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By Natalie Brinham

Eight months after Myanmar’s genocidal violence in 2017, which saw more than a million Rohingyas driven into Bangladesh, 55-year-old Rafique (not his real name) welcomed me into his shelter in a busy section of the refugee camp. He served me tea and asked me to wait – he wanted to show me something important that would explain ‘everything I wanted to know’ about Rohingya statelessness in Myanmar.

After some time, he emerged from behind the blanket that had been hung as a make-shift wall. He placed a metal cash box on the bamboo floor. Opening it with a key, he revealed a stack of papers, cards and photos – tattered ones, faded ones and plastic covered ones. Very carefully, he unfolded and displayed the contents across the length of the floor in front of me and my young Rohingya ‘fixer’. Methodically, he placed them in date order with the oldest closest to him. There were ID cards from his parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties and children – fraying blue and pink ones from the 1950s, white ones for the 1990s and one new turquoise one; registration documents listing every family member from the 1970s to the 2010s complete with crossings out, alterations and comments added by officials; joint-mugshots of the family holding a board with their registration number; repatriation documents from the 1970s and 1990s; and piles of land registration papers going back to the early years of independence in the 1950s.

‘But Uncle,’ said my fixer in amazement, ‘This must be one of the most complete collections in the whole camp! How on earth did you manage to keep hold of all these documents?’

Other Rohingya refugees had told us how their documents had been confiscated, seized, destroyed and burnt by state officials. Rafique explained how he would wrap the papers and cards in plastic, secure them in a metal box and bury them deep underground. Each year for almost 30 years, he would dig them up, rewrap them and bury them somewhere else. His brother was well connected; when authorities demanded he relinquish old ID cards, he would say they were lost and offered bribes of food, farm produce, favours or money.

Pointing to the documents in turn, Rafique explained – over three hours – how successive regimes in Myanmar had slowly destroyed Rohingya identity as a group belonging to the Rakhine region of the country. He kept the papers, he said, to evidence Rohingya history in Myanmar. He re-told the stories of belonging of his relatives; three mass expulsions and forced repatriations since independence; slow denationalisation; violent encounters with state authorities. Finally, he talked about his determination to resist the current state ID scheme, which ‘makes Rohingya into foreigners’. Group resistance, he reasoned, was intricately connected to the mass violence, killings and expulsions that had landed him in this refugee camp in 2017. Myanmar, he said, would not be a safe place to return to until Rohingyas were ‘given back’ their citizenship.

Invisible people or invisible states?

At a global level, citizenship has been compared to a giant filing system. Each individual human is assigned at least one nationality and filed ‘according to their return address’ or where they can be deported to. From a statist point of view, stateless people – or people without any legal citizenship – are an aberration in that filing system. They have no return address, so cannot be formally deported or expelled.

Human rights advocates take a different view. Those un-filed people are an ‘anomaly’ in an international rights system that is supposed to apply universally to all humans. It’s impossible for people to realise their rights if no state is responsible for protecting or providing for them. As such, stateless people are often described as legally and administratively ‘invisible’. They struggle to access legal protections, education, healthcare, work and financial services. Further, they are unable to benefit from international development and aid interventions.

Though statist concerns over deportability and human rights concerns over rightlessness seem to be ideologically opposed to one another, proposed solutions to the problems of statelessness often align. Administrative invisibility is generally tackled by proposing more state registration, more documentation, more efficiency, more digitisation and more biometrics. Sustainable Development Goal 16.9, which commits to providing a ‘legal identity for all’ by 2030, has become a rallying cry for international development organisations, refugee and migration management agencies, multinational tech companies and NGOs alike.

Yet, these approaches to statelessness by-pass fundamental issues relating to state abuses of power. State authorities consolidate their power through identification technologies and ID schemes, and can misuse these powers to exclude and expel. Few people in the world are actually completely undocumented. More people lack the right documents to be able to live legally in their homes, move freely within their own country, find regulated work or use banking systems. Other people are wrongly documented/registered by state authorities as foreign. The wrong kinds of registration can make things worse.

Despite being hailed as the harbingers of social inclusion, digital ID schemes can harden the boundaries of citizenship, excluding minorities and making it more difficult for people of uncertain citizenship to function in society. As Rafique’s account shows, the implementation of ID systems can be intricately linked to citizenship stripping and mass atrocities. Analysis of how power functions (differently) in particular states and societies, and how it functions through citizenship regimes and ID systems, is absent in ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to delivering ‘legal identities for all’. ID schemes are often misconceived as neutral processes in which sets of biological and/or biographical facts about individuals are recorded. In fact, they are imbued with power and profoundly impact social relations.

In initiatives to lift ‘stateless people’ out of a state of invisibility – to count them and document them – we fail to look properly at the perpetrating states. States are not identical containers that will function once filled up with international policy recommendations, capacity development and technical advice. Rafique’s oral history, which covered a period of 30 years of UN presence in his homelands, tells a story not of the invisibility of stateless Rohingya, but of how international actors have failed to look at the criminal intent of the state relating to their ID schemes and registration processes.

Statelessness studies often grapple with how to research ‘invisible’ populations. It’s equally important to grapple with how and why state violence has been invisibilised in anti-statelessness work. The very best starting point is to listen properly to survivors of state violence. Rafique’s account is just one of many. Rohingyas and many other stateless people are not really ‘invisible’. It’s just that if we look for them through state-tinted lenses, we tend to look right through the structures that were built to incarcerate them.

Natalie Brinham is an ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Bristol, working with MMB and the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies.

12 December 2023

Source: migration.bristol.ac.uk

The statement issued by Washington-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum

December 11, 2023

The supreme court of India upholds the decision of the Modi Government to strip the occupied Jammu & Kashmir of special status. The verdict though disappointing does not come as a surprise. This is the same court that confirmed the death sentence on Afzal Guru, notwithstanding the fact (own admission of the chief justice) that evidence for the alleged crime was not conclusive. The judgment came “to satisfy the collective conscience of the nation.” The same court few years ago issued a judgment giving the Hindu majority a right to build a temple in place of Barbari Mosque. This decision came as a shock to legal luminaries who cast aspersion on the acumen of the judges of the highest court of the land. Any single or group of individuals expecting a fair judgment from Indian courts is exhibiting his/her naivety as rule of law has been buried under BJP Hindutva rubble by the Indian government.

It is evident that the decisions regarding these cases are made   within the precincts of establishment and all that is left for the judges is to narrate the judgment. Although very much expected this pronouncement is a slap on the face of freedom seeking nations and institutions of the world that eloquently expostulate for peaceful and amicable resolution of Kashmir issue. India, especially the present government has expansionist ambitions that can be detrimental, disastrous, and devastating for the whole region that includes three nuclear powered states. The appalling judgment passed today should leave no doubt in anybody’s mind that peaceful resolution of the protracted problem of Kashmir is not a part of the Indian agenda. Thus, onus is on the world bodies like United Nations to marshal all their resources to dissuade India from embarking in her nefarious designs. It must be emphasized here that today’s Supreme Court decision contravenes UN resolutions #122 and #126 adopted on January 24, 1957, and December 2, 1957, respectively. These resolutions prohibit any unilateral action targeted at changing the disputed nature of the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Today’s decision in no way will dampen the spirit of Kashmiris to attain freedom from Indian occupation. The torch of liberty, peace and justice will continue to burn in the hearts of enslaved people of Jammu & Kashmir and will not be doused by these horrendous decisions.

With this final destructive blow, the moral fabric of the Indian judiciary lies in tatters. The rule of law and the system of justice has been abdicated from the country and what remains is a jungle roaming with hyenas. Indian authorities are living in a fool’s paradise if they believe that by their foolish antics and cowardly decisions the voices of freedom can be subdued. The nation of Kashmir has sacrificed over 100,000 youth and the honor of over 11,000 sisters and under no circumstances they will give up their peaceful struggle for freedom and justice. As a matter of fact, the struggle will be invigorated, and the people of Indian occupied Kashmir will spare no efforts to lead it to its logical conclusion.  It is for the world to decide if   they prefer a cataclysmic outcome of this struggle or will they restrain India to ensure peace, tranquility, and justice in Kashmir. The world powers do remember what Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations said on August 10, 20219 that “the position of the United Nations on this region (Kashmir) is governed by the Charter of the United Nations and applicable United Nations Security Council resolutions.”

For more information,

Please contact: info@kashmirawareness.org

www.kashmirawarenss .org

By Ellen Isaacs

“Thin” the Palestinian population “to a minimum.”¹

“I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it. “²

Can you guess who said which one? Which is Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, in 1938, and which is Netanyahu this week referring to Gaza? Well, the first one is the more recent, but you can see that the plan has not changed. And Netanyahu’s appointees say much the same. His finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said last March that “Palestinians don’t exist” and called for more “sterile” – Palestinian free – zones in the West Bank (WB). Others have said it is now Gaza Nakba 2023, referring to the mass expulsions of five out of seven Palestinians from Israel as it became a state in 1948.^2a On October 13, +972 Magazine published an Israeli intelligence document which concludes:

The evacuation of the civilian population from Gaza to Sinai…will yield positive, long-term strategic outcomes for Israel, and is an executable option. It requires determination from the political echelon in the face of international pressure, with an emphasis on harnessing the support of the United States.

And the idea goes even farther back than these examples. Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, said in 1895: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border…while denying it any employment in our country….Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”³

Many other Israeli politicians have also asserted the necessity of removing all Palestinians. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Housing Minister Eitam said in 1950: “We’ll have to expel the overwhelming majority of West Bank Arabs from here.” In 1980 Israel published the Drobles Plan, which stated that the goal was to “remove any trace of doubt about our intention to control to control Judea and Samaria (what Israel calls the WB) forever.” Netanyahu’s opponent, Avigdor Lieberman, said in 2009 that Israel’s Palestinian citizens should be stripped of their citizenship unless they pledged loyalty to a Jewish state. In polls from 2015-7 that asked Israelis if Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians should be expelled from Israel, 32-58% said yes.⁴

By winning the Jews of Israel to focus all their anger and frustration on Palestinians, discontent is deflected from the ruling elite of Israel. Israel itself is a highly ineqalitarian capitalist society with a small ruling elite. The nationalist antipathy towards Israel serves the same function in the West Bank and Gaza, which are also capitalist societies, all of which is discussed in several articles on the multiracialunity.org blog. (see appendix)

Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide

Ethnic cleansing is defined as forcefully homogenizing an ethnically mixed population of a region by any means at the expeller’s disposal. In the case of the Israeli war on Palestinians, the term genocide is also applicable, defined as the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. Israeli Jews, who had recently been the victims of the mass Nazi extermination campaign, carried out such a plan against Palestinians in 1947-8 and are doing so again today. In his landmark 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe said, when talking about the Nakba: “Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity, and the people who perpetrate it today are considered criminals to be brought before special tribunals.”⁵ But there are no legal proceedings. The US is funding Israel’s war with an extra $14.3 billion in aid, while other nations just look on in silence, even as millions around the world protest.

Before the recent seven day “humanitarian pause” in the war on Gaza, at least 15,000 Palestinians had been killed, many more wounded, and the northern half of the Gaza strip completely destroyed. Now Israel has declared that the South, to which survivors had fled, will be treated the same way. The death toll has risen by over 1000 as of today as central Gaza is destroyed. There is no place to go to escape the bombing, no hospital beds or medicines to treat the sick and wounded, and an almost complete lack of food, water and fuel. Those who are not blown up will suffer the slower death of thirst, starvation or disease.

The justification for this slaughter is the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, in which 1200 Israelis were killed. And there is no justification for this murder of civilians. However, there is a caveat to this story. It has recently been revealed that Israeli intelligence knew about Hamas’ plan a year in advance, but claims that the leading politicians were never told.⁶ This seems highly unlikely, less likely than that they welcomed an excuse to enact their genocidal plan.

The Oppressed Become the Oppressors

There is no doubt that anti-Semitism had a long and virulent history in Europe, and for centuries Jews lived in ghetto communities and suffered severe persecution. With the growth of European nationalism in the 19^th century, many Jews also conceived of a national home. Episodes like the false accusation of treason against a Jewish French military officer, Alfred Dreyfus, and anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia in the 1880s stimulated the movement. Herzl, a secular middle-class Hungarian-born Austrian, concluded that assimilation was impossible and founded the World Zionist Organization in 1897, which aimed to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Although some Jews believed the lie that Palestine was unoccupied and some that only very primitive peoples lived there, many understood that the 400,000 Arab inhabitants would have to be displaced. Zionist leader Leo Motzkin spelled this out in 1917: “Our thought is that the colonization of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel [Jewish religious name for Palestine] and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas outside the country.”⁴ By emphasizing the biblical role of Palestine, the Zionists convinced many Jews that Palestinians were strangers or intruders who needed to be removed so they could reclaim their homeland. Others saw it as a European missionary project to bring advancement to a primitive people. Some, especially those from socialist backgrounds, wished to live in harmony with Arab neighbors, but this minority view did not prevail.

Jews had been immigrating to Palestine in small numbers before World War I, but the real possibility of a Jewish state only emerged when Britain promised as much in 1917 with the Balfour declaration. A relationship of antagonism between Arabs and Jews was born out of what had been peaceful coexistence with a Jewish minority of about 5%. The Jewish newcomers primarily set out to buy Arab land through the Jewish national Fund (JNF). By 1928, the Jews made up 10-20% of the population, but the British attempted to establish a system giving so-called equal representation to Jews and Arabs. Although Palestinians were disadvantaged by the arrangement, their offer to negotiate was refused, which led to an uprising in 1929 and a larger one in 1936. Their defeated leaders were exiled, armed units disbanded and many arrested. In 1937, the British Peel Commission recommended partitioning the land into two states, but by 1942 the Zionists were demanding the whole of Palestine for themselves.

In case the whole territory was not awarded to them, the Zionists began preparations for taking it by force. The paramilitary Hagana was transformed into a potent force with training by the British during the 1936 Arab revolt and by fighting alongside Britain in World War II. Once the Nazis were defeated, the British hoped for a settlement in Palestine that acknowledged all parties. The Zionists fought back with terrorist attacks, the most famous being bombing the British headquarters at the King David hotel in Jerusalem. By 1946 The Zionist leader Ben-Gurion was ready to settle for 80% of the land.

In preparation for seizing what land they wanted, the Zionists in the 1940s had the JNF begin mapping every Palestinian village and all its sociological data. This data paved the way for the later efficient attacks on villages and their leaders. The first Zionist plan was Plan C devised in 1946, which included:

“Killing the Palestinian political leadership, killing Palestinian inciters and their financial supporters, killing Palestinians who acted against Jews,killing senior Palestinian officers and officials, damaging Palestinian transportation, damaging the sources of Palestinian livelihoods: water wells,mills, etc., attacking nearby Palestinian villages likely to assist in future attacks, and attacking Palestinian clubs, coffee houses, meeting places, etc.”

However, within a few months, this plan was superseded by Plan D, which called for the systematic and complete expulsion of all Palestinians.⁷

By the late 1940’s, The British had decided to solve their Palestinian problem by turning it over to the UN, which came up with a partition plan awarding 56% of the land to the Jews, including the most fertile areas, even though they then comprised 30% of the population and owned only 6% of the land. The Palestinians boycotted the proceedings, but the resolution was adopted in November, 1947, and a month later the methodical ethnic cleansing began. Despite some Palestinian resistance, Plan D was completed in about 6 months. 530 villages were destroyed, nearly 800,000 Palestinians were expelled, and untold numbers were massacred. Others were killed by tactics like poisoning the water of Acra with typhus. Israeli history to this day portrays this catastrophe as a voluntary exodus to make way for invading Arab armies or as the result of anti-Semitism.

The Evolution of Apartheid

The Palestinian refugees of 1948 settled in what is now the West Bank and Gaza in camps that persist to this day or in neighboring countries. The 3-5000 who tried to return to their homes were killed. About 160,000 Palestinians remained within the Israeli state, and they were driven from their homes into three concentrated areas. In 1967, Israel launched a war to claim control of the West Bank and Gaza, which had been run by Jordan, Egypt and Syria. The Six Day War was won by Israel, which resulted in the expulsion of 3-400,000 more Palestinians into Jordan, and the illegal military occupation of these areas began.

Since 1967, Israel has seized about a quarter of what remained of the West Bank by calling it State Land even though much of it was privately owned by Palestinians. On this they have built settlements and infrastructure for now over 600,000 Israeli settlers. Within Israel 19% of the population is Palestinian, but they are confined to 3% of the land. In the Negev desert, Israel refuses to recognize 35 Bedouin villages and demolished more than 10,000 Bedouin homes in the Negev between 2013 and 2019.⁸ From 1967-94, Israeli policies that prevented Palestinians who left the West Bank and Gaza Strip from returning forced roughly 9,000 Palestinians per year into permanent exile.

In the last couple of years Israel has accelerated its policy of killing and displacing Palestinians in the West Bank. Many WB residents have deeds from the Ottoman or pre-1967 eras that Israel does not recognize are threatened with dispossession. Attacks by the illegal settlers have been accelerating for the last two years. Eleven Palestinian communities were abandoned this year, hundreds of olive trees destroyed and 1100 residents fled. Over 400 Palestinians have been killed in 2023 by settlers, often protected by Israeli soldiers.⁹ Since October 7, 130 have been killed, including 43 children, 1700 arrested, and 1000 forced from their homes.¹⁰

Palestinian resistance movements, both civil and militaristic, developed early on, mostly on a nationalistic basis. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) lost whatever militancy it once had by forging relations with corrupt rulers of Arab nations and collaborating with US and Israeli leaders, culminating in the Oslo accords of 1993, that ceded direct control of 60% of the West Bank to Israel. Hamas was formed in 1987 with the aid of Israel, who thought a fundamentalist religious group would reduce support for the secular PLittle anger or energy remains to face the internal problems of Israeli society. Racism and nationalism have turned Jews into Nazis, much against their own interests.

Racism and Nationalism Have Captured Israel

Thus we can see that Israeli leaders have had a plan from the beginning to drive as many Arabs as possible from all of historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the sea. They have won the majority of Jewish Israelis to support them by inculcating every Jew with the idea that Arabs are inferior and have an inborn hatred of Jews. With every child raised on the idea that another Holocaust is waiting to happen, most are anxious to reign violence down on Palestinians. Only a few object. By allowing the recent Hamas raid to go forward and by exaggerating its horrors with stories of beheaded babies and the like, the Israeli population has been won to applauding a brutal genocide. Little anger or energy remains to face the internal problems of Israeli society. Racism and nationalism have turned too many Israeli Jews into Nazis, much against their own interests.

Ellen Isaacs is a physician, anti-racist and anti-capitalist activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org. She can be reached at eisaacs66@gmail.com.

 Notes

1. https://theintercept.com/2023/12/03/netanyahu-thin-gaza-population/

2. Pappe, Ilan, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications,2006, p.xi

2a. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-nakba-israels-far-right-     palestinian-fears-hamas-war-rcna123909

3. Morris, Benny, Righteous Victims, Vintage books, 1999, p, 21-2

4. https://jewishcurrents.org/could-israel-carry-out-another-nakba

5. Pappe, pxiii

6. https://www.timesofisrael.com/more-details-unveiled-of-idf-intel-on-oct-7-plans-consults-hours-before-hamas-attack/

7. Pappe, p.28

8. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

9. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/09/west-bank-israel-settlers-violence/

10. https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/settler-violence-rises-west-bank-gaza-war

Appendix

https://multiracialunity.org/2023/11/19/arab-and-jewish-working-class-solidarity/,

https://multiracialunity.org/2016/07/31/israel-a-study-in-racism-and-nationalism/

https://multiracialunity.org/2018/05/21/one-state-in-palestine-israel-cannot-bring-equality-if-it-is-a-capitalist-state/ ,

https://multiracialunity.org/2021/05/22/corrupt-leaders-kill-arabs-and-jews-in-the-name-of-nationalism-and-racism/

8 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andrew Bacevich

One way of understanding the ongoing bloodbath pitting Israel against Hamas is to see it as just the latest chapter in an existential struggle dating back to the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. While the appalling scope, destructiveness, and duration of the fighting in Gaza may outstrip previous episodes, this latest go-around serves chiefly to reaffirm the remarkable intractability of the underlying Arab-Israeli conflict.

Although the shape of that war has changed over time, certain constants remain. Neither side, for instance, seems capable of achieving its ultimate political goals through violence. And each side adamantly refuses to concede to the core demands of its adversary. In truth, while the actual fighting may ebb and flow, pause and resume, the Holy Land has become the site of what is effectively permanent conflict.

For several decades, the United States sought to keep its distance from that war by casting itself in the role of regional arbiter. While providing Israel with arms and diplomatic cover, successive administrations have simultaneously sought to position the U.S. as an “honest broker,” committed to advancing the larger cause of Middle Eastern peace and stability. Of course, a generous dose of cynicism has always informed this “peace process.”

On that score, however, the present moment has let the cat fully out of the bag. The Biden administration responded to the gruesome terrorist attack on October 7th by unequivocally endorsing and underwriting Israeli efforts to annihilate Hamas, with Gazans thereby subjected to a World War II-style obliteration bombing campaign. Meanwhile, ignoring tepid Biden administration protests, Israeli settlers continue to expel Palestinians from parts of the West Bank where they have lived for generations. If Hamas’s October assault was a tragedy, proponents of a Greater Israel also saw it as a unique opportunity that they’ve seized with alacrity. As for the peace process, already on life support, it now seems altogether defunct. Prospects of reviving it anytime soon appear remote.

More or less offstage, the fighting is having this ancillary effect: as Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) employ U.S.-provided weapons and munitions to turn Gaza into rubble, the “rules-based international order” touted by the Biden administration as the latest organizing principle of American statecraft has forfeited whatever slight credibility it might have possessed. Russia’s assault on Ukraine appears almost measured and humane by comparison.

As if to emphasize Washington’s own limited fealty to that rules-based order, President Biden’s immediate response to the events of October 7th focused on unilateral military action, bolstering U.S. naval and air forces in the Middle East while shoveling even more weapons to Israel. Ostensibly tasked with checking any further spread of violence, American forces in the region have instead been steadily edging toward becoming full-fledged combatants.

In recent weeks, U.S. forces have sustained dozens of casualty-producing attacks, primarily from rockets and armed drones. Attributing those attacks to “Iran-affiliated groups,” the U.S. has responded with air strikes targeting warehouses, training facilities, and command posts in Syria and Iraq.

According to a Pentagon spokesman, the overall purpose of American military action in the region is “to message very strongly to Iran and their affiliated groups to stop.” Thus far, the impact of such messaging has been ambiguous at best. Certainly, U.S. retaliatory efforts haven’t dissuaded Iran from pursuing its proxy war against American military outposts in the region. On the other hand, the scale of those Iran-supported attacks remains modest. Notably, no U.S. troops have been killed — yet.

For the moment at least, that fact may well be the administration’s operative definition of success. As long as no flag-draped coffins show up at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, Joe Biden may find it perfectly tolerable for the U.S.-Iran subset of the Israel-Hamas war to simmer indefinitely on the back burner.

This pattern of tit-for-tat violence has received, at best, sporadic public attention. Where (if anywhere) it will lead remains uncertain. Even so, the U.S. is at risk of effectively opening up a new front in what used to be called the Global War on Terror. That war is now nearly dormant, or at least hidden from public view. The very real possibility of either side misinterpreting or willfully ignoring the other’s “messaging” could reignite it, with an expanded war that directly pits the U.S. against Iran making the Israel-Gaza war look like a petty squabble.

Then there are the potential domestic implications. No doubt President Biden’s political advisers are alive to the possibility of a major war affecting the outcome of the 2024 elections (and not necessarily to the incumbent’s benefit either). One can easily imagine Donald Trump seizing on even a handful of U.S. military fatalities in Middle East skirmishing as definitive proof of presidential ineptitude, akin to the bungled withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan, during Biden’s first year in office.

Two Wars Converge

Understanding the larger implications of these developments requires putting them in a broader context. In Gaza in the last two months, two protracted meta-conflicts that had unfolded on parallel tracks for decades have finally converged. That is likely to have profound implications for basic U.S. national security policy, even if few in Washington appear aware of the potential implications.

On the one track, dating from 1948 (although its preliminaries occurred decades earlier) is the Arab-Israeli conflict. Enshrined among Israelis as the War for Independence, for Arabs the events of 1948 are seen as the Nakba, or “Catastrophe.” Subsequent eruptions of violence have ensued from time to time, as Arab nations vented their anger at the Jewish state and Israel pursued opportunities to create a strategically more coherent and more economically viable, not to mention biblically endorsed, “Greater Israel.”

Initially intent on steering clear of the Arab-Israeli conflict — occasionally even denouncing Israeli misbehavior — American officials allowed themselves over time to be incrementally drawn into becoming Israel’s closest ally. Yet under the terms of the relationship as it evolved, the Israeli leaders insisted on retaining a large measure of strategic autonomy. Over Washington’s vociferous objections, for example, it acquired a robust nuclear arsenal. To guarantee their security, Israelis placed paramount emphasis on their own military capabilities, not those of the United States.

Meanwhile, on the other track, dating from the promulgation of President Jimmy Carter’s Carter Doctrine in 1980, U.S. forces have had their hands full in the region. With Israel exacerbating or fending off threats to its own security, successive American administrations undertook a series of new military commitments, interventions, and occupations across the Greater Middle East that had little or nothing to do with protecting Israel.

In the Persian Gulf, the Levant, the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, the Pentagon dealt with problems of its own as those regions became venues for hosting American forces engaged in operations intended to protect, punish, or even “liberate.” Such military exertions and the presence of U.S. forces became commonplace throughout the Middle East — except in Israel. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Washington’s military actions reached their apotheosis when President George W. Bush embarked on a global campaign with the aim of eliminating evil.

Meanwhile, the various engagements undertaken by Israeli forces from the 1950s into the present century achieved mixed results. On the one hand, the Jewish state persists and has even expanded — a minimalist definition of “success.” On the other hand, recent events affirm that threats to Israel’s existence also persist.

In comparison, the U.S.-led Global War on Terror proved an outright failure, even if strikingly few ordinary Americans (and even fewer members of the political establishment) appear willing to acknowledge that fact.

Once the U.S.-supported regime in Kabul collapsed in 2021, it appeared American military misadventures in the Greater Middle East might be petering out. The humiliating result of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in the wake of the disappointing outcome of Operation Iraqi Freedom had seemingly exhausted Washington’s appetite for remaking the region. Besides, there was Russia to tend to — and China. Strategic priorities seemed to be shifting.

Alarm Bells, American-Style

Now, however, in the wake of the atrocities committed on October 7th and Washington’s tacit acquiescence in Israel’s maximalist war aims, the dubious notion that vital American interests are still at stake in the Greater Middle East has taken on new life. Dating from the 1980s, Washington had cycled through a variety of arguments for why that part of the world was worthy of spending American blood and treasure: the threat of Soviet aggression, U.S. reliance on foreign oil, radical Arab dictators, Islamic jihadism, weapons of mass destruction falling into hostile hands, potential ethnic cleansing and genocide. All of those were pressed into service at one time or another to justify continuing to treat the Middle East as a strategic U.S. priority.

In truth, though, none of them has stood the test of time. Each has proven to be fallacious. Indeed, efforts to cure the sources of dysfunction afflicting the region proved to be a fool’s errand that has cost the United States dearly in money and lives while yielding little of value.

For that reason, allowing Israel’s conflict with Hamas to draw the United States into a new Middle Eastern crusade would be the height of folly. In fact, however, with little public attention and even less congressional oversight, that is precisely what may be happening. The Global War on Terror seems on the verge of absorbing the Gaza War into its current configuration.

In recent years, a shift in Pentagon priorities to the Indo-Pacific and to a future face-off with China has left only about 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq and 900 more in Syria. The nominal mission of such modestly sized garrisons is to carry on the fight against the remnants of ISIS.

White House officials have, however, never gone out of their way to explain what those troops are really doing there. In practice, they have effectively become inviting stationary targets. As a consequence and not for the first time, “protecting the troops” has emerged as a convenient pretext for mounting a broader punitive response.

With Congress accepting claims that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) enacted in response to 9/11 suffices to cover whatever U.S. forces in the region may be up to 22 years later, the Biden administration functionally has a free hand to act as it wishes. The course it has chosen is to use Israel’s war in Gaza as a rationale for reversing course in the Middle East and once again making violence and threats of violence the basis of U.S. policy there. On that score, the fact that some American forces are now covertly operating in Israel itself should set off alarm bells.

The Gaza War will change Israel in ways that may be difficult to foresee. The failure of its vaunted military and intelligence establishments to anticipate and thwart the worst terrorist attack in that country’s history leaves Jewish Israelis with a sense of unprecedented vulnerability. It will hardly be surprising if they look to Washington for protection, in which case Israel’s survival could become an American responsibility.

The invitation is one that the United States would do well to refuse. Accepting it will confront Americans with challenges they are ill-equipped to meet and with obligations they can ill afford. Deepening the Pentagon’s involvement in the Greater Middle East will only compound the failures to which the Carter Doctrine has already subjected this nation, while scrambling U.S. strategic priorities in ways sure to prove counterproductive.

In 1796, George Washington warned his countrymen of the dangers of allowing a “passionate attachment” to another nation to affect policy. That warning remains relevant today. The Gaza War is not and should not become America’s war.

Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is chairman and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

8 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By John P Ruehl

Militant groups are increasingly threatening Myanmar’s military government. But other non-state actors, as well as China, are playing powerful roles in the divided country.

Myanmar’s stability has eroded significantly since the 2021 military coup. But the coordinated attack by multiple separatist and pro-democracy groups in October and November 2023 has seen military outposts, villages, border crossings, and other infrastructure overrun. While the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, clings to control in central and coastal regions populated by the country’s ethnic majority, much of the country’s border areas are increasingly slipping into anti-government control.

This current turbulence is not an aberration but deeply rooted in Myanmar’s history. Since gaining independence from British rule in 1948, the country has grappled with what is commonly described as the world’s longest-running civil war. Initial experiments with democracy witnessed limited clashes between Myanmar’s central government and Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs.) Following a military coup in 1962 that established the junta, more EAOs emerged to challenge government power.

Infighting and splintering among EAOs, coupled with their growing antagonism toward the Burma Communist Party (BCP), itself waging a war on the central government, allowed the junta to implement fragile ceasefires in exchange for limited autonomy. By the end of the Cold War, democratic protests in 1988, the collapse of the BCP in 1989, and free elections in 1990 all suggested Myanmar was cautiously embracing a peaceful future.

Despite losing the elections in 1990, however, the junta did not relinquish power, drawing international condemnation. EAOs and other groups like the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which split from the BCP, then continued their struggle for two decades until the junta ceded some powers to a civilian administration in 2011. Elections in 2015 and 2020 saw landslide victories for the National League for Democracy (NLD), as well as some progress toward reconciliation.

But in 2021, the Tatmadaw reestablished the junta and plunged the country back into destabilization, culminating in the 2023 autumn offensive by anti-junta forces. In addition to EOAs and a reorganized BCP, the junta has also been forced to contend with People’s Defense Forces (PDFs), loose armed organizations backed by the National Unity Government (NUG), set up by lawmakers and politicians in the aftermath of the coup. Additionally, the role of the Burman ethnic majority and grassroots civil defense forces in opposing the junta has also complicated its response to unrest.

The junta has proven adept at managing its restive elements before, and can also rely on its Border Guard Forces (BGFs) and other pro-government militia groups. But the broad swathes of Myanmar’s society fighting against it have made the junta’s traditional policy of divide and rule far less effective. Myanmar’s Acting President Myint Swe has said the country could “split into various parts”, prompting Myanmar military officials to retreat to the capital, Naypyidaw, a planned city completed in 2012 that effectively serves as a fortress located near the most restive regions.

China’s role in Myanmar has undergone significant shifts since the latter’s independence. Despite Chinese support for the BCP and other communist groups, Myanmar grew closer to China after its isolation from the West in the 1990s. Beijing supported the junta to stabilize Myanmar and prevent adversaries from establishing a foothold on China’s southern border. Other interests included maintaining access to Myanmar’s raw materials and natural resources, as well as infrastructure development to turn Myanmar into a strategic gateway to the Bay of Bengal through the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China maintained ties to the junta, democracy advocates, and ethnic groups from 2011 to 2021. However, the 2021 coup disrupted development projects and led to attacks on Chinese-run facilities by rebel groups, and the junta’s inability to protect infrastructure exacerbated historical tension between it and Beijing. Four Chinese civilians were killed in 2015 after a Myanmar military airstrike hit across the border into Yunnan, while the junta burned down a Chinese-owned factory and killed Chinese and Myanmar civilians in 2021.

China’s ongoing support to some militia groups, such as the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and MNDAA, provides Beijing leverage over the junta and a say in the ceasefire processes. Chinese firms also often work with armed groups in “special economic zones” near the border, and some of the anti-junta groups regularly cross the border to China to escape the junta and its proxy forces. Beijing’s tacit approval of their activities may also be partially fueled by wariness that rebel groups were becoming closer to the U.S. prior to the new offensive.

Beijing has nonetheless attempted to sustain a balancing act, arresting a UWSA deputy military chief in October 2023 and initially ignoring calls for assistance from the rebels after the launch of their offensive. But following the steady string of defeats suffered by the junta, China has since altered its outlook. China’s affiliates now form some of the most powerful groups operating in Myanmar, and China’s foreign ministry has called for a ceasefire.

Myanmar’s porous borders have not only allowed armed groups to flourish but also facilitated the expansion of organized crime networks. Increased cooperation between militant and criminal groups in recent decades, known as the terror-crime nexus, has elevated the power of these groups worldwide.

American efforts to counter communism inadvertently helped develop drug networks in Myanmar during the early Cold War, while transnational organized crime in Southeast Asia burgeoned in the 21st Century. The COVID-19 pandemic further established Myanmar as a hub of criminal activity, expanding the funding networks available to the country’s armed groups. Both local and international criminal networks operate in Myanmar’s special economic zones, engaging in human and wildlife trafficking, slavery, cybercrimes, money laundering, communication fraud, illegal casinos, and online gambling centers.

The relationships between these entities and governments are intricate, with shifting alliances commonplace. Beijing and transnational Chinese gangs play central roles in Myanmar’s heightened criminal activity. The junta has also had close ties to criminal networks for decades, and since the 2021 coup has become increasingly reliant on criminal activity to finance itself and offset international isolation.

China, while entangled in Myanmar’s criminal underworld, has grown steadily more concerned with rising illicit activity on its border with Myanmar and the willing and unwilling participation of Chinese citizens. China’s signals to the junta to address the forced-labor networks since May 2023 went unheeded, leading to China issuing arrest warrants for junta allies and the UWSA to raid online scam compounds and trafficked labor centers in border regions.

However, the resilience of regional criminal groups became evident after the NLD failed to disrupt their activities during the decade of partial democratic rule from 2011 to 2021, and they have only grown financially stronger since. And despite their interweaving with regional elites, criminal networks and their militant partners have developed newfound agency and an ability to act independently from governments since the 2021 coup.

Additionally, while the junta styles its current campaign as a counterinsurgency, Myanmar’s armed groups possess significant military capabilities. Minority groups such as those belonging to the Karen ethnic group were prominent in Myanmar’s armed forces during the British colonial administration, gaining valuable experience. As in Ethiopia, certain ethnic groups have developed and maintained well-equipped forces capable of both insurgency and conventional warfare.

Like other anti-government forces around the world, Myanmar rebel groups have also embraced new technologies and strategies in recent years. This includes crowdfunding initiatives, which have expanded significantly since 2021, to offset the junta’s control over the central bank and other national economic levers. Large-scale application of drone warfare has also made a marked difference on the battlefield, even before the current offensive by the rebels.

Myanmar’s militant groups have also worked with European criminal groups to obtain weapons, and groups like the UWSA have proven capable of manufacturing weapons since 2008. The use of 3D-printed guns by Myanmar rebel groups, just ten years after the first 3D-printed gun was produced, also marks a distinctive feature of the current conflict. The NUG has meanwhile been busily setting up local civic administration and public services and People’s Administrative Teams (PATs) in PDF-controlled or contested areas, indicative of their state-building capabilities.

Hindered by international isolation, increasingly powerful rebel groups, and a growing dependence on a Chinese leadership willing to support multiple sides, the junta’s outlook appears bleak. But it does maintain some other allies abroad. Russia grew closer to the junta throughout the 2010s and despite being tied down in Ukraine, Moscow has offered more support for Myanmar since the coup, including the first ever Russia-Myanmar joint naval exercise in November 2023. Bordering states Laos and Thailand also maintain friendly ties to the junta, and Laos, holding the chairmanship of ASEAN since September 2023, has shielded Myanmar from greater institutional isolation.

Myanmar’s other neighbors, India and Bangladesh, are also wary of additional instability and the potential emergence of a failed state on their borders. India has already seen tens of thousands of refugees (as well as soldiers from the junta) cross the border since 2021, while Bangladesh has seen close to one million Rohingya refugees enter the country since 2016, and India has recently shown it is still willing to engage with the junta despite its vulnerability.

Efforts to further unite anti-government forces meanwhile face obstacles due to differences in strategies, objectives, and allegiances. Several organizations have been set up to encourage greater coordination, but infighting is still common. Some EAOs, like the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS), are still open to adhering to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) while others consider a federal system a viable alternative to complete independence. Perceived indifference to the Rohingya crisis in 2017 on behalf of the democratic government at the time also reveals the persistent ethnic tensions among Myanmar’s population despite alternative leadership.

Convincing criminal and militant groups to give up their lucrative illicit networks, as well as untangling their links to the junta-dominated economy, will also prove challenging. And with the U.S. diplomatically tied down in Ukraine and Israel and ASEAN’s divided approach to the crisis, China enjoys relative freedom to manipulate the situation on its border. Yet despite positive relations across Myanmar’s political spectrum, Beijing’s reluctance to intervene more directly only amplifies the persistent uncertainty surrounding Myanmar’s future.

John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute.

8 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Those unfamiliar with Gaza and its history are likely to always associate Gaza with destruction, rubble and Israeli genocide.

And they can hardly be blamed. On November 3, the UN Development Programme and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) announced that 45 percent of Gaza’s housing units have been destroyed or damaged since the beginning of the Latest Israeli aggression on Gaza.

But the history of Gaza is also a history of great civilizations, as well as a history of revival, rebirth.

Shortly before the war, specifically September 23, archaeologists in Gaza announced that four Roman-era tombs had been unearthed in Gaza City. They include “two lead coffins, one delicately carved with harvest motifs and the other with dolphins gliding through water,” ARTNews reported.

According to Palestinian and French archaeologists, these are Roman-era tombs dating back 2,000 years.

The finding was preceded, two months earlier, in July, by something even more astonishing: a major archaeological discovery, of at least 125 tombs, most with skeletons still largely intact, along with two extremely rare lead sarcophaguses.

In case you assume that the great archaeological finds were isolated events, think again.

Indeed, Gaza has existed not only hundreds of years, but even thousands of years before the destruction of the modern Palestinian homeland during the Nakba, the subsequent wars and all the headline news that associate Gaza with nothing but violence.

I grew up in the Nuseirat refugee camp located in central Gaza. As a child, I knew that something great had taken place in Nuseirat without fully appreciating its grandeur and deep historical roots.

For years, I climbed the Tell el-Ajjul – The Calves Hill – located to the north-east of Nuseirat, tucked between the beach and the Gaza Valley – to look for Sahatit, a term we used in reference to any ancient currency.

We would collect the rusty and often scratched pieces of metal and take them home, knowing little about the value of these peculiar finds. I always gifted my treasures to my Mom, who kept them in a small wooden drawer built within her Singer sewing machine.

I still think about that treasure that must have been tossed away following my mother’s untimely death. Only now do I realize that they were Hyksos, Roman and Byzantine currencies.

Once Mom would diligently scrub the Sahatit with lemon juice and vinegar, the mysterious Latin and other writings and symbols would appear, along with the crowned heads of the great kings of the past. I knew that these old pieces were used by our people who dwelled upon this land since time immemorial.

The region upon which Nuseirat was built was inhabited by ancient Canaanites, whose presence can be felt through the numerous archeological discoveries throughout historic Palestine.

What made Nuseirat particularly unique was its geographical centrality in the Gaza region, its strategic position by the Gaza coast, and its unique topography. The relatively hilly areas west of Nuseirat and the fact that it encompasses the Gaza Valley have made Nuseirat inhabitable since ancient times to the present.

Evidence of Hyksos, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic and other civilizations which dwelled in that region for thousands of years, is a testimony to the historical significance of the area.

When the Hyksos ruled over Palestine during the Middle Bronze Age II period (ca. 2000-1500 BC), they built a great civilization, which extended from Egypt to Syria.

So powerful was the Hyksos Dynasty that they extended their jurisdiction into Ancient Egypt, remaining there until they were driven out by the Sea Peoples. Though the Hyksos were eventually defeated, they left behind palaces, temples, defense trenches and various monuments, the largest of which can be found in the central Gaza region, specifically at the starting point of the Gaza Valley.

Like the Calves Hill, Tell Umm el-’Amr – or Umm el-’Amr’s Hill – was the location of an ancient Christian town, with a large monastery complex, containing five churches, homes, baths, geometric mosaics, a large crypt and more.

The discoveries of Tell Umm el-’Amr were recent. According to the World’s Monuments Fund (WMF), this Christian town was abandoned after a major earthquake struck the region sometime in the seventh century. The excavation process began in 1999, and a more serious preservation campaign began in earnest in 2010.

In 2018, the restoration of the monastery itself started. The discovery of the St. Hilarion Monastery is one of the most precious archeological finds, not only in Gaza’s southern coastal region, but in the entire Middle East in recent years.

There is also the Shobani Graveyard, tucked by the sea and located near the western entrance of Nuseirat, the Tell Abu-Hussein in the north-west part of the camp, also close to the sea, along with other sites, which are of great significance to Nuseirat’s past.

A Gaza historian told me that it is almost certain that Tell Abu Hussein was of some connection to Sultan Salah ad-Din al-Ayyubi’s military campaign in Palestine, which ultimately defeated and expelled the Crusaders from the region in 1187.

The history of my old refugee camp is essentially the history of all of Gaza, a place that played a significant role in shaping ancient and modern history, its geopolitics as well as its tragic and triumphant moments.

What is taking place in Gaza now is but an episode, a traumatic and a defining one, but nonetheless, a mere chapter in the history of a people who proved to be as durable and resilient as history itself.

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

4 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Priti Gulati Cox & Stan Cox

In 1981, India’s post office issued a stamp showing the flags of India and occupied Palestine flying side by side above the phrase “Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” That now seems like ancient history. Today, Hindu nationalists are flying the flags of India and Israel side by side as a demonstration of their support for that country’s catastrophic war on Gaza.

It’s a match made in heaven (or do we mean hell?), because the two nations have similar “problems” they’re trying to “solve.” Israel has long been engaged in the violent suppression of Palestinians whose lands they occupy (including the current devastation of Gaza, an assault that 34 U.N. experts have labeled a “genocide in the making”). Meanwhile, India’s Hindu nationalist government continues the harsh oppression of its non-Hindu minorities: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and indigenous people.

About the time Zionist settlers were beginning their occupation of Palestine in the early 1920s, an Indian right-wing figure, V.D. Savarkar, fashioned the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu-ness). Today, right-wing Hindu nationalists employ Hindutva and physical violence to further its vision of India as a nation for Hindus and Hindus only. Similarly, Zionism views historic Palestine as a land for Jews and Jews only. These parallel visions, along with the two governments’ increasingly authoritarian tendencies and ready use of violence, have drawn them into a dark alliance the consequences of which are unpredictable.

India Makes New Friends

The Republic of India and the State of Israel were born nine months apart in 1947 and 1948, each an offspring of partition. The British-ruled Indian subcontinent was then split into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, while Israel was carved out of a portion of the British Mandate Palestine.

Throughout the Cold War, India would be a leader of what came to be known as the nonaligned movement — formerly colonized nations that sought to develop independently of both American and Soviet influence. In the 1980s, it also became the first non-Arab nation to recognize the state of Palestine. A similar recognition of Israel didn’t come until 1992, around the time India was shifting away from its nonaligned social-democratic stance toward its current adherence to neoliberalism.

In recent decades, India and Israel have established strong trading relationships, especially in the military sphere. In fact, given the massive militarization of its borders with China and Pakistan and its suppression of occupied Kashmir and its people, India has become the top importer of weapons and surveillance equipment from Israel. In 2014, the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won power and its leader, Narendra Modi, became prime minister. In the process, India and Israel grew ever closer.

By 2016, as the Washington Post reported, “after Indian commandos carried out a raid inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in response to an attack by militants on an Indian army post, Modi trumpeted the action, saying: ‘Earlier, we used to hear of Israel having done something like this. But the country has seen that the Indian army is no less than anyone else.’”

Today, the Israeli weapons-robotics firm Elbit Systems has even established a drone factory in India and now has a $300 million contract to supply drones to the Indian army occupying Kashmir. Meanwhile, Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have established a mutual-admiration society, dubbed by the media of both countries the “Modi-Bibi bromance.” And New Delhi has all but abandoned the Palestinians.

Economic Alliances

When, on October 27th, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for an “immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza, only the U.S., Israel, and a handful of small nations voted “no.” India abstained. (Apparently, the Modi-Bibi bromance wasn’t quite enough to sustain a “no” vote.) Modi, however, immediately responded to the measure’s passage by declaring his “solidarity” with Israel.

Economic, political, and diplomatic relations between New Delhi, Tel Aviv, and Washington (all nuclear powers, by the way) had been strengthening even before the current conflict. Last year, for instance, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the “I2U2 Group” to attract corporate investment for their mutual benefit. Projects now underway include “food parks across India” with “climate-smart technologies” and a “unique space-based tool for policymakers, institutions, and entrepreneurs” (whatever in — or out of — the world “food parks” and “space-based tools” might be).

Then, in September, the G-20 summit of the group of 20 major nations, meeting in New Delhi, approved an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor which, according to Voice of America, would “establish a rail and shipping network linking the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to the Israeli port of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea.” And guess who now operates that very port? A company led by Gautam Adani, India’s richest person and (naturally!) a Modi buddy. Foreign Policy notes, “It is also palatable for the Middle East to have India as a major energy market to diversify its exports and offset Chinese influence over critical commodities such as oil and gas.”

But not surprisingly, the war in Gaza has thrown plans for such a new Indian-oriented economic corridor through the Middle East into limbo.

High-, Medium-, and Low-Tech Warfare

Militarily, the conflicts in occupied Palestine and occupied Kashmir are both lopsided mismatches. In each, a powerful nation-state is assaulting resource-poor populations, though the scale of slaughter, displacement, immiseration, and death wrought by the Indian regime doesn’t faintly approach what’s currently being done by Israel in the Gaza Strip — at least not yet. While the cases have similarities, magnitude isn’t one of them.

In Gaza, you have the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a massive high-tech killing machine financed in large part by the world’s richest nation, facing off against Palestinian resistance groups, including the Qassam Brigade, whose most effective weapons are homemade Yassin antitank grenades and whose defenses largely consist of a network of fortified tunnels. Instead of engaging in face-to-face subterranean combat with the Qassam fighters — something that could turn out badly indeed for the IDF — the Israelis have been carrying out an industrial-scale bombardment of densely populated areas. As of late November, the result was approximately 15,000 civilians killed (including more than 6,000 children) and the displacement of 1.6 million people, or two-thirds of Gaza’s population.

In India, the Hindu nationalists’ onslaught against non-Hindu minorities has not been carried out by the Indian Army itself, but by a paramilitary organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in partnership with the BJP. That unofficial army, founded almost a century ago and modeled on Italian fascist Benito Mussolini’s “blackshirts” and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi stormtroopers, has a membership of five to six million and holds daily meetings in more than 36,000 different locales across India. Its shock troops rarely even carry firearms; their weapons are low-tech, crude, and exceptionally cruel, and their targets are unarmed, unsuspecting civilians. They kill or maim using batons, machetes, strangulation, sulfuric acid to the face, and rape, among other horrors.

Such attacks by Hindu-nationalist gangs, different as they are from the military assault on Gaza, do have parallels in the occupied West Bank. There, Israeli settlers, some carrying government-supplied small arms, maraud through parts of that area (where they live illegally), beating, torturing, and killing Palestinians, including ethnic Bedouin families. They have expelled people from their homes, stolen their money and possessions, including livestock, and destroyed houses and schools. It is now olive harvest season and Jewish settlers have attacked Palestinians in their olive groves, sometimes forcing them off their ancestors’ land, perhaps permanently. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed this way since October.

Common Language

One of the worst atrocities perpetrated against Muslims since India’s partition occurred in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat. (Not coincidentally, that state’s chief minister at the time was Narendra Modi.) Following the alleged torching of a train compartment in which 58 Hindu nationalist “volunteers” were traveling, Hindu mobs inflicted state-sponsored terrorism on the Muslim community across Gujarat. More than 2,000 Muslims were killed. Speaking in the aftermath of that horror, then-prime minister A.B. Vajpayee offered a perfunctory admission of regret for the carnage, only to ask rhetorically, “Lekin aag lagayi kisne?” (“But who lit the fire?”) The implication was that since some from their community were accused of committing the initial crime, all Gujarat Muslims were responsible and that, however regrettably, justified their slaughter.

Similar allegations of collective guilt and justifications for collective punishment have a long history in Israel, as in the current conflict. In October, Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed that “there is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” That comment earned Herzog a place in a greatest-hits video of Israeli leaders attempting to defend atrocities inflicted on Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants. Similarly, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. told Sky News, “I am very puzzled by the constant concern which the world… is showing for the Palestinian people, and is actually showing for these horrible inhuman animals.”

Some of the language surrounding it can be similar. Allegations that, in their October 7th attack on Israel, Hamas fighters beheaded children and tore fetuses from women’s wombs — none of which have been substantiated — eerily echo the sexualized violence committed by Hindu mobs in Gujarat in 2002 (rape, mutilation, the killing of women and their babies, and other horrors). A report of attackers using a sword to cut a fetus out of a Muslim woman and burning the bodies of both fetus and mother has been told and retold countless times over the past two decades.

And within mere hours of the October 7th attack in Israel, BJP politicians and Hindu nationalists in India were spreading propaganda on social media, including accusations that Palestinians were “worse than animals” and were cutting fetuses from wombs, beheading children, and taking girls as “sex slaves.” This started in India before IDF spokespeople began spreading similar claims.

An Unnatural Disaster

Drawing a comparison to the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the Israeli agriculture minister, a member of the security cabinet, recently explained his government’s goal to a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz this way: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.” (Nakba was a reference to Israel’s forcible expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from large portions of their territory in 1948.) When the incredulous reporter tossed the minister a lifeline, asking if he really meant what he’d said, he doubled down: “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

As of now, it certainly looks that way. The IDF bombed apartment blocks, shelters, schools, and hospitals in northern Gaza to force the migration of the population there toward supposedly “safe” south Gaza. They then began bombing southbound car caravans and even ambulances in which refugees were fleeing. Large groups of other Gazans were forced to make the long journey south on foot through narrow IDF-designated corridors. As the Guardian reported in mid-November,

“Those walking south under the tense gaze of Israeli troops, through a hellscape of tangled rubble that had been buildings two months ago, along roads shattered by weapons and churned to mud by tanks, had little hope of rest when they reached the south. Shelters are crammed, food and water supplies are so low the UN has warned that Palestinians face the ‘immediate possibility’ of starvation, infectious diseases are spreading, and the war there is expected to intensify in coming days.”

Israel soon began bombing parts of South Gaza, too, clearly trying to drive the refugees further south, possibly even through the Raffah gate into Egypt. But Egypt has refused to participate in such an ethnic-cleansing campaign. So, figuratively speaking, millions of desperate Palestinians have their backs to the wall, or in this case, fence, with nowhere to run.

As economic and geopolitical ties among Israel, India, and the U.S. have only continued to strengthen, Joe Biden has chummed it up with both Netanyahu and Modi, averting his eyes from their antidemocratic and all-too-violent national visions. He has backed the assault on Gaza all the way and as late as November 18th was still arguing in the Washington Post against a ceasefire. At the same time, he called for increasing the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza to remedy critical staggering shortages of food, water, housing, and fuel. In other words, the Biden administration is treating the catastrophe there like a natural disaster, acting as if there’s something terrible happening, something beyond his (or anyone’s) power to prevent, so all that can be done is to aid the survivors.

In truth, administrations in Washington have been treating Israel’s occupation and immiseration of the West Bank and Gaza like a natural disaster for more than half a century now. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, recently pointed out an incident that suggests just how disingenuous that claim is. In November, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came under withering criticism for permitting a few small, wholly inadequate truckloads of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt. As Theoharis noted, Gallant defended his decision to allow the aid this way: “The Americans insisted, and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?” This puts the lie to the idea that Washington has no influence over the progress or outcome of this war. It does have influence over Israel — more than $3 billion worth in the form of military aid provided by Washington every year, not to speak of the $14 billion the Biden administration still wants to reward Israel with.

As we write this, we don’t know what will happen to the people of Gaza once the temporary ceasefire for prisoner exchanges expires. But rest assured that the governments of India and Israel will continue to feed off each other as they develop new strategies, tactics, and propaganda for their respective campaigns of occupation and oppression, campaigns the U.S. government, through both action and inaction, is endorsing. Consider them now three nations under god(s) of hell.

Priti Gulati Cox, (@PritiGCox), a TomDispatch regular, is an artist and writer.

Stan Cox, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic, The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can, and the current In Real Time climate series at City Lights Books.

4 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

 

By Andre Damon

Saturday was the deadliest day since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza, with over 1,000 people killed, the Euro-Med human rights monitoring group said Sunday.

The organization documented “a string of Israeli airstrikes with strong fire belts on Saturday. The strikes targeted buildings and inhabited residential blocks in Shuja’iya, Jabalia, and Beit Lahia without prior notice, demolishing them above the heads of their residents and burying dozens beneath the debris.”

After forcibly displacing over a million people from northern Gaza into the south, Israel launched a ferocious air bombardment and ground offensive aimed at forcing the population of Gaza into the Sinai Desert. Already 1.8 million people in Gaza, or about 80 percent of the population, are internally displaced.

Bisan Owda, the Palestinian filmmaker who has amassed a following of millions of people around the world by documenting her life as a refugee in Gaza, explained what is taking place in a social media post:

This is the emptying of the Gaza Strip. This is the displacing of 2.25 million people to be homeless. To be displaced in the Sinai desert. They are emptying Gaza. They are saying that the South is a combat zone and the North is a combat zone. Where to go? They never told us before and they will never tell us. They told us to go to the South. And we came to the South and they tell us to go to anywhere else.

On Saturday, the New Arab, the London-based pan-Arab news outlet, cited sources close to the Egyptian negotiators who said that Israel’s plan to push the Palestinians into the Sinai Desert was becoming more clear.

The source told the newspaper,

By reviewing the map published by the occupation army (yesterday, Friday) and dividing the Gaza Strip and the south into squares, with alternating strikes west and east within the south, it becomes clear that the goal is to slowly displace or move the population towards the Egyptian border.

The newspaper cited Mohamed Mahmoud Mahran, professor of public international law, saying: “What Israel did is a flagrant violation of the principles of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.” He continued, “The Israeli occupation authority does not have the right to forcibly displace Palestinian civilians or transfer them outside their areas of original residence, even if it distributes leaflets or issues warnings of the need to move to other areas.”

The death toll currently stands at more than 15,523 Palestinians killed in Gaza, 70 percent of whom were women and children, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said.

This includes 198 doctors and medics, 112 employees of the United Nations and 77 journalists.

Over the weekend, Israel designated about 28 percent of Gaza for evacuation, under conditions in which those who have already evacuated were not being allowed to return to their homes.

On Sunday, the World Food Program reported, “there is a high risk of famine for all the people of Gaza.” It added, “Gaza’s food system is on the brink of collapsing. Most shops are either shut down or have nearly empty shelves. Inflation is high as prices of essential food items have spiked while aid delivery has not been sufficient during the humanitarian pause to cater for the food and nutrition needs of people in Gaza.”

Against this backdrop, the United States has unequivocally endorsed Israel’s genocide and vowed to support it without conditions.

Appearing on the “Meet the Press” Sunday talk show, Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby was asked if there would be “consequences … if the United States feels as though Israel is not following a specific plan to protect civilians?”

To this, Kirby replied, “We’re going to continue to support Israel as they go after Hamas. The security assistance continues to flow. That’s not going to change.”

Kirby defended Israel’s targeting of the civilian population, declaring, “They have actually given civilians in Gaza a list, a map—it’s online—a list of areas where they can go to be more safe. There’s not too many modern militaries, in advance of conducting operations, that would actually do that. So they are making an effort to at least inform the civilian population about where to go and where to avoid.”

In reality, the entire purpose of the forcing the civilian population to flee is to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, accompanied by the total destruction of social infrastructure, from housing, to schools and hospitals.

The actual genocidal attitude of the US ruling class toward the people of Gaza was summed up by Senator Lindsey Graham, who justified attacks against the civilian population by claiming it was “radicalized”—i.e., that it opposed Israel and the United States.

“This is a radicalized population,” he said. “I don’t want to kill innocent people, but Israel is fighting not just Hamas, but the infrastructure around Hamas.”

Asked whether he believes “that too many Palestinian civilians have been killed,” Graham replied, “What is too many people dying in World War II after Pearl Harbor? Did the American public worry about how many people were dying to destroy Tokyo and Berlin?”

The UK, meanwhile, has announced plans for a more direct intervention, declaring that it will be flying surveillance drones over the territory of Gaza in support of Israel’s military onslaught.

4 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

Chairman

World Forum for Peace & Justice

December 30, 2023

The second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons began at the United Nations Headquarters on 27 November and will continue until 1 December 2023. Ambassador (Dr.) Juan Ramón de la Fuente (Mexico) was elected as President of the Meeting.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations calls the Treaty “an important step towards the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and a strong demonstration of support for multilateral approaches to nuclear disarmament.”

Ambassador Melissa Parke of Australia and the Executive Director of ‘International campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons’ (ICAN) warned the world body during the high level opening statement that “Nuclear-armed states, instead of pursuing disarmament in accordance with their legal obligations, are squandering tens of billions of dollars every year to ‘improve’ and expand their arsenals. A theft from the world’s poor. An insult to all who value peace…Some of these same states are also waging wars of aggression – with staggering death tolls and undeniable nuclear risks…Against this backdrop of bloodshed, we must renew our call not only for nuclear disarmament, but also, more broadly, for multilateral approaches to peace and security, and for adherence to the international rule of law, based on the UN Charter.”

It is worth mentioning here that ICAN was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for the leadership role it played in achieving Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Arundhati Roy, an Indian novelist and activist was representing the aspirations of hundreds of millions of people all over the world when she wrote in “Cost of Living” that “It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they’re used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.”

I completely agree with Ms. Roy for her foresight about the danger of the existence of nuclear weapons. Perhaps not by coincidence, the danger of nuclear threat in South Asia should be of paramount interest to the world body. Kashmir is clearly the bone of contention of nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan. It has been regarded by President Bill Clinton as the most dangerous place on earth. Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark said, “Kashmir is a nuclear flashpoint.” Kashmir is the only nation in the world which is surrounded by three nuclear powers – India, Pakistan & China. Perhaps that was the reason that former President Obama said on November 10, 2010, in New Delhi, “the resolution of Kashmir is in the interest of India, Pakistan and the region and the United States.”

Kashmir currently has more than 900,000 military and paramilitary troops occupying the Valley with no more than 10 million people, a ratio of one soldier for every 10 citizens. However, because of their concentration in the towns and cities, the density is more like 5 to one. Imagine what that would be like on your city block.

Having so many troops in this small country whose size is no greater in square miles than the U.S. state of Tennessee should certainly be a cause for concern by anyone. Why are Indian forces there? Where’s the war? Is neighboring Pakistan about to invade? Is China? Do they have a similar number of troops amassing at the border? This is more than three times the number of troops the U.S. had at the height of the Iraq War. The answer is None of the Above. It’s a curious fact that we have a very circular problem inherent in a deep paranoia India has long had of an uprising and its use of such troops to maintain control and put down any threat has become a way of life. It’s like avoiding a fire by burning down the house first.

The possibility of such an uprising is greatly enhanced and exacerbated by the presence of these troops and would more likely be a direct provocation for such an uprising and in fact has been. Rather than relieve the pressure in the cooker by taking it off the fire, India’s solution has been to simply turn up the burner. The greatest cause of discontent is this constant abrasive to the social conscience, this erosion of trust in New Delhi, and a pervasive atmosphere of fear. People look for leadership elsewhere in their own ranks, and they have. There is a deeply entrenched movement at the grassroots level that has become very influential in being the voice of public opinion.

It is a historical fact that when the Kashmir dispute erupted in 1947-1948, the United States championed the stand that the future status of Kashmir must be ascertained in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of the people of the territory. The United States was the principal sponsor of the resolution # 47 which was adopted by the Security Council on 21 April 1948 and which was based on that unchallenged principle. Following the resolution, the United States as a leading member of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), adhered to that stand.  The basic formula for settlement was incorporated in the resolutions of that Commission adopted on 13 August 1948 and 5 January 1949.

But India would not then and will not now honor that commitment or admit that its claim to Kashmir is illegitimate. And it will not admit to the world that the people of Kashmir have no faith in Indian democracy. Perhaps India believes that if it keeps repeating the same lie over and over again, that Kashmir is an integral part of India, things will settle down if a few carrots are offered, and the problem will go away.

Who knows it better than India that the cry for azadi (Freedom) in Kashmir has simply gotten louder? As such the level of tensions between India and Kashmir and between India and Pakistan show few signs of letting up any time soon. And ignoring the decades old problem of refusing to resolve the question of Kashmiri sovereignty and self-determination has not only led to deep unrest among the Kashmiris; it has also led to two wars between India and Pakistan. That they are now both nuclear-armed states raise the stakes dramatically and calls for action to defuse these tensions immediately.

Perhaps it’s time the major powers take this seriously. The answer is plain as day for anyone. Kashmir has international legitimacy. It has international sanctity. It has the commitment from the United Nations Security Council. These commitments should once and for all be honored. The clock is ticking. Every day that passes without resolution of Kashmir dispute is one day closer to a cataclysm that will reach far beyond the borders of all countries involved.

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai is also Secretary General

World Kashmir Awareness Forum.

He can be reached at: WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435

gnfai2003@yahoo.com

ww.Kashmirawareness.org

Dear All, (français dessous)

Five years ago, you expressed your support for Tariq Ramadan when he faced false accusations of rape and sexual violence. Today things are finally becoming clearer. Find here some updates :

1. Tariq Ramadan was acquitted in Switzerland in May 2023. The judges noted that the complainant had lied and was in contact with “people whose goal was to smear and bring down Tariq Ramadan” They cited the name, among others, of Caroline Fourest. They noted that it was the complainant who wrote obsessively to Tariq Ramadan ( therefore nothing justified the qualification of him being “a predator”) and that all the elements put together did not give credence to her version. It was added that she was in contact with the complainants in France for the last 14 years.

2. In France, the file is now only based on a psychiatrist’s report which has been contested, in legal terms, because the expert did not answer the questions and copied more than 15 pages from a previous report which had been canceled. This is illegal. He is also a member of a research center based in Paris and Tel Aviv, 15 of whose members have written against Tariq Ramadan in the past.

3. The NewYorker and an international media consortium revealed the United Arab Emirates paid the company ALP SERVICES $8 million to sully the reputation of high profile Muslim leaders in the West. The matter is currently being handled by the Swiss government. A meeting took place in Abu Dhabi in August 2017: the documents found spoke of two main targets “(Tariq) Ramadan and Qatar”. There was talk of tarnishing the reputation of Tariq Ramadan. The journalist Ian Hamel was recorded during that meeting and he received money from Alp Services. Toda,y he has just been sentenced in Geneva for defamation about Tariq Ramadan. He has affirmed that the Geneva State Council confirmed that the professor had had relations with students. The report stipulated in its conclusion, on the contrary, that these were just unconfirmed rumors. Ian Hamel lied. Read an excerpt of the judgment below :

“Ian HAMEL’s fault is not negligible. He attacked the appellant’s honor by attributing to him criminally reprehensible behavior. He pretended to base his remarks on an official report, commissioned by the State, while truncating its content. In doing so, he deceived the reader, which, beyond the criminal aspect, constitutes professional misconduct. His personal situation does not explain his actions. On the contrary. He had to comply with the duties of a journalist, report the truth, say what the report in question really was, and not distort, not disguise. He persists in denying any responsibility, any fault. Awareness of the seriousness of his actions is therefore lacking. He doesn’t express regrets, he doesn’t apologize.”

After 5 years, we know that this is a French case with political ramifications in the Middle-East. It is but a political case. Meanwhile, two complaints withdrew. Tariq Ramadan remains confident and he asks us to convey his thanks to those who still support him, knowing the truth and the political game behind this case.

Yours sincerely.
Free Tariq Ramadan team

30 November 2023