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By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Shortly after the start of a four-day ceasefire in the war on Gaza, the prime ministers of Spain and Belgium, Pedro Sanchez and Alexander De Croo, appeared in a joint press conference at Rafah Crossing.

While Sanchez described “what is happening (as) a disaster,” De Croo called for a “permanent cessation of hostilities” and for an end to the killing of children.

Equally significant, the two European leaders declared that “we may decide to recognize the State of Palestine, if the European Union does not”.

Coupled with the strong position of Ireland, some in Europe seem to be waking up to the fact that the Israeli occupation is the primary cause of the recent Gaza ‘hostilities’.

Israel was not pleased by the evolving European position. It immediately summoned the ambassadors of both countries, and sharply ‘rebuked’ them. This exaggerated response comes to show that Israel is not willing to give Europe even the narrowest of margins – as in condemning the killing of children or, expecting some kind of a peaceful settlement centered round Palestinian sovereignty.

Spain and Belgium’s phrase of “we may decide” to recognize Palestine even without EU consensus is indicative of an actual foreign policy schism within Europe itself. It turned out that not all EU governments have the same tolerance towards the genocide in Gaza as, for example, Germany and Britain.

Interestingly, other EU officials, too, are calling for a Palestinian State, though their intention is neither to ensure Palestinian freedom nor to safeguard Palestinian rights.

EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell, for example, argued on November 20 that “the creation of a Palestinian state would be the best way of ensuring Israel’s security”.

Even the former British Prime Minister, now Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, used similar logic. Israel will not have security unless it guarantees “long-term safety, security and stability” for the Palestinian people, Cameron said.

Regardless of the reasoning behind the growing emphasis on a ‘solution’ and rights for the Palestinians, this language was almost entirely absent from the Western political discourse prior to October 7.

The truth is that Palestinians have succeeded, through their resistance and sumud, to reassert Palestine on the global agenda. But how did Palestinians succeed in doing so, despite the utter marginalization of their cause before the war?

First, unlike previous wars, especially those that preceded the Unity Intifada of May 2021, this time around Palestinians spoke in unison.

Without rehearsing or even coordinating, it felt as if the Palestinian message flew seamlessly, when all Palestinians, regardless of their ideological backgrounds, placed the focus on the Israeli atrocities, without falling into the trap of the typical factional blame game.

Even children who have lost members of their families in Gaza would stand bravely in front of cameras reiterating that they will never weaken and that nothing would remove them from their homeland. Young and old repeated the same logic, used similar language, even from their hospital beds.

This led Israel to do everything in its power to excommunicate the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza from the rest of the world, shutting down the internet, electricity and any form of communications, even among Palestinians themselves.

Yet, somehow, a clear, united Palestinian message continued, amplified countless times by an army of social media activists who impressively helped balance out mainstream media bias, eventually overpowering corporate media’s control over the war narrative altogether.

The Palestinians have done this, and more, without powerful lobby groups, media consultants or a hasbara machine, like that which attempted, to no avail, to sway the public opinion in favor of Israel.

Secondly, the factional Palestinian suddenly disappeared.

For years, factional narratives, dividing Palestinians into conflicting interest groups, have thwarted the Palestinian people’s attempt to unify behind a single leadership – one that is capable of conveying, representing and defending Palestinian political aspirations.

Yet, all the Fatah-Hamas talks and agreements have failed, leaving the people with no other alternative but to explore different manifestations of unity that go beyond the interests of politicians.

This unity is now on full display, compelling everyone, including those affiliated with the Palestinian Authority itself, to adhere to the line of the people. While Gazans fought to free prisoners in the West Bank, West Bankers rose, and died in large numbers, in defense of Gaza.

This popular unity must continue, so that it would eventually be harnessed in the form of  political unity, which will bring all Palestinian groups together under a single leadership. This is the only way to ensure the tremendous Palestinian sacrifices and the precious blood that spilled in Gaza, eventually translate into the freedom that all Palestinians covet.

Thirdly, unity beyond Palestine also proved critical.

Arabs and Muslims served as the core of Palestinian solidarity throughout the Israeli war on Gaza. They protested, boycotted, fought and mobilized. Moreover, tens of millions of people, beyond the confines of the Arab and Muslim worlds, also marched around Palestinian rights and priorities.

Indeed, whole new conversations on Palestine are now occupying many public spheres around the globe. The Global South is once more embracing the struggle for Palestine, while the Global North is challenging governments, big corporations and mainstream media for justifying, supporting and financing the Israeli genocide.

The Palestinian people would now have to lead and direct this momentum of solidarity so that it may serve their righteous objectives, those of equality, justice and freedom – all enshrined in international law.

No public space should be left without engagement, no audience should be overlooked or neglected, and no stone should be left unturned in the search of that critical mass needed to hold Israel accountable for its crimes.

Western leaders and officials are speaking out now because they understand that the Palestinian cause has become a global one, and that the prolonging of Israeli occupation and apartheid will not bode well, neither for Tel Aviv nor for the collective West.

It is time for Palestinians to utilize this significant moment. It is time for them to lead the process of their own liberation. In fact, in Gaza, Jenin and elsewhere, this process has already begun.

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

30 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

On Monday, the World Health Organization issued a dire warning: Even after the relentless Israeli bombing that has left over 20,000 Gazans dead or missing, the death toll from infectious disease in the period ahead is likely to be even higher.

“We will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,” Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the WHO, said at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

For two months, Israel has systematically targeted Gaza’s hospital system for destruction. To date, 207 health personnel have been killed, and 56 ambulances have been attacked. Twenty-six hospitals and 55 health centers have ceased operations.

In the latest horrific scene, footage has emerged of premature babies being left to die and decompose in hospital beds at Al-Naser Hospital after Palestinian medical personnel were forced at gunpoint to abandon them.

“We were subjected to a direct targeting operation by the Israeli forces after strangling the health system on the first day of the aggression by cutting off medical supplies, fuel and electricity,” said Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra.

The destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system compounds the catastrophic consequences of the starvation and dehydration of the population by Israel’s blockade of food, fuel and water, and the mass displacement of nearly three-quarters of the population.

In an interview with Al Jazeera last week, WHO spokesperson Harris described the medical conditions in Gaza as “misery being piled on misery.”

She continued, “It’s catastrophic in so many ways. As the needs rise from the terrible crush injuries, the burns, the amputated limbs, the multiple complex fractures due to all the bombing, the hospital supply is reducing as fewer and fewer hospitals are able to function.

“Because people are so crowded, because they are in such poor condition, because they lack food and they lack water, and they are unable to wash themselves or drink clean water, we are seeing huge rises in infectious diseases, particularly in diarrheal diseases—diarrheal disease is going up exponentially. It’s increased 31 times more than you would expect in children under 5; also in adults: 104 times greater than you would expect.” Dysentery has increased 14 times, she said.

These conditions are deliberate. Their intentional character is publicly acknowledged by Israeli officials. Last week, Giora Eiland, the former head of the Israeli National Security Council, published an article in which he urged the Israeli military to create medical conditions in which as many Gazan civilians die as possible from preventable disease.

Eiland wrote:

Who are the “poor” women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers…

The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers.

Eiland argues that inflicting death and misery through infectious disease should be a goal, not a mere byproduct, of Israel’s actions. Its aim is “not the mere killing of more Hamas fighters” but “irreversible harm to their families.”

Such monstrous statements would seem to be the mere ravings of a lunatic. In reality, the deliberate subjection of a population to conditions that facilitate mass infection has been a critical component of past historical genocides, including the Holocaust. The parallels between Israel’s deliberate withholding of food, fuel and water from the Palestinians and descriptions of the Nazi regime’s treatment of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto are striking.

In his landmark book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, jurist Raphaël Lemkin, who introduced the term “genocide” in its contemporary understanding, explained how the Nazis used the blockade of food, fuel and water in the Warsaw Ghetto as a deliberate means of killing its inmates:

The undesired national groups … are deprived of elemental necessities for preserving health and life. … No fuel at all has been received since then by the Jews in the ghetto.

Moreover, the Jews in the ghetto are crowded together under conditions of housing inimical to health, and in being denied the use of public parks they are even deprived of the right to fresh air. Such measures, especially pernicious to the health of children, have caused the development of various diseases.

Payam Akhavan, a special adviser to the International Criminal Court, wrote in 2021:

Extermination through disease and starvation in the ghettos became the staging grounds for the concentration camps. An estimated 700,000 Jews died in the ghettos from diseases such as typhus, having been abandoned to “perish in their filth.” In the Warsaw Ghetto “the death toll from typhus was estimated at 15 percent, even though the Germans prevented proper treatment … and refused to allow the necessary preventive measures to be taken and enforced.”

In Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, historian Arno J. Mayer described the conditions of concentration camp inmates:

half-starved and practically without medical care, the frail and the sick were particularly imperiled, the more so since at the journey’s end the whole of Auschwitz was intermittently in the grip of a devastating typhus epidemic. The result was an unspeakable death rate…

The Nazi leaders decided to transport frail and sick Jews, and Gypsies, to Auschwitz in full awareness of the perils they would face, and they continued to do so once there was no ignoring and denying the deadly conditions there, including the endemic danger of epidemics.

The United Nations defines “genocidal acts” as including “the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for the group’s physical survival and which are available to the rest of the population, such as clean water, food and medical services,” and the “Creation of circumstances that could lead to a slow death, such as lack of proper housing, clothing and hygiene or excessive work or physical exertion.”

It notes: “Deprivation of the means to sustain life can be imposed through confiscation of harvests, blockade of foodstuffs, detention in camps, forcible relocation or expulsion to inhospitable environments.”

This language reads as a perfect description of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Notably, the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system takes place amid a new global upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic—a disease that becomes exponentially more deadly in the absence of adequate healthcare to treat the sickest patients.

The ruling classes of the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with homicidal indifference to human life, with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson praising the disease as “nature’s way of dealing with old people.” In Gaza, the sociopathic indifference to human life manifested in these remarks has metastasized into a full-scale genocide.

Not one single member of the Biden administration has made a public statement condemning the Israeli government’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s public health infrastructure and the starvation of its population. When Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital killing hundreds, US President Joe Biden blamed the Palestinians. The White House has made clear that there are “no red lines” limiting the number of civilians the US will allow Israel to kill, or the scale of the war crimes it will be allowed to commit.

The apologists for capitalism have argued that the vast crimes committed by the imperialist powers during the 20th century, the gravest of which was the Holocaust, were an exception, the actions of singularly evil individuals the likes of which would never appear again.

Twenty-three years into the new century, many of the means by which the Nazis carried out their “Final Solution” are being applied in Gaza, with the full support of all the imperialist powers.

This reality must bear upon the analysis not only of the present but also of the past. The Holocaust and Nazism were not the result of historical accidents but expressed the essential barbarism of the capitalist system in its “highest stage” of modern imperialism, which Leon Trotsky called its “death agony.”

Millions of people have taken part in mass demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza. They must understand what they are fighting against. It is not merely Netanyahu, or even just the governments that are funding and arming Israel’s genocide. It is the entire capitalist social order that is responsible for this monumental crime.

30 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Abubaker Abed

Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza Wael al-Dahdouh was live on air when he heard the worst possible news: His family had been attacked by Israel.

His wife Amna, son Mahmoud, daughter Sham and grandson Adam were all killed.

It has been almost a month since the massacre yet Wael has not had any space to grieve. He has continued reporting with great courage on the genocide being inflicted on his people.

“The pain of loss can never be described,” he said in an interview. “It was unbearable but I am a different person because of the profession I hold. I fully believe that God has pearls of wisdom and he is the one who provides a man with patience and strength.”

Wael believes that by documenting Israel’s crimes, he is fulfilling a duty to his family.

“I was determined to return to work and appear on the screen out of loyalty to their blood and the blood of all the martyrs. I refused to let the occupation achieve its goal of shattering this voice. So I overcame my pain to appear to the world again and convey my message and the message of every Palestinian suffering in Gaza.”

“Absolute horror”

Wael has witnessed all five of the previous major Israeli attacks on Gaza since December 2008.

“The 2023 war on Gaza is an absolute horror,” he said. “It is totally different and undoubtedly the bloodiest, the most destructive and the most monstrous. Throughout all the wars we have seen violence, destruction and injuries. But none comes close to this level of brutality and bloodshed.”

While Israel has bombed residential buildings without warning on many occasions, it is doing so far more frequently this time.

“It’s the first war when electricity was fully cut off, water was wholly cut off, and when crossings were completely closed for more than 25 days, preventing aid from entering the Strip,” he said.

I asked Wael when there will be peace and liberty in Gaza.

“When the occupation ends,” he said. “The occupation means aggression and the continuation of these painful images of destruction, horror and hardship. Its end will mean the return of Gaza, Palestine, and the Arab region to the hugs of peace, freedom, love, calm, security and every beautiful thing.”

Aged 53, Wael has no retirement plans despite everything that he has endured. He vows to keep working “no matter the cost.”

Journalists have paid a heavy price during this current war. More than 50 have been killed.

“We are all journalists in these circumstances,” said Wael. “We are not a party to this war. All we do is report events and what is happening around us.”

The bravery of Wael and other Palestinian journalists is at odds with how Western media outlets generally refuse to hold Israel accountable.

“As a human being and a Palestinian, I have a message to people all over the world,” Wael said. “We want you to listen to the narrative of the Palestinians, not just the Israelis. Please do not let the world apply any double standards. We have our narrative and we only ask for justice. Justice must prevail in the world.”

Abubaker Abed is a journalist and translator based in Gaza.

26 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

We, the Rohingya have been chased from our homelands through a series of massacres and Burmese military campaigns since 1978. Our villages have been exterminated and wiped out of all maps. The Palestinian situation is just the same, if not, even worse.

By Raïss Tinmaung

The Palestinian situation is just the same, if not, even worse. They were evicted from their homes through non-stop eviction campaigns by the Israeli government ever since the formation of Israel which resulted in the Nakba of 1948. Their houses have constantly been bulldozed and their entire neighbourhoods have been demolished to make way for new Israeli settlements. The vast majority of Palestinians are now forced to live in pockets of “Bantustans” in the West Bank, in refugee camps within Israel and neighbouring states, and in the open air prison of Gaza.

Just like the Rohingya, the Palestinians cannot move freely within their own ancestral lands. Like the Rohingya, the Palestinians need to go through check points and pay hefty sums to the authorities to be able to simply go from one village/township to another. The Rohingya can never get official jobs or work without fear of their land and produce getting confiscated overnight; the Palestinians live through the same. The Rohingya are not allowed to vote or run for office in federal elections, the Palestinians in Israel are the same. The Rohingya are discriminated in Burmese schools and educational institutions, just like Palestinian children are treated inferior in Israeli education systems. The Rohingya are constantly abducted, detained, and imprisoned without trial; the Palestinians have an unparalleled record of unlawful detentions in Israeli prisons. In essence, just like the Rohingya live under severe discrimination in Myanmar, the Palestinians live in apartheid under systemic discrimination and oppression from Israeli authorities.

Like the Rohingya, the Palestinians are looked down upon and denigrated by the Israelis as objects of extreme hate. Throughout social media, Israeli citizens are often heard saying out loud in public “we will kill you all”, “we will bomb all hospitals, all the tunnels, everything”, ”Gaza nakba 2023” . Similarly, prior to the Rohingya massacre of 2017, hate speech on social media was widespread with statements such as “kill them all so that they can meet Allah faster”, or “stuff pig into their mouths and throw them into the river”. At the government level, Israeli Ministers have referred to Palestinians as “snakes”, “beasts on two legs” and “human animals”, just like the Rohingyas were referred to as “insects” and “half humans” by government officials and the clergy. Scholars of genocide stress that hate speech and dehumanization of a population are integral to any genocide, an international and organized process of physical destruction of any identity-based population or human group. There is no doubt that the Israeli regime, from its “moderate” president to Far-Right prime minister and cabinet ministers, as well as the society at large, have openly and crudely expressed vile and hate-filled speech towards the Palestinians, just as Myanmar’s flagship political party of Aung San Suu Kyi, state officials, and the military, as well as multi-ethnic civil society had towards the Rohingya while committing genocide.

However revolting the Hamas acts of violence against the Southern settler communities might have been, a just military retaliation can never include the indiscriminate bombing of refugee camps. Genocide is no “self-defence”: Period. For an armed force as sophisticated as the IDF, there is no reason why they should ever resort to the bombing of a civilian population, starving them for weeks, and destroying their healthcare facilities where the crippled and elderly are housed. The only reason is their sheer intent to eliminate the Palestinians as much as they can.

Last month I was at Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh as part of my yearly visits to the Rohingya children’s education & vocational training programs that I run through a registered charity. During my visit I saw many kids playing and running around in narrow unkempt alleys between densely crowded shelters. I got to know a few kids by their names: Kulsum, 6, Jannatara, 7, and Nurhashim, 6. Their smiles were innocent and their laughter simply oblivious. I can still see them when I close my eyes.

But what if I closed my eyes and I saw them bombed to death all of a sudden? Alas, such unspeakable horror was the eventuality of many Palestinian children in Jabalia and many other refugee camps…

We, the Rohingya have been chased from our homelands through a series of massacres and Burmese military campaigns since 1978. Our villages have been exterminated and wiped out of all maps. People who lived in my parents’ and grandparents’ villages were forced out by government authorities to make space for settler colonies called “Nga ta la”. Those of us who owned lands for generations became homeless overnight. Many had no choice but to resort to Internally Displaced Persons camps a few kilometers from their own villages inside Arakan. We became refugees in our own homelands.

The Palestinian situation is just the same, if not, even worse. They were evicted from their homes through non-stop eviction campaigns by the Israeli government ever since the formation of Israel which resulted in the Nakba of 1948. Their houses have constantly been bulldozed and their entire neighbourhoods have been demolished to make way for new Israeli settlements. The vast majority of Palestinians are now forced to live in pockets of “Bantustans” in the West Bank, in refugee camps within Israel and neighbouring states, and in the open air prison of Gaza.

Just like the Rohingya, the Palestinians cannot move freely within their own ancestral lands. Like the Rohingya, the Palestinians need to go through check points and pay hefty sums to the authorities to be able to simply go from one village/township to another. The Rohingya can never get official jobs or work without fear of their land and produce getting confiscated overnight; the Palestinians live through the same. The Rohingya are not allowed to vote or run for office in federal elections, the Palestinians in Israel are the same. The Rohingya are discriminated in Burmese schools and educational institutions, just like Palestinian children are treated inferior in Israeli education systems. The Rohingya are constantly abducted, detained, and imprisoned without trial; the Palestinians have an unparalleled record of unlawful detentions in Israeli prisons. In essence, just like the Rohingya live under severe discrimination in Myanmar, the Palestinians live in apartheid under systemic discrimination and oppression from Israeli authorities.

Like the Rohingya, the Palestinians are looked down upon and denigrated by the Israelis as objects of extreme hate. Throughout social media, Israeli citizens are often heard saying out loud in public “we will kill you all”, “we will bomb all hospitals, all the tunnels, everything”, ”Gaza nakba 2023” . Similarly, prior to the Rohingya massacre of 2017, hate speech on social media was widespread with statements such as “kill them all so that they can meet Allah faster”, or “stuff pig into their mouths and throw them into the river”. At the government level, Israeli Ministers have referred to Palestinians as “snakes”, “beasts on two legs” and “human animals”, just like the Rohingyas were referred to as “insects” and “half humans” by government officials and the clergy. Scholars of genocide stress that hate speech and dehumanization of a population are integral to any genocide, an international and organized process of physical destruction of any identity-based population or human group. There is no doubt that the Israeli regime, from its “moderate” president to Far-Right prime minister and cabinet ministers, as well as the society at large, have openly and crudely expressed vile and hate-filled speech towards the Palestinians, just as Myanmar’s flagship political party of Aung San Suu Kyi, state officials, and the military, as well as multi-ethnic civil society had towards the Rohingya while committing genocide.

However revolting the Hamas acts of violence against the Southern settler communities might have been, a just military retaliation can never include the indiscriminate bombing of refugee camps. Genocide is no “self-defence”: Period. For an armed force as sophisticated as the IDF, there is no reason why they should ever resort to the bombing of a civilian population, starving them for weeks, and destroying their healthcare facilities where the crippled and elderly are housed. The only reason is their sheer intent to eliminate the Palestinians as much as they can.

When I close my eyes and see Kulsum, Jannatara and Nurhashim playing in the alleys of Kutupalong refugee camps, I pray that they aren’t bombed to death by some Burmese military artillery falling over their heads. Their only crime: they were born Rohingya and are therefore considered less human by the ruling regime. And I hope my prayers are answered. But for Alaa, Momen, Hazem, Yousef, Yazan and dozens of other children in Jabalia refugee camp, that prayer cannot be made. They are already bombed to death, along with approximately 6000 other innocent children, who were clearly considered less human by the Israeli government and its allies.

Raïss Tinmaung is the country coordinator for Canada at Free Rohingya Coalition.

28 November 2023

Source: forsea.co

By The Chris Hedges Report

20 Nov 2023 – Israel is carrying out a campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable. This campaign includes destroying all of Gaza’s hospitals. The message Israel is sending is clear – Nowhere is safe. If you stay you die.

Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt where they will never return.

Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing twelve people.

The playbook is familiar. Flyers are dropped by Israel over a hospital telling people to leave because the hospital is a base for “Hamas terrorist activities.” Tanks and artillery shells rip away parts of the hospital walls. Ambulances are blown up by Israeli missiles. Power and water is cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics and oxygen. The most vulnerable, premature babies in incubators and the gravely ill, die. Israeli soldiers raid the hospital and force everyone out at gunpoint.

This is what happened at Al Shifa hospital. This is what happened at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital. This is what happened at Gaza’s main psychiatric hospital. This is what happened at Nasser Hospital. This is what happened at the other hospitals that Israel has destroyed. And this is what will happen at the few hospitals that remain.

Israel has shut down 21 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals, including Gaza’s only cancer hospital. The hospitals still operating have severe shortages of basic medicine and supplies. One by one the hospitals are being picked off. Soon there will be no health facilities left. This is by design.

Tens of thousands of terrified Palestinians, forced to evacuate by Israel, their homes blasted into rubble, seek refuge from the relentless bombing by camping out in and around Gaza’s hospitals. They hope the medical centers will not be targeted by Israel. If Israel abided by the Geneva Conventions they would be correct. But Israel is not carrying out a war. It is carrying out a genocide. And in a genocide, a population, and all that sustains a population, is obliterated.

In an ominous sign that Israel will turn on the Palestinians in the West Bank once it is done flattening Gaza, armored vehicles have surrounded at least four West Bank hospitals. The Ibn Sina Hospital has been raided by Israeli soldiers along with the East Jerusalem Hospital.

Israel’s settler colonial state was founded on lies. It is sustained by lies. And now, when it is grimly determined to carry out the worst slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” that saw 750,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed and some 50 massacres by Jewish militias, it spits out one grotesque absurdity after another. It speaks of Palestinians as a dehumanized mass. There are no mothers, fathers, children, teachers, doctors, lawyers, cooks, poets, taxi drivers or shopkeepers. Palestinians, in the Israeli lexicon, are a single contagion that must be eradicated.

Watch this video of Israeli school children singing, “We Will Annihilate Everyone” in Gaza.

Hitler Youth used to sing songs like this about Jews.

Those who embark upon projects of mass killing lie to avoid demoralizing their own populations, lull the victims into believing they will not all be exterminated and stop outside forces from intervening. The Nazis claimed that Jews packed on trains and sent to extermination camps were on work details and had good medical care and adequate food. As for the infirm and elderly, they were cared for in rest centers. The Nazis even created a mock camp for the “resettlement” of Jews “to the East,” – Theresienstadt – where international bodies such as the Red Cross could see how humanely the Jews were treated, even as millions were being exterminated.

At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million Armenians were massacred or died of exposure, disease and starvation during the genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire from the spring of 1915 to the autumn of 1916. The Armenian genocide was as public as the genocide in Gaza. European and U.S. consular missions provided detailed accounts of the campaign to cleanse modern day Türkiye of Armenians.

The Ottoman government, in an attempt to hide the genocide, banned foreigners from taking photographs of Armenian refugees or the corpses that lined the roads. Israel too has blocked the foreign press from Gaza, carrying out only a handful of brief and carefully staged visits arranged by the Israeli military. Israel periodically cuts off internet and phone services. At least 43 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel since the Hamas incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, many undoubtedly targeted by Israeli forces.

Armenians, like Palestinians, were forced from their homes, gunned down and denied food and water. Armenian deportees were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert where tens of thousands were shot or died from starvation, cholera, malaria, dysentery and influenza. Israel is forcing 1.1 million Palestinians into the southern tip of Gaza and bombing them as they flee. These refugees, like the Armenians, lack food, water, fuel and sanitation. They too will soon succumb to epidemics of infectious diseases.

Talat Pasha, the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire, told the United States ambassador, Henry Morgenthau Sr., in words that replicate Israel’s stance, on Aug. 2, 1915, “that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.”

The longer the genocide continues the more absurd the lies become.

There are big Israeli lies. The obliteration of Gaza and wanton killing of thousands of Palestinians, Israel insists, is a targeted effort to get rid of Hamas rather than a campaign to reduce Gaza to a pile of rubble, carry out mass murder and ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

There are small Israeli lies. Forty beheaded babies. Al Shifa Hospital is a “Hamas command center.” A calendar in Arabic on the wall of a hospital, according to IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, is “a guardian [guard] list, where every terrorist writes his name and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here.” An Israeli actor dressed up as a nurse and speaking heavily accented Arabic claims to be Palestinian doctor and to have seen Hamas use civilians as human shields. She says members of Hamas “attacked Al Shifa Hospital” and stole “the fuel and medicine.” Palestinian militants, rather than Israeli tanks, Israel says, are responsible for shelling Al Shifa Hospital. Israel struck a car full of “terrorists” in southern Lebanon, “terrorists” who turned out to be three girls, their mother and grandmother. The explosion at the Al Ahli Hospital was the result of an errant rocket fired by the Palestinians, a claim questioned by The New York Times when it discredited the video based on analysis of its time stamp. Israel said it “responded to the request of the director of Shifa Hospital to allow Gazan citizens who were sheltering in the hospital and who wish to evacuate from Shifa Hospital towards the humanitarian crossing in the Gaza Strip via a secure axis,” a statement Mohammed Zaqout, director general of hospitals in Gaza, said was “false,” adding “we were forced to leave by gunpoint.” Israeli Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, in a video pilloried by the BBC, shows viewers a meager stash of automatic weapons in a promotional video that magically increases once foreign reporters arrive for a guided tour. The IDF later deleted it.

The lies will be written into the Israeli school books. The lies will be repeated by Israeli politicians, historians and journalists. The lies will be told on Israeli television and in Israeli films and books. Israelis are eternal victims. Palestinians are absolute evil. There was no genocide. Türkiye, a century later, still denies what happened to the Armenians.

In wartime people believe what they want to believe. The lies fill a hunger within the Israeli public that sees the conflict as a binary struggle between “the children of light and the children of darkness.” The lies are a defense against accountability, for if Israel refuses to acknowledge reality, it is not forced to respond to reality. The lies create cognitive dissonance, where fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes truth. The lies make any discussion of genocide, or reconciliation, impossible.

Israel, with the backing of the Biden administration, will continue to snuff out all systems that sustain life in Gaza. Hospitals. Schools. Power plants. Water treatment facilities. Factories. Farms. Apartment blocks. Houses. Then Israel will pretend, like the killers in past genocides, it never happened.

The lies used by Israel to absolve itself of responsibility will eat away at Israeli society. They will corrode its moral, religious, civic, intellectual and political life. The lies will elevate war criminals to heroic status and demonize those with a conscience. Israel’s genocide, as with the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia, will be mythologized, an epic battle against the forces of evil and barbarity, just as we mythologized the genocide of Native Americans and turned our settlers and murderous cavalry units into heroes. The killers in the Indonesian war against communism are cheered at rallies as saviors. They are interviewed about the “heroic” battles they fought nearly six decades ago. Israel will do the same. It will deform itself. It will celebrate its crimes. It will turn evil into good. It will exist within a self-constructed myth. The truth, as in all despotisms, will be banished. Israel, a monster to the Palestinians, will be a monster to itself.

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.

By Shola Lawal

The grouping, which has previously focused on economic issues, called for an end to ‘war crimes’ in the Gaza conflict.

21 Nov 2023 – Leaders of major emerging economies called for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza today and for a cessation of hostilities on both sides to ease the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

By Gisela Cernadas and John Bellamy Foster

New Estimates Based on U.S. National Accounts

November 2023 – For decades, it has been recognized by independent researchers that actual U.S. military spending is approximately twice the officially acknowledged level.¹ In 2022, actual U.S. military spending reached $1.537 trillion—more than twice the officially acknowledged level of $765.8 billion. Data on U.S. military spending reported by the U.S. government, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI, generally considered the definitive source on international military expenditures), and NATO all primarily rely on the figures of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB).² These data, however, are subject to two major shortcomings.First, the numbers provided by the OMB with respect to “defense spending” are substantially lower than those provided in the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), the most complete and definitive source on U.S. national income and expenditures as a whole, constituting an input-output approach to the whole economy, and the basis of all analysis of the U.S. economy.

Second, as is well-known, key areas of U.S. military spending are included in other parts of federal expenditures and do not fall under the OMB’s “defense spending” category. Although SIPRI and NATO adopt wider definitions of “defense spending” than the U.S. government and claim to increase their estimates using the OMB figures as a base, in practice, they do so only marginally and in ways that are not entirely transparent, with the result that their figures are only slightly above those of the officially acknowledged U.S. figures.3

If the reality is that actual U.S. military spending has been consistently around twice the acknowledged amounts—something demonstrated repeatedly in independent studies—the methodology for approaching the question of actual military spending on a consistent, statistically conservative, and incontestable basis has only developed over time. Most attempts have sought simply to add components of actual military spending appearing in other parts of federal spending and not included under OMB figures for “national defense.” Although these studies helped to set the stage, they often appeared to have a scattered and arbitrary character, rather than employing a truly consistent methodology.

A breakthrough in this respect was first achieved by Jurgen M. Brauer at Augusta State University’s College of Business Administration in 2007. Brauer introduced an approach that took the NIPA data on U.S. military consumption and investment expenditures as the base for U.S. military spending, and then added in other military expenditures outside of official defense using the NIPA accounts, creating a methodology for detailing U.S. military expenditures that not only surmounted the limitations of the OMB data with respect to accounting for “defense spending” itself, but adopted an entirely consistent approach, based on NIPA data, to adding in unacknowledged expenditures.4 Brauer’s approach was then developed further by Hannah Holleman, John Bellamy Foster, and Robert W. McChesney in an article in Monthly Review in 2008 that provided detailed estimates of actual U.S. military expenditures, as opposed to those officially acknowledged by the OMB, for 2007.5

Although the estimates of military spending here rely on the 2008 study by Holleman, Foster, and McChesney (building on Brauer’s 2007 methodological breakthrough) as its original basis, the method and results differ somewhat from that earlier study, adopting more conservative assumptions, while incorporating some refinements that Brauer introduced in 2019. Thus, the percentages attributed to the military in federal space expenditures and in grants to foreign countries are lower in the present estimates, in accord with widely accepted mainstream assumptions. Military medical insurance (consisting of payments for medical services for dependents of active duty military personnel at nonmilitary facilities) is also added, which was not included in the earlier study by Holleman, Foster, and McChesney. (It should be noted that military spending in the Department of Energy associated with nuclear weapons is included in both OMB and NIPA, as recognized in the earlier study.)

In addition to the NIPA data for total defense consumption and gross investment expenditures, our figures for actual U.S. military expenditures include seven further categories: veterans’ benefits, veterans’ life insurance, other veterans’ costs, military medical insurance, the military portions of space spending, grants in aid to other governments, and the share of net interest attributed to actual federal military expenditures. (Net interest here includes only “on-budget” net interest, excluding the “off-budget” net interest associated with Social Security and other transfer payments, as well as the Post Office.)

Veterans’ benefits and net interest both constitute what are known as so-called legacy costs of militarism and war, and thus are part of overall military spending, but are not included in the official “defense budget.” Euroconsult has attributed 42.4 percent of federal space consumption and investment expenditure to the military.6 The Council of Foreign Relations conservatively classified 33 percent of all U.S. grants in foreign aid as for military purposes.7

All of these categories, taken together, thus constitute the components of actual military spending as shown in Table 1. The table shows that actual U.S. military spending in 2022 came to $1.537 trillion, as opposed to the $765.8 billion in acknowledged (OMB) defense spending (and the $876 billion estimated by SIPRI and $821 billion by NATO). This means that actual U.S. military spending in 2022 was more than double the acknowledged “defense spending” provided by OMB.

Table 1. Actual U.S. Military Spending in 2022 (Billions USD)

Category	Table Line Item	Allocation	Amount
NIPA National Defense Expenditure	Consumption expenditures	100%	732.4
Military Medical Insurance	Gross investment	100%	192.6
	Military medical insurance	100%	5.7
	Veterans’ life insurance	100%	0.8
Veterans-Related Expenses*	Veterans’ benefits	100%	153.3
	Other	25%	26.1
Space Consumption and Gross Investment Expenditure**	Space	40%	15.2
Grants to Foreign Countries	Grants to foreign countries	33%	29.4
Net Interest Attributed to Military***	Net interest attributed to military		381.4
	Total		1,536.9

Sources: See Table 2 in Statistical Appendix for a discussion of data and sources.

* Since the data corresponding to “Veterans-Related Expenses,” from NIPA Table 3.12 (“Government Social Benefits”) for the year 2022 were not available at time of writing, we adopted a conservative assumption and assigned the same nominal value that such expenses adopted in 2021.

** Since the data corresponding to “Space Consumption and Gross Investment Expenditure,” from NIPA Table 3.15.5 (“Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment by Function”) for the year 2022 were not available at time of writing, we adopted the same nominal value from the year 2021 for this variable.

*** The details corresponding to the calculation of this item are explained in the Statistical Appendix, Table A-2.

Chart 1 shows actual U.S. military spending as a percentage of GDP, compared to the acknowledged defense spending and the closely related SIPRI data from 2007 (the year in which the Great Recession began) to 2022. Over the entire period, actual military spending (NIPA augmented) as a percentage of GDP averaged 6.7 percent. In 2022, actual U.S. defense spending came to 6 percent of GDP, while acknowledged military spending was only half that, at 3 percent of GDP.

Chart 1. U.S. Military Spending as a Percentage of GDP

Source: See Statistical Appendix for sources and notes.

Chart 2 presents actual military spending as a percentage of total federal government consumption and gross investment, which averaged 72 percent over the entire period and, in 2022, was 70.2 percent. Once again, however, it is rising.

Chart 2. U.S. Military Spending as a Percentage of Federal Consumption and Gross Investment, 2007–2022

Source: See Statistical Appendix for sources and notes.

“National Defense Consumption Expenditures” and “National Defense Gross Investment” accounted, respectively, for 47 percent and 13 percent of actual military spending in 2022, according to NIPA. The remaining 40 percent of U.S. military spending is not included in OMB figures or in the larger figures on “defense” spending reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in NIPA, but appears in other budgets in NIPA. The breakdown is shown in Chart 3.

Chart 3. U.S. Military Spending by Component, 2022

Source: See Statistical Appendix for sources and notes.

All of this demonstrates that the extent of U.S. military spending has been grossly understated by the U.S. government. Washington has allocated expenses corresponding to military-related activities under departments other than the Department of Defense.

Although institutions like SIPRI and NATO claim to reflect the actual military spending of most countries, their estimations for the United States are vastly understated. Moreover, it is important to recognize that the base data from which we start our calculations (National Defense Consumption and Gross Investment Expenditure, using U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis NIPA tables) are already larger than the final estimations reported by SIPRI and NATO. Central to the estimates of actual military expenditure presented here, then, is the fact that expenses of military-related activities are not fully included under the expenditure announced by the OMB. Significantly, legacy costs, which support the entire military systems, such as veterans’ benefits and the enormous net interest payments attributable to the military and largely responsible for U.S. government deficits, are fully incorporated in our analysis, while excluded in military spending acknowledged by the U.S. government and largely excluded by SIPRI (see Statistical Appendix).

It is no wonder, then, that, taking the ten countries with the highest military spending in the world in 2022, the United States—based on its actual military spending as shown here—accounts for more than 70 percent of the total.8

Statistical AppendixMethodological Approach

To estimate actual U.S. military spending, we utilize a set of nine items from the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) produced by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (see Table A-1). The criteria to allocate each of these items is described below:

1. National Defense consumption expenditure. This information is provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. We allocate 100 percent of this item to the estimation of the U.S. military spending.
2. National Defense gross investment expenditure. This information is provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. We allocate 100 percent of this item to the estimation of the U.S. military spending.
3. Veterans’ related costs. This information is provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and consists of three categories:
   1. Veterans’ life insurance
   2. Veterans’ benefits
   3. Other

Table A-1. Sources for Calculation of Actual Military Spending

Category	Line Name (Line #)	Table	Source
NIPA National Defense Expenditure	Consumption expenditures (18)	Table 3.9.5. Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment	NIPA
	Gross investment (19)	Table 3.9.5. Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment	NIPA
Military Medical Insurance*	Military medical insurance (16)	Table 3.12. Government Social Benefits	NIPA
Veterans-Related Expenses	Veterans’ life insurance (14)	Table 3.12. Government Social Benefits	NIPA
	Veterans’ benefits (17)	Table 3.12. Government Social Benefits	NIPA
	Other (26)	Table 3.12. Government Social Benefits	NIPA
Space Consumption and Gross Investment Expenditure	Space (58)	Table 3.15.5. Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment by Function	NIPA
Grants to Foreign Countries	Grants to foreign countries (32)	Table 3.2. Federal Government Current Receipts and Expenditures	NIPA
Net Interest Attributed to Military	Net interest payments (on budget)	Table 3.2 Outlays by Function and Subfunction: 1962–2028	OMB

Sources and Notes: NIPA Tables, bea.gov/itable; OMB: White House Historical Tables, whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables. Also see direct links to tables above.

* Consists of payments for medical services for dependents of active duty military personnel at nonmilitary facilities.

We allocate 100 percent of the items 3.a and 3.b to the estimation of the U.S. military spending. The category “Other” (3.c) is shared among other institutions, therefore we allocated only 25 percent of this expenditure to the military.

4. Military medical insurance (payments for medical services for dependents of active-duty military personnel at nonmilitary facilities).
5. Space consumption and gross investment expenditure. This information is provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. We allocate 40 percent of the space consumption and gross investment of the United States for defense purposes, following the study of Euroconsult, which reports that 42.4 percent of global space spending in 2021 was meant for defense purposes.
6. Grants in foreign aid. This information is provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. We allocate 33 percent of this expenditure to military purposes, following the analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations.
7. Net interest paid by the federal government attributed to military. This information is provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (see Table A-2). We allocated this item according to the following formula:
   

   Percentage of allocation =
   	Total expenditures of the federal government with military purposes on consumption and gross investment
   	Total expenditures of the federal government on consumption and gross investment

It is important to note that we are considering federal gross investment expenditures in both the numerator and denominator, and not only the consumption expenditure.

Table A-2. Calculation of Net Interest Attributed to U.S. Military Spending in 2022 (Billions USD)

Item	Amount	Source/Note
Total Federal Government Consumption and Gross Investment Expenditure	1,646.7	NIPA, Table 3.9.5. Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment (lines 10 + 11)
Actual Federal Military Spending (without Interest)	1,155.4	NIPA (see Table 1)
Interest Allocation	70.2%	Row 2 / Row 1 (above)
Net Interest Payments (On Budget)	543.6	OMB, Table 3.2. Outlays by Function and Subfunction: 1962–2028
Net Interest Attributed to Military	381.4	Row 3 * Row 4 (above)

Comparison with Other Estimations

Table A-3 compares our method with mainstream estimations of U.S. military spending. Here, we can see that the expenditures reported by the OMB ($765.8 billion) are significantly lower than other sources. SIPRI and NATO claim to report actual military spending of the countries, including some legacy costs, but their numbers are still below those of independent researchers (see Table A-4 below). Indeed, our estimation of the actual U.S. military spending for 2022 is twice that reported by the White House, 1.9 times the spending estimated by NATO, and 1.8 times that reported by SIPRI.

Table A-3. Comparison with Mainstream Estimates of U.S. Military Spending for 2022 (Current USD)

Source	Year	Amount estimated	As % of GDP
NIPA Augmented (JBF/GC)	2022	1,536.9	6.0
“Acknowledged” U.S. Military Spending (OMB)	2022	765.8	3.0
SIPRI Military Expenditure	2022	876.9	3.4
NATO	2022	821.8	3.2

Sources: NIPA Augmented, see Table A-1; “Acknowledged,” Office of Management and Budget (OMB), “Table 3.2. Outlays by Function and Subfunction: 1962–2028,” whitehouse.gov; SIPRI, “Military Expenditure by Country, 1949–2022,” sipri.org; NATO, Defense Expenditure Tables: 2022, nato.int.

Notes: “Acknowledged” U.S. military spending consists of three elements: 1) spending by the Department of Defense; 2) spending in atomic energy defense activities (under the Department of Energy); 3) and other defense-related activities. See Eric Berger, “Report Finds that the US Accounts for Half of Global Space Spending,” Ars Technica, January 6, 2022, arstechnica.com.

Table A-4. Independent Estimates of U.S. Military Spending

Source	Year	Amount estimated	Percent of GDP	Unit	Method
Cockburn	2023	1,447.70	—	Current USD	Real U.S. defense budget
Smithberger and Hartung	2020	1,254.20	6.0	Current USD	U.S. national security state budget
Brauer	2018	1,202.80	6.5	Constant 2012 USD	Augmented NIPA U.S. military spending
Foster, Holleman, and McChesney	2007	1,002.50	6.9	Current USD	Augmented NIPA U.S. military spending

Sources: Andrew Cockburn, “Getting the Defense Budget Right: A (Real) Grand Total, over $1.4 trillion,” Responsible Statecraft, May 7, 2023, responsiblestatecraft.org; Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung, ”Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget,” POGO, May 7, 2019, pogo.org; “Don’t Just Click ‘Download’: The Case of U.S. Military Expenditure Data,” Economics of Peace and Security Journal 14, no. 2 (2019): 55–64; John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending,” Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 1–19

Using our method, actual U.S. military spending doubled acknowledged military spending for the year 2022. Between 2007 and 2022, the gap between our measure and mainstream estimates averaged around 3 percent as a share of GDP.

Independent researchers have devised a number of critical approaches to the calculation of actual U.S. military spending. In Table A-4, we present estimates for selected years by Cockburn; Smithberger and Hartung; Brauer; and Foster, Holleman, and McChesney. As can be seen, these authors have reached estimates that are similar to each other—and, of course, significantly higher than official estimates for the respective years.

Notes

1. ↩ James Cypher, “The Basic Economics of ‘Rearming America,’” Monthly Review 33, no. 6 (November 1981): 11–17; James Cypher, “From Military Keynesianism to Global Neoliberal Militarism,” Monthly Review 59, no. 2 (June 2007): 37–55; Jurgen Brauer, “United States Military Expenditure,” in Arms, War, and Terrorism in the Global Economy Today (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 2007), 61–94; Hannah Holleman, John Bellamy Foster, and Robert W. McChesney, “The U.S. Military Triangle and Military Spending,” Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 1–18; Jurgen Brauer, “Don’t Just Click ‘Download’: The Case of U.S. Military Expenditure Data,” Economics of Peace and Security Journal 14, no. 2 (2019); Andrew Cockburn, “Getting the Defense Budget Right: A (Real) Grand Total, over $1.4 Trillion,” Responsible Statecraft, May 7, 2023, responsiblestatecraft.org; Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung, May 7, 2019, “Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget,” Project on Government Oversight, May 7, 2019.
2. ↩ Note that OMB data is reported by fiscal year. For further explanation, see Table 4 in the Statistical Appendix.
3. ↩ SIPRI, “Frequently Asked Questions: What Is the SIPRI Definition of Military Expenditure?”; NATO, “Information on Defence Expenditures,” July 7, 2023.
4. ↩ Brauer, “United States Military Expenditure.”
5. ↩ Holleman, Foster, and McChesney, “The U.S. Military Triangle and Military Spending.”
6. ↩ Eric Berger, “Report Finds that the US Accounts for Half of Global Space Spending,” Ars Technica, January 6, 2022, arstechnica.com.
7. ↩ James McBride, “How Does the U.S. Spend Its Foreign Aid?,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 1, 2018, cfr.org.
8. ↩ See “Countries with the Highest Military Spending Worldwide in 2002,” Statista, statista.com.

2023, Volume 75, Number 06 (November 2023)

Gisela Cernadas is an economist at the National University of La Plata, Argentina, and a Master’s student on Economic Development and researcher at the Center of Economic Development Studies at the National University of San Martin, Argentina.

John Bellamy Foster is a North American professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the Monthly Review.

27 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Vanessa Beeley

23 Nov 2023 – In-Depth Analysis of Syrian Military Developments Since 7 October

October 7th has sent shock waves throughout the world. The invincible Israel with, allegedly, the most powerful military and intelligence capability was proven to be a paper tiger by a weaker and less well equipped Palestinian Resistance coalition.

The effect has been dramatic on regional Resistance factions – triggering a regional wide engagement with Israel or with the illegal US military bases in Syria and Iraq. As a result, there has been an unprecedented military escalation in the region that has largely gone unreported with all eyes on Gaza and the ongoing Zionist ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and West Bank.

Israel is in disarray with internal divisions threatening the Netanyahu extremist coalition government. Netanyahu is unable to acknowledge the military and intelligence failings despite pressure to do so, even from within his own military.

Instead Israel has resorted to the familiar sadistic war against women, children and innocent civilians for almost two months. The ongoing brutal massacre on an hourly basis, the targeting of hospitals, UNRWA refugee centers and schools, humanitarian convoys, ambulances, paramedics, civil defence headquarters are a litany of war crimes.

Of course any admission by Netanyahu would signal the end of his political career and bring him to trial for corruption. Despite the knowledge that his military would suffer horrendous losses in a ground operation in the sprawling urban landscape of the Gaza enclave, Netanyahu gave the green light to invade. He relied on the daily horrific civilian death toll to break the Resistance resolve.

The message was “to resist is futile” but just as the entire globalist axis led by the US and UK failed to factor in the determination of the Syrian people to prevent regime change in Syria – the world has underestimated the strength of the Palestinian Resistance against decades of apartheid, oppression and trickle expansionist ethnic cleansing by the Zionist entity.

Hezbollah in northern Palestine has skillfully and tactically occupied the Zionist forces in the north preventing their involvement in the Gaza operations and ongoing stealth ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

Yemen has directly engaged by targeting sites in southern occupied Palestine. Iraqi Resistance factions have increased their attacks against US illegal military bases in Iraq and Syria resulting in the death of at least forty US military personnel. Most recently Yemeni forces have seized an Israeli owned vessel in the Red Sea holding the crew hostage.

Palestinian factions inside Syria have launched several missile attacks on Israeli occupation sites in the illegally annexed Golan territories and even attacked Eilat from Syrian territory.

In response, the US and Israel have mobilised their ISIS agents in Syria to attack Syrian Arab Army positions in the central desert areas.

Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), an Al Qaeda offshoot, have escalated attacks on the northern Lattakia countryside axis and intensified drone attacks in Western Aleppo, northern Lattakia and northern Hama.

Israel aggression particularly south of Damascus has increased with the latest attack on the Sayeda Zainab district of south-east Damascus yesterday afternoon (22/11). Aleppo and Damascus civilian airports are still closed, not because of the previous damage from Israeli aggression, due to the high risk of Israeli bombardment.

The US has directly engaged with the Syrian Arab Army in Deir Ezzor in north-east Syria. Syria has responded by directly engaging with the US occupation forces, targeting US military bases and shooting down US drones. Syria has expanded the operational area in Syria for all Resistance factions to enable the targeting of Israel from multiple and mobile fronts.

In this article the focus will be on the military situation in Syria. Syria has endured a 12 year Western-orchestrated regime change war that has decimated Syrian infrastructure, depleted the military capability, imposed unprecedented sanctions unilaterally on the Syrian people. The US occupies oil and agricultural resources in the north-east, their assets occupy the agricultural resources in the north-west. Their Kurdish proxies and Al Qaeda assets benefit from the trade of Syrian resources under the protection of US political and military endorsement and collaboration.

Syria’s refusal to abandon Palestine and willingness to expand the ability of Resistance factions to target Israeli facilities and installations has triggered serious recriminations from the US/Israeli axis.

ISIS aggression on behalf of Israel and US

On the 8th of November ISIS groups attacked Syrian Arab Army positions in the vicinity of the Homs, Hama and Raqqa triangle. The attack led to the deaths of 21 SAA soldiers and several injured. Military reinforcements were dispatched to comb the area and to eliminate the ISIS fighters.

Since the double earthquake tragedy that struck Syria and Turkey on the 6th February there have been a number of ISIS attacks on Syrian military and civilians. This attack of the 8th November and the one that preceded it are the most intense.

On 18th October, ISIS launched a wide-scale assault on the SAA and allies in the Al Sukhnah area of the eastern Homs desert. ISIS took control of SAA positions along the main road and the Dubayyat gas field. This from a Carnegie Middle East Center report in 2015 when ISIS was gaining ground in Syria (before Russian intervention in September 2015):

Faced with dense regime defenses around Shaer, the Islamic State shifted its focus to Palmyra, which has been the site of the most development in Syria’s gas sector since the mid-1990s. Fields in the area were expected to eventually produce 9 million cubic meters of crude gas per day. These included the Arak, Dubayat, Hail, Hayan, Jihar, al-Mahr, Najib, Sukhneh, and Abi Rabah fields, which according to a former industry insider have collectively been producing half of Syria’s output of natural raw and liquid petroleum gas. Palmyra is also the transit point for pipelines carrying gas from important fields in Hasakah and Deir Ezzor provinces in northeastern and eastern Syria respectively.

The US appears to be recycling their strategy of pre-Russian intervention to control the ‘hub between the extraction or transfer of virtually all of Syrian gas production and the processing and power plants further west that supply electricity and gas for domestic and industrial use’ to the most populated areas of Syria that are under the control of the Syrian government and military.

The SAA was forced to withdraw and to await reinforcements from the 18th Division and allied forces.

The ISIS terrorists were counter-attacked and the Syrian positions were recaptured in the southern outskirts of Al Sukhna. ISIS forces were routed with a high casualty rate.

Units of the SAA pursued the remnants of ISIS terrorists targeting them heavily with artillery to force their retreat to the 55 km exclusion zone established by the US occupation forces around the US allied Al Tanf military base on the borders of Iraq and Jordan.

ISIS terrorists were also besieged in small pockets around Al Dubayyat gas field. Russian and Syrian warplanes concurrently bombed ISIS groups emanating from the area of Al Tanf that were trying to reach Al Dubbayat to break the SAA siege on their militants.

On November 16th, Deputy Head of the Russian Reconciliation Center, Vadim Collet, gave a statement that:

“Armed groups trained at Al-Tanf base are planning to carry out sabotage acts in southern Syria against Syrian forces on main roads and fuel and energy facilities” adding that “the leadership of both Russian and Syrian forces will take preemptive measures to prevent armed provocations”

On the 13th November, at night, the SAA again repelled an ISIS attack on Point 10 in the Ja’ideen area in the eastern desert of Raqqa, on the administrative border with Homs province.

The joint Russian-Syrian warplanes targeted ISIS terrorists, forcing them to withdraw again to the open desert within the US controlled Al Tanf 55 km exclusion zone.

The Syrian Arab Army secured the area between the Al-Rasafa Castle and Al-Zamla village less than an hour after the failed infiltration operation, which demonstrates a significant improvement in the Syrian Arab Army’s ability to respond and deal with these attacks.

Later on November 14, an ISIS cell attacked a Russian patrol with an RPG on Al-Shaer gas field road in the desert. Three Russian soldiers were injured in the attack.

The level of attacks being carried out by the ISIS terrorists is indicative of both their presence in the areas occupied by US allied forces and of the control that the US alliance has over this terrorist faction operating in Syria and Iraq.

The ISIS attacks must be seen in conjunction with the US and Israeli direct attacks on SAA and allied military positions.

Israeli aggression against Syria since October 7th

After five Israeli attacks in October, four of which targeted civilian airports in Damascus and Aleppo, putting them out of service, Israel has attacked more than three times in November.

On November 8th at 22.50 Israel launched an attack on the positions of allied forces in the farmland extending from Sayeda Zainab and Aqraba, south-west of Damascus. They also targeted radar systems and air defence positions in Tal Qalib and Tal Al Massih in the Sweida district, southern Syria – scene of the most recent separatist protests backed and instigated by the US and Israel. Three civilians were injured in the Sweida attack.

In the early dawn hours of November 10th, Israel bombed two positions of the Syrian allies in the vicinity of Shanshar, south-west of Homs. This led to the deaths of seven Hezbollah soldiers and significant material damage.

Vanessa Beeley is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

27 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Richard Falk

21 Nov 2023 – Revised version of an interview by Mohaddeseh Pakravan of Mehr News Agency published in the Tehran Times on 16 Nov 2023.

1-How do you assess the international developments taking place around the Gaza war? Can the support of the United States and some European countries to the Israeli regime be justified?

There are two broad responses to this question. The first distinguishes between the Global West, including several EU countries, especially the US that are supportive enablers of Israel and the Global South in which there is present on every continent widespread opposition to the genocidal violence of the Israeli response to the October 7 Hamas attack.

The second line of response is to distinguish between the people in the countries supporting Israel and their governments. Even in the United States and Western Europe, street protests and demonstrations, as confirmed by public opinion polls, suggest that the people are calling for, even demanding, a Gaza ceasefire while governments continues to abstain or even continue to endorse Israel’s military operations despite its daily atrocities, although the support for Israel is expressed in a less unqualified way verbally as the Hamas attacks recedes from consciousness and as Palestinian bodies pile up, especially those of infant children.

The Israeli justification for unleashing this tsunami of violence against an entrapped civilian population was initially expressed in the vengeful language of its leaders in response to the Hamas attack. Such an outrageous embrace of violence failed to produce any dissenting comments from official circles in the Global West. Later Israel and supporters put forward somewhat more standard justifications based on its claimed right to defend itself, which seems to imply that Israel is exercising its international law right of self-defense, but the vague language used may be a deliberate attempt to gain greater latitude than is associated with the scope of self-defense under international law. Israel seems to be issuing itself a license for an unlimited recourse to punitive violence which is not permissible under international law. In any event, Israel’s disproportionate, indiscriminate, and grossly excessive violence that is further aggravated by the targeting of such protected sites as hospitals, mosques and churches, crowded refugee camps, UN buildings, and schools throughout Gaza. Such behavior discredits any Israeli defensive security justifications both legally and morally.

There are additional problems with Israel’s onslaught being carried out against the civilian population of Gaza under the glare of journalistic coverage and TV cameras. Because Israel remains the Occupying Power in Gaza it is subject to the legal framework set forth in the 4^th Geneva Convention on Belligerent Occupation, and possesses a primary duty that is spelled out in the provisions of the treaty to protect the wellbeing and rights of the occupied population. It has no right of self-defense as the concept is understood in international law, or set forth in the constraining language of Article 51 of the UN Charter, which presupposes a prior sustained armed attack across an international border by a foreign actor, and not just a single incident of the sort caused by  Hamas, an actor internal to Israel’s de facto domain of sovereign authority, although limited by its duties in relation to the administration of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which has been Israel’s responsibility since the end of the 1967 War.

In 2005 for a variety of reasons associated with a pragmatic approach to national interests, Israel implemented a ‘disengagement’ plan in Gaza, which included withdrawing its troops and security forces from occupied Palestinian territories to Israel proper and dismantling the unlawful settlements that had been established in Gaza between 1967 and 2005. Israel contended that these moves of disengagement ended its responsibilities under international humanitarian law as the Occupying Power. This view was rejected by the UN and the weight of assessment by international jurists because Israel retained effective control over the borders, including the entry and exit of persons and traded goods, as well as exerting its authority to impose continuing control of Gaza’s air space and coastal waters, including a highly restrictive blockade since 2007, confining the identity of Hamas to that of ‘terrorists’ despite its success in internationally monitored election in 2006. Israel made no secret of its policy of keeping the population on what governmental officials called ‘a subsistence diet’ as periodically reinforced by major military incursions luridly described by Tel Aviv as ‘mowing the lawn.’ Such genocidal tropes anticipate the behavior and language relied upon in the ongoing all out attack on Gaza.

From 1967 until the present there have been resistance initiatives undertaken by the Palestinians in Gaza, including the Intifada of 1987, the Great March of Return in 2018, and rocket launches that did minimal damage and always were either in response to Israeli provocations or followed by disproportionate Israel air strikes. Even after its disengagement plan was put in operation the people of Gaza were subjected to a variety of serious forms of collective punishment as prohibited by Ariticle 33 of Geneva IV. The overall conditions of Gaza led prominent international observers to describe  Gaza ‘the world’s largest open air prison,’ a damning indictment of Israel’s dereliction of its duties as Occupying Power.

By way of open diplomacy and by concerted recourse to back channel efforts Hamas from the time of its election victory in 2006 put forward a variety of proposals for an extended ceasefire for as long as 50 years, but Israel showed no interest in exploring such a prospect.

During this period UN Special Rapporteurs chosen by the Human Rights Commission in Geneva reported on Israeli violations of human rights, making various policy recommendations that were never carried out due to geopolitical leverage exerted to insulate Israel from legal accountability.

2-Although the Israeli regime is clearly violating international law, international organizations including the United Nations have failed to take a decisive practical measure against Tel Aviv. Why cannot such organizations take serious measures to stop Israeli crimes?

In the last years i=of World War II the founders designed the UN to be weak regarding the management of power and strategic rivalry, giving a veto power in the Security Council to the winners in the war, presumed then to be the most powerful and dangerous countries in the world. This view seemed to reflect accurately power hierarchies as of 1945. In one respect it was confirm by the fact of the first five nuclear powers were the same five countries given this privileged status in the UN System.

Such an arrangement was also expressed by making the General Assembly’s authority expressly limited to making recommendations and specific fact-finding initiatives despite it being the UN political organ most representative of the peoples of the world. It is made clear in numerous provisions of the Charter that the Organization formally defers to the primacy of geopolitics in a large variety of situations that occur within the UN, including the selection of the Secretary-General, the amendment of the Charter and reform of the UN, the enforcement of International Court of Justice decisions, and the implementation of policy recommendations from the various entities comprising the UN System. This means in practice, the UN can only be effective when P5 reach agreement, and paralyzed when disagreement is fundamental as it is with respect to the present unfolding genocide victimizing the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza, and less directly the whole of the Palestinian presence in both the entire occupied territories and Israel itself.

Even if the Security Council reaches an agreement, the UN does not. possess the capabilities to implement its decisions without the voluntary provision of funds and personnel for peacekeeping and humanitarian undertakings, which presupposes the presence of a supportive political will. The UN can be effective, perhaps too effective, if a Security Council resolution as was the case in 2011, which authorized a limited intervention in Libya. The use of force was implemented by NATO capabilities in a manner that greatly exceeded what the Security Council, producing a regime-changing intervention, angering countries that had abstained and undermining trust among the P5, as well as causing chaos in the country that has lasted up to the present. In the Libyan case the UN allowed itself to be geopolitically manipulated by NATO seeking to legitimize its regime-changing mission that violated Libya’s sovereign rights.

3- How successful do you see the Zionist-affiliated world stream media in justifying the Israeli regime’s brutal attacks on civilians in Gaza?

The global media, by and large, did provide credibility for the initial phases of the Israeli response. It became harder to do this as the narrative about the Hamas attack of October 7 receded in time and the Israeli attack took on such visibly vicious characteristics of disproportionate violence and genocide, given an explicit transparency by the statements of numerous Israeli leaders including Netanyahu and the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant. Gallant issued a notorious decree denying the people of Gaza food, fuel, and electricity and comparing the beleaguered Palestinian civilians to ‘human animals’ who deserved to be treated “accordingly”, a dehumanizing language confirming genocidal intent. Such intent was manifest in the repeated attacks on prohibited targets, producing high casualties including among children, sick and disabled Palestinians, health and aid workers, and those sheltering in UN buildings and hospitals. Israel completely abandoned the canons of responsible statecraft and made no effort to uphold the duties of an Occupying Power. Even before this eruption the UN was seeking guidance from the ICJ and a specially constituted Commission of Inquiry as to whether the UN should formally terminate Israel’s status as Occupying Power and call for Israel’s withdrawal to its former borders from the three Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. It should be remembered that an unanimous Security Council Resolution, 242, anticipating a temporary occupation followed by such a withdrawal. Such thinking was shaped by the view that international law prohibited the acquisition of foreign territory by forcible means. It should also be appreciated that Israel was deemed an apartheid by a wide range of respected civil society human rights civil society non-governmental organizations, which is a serious crime that is continuous as embedded in the structure of Israel’s system of oppressive control of the Palestinian people in their distinct circumstances.

4-What Should Muslim leading countries do to stop Israeli crimes?

This is the most important challenge faced by Muslim majority countries since the end of the Cold War. In essence, the governments of Muslim countries should feel obligated to do more than call for a ceasefire, but they should certainly at least do this, and have yet to do. More is needed by way of punitive and substantive action in the form of boycotts and sanctions, censure for genocide to halt and oppose the Israeli war machine. More is also needed as to the future, ideally accountability for Israel, major reconstruction aid and pressure for a just peace that realizes the Palestinian right of self-determination. This is a. moment of truth for the entire world, and it could become a turning point for a better future for humanity, but only if actions taken are done to oppose Israel’s genocidal campaign in a spirit of urgency, sacrifice, sufficiency, and a re-humanizing solidarity. We cannot let ourselves, wherever located, become resigned to a toxic fate for the Palestinians imposed by Israeli criminality. Better to heed the words and slogans of the enraged masses in the streets of cities throughout the world than resign ourselves to the rhetoric of governmental leaders that condemns but stays on the sidelines. Of course, worse than a failure of commitment to take action in opposition to genocide and Palestinian victimization, is the continuing unwillingness of leading Western countries to show concern for acute and massive patterns of victimization except with respect to the hostages seized by Hamas in the course of their attack that combined armed resistance with terrifying criminal acts of violence inflicted on innocent Jewish civilians as well as on Israeli military forces.

From a Western perspective it may be relevant to reconsider the Huntington contention that after the Cold War the West would face a challenge from the Islamic world, what he labeled ‘a clash of civilizations’ along the faultlines where Muslim majority countries are in direct contact with Western states. It is notable that the Hamas allies in Gaza are all Muslim, and the allies of Israel are European or whit settler colonial countries.

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

27 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Craig Murray

There is no room to doubt that Israel’s bombing of Palestinian civilians and depriving them of food, water and other necessities of life are grounds to invoke the 1948 Genocide Convention. 

19 Nov 2023 – There are 149 states party to the Genocide Convention. Every one of them has the right to call out the genocide in progress in Gaza and report it to the United Nations.

In the event that another state party disputes the claim of genocide — and Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are all states party — then the International Court of Justice is required to adjudicate on “the responsibility of a State for genocide.”

These are the relevant articles of the genocide convention:

“Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.

Article IX
Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.”

Note that here “parties to the dispute” means the states disputing the facts of genocide, not the parties to the genocide/conflict. Any single state party is able to invoke the convention.

There is no doubt that Israel’s actions amount to genocide. Numerous international law experts have said so and genocidal intent has been directly expressed by numerous Israeli ministers, generals and public officials.

Definition of Genocide

This is the definition of genocide in international law, from the Genocide Convention:

“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”

I can see no room to doubt whatsoever that Israel’s current campaign of bombing of civilians and of the deprivation of food, water and other necessities of life to Palestinians amounts to genocide under articles II a), b) and c).

It is also worth considering Articles III and IV:

“Article III
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

Article IV
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.”

There is, at the very least, a strong prima facie case that the actions of the United States and United Kingdom and others, in openly providing direct military support to be used in genocide, are complicit in genocide.

The point of Article IV is that individuals are responsible, not just states. So Israel’s Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak bear individual responsibility. So, indeed, do all those who have been calling for the destruction of the Palestinians.

27 November 2023

Source: transcend.org