Shifa,” it left room for even more Israeli attacks by claiming that the US “has also picked up intelligence about other hospitals.” When reporters pressed Kirby to provide even a shred of evidence, the White House spokesperson refused. But not to worry: yet another anonymous “knowledgeable source” emerged to inform Reuters that the intelligence “is definitive.”

The Israeli siege of al-Shifa caused the deaths of several dozen patients in intensive care, as well at least four premature babies. In heralding the operation, an Israeli official even dispensed with the pretext about a Hamas command post or rescuing hostages. “The entrance to Shifa is first of all a symbol that there is no place we will not reach,” the official said. “We did not think we would find hostages, but we will definitely locate and dismantle Hamas capabilities.”

For its part, the Biden administration still defends the al-Shifa assault. “This was a very precise and targeted military operation that Israel carried out with a range of efforts to reduce any civilian casualties,” a senior U.S. administration official told the Post.

The operation was indeed targeted. In attacking Gaza’s largest hospital with US assistance, Israel laid the foundation to destroy and disable even more health facilities across the besieged enclave. This unprecedented barbarism can only have one goal: to maximize civilian casualties, and destroy the basic institutions of a functioning society.

The assault on al-Shifa is also perfectly in line with Israeli officials’ open calls for genocide and ethnic cleansing, and the high-level effort undertaken for those goals.

According to the newspaper Israel Hayom, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top aide, cabinet member Ron Dermer, has been tasked to “thin” the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip “to a minimum.” A new account in the Washington Post claims that in the days after Oct. 7^th, Netanyahu even personally asked President Biden to pressure Egypt into accepting a massive influx of Palestinian refugees. Aides claims that Biden rebuffed Netanyahu, but evidence suggests otherwise. On Oct. 20^th, the White House submitted a Congressional budget request that included funding for the “potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries,” given that the “crisis could well result in displacement across border and higher regional humanitarian needs.”

Resistance from Egypt and Jordan has thwarted, for now, Israel’s effort to enlist their help in trying to “thin” out Gaza. Accordingly, the Israeli army is settling for exterminating as many Palestinians as possible, and making the death camp uninhabitable for those who survive.

White House support for Israel’s war on Palestinian civilians goes beyond any act of US barbarism in recent memory. Complicit in mass murder, Biden and his principals are also engaging in unprecedented levels of deceit, from lying about civilian hospitals to pretending that the perpetrator of a genocide is in fact the victim.

Aaron Maté is a journalist with The Grayzone, where he hosts “Pushback.” He is also a contributor to Real Clear Investigations and the temporary co-host of “Useful Idiots.” In 2019, Maté won the Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for Russiagate coverage in The Nation.

25 December 2023

Source: transcend.org

 

By Alia Chughtai, Marium Ali and Delaney Nolan

15 Dec 2023 – From Jakarta to San Francisco, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past two months to protest Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 18,700 people, including more than 7,700 children.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Events Data Project, a nongovernmental organisation specialising in conflict data collection, from October 7 to November 24, there were at least 7,283 pro-Palestine protests that took place in more than 118 countries and territories.

Many more have chosen to express their condemnation using their purchasing power, opting to boycott products and services that support Israel, in turn fueling the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that was set up in 2005 by a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups.

Censoring voices on campus

In the United States, students at several universities, including Columbia University in New York City, have said their attempts to speak out against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza have met intimidation and censorship.

Mateescu said there’s a Colombia-specific boycott list that’s being shared on social media to make local consumer choices.

Across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom, a group of students at the University of York have also been holding events to raise awareness about the events in Palestine.

The students requested their identities be concealed due to the backlash for publicly supporting Palestine.

“I do find that a lot of people don’t want to take a stance on it and are sort of sitting in the middle and a lot of people that I know don’t really understand what’s going on very much because there’s quite a lot of misinformation. I would say it’s your duty to uplift voices that aren’t necessarily being heard,” one of the society members said.

“I think for me to take the small action of not buying a coffee at a certain chain, it’s very easy to take small actions to make sure that there’s less money being directed towards violence,” she said, explaining the steps she is taking.

Another member said they are focused on educating people who may not be equipped with information to form an opinion on the conflict and the conditions of the Palestinian people.

What is BDS?

TO CONTINUE READING THE REPORT Go to Original – aljazeera.com

25 December 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Richard Falk

20 Dec 2023 – Declaration of Conscience of Global Intellectual on Gaza Genocide prepared by Ahmet Davutoglu and myself, with the assistance of Abudllah Ahsan and Hilal Elver, to enlist signatories from around the world. We invite others to join by sending their endorsement to <change.org> listed under the heading of Declaration of Conscience. I will post a link as it is available. We view the virtual annihilation of Gaza as a societal grouping and its people as an imminent possibility. As of 20 Dec 2023, it is reported that 88% of the population has insufficient food and potable water is 90% less than minimum needs for sustainable health.

On 30 Nov, the Government of Israel resumed the genocidal onslaught it indicted on Palestinians in Gaza after a much overdue but brief “humanitarian pause.” In doing so, Israel has ignored the worldwide protests of people as well as the fervent pleas of moral, religious, and political authority figures throughout the world to convert the hostage/prisoner exchange pause into a permanent ceasere. The overriding intention was to avert the worsening of the ordeal of the Gazan population. Israel was urged to choose the road to peace not only for humanitarian reasons but also for the sake of achieving real security and respect for both Palestinians and Israelis. Yet now the bodies are again piling up, the Gaza medical system can no longer offer treatment to most of those injured, and threats of widespread starvation and disease intensify daily.

Under these circumstances, this Declaration calls not only for the denunciation of Israel’s genocidal assault but also for taking effective action to permanently prevent its repetition. We come together due to the urgency of the moment, which obliges global intellectuals to stand against the ongoing horrific ordeal of the Palestinian people and, most of all, to implore action by those who have the power, and hence the responsibility, to do so. Israel’s continuing rejection of a permanent ceasefire intensifies our concerns. Many weeks of cruel devastation caused by Israel’s grossly disproportionate response to the October 7 attack, continues to exhibit Israel’s vengeful fury. That fury can in no way be excused by the horrendous violence of Hamas against civilians in Israel or inapplicable claims of self-defense against an occupied population.

Indeed, even the combat pause seems to have been agreed upon by the Israeli government mainly to ease pressures from Israeli citizens demanding greater efforts to secure the release of the hostages. The United States government evidently reinforced this pressure as a belated, display to the world that it was not utterly insensitive to humanitarian concerns. Even this gesture was undercut before the pause started by the deant public insistence of Prime Minister Netanyahu to resume the war immediately after the pause. It is more appropriate to interpret these seven days without combat as a pause in Israel’s genocidal operations in Gaza rather than as a humanitarian pause. If truly humanitarian, it would not have crushed hopes of ending the genocide and conjointly resuming efforts to negotiate the conditions for an enduring and just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

The revival of this military campaign waged by Israel against the civilian population of Gaza amounts to a repudiation of UN authority, of law and morality in general, and of simple human decency. The collaborative approval of Israel’s action by the leading liberal democracies in the Global

West, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, accentuates our anguish and disgust. These governments pride themselves on adherence to the rule of law and yet have so far limited their peacemaking role to PR pressures on Israel to conduct its exorbitant actions in a more discreet manner. Such moves do little more than soften the sharpest edges of Israel’s genocidal behavior in Gaza. At the same time continuing to endorse Israel’s false rationale of self-defense, which is inapplicable in a Belligerent Occupation framework established by the UN in the aftermath of the 1967 War, shielded this brazenly criminal conduct from legal condemnation and political censure at the UN and elsewhere.

We deplore the reality that these governments continue to lend overall support to Israel’s announced intention to pursue its combat goals, which entail the commission of severe war crimes that Tel Aviv does not even bother to deny. These crimes include the resumption of intensive bombing and shelling of civilian targets, as well as reliance on the cruel tactics of forced evacuation, the destruction of hospitals, bombings of refugee camps and UN buildings that are sheltering many thousands of civilians and the destruction of entire residential neighborhoods. In addition, Israel has been green-lighting settler-led violence and escalating ethnic cleansing efforts in the West Bank. Given these developments we urge national governments to embargo and halt all shipments of weapons to Israel, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, which should also withdraw their provocative naval presences from the Eastern Mediterranean; we urge the UN Security Council and General Assembly to so decree without delay.

We also support the Palestinian unconditional right as the indigenous people of the land to give or withhold approval to any proposed solution bearing upon their underlying liberation struggle.

The deteriorating situation poses an extreme humanitarian emergency challenging the UN system to respond with unprecedented urgency. We commend UNICEF for extending desperately needed help to wounded children as well as to children whose parents were killed or seriously injured every continuing effort. We also commend WHO for doing all in its power to help injured Palestinians, especially pregnant women and children, and to insist as effectively as possible on the immediate reconstruction and reopening of hospitals destroyed and damaged by Israeli attacks. We especially commend UNRWA for continuing the sheltering of many thousands of Palestinians in Gaza displaced by the war and for providing other relief in the face of heavy staff casualties from Israeli repeated bombardment of UN buildings. Beyond this, UNESCO should be implored to recognize threats to religious and cultural sites and give its highest priority to their protection against all manner of violation, especially the Masjid al-Aqsa; the Israeli government should be warned about its unconditional legal accountability for protecting these sites.

We also propose that the UN Human Rights Council should act now to establish a high-profile expert commission of inquiry mandated to ascertain the facts and law arising from the Hamas attack and Israel’s military operations in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The commission should offer recommendations in its report pertaining to the responsibility and accountability of principal perpetrators for violations of human rights and humanitarian norms that constitute war crimes and genocide.

We also view the desperation of the situation to engage the responsibility of governments, international institutions, and civil society to act as well as to speak, and use their diplomatic and economic capabilities to the utmost with the objective of bringing the violence in Gaza to an end now!

As signatories of this Declaration, we unequivocally call for an immediate ceasefire and the initiation of diplomatic negotiations under respected and impartial auspices, aimed at terminating Israel’s long and criminally abusive occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. This process must be fully respectful of the inalienable right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and take proper account of relevant UN resolutions.

SIGN THE PETITION

Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals on Gaza Genocide

Signatories:

1. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, Türkiye;
2. Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967 (2008-2014), Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University;
3. Dr. Moncef Marzouki, Former President of Tunisia;
4. Mahathir Mohamed, Former Prime Minister of Malaysia;
5. Georges Abi-Saab, Professor Emeritus, Graduate Institute Geneva and Cairo University, Former UN Advisor to the Secretary Generals of the UN; Former Judge of the International Court of Justice, Egypt;
6. Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976), Member of Russell Tribunal, Northern Ireland;
7. Amr Moussa, Former Secretary General of the Arab Leauge, Former Foreign Minister, Member of the UN’s High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change for International Peace and Security, Egypt;
8. M. Javad Zarif, Professor, University of Tehran, Former Foreign Minister, Iran;
9. Hamid Albar, Former Foreign Minister, First Chancellor of the Asia e University, Malaysia;
10. Brigette Mabandla, Former Minister of Justice and anti-Apartheid Activist, South Africa;
11. Judith Butler, Professor, University of California at Berkeley; Feminist Studies, USA;
12. KamalHossein,FormerForeignMinister,Bangladesh;
13. PauloSergia,ProfessorofPoliticalScience(USP)andFormerMinisterofHuman Rights, Brazil;
14. ChrisHedges,Pulitzer-prizeWinningReporterandFormerMiddleEastBureau Chief for The New York Times, USA;
15. TuWeiming,MemberofUNGroupofEminentPersonsfortheDialogueAmong Civilizations, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, USA; Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Peking University, China;

16. JohnEsposito,ProfessorofInternationalRelationsandtheFoundingDirectorofthe Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University; Member of High Level Group of the UN Alliance of Civilizations, USA;
17. Arundhati Roy, Author of God of Small Things, Human Rights Activist, India;
18. SusanAbulhawa,PalestinianNovelist,AuthorofMorningsinJenin,USA;
19. HansvonSponeck,FormerUNAssistantSecretary-General,FacultyMemberat Conict Research Center, University of Marburg, Germany;
20. Angela Davis, Berkeley, USA;
21. HilalElver,ProfessorofInternationalLaw,UNSpecialRapporteuronRighttoFood (2014-2020), Türkiye;
22. Abdullah Ahsan, Professor of History International Islamic University Malaysia and Istanbul Şehir University, USA;
23. Phyllis Bennis, Journalist, Author and Social Activist, Institute of Policy Studies, USA;
24. Noura Erakat, Activist and Professor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Co-founder of Jadalliyah, USA;
25. Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development; Deputy Director UN FAO, Malaysia;
26. Victoria Brittain, Former Foreign Editor of the Guardian, worked closely with anti-Apartheid Movement, Founder of the annual Palestine Festival of Literature, UK;
27. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak FBA, Professor, Columbia University, received Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy 2012, India;
28. Ali Bardakoğlu, Professor of Theology, Former President of Directorate of Religious Affairs, Türkiye;
29. Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti Emeritus of Bosnia, President of the World Bosniak Congress, co-recipient UNESCO Felix Houphouet-Bougny Peace Prize, Bosnia and Herzegovina;
30. Maung Zarni, Human Rights Activist, Member of the Board of Advisors of Genocide Watch, Co-founder of Free Burma Coalition, Free Rohingya Coalition and Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, Myanmar;
31. JosephCamilleri,EmeritusProfessor,LaTrobeUniversity,Co-ConvenerofSHAPE Melbourne, Australia;
32. Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government Columbia University, Chancellor of Kampala University, Uganda;
33. Dayan Jayatilleka, Former Ambassador to UN (Geneva), France; Journalist, Sri Lanka;

34. Elisabeth Weber, Professor of German Literature and Philosopy, University of Califor-nia at Santa Barbara, Germany/USA;
35. Marjorie Cohn, Dean of the Peoples Academy of International Law, Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, USA;
36. Jan Oberg, Chairman of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, Sweden;
37. Ramzy Baroud, Author, Academic, Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Palestine/ USA;
38. Saree Makdisi, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, USA;

39. Roger Leger, Retired Professor of Philosophy at the Military College of Saint-Jean, Québec, Canada;
40. Usman Bugaje, Professor, Former Adviser to the Vice President of Nigeria, Nigeria;
41. ChandraMuzaffar,President,InternationalMovementforaJustWorld(JUST), Malaysia;
42. Avery F. Gordon, Professor Emerita University of California Santa Barbara, USA;
43. Arlene Elizabeth Clemesha, Professor of Contemporary Arab History at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil;
44. Ömer Dinçer, Professor, Former Minister of Education, Former President of Şehir University, Türkiye;
45. Fethi Jarray, Former Education Minister, current Chairperson of the National Mechanism on Torture Prevention, Tunisia;
46. Alfred de Zayas, Former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, USA;
47. Walid Joumblatt, Member of Lebanese Parliament, Leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, Lebanon;
48. Elmira Akhmetova, Professor at the Institute of Knowledge Integration in Georgia, Russia;
49. Sami Al-Arian, Professor, Director of Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Zaim University, Türkiye;
50. George Sabra, Signatory of the Damascus Declaration (2005), Former President of the Syrian National Council, Syria;
51. RayMcGovern,Activist,VeteransforPeace,Supporteroftheanti-wargroupNotin Our Name, USA;
52. Juan Cole, Professor of History, The University of Michigan, Former Editor of The Internatioanl Journal of Middle East Studies, USA;

53. Penny Green, Professor of Law and Globalization, Director, International State Crime Initiative Queen Mary University of London, UK;
54. Bishnupriya Ghosh, Professor of English and Global Studies, UC Santa Barbara, USA/India;
55. Nader Hashemi, Professor, Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, USA;
56. Ahmed Abbes, Mathematician, Director of Research at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientiques Paris, France, Tunisia;
57. Bhaskar Sarkar, Professor of Film and Media, UC Santa Barbara, USA/India;
58. AkeelBilgrami,ProfessorofPhilosophyatColumbiaUniversity,USA,India;
59. Assaf Kfoury, Mathematician and Professor of Theoretical Computer Science, Boston University, USA;
60. Helena Cobban, Journalist, Author, President of Just World Educational, USA;
61. BilijanaVankovska,ProfessorandHeadoftheGlobalChnagesCenter,Cyriland Mehtodius University, Skopje, Macedonia;
62. David Swanson, Author, Executive Director of World BEYOND War, USA;
63. Radmila Nakarada, Professor, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade; Spokesperson of the Yugoslav Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Serbia;
64. Fredrick S. Heffermehl, Lawyer and Author, Norway;
65. Anis Ahmad, Emeritus Professor and President Riphah International University Islamabad, Pakistan;
66. Lisa Hajjar, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA;
67. Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, President Emeritus , Islamic Society of North America, USA;
68. Muhammed al-Ghazzali, Professor, Judge Supreme Court of Pakistan, Pakistan;
69. Syed Azman Syed Ahmad, Former Member of Malaysia Parliament, Chairman of Asia Forum for Peace and Development (AFPAD), Malaysia;
70. Osman Bakar, Al-Ghazali Chair of Epistemology and Civilisational Renewal, International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, Malaysia;
71. IbrahimMZein,ProfessorofIslamicStudies,QatarFoundation,Qatar;
72. Engin Deniz Akarlı, Professor of History Emeritus, Brown University, Türkiye;
73. Francesco Della Puppa, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Italy;
74. Julio da Silveira Moreira, Professor, Federal University of Latin-American Integration, Brazil;

75. Nabeel Rajab, Founder and former president of the Gulf Center for Human Rights; Former Deputy Secretary-General of the International Federation for Human Rights, Recipient of the Ion Ratiu Award for Democracy and Human Rights, Bahrain;
76. Feroz Ahmad, Emeritus Professor of History and Internatiıonal Relations, Harvard University, USA, India;
77. Serap Yazıcı, Professor of Constitutional Law, MP, Turkish Parliament, Türkiye;
78. Natalie Brinham, Genocide and Statelessness Scholar, UK;
79. Ayçin Kantoğlu, Author, Türkiye;
80. Dania Koleilat Khatib, ME Scholar and President of RCCP TrackII Organisation, UAE;
81. Imtiyaz Yusuf, Assoc. Prof. Dr., Non-Resident Research Fellow Center for Contemporary Islamic World (CICW), Shenandoah University, USA/Vietnam;
82. Kamar Oniah Kamuruzaman, Former Professor of Comparative Religion, International Islamic University, Malaysia;
83. Ümit Yardım, Former Ambassador of Türkiye to Tehran, Moscow and Vienna, Türkiye;
84. Ahmet Ali Basic, Professor, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina;
85. Kani Torun, Former Ambassador of Türkiye to Somalia, Former Head of Doctors Worlwide, Member of Parlament, Türkiye;
86. Ermin Sinanovic, Center for Islam in the Contemporary World at Shenandoah University, USA/ Bosnia and Herzegovina;
87. Nihal Bengisu Karaca, Journalist, Türkiye
88. Alkasum Abba, Emeritus Professor of History, Abuja, Nigeria;
89. Hassan Ahmed Ibrahim, Professor of History and Civilization, Former Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Khartoum, Sudan;
90. Anwar Alrasheed, Khiam Rehabilitation Center, The victims of Torture (KRC), Representative of the International Council for Fair Trials and Human Rights in the State of Kuwait and the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, Kuwait;
91. MohdHishamMohdKamal,Assoc.Prof.Dr.,AhmadIbrahimKulliyyahofLaws, Malaysia/ Indonesia;
92. Syed Arabi Bin Syed Abdullah, Former Rector, International Islamic University, Malaysia;
93. Yusuf Ziya Özcan, Former President of Council of Higher Education, Türkiye;
94. Mohamed Jawhar Hassan, Former Chairman and Chief Executive, Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia;
95. Shad Faruqi, Professor of Law, University of Malaya, Malaysia;

96. Mohammad Ahmadullah Siddiqi, Professor Emeritus of Journalism and Public Relations, Western Illinois University, Macomb IL USA/India;
97. Mohamed Tarawna, Judge at the Cassation Tribunal, Jordan;
98. Etyen Mahcupyan, Author, Former Chief Advisor to Prime Minister of Türkiye;
99. Khawla Mattar, the Director of the United Nations Information center in Cairo, Former UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, Bahrain;
100. Aslam Abdullah, Senior Journalist, USA/India;
101. Stuart Rees, Professor Emeritus, University of Sydney, Australia;
102. Hatem Ete, Academic, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Department of Sociology, Türkiye;
103. Karim Makdisi, Professor of Political Science, American University of Beirut, Lebanon;
104. Camilo Pérez-Bustillo, National Taiwan University, Taiwan;
105. Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol, UK;
106. William Spence, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Queen Mary University of London, UK;
107. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Professor of Law, Founding CEO of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, Malaysia/Afghanistan;
108. Ferid Muhic, Prof of Philosophy, Krill Metodius University, Macedonia;
109. Frej Fenniche, Former Senior Human Rights Ofcer/UN, OHCHR, Switzerland;
110. Sevinç Alkan Özcan, Associate Professor, International Relations Department, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University;
111. Sigit Riyanto, Professor, Faculty of Law Universitas, Indonesia;
112. Khaled Khoja, Former President of Syrian National Coalition;
113. Tarık Çelenk, Former Chairman of Ekopolitik, Türkiye;
114. M. Bassam Aisha, Human Rights Expert, Libya;
115. Naceur El-Ke, Academician and Human Rights Activist, Tunisia;
116. Jean-Daniel Biéler, Former Ambassador, Special Advisor, Human Security Division, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland;
117. Fajri Matahati Muhammadin, Faculty of Law, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia;

118. Ahmet Okumuş, Chairman of The Foundation for Sciences and Arts (BİSAV), Türkiye;
119. Khan Yasir, Dr., Director In-Charge, Indian Institute of Islamic Studies and Research, India;
120. Mahmudul Hasan, Md., Professor, International Islamic University Malaysia/ Bangladesh;
121. Tara Reynor O’Grady, General Secretary for Human Rights Sentinel, USA;
122. NurullahArdıç,ProfessorofSociology,IstanbulTechnicalUniversity,Türkiye;
123. PharKimBeng,FounderandCEOofStrategicPan-PacicArena,Malaysia;
124. Dinar Dewi Kania, M.M, .M.Sos, Trisakti Institute of Transportation and Logistics. Jakarta, Indonesia
125. MulyadhiKartanegara,ProfessorofIslamicphilosophyat,UniversitasIslamNegeri Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, Indonesia;
126. Habib Chirzin, Academic and Human Rights activist, IIIT, Indonesia

__________________________

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

25 December 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Edward Curtin

20 Dec 2023 – Jesus was a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem.  He grew up in Nazareth and was executed as a criminal in Jerusalem. It is because of him that we celebrate Christmas.  But it is in spite of him that what we celebrate is the opposite of what he stood for.

The different stories of his birth, told by Mathew and Luke in the New Testament, which are the bases for Christmas, are not filled with sugar plum fairies and sleighs filled with useless, unnecessary consumer goods.  There’s nothing about a Jolly Old St. Nicholas or baked ham or candy canes.  No gifts to return in a frenzied rush that replicates their purchase.  No credit card bills that come due in the new year.  No “Jingle Bell Rock” with Brenda Lee or “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby.

Just a poor child’s birth to fulfill a prophecy that out of life would come death and out of death would come life.  That hope was improbable but possible with faith.

These birth narratives, which tell of a nativity that concludes with the grown child’s suffering, public crucifixion, death, and Resurrection – a story that lives on with the suffering of so many innocents – are, as Gary Wills puts it in What the Gospels Meant, “. . . far from feel-good stories.  They tell of a family outcast and exiled, hunted and rejected.  They tell of children killed, of a sword to pierce the mother’s heart, of a judgment on the nations.”  They are stories of rejection, massacre, and a desperate flight from death at an early age.  They are not what most people now consider to be the essence of Christmas since a radical Palestinian Jew’s story has been almost totally erased by the glitz and greed of getting and spending to fuel an economy geared for war and killing.

Mathew and Luke’s birth narratives are replicated again and again throughout history, presently and most conspicuously in Gaza and the West Bank, as the massacre of the innocents continues under today’s King Herod, Benjamin Netanyahu, the client king of Washington, not Rome, while U.S. politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who claims to be a defender of children and opposed to U.S. war policies, support this genocide with rhetorical justifications that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called the unspeakable:

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . .

To the shock of so many of Kennedy’s early supporters, he claims, among other unspeakable assertions, that the Israelis have been the innocent victims of the Palestinians for 75 years, and they “could flatten Gaza” if they chose to, but instead have kindly used high-tech explosives “to avoid civilian casualties”; that they are not committing genocide intentionally. Indeed, his defense of the indefensible Israeli war crimes is widely shared by the compromised political leadership of both parties in Washinton, D.C., a place Kennedy is hoping to reach as the top of the heap, but he is contradicting all his talk about spiritual renewal and healing the divide, and it is especially galling and hypocritical as we try to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

While the genocide of Palestinians is being documented every ongoing day now, the Gospel stories are different in that they were written after the fact and were not based on eyewitness testimony but are narratives of deep symbolic faith significance, historically wrong in places, but told to signify religious truths of the early Christian faith community.

Once there was a mother and father with their child on the run to safety in Egypt; today there are millions of Palestinian refugees on a bombed-out unarmed road of flight to nowhere but a dead-end.

A few days ago my wife and I were caring for our son’s two dogs.  Down the hill as night came on, the town set off fireworks – those bombs bursting in air (Oh how lovely is war!) – to celebrate and encourage people to buy holiday gifts, what can only fairly be described as acquisitive consumer madness that many realize yet have accepted as an essential part of the Christmas message.  As the fireworks exploded loudly, the dogs started to quake uncontrollably and we had to hold them tight to comfort them.

Yes, they are animals, but sentient animals with deep feelings; and yes, they are not children in Gaza quivering in fear as the Israelis bomb them night and day in savage attacks.  But as we held those frightened dogs, feeling their hearts beat fast as they gasped for breath, the visceral sense of what those Palestinians must be feeling, as they hold their trembling children who are butchered as useless objects, overwhelmed me.  As they are “thinned out,” as Netanyahu is reported to have said, I felt sick at heart to be living safely in a country that finances and supports such slaughter.  A country in which buying and selling is the real religion, people have become commodities, and Christmas has become the celebration of such grotesqueries.

I keep thinking of the difference between human beings and things; life and death; money and power; acquisitiveness and poverty; and, as Norman O. Brown puts it in Life Against Death, “an economy driven by a pure sense of guilt, unmitigated by any sense of redemption.”

In his classic study, Brown makes clear that it is erroneous to think that the secular and the sacred are exclusive opposites, as if the secular has replaced the “irrational” beliefs of religion with clean science and logical thinking; has banished irrational superstitions with abstract, objective, quantitative, and impersonal thinking.  On the contrary, he argues that the whole modern secular money complex – the spirit of capitalism – is rooted in the psychology of guilt and the secular sacred.  He writes:

The psychological realities here are best grasped in terms of theology, and were already grasped by Luther. Modern secularism, and its companion Protestantism, do not usher in an era in which human consciousness is liberated from supernatural manifestations; the essence of the Protestant (or capitalist) era is that the power over this world has passed from God to God’s negation, God’s ape, the Devil. And already Luther had seen in money the essence of the secular, and therefore of the demonic. The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God’s ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.

Things, just like money, beyond a certain minimum necessary for a simple life of use, do not, as everyone knows, bring happiness.  This is because they are dead – excrement – the Devil’s favorite toy.

Take all those useless and superfluous objects people exchange during the holiday season.  The disposable gifts that are purchased to ease the guilt of giving and receiving.  Or such “objects” as an autograph of a famous person, an art work such as Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn that sold at auction last year for $195 million, Babe Ruth’s bat, Princess Diana’s evening dress ($1,148 million at auction), antlers over a fireplace and trophies of all sorts – the examples are manifold – they serve to confer on their owners a sacred prestige (etymology = deception, illusion) that is pure magic.  Like vast piles of money, they are talismanic protectors against death.  Their magical properties are irrational and rarely acknowledged, for to do so would reveal the absurdity of their acquisition and the pathetic nihilistic core of their owners.  They are outward signs of inward barrenness, yet for those who possess these useless objects they are magic ordure.

The more expensive the objects the more social power they mystically confer, since the message is that the owner can always give it up for a pot of gold but doesn’t have to since they are sitting on a lot more gold, which is really a pot of shit.  In other words, wealth, its possession and the avid desire for it, signifies power over people and that power includes using them in many ways, including their labor, and killing them if one chooses, quickly or slowly, overtly or deviously, directly or indirectly, for some people are useless objects, inferior people.

Such power is central to politics and warfare, as a quick glance at the wealth of war-promoting politicians will reveal.

It is central to the widespread thinking today that the world is filled with useless people who must be disposed of one way or the other.

It is a fundamental tenet of the World Economic Forum, the Gates-Rockefeller et al. crowd, and the racist eugenics promoters today and yesterday.

It is behind the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) biological weapons gain-of-function research, the Covid-19 propaganda, and the CIA’s and Defense Department’s distribution of the mRNA countermeasures (“vaccines”).

It is central to the hideously obscene profits of the medical military-industrial complex and the world-wide arms industry.

It is central to the genocide taking place in Gaza.  For the Israeli rulers, the problem is that the Palestinians exist, so they must be exterminated.

It’s still the same old story told differently down through the ages.

Hitler enacted it against the Jews.

Once long ago, it was a Palestinian Jewish boy born in a manger destined to make trouble for the rulers of the empire who had to be eliminated one way or another.  Today that child of God is any Palestinian child, destined, we are told by the rulers of Israel, to grow into a terrorist animal.

Christmas is about a birth, the birth of a boy who would become a man who sided with the outcasts, the poor, the forsaken, the gentle, and the peacemakers.  His birth and life was a rebuke to the powerful and the rich who lord it over the innocent, the killers, those who profit at the expense of others, who amass wealth and useless possessions to parade their power, a show of power which, unknown to their self-obsessed minds, is a sign of their spiritual nullity.

I have nothing against Santa.  I once sat on his lap and he seemed nice to my four year-old mind.  He was fat and jolly.  He told me I would get what I wanted for Christmas.  But he forgot to tell me what Christmas was really about.

That is what I want.  To remember.

Edward Curtin, Ph.D. is a widely published author and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

25 December 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Anwar Fazal

Last Saturday, I gave a keynote address and declared open a Tribal Art Exhibition at the Wawasan Open University in Penang,Malaysia,and drew the attention of the audience to the mostly unknown UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES.

The Declaration provided the world with a framework for reconciliation,healing and peace as well as harmony and cooperation based on the principles of justice, democracy, respect for human rights,non-discrimination and good faith!

It was finally adopted on 23 September 2007 , 16 years ago, after two decades ,I repeat ,two long decades of negotiations.

Not well known is the shocking fact that 4 countries (in alphabetical order)- AUSTRALIA, CANADA , NEW ZEALAND and the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.. opposed the Declaration. Shockingly also, a dozen other countries of mostly ex colonial powers even abstained!

HYPOCRISY AT ITS WORST!

Over the next few years, however,feeling the shame and the pressure of people with conscience most of them acceded to the Declaration.

SADLY ,AND UNCONSCIONABLY,HYPOCRISY AT IT WORST CONTINUES WITH THE MASSACRE AND GENOCIDE OF PALESTINEANS

We have to keep on fighting these evil forces.

We must never give up.

Anwar Fazal, Penang, Malaysia, Right Livelihood Awardee (popularly known as the ” Alternative Nobel Prize’

25 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, is rarely one to be cryptic. “Day X is here,” she posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter.  For those who have followed her remarks, her speeches, and her activism, it was sharply clear what this meant.  “It may be the final chance for the UK to stop Julian’s extradition.  Gather outside the court at 8.30am on both days. It’s now or never.”

Between February 20 and 21 next year, the High Court will hear what WikiLeaks claims may be “the final chance for Julian Assange to prevent his extradition to the United States.”  (This is qualified by the prospect of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.)  Were that to take place, the organisation’s founder faces 18 charges, 17 of which are stealthily cobbled from the aged and oppressive US Espionage Act of 1917.  Estimates of any subsequent sentence vary, the worst being 175 years.

The WikiLeaks founder remains jailed at His Majesty’s pleasure at Belmarsh prison, only reserved for the most hardened of criminals.  It’s a true statement of both British and US justice that Assange has yet to face trial, incarcerated, without bail, for four-and-a-half years.  That trial, were it to ever be allowed to take place, would employ a scandalous legal theory that will spell doom to all those who dive and dabble in the world of publishing national security information.

Fundamentally, and irrefutably, the case against Assange remains political in its muscularity, with a gangster’s legality papered over it.  As Stella herself makes clear, “With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2018, such as the violation of legal privilege and reports that senior US officials are involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband, there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited.”

In mid-2022, Assange’s legal team attempted a two-pronged attempt to overturn the decision of Home Office Secretary Priti Patel to approve Assange’s extradition while also broadening the appeal against grounds made in the original January 4, 2021 reasons of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.

The former, among other matters, took issue with the acceptance by the Home Office that the extradition was not for a political offence and therefore prohibited by Article 4 of the UK-US Extradition Treaty.  The defence team stressed the importance of due process, enshrined in British law since the Magna Carta of 2015, and also took issue with Patel’s acceptance of “special arrangements” with the US government regarding the introduction of charges for the facts alleged which might carry the death penalty, criminal contempt proceedings, and such specialty arrangements that might protect Assange “against being dealt with for conduct outside the extradition request”.  History shows that such “special arrangements” can be easily, and arbitrarily abrogated.

On June 30, 2022 came the appeal against Baraitser’s original reasons.  While Baraitser blocked the extradition to the US, she only did so on grounds of oppression occasioned by mental health grounds and the risk posed to Assange were he to find himself in the US prison system.  The US government got around this impediment by making breezy promises to the effect that Assange would not be subject to oppressive, suicide-inducing conditions, or face the death penalty.  A feeble, meaningless undertaking was also made suggesting that he might serve the balance of his term in Australia – subject to approval, naturally.

What this left Assange’s legal team was a decision otherwise hostile to publishing, free speech and the activities that had been undertaken by WikiLeaks.  The appeal accordingly sought to address this, claiming, among other things, that Baraitser had erred in assuming that the extradition was not “unjust and oppressive by reason of the lapse of time”; that it would not be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (inhuman and degrading treatment)”; that it did not breach Article 10 of ECHR, namely the right to freedom of expression; and that it did not breach Article 7 of the ECHR (novel and unforeseeable extension of the law).

Other glaring defects in Baraitser’s judgment are also worth noting, namely her failure to acknowledge the misrepresentation of facts advanced by the US government and the “ulterior political motives” streaking the prosecution.  The onerous and much thicker second superseding indictment was also thrown at Assange at short notice before the extradition hearing of September 2020, suggesting that those grounds be excised “for reasons of procedural fairness.”

An agonising wait of some twelve months followed, only to yield an outrageously brief decision on June 6 from High Court justice Jonathan Swift (satirists, reach for your pens and laptops). Swift, much favoured by the Defence and Home Secretaries when a practising barrister, told Counsel Magazine in a 2018 interview that his “favourite clients were the security and intelligence agencies”.  Why? “They take preparation and evidence-gathering seriously: a real commitment to getting things right.”  Good grief.

In such a cosmically unattached world, Swift only took three pages to reject the appeal’s arguments in a fit of premature adjudication.  “An appeal under the Extradition Act 2003,” he wrote with icy finality, “is not an opportunity for general rehearsal of all matters canvassed at an extradition hearing.”  The appeal’s length – some 100 pages – was “extraordinary” and came “to no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made and rejected by the District Judge.”

Thankfully, Swift’s finality proved stillborn.  Some doubts existed whether the High Court appellate bench would even grant the hearing.  They did, though requesting that Assange’s defence team trim the appeal to 20 pages.

How much of this is procedural theatre and circus judge antics remains to be seen.  Anglo-American justice has done wonders in soiling itself in its treatment of Britain’s most notable political prisoner.  Keeping Assange in the UK in hideous conditions of confinement without bail serves the goals of Washington, albeit vicariously.  For Assange, time is the enemy, and each legal brief, appeal and hearing simply weighs the ledger further against his ailing existence.

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

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jay Janson

Global corporate capitalism led by the hegemonic state, the United States, is a fundamentally immoral and irrational system. In capitalism, both states and corporations are designed to maximize short-term power and profits for the super-wealthy corporate elite. [1]

For two and a half months, Israeli military forces, with the full backing of the US government, have dropped more than 40,000 tons of explosives—the equivalent of more than two nuclear bombs—on Gaza destroying residential buildings, hospitals, schools and refugee camps and deliberately targeting hundreds of medical workers, journalists, teachers and other civilians for assassination. [2]

At least 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and 54,000 wounded, the majority women and children. Many more face death in the coming weeks, as Israel lays siege in the south and deprives Gaza’s 2.2 million people of food, water and medical care. Hunger and disease are rapidly spreading through their makeshift shelters.

US vetos have blocked international calls for a ceasefire. The US government is fully supporting Israel politically, financially and militarily.

A recently leaked Pentagon document stated that US “security assistance” was arriving in Israeli on a near-daily basis. The US has delivered 36,000 rounds of 30mm artillery shells, 1,800 M141 Bunker-buster bombs and other munitions to Israel in late October alone, according to the document. [2]

Under the rubble, alongside the buried bodies of children, Palestinian rescue workers have found bomb fragments with the manufacturing codes of Boeing and other US defense companies. There is unchallengeable evidence that the Biden administration and both corporate-backed U.S. political parties are just as guilty as the Netanyahu government for perpetuating the greatest war crime of the 21st century.

Why all this death and destruction? Because corporate war investors ruled America needs to be assured of its continuing to have that US armed powerful Israeli military outpost in the midst of the oil rich nations of the Middle East. Something America established in 1946 when American power over an incipient United Nations of only 56 nations, produced the genocidal stratagem of torching the Holy Land with a phony, never expected nor intended to be implemented resolution for a crazy quilt partition of Palestine into six noncontiguous areas; the Arab areas entirely noncontiguous; the Jewish areas contiguous by a thread; the designated major area for Jews containing more Arabs than Jews, and meant to immediately provoke a civil war prepared for and expected by the Colonial Powers supported and well armed Revisionist Zionists leadership. With the announcement of the UN vote for partition (adopted by a vote of only 25 in favor versus 32 against, abstaining or absent), the fully expected bloodshed had begun. The partition resolution awarded the proposed Jewish State 51% of the land even though Jews owned only 6% and made up only 33% of the population. [Map of the UN proposed partition at Click Here ]

Item:

Western Media Never Questions Why U.S. Well Armed Israel Could Not Just Defend Itself Instead of Claiming It Must Destroy Hamas and Murder Tens of Thousands of Women and Children. 

Is there a risk for U.S.A. that the Israeli tail might be waving the America dog?

The destruction of Gaza’s homes and buildings makes the 2.3 million citizens of Israeli prison-enclosed Gaza homeless. Without  food, water, fuel electricity and sanitation infrastructure, the survivors will be forced to leave. (Neighboring Egypt and Jordan are well aware of the increasing threat of having to care for more than two million impoverished Gaza refugees seeking asylum.)

Once Gaza is obliterated has become a desolate and de-populated land, while the West Bank Palestinian land is further settler colonized beyond the half million Israeli settler enclaves already making life difficult for Palestinians, Israel will be close to its goal of eventually having complete control and ownership of all the land that once was the British Mandate of Palestine. Then Israel could expel the Arabs from their last enclave in East Jerusalem.

Haaretz, Israel News, Nov. 5, 2023

Rabbi at Israeli Military Training Base Says ‘Whole Country’ Is ‘Ours,’ Including Gaza and Lebanon.’

The Israel-Hezbollah conflict is intensifying! Could Netanyahu decide to settle old scores with Hezbollah and even Iran while U.S. aircraft carriers are committed to defend Israel?

Item:

Western Media Ignores Palestinian Fight for Freedom & Israeli Killing to Continue Its Murderous Illegal Occupation & Colonization.

Item:

Western Media Hides Truth Palestinians Fight for Freedom & Israel Kills to Continue Occupation & Colonization

Item:

Western Media Questions Gaza’s Future Never Israel’s Illegal Occupation & Colonization of Palestine 

Item:

Turkey’s President Erdogan calls Israel a ‘terror state’, criticizes the West and calls for Israeli officials to be tried for war crimes. Has said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Nov. 1, 2023 Aljazeera

Israel in its supporting CIA-overseen Western media[3] have concocted grotesque fables to present Palestinians as bloodthirsty savages in order to justify its horrific genocide in Gaza.

Barely a day has passed since the 7 October attack by Hamas when the western media has not revisited those events, often to reveal what it claims are new details of astonishing atrocities carried out by the Palestinian group.

These disclosures have served to sustain public indignation in the West, and kept Palestinian solidarity activists on the back foot.

In turn, the outrage has smoothed Israel’s path as it has leveled vast swaths of Gaza; killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children; and denied the enclave’s population of 2.3 million access to food, water and fuel.

Critically, it has also made it far easier for western governments to throw their weight behind Israel – and arm it – even as Israeli leaders have repeatedly engaged in genocidal talk and carried out ethnic cleansing operations.

Many of the claims about 7 October have been shocking beyond belief, such as stories that Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even described in graphic detail – and wholly falsely – a Hamas attack on an Israeli family: “The father’s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed.”

As to Israel’s using the Israelis killed in the Hamas Oct 7th attack to justify the Israeli response of murdering at the time already 12, 500 Palestinian civilians, resent investigations find that a large fraction of the bodies recovered had been charred beyond all recognition, making it very difficult to distinguish between Israelis and Hamas attackers. Since the Hamas fighters had only been carrying rifles, Kalashnikov rifles and other small arms, all those victims must have been killed by explosive tank shells and Hellfire missiles. Indeed, newly released video footage revealed that hundreds of Israeli cars had been incinerated by such munitions, suggesting that many or most of the Israelis killed fleeing the dance festival had probably died at the hands of trigger-happy Apache pilots, who reported that they had blasted anything that moved.

Israel admits apache helicopters fired on their own civilians running from the Supernova music festival. 

“The pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian… The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.” [4]

Last week the BBC and others led again with stories of systematic Hamas mass rapes on 7 October. Efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims are being obstructed by Israel.

The media’s amplification of Israel’s version of 7 October continues to breathe life into the Israeli case that wrecking Gaza to eliminate Hamas is morally justified

Media readiness to re-examine 7 October long after those events took place

Only claims that support Israel’s narrative about what happened that day are being aired.

Unknown to most western audiences, there has been a steady trickle of evidence from Israeli sources over the past two months implicating Israel’s own military in at least some of the killings attributed to Hamas.

The Israeli military has finally conceded that it had killed its own civilians on October 7 “in immense and complex quantity”.

Regev told MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan:

“There were actually bodies that were so badly burned we thought they were ours. In the end, apparently, they were Hamas terrorists.”

How did so many Hamas fighters end up burned – and in exactly the same locations as Israelis, meaning their remains could not be identified separately for many weeks?

Shelled by Israel

Yasmin Porat, who fled the Nova festival and ended up hiding in Be’eri, was one of the few to survive that day. Her partner, Tal Katz, was killed.

She has repeatedly explained to the Israeli media what happened.

According to Porat’s account to Kan radio on 15 November, the Hamas fighters in Be’eri barricaded themselves into a house with a group of a dozen or so Israeli hostages – either planning to use them as human shields or as bargaining chips for an exit.

The Israeli military, however, was in no mood for bargaining. Porat escaped only because one of the Hamas fighters vacated the house early on, using her as a human shield, before giving himself up.

Porat describes Israeli soldiers engaging in a four-hour firefight with the Hamas gunmen, despite the presence of Israeli civilians. But not all of the hostages were killed in the crossfire. Israel ended the clash with an Israeli tank firing two shells into the house.

In Porat’s account, when she asked why this had been done, “they explained to me that it was to break the walls, in order to help purify the house”.

The only other survivor, Hadas Dagan, who was lying face down on the lawn in front of the house during the firefight, reported to Porat what happened after the two shells hit the house. Dagan saw both of their partners lying near her, killed by shrapnel from the explosions.

Survivor of Kibbutz Be’eri incident reveals harrowing details of Israeli forces’ assault

Hadas Dagan, the only survivor of the Kibbutz Be’eri incident on 7 October, has broken her silence, recounting the horrific events. During the Israeli forces’ arrival, a fierce exchange of gunfire ensued, followed by missile strikes. Amidst this chaos, Dagan recalls the children’s desperate screams for help. Her testimony brings to light the targeted assault on civilians by the Israeli army, including her partner Adi, who was killed in the attack. Dagan vividly describes the terrifying moments,

A 12-year-old girl, Liel Hatsroni, who had been screaming inside the house throughout the firefight, also fell silent.

Hatsroni and her aunt, Ayalan, were both incinerated. It took weeks to identify their bodies.[5]

Confused pilots

Porat’s testimony is far from the only source showing that Israel is likely to have been responsible for a significant proportion of the civilian deaths that day – and for the burned bodies.

The security coordinator at Be’eri, Tuval Escapa, effectively confirmed Porat’s account to the Haaretz newspaper. He said: “Commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

The burnt-out cars at the Nova festival and their occupants appear to have suffered a similar fate. Worried that Hamas gunmen were fleeing the area with hostages in cars, it seems, helicopter pilots were told to open fire, incinerating the cars and all the occupants.

The Ynet news website cited an Israeli air force assessment of its two dozen attack helicopters in the skies above the Nova festival: “It was very difficult to distinguish between terrorists and [Israeli] soldiers or civilians.” Nonetheless, pilots were instructed “to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence” with Gaza.

Pilots emptied the ‘belly of the helicopter’ in minutes, flew to re-arm and returned to the air, again and again.

Challenge to official story

Although they are rarely given a voice, Palestinians have their own, alternative narrative of what happened that day – and parts of it are being bolstered by accounts from Israeli sources.

In this telling, Hamas long trained for its breakout, and with a strategic aim in mind. The goal was to launch a commando-style assault on four military bases surrounding Gaza to kill or take hostage as many Israeli soldiers as possible, and a similar assault on local Israeli communities to seize civilian hostages.

The aim, according to this narrative, was to trade the hostages for Palestinian prisoners, thousands of whom are in Israeli jails, including women and children, often held without a military trial or even charges.

To the Palestinian public, these prisoners are no less hostages than the Israelis held in Gaza.[6]

Your 92 year old writer, is unable to stop thinking of the mass of fellow civilian human beings and their children being murdered, maimed and starved in Gaza with the weapons and munitions supplied by my government.

Seems like minded people, especially fellow Americans, should make this a topic of conversation among family, friends and co-workers, for none of us are safe from future crimes of our government.

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”  Leonardo da Vinci

“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.” –Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Archbishop of South Africa Desmond Tutu

America will not be ruled by corporate investors in war dis-informing and shaming its citizens by U.S. genocidal military crimes in other peoples countries forever. The whole world is getting fed up with it.

The vast majority of Humankind in the Global South cannot but be aware of having suffered genocide and military occupation by U.S./NATO similar to that being suffered by Palestinians today.

Ih our space age of instant world wide communication the five centuries of White race rule of planet Earth will come to an end.

There are more Chinese than the total population of U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. There are also now more Indians than Chinese and more Africans than Indians. Imagine how this human majority feels about this continuing American hegemony.

End Notes

1. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/07/16/us-corporate-elite-killing-democracy-and-planet

2. World Socialist Web Site

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/21/cdxa-d21.html

3.“Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A,” December 26, 1977, New York Times

4. https://middleeastmonitor.com/20231030-report-7-october-testimonies-strikes-major-blow-to-israeli-narrative/… 4.

5. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0tKA-stHb0/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5d0d1e79-4f79-4d93-ab5a-803ed391531e

6. ‘Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel’s own actions on 7 October?’ By Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at http://www.jonathan-cook.net . Via Middle East Eye

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989.

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

 

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

Following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, the U.S. government rushed to evacuate its citizens from Israel. Flights to Europe were chartered from Tel Aviv. A Royal Caribbean cruise ship, the Rhapsody of the Seas, was chartered, taking 2,500 people from Haifa to Cyprus. U.S. citizens, green card holders, their family members and others in the Gaza Strip, though, weren’t so lucky. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza heeded the warning of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to flee to southern Gaza, only to learn that Israel was bombing there as well. No place is safe in Gaza for the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped there.

“My mother was an old lady who was living safely in her home. She was displaced many times. Every time…the Israeli forces are threatening to bomb the house,” Narmin AbushaBAN, a Palestinian American in Detroit, explained on the Democracy Now! news hour. “She was paralyzed. She was on medications. Due to the air forces threatening to displace them many times…Even when they were in the south, in Khan Younis, they were threatened in the middle of the night to leave their house. They had to displace her again, until they reached Rafah. There, her health was getting worse and worse. She didn’t have the right medication, due to the Israeli forces preventing medical supplies from getting into Gaza. So she had to switch to another medication that did not help her at all. And she passed away.”

Rather than a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Narmin Abushaban’s mother got a hole in the ground.  Abushaban still has twenty family members trapped in Gaza, who she has been unable to reach.

“My clients’ family members need immediate evacuation from Gaza to reunite with their families and to escape near-certain death due to Israel’s brutal war on Palestine,” Narmin’s attorney, Sophia Akbar, said on Democracy Now! “We need the U.S. government to create immigration pathways for Palestinians to come to the U.S. to escape deadly and inhumane conditions.”

Journalist Fadi Abu Shammalah works as the Outreach Associate in Gaza for the Washington, DC-based non-profit Just Vision. He applied for a J-1 exchange visitor visa for a fellowship in the US. In November, Fadi was able to cross into Egypt from Gaza, but his wife and three children were prevented. What followed were weeks of hell, while they moved from camp to camp for displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

“On December 6, while I don’t have connection with my wife and my kids, I knew that from the news that Israel  bombed the Shaboura refugee camp, exactly where my family evacuated,” Fadi said on Democracy Now! from Cairo. “For two hours and a half, I was waiting any sign that my family are alive. I had to go through the news of WhatsApp thread to look for my kids’ photo. I had to look into the photos of the killed children, because I knew that there’s 20 women and kids were killed in this bombing. I had to open the photos and zoom in to determine if one of these photos is one of my kids.”

Sophia Akbar sees disparities in the treatment of Palestinians and other asylum seekers:

“Under the Uniting for Ukraine program, all requirements of having connections to green card holders and U.S. citizens were waived. So, Ukraine, about — over 270,000 Ukrainians were allowed to come to the United States under this program. As advocates on the ground right now serving our clients who have families in Gaza, we cannot even get U.S. citizens out. Our advocates had to sue the Biden administration just to get U.S. citizens evacuated.”

In a note to Democracy Now!, Reverend Seth Kaper-Dale of Interfaith-RISE, a New Jersey refugee aid agency, wrote, “When a conflict arises in the world…we’ll be asked by the federal government to receive an influx of refugees.  Kabul fell, hundreds came here to our agency. The war between Ukraine and Russia started, 800 Ukrainians entered our program. We’ve received 1500+ Haitians. The earthquake in Turkey, immediately we saw an influx of dozens of Syrian refugee families. So why no Palestinian refugees?”

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Congressmember Pramila Jayapal of Seattle were joined by 100 colleagues, urging President Biden to expand TPS, Temporary Protected Status, for Palestinians already in the US, to prevent their potential deportation back to the killing fields of Gaza, or to Israeli military and settler violence in the West Bank.

Israel has killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7th, 8,000 of them children. This “indiscriminate bombing,” as President Biden called it, has to stop now. Biden has the power to end it, with a simple Christmas phone call to Netanyahu.

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 1,400 public television and radio stations worldwide.

Denis Moynihan has worked with Democracy Now! since 2000. He is a bestselling author and a syndicated columnist with King Features.

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By P.S. Sahni

Several petitions have been filed in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for proceedings against Israel. The Public Prosecutor of the ICC has visited Israel, Palestine (Gaza Strip) and even talked to families of victims. As the Israeli government has not ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC it claims to remain outside the jurisdiction of ICC. However the UK and Germany have ratified the Rome Statute. It is public knowledge that Sunak and Olaf Scholz did visit the scene of ongoing crime in Israel in October 2023 and promised to stand by Israel in this war. The UK government has sent arms and ammunition (see here).

The German government followed suit (see here).

The ICC has thus the jurisdiction to investigate the complicity of these two individuals viz. Sunak and Olaf Scholz and the governments they represent viz. UK and Germany. As suppliers of arms and ammunition to Israel in the ongoing Holocaust-II of Palestinians, they/their respective governments are indeed complicit in the crime against humanity. After satisfying that arms and ammunition were supplied to Israel through its own independent investigations, the ICC could issue warrants of arrest against the two entities.

Meanwhile the USA and Israel are smarting under the fig leaf of an excuse that they are both not signatories to the Rome Statute and are outside the purview of ICC. Even the mere issuance of warrants of arrest against Sunak and Olaf Scholz would be a moral victory for the international community. Why, even the act of pressing for legal proceedings at ICC alone would change global power equations.

France had strengthened its naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. This announcement was made by Macron on October 25 according to Le Monde:

“The move marks a significant reinforcement of France’s military posture in the war between Israel & Hamas.”

However the French government is at pains to explain that the naval presence is for humanitarian aid only.

There are positive signals all round. The ongoing worldwide mass protests against the Israeli government; the 153 countries opposing Israel at UNGA; the European Parliament election in 2024; and the domestic pressure in Israel, USA, UK –  countries due for general elections in 2024 could eventually lead to a Nuremberg-II Trial!

P.S. Sahni is a qualified orthopaedic surgeon.

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman

It was 6:00 am on 15 December, when my mother woke me to take our turn in the line at a nearby bakery, 15 minutes away on foot.

There are two lines, one for women and one for men. My mother was number 29, I number 30. We had arrived before the bakery opened to ensure our turn.

The number of waiting men soon tripled, far surpassing the number of women. The bakery’s proprietor decided that every customer could purchase just 10 pieces of bread each, since hundreds were already queuing by the time he opened at eight.

There were six employees in the bakery, including the proprietor. Each one was assigned a certain task.

One rolled the dough into balls and placed them in a wooden tray. Another moved those trays to a third employee, who fixed the dough before it was baked and divided into portions. A cashier took money.

I stood in the queue for six hours. One advantage of getting there early was that I managed to grab a chair for my mother, who cannot stand for extended periods as she has severe pain in her legs and back.

After four hours of standing, I felt lightheaded. I couldn’t see anyone in front of me and was barely able to keep myself from collapsing. Did I feel this weak because I was starving or because I was thirsty?

Exhaustion

I had gone to the bakery on an empty stomach. I had eaten my last meal, a can of peas, 18 hours prior.

I am used to it now, in this, the third month of Israel’s genocidal aggression. I eat only one meal, usually around midday. It’s hard to find food in Rafah’s stores and markets. Israel continues to prevent the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and only a trickle of food for the more than 1 million displaced people in Rafah enters any given day.

Supermarkets are empty. There is no food – not even snacks and beverages – on their shelves, and they stay open only to sell internet bundles.

There are also no longer any vegetables or fruit available in the markets. Rafah’s marketplaces typically depend on the produce harvested in the fields on the eastern boundary of Khan Younis. However, these lands are now off-bounds to farmers.

Back at the queue, I managed to leave my place for a moment to get some falafel and water from nearby stores. The sustenance cleared my head, and my mother and I eventually managed to get our bread.

That alone, after six hours, felt like an achievement. And it doesn’t always work out that way. My brother-in-law did not manage to get to the front of the queue in time a day earlier, and we missed out on any bread that day.

When we got back to the flat where we are seeking shelter, I had to lie down. My feet were red and swollen. Luckily, my father had managed to get some painkillers a while back, so he gave me those. The pain still took hours to dissipate.

Desperation

The struggle for food has grown acute. Israel cut food, water, electricity and fuel supplies early in the attack.

At first there was still flour in the marketplace and bakeries were still working, selling a rabta of bread, 30 pieces, for $1.90, same as it cost before the war.

But as the south started filling with those displaced from the north, the wait began to get longer. And as individuals ran out of fuel to cook with, more and more people began to rely on the bakeries.

Some resorted to wood fires to make bread. Costs began to rise steeply, and a single rabta became unaffordable for most people, deprived of work and any income.

A month into Israel’s aggression, my father began to see that he could no longer afford to come to the bakery at the usual time. Some were starting to queue as early as 2:00 am. By then, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, had distributed flour to bakeries, stipulating that they now sell a rabta for just $1.10, affordable to most people.

During this period, we bought a rabta twice a week, as one was enough for three or four days for my 10 family members – my sister Samah, her three kids, her husband Abed, and my parents.

By then, my dad would go get a number at the bakery at 2:00 am and wait until sunrise when Abed would take over for another three hours to get the bread. Sometimes he returned empty-handed as either his patience or the flour ran out.

Deprivation

My father also registered us with an UNRWA school for flour. It took two weeks, but eventually he secured the family a 25 kg bag. It was a joyful moment that we thought might at least secure us all bread for a while.

It only brought more torment.

When my dad received the flour, I went to a Rafah market to buy salt, yeast and coal to make bread. But there was no yeast and no salt. I returned home carrying only a bag of coal, whose price had nearly doubled at that time.

It took days of me searching in every market in Rafah before I managed to get hold of a small packet of yeast, the price of which had risen four-fold, from just above a dollar to $4.30. Salt has become even more expensive. One kg now costs $5.40, 20 times its normal price of 25 cents.

At that point, we had adjusted to eating meals without bread, typically rice, canned peas and pasta. We’d try to ensure that my three nephews and my sister – whose youngest, Muhammad, is just three-months-old – had two meals a day each. The rest of us would share one meal along with a few biscuits. Occasionally we could get falafel.

We tried to keep Fridays – the weekend in Gaza – special, as much as possible purchasing rice with chicken when available.

This gave some stability to the children. Aya, one of my nephews, said Fridays allowed him to remember happy weekends before the war, when chicken and other meats were freely available.

Starvation

The flour lasted three weeks. Then we had to get back to lining up outside the bakeries.

But in the past week, Rafah’s bakeries have gradually closed. The last bakery finally shut on 16 December. There is no longer, it seems, any flour in the Gaza Strip.

Yesterday, we wasted a whole day searching Rafah’s neighborhoods for a bakery, a shop or just someone selling some bread.

We had just given up when, at sunset, we saw a group of people gathering around a fire inside an UNRWA school. There, a man was making bread on an open fire. I was over the moon when I managed to purchase enough bread for my family for three days.

I don’t know what awaits us after these next three days. The bakeries are closed. The stores are closed.

We go to bed hungry. We wake up hungry.

UNRWA has begun distributing flour again. But when is it our turn? What will happen to us if they run out?

I fear that if we die, we will die of starvation before we can secure any flour in Rafah.

Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman is a journalist living in Gaza.

20 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org