Archives: Articles

By Vijay Prashad

On September 9, 2023, during the G20 meeting in New Delhi, the governments of seven countries and the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding to create an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Only three of the countries (India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates or the UAE) would be directly part of this corridor, which was to begin in India, go through the Gulf, and terminate in Greece. The European countries (France, Germany, and Italy) as well as the European Union joined this endeavor because they expected the IMEC to be a trade route for their goods to go to India and for them to access Indian goods at, what they hoped would be, a reduced cost.

The United States, which was one of the initiators of the IMEC, pushed it as a means to both isolate China and Iran as well as to hasten the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. It seemed like a perfect instrument for Washington: sequester China and Iran, bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together, and deepen ties with India that seemed to have been weakened by India’s reluctance to join the United States in its policy regarding Russia.

Israel’s war on the Palestinians in Gaza has changed the entire equation and stalled the IMEC. It is now inconceivable for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to enter such a project with the Israelis. Public opinion in the Arab world is red-hot, with inflamed anger at the indiscriminate bombardment by Israel and the catastrophic loss of civilian life. Regional countries with close relations with Israel—such as Jordan and Turkey—have had to harden their rhetoric against Israel. In the short term, at least, it is impossible to imagine the implementation of the IMEC.

Pivot to Asia

Two years before China inaugurated its “One Belt, One Road” or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the United States had already planned a private-sector-funded trade route to link India to Europe and to tighten the links between Washington and New Delhi. In 2011, then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Chennai, India, where she spoke of the creation of a New Silk Road that would run from India through Pakistan and into Central Asia. This new “international web and network of economic and transit connections” would be an instrument for the United States to create a new intergovernmental forum and a “free trade zone” in which the United States would be a member (in much the same way as the United States is part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation or APEC).

The New Silk Road was part of a wider “pivot to Asia,” as U.S. President Barack Obama put it. This “pivot” was designed to check the rise of China and to prevent its influence in Asia. Clinton’s article in Foreign Policy (“America’s Pacific Century,” October 11, 2011) suggested that this New Silk Road was not antagonistic to China. However, this rhetoric of the “pivot” came alongside the U.S. military’s new AirSea Battle concept that was designed around direct conflict between the United States and China (the concept built on a 1999 Pentagon study called “Asia 2025” which noted that “the threats are in Asia”).

Two years later, the Chinese government said that it would build a massive infrastructure and trade project called “One Belt, One Road,” which would later be called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Over the next ten years, from 2013 to 2023, the BRI investments totaled $1.04 trillion spread out over 148 countries (three-quarters of the countries in the world). In this short period, the BRI project has made a considerable mark on the world, particularly on the poorer nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where the BRI has made investments to build infrastructure and industry.

Chastened by the growth of the BRI, the United States attempted to block it through various instruments: the América Crece for Latin America and the Millennium Challenge Corporation for South Asia. The weakness in these attempts was that both relied upon funding from an unenthusiastic private sector.

Complications of the IMEC

Even before the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, IMEC faced several serious challenges.

First, the attempt to isolate China appeared illusory, given that the main Greek port in the corridor—at Piraeus—is managed by the China Ocean Shipping Corporation, and that the Dubai Ports have considerable investment from China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan port and the Zhejiang Seaport. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now members of the BRICS+, and both countries are participants in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Second, the entire IMEC process is reliant upon private-sector funding. The Adani Group—which has close ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has come under the spotlight for fraudulent practices—already owns the Mundra port (Gujarat, India) and the Haifa port (Israel), and seeks to take a share in the port at Piraeus. In other words, the IMEC corridor is providing geopolitical cover for Adani’s investments from Greece to Gujarat.

Third, the sea lane between Haifa and Piraeus would go through waters contested between Turkey and Greece. This “Aegean Dispute” has provoked the Turkish government to threaten war if Greece goes through with its designs.

Fourth, the entire project relied upon the “normalization” between Saudi Arabia and Israel, an extension of the Abraham Accords that drew Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates to recognize Israel in August 2020. In July 2022, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the I2U2 Group, with the intention, among other things, to “modernize infrastructure” and to “advance low-carbon development pathways” through “private enterprise partnerships.” This was the precursor of IMEC. Neither “normalization” with Saudi Arabia nor advancement of the I2U2 process between the UAE and Israel seem possible in this climate. Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinians in Gaza has frozen this process.

Previous Indian trade route projects, such as the International North-South Trade Corridor (with India, Iran, and Russia) and the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (led by India and Japan), have not gone from paper to port for a host of reasons. These, at least, had the merit of being viable. IMEC will suffer the same fate as these corridors, to some extent due to Israel’s bombing of Gaza but also due to Washington’s fantasy that it can “defeat” China in an economic war.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist.

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kathy Kelly

The Biden Administration must demand a full ceasefire, not a temporary pause, to stop the violence.

Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli aerial assault and massacre of  Gazans begun on December 27, 2008, lasted for 22 days. The Israeli military deployed its navy, air force and army against the people living in Gaza, using U.S.-supplied weapons and killing 1,383 Palestinians, of whom 333 were children.

I remember a doctor at the Al Shifa hospital, after a ceasefire was declared, shaking with anger and remorse as he told me that for 22 days the world watched while the incalculable affliction of Gaza went on and on. Most of his patients, he said, were women, children, grandparents.

Carrying our press passes from Counterpunch,  I and Audrey Stewart, a human rights worker, walked into Gaza at the Rafah border crossing, which at the time was the only Gazan border crossing not controlled by Israel. We were sandwiched between correspondents working for the New York Times and the LA Times. A human rights activist in Cairo had arranged for Audrey and me to stay with a family in Rafah, the residential area the crossing opened into. Overnight, bombs could explode like clockwork, once every eleven minutes, from 11 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. and then again from 3:00 a.m. – 6:00 a.m. Yusuf, a bright child and the family’s oldest, explained to Audrey and me the difference between explosions caused when an Apache Helicopter fired a Hellfire missile and the sounds of 500 lb. bombs dropped by F-16 fighter jets. Yusuf at the time was seven years old.

When the ceasefire was declared, Yusuf’s mother sank into a chair and murmured, “Can you imagine? This is the first time I breathe in all these 22 days, – I was so frightened for my children.”  Yusuf lost no time in going out to organize neighborhood children who were soon dragging a large tarp through alleys and along roadways, seeking twigs and branches they could bring to their families for fuel.

Meanwhile, Mohammad, his younger brother, playfully imitated an airplane flying in circles, after which he would dive into his father’s lap as, seated in a circle, we all shared breakfast.

Four years later, following another Israeli aerial attack against Gaza, I had a chance to again visit the family in Rafah. The children were proud of how their father organized relief work to help children traumatized by the bombings and siege. Gaza’s access to food, fuel, basic medicines, even clean water for washing or drinking, would continue to constrict under Israeli pressure over those years in which Yusuf and Mohammad would, eventually, become husbands and fathers themselves, still assisting the family efforts to share resources and care for increasingly desperate neighbors.

This month, Mohammad is dead. On October 12, while he was sleeping, his building was attacked by an Israeli warplane so that it collapsed, crushing him to death. I don’t know if his own children were with him, but countless others took hours or days to die in the rubble, as the region starved for fuel with which a rescue effort might have been undertaken.  An estimated 10,000 people have been killed. 4,104 Gazan children, utterly innocent, have suffered tortuous deaths in just the recent month of atrocity.

Calling for a “pause” in the bombing rather than a full ceasefire is hideously cruel and unmistakably futile. Allow some relief to go in, a few of the maimed and wounded to go out, and then resume the bombing and the starvation blockade?  President Joe Biden must call for a cease-fire, writes Professor Emeritus Mel Gurtov, “in order to save lives, including those of the hostages and Gaza’s population.” Who will benefit if the slaughter, instead, continues? Certainly, the weapon manufacturers’ profits will soar, assured of a sustained intensification of violence across the region and perhaps across the world.

On November 12, launching at 8pm Central time, the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, which  multiple activists have spent the last year preparing, will officially convene.  It will aim to hold four major military contractors – Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon) and General Atomics – accountable for any war crimes and crimes against humanity they may be found to have committed.

I hold myself accountable for not having done more to stop the ongoing, and now horrifically intensified, carnage enacting monumental collective punishment on innocent Palestinians, including the children who make up half of Gaza’s population.

Recently, former U.S. President Barack Obama admitted that “nobody’s hands are clean … all of us are complicit to some degree.” We all, and not just the leaders we’ve failed to restrain, have unforgivable blood on our hands, but I’m mindful of young Afghans who repeatedly told us, over the past decade, that “blood doesn’t wash away blood.”

We’ve no excuse, none whatsoever, for not raising our voices resoundingly, thunderously, clamoring for a Ceasefire, Now.

Kathy Kelly (kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is the board president of World BEYOND War (worldbeyondwar.org)and a co-coordinator of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. (merchantsofdeath.org)

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By P.S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal

The Zionist state of Israel; Imperialist America; erstwhile colonial rulers UK,   France; and former Nazi Germany are collectively responsible for the ongoing 24×7 slaughtering of children in Gaza Strip in full view of the public; TV channels; international aid agencies – UN, UNICEF, WHO.

These five heads of states have been seen near the site of the crime Gaza-Israel territories post October 7 assault and four of them have provided arms and ammunition to Israel as a part of the plan viz final solution for the Palestinians. All of these butchers are history-sheeters as their track record of the past few centuries would reveal. The sheer audacity of these butchers turning a deaf ear to the collective voice of the UN and the international community demanding a ceasefire; lifting of siege; and a permanent solution to the Palestine-Israel dispute lead to the following conclusions:

1. The heads of these five butcher states masquerading around as elected representatives of western democracies – should be examined by an independent panel of medical experts including psychiatrists regarding their state of mental health and their ability to take correct, just and balanced decisions affecting humanity.In the interest of justice & fair-play they should be offered institutional treatment. It is obvious they would not voluntarily come for examination or treatment.
2. If these five heads of the states are found to be medically fit, they deserve to be facing Nuremberg-II trials now or even 100 years later. There is no limitation prescribed to try crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in international laws.

True the power these butcher states enjoy presently comes to their rescue; but power equations change with time and cases could be pursued even a century later. Article 1 of the “Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity” adopted by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 2391 (XXIII) of 26 November 1968 states:

“No statutory limitation shall apply to the following crimes, irrespective of the date of their commission:

(a) War crimes as they are defined in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Nürnberg, of 8 August 1945 and confirmed by resolutions 3 (I) of 13 February 1946 and 95 (I) of 11 December 1946 of the General Assembly of the United Nations, particularly the “grave breaches” enumerated in the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 for the protection of war victims;

(b) Crimes against humanity whether committed in time of war or in time of peace as they are defined in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Nürnberg, of 8 August 1945 and confirmed by resolutions 3 (I) of 13 February 1946 and 95 (I) of 11 December 1946 of the General Assembly of the United Nations, eviction by armed attack or occupation and inhuman acts resulting from the policy of apartheid, and the crime of genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, even if such acts do not constitute a violation of the domestic law of the country in which they were committed.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) set up in this century has jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, when committed after 1 July 2002. Article 5 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states:

“Crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court

The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. The Court has jurisdiction in accordance with this Statute with respect to the following crimes:

(a) The crime of genocide;

(b) Crimes against humanity;

(c) War crimes;

(d) The crime of aggression.”

Further Article 29 of the Rome Statute states:

“Non-applicability of statute of limitations

The crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court shall not be subject to any statute of limitations.”

Media reports indicate that the ICC has begun investigating war crimes perpetrated in the Gaza Strip by Israel since 7 October 2023. The UK, France and Germany have ratified the Rome Statute. The ICC recognised Palestine as its member in 2015. Even though the USA and Israel are signatories to the Rome Statute they have not ratified it yet! Anyways an International Criminal Tribunal on the lines of the ‘International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’ and the ‘International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’ can be established.

[P.S. Sahni is a qualified orthopaedic surgeon.

Shobha Aggarwal is an independent legal researcher and lawyer.

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Gideon Polya

Genocidally racist Zionists from Zionism’s psychopathic founder Theodor Herzl to present war criminal Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu have explicitly stated that they want all the land of Palestine but not its Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. Below is a convenient Summary for peace and human rights activists of  the century-long Palestinian Genocide from British-ruled Palestine to neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel’s present US Alliance-backed and genocidal Gaza Massacre.

By a macabre coincidence 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the League of Nations grant of a Palestine Mandate to Britain in 1923, and the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (or Catastrophe) in which 800,000 Palestinians (60% of the Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants) were forcibly expelled from the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3 millennia [1-4]. Now in 2023 the 2.3 million utterly impoverished, besieged and bombed inmates of the Gaza Concentration Camp and mostly descending from refugees in the 1948 Nakba are facing and indeed undergoing a genocidal second mass population expulsion by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel. Unfortunately the World did not listen to Gandhi when he stated (1938): “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred” [5].

 (1). Palestinian Genocide start: 1880, Palestinian population 500,000 Arabs (90% Muslim, 10% Christians) and 25,000 Jews (half immigrants); 1914, Britain invaded the 400-year Ottoman Turkish Caliphate in 1914 for oil and hegemony; 1916, Sykes-Picot Anglo-French Agreement to carve up the Middle East for themselves; mid-WW1, Palestinian Famine (100,000 dead); 31 October 1917, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC)  defeated Turks at Beersheba, Palestine;  2 November 1917, British Balfour Declaration to Zionist Lord Rothschild granting Palestine as a Jewish Homeland (actually devised to get Zionist Russian Communists to keep Russia in the war); 1917, Britain conquered Palestine, ending 400 years of peaceful Turkish rule; 10 December 1918, ANZAC Surafend Massacre of 100 Palestinian men and boys (100 killed); 1923, League of Nations grant of Palestine Mandate to Britain that encouraged European Jewish settler-colonialist immigration.

(2). Palestinian Genocide under British rule (1917-1948). 1920s, 1930s, Arab tenant farmers and labourers displaced, Arab resistance to Zionist immigration and the resultant Arab Revolt; the British and British-trained and British-armed Zionist terrorists killed 10% of the adult male Palestinian population; 1939 White Paper stopped Jewish immigration  to placate British Empire Arabs and Muslims during WW2; 1944, British War Cabinet secretly decided to Partition Palestine (causing the John Curtin Labor Government to veto a plan for Jewish settlement of NW Australia; 1945, Jewish immigration resumed, Zionist terrorists targeted Palestinians and British; 1947, UN Partition Plan, population 1,970,000 comprising 630,000 Jews (32.0%), 143,000 Christians (7.3%) and 1,181,000 Muslims (59.9%) i.e. two thirds were Indigenous Palestinians.

(3). 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and mass Indigenous population expulsion: 1948, British  withdrew and  Zionists declared State of Israel, seizing 78% of Mandated Palestine; 1947-1948, 800,000 Palestinians (60% of the Indigenous Palestinian population) were violently expelled  by British-trained and British-armed Zionist terrorists (76 massacres, 15,000 Palestinians killed, 530 villages ethnically cleansed, 120 mosques eventually destroyed); the racist US-dominated World,  including genocidally racist White Australia from Australian Dr H.V. Evatt (UN President, 1948-1949) onwards, recognized the State of Israel but not a State of Palestine; UK- and US-involved mass immigration of Yemeni, Iraqi and Moroccan Jews from convert communities that had co-existed peacefully with the Muslim World for 1400 years; 1956, Israel showed its raisond’être by joining the UK and France invasion of Egypt that was stopped by a not yet Zionist-dominated America; 1960, impoverished Palestinians inside Israel “granted” citizenship albeit under Nazi-style, race-based discriminatory laws.

(4).  1967 Naksa (Setback), Zionist seizure of all of Palestine plus territory of all its neighbours with further mass Indigenous population expulsions. By mid-1967 Israel had developed nuclear weapons with French, UK, US and Apartheid South African help; 1967, Israel attacked all its neighbours, seized all of Palestine plus territory of all its neighbours, Egypt, Palestine, Jordan and Syria; 400,000 Arabs expelled from the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.

(5). US-backed Palestinian Genocide, Arab Genocide and population expulsions in 1967-2005.  1967, increasing Zionist-domination of the US dates from Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons by mid-1967; 1973, Egypt attempted to regain its Sinai territory (part of Egypt for over 5,000 years but seized by 19 years old neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel in 1967 ); 1974, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly; 1979, return of Sinai to Egypt and enforced peace  with Egypt; 1982-2000, Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon; 1982, Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre of 3,000 Palestinians by Christian Falangist militia in Israeli-occupied Beirut, and 7,000 Palestinians forced to leave; large emigration of Lebanese during the  Lebanon civil war (1970s-1990s); 1987, First Palestinian Intifada (Uprising); 1988, PLO recognized Israel; 1993, Oslo Agreement  for Palestinian self-government under Israeli Occupation; 1967 onwards, highly abusive subjugation of Occupied Palestinians under violent Israeli military rule, with continued  expulsion from land, and large-scale home demolitions; 2,000-2005, Second Intifada (Al-Aqsa Intifada); 2004, Yasser Arafat died (likely murdered by the Israelis using polonium poisoning ).

(6). US-backed Palestinian Genocide, 2005 from -September 2023. 2006, Hamas won the Occupied Palestinian elections but was declared a terrorist organization by the serial war criminal US Alliance and Israel and fled to rule the Gaza Concentration Camp from 2007, leaving Fatah to rule the Occupied Palestinian West Bank; Apartheid Israel imposed a savage blockade on the Gaza Concentration Camp from 2005, allowing for bare survival and some day labourers allowed to work in Israel. Exercising  the legal right of self-defence of  subjugated people as acknowledged by the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Charter, over 20 years Gazans fired about 30,000 ineffective rockets into Israel that were mostly stopped by the US-supplied Iron Dome defence  system and killed about 50 people. However the Israelis responded with sniper fire and unstoppable high explosive missiles from air, land and sea that killed about 6,407 Gaza Palestinians in some  5 major deadly episodes in 2006, 2008-2009, 2014, 2018-2019, and 2021 [6]. Thus in the Gaza Great March of Return following the Israeli  annexation of East Jerusalem in 2017 about 180 Gaza Palestinians  were killed and 9,200 wounded by Israeli snipers.

(7). Palestinian subjugation and Palestinian Genocide prior to October 2023. Prior to the present ghastly and ongoing Gaza Massacre by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel, the century-long Palestinian Genocide was associated with 0.1 million deaths from violence and 2 million deaths from imposed deprivation [1-4]. Of about 15 million mostly impoverished Indigenous Palestinians, there are 7 million Exiled Palestinians (deriving from prior mass population expulsions and illegally  prevented by the Zionazis from returning to the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3 millennia); presently 5.7 million Occupied Palestinians (unable to vote for the government ruling them, and denied all human rights specified in the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [7] and highly abusively confined  under brutal Israeli military rule to ever-diminishing West Bank ghettoes (3.4 million) or to the blockaded and bombed Gaza Concentration Camp (2.3 million)); and 2 million Israeli Palestinians  (able to vote for the government ruling them, albeit as Third Class citizens under 60 Nazi-style, race-based discriminatory laws).

Some shocking indicators: (a) poverty kills and the GDP per capita is $1,000 (Gaza), $3,500 (Occupied Palestinian Territory), and $55,500 (Apartheid Israel); (b) according to the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) more than 131,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) since 1947 with huge numbers threatened by “lack of permits” and “collective punishment by home demolition”; (c). before WW2 Palestine exported nearly 40 million oranges annually and was also famed for olive oil, but since 1948 about 3 million citrus and olive trees have been destroyed by the Zionazis; (d) the life expectancy gap between Apartheid Israel and the OPT is 10 years; (e) on average in the 21st century Israelis have violently killed about 500 Occupied Palestinians per year with a further 4,000  killed annually by imposed deprivation [3], and in the 21st century prior to October 2023 this carnage totalled about 11,500 violent Palestinian deaths and about 90,000 deaths from imposed deprivation (contrast the average domestic Israeli homicide rate for Israelis killing fellow Israelis that has been about 20 per million per year i.e. about 190 per year and 4,300 in the 21st century).

(8). The genocidal killing continues with an ongoing Third Nakba from northern Gaza and a Fourth Nakba and even a Final Nakba looming.

(a). Apartheid Israel has promised to “annihilate” Hamas (16,000 fighters) and Islamic Jihad (1,000 fighters) and this promises an Occupied/Occupier reprisals Death Ratio of (17,000 /1,400 = 12.1, already greater than that of 10 ordered by Nazi mass murder Adolph Hitler in 1944 and immediately carried out in the Ardeatine Cave Massacre [8-10].

(b). As of 8 November  2023, just over 4 weeks after the commencement of the Israeli Palestinian Genocide in Gaza on 7 October, confirmed  Palestinian casualties in Gaza total 10, 468 deaths with 27,000 wounded. A further 1,500 Palestinians were killed in Israel as compared to the 1,400 Israelis killed in the 7 October Gaza Breakout The Occupied  Palestinian /Occupier Israel reprisals Death Ratio is presently (10,468 + 1,500)/1,400 = 11,968/1400 = 8.5 as compared to the Hitler-ordered Occupied/Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio of 10.

(c). Respected journalist Jonathan Cook: “Given Hamas’ situation, effectively managing the Israeli-controlled concentration camp of Gaza, it has limited resistance strategies available to it. Capturing Israeli soldiers maximises its leverage. They can be traded for the release of many of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in jails inside Israel, in breach of international law. In addition, in the negotiations, Hamas usually hopes to win an easing of Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza. To avert this scenario, Israeli commanders reportedly called in the attack helicopters on the military bases overwhelmed by Hamas on October 7. The helicopters appear to have fired indiscriminately, despite the risk posed to the Israeli soldiers in the base who were still alive. Israel’s was a scorched-earth policy to stop Hamas achieving its aims. That may, in part, explain the very large proportion of Israeli soldiers among the 1,300 killed that day” [11]. Indeed it appears that no Israeli troops were killed in the killing of 1,500 Palestinian fighters in Israel after the Breakout from Gaza. If we assume that three quarters of the 1,400 Israelis killed on 7 October were killed in the Israeli response as described by Jonathan Cook then the present Death Ratio would be 11,968/1,050 = 11.4.

(d). The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has provided  year-by-year statistics for the Occupied Palestinian/Occupier Israeli  reprisals Death Ratios from  2008, the worst years being2008/2009: 1,965/44 = 44.7, : 2,329/68 = 34.3,  2018: 300/13 = 23.1, and 2021: 349/11 = 31.7 [6]. The average Occupied Palestinian/Occupier Israeli  reprisals Death Ratio for 1 January 2008 – 19 September 2023 was  6,407/308 = 20.8, which predicts 20.8 x 1,400 = 29,000 Palestinian deaths in the present atrocity.

(e). Humans can survive only 3 days without water and 4 weeks ago neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel  immediately cut water, food, fuel, and electricity (needed for hospitals and water desalination) to impoverished Gaza. Half the population are already homeless. Only a trickle of aid has been allowed in from Egypt for only a few  days so far, and the World is watching an ongoing Palestinian Genocide in Gaza that will worsen with Israel’s horrendous land invasion. If half the population of  Gaza perishes the Death Ratio will be 1,150,000/ 1,400 =  821 i.e. neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel would be valuing Palestinian lives as 821 times less than Israeli lives, and would be applying a reprisals Death Ratio 82 times bigger than the 10 ordered by Nazi mass murderer Adolph Hitler.

(f). Zionist leaders from its proto-Nazi founder Theodor Herzl (unfortunately related to my esteemed Jewish Hungarian  great-great grandmother) to the present genocidal psychopaths running neo-Nazi  Apartheid Israel have been explicit in advocating removal of the Indigenous Palestinians from Palestine. Indeed in the present Gaza Massacre Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu recently invoked the demand by the Israelite “God” in the Old Testament  for the total extermination of the Amalekites: “They [IDF soldiers] are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world. You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember” (the Holy Bible: “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” [12].  Tom Pickering (a former US Ambassador to Apartheid Israel and the UN) (2021): “The Palestinians who clearly suffered a 20 to 1 death rate and who clearly are vastly overwhelmed by the Israelis in terms of military power… I think it is an extremely high mountain to cross… It doesn’t appear there is a 1 state solution to this problem and there is no multiple state outcome to this problem… Israel for a very long period of time under Netanyahu has kind of narrowed down the goal for the Palestinians to something like 20% of what is currently believed to have been the Palestinian state under the 2 state solution [i.e. to 4.4% of Palestine] … And if in fact there is no agreement and the status quo is continued with interruptions for violence as we have seen, it is quite possible that over years – and I am talking about a long time – you will see a removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and quite possibly Gaza to other parts of the world and a no-state solution if I can put it that way. Israel triumphant covering it all”. Indeed an Israeli report favouring an expulsion of all Gaza Palestinians to the Sinai (the 2014 Greater Gaza Plan) was exposed last week (for an alphabetical compendium of this and other  horrendous genocidal Zionist quotes see [12]).

(g). Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel has been explicit in word and in sustained genocidal deeds in wanting all the land of Palestine but not the Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants [12]. Impelled by genocidally racist Zionists, for 75 years  neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel has grossly violated numerous International laws and conventions, notably the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination [13], the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid [14], the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War” (an Occupier must try to keep its Occupied Subject alive “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”[15], and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [16].

(h). As of 10 November 4,200 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israelis in reprisals for the Gaza Breakout in which 35 Israeli children died. About 1,300 Palestinian children are buried under rubble and presumed dead. This gives  a Palestinian/ Israeli Child Death Ratio of 5,500/35 = 157 (with an unknown  number of Israeli children killed by Israelis in the Israeli armed response that killed 1,500 Palestinians fighters).

(9). The core ethos of Humanity is Kindness and Truth but both are comprehensively violated by neo-Nazi  Apartheid Israel and its complicit Western Mainstream politician and media supporters. The worst of crimes is the killing of children as measured by “children killed per year per million of population” and one can calculate this by Apartheid Israel in the Gaza Concentration Camp over the last 34 days = (5,500 deaths / 34 days) x (365.25 days/ year) / 2.3 million Gazans =  25,689  “children killed per year per million of total territory population” . This horrifying number of 25,689 is 3,380 times greater than for the World (7.6) and  339 times greater than  for crime-wracked Honduras (75.7).  In order to be exquisitely  “fair” to  the child-killing Israelis one should estimate  the average from 2008 onwards of “children killed per year per million of the total Occupied Palestinian Territory population”. Children killed in this period totalled 859 + 5,500 = 6,359, this giving “children killed per year per million of total Occupied Palestinian Territory population” = 6,359 Children killed / 16 years)/ (average population of 5.15 million) = 77.2, bigger than that  Honduras (75.7), worst in the world and  set to rise enormously in coming days, weeks. and months in the deadly absence of water, food, medicine, medical services, fuel and electricity [9, 17]. Indeed neo-Nazi Israeli forces have targeted 58 health care facilities in Gaza, with 132 medics dead,  25 ambulances destroyed, and 58 hospitals and 32 primary care centres forced out of service due to bombing and fuel shortage. 1 million Gazans are homeless [18].  The number of Gaza children killed to date totals 5,500 i.e. 157 times more than the 35 Israeli children killed on 7 October 2023.

As for Zionist perversion of  truth  one only has to turn to the all-European, US Alliance-backed and  Zionist-promoted  International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that promulgates a definition of anti-Semitism that has been used to falsely defame anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics of Apartheid Israeli crimes, and has been condemned by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations [19, 20]. In horrible reality the IHRA is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim critics of Apartheid Israel, and holocaust denying by ignoring all WW2 Holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and indeed ignoring about 70 genocide and holocaust atrocities [19, 21]. Zionism is genocidal racism in awful theory and appalling  practice. Indeed Zionism is Nazism without gas chambers but with a huge high technology war  machine,  huge war and subjugation industries, and with 100 nuclear weapons  plus delivery systems including Germany-supplied submarines. Indeed there is a shocking list of 52 Zionist- and  Apartheid Israeli-Nazi Germany comparisons [22], and I have made a detailed and documented  Submission to the Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission over the Australian Labor Government extensively lying for Apartheid Israel [23].

Final comments and conclusions.

The genocidal Gaza Massacre of innocents continues. 47% of the inmates of the Gaza Concentration Camp are children and over 72% are women and children. The World contains 2 kinds of people, those who condemn the killing of innocents, and the others.

Those complicit in the Gaza Massacre include not just the Israeli perpetrators  but also the Western Mainstream politicians  and  media who overwhelmingly fervently support neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel. Thus 120 mainly non-European nations supported the UNGA Resolution for a Ceasefire in Gaza but this was opposed by 59 countries, mostly European US Alliance countries with a minority of poor and easily “bought”  non-European countries [24]. The big BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa voted Yes but Modi’s India  disgraced India’s fine record of leading the World in the fight against Apartheid by opposing the Ceasefire Resolution (ideological reasons for this betrayal of Humanity by pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid Modi India become apparent when one reads Arundhati Roy’s book “Azadi. Fascism, Fiction and Freedom in the Time of the Virus” [25].

What can decent people do to stop the war criminal carnage inflicted by neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel on the besieged, bombed and devastated Gaza Concentration Camp? Unfortunately my own country, Australia, like most Western countries is a craven US lackey. Australia, is second only to the US as a fervent supporter of Apartheid Israel and hence of the utterly evil crime of Apartheid. Australia has an excellent compulsory and  preferential voting system and is presently ruled by a Rightist Labor Government with a much worse, Right to extreme Right  Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Opposition, Until  this latest Gaza Massacre progressive  people like me would say “Vote 1 Green, put the Coalition last and put Labor second last”. However Labor is in government and, like the unspeakably awful Coalition, is a fervent supporter of genocidal and neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel, opposes a Gaza Ceasefire and via diplomacy, military deals and  global electronic spying (from the US-Australian Pine Gap base in Central Australia) supports the ongoing Israeli Gaza Massacre. The Zionist-subverted Australian Labor Government should be massively defeated at the next election and replaced by a civilized Green Government or a Greens-led coalition opposed to Apartheid and the mass murder of women and children. Ditto other US Alliance and Western countries.

Decent people around the World must (a) inform everyone they  can of these ongoing atrocities, and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against child-killing,  neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel and all people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations, and countries supporting this genocidally racist and child-killing Apartheid rogue state.

References.

[1]. Gideon Polya, “Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters”, Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .

[2]. Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/home .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2021 (that contains a succinct history of every country from ancient times).

[4].  2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide .

[5]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[6]. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) , “Data on casualties”:  https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties .

[7]. Gideon Polya, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Palestinians. Apartheid Israel violates ALL Palestinian Human Rights”, Palestine Genocide Essays, 24 January 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-palestinians .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Stop Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian genocide in Gaza”, Green Left, 18 October 2023: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/stop-apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-gaza .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Death Ratios, Child Deaths & Palestinian Genocide Demand Immediate Cessation Of Gaza Massacre, Countercurrents, 30 October 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/horrendous-death-ratios-child-deaths-palestinian-genocide-demand-immediate-cessation-of-gaza-massacre/ .”

[10].  “Ardeatine massacre”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardeatine_massacre .

[11]. Jonathan Cook, “What our Media fails to tell you about October 7”, Pearls & Irritations, 6 November 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/what-the-bbc-fails-to-tell-you-about-october-7/ .

[12]. “Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide”, Palestinian Genocide :  https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .

[13]. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination: https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cerd.aspx .

[14]. “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, UN, 1976: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Apartheid.pdf .

[15]. “Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”, 12 August 1949: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf .

[16]. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Among World Leaders For Killing Children”, Countercurrents, 15 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/apartheid-israel-among-world-leaders-for-killing-children/ .

[18]. Mohamed Majed, “Gaza’s death toll from Israeli assault climbs to 8,796”, AA, 1 November 2023: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/gaza-s-death-toll-from-israeli-assault-climbs-to-8-796/3040221 .

[19].  Gideon Polya, “US-backed IHRA Definition Of Antisemitism Is Anti-Arab Anti-Semitic & Anti-Jewish Anti-Semitic”, Boycott Apartheid Israel, 9 March 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/2021-03-09 .

[20]. Jewish Voices for Peace, “First ever: 40+ Jewish groups worldwide oppose equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel”, 17 July 2018: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/#english .

[21]. Gideon Polya, “Melbourne University Adopts Anti-Semitic & Holocaust-Ignoring IHRA Definition Of Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 5 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/melbourne-university-adopts-anti-semitic-holocaust-ignoring-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/ .

[22]. Gideon Polya, “A Shocking List of 52 Zionist- & Apartheid Israeli-Nazi Germany Comparisons”, Countercurrents, 7 August 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/08/a-shocking-list-of-52-zionist-apartheid-israeli-nazi-germany-comparisons/ .

[23]. Gideon Polya, “Submission To National Anti-Corruption Commission: Australian Labor Government’s Lying For Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 22 July 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/07/submission-to-national-anti-corruption-commission-australian-labor-governments-lying-for-apartheid-israel/ .

[24]. Gideon Polya, “491 Sins & Gaza Genocide: Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel Leads World In Killing Children & Journalists”, Countercurrents, 6 November 2023:  https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/491-sins-gaza-genocide-neo-nazi-apartheid-israel-leads-world-in-killing-children-journalists/ .

[25].Arundhati Roy’s book “Azadi. Fascism, Fiction and Freedom in the Time of the Virus”, Penguin, 2022.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Michael K Smith

“We are witnessing the sick relationship between the United States and Israel.”
—–Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zain

The outpouring of support for Palestine around the world in recent weeks has been a very encouraging sight. Dotted with signs calling for “Freedom For Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” and “We Are All Palestinians,” protests burst forth in London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Ankara, Istanbul, Tokyo, New York City, Toronto, Washington D.C., Rome, Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Karachi, Stockholm, Oslo, and Wellington New Zealand. While they have no direct power to change government behavior, governments cannot afford to ignore the threat they pose to their legitimacy. The “Great Beast,” as Alexander Hamilton called the public, is at last stirring, this time on behalf of a colonized people whose suffering has for far too long been rendered invisible.

And for once social media has proven itself a positive force, spreading videos of Israel carpet-bombing a concentration camp full of children to all corners of the earth. The steady flow of images from this Truth Superhighway instantly shattered rationalizations of the barbarity, leaving in their wake only a stark and haunting picture of USraelis as remorseless killers.

Though it’s impossible to reconcile with the American self-image, we can hardly claim to be surprised at this. After all, the latest round of  “humanitarian” butchery is merely one in a long line of betrayals of all that is allegedly most sacred to Americans – human rights, self-determination, the rule of law – blah, blah, blah. The latest bloodletting is supposedly justified now more than ever because – wait for it – the enemy is irredeemably evil and irrevocably committed to the rape of women, the decapitation of babies, and the massacre of old people, among other uniquely diabolical horrors. What else can we-as-decent-people do but bury them in blood-spattered rubble?

In other words, the closest thing we can actually claim as a “sacred” value is hypocrisy. We preach peace, but are forever at war. We praise diplomacy, but spit out “obey-or-die” ultimatums like machine-gun fire. We recommend self-determination, but enthusiastically guarantee Israeli apartheid with an avalanche of lethal weaponry.

The prompt international protest against this two-faced lunacy has been a welcome demonstration that much of the world will no longer tolerate the gratuitous contempt with which USrael treats Palestinian Arabs.* It is this, not international human rights law, that is forcing governments to confront their complicity in apartheid, and it is only a great deal more of it that stands any chance of bringing about peace.

Obviously, Hamas could not possibly have initiated this conflict a mere one month ago. In fact, it dates back more than a century, to when the British, themselves lacking any legitimate right to the land, promised Palestine to both Zionist Jews and Palestinian Arabs. As we know, the Zionist Jews won out based on strength of evidence – a Bronze Age land deed carved by God on a tablet, helpfully carried down the mountain by Uncle Moses. Even Jimmy Carter, the reputedly neutral broker of the Camp David Accords, found this evidence convincing, saying in his memoirs that Israel was “ordained by God.”

With neutrals like that, who needs partisans? Though the appearance of Biblical mythology in historical discussion ought to evoke alarm bells in any mind claiming a speck of rationality, the peculiar justifications offered up for Jewish sovereignty over Palestine have long passed muster in the United States. In a nutshell, this is the story that is quite uncritically accepted: a largely irreligious people re-claimed land after an absence of two thousand years based on Biblical texts few of them believed in. An ethno-theocratic state bent on conquest and expansion was hailed as a model of democratic socialism with unique sensitivity to morality and human rights. Its leaders embarked on an “in-gathering” of Jews from lands they had lived in for centuries while intoning the words Hitler had used in carrying out the Holocaust: “You are not a German, you are a Jew – you are not a Frenchman, you are a Jew – you are not a Belgian, you are a Jew.”

The heart of the matter was a serious and deliberate confusion of nationalism and religion. Organized Jewry, an unequivocal supporter of separation of Church and State outside the Holy Land, condoned their union in Israel, demanding the loyalty of Jews everywhere, whether or not they considered themselves as such. Diasporan Jews supported Israel out of religious duty, though they may or may not have realized what Zionist ideology actually entailed.

Though twenty percent of Israelis were Arabs from the start, Israeli citizenship** was anchored in Jewish identity, and the state announced its independence in “the name of the Jewish people.” In that context, public debate naturally centered on the question, “What is a Jew?” Since Jews, like most people, had a mixed ancestry, Israeli myth-makers eager to buttress territorial claims with evidence of historical continuity quickly blurred distinctions between Hebrew, Israelite, Judean, Jewish, Judaism, and Zionism, forestalling recognition that these referred to different people at different points in history with different ways of life. Neither the Jews or these various forebears ever constituted a race or even a distinctive pure ethnic grouping, and since Judaism had been of declining significance for most Jews for some time, it was not at all clear what the basis of Jewish statehood actually amounted to – apart from subjugating Palestinian Arabs, which quickly became the national pastime.

Seventy-five years of dispossession and two fake peace agreements later, and the overwhelming majority of today’s Gazan population – “human animals” according to Israel – are indeed living like such in the Gaza concentration camp, after having survived a whole series of violent land grabs inspired by the quest for a Greater Israel, another concept derived from Biblical fantasy. Counterposed to that fanciful notion has been the all-too-real dreadfulness of Gaza, which was the world’s most wretched colonial outpost long before Hamas appeared on the scene.

Refusing to accept their assigned fate, Gazans rose in rebellion in December 1987. Children threw rocks at tanks and soldiers carrying automatic rifles. Old people, too feeble to hurl their defiance, filled sacks with rocks for their grandchildren to throw. Young and old alike went on strike, established liberated zones, directed an underground economy, and shut their shops at noon in honor of imprisoned compatriots.

Shooting and cursing, Israeli soldiers chased the insolent children through the unpaved, pothole-ridden streets, where open sewers reeked with a stomach-turning odor. With a violent banging they announced their presence, ransacking homes and raiding hospitals in pursuit of child “terrorists.” Whenever they winged their prey or left a corpse lying in the road, they, laughed, whistled, or clapped their hands with glee.

The Palestinian Arabs, then ninety-eight percent of the West Bank and Gaza, were called the minorities. The two percent who resided in religious settlements – replete with green lawns and swimming pools – were their designated masters.

Anyone caught using the word “Palestine,” or displaying a map of its territory, was subject to immediate arrest and torture. But for reasons Israel still can’t understand, hooded interrogations didn’t make Gazans sing, while their outlawed Palestine national anthem did.

This was the language of the occupiers: confiscation, demolition, surveillance, arrest, prison, torture, humiliation, deportation, death. These were the results: hunger, disease, mutilation, death, pride, defiance, insurrection.

All this was so sixteen years before Hebrew University sociology professor Baruch Kimmerling pronounced Gaza the largest concentration camp in the world, and nineteen years before Hamas was elected, quickly followed by the siege of Gaza. Though few people seem to remember, those fateful elections were certified as eminently fair by Jimmy Carter. And once in power, Hamas quickly put out peace feelers. By 2008 they had negotiated a cease-fire, which Hamas honored for months and Israel ultimately violated.

Keep all this in mind when you are asked, “Do you support Hamas?” The reasonable answer is “yes,” when they act constructively, as they frequently do. Israel, on the other hand, never misses an opportunity to indulge an infantile spasm of murderous rage that shocks the world and worsens Jewish security. This is what we are seeing yet again in the rubble of Gaza, and it will not end until the ideology of Jewish supremacy is dealt a stinging defeat.

But what about the hostages, and don’t we have to “condemn Hamas?” Hopefully, these are naive, but not consciously diversionary questions. The answer is “no,” we do not have to condemn Hamas, at least not until Israel responds constructively to the countless daily acts of non-violent Palestinian resistance, which are by far the most numerous and common response to Israeli apartheid by its victims. Until that happens,“condemning Hamas” will continue to be an exercise in sheer hypocrisy, i.e., justifying apartheid for Israel, but not national liberation for Palestinians.

As for “the hostages,” the current campaign of saturation bombing stands a good chance of getting them killed before a negotiated exchange can get them released. But even more fundamentally, hand-wringing about Hamas’s hostages overlooks the fact that all Gazans were already hostages on October 7, and had been for decades as a consequence of their colonial subjugation. When is their release date?

Furthermore, one does not have to wish Hamas’s hostages any harm to point out that it doesn’t really make much sense to build one’s home on a volcano and then wax indignant at having lava in the living room. As a measure of the moral bankruptcy that prevails in Israel, consider the fact that the music festival dedicated to peace and love that Hamas savagely attacked – was just two kilometers from a concentration camp full of children.

The truth is that Hamas “terror” has never been the problem, as Israel reflexively dismisses any Palestinian nationalist impulse as terrorism, quite apart from any associated violence. The real problem, therefore, is not terrorism, but the 1948 declaration of Jewish sovereignty over Arab lands, which instantly made every act of Palestinian resistance into “terrorism.” Asserting a right to Jewish supremacy in Palestine was a very predictable – and predicted – disaster, even for Jews, who claim to be “redeeming” the land by taking it from indigenous Arabs. Any notion that this robbery is wrong is unthinkable in Israel, which is why prior to October 7 the only discussion of apartheid in the Holy State was about what form it should take: messianic, religious, and theocratic, or secular, Western, and democratic. Palestinians had been completely forgotten.

And not only in Israel. To our everlasting shame, it took a hideous act of mass killing to put them back on the world’s agenda. One can only hope that the “Great Beast” will keep up the pressure until Holy Apartheid is no more.

*Nevertheless, much of the rhetoric of denunciation aimed at Israel has exceeded rational bounds. Gazans are not being subjected to genocide, for example, as is rather commonly suggested by human rights experts, independent media outlets, and pro-Palestine activists, with no reflection on just how difficult it would be for Israel, itself born as the alleged solution to genocide, to get away with its own genocide. Tedious legal debates aside, mathematics argues against the claim that genocide is occurring. Right now, ten thousand plus Gazans are said to have been killed since October 7. Even if we assume another ten thousand are buried beneath the rubble, that is still less than one percent of the population of Gaza (2.3 million), an appalling total, but nevertheless well short of genocide. Furthermore, the intent is to make them flee, not kill them to the last man, woman, and child. This de-population effort, known as “transfer” in Zionist commentary, has been present from the beginning. A June 12, 1895 diary entry by Theodore Herzl, the “Founding Father” of Zionism, predicted that his dream of a Jewish homeland would require the expulsion of the indigenous Arab population.

**Actually, “Israeli” citizenship is codified as either “Jew” or “Arab.” Allegedly possessed of equal civil rights, the two groups belong to separate nations.

Michael K. Smith is the author of Portraits of Empire
www.legalienate.blogspot.com

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

On Thursday, as he was leaving for a campaign event in Illinois, US President Joe Biden again categorically reiterated his opposition to a ceasefire in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Asked, “What are the prospects of a Gaza ceasefire?” Biden replied, “None. No possibility.”

Biden’s comments made clear that the United States is actively instigating Israel’s genocide in Gaza and working to inflame a wider war in the Middle East. They came just two days after White House National Security spokesman John Kirby stated again that the United States has no “red lines” on the number of civilian casualties it will accept.

Biden’s remarks sparked worldwide outrage, with clips of his statement viewed or shared by millions of people on all social media platforms. He was met in Chicago by thousands of people demonstrating against US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The crowd chanted, “Genocide Joe” and “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

While Biden was speaking in Illinois, he was interrupted by a protester who yelled, “10,000 Palestinians have been killed. Half of them are children.”

Before Biden left for Chicago, he was asked whether Israel’s “retaliatory airstrikes” were working, he replied, “Yes,” adding, “they’re hitting the targets they’re seeking.”

Just hours after these remarks, the Israel Defense Forces made clear the targets they were “seeking” by bombing three hospitals. Israel bombed the al-Shifa Hospital complex, where tens of thousands are sheltering, with an experimental bladed missile, whose horrifying aftermath was shown in a widely shared video. The missile, believed to be an American Hellfire R9X, carried no explosives but dispersed blades throughout the area, slashing and amputating limbs and leaving pools of blood.

Gaza’s al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital was also attacked, with Dr. Mostafa al-Kahlout telling Al Jazeera of a “massive fire” at the hospital, which is sheltering 1,000 refugees. The area surrounding the Indonesian Hospital was struck by 11 missiles, damaging its buildings, the hospital director said.

“Israel is now undertaking these dangerous steps against the hospitals to put them completely out of commission and subsequently displace the people sheltering in them, as well as the patients and medics,” said Ashraf al-Qudra, the spokesman of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.

This is the context in which National Security spokesman John Kirby, who is also a retired admiral, announced what he called “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s non-stop bombing of Gaza. Kirby said, “Israel will begin to implement four-hour pauses in areas of northern Gaza each day, with an announcement to be made three hours beforehand” and create “humanitarian corridors allowing people to flee the areas of hostilities in the northern part of Gaza.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear to other world leaders that his plan is to displace the population of Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Desert. His plans, reported in the Financial Times, are consistent with a paper published by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry proposing to expel the population of Gaza.

Under these conditions, what the United States and the entire media are referring to as “humanitarian pauses” and “humanitarian corridors” are simply the means by which the Netanyahu government, with US support, is carrying out the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza.

In line with this plan, Israel said that 80,000 people have left northern Gaza on Thursday, the largest number yet. According to the United Nations, over 557,000 people are sheltering at UN facilities in southern Gaza, and the hospitals cannot accommodate any new arrivals. There is one toilet for every 160 people.

At least 10,812 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7, according to the Health Ministry. Over 4,000 of the dead are children. In a statement Thursday, Human Rights Watch wrote, “Israeli ground forces are encircling and moving deeper into Gaza City, within 2 km of Gaza’s largest medical facility, al-Shifa Hospital, where staff are overwhelmed by the number of patients amid a month-long blockade & heavy bombardment.”

The statement continued, “With ongoing strikes and fighting nearby, we are gravely concerned about the well-being of thousands of civilians there, many children among them, seeking medical care and shelter, including people on life support, those who lost limbs in air strikes, and burn victims. … Hospitals have special protection under the laws of war, which they only lose if they are being used to commit ‘acts harmful to the enemy’ and after due warning. Evacuation of hospital patients and staff should only be a last resort.”

Meanwhile the US continues to expand the scope of the war raging in the Middle East. For the second time in almost two weeks, the US carried out airstrikes against what it claimed were forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria on Thursday. The strikes were carried out by two Air Force F-15E jets against a weapons warehouse in Deir al Zour Province, Syria. “The United States is fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.

The United States has surged two aircraft carrier battle groups and an Ohio-class nuclear submarine to the Middle East, in what USNI (United States Naval Institute) news called the “largest mass of U.S. ships in the region in decades.”

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By David Boyajian

Oddly, few Western writers on the South Caucasus have ever grasped Christian Armenia’s significance as Russia’s only ally and military outpost among the region’s three countries.

Simply put: Were Russia to lose Armenia, the U.S./NATO/EU and pan-Turkism would inevitably dominate the Caucasus/Caspian and, perhaps, beyond.  Putin understands this.

Georgia and Azerbaijan are, after all, headed away from Russia.

Though always under Russian pressure, Georgia’s an unofficial NATO candidate with sizeable Western investments.  NATO countries and Israel have been modernizing its military.  Tbilisi’s also the middleman for Baku’s gas/oil pipelines extending to Turkey and elsewhere.

Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel deposits, pipelines, and U.S./European commercial/economic ties are well-known.

Less talked about are the Aliyev autocracy’s pan-Turkic ideology; formal alliance with NATO’s Turkey; deployment of international terrorists; dependence on Israeli weapons/military prowess; and longtime backing by America’s Jewish lobby.

Elected ostensibly as a democratic reformist in 2018, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan grew friendlier with the West than had Yerevan’s previous leaders.

This enraged Putin.  That’s problematic: Armenia’s dependent on its ally for gas, oil, the nuclear power plant, weapons, remittances from Armenians in Russia, and more.  However, Pashinyan didn’t break with Moscow.

Nevertheless, Putin resolved to punish and humiliate Armenia to force it totally and irrevocably under Russian domination.

Punish and Humiliate

In 2020, Putin silently but indisputably greenlighted Azerbaijan, Turkey, international terrorists, and Israel to sledgehammer Christian Armenia and Armenian-populated Artsakh/Karabagh into submitting to Russia.

We know that near its borders Russia’s extremely NATO-and-terrorist-phobic.

And yet:

In Azerbaijan’s 44-day war in 2020 (Sept. 27-Nov. 9) against Artsakh’s Armenians, Turkey openly deliveredAmerican-supplied F-16s, Bayraktar drones containing NATO parts, additional weapons, generals, troops, andseveral thousand jihadist terrorists to Azerbaijan.

Tellingly, the Kremlin was unruffled.

Moreover, Tel Aviv — the West’s friend, not Moscow’s — overtly resupplied Baku with hi-tech weapons.

The Kremlin, again, voiced no particular alarm.

Post-war, however, Russia revealed that it’d been in charge all along.  During the fighting, for instance, it was Moscow — not Baku — that had offered Yerevan a “peace” deal (which Pashinyan declined).

Artsakh — gifted to Azerbaijan by Stalin but indigenously Armenian for millennia — lost the war, as did Armenia.  Buffer zones around Artsakh gained by it in the early 1990s were also forfeited.

Putin’s fingerprints were, not surprisingly, all over the Nov. 9, 2020 agreement among Moscow, Yerevan, and Baku.

In what remained of Armenian-populated Artsakh,the pact awarded Russia:

• An armed, 2000-troop “peacekeeping” mission plus guardianship over the only road — the Lachin corridor — between Artsakh and Armenia proper (Points 3/4/6).

• Militarycontrol over future routes through Armenia between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave (Point 9).

That Russia greenlighted a war against Armenia/Artsakh isn’t a total surprise.

Moscow’s always sought to keep Yerevan apprehensive and dependent.  The Kremlin has for decadespermitted repeated Azerbaijani attacks on Armenia despite Yerevan’s defense pacts with Moscow and the Russian-led CSTO alliance.

None of this is intended to defend PM Pashinyan.  He has failed and should resign.

And please ignore the nonsense that Russia, shaken by setbacks in Ukraine, couldn’t prevent the 2020 war.  Putin’s invasion of Ukraine came much later: February of 2022.

Punishment Without End

Throughout 2021-2023, Azerbaijan invaded, occupied, and fortified over 80 sq. miles of Armenia’s internationally recognized southeast.

Hurling the Azeri attacks in Armenia’s face, the Kremlin sarcastically termed them mere “border demarcations.”  The Azeris are still there.

Russia/CSTO had again willfully violated their defense treaties with Armenia.

Meanwhile, despite Russia’s 2020 pledge, its “peacekeepers” permitted incessant Azeri assaults on Artsakh from 2021 on.

Then, in December of 2022, Azerbaijan sent military and other officials disguised as “eco-activists” to block the Lachin corridor.

The armed “peacekeepers” could’ve moved the Azeris off the road in 5 minutes.  Instead, the Russians feigned helplessness as food and medical supplies to Artsakh were blocked.  Meanwhile, the well-fed Russian soldiers offered to sell food to the starving Armenians at inflated prices.

Baku also cut off gas, electricity, and communications to Artsakh.  Yet again, despite its signed agreement, Moscow said little and did nothing.

The blockade, declared former International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, fit the UN definition of genocide: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

Thus, “Christian” Russia and its half-Turkic Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu blatantly violatedNov. 9, 2020’s accord while Artsakh was attacked and starved.

On September 14, 2023, Acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Yuri Kim testified that the Biden administration “will not countenance any effort — short-term or long-term — to ethnically cleanse Artsakh.”

Then came September 19’s genocidal cleansing.

Genocidal Cleansing

Azerbaijan launched a genocidal military assault on Artsakh.  120,000 Armenians fled their democracy of 30+ years lest they be murdered if they stayed.  Some were, in fact, killed, tortured, and murdered.

Russian “peacekeepers” let it happen. No surprise.

Artsakh’s millennia-long nationhood — gone in a flash.

The White House clearly “countenanced” the cleansing, as did Europe and the UN.  America often prioritizes authoritarian regimes over human rights and common decency.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention recently issued a Red Flag Alert “due to the alarming potential for an invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks.”

The Geopolitical Future

Russia has certainly not finished punishing Armenia and PM Pashinyan.

Invasions by Azerbaijan and even Turkey are quite possible.

In that case, Russia would likely “save” Armenia, which would sign over its sovereignty to Moscow.  Armenia might even become a Russian Union State, like Belarus.

Assuming near total Russian control of Armenia, the U.S./NATO/EU would find it very difficult to totally penetrate the Caucasus even if Armenia’s borders with Turkey/Azerbaijan eventually open.

Putin’s been trying for years to entice Turkey and Azerbaijan into his web.  The Turkic twins have played along but aren’t fooled.

But as Russia rightly fears pan-Turkism, it would probably permit only limited penetration through Armenia by Ankara and Baku.  Thus, a Russian-controlled Armenia would become a buffer, not a U.S./NATO/EU pathway.  But nothing is certain.

To keep the West totally at bay, Russia could invade Georgia and control the pipelines originating from Azerbaijan.

Another danger to Russia would be an extraterritorial corridor (not just the existing roads) from Turkey through northwest Iran — occupied by masses of Azeri speakers — to Azerbaijan.

That’s one reason why Turkey, Azerbaijan, and probably the U.S. and Israel wish to dismember Iran, attach its northwest to Azerbaijan, and cut off Armenia’s access to Iran.  Moscow and Tehran know this well.

Will Russia’s punishment of Armenia ultimately benefit the Kremlin?

Or will Russia receive its just desserts for the vile, unwarranted punishment of its ally?

David Boyajian’s primary foreign policy focus is the Caucasus.

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

A public call for UPenn president Magill to resign for failing to ban the Palestine Writes festival, one of the several propaganda billboard vans driving through the streets of Philadelphia in the lead up to the festival. [photo from internet, credit “macher52”]

By Tom Suárez

The deafening blowback against the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, held at the University of Pennsylvania campus 22-24 of September, is emblematic of an escalation in censorship, intolerance, and indeed willful ignorance spreading across the US political spectrum. The festival is over — a success despite the enormous obstacles thrown at it — but not forgotten, as its detractors continue calls for UPenn President Elizabeth Magill to step down for not having acted more aggressively to cancel what they libel as an antisemitic event.

I write as a historical researcher honored to have been among the festival’s speakers. I write as being among those smeared as “antisemitic” in the attempts to block it. And I write as someone with a personal interest in the University, the proud parent of a UPenn graduate.

The charge of Festival antisemitism continues to be repeated by the major media with scant concern for its truth, nor indeed for what those wielding it mean by the word. Had the media actually looked behind the slander rather than parrot it, the onus for explanation would have fallen instead to our detractors.

My own case is typical: the Zionist advocacy organization masquerading under the name Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, warned of “antisemitic author Tom Suarez” in its plea to Magill to “cancel the Terror-Inciting ‘Palestine Writes’ Hate-Fest”. As if it were an offense, the CAEF accused me of “comparing Zionism to Nazism” — omitting that the comparisons I had cited were not mine, but those of German Jews fleeing Nazism in the early 1940s, voices long silenced by the Zionist political movement of which the CAEF is part. My having given voice to these Jewish victims of fascism is, for Israel’s purposes, “antisemitic”. (Separately, both US and British intelligence made the same assessment of Zionism in the 1940s.)

All this begs the question: What do the Festival’s detractors mean by “antisemitism”? A straight-forward definition would be something like Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, or hostility against Jews, as Jews — the same as any bigotry. But Israel’s propagandists push a politically-engineered definition known as IHRA, whose very purpose is to weaponize the smear of antisemitism to insulate Israel — and accuse those who resist this “definition” of, yes, antisemitism.

Briefly described, IHRA begins with a core definition so vague as to justify almost any accusation, and is followed by examples that have nothing to do with antisemitism but everything to do with Israeli impunity. The document renders it antisemitic to cite Israel’s actual crimes — such as “that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”. It was embraced by the U.S. State Department under the Trump Administration, and became official US policy under Biden.

Thus, those claiming that according to the US government, Palestine Writes was antisemitic, are correct. They are correct because every true anti-racist, anyone advocating for human rights and equality, indeed anyone opposing true anti-Jewish bigotry, is “antisemitic” according to this ignorance-is-strength pseudo-definition.

IHRA in turn enables skewed antisemitism statistics that give perceived life to the racist lie that advocacy for Palestine corresponds to increased antisemitism. It does this by making Jews as Jews synonymous with the Israeli state in order to exploit Jewish identity as a human shield — but instead of condemning this cynical abuse of ethnicity to empower the crimes of the state, we embrace it or run in fear from it. So pernicious is this weaponization of antisemitism that even my pointing this out is deemed antisemitic.

IHRA in turn feeds a much older fraud at play that operates invisibly and is thus even more insidious: the mindset that there is some intrinsic link between Palestinian advocacy + antisemitism. No: this silent manipulation must be exposed and condemned. We who advocate for Palestine fight against anti-Jewish bigotry because we oppose all bigotry, not because bigotry against Jews has something special to do with us. These libels not only block any honest reckoning of the 75-year so-called “conflict” in Israel-Palestine, but also make a mockery of the fight against racism.

It is thus the Festival’s very antiracism that is the cause of the attempts to silence it. Opponents of racism are, obviously, opponents of apartheid — and thus are critics of the Israeli state, whose apartheid system is on open display for the world to see and has been meticulously documented by all major human rights organizations, including Israel’s own.

And that is the problem: Human rights and equality in Israel-Palestine would mean the end of the Israeli status quo, river-to-sea. Put bluntly, the phony charge of antisemitism — racism — is flung about to safeguard actual racism. Yet this morphing of “antisemitism” with criticism of Israel is so ingrained in us that its advocates barely need a fig leaf to hide the deceit.

All this leads back to what, really, is behind the continuing calls for UPenn President Magill to resign. She is not the actual target — she is the means to a far larger goal. She is being hung up as a high-visibility warning to administrators everywhere of what awaits them if any activity critical of the Israeli state, or any activity humanizing Palestinians, occurs under their watch. The outrage against Palestine Writes was far more a ritual to assure that no other institution dare allow anything with the “P” word, than it was about shutting down this particular event or this particular university president.

Tom Suárez is a London-based historical researcher as well as a professional Juilliard-trained violinist and composer.

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jim Miles

As the slaughter in Gaza continues, the western nations remain comfortably at ease with their wealth and privilege.  Unfortunately I have to make the same accusation towards the various Arab and Muslim governments in the Middle East and abroad.   The “street” demands action, if only minimally so, for a cease fire;  many want action beyond that, of different kinds.   Unfortunately it appears that the governments of the countries where the street demands action do not want to take action of any kind, with several possible reasons for that lack.

In western countries, protests will not sway governments as they are far too entrenched in the  western mythology of their own societal supremacy which includes the need to safeguard the “only democratic government” in the Middle East.   They are interlinked by religion, finances, and military exchanges.  All too comfortable in their imperial superiority, the leaders of the western nations will do nothing but express the right of Israel to defend itself even as the death toll climbs over 10 000 civilians.

The Arab/Muslim states do not have the same viewpoint but other than mouthing platitudes and so far ineffective mild threats, nothing else – at least not visible on the surface – is being done to assist their kin in Gaza and the West Bank.

Obviously they do not want to disturb their status quo:  that being their own relative ease and comfort in a region where ease and comfort have not come easily for most.  To take action of whatever kind, but in particular military action, will certainly weaken if not destroy the leaders safety and security, but more importantly, their power and wealth.

The countries of the Middle East are for the most part subject to the military and financial power of the United States empire, subject to the power of the U.S. petrodollar and continually threatened – and knowledgeable from current events – by U.S. military covert and direct military interventions in order to maintain passive and quisling governments to control the supply and price of oil.

While Gaza is pummelled continuously, the Arab states appear to be doing little.  Apart from Hezbollah engaging across the border between Lebanon and northern Israel and the Houthis firing off a few ineffective drones, very little is being done to assist the Palestinians of Gaza.  A regional war against Israel would draw in – willingly – the U.S. forces stationed in the region, always eager for a fight, leading to more and more serious confrontations that would lead to a world destroying nuclear war.

There are non-military solutions that, while slower to cause a reaction than any direct military action, would be stronger means of destroying the power of the empire.  Two actions can be taken along non-military lines:  material – put an oil embargo into effect;  and financial –  selling off U.S. treasuries and stopping financial transactions using the U.S. petrodollar, destroying its power as the global reserve currency.  The two are related as an oil embargo would also have an impact on the price of oil, creating massive inflation, greatly weakening the US$.

Embargo and the makings of the petrodollar

In the 1973 Yom Kippur war a partial oil embargo began nine days into the war and in two weeks a full embargo was put into place from Saudi Arabia.  The consequences were sudden and far reaching.  The price of oil rose significantly, pushing a Vietnam war induced inflation rate even higher, the end results being a shortage of oil products (gasoline in particular) for the consumer and a generalized downturn in the overall economy.  Nixon had removed the U.S. from the gold standard in 1971 and the US$ value floated along with the value of other currencies.

One of the bigger consequences of the resulting financial problems and geopolitical maneuverings was the creation of the petrodollar.  Saudi Arabia agreed in 1974 to sell oil using only the US$ in exchange for military security and economic assistance.  The latter two were intertwined as the military assistance came largely in the form of Saudi Arabia investing in U.S. financial products as well as buying huge amounts of U.S. military products.

From that decision, the petrodollar retained the US$’s position as the global reserve currency.  All countries needed oil derived products and therefore needed the US$ held in its reserves.  Along with that, and preceding it, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (both controlled by the U.S.) had made unreasonable loans to second and third world countries.  When these countries found themselves unable to pay off their debts, the IMF imposed “structural adjustment programs” (SAPs) that effectively tied the debtor country to the IMF financial system, partly through onerous loan repayment schedules and the demands of the SAPs that altered the countries economies into perpetual serfs for the financial empire.

Oil embargo and the end of empire?

An embargo today would have serious consequences for the petrodollar and its global reserve status, but as the tentacles of U.S. financial manipulations cover the world it would also have serious consequences for the rest of the world.  The bottom line however would be a huge peace dividend (providing the U.S. did not literally go nuclear over it) and a global economy reestablishing itself along more independently sovereign lines.

The U.S. is currently hugely indebted and its inflation rate, officially at about 3.5 percent, is running about ten or eleven percent as calculated under the 1970s’ rulebook.  An embargo would have the same initial worldwide effect, with the price of oil rising sharply, and as it quadrupled in 1973, a quadrupling now would price oil at about $300 per barrel.   U.S. debt would increase enormously along with the inflation rate placing the value of the US$ into near worthlessness as it would have to print more and more money to support its spiraling debt costs.

The results for Israel, intent on its destruction of Palestine and Gaza, armed with its own arsenal of nuclear weapons, are truly unpredictable.  Now clearly demonstrating their total disdain for human life and their fanatical Zionist fundamentalism, resorting to their nuclear arsenal is for them a strong possibility.  They could also count on U.S. intervention regionally with all the complications that brings.  They are a rabid wild card, using military tactics to eliminate a perceived usurper of their now god-forsaken land.

 Financial embargo and the end of empire?

Outside that very real possibility, the US$ would not disappear, but as it became less and less valuable due to inflation, and other countries under the influence of China and Russia would further their attempts to interact financially outside of the US$ system.

A related embargo of a kind could rise from the financial side of the geopolitical equation.  As most countries have the US$ and U.S. treasuries (bonds = debt) in their reserves, a selling off of the reserves – as has been done by Russia and as is preceding slowly by China and inconspicuously by a few other countries – would greatly reduce the value of the US$ as an investment, the dollars would flow home – more inflation.

Russia clearly demonstrates the value of not being tied into the U.S. financial system.  While it cannot avoid it in international settings, it holds very small US$ reserves and thus sanctions and financial closures – i.e. being shut out of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) – have little effect on it.  Along with China, they are trading with other countries outside of the US$ system, using their own payment systems and their own currencies, now including oil sales from Saudi Arabia to China…which in turn ties it back into the oil embargo.

Lament for the global economy – will peace be given a chance?

The global economy as measured by GDP would probably suffer enormously but the hardest hit would be the western countries still living with the riches of empire, past and present.  Most economic statistics, if examined carefully, are pretty much worthless anyway, manipulated as they are by various formulas used to rig them in favor of the government in power.

If all the countries tied into IMF debt simply annulled or defaulted on the loans unilaterally, the debt structure would collapse.  Poorer countries would be able to return to a sovereign economy, producing what they need for their own people, trading what they can offer at a fair global price for fair profits, and invest in their own civic infrastructure without interference from some special covert CIA team or pure military intervention.

There would be a huge dividend, a peace dividend, allowing the world to restructure itself away from U.S. domination.  As indicated above, Israel is the unknown in all this, acting in an unpredictable frenzied manner in order to assert its particular brand of fanatical theism.

Unfortunately the governments of the global “south” are holding themselves hostage to the IMF loans and U.S. financial manipulations.  Much of the billions of dollars in IMF aid money goes to those in control, the elites of any particular country, either through straight up graft and corruption, or through money spent on their own businesses, or money sent to a safe haven somewhere outside their home country – just in case.

Much of that money is also used to pay off the interest debt of previous loans – a vicious spiral into poverty.  Personal power and greed create maximum hesitation on these leaders to actually do something to upset their private wealth trough.

A ceasefire – maybe even peace –  is possible, if the Arab and Muslim leaders of the world would get over their fears of losing their own power – to their own people – and act in concert against the aggressions of Israel against the Palestinians.  If not, this could either be another in the long cycle of Israeli attacks on Palestinians, or worst case, the final ethnic cleansing/genocide of Palestinians.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

Dear child. It is past midnight. I am flying at hundreds of miles an hour in the darkness, thousands of feet over the Atlantic Ocean. I am traveling to Egypt. I will go to the border of Gaza at Rafah. I go because of you.

You have never been in a plane. You have never left Gaza. You know only the densely packed streets and alleys. The concrete hovels.  You know only the security barriers and fences patrolled by soldiers that surround Gaza. Planes, for you, are terrifying. Fighter jets. Attack helicopters. Drones. They circle above you. They drop missiles and bombs. Deafening explosions. The ground shakes. Buildings fall. The dead. The screams. The muffled calls for help from beneath the rubble. It does not stop. Night and day. Trapped under the piles of smashed concrete. Your playmates. Your schoolmates. Your neighbors. Gone in seconds. You see the chalky faces and limp bodies when they are dug out. I am a reporter. It is my job to see this. You are a child. You should never see this.

The stench of death. Rotting corpses under broken concrete. You hold your breath. You cover your mouth with cloth. You walk faster. Your neighborhood has become a graveyard. All that was familiar is gone. You stare in amazement. You wonder where you are.

You are afraid. Explosion after explosion. You cry. You cling to your mother or father. You cover your ears. You see the white light of the missile and wait for the blast. Why do they kill children? What did you do? Why can’t anyone protect you? Will you be wounded? Will you lose a leg or an arm? Will you go blind or be in a wheelchair? Why were you born?  Was it for something good? Or was it for this? Will you grow up?  Will you be happy? What will it be like without your friends? Who will die next? Your mother? Your father? Your brothers and sisters?  Someone you know will be injured. Soon. Someone you know will die. Soon.

At night you lie in the dark on the cold cement floor. The phones are cut. The internet is off. You do not know what is happening. There are flashes of light. There are waves of blast concussions. There are screams. It does not stop.

When your father or mother hunts for food or water you wait. That terrible feeling in your stomach. Will they come back? Will you see them again? Will your tiny home be next? Will the bombs find you? Are these your last moments on earth?

You drink salty, dirty water. It makes you very sick. Your stomach hurts. You are hungry. The bakeries are destroyed. There is no bread. You eat one meal a day. Pasta. A cucumber. Soon this will seem like a feast.

You do not play with your soccer ball made of rags. You do not fly your kite made from old newspapers.

You have seen foreign reporters. We wear flak jackets with the word PRESS written on it. We have helmets. We have cameras. We drive jeeps. We appear after a bombing or a shooting. We sit over coffee for a long time and talk to the adults. Then we disappear. We do not usually interview children. But I have done interviews when groups of you crowded around us. Laughing. Pointing. Asking us to take your picture.

I have been bombed by jets in Gaza. I have been bombed in other wars, wars that happened before you were born. I too was very, very scared. I still have dreams about it. When I see the pictures of Gaza these wars return to me with the force of thunder and lightning. I think of you.

All of us who have been to war hate war most of all because of what it does to children.

I tried to tell your story. I tried to tell the world that when you are cruel to people, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, when you deny people freedom and dignity, when you humiliate and trap them in an open-air prison, when you kill them as if they were beasts, they become very angry. They do to others what was done to them. I told it over and over. I told it for seven years. Few listened. And now this.

There are very brave Palestinian journalists. Thirty-nine of them have been killed since this bombing began. They are heroes. So are the doctors and nurses in your hospitals. So are the U.N. workers. Eighty-nine of whom have died. So are the ambulance drivers and the medics. So are the rescue parties that lift up the slabs of concrete with their hands. So are the mothers and fathers who shield you from the bombs.

But we are not there. Not this time. We cannot get in. We are locked out.

Reporters from all over the world are going to the border crossing at Rafah. We are going because we cannot watch this slaughter and do nothing. We are going because hundreds of people are dying a day, including 160 children. We are going because this genocide must stop. We are going because we have children. Like you. Precious. Innocent. Loved. We are going because we want you to live.

I hope one day we will meet. You will be an adult. I will be an old man, although to you I am already very old. In my dream for you I will find you free and safe and happy.  No one will be trying to kill you. You will fly in airplanes filled with people, not bombs. You will not be trapped in a concentration camp. You will see the world. You will grow up and have children. You will become old. You will remember this suffering, but you will know it means you must help others who suffer. This is my hope. My prayer.

We have failed you. This is the awful guilt we carry. We tried. But we did not try hard enough. We will go to Rafah.  Many of us. Reporters. We will stand outside the border with Gaza in protest. We will write and film. This is what we do. It is not much. But it is something. We will tell your story again.

Maybe it will be enough to earn the right to ask for your forgiveness.

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.

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org