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By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By P.S. Sahni

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

The German government followed suit (see here).

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

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

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

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

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

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

P.S. Sahni is a qualified orthopaedic surgeon.

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exhaustion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desperation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deprivation

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

It only brought more torment.

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

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

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

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

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

Starvation

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

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

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

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

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

We go to bed hungry. We wake up hungry.

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

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

Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman is a journalist living in Gaza.

20 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ranjan Solomon

Gaza is going through a murderous genocide at the hands of a barbaric Israeli army assault. It is in this context that Christians around the world must find solidarity in the call of the Heads of Churches in Palestine who have called on their people to desist from Christmas celebrations.

It’s a hard-hitting call that demands sacrifice and a deep understanding of what it means to be a human community. While bright lights, fancy decorations, classy gifts, (an imaginary Santa Claus), parties, booze and dances are the culture of modern Christmas, this has been deprived to the people of Palestine who live in uncertainty not knowing when their homes will be bombed or a random sharp shooter will kill a kid. Every 30 minutes, a child is killed.

At least 18,787 people, including more than 7,700 children, have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to Palestinian officials in less than six weeks. Schools, hospitals, and offices, of relief agencies lie in ruins making welfare and relief near-impossible.

It is easy for Churches, priests, and Christian leaders to insist that we must live in hope. The anguish in Gaza and in multiple cities in the West Bank leave the notion of hope looking empty.

What is the sacrifice we can each make in the here and now for the children of Gaza who have no shelter? No crib for a bed. Not even a cow-shed.

But we’re not talking about Gaza alone or Bethlehem, or Jenin or Jerusalem or a dozen other cities and villages where people live in terror and anxiety. Around the world, the Manger scene is played out for migrants, the rural and urban poor, street children, slum dwellers living under polluted conditions.

It is not a Merry Christmas for millions upon millions. Their tragedy drags on for an eternity – even until they die. Hope is the only instrument we have in this dire state of affairs?

We are saddened at how those who have no hope survive this cold shelter less Christmas time. Our hearts are heavy with the burdens our suffering sisters and brothers live through. We can utter all the words of sadness at the killing of our brothers and sisters. The challenge is to lift up our eyes and fix them on Christ alone. (Heb 12:2.). Amidst persecution, we must worship in spirit and truth, and continue to worship and offer our treasures like the wise men to Him, who has set us free and secured life and eternity before us.

Meanwhile cancel Christmas celebrations because this is not time to celebrate!

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator

19 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Press Release

As the brutal slaughtering in Gaza unfolds in increasingly horrific proportions, we, as an experienced research foundation for peaceful conflict resolution and peace-making since 1986, feel the urge to contribute our analytical points, sentiments and constructive conflict-resolution ideas.

The Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research (TFF) also wants to be on record with this Statement so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see who stood with whom and who advocated peace instead of ongoing genocide.

The killing has to stop, and we call, together with the UN and so many others, for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

The horrific attack of Hamas on October 7, 2023, with the death of over 1100 people, is indefensible. There is no excuse for the killing of absolutely innocent people. While there is a painful history of 75 years of brutal occupation and apartheid regime against the Palestinian people, there is no justification for such an act of senseless violence.

However, Israel’s response can by no means be seen as practising the right to self-defence. It is an utterly out-of-proportion massacre of civilians, mainly women and children, executed by the military of the most totalitarian and racist government Israel ever had since it was established. It is an unprecedented murderous revenge. It is genocide.*

Despite the strongest condemnation by the UN, despite the unprecedented calls of its Secretary General, Israel continues with its systematic high-tech slaughter, and the Western governments are standing silent or, like Germany, declare their ”unwavering support for Israel.“ EU leaders declared immediately that ’Europe’ is ”standing with Israel.” The US voted against a ceasefire.

It is heartbreaking and painful beyond words to helplessly watch the unfolding of this massacre.

After two months, these are the facts:

> 7.900 children bombed to pieces, hundreds of them trapped under the debris, thousands of children mutilated, a whole young generation traumatised forever.

> 17.500 dead. Crying doctors in utterly dysfunctional hospitals, operating without anaesthetics.

> The homes of tens of thousands of people in shambles, 24 of 36 hospitals, schools, mosques, libraries, the beautiful university of Gaza – destroyed, erased to the ground.

> 1,9 million out of 2.2 million people forced out of their homes into the streets, deliberately starved of food, water and medical help, trapped under more and more bombing without any possibility to escape – it is a war crime of monstrous proportions.

> More than 100 UN staff members and over 60 journalists and media people have been killed, 54 of them Palestinians.

But while much of Israel and many of the Western governments seem to be blinded by the idea of eternal victimhood of Jews and Israel, that can’t be used as an equally eternal excuse for just every atrocity. Fortunately, hundreds of thousands of Jews in and outside Israel show in unequivocal terms, that this is not happening in their name.

Hundreds of Jews with kippas packed New York Central Station as early as three weeks after the beginning of the forced exodus of 1 million Palestinians and the following slaughtering and blocked the whole station for hours, all of them in black t-shirts with huge letters ”This Jew is for immediate ceasefire“. And they keep protesting.

35 Jewish-Palestinian organisations in Israel are calling for an unconditional ceasefire, and the International Jewish Voice for Peace is raising its voices everywhere around the globe.

Hundreds of Rabbis all around the world, including in Israel, have been condemning the unparalleled killing and are calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Little do you read in the Western mainstream media about this, nor about the millions of other people around the world who manifest their solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Amnesty International condemned Israel in non-mistakable terms, and the Security Council nearly unanimously called for an immediate ceasefire – vetoed shamefully by the United States alone.

The WHO called out Israel and urged for an immediate ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu repeatedly states that he will not be moved: the ”war on Hamas” (the Western media’s deceptive narrative for the genocide) will continue. Palestine did not exist on the map of the New Middle East he showed at the UN.

By all means available, this Israeli government should be isolated until it stops the genocide. Its political and military leaders must be held accountable for the horrible crimes against humanity and be brought to justice. What is at stake is the strength of international law, several conventions and UN Charter norms.

Every country that has delivered and continues to deliver the military means enabling this immoral, illegal and barbaric policy must be seen as complicit and likewise be held accountable. Without the ongoing military and political support of the US and Western States, Germany in particular – that 10-folded its weapon deliveries since October 23 – this horrible war and the unlawful occupation would be over soon.

There is no doubt that this will backfire on Israel and the West.

The whole world is watching the slaughtering and the collaboration of the Western states with horror and disgust. The arrogance of the ”leading nations” and their claim to act in the name of democracy, freedom, and human rights – as well as their ’rules-based international order’ – is fast falling apart.

How can we move towards long-term peace?

• We still believe that Jews and Palestinians can live together – and so do many of them themselves. Even under shocking conditions, people and organisations on both sides still insist that their lives are inextricably linked and that peaceful coexistence is possible.

It will be a long and painful path to make this happen – and it will only be possible with equal rights for all.

And it will need tremendous pressure from the outside and a non-violent revolution from the inside to change Israel into a just, human rights and law- respecting true democracy.

• We need to look at the entire Middle East as a region – we need its dense network of economic, cultural, and political ties to set up an all-regional conflict-resolution mechanism á la the OSCE. This way, over several years, all parties can dialogue their way through to something they can live with in the long term.

There are many possible elements – tie peace into economic and political mechanisms and relations; think of cantons and autonomies; think of mutually beneficial/cooperative uses of territories; think of the relations of it all with the Rest of the World, including the Global South. Tie it in with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, BRI.

Warfare requires no intellect or creativity; peace-making requires both.

• The violence must die down to move towards such a civilised process. We need an immediate ceasefire.

Ideally, we need a huge UN mission to disarm Israel and Hamas to such a level that neither can re-start a war. And then all the good offices around the world, governmental but certainly more so non-governmental, to help mediate, consult, dialogue every detail: What do the many parties fear and what do they want?

And then – at the end, after years of such a peace-building process – the parties would come to a final negotiation table and then sign an agreement of peaceful coexistence with all its civilian and military modalities.

• Conflict resolution means solving problems that stand between the parties. It cannot succeed by violence, looking to the past, or tit-for-tat for what was done yesterday.

It is, instead, one big, complex and long peace workshop where better futures/visions/ scenarios are brought up, evaluated, and sorted out – ending in combining the best elements into a comprehensive future arrangement.

You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. And – no! – everybody will not be happy, but all can be happy with something – and see a better future for their children.

And this is also where truth and reconciliation commissions come in – the healing and forgiveness that is found in all religions.

Peace is still possible.

Signed by TFF Associates:

Christina Spännar – PhD in sociology, founder, Sweden.

Jan Oberg – PhD in sociology, founder and director, Sweden.

Annette Schiffmann – Veteran peace activist & organiser of numerous international conferences on alternatives to war and violence: Iraq, Death Penalty, Israel/Palestine, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Heidelberg, Germany.

David Swanson – Co-Founder, Executive Director, and a Board Member of World Beyond War, author, activist, journalist, and radio host, the United States.

Liu Jian – Co-founder of Ichi Foundation, Beijing, China.

Erni Friholt – Secretary, the Orust Peace Movement, Orust, Sweden.

Claus Kold – PhD, senior researcher, director of TurningPoints, Denmark.

Biljana Vanskovska – Professor, Head of the Global Changes Center, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia.

Farhang Jahanpour – Retired professor and Editor for Middle East and North Africa at BBC Monitoring, England.

Radmila Nakarada – Professor, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Distinguished Fellow, New South Institute, Johannesburg, Belgrade, Serbia.

Ola Friholt – Chairman, the Orust Peace Movement, Orust, Sweden.

Richard Falk – Professor Emeritus, Princeton University, public intellectual and former UN Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, US/Turkey.

Elaheh Pooyandeh – MA in peace studies, peace educator and mediator, Tehran, Iran.

Ina Curic – Sociologist, M.A. in Gender Studies as well as Peace and Conflict Studies; former TFF project coordinator in Burundi, creator of Imagine Creatively story-telling for peace, Romania.

David Loy – Retired professor of Buddhist and comparative philosophy, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism.

Chantal Mutamuriza – Former TFF project coordinator in Burundi, human rights advocate and humanitarian worker, Switzerland and Ethiopia.

Chaiwat Satha-Anand – Professor emeritus, Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University and prolific writer on Islam and nonviolence, Bangkok, Thailand.

Brajna Greenhalgh – PhD Researcher; MSc in psychology, licensed counsellor, Bangor University, Wales.

Mairead Maguire – Nobel peace laureate, co-founder of Peace People, Northern Ireland, Kilcief County Down.

Gareth Porter – historian, independent investigative journalist, author and policy analyst specializing in U.S. national security issues, the United States.

Shastri Ramachandaran – Independent Journalist, editor, writer, publication & media consultant, New Delhi, India.

Peter Peverelli – Retired professor, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and lifelong expert on China, The Netherlands.

Neelakanta Radhakrishnan – Dr., The Gandhi Peace Mission, India; former Director of Gandhi Darshan and International Centre of Gandhian Studies in New Delhi, India.

Jorgen Johansen – Editor at Irene Publishing, independent peace researcher and writer, Sweden.

Majken Sorensen – Associate Professor of Social Science at Østfold University College and Karlstad University, Sweden.

Jake Lynch – Associate Professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He also writes, reports and broadcasts regularly as a journalist working in peace journalism, as well as making documentary films.

* Appendix: Why we use the word ”genocide.”

The use of the word ’genocide’ is controversial in many circles and may evoke emotional reactions. We are also aware that it has been used by some for political purposes to denigrate some other country or people.

But we do not use the term lightly or for political purposes. Given the links we provide below to trustworthy sites and organisations, legal documents such as the Genocide Convention, as well as expert opinion, we believe this is the term that best summarises what has unfolded in Gaza and subjected the Palestinians to unspeakable, unprecedented suffering as a people.

One central criterion is intentionality – that there is a deliberate intention to harm, eradicate, humiliate, displace or make life impossible for a nation – in part or, over time, in whole.

Most of the links provided by professor John Mearsheimer here, in which various Israeli leaders are on record, make it abundantly clear that the suffering cannot be explained merely by ’collateral damage,’ i.e. civilian casualties caused by unintended consequences of bombings and other warfare activities.

Furthermore, according to the Genocide Convention of 1948 – “Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as … “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

All these criteria do not have to be present – as the word ”any” indicates. In the case of Gaza, it should be abundantly clear that the Israeli government’s activity falls within criteria a, b and c.

To that can be added a multi-decade occupation (since 1967), apartheid, humiliation and other elements that, in and of themselves, do not constitute genocide.

Finally, it is extraordinarily important to note that – as pointed out by UN experts:

“The international community has an obligation to prevent atrocity crimes, including genocide, and should immediately consider all diplomatic, political and economic measures to that end.”

We believe that this obligation does place the West’s complicity in the genocide – thanks to arms and ammunition export and political side-taking statements – in a particularly tragical light.

Links on genocide

The Convention

The Convention

Wikipedia about the Convention

Arguments and judgements

Oct. 12, 2023
Gaza: UN experts decry bombing of hospitals and schools as crimes against humanity, call for prevention of genocide

Oct. 15, 2023
Public Statement: Scholars Warn of Potential Genocide in Gaza
On 15 October 2023, over 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies signed a public statement warning of the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Oct. 20, 2023
Genocide Scholars and 100 Palestinian and International Civil Society Organisations Call on Prosecutor Khan to Issue Arrest Warrants, Investigate Israeli Crimes and Intervene to Deter Incitement to Commit Genocide in Gaza

Oct. 24, 2023
The Guardian: Israel is clear about its intentions in Gaza – world leaders cannot plead ignorance of what is coming

Nov. 7, 2023
Washington Post – Israel’s war in Gaza and the spectre of ‘genocide.’

Nov. 12, 2023
Aljazeera – Genocide in Gaza: A call to urgent global action. What is happening in Gaza fits the definition of genocide.

Nov. 13, 2023
Center for Constitutional Rights
Stop the Genocide: United States Complicity and Failure to Prevent the Israeli Government’s Unfolding Genocide of Palestinians

Nov. 14, 2023
Time
Is what is happening in Gaza a genocide. Experts weigh in.

Nov. 16, 2023
United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, OHCHR
Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent genocide on the Palestinian people

Dec. 1, 2023
Aljazeera – Former ICC chief prosecutor: Israel’s siege of Gaza is a ‘genocide’
Luis Moreno Ocampo discusses accusations of war crimes and genocide against both Hamas and Israel.

Dec. 6, 2023
As part of its genocide in Gaza, Israel escalates its targeting of schools housing displaced people

Dec. 11, 2023
‘Time for Action to Prevent Genocide Is Now’:
The 56 scholars said in their open letter that Palestinians in the West Bank and those who are citizens of Israel also faced “grave danger” if Israel’s attack on Gaza were to continue and escalate.

Dec. 12, 2023
International Middle East Media Center, IMEMC
Euro-Med Monitor: “In Gaza, Israel’s Army Replicates the Crimes Committed by Zionist Gangs in 1948.”

Finally, another statement, ”Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals on Gaza Genocide,” drafted by world-renowned Princeton University Professor Emeritus of International Law and TFF Associate Richard Falk, together with former Turkish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, determines that the word ’genocide’ describes the situation in Gaza. It is signed by many scholars, diplomats, former ministers, etc. and addresses the world community, including the UN (forthcoming).

17 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Friday 15 December will be remembered as another black day for the Palestinian people. The killing of Samer Abu Daqqa by Israeli forces is another nail in the coffin of freedom from occupation and free speech.

Ever since the war on Gaza started a few days after 7 October, the Israeli military has been targeting Palestinian journalists and seeking to muzzle their words and reporting. Abu Daqqa, a cameraman for the Arabic Al Jazeera becomes journalist no 89 to have been targeted and killed by the Israeli big guns and sophisticated gadgetry.

He was killed on day 70 of Israel’s war on Gaza when its army continued bombarding the Strip, day and night. By late November, Israel dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on different parts of Gaza and it continues to do so till today.

For him, Friday 15 September proved to be a fateful day, an end to a career long dedicated to the Palestinian cause and revealing oppression experienced by the people of Gaza under Israeli occupation and siege imposed since 2007.

On that day, together with his colleague Wael Al Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza Bureau Chief, were in the field covering the Israeli military strikes of the Farhanah UNRWA school in the vicinity of Khan Younis.

Israeli warplanes were striking at the school, beginning Friday early morning, telling the displaced people there to move further south to the city of Rafah on the border of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. This had been the policy of the Israeli military ever since they unleashed their war on Gaza of ordering people first, from the north of Gaza, to move to the south.

An Israeli drone

They were returning to the school having been in an ambulance that was struck by an Israeli drone having been given permission to transport people whose house had just been bombed.

But suddenly, and according to reports an Israeli reconnaissance drone appeared, armed with missiles and targeted the ambulance that reached the school. Both Al Dahdouh and Abu Daqqa were hit by shrapnel’s and injured, chaos ensued, people around started running asunder and the two got separated.

Al Dahdouh retreated quickly out of the area; Al Duqqa couldn’t, he was too badly hurt and stayed laying on the ground bleeding with the other civilians.

They were besieged by more Israeli firepower and warplanes and were stuck in the school. At that moment any human movement would be fatal, thuds from above continued and the cameraman stayed helpless on the ground whiles hemorrhaging.

Meanwhile, Al Dahdouh said he walked for at least 10 minutes – hundreds of meters – before a rescue teams got to him. He was struck in the arm and abdomen and in great pain. He told them about rescuing his friend but after intense firepower, they told him it would be better to get him to the hospital and send another ambulance for his colleague.

Meanwhile, and caught on camera, he was beseeching the doctors and nurses to get to Al Duqqa through the Red Cross. He said the man was laying in the courtyard of the school bleeding profusely, it was imperative that help be sent, not only for him but the rest of the displaced people also hurt.

And so, the long waiting begun while the channels of communications wired, trying to persuade the Israeli politicians, their military people and air force to send an ambulance to rescue the bleeding man in the middle of the school ground.

According to the Israelis, the area was already declared a military zone which meant the are was under bombardment. The chains of command moved painfully slow. Who to contact, which to contact, who has the ability to make the decision, all these issues took around five hours to sort out.

In the end an ambulance was given permission to enter the area but had to move slowly. The anti-climaxes continued, it was a long drive, for such a short period to the Nasser Hospital. The ambulance had to turn back because the road was potholed with craters from bombs and missiles.

It was then that Samer Al Duqqa, a long-dedicated hero to the word and the image said goodbye to the world and declared dead. He last breath was on the ground of the school because of Israeli military-bureaucratic wrangles who didn’t care which Palestinians they killed and/or maimed.

After all, they had been bombing and missiling Gaza for the last 70 days non-stop with the number of those killed at over 18,000 not to say anything about the injured at over 50,000 as well as the thousands –estimated at 7000 – under the rubble and waiting for burials.

The cameraman’s life was dedicated, working for Al Jazeera since 2004. In 2021 his hand was injured during similar Israeli strikes on Gaza but insisted on continuing to work in the field, although he was offered a job by the station in its Belgium office where his family lives.

Al Duqqa was quoted as saying that, during this latest onslaught, he slept for less three hours a day but it was enough for him to continue coverage of the merciless war.

Annoyed

The Israelis are annoyed with Al Jazeera as they long made that clear to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who conveyed the message to the Qataris who own the satellite station during his frequent trips to the region. But Al Jazeera wouldn’t relent.

On 25 October, Al Dahdouh’s family were targeted. For safe reasons, not that there is really any safe place in Gaza, his family moved to the Al Nuseirat camp – one of eight refugee camps in the 365-kilometer enclave – but they were targeted. His wife was killed so was his son, daughter and grandbaby.

In early December, Israeli warplanes targeted the family of two Al Jazeera correspondents. First, it was Momen Al Sharafi, his father, mother and 20 of his relatives were killed in an Israeli strike. As well, and in a separate attack days later, the 65-year-old father of Anas Al-Sharif was also killed in the Jabalia refugee camp which had been the subject of untense Israeli bombing.

This is not to say anything about the other local journalist who are constantly at the end of the Israeli barrel. Their lives continue to be in danger so long as the war on Gaza continues, and the bombing is likely to be longer than expected with talk now of “precision targeting” as a new phase and as conveyed to the Americans who seem to take that as winding down the conflict.

Marwan Asmar is a journalist from Amman, Jordan

18 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ben Norton

10 Dec 2023 – The US government has paralyzed the United Nations, voting alone against the rest of the world and preventing peace in Gaza by vetoing three different resolutions in the Security Council. Meanwhile, Washington [the Good Guys] continues giving weapons to Israel.

The United States has used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council three times in less than two months to kill resolutions calling for peace in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Washington is sending billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel, directly assisting the country as it commits war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

US blocks Gaza peace proposal at UN for 3rd time, holding world hostage

On December 8, the Security Council voted on a resolution that called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and the unconditional release of all hostages.

The United States was the only country on the 15-member council that voted against the measure.

This resolution had been introduced by the United Arab Emirates, and had the support of more than 90 UN member states.

The 13 Security Council members that voted for the measure were Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Russia, Switzerland, and the UAE.

Close US ally the United Kingdom was the only country to abstain in the vote.

The United States helped to design the United Nations after World War II, concentrating power in the Security Council and giving permanent seats with veto power to the victors: the US, UK, France, USSR (now Russia), and China.

Many countries in the Global South have called to expand the Security Council and to eliminate the veto.

China and Russia have repeatedly expressed support for expanding the council. But Washington has adamantly opposed the initiative.

Global South leaders are particularly frustrated by the fact that the UK and France, each of which has a population of fewer than 70 million people, both have permanent seats on the Security Council, but not many of the most populous countries on Earth, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, or Brazil.

Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva stressed this November that the failure of the UN to bring peace to Palestine demonstrates that the system is “broken” and has a “lack of credibility”.

“The UN needs change”, Lula said, calling to expand the Security Council and remove the veto.

“The UN of 1945 does not work in 2023”, the Brazilian leader added.

US Rebukes UN Secretary-General’s Historic Invocation of Article 99

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has publicly called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but was rejected by Washington.

Guterres took the extraordinary measure of invoking article 99 of the UN Charter, for the first time in five decades.

Article 99 states, “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

The Associated Press noted, “Article 99 is extremely rarely used. The last time it was invoked was during fighting in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh and its separation from Pakistan”.

In the case of the Bangladeshi national liberation war of 1971, Pakistan’s right-wing military regime ethnically cleansed and committed genocide against Bengalis, with the support of the US government – specifically President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

The genocidal situation in Palestine is strikingly similar today.

This November, top UN experts warned that “grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians… point to a genocide in the making”.

The UN experts wrote:

[Israeli officials] illustrated evidence of increasing genocidal incitement, overt intent to “destroy the Palestinian people under occupation”, loud calls for a ‘second Nakba’ in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, and the use of powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts, resulting in a colossal death toll and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.

The Wall Street Journal reported on December 1 that the “U.S. has provided Israel with large bunker buster bombs, among tens of thousands of other weapons and artillery shells”.

In less than two months, Washington sent Israel approximately 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.

In fact, Gaza is now one of the most heavily bombed areas in history, according to a report in the Financial Times.

US Vetoed Two Other Security Council Resolutions on Gaza

The United States voted against two similar resolutions in October.

On October 16, the US and its allies the UK, France, and Japan voted against a measure introduced by Russia that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original – geopoliticaleconomy.com

18 December 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Craig John Murray

Why the Genocide Convention has not been activated at the ICJ? It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful, but that it will succeed. It follows that not only Benjamin Netanyahu but also “Genocide Joe” Biden and Rishi Sunak will be criminally liable for complicity.

13 Dec 2023 – Al Jazeera are leading their news with the execution of Palestinian civilians, including women and toddlers, inside the school in Jabalia where they were sheltering. They were all shot at point blank range, with no signs of a bomb or missile strike.

On the BBC, the Daily Politics show – which consists of discussion between senior British MPs – does not discuss Palestine at all, because the British political class supports the genocide, so for them there is nothing to discuss.

Also in Jabalia, the Israelis today destroyed the last remaining bakery.

It is worth stating why this is plainly a genocide in Gaza:

1) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure which supports the civilian population, including water treatment, electricity, sewerage systems, bakeries and fishing boats;

2)  Deliberate destruction of almost all medical facilities;

3) Deliberate destruction of educational facilities, from universities to primary schools;

4) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of civil society, including Supreme Court, Parliament, Ministries and Council buildings and deliberate destruction of administrative records;

5) Deliberate blocking of food aid inducing mass starvation;

6) Massive and indiscriminate bombardment. In wars the general percentage of children among those killed varies from 6 to 8 percent. In Ukraine it is 6 percent. In Gaza it is 42 percent. This is indiscriminate destruction of an ethnic group;

7) Mass executions of civilians;

8) Acts of dehumanisation of the Palestinians, including parading prisoners naked for public and media show and humiliation, beating and sexually abusing them;

9) Forced mass movement of population;

10) Deliberate targeting of religious and cultural heritage buildings;

11) Deliberate targeting of intellectual leadership, including journalists, doctors, poets, university lecturers and senior administrators;

12) Numerous declarations of open genocidal intent from the President and Prime Minister down through almost the entire fabric of both civilian and military establishment.

This is the official definition of Genocide in international law, from the

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, 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

On Tuesday [12 Dec] I attended a session called by Palestine at the United Nations in Geneva. Over 120 states attended. While the formal session consisted of statements of national position with few surprises, I was able to discuss with a large number of delegates in the corridors why the Genocide Convention has not been activated triggering a reference to the International Court of Justice.

The answer is now clear to me. It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed. There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide in the terms outlined above.

The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are Benjamin Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely plain that “Genocide Joe” Biden, Rishi Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide.

The International Criminal Court cannot ignore a judgment of genocide from the International Court of Justice and will have no choice but to issue arrest warrants.

A genocide is the worst of crimes. Just how appalling this one is has been shown to the world like never before, through the power of social media.

But to the global 1 percent whose interests rule the world, no number of dead Palestinians makes any real difference to their interests. On the other hand, the ramifications for the international system of wealth concentration, if western political elites start to be held accountable for their crimes, are uncertain and therefore carry more risk.

This is particularly the concern of ruling classes of both Western and Arab states.

It may sound astonishing, but to the world’s diplomats the enormity of a genocide appears less troubling than the enormity of doing something about it.

Craig John Murray (born 17 Oct 1958) is a Scottish author, human rights campaigner, journalist, and former diplomat for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

18 December 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

11 Dec 2023 – The nearly unanimous vote in the UN Security Council on Friday [8 Dec] calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza is a moment of honor for the United Nations and shame for the United States. By voting to stop Israel’s war on Gaza by a vote of 13 yes, 1 no (US), and 1 abstention (UK), the vast majority put itself on the side of international law. The US stood alone against international law, with its sidekick and tutor in imperial brutality, the United Kingdom, dutifully abstaining.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres honored the UN and human decency by invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter, calling for the UN Security Council to stop the killing in Gaza as a basic responsibility under the UN Charter. Each day, UN officials on the ground in Gaza heroically struggle to feed, shelter, and protect the population from Israeli bombs. More than 100 UN staff have been killed in the Israeli assault.

The situation in Gaza is as clear as it is brutal. The State of Palestine, recognized by 139 nations, has long suffered from the brutalities of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza has been called the world’s largest open-air prison by Human Rights Watch. After the Hamas-led horrific terrorist attack on October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis died, Israel began to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Legal specialists at the Center for Constitutional Rights regard Israel’s actions as a genocide.

To date, more than 17,400 Gazans have been killed, and an unfathomable 1.8 million Gazans have been displaced. Tens of thousands are at risk of imminent death. Last month, Guterres warned that “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.” Israel pushed the population from northern Gaza to the south, and then invaded the south. Israeli authorities told Gazans to flee for their life to zones within the south, and then bombed the places to which the Gazans had been directed.

The US is more than a protector of Israel. It is an accomplice. The US supplies, in real-time, the munitions Israel uses for mass murder, even as US authorities pay lip-service to Gazan civilian lives.

The President of Israel Isaac Herzog justifies the slaughter by declaring that there are no innocent civilian Gazans: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” The Israeli government’s biggest lie is that Israel has no options other than the mass killing of Gazans, supposedly to defeat Hamas.

The fact that Israel was lulled by its arrogance into letting its guard down on October 7 does not make Hamas an existential threat. Hamas has only a tiny fraction of Israel’s military might. October 7, like 9/11 in the US, was a colossal security blunder that should be immediately corrected by stepped-up border security, not an existential threat that in any remote manner justifies the killing of thousands or tens of thousands of innocent civilians, with women and children constituting 70% of the victims. The killing frenzy is being led by the very same politicians who were responsible for the October 7 security failure and who now manipulate the deepest anxieties of the Israeli population.

There is a larger and far more important point. Hamas can be demobilized through diplomacy, and only through diplomacy. Israel and the United States need finally to abide by international law, accept a sovereign state of Palestine alongside Israel, and welcome Palestine as the 194th member state of the UN. The US needs to stop arming the Israeli operation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and stop protecting Israel’s rampant violations of basic human rights in the West Bank. Fifty-six years after its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and after decades of illegal settlements in the occupied territories, Israel needs finally to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands.

With such steps, peace between Israel and the neighboring countries could and would be secured. On that basis, UN peacekeepers, including both Arab and Western troops, would in turn secure the Israel-Palestine border for a needed transition period. At the same time, all international flows of financing to anti-Israel militants would be choked off by joint and coordinated actions of the US, Europe, and Israel’s Arab and Islamic neighbors.

The diplomatic route is open because the Arab and Islamic countries (including Iran) have once again reiterated their long-standing desire for peace with Israel as part of a peace agreement that establishes Palestine along the 1967 borders and its capital in East Jerusalem.

The real reason for Israel’s war in Gaza is that the Government of Israel rejects the two-state solution, and points to extremists on the other side rather than to the Arab and Islamic states, which want peace based on the two-state solution.

Israeli zealots, including several in the cabinet, believe that God promised them all of the lands from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. This belief is fatuous. As Jewish history should make clear to religious Jews, and as all human history should make clear generally, no group, whether Jewish or otherwise, has an unconditional “right” to any land. For rights to be secured and internationally respected in our day, governments need to abide by the international rule of law. In the case of Israel and Palestine, international law, as expressed repeatedly by the UN Security Council, holds that two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine, have both the right and responsibility to live side by side in peace according to the 1967 borders.

Not only Israel, but even perhaps more so the United States, has lost its way. The deep reason was clear to Senator J. William Fulbright sixty years ago, when Fulbright was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and wrote the magnificent book, The Arrogance of Power. Fulbright pointed to arrogance as the deep cause of America’s reckless war in Vietnam in the 1960s. In its ongoing arrogance, the US military-security state repeatedly ignores the will of the international community and international law because it believes that weapons and power enable it to do so. US foreign policy is based heavily on covert, illegal regime-change operations and on perpetual warfare that caters to the US military-industrial complex.

We must not become cynical about the UN. It is currently blocked by the US, the country that led its creation under America’s greatest president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The UN is doing its job, building international law, sustainable development, and universal human rights, step by step, with advances and reverses, over the opposition of powerful forces, but with the arc of history on its side. International law is a relatively new human creation, still in the works. It is difficult to achieve in the face of obstreperous imperial power, but we must pursue it.

It is important to note that opposing Israel’s war crimes has absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism. This point has been made eloquently in an open letter by dozens of Jewish writers. Netanyahu doesn’t speak for Judaism. The Israeli Government violates the most sacred of all Jewish injunctions, to protect life (Pikuach Nefesh) and to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). The message of Jewish ethics is found in the words of the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4) inscribed on a wall directly facing the United Nations: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

18 December 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Chris Hedges

Settler colonial states have a terminal shelf life. Israel is no exception.

17 Dec 2023 – Israel will appear triumphant after it finishes its genocidal campaign in Gaza and the West Bank. Backed by the United States, it will achieve its demented goal. Its murderous rampages and genocidal violence will exterminate or ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Its dream of a state exclusively for Jews, with any Palestinians who remain stripped of basic rights, will be realized. It will revel in its blood-soaked victory. It will celebrate its war criminals. Its genocide will be erased from public consciousness and tossed into Israel’s huge black hole of historical amnesia. Those with a conscience in Israel will be silenced and persecuted.

But by the time Israel achieves its decimation of Gaza — Israel is talking about months of warfare — it will have signed its own death sentence. Its facade of civility, its supposed vaunted respect for the rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation, will lie in ash heaps. Israel’s social capital will be spent. It will be revealed as an ugly, repressive, hate-filled apartheid regime, alienating younger generations of American Jews. Its patron, the United States, as new generations come into power, will distance itself from Israel the way it is distancing itself from Ukraine. Its popular support, already eroded in the U.S., will come from America’s Christianized fascists who see Israel’s domination of ancient Biblical land as a harbinger of the Second Coming and in its subjugation of Arabs a kindred racism and white supremacy.

Palestinian blood and suffering — 10 times the number of children have been killed in Gaza as in two years of war in Ukraine — will pave the road to Israel’s oblivion. The tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of ghosts will have their revenge. Israel will become synonymous with its victims the way Turks are synonymous with the Armenians, Germans are with the Namibians and later the Jews, and Serbs are with the Bosniaks. Israel’s cultural, artistic, journalistic and intellectual life will be exterminated. Israel will be a stagnant nation where the religious fanatics, bigots and Jewish extremists who have seized power will dominate public discourse. It will find its allies among other despotic regimes. Israel’s repugnant racial and religious supremacy will be its defining attribute, which is why the most retrograde white supremacists in the U.S. and Europe, including philo-semites such as John Hagee, Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, fervently back Israel. The vaunted fight against antisemitism is a thinly disguised celebration of White Power.

Despotisms can exist long after their past due date. But they are terminal. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to see that Israel’s lust for rivers of blood is antithetical to the core values of Judaism. The cynical weaponization of the Holocaust, including branding Palestinians as Nazis, has little efficacy when you carry out a live streamed genocide against 2.3 million people trapped in a concentration camp.

Nations need more than force to survive. They need a mystique. This mystique provides purpose, civility and even nobility to inspire citizens to sacrifice for the nation. The mystique offers hope for the future. It provides meaning. It provides national identity.

When mystiques implode, when they are exposed as lies, a central foundation of state power collapses. I reported on the death of the communist mystiques in 1989 during the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The police and the military decided there was nothing left to defend. Israel’s decay will engender the same lassitude and apathy. It will not be able to recruit indigenous collaborators, such as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority — reviled by most Palestinians — to do the bidding of the colonizers. The historian Ronald Robinson cites the inability to recruit indigenous allies by the British Empire as the point at which collaboration inverted into noncooperation, a defining moment for the start of decolonization. Once noncooperation by native elites morphs into active opposition, Robinson explains, the Empire’s “rapid retreat” is assured.

All Israel has left is escalating violence, including torture, which accelerates the decline. This wholesale violence works in the short term, as it did in the war waged by the French in Algeria, the Dirty War waged by Argentina’s military dictatorship and during Britain’s conflict in Northern Ireland. But in the long term it is suicidal.

“You might say that the battle of Algiers was won through the use of torture,” the British historian Alistair Horne observed, “but that the war, the Algerian war, was lost.”

The genocide in Gaza has turned Hamas fighters into heroes in the Muslim world and the Global South. Israel may wipe out the Hamas leadership. But the past — and current — assassinations of scores of Palestinian leaders has done little to blunt resistance. The siege and genocide in Gaza has produced a new generation of deeply traumatized and enraged young men and women whose families have been killed and whose communities have been obliterated. They are prepared to take the place of martyred leaders. Israel has sent the stock of its adversary into the stratosphere.

Israel was at war with itself before Oct. 7. Israelis were protesting to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s abolition of judicial independence. Its religious bigots and fanatics, currently in power, had mounted a determined attack on Israeli secularism. Israel’s unity since the attacks is precarious. It is a negative unity. It is held together by hatred. And even this hatred is not enough to keep protestors from decrying the government’s abandonment of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Hatred is a dangerous political commodity. Once finished with one enemy, those who stoke hatred go in search of another. The Palestinian “human animals,” when eradicated or subdued, will be replaced by Jewish apostates and traitors. The demonized group can never be redeemed or cured. A politics of hatred creates a permanent instability that is exploited by those seeking the destruction of civil society.

Israel was far down this road on Oct. 7 when it promulgated a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that resemble the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law permits exclusively Jewish settlements to bar applicants for residency on the basis of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.”

Many of Israel’s best educated and young have left the country to places like Canada, Australia and the U.K., with as many as one million moving to the United States. Even Germany has seen an influx of around 20,000 Israelis in the first two decades of this century. Around 470,000 Israelis have left the country since Oct. 7. Within Israel, human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists — Israeli and Palestinian — are attacked as traitors in government-sponsored smear campaigns, placed under state surveillance and subjected to arbitrary arrests. The Israeli educational system is an indoctrination machine for the military.

The Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned that if Israel did not separate church and state and end its occupation of the Palestinians, it would give rise to a corrupt Rabbinate that would warp Judaism into a fascistic cult. “Israel,” he said, “would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it.”

The global mystique of the U.S., after two decades of disastrous wars in the Middle East and the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, is as contaminated as its Israeli ally. The Biden administration, in its fervor to unconditionally support Israel and appease the powerful Israel lobby, has bypassed the congressional review process with the Department of State to approve the transfer of 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale.” At the same time he has cynically called on Israel to minimize civilian casualties.

Israel has no intention of minimizing civilian casualties. It has already killed 18,800 Palestinians, 0.82 percent of the Gazan population — the equivalent of around 2.7 million Americans. Another 51,000 have been wounded. Half of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the U.N. All Palestinian institutions and services that sustain life — hospitals (only 11 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are still “partially functioning”), water treatment plants, power grids, sewer systems, housing, schools, government buildings, cultural centers, telecommunications systems, mosques, churches, U.N. food distribution points — have been destroyed. Israel has assassinated at least 80 Palestinian journalists alongside dozens of their family members and over 130 U.N. aid workers along with members of their families. Civilian casualties are the point. This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against the Palestinians. The objective is to kill or remove 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza.

The shooting dead of three Israeli hostages who apparently escaped their captors and approached Israeli forces with their shirts off, waving a white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew is not only tragic, but a glimpse of Israel’s rules of engagement in Gaza. These rules are — kill anything that moves.

As the retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland, who formerly headed the Israeli National Security Council, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, “[T]he State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in…Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal.” “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” he wrote. Major General Ghassan Alian declared that in Gaza, “there will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.”

Settler colonial states that endure, including the United States, exterminate through diseases and violence nearly the entirety of their indigenous populations. Old World plagues brought by the colonizers to the Americas, such as smallpox, killed an estimated 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America. By 1600 less than a tenth of the original population remained. Israel cannot kill on this scale, with nearly 5.5 million Palestinians living under occupation and another 9 million in the diaspora.

The Biden presidency, which ironically may have signed its own political death certificate, is tethered to Israel’s genocide. It will try to distance itself rhetorically, but at the same time it will funnel the billions of dollars of weapons demanded by Israel — including $14.3 billion in supplemental military aid to augment the $3.8 billion in annual aid — to “finish the job.” It is a full partner in Israel’s genocide project.

Israel is a pariah state. This was publicly on display on Dec. 12 when 153 member states at the U.N. General Assembly voted for a ceasefire, with only 10 — including the U.S. and Israel — opposed and 23 abstaining. Israel’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza means there will be no peace. There will be no two state solution. Apartheid and genocide will define Israel. This presages a long, long conflict, one the Jewish State cannot ultimately win.

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.

18 December 2023

Source: www.transcend.org