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By Julia Conley

“Israeli doctors who signed a letter promoting [the] bombing of hospitals with patients inside have committed a betrayal to their noble profession and bear responsibility,” said a group of doctors in Gaza.

6 Nov 2023 – Physicians who have been working for four weeks to save as many lives as possible from Israel’s “complete siege” of Gaza, even as the healthcare system collapses around them, responded on Monday to a statement by a group of Israeli doctors who over the weekend called for the bombing of a hospital in the besieged territory.

“We as doctors are ambassadors of peace. We save lives,” said the doctors, led by Dr. Marwan Shafiq Al-Ham, director of Muhammad Yusuf Al-Najjar Hospital, in a statement. “Israeli doctors who signed a letter promoting [the] bombing of hospitals with patients inside have committed a betrayal to their noble profession and bear responsibility.”

The medical providers called on the World Health Organization and human rights groups that work in the healthcare field to help hold the signers of the letter accountable.

The weekend letter was signed by about 100 members of a group called Doctors for the Rights of Israeli Soldiers and was first reported Sunday by the Israeli outlet HaMedash.

The doctors claimed the bombing of al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza, was a “legitimate right” of Israel because it serves as a base for “Palestinian armed groups.”

“The residents of Gaza saw fit to turn hospitals into terrorist nests to take advantage of western morality, they are the ones who brought destruction upon themselves; terrorism must be eliminated everywhere,” reads the letter. “Attacking terrorist headquarters is the right and the duty of the Israeli army.”

An ambulance convoy outside the hospital was bombed last Friday, with Israel claiming an ambulance was carrying Hamas fighters. Officials at al-Shifa said the convoy was carrying wounded civilians to Egypt via the Rafah crossing for treatment, as medical supplies are running extremely low in Gaza.

At least 15 Palestinians were killed and 60 were injured in the bombing.

The signatories of the Israeli letter, said the doctors in Gaza, are “fully responsible if, God forbid, something happens to the hospitals.”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which has led protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and has long called for an end to the country’s apartheid policies in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the doctors who signed the letter are “derelict in their duty” to protect human lives.

“We want to build a world that upholds the sanctity of life—equally, for everyone—not one that promotes the extermination of Palestinians,” said JVP. “And we won’t stop fighting until we get justice, for Palestinians and for all people.”

Al Jazeera journalist Sana Saeed said Israel’s bombing of hospitals and claims that they are terrorist targets has aimed to “dehumanize” medical workers as they’ve “put their lives on the line” for the more than 2 million people—about half of them children—who live in Gaza.

“We have sworn to protect human lives,” said the doctors in Gaza. “Therefore, it is not permissible to betray the oath and the profession.”

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

13 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

 

By Jonathan Cook

It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account of that day.

2 Nov 2023 – The BBC’s Lucy Williamson was taken once again this week to view the terrible destruction at a kibbutz community just outside Gaza attacked on October 7. As we have been shown so many times before, the Israeli homes were riddled with automatic fire, both inside and out. Sections of concrete wall had holes in them, or had collapsed entirely. And parts of the buildings that were still standing were deeply charred. It looked like a small snapshot of the current horrors in Gaza.

There is a possible reason for those similarities – one that the BBC is studiously failing to report, despite mounting evidence from a variety of sources, including the Israeli media. Instead the BBC is sticking resolutely to a narrative crafted for them, and the rest of the western media, by the Israeli military: that Hamas alone caused all this destruction.

Simply repeating that narrative without any caveats has by now reached the level of journalistic malpractice. And yet that is precisely what the BBC does night after night.

Just a cursory look at the wreckage in the various kibbutz communities that were attacked that day should raise questions in the mind of any good reporter. Were Palestinian militants in a position to actually inflict physical damage to that degree and extent with the kind of light weapons they carried?

And if not, who else was in a position to wreak such havoc other than Israel?

A separate question that good journalists ought to be asking is this: What was the purpose of such damage? What did the Palestinian militants hope to achieve by it?

The implicit answer the media is supplying is also the answer the Israeli military wants western publics to hear: that Hamas engaged in an orgy of gratuitious killing and savagery because … well, let’s say the quiet part out loud: because Palestinians are inherently savage.

With that as the implicit narrative, western politicians have been handed a licence to cheerlead Israel as it murders a Palestinian child in Gaza every few minutes. Savages only understand the language of savagery, after all.

Brutal tango

For this reason alone, any journalist who wishes to avoid colluding in the genocide unfolding in Gaza ought to be increasingly wary of simply repeating the Israeli military’s claims about what happened on October 7. Certainly, they should not credulously regurgitate the latest agitprop from the IDF press office, as the BBC is so evidently doing.

What we know from a growing body of evidence gleaned from the Israeli media and Israeli eyewitnesses – carefully laid out, for example, in this report from Max Blumenthal – is that the Israeli military was completely blindsided by that day’s events. Heavy artillery, including tanks and attack helicopters, was called in to deal with Hamas. That appears to have been a straightforward decision in regard to the military bases Hamas had overrun.

Israel has a long-standing policy of seeking to prevent Israeli soldiers from being taken captive – chiefly, because of the high price Israeli society insists on paying to ensure soldiers are returned. For decades, the military’s so-called “Hannibal procedure” has directed Israeli troops to kill fellow soldiers rather than allow them to be taken captive. For the same reason, Hamas expends a great deal of energy in trying to find innovative ways to seize soldiers.

The two sides are essentially engaged in a brutal tango in which each understands the other’s dance moves.

Given Hamas’ situation, effectively managing the Israeli-controlled concentration camp of Gaza, it has limited resistance strategies available to it. Capturing Israeli soldiers maximises its leverage. They can be traded for the release of many of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in jails inside Israel, in breach of international law. In addition, in the negotiations, Hamas usually hopes to win an easing of Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza.

To avert this scenario, Israeli commanders reportedly called in the attack helicopters on the military bases overwhelmed by Hamas on October 7. The helicopters appear to have fired indiscriminately, despite the risk posed to the Israeli soldiers in the base who were still alive. Israel’s was a scorched-earth policy to stop Hamas achieving its aims. That may, in part, explain the very large proportion of Israeli soldiers among the 1,300 killed that day.

Charred bodies

But what about the situation in the kibbutz communities? By the time the army arrived and was in position, Hamas was well dug in. It had taken the inhabitants as hostages inside their own homes. Israeli eyewitness testimony and media reports suggest Hamas was almost certainly trying to negotiate safe passage back into Gaza, using the Israeli civilians as human shields. The civilians were the Hamas fighters’ only ticket out, and they could be converted later into bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Watch the video about 7 October YouTube would rather you didn’t see

The evidence – from Israeli meda reports and eyewitnesses, as well as a host of visual clues from the crime scene itself – tell a far more complex story than the one presented nightly on the BBC.

Did the Israeli military fire into the Hamas-controlled civilian homes in the same fashion as it had fired into its own military bases, and with the same disregard for the safety of Israelis inside? Was the goal in each case to prevent at all costs Hamas taking hostages whose release would require a very high price from Israel?

Kibbutz Be’eri has been a favoured destination for BBC reporters keen to illustrate Hamas’ barbarity. It is where Lucy Williamson headed again this week. And yet none of her reporting highlighted comments made to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper by Tuval Escapa, the kibbutz’s security coordinator. He said Israeli military commanders had ordered the “shelling [of] houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages”.

That echoed the testimony of Yasmin Porat, who sought shelter in Be’eri from the nearby Nova music festival. She told Israeli Radio that once Israeli special forces arrived: “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages because there was very, very heavy crossfire.”

Survivor Speaks: Israeli forces shot their own civilians

Are the images of charred bodies presented by Williamson, accompanied by a warning of their graphic, upsetting nature, incontrovertible proof that Hamas behaved like monsters, bent on the most twisted kind of vengeance? Or might those blackened remains be evidence that Israeli civilians and Hamas fighters burned alongside each other, after they were engulfed in flames caused by Israeli shelling of the houses?

Israel will not agree to an independent investigation so a definitive answer will never be forthcoming. But that does not absolve the media of their professional and moral duty to be cautious.

‘Hamas as savages’

Consider for a moment the stark contrast in the western media’s treatment of events on October 7 and its treatment of the strike on the car park at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in northern Gaza on October 17, in which hundreds of Palestinians were reported killed.

In telling contrast, the western media have not been willing to raise even a single question about what happened on October 7. They have enthusiastically attributed every horror that day to Hamas. They have ignored the reality of utter chaos that reigned for many hours and the potential for poor, desperate and morally dubious decision-making by the Israeli military.

In fact, the media have gone much further. In advancing the narrative of “Hamas as savages”, they have promoted obvious fictions, such as the story that “Hamas beheaded 40 babies”. That piece of fake news was even taken up briefly by US President Joe Biden, before it was quietly walked back by his officials.

Similarly, it is still a popular throwaway line among the western commentariat that “Hamas carried out rapes”, though once again the allegation is evidence-free so far.

We should be clear. If Israel had serious evidence for either of these claims, it would be aggressively promoting it. Instead, it is doing the next best thing: letting innuendo gently sink into the audience’s subconscious, settling there as a prejudice that cannot be interrogated.

Hamas undoubtedly committed war crimes on October 7 – not least, by taking civilians as human shields. But that kind of crime is one we are familiar with, one “ordinary” enough that the Israel military has been regularly documented carrying it out too. The practice of Israeli soldiers taking Palestinians as human shields goes under various names, such as the “neighbour procedure” and the “early warning procedure”.

Worse atrocities may have happened too, especially given the unexpected scale of Hamas’ success in breaking out of Gaza. Large numbers of Palestinians escaped the enclave, some of them doubtless armed civilians with no connection to the operation. In such circumstances, it would be surprising if there were no examples of the headline-grabbing atrocities being committed.

The issue is whether such atrocities were planned and systematic, as Israel claims and the western media repeats, or examples of rogue actions by individuals or groups. If the latter, Israel would be in no position to judge. Israel’s own history is littered with examples of such crimes, including the documented case of an Israeli army unit taking captive a Bedouin girl in 1949 and repeatedly gang-raping her.

Savagery would certainly not be a uniquely Hamas trait. Following the October 7 attack, videos have been emerging of systematic abuses of any Hamas fighters captured, whether alive or dead. Images show them being beaten and tortured in public for the gratification of onlookers, when there is clearly not even the pretence of information gathering. Others show the bodies of Hamas fighters being defiled and mutilated.

No one can claim the moral high ground here.

What the media’s uncritical promotion of Israel’s “Hamas as savages” narrative has achieved is something sinister – and all too familiar from the West’s long colonial history. It has been used to demonise a whole people, presenting them either as barbarians or as the willing protectors and enablers of barbarism.

The “savages” narrative is being weaponised by Israel to justify its mounting campaign of atrocities in Gaza. Which is why it is so important that journalists don’t simply allow themselves to be spoonfed. Far too much is at stake.

Hamas committed war crimes on October 7 on a scale that is unprecedented for any Palestinian group. But there is little more than Israeli narrative spin so far to suggest that there was an unparalleled depravity to Hamas’ actions. Certainly from what we know, it is hard to see that anything Hamas did that day was worse, or more savage, than what Israel has been doing daily in Gaza for weeks.

And Israel’s actions – from bombing Palestinian families to starving them of food and water – has the blessing of every major western politician.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.

13 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Phil Wilayto

10 Nov 2023 – This November 2 marked 106 years since one Englishman gave another Englishman the right to establish a “homeland” for his people. The first Englishman was Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, the second was Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community.

But the land targeted for that homeland in the Balfour Declaration wasn’t in England. It was in the Middle East. And it already was home to millions of people.

For centuries, Palestine had been under the control of the Ottoman Empire. When that entity collapsed at the end of World War I, England and France carved it up into new, separate countries, installed leaders and through them sought to control the entire Middle East. But not everyone got a country. Many were left out, including the Palestinians.

Not all Palestinians were Arab and not all were Muslim. There were also Christians and Jews, all of whom had lived together in relative harmony for centuries. That ended with the mass immigration of European Jews to Palestine and their increasing demand, not for a homeland, but for a state. That demand increased greatly after the horrific events of World War II when Germany – a European country – opened a campaign of genocide against the Jewish people, taking the lives of some 6 million, along with millions of others.

The Zionists got their country, the Palestinians resisted, and there has been conflict ever since – 75 years of repression against the Arab Palestinians.

Today, of the estimated 14.3 million Palestinians in the world, half live in historic Palestine, while the other half live in exile, forbidden by Israel to return home.

Those who live in the state of Israel are treated as second-class citizens. Those who live in what are called the Occupied Territories are subject to varying degrees of repression, including murder by fanatical “settlers” in the West Bank and a 16-year, militarily enforced blockade in the Gaza Strip.

This is the background to the events of Oct. 7, when hundreds of Hamas militants broke out of Gaza and attacked Israeli villages, many of which had been Arab villages before the original inhabitants were driven out, and an all-night dance party being held just three miles outside the fence that imprisons the 2.3 million people of Gaza.

The Defenders mourn the loss of any human life. We especially condemn the targeting of children, the ultimate innocents.

But to condemn Hamas for its Oct. 7 attacks would mean we would also have to condemn the slave rebellions, planned and actual, led by Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey and Gabriel, along with John Brown, Harriett Tubman, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and all other rebellions by oppressed peoples against their oppressors.

Now we are witnessing the most barbaric ethnic cleansing of a people since the years of Nazi Germany: the mass murder of the Palestinians trapped in the tiny Gaza Strip. As we go to press, the Gaza Health Ministry has announced that more than 10,000 people have been killed by the Israeli air strikes. Forty percent were children. Children.

And while this carnage continues, day after day, the U.S. government leaders are arguing, not about how to stop the killing, but how they can send MORE military and financial support to Israel. Washington has mobilized a massive naval force in the eastern Mediterranean to prevent any other country from coming to the aid of the Palestinians. It has repeatedly blocked resolutions in the U.N. Security Council calling for a ceasefire. And all this is on top of sending $3.8 billion every year to Israel, making it the largest recipient of U.S. foreign “aid.”

Every bomb that is dropped on Gaza, every bullet that rips open another Palestinian child, every drop of searing white phosphorus, every blast of gas forced into the tunnels of Gaza is paid for with our tax dollars. Willingly or unwillingly, WE are funding this carnage.

Here in Virginia, the country’s most militarized state, Gov. Glenn Youngkin ordered that U.S. and Virginia flags be flown at half-staff on all state and local buildings and grounds to honor the Israeli lives lost “in the horrific terror attack committed against Israel.” But there was no mention of the horrific terror attacks that Israeli settlers had been carrying out for months against Palestinians in the West Bank. And no tears for the 10,000 slaughtered in Gaza. Palestinian lives don’t matter?

And now Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has taken time out from collecting “surplus” police gear to send to Israel to open an investigation into the Virginia-based organization American Muslims for Palestine, which has been calling for protests against the Gaza massacre, including here in Richmond.

Meanwhile, Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner have been promoting sending more military aid to Israel. (See our Open Letter on page 15.)

The longer this madness goes on, the less likely it will be that Muslims, Christians and Jews will once again be able to live together, in Palestine, in peace. Far from being a place of refuge, Israel has proven to be a death trap for the Jewish people. Antisemitism, always present, is on the rise, in this country and around the world, as is Islamophobia. All true progressives must condemn and act against both forms of racism.

In this context, we are greatly heartened by the militant actions of members of Jewish Voice for Peace in occupying the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., and Grand Central Station and the Statue of Liberty in New York City. Their cry is “Not in our Name!”

These truly are difficult times, and they are likely to get worse. Those of us who consider ourselves conscious – “woke” – and committed to the struggle for social justice need to redouble our vigilance, our activity and our preparations for the future.

And we all need to oppose the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

13 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By CNN

7 Nov 2023

CNN’s Anderson Cooper speaks with Emily Callahan, a US nurse with Doctors Without Borders, who gives a harrowing description of what she witnessed in Gaza as she was attempting to get out of the area.

American nurse who got out of Gaza describes desperation she saw

13 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By The Grayzone

30 Oct 2023

Renowned psychiatrist and author Gabor Maté joins us to offer his reflections on Israel’s gruesome military operation in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Dr. Gabor Mate: this is genocide

A renowned speaker, bestselling author, and a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, Hungarian-Canadian physician Dr. Gabor Maté (born 6 Jan 1944) is one of the wisest and most humane psychiatric analysts of the present. He is an expert on a range of topics including addiction, stress, childhood development, attention deficit disorder, chronic illness, and parental relations. https://drgabormate.com/

13 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

11 Nov 2023 – The Israeli government just downgraded the number of those killed in October 7 attack to 1200 from 1400. Haaretz Newspaper was able to name less than 980 (some yet to be identified). George Galloway wrote: “The foul allegations of rape have been dropped by the Israeli government. The forty beheaded babies has been downscaled to one dead baby, not beheaded, and killed by persons unknown.” Does the truth of what happened on October 7 matter? Yes it does because it is used to justify an ongoing genocide (of course nothing justifies genocide even exaggerated and fabricated stories). But why do many western leaders and western media parrot Israeli lies and not just about 7 October but for the past 75 years of committing atrocities against a largely defenseless Palestinian population? DOES THE TRUTH MATTER? The links below are a glimpse of the overwhelming body of evidence about Israeli/Zionist lies. You be the judge. In the end I will say why this is important if not CRITICAL to achieve peace.

The Zionist movement literally threw Palestinians into the sea (loading boats in Haifa and Jaffa) in 1948 to sent them to Lebanon and Gaza, Only AFTER this ethnic cleansing, they came up with the lie that Palestinians were going to throw Jews into the sea (see http://qumsiyeh.org/sharingthelandofcanaan/).

From these early lies sprung many others over the past 75 years. A book should be written about this as it is the most remarkable set of orchestrated lies in the history of global colonization. Here are some information and links from ongaza.org about lies and then I add a comment on why these lies will contribute to the end of the Israeli apartheid regime. Since western media puppets always start with the events of October 7, ignore history, ignore lies, and ignore preplanned and executed genocide, we can start with 7 October.lies about Hamas atrocities (beheading 40 babies, raping women, burning people alive etc.):
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/
https://new.thecradle.co/articles/what-really-happened-on-7th-october
see also Why is Israel trying to HIDE this hostage interview?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HugMS0k0kB4
https://www.jta.org/2023/10/16/israel/i-decided-to-play-dead-my-son-is-still-missing-a-survivors-account-from-kibbutz-nir-oz
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231030-report-7-october-testimonies-strikes-major-blow-to-israeli-narrative/
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/hostages-how-the-u-s-media-is-distorting-the-news-from-palestine/
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/no-proof-of-beheaded-israeli-babies-white-house-backtracks-on-bidens-comments-breaking
https://fair.org/home/unconfirmed-beheaded-babies-report-helped-justify-israeli-slaughter/

Fabricating a picture of a burnt baby https://www.facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9/posts/pfbid0471gNBRhrK4iySTFbvt5qNvet6GMgywH7TdUnRsqVw7G1UWgdAA6y9SjsFjGHBnol

Israeli forces shot at their own civilians
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861
also look up Hannibal doctrine.There were false flag operations like the Lavon Affair, or the bombing of Jewish community centers in Iraq to blame it on locals and scare Iraqi Jews to leave their country. Hasbara (propaganda) is a very common Zionist tactic to advance their project of colonization. During the October 2023 incidents Israeli leaders lied about Hamas killing and beheading babies, about Israeli soldiers killing Israeli citizens, or even about wanting peace and set the stage for ongoing genocide.

The Lavon Affair: Israel and Terror in Egypt http://www.mideastweb.org/lavon.htm
Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (about Israel’s false flag operations targeting Jews to drive them out of Iraq) https://books.google.ps/books?id=XTWUEAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/avi-shlaim-proof-israel-zionist-involvement-iraq-jews-attacks
Israel killed an American citizen and lied about it https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/24/middleeast/shireen-abu-akleh-jenin-killing-investigation-cmd-intl/index.html
This UN report on the shelling of a UN Compound that killed civilians (Qana massacre 1996 that contradict Israeli lies).https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N96/117/52/IMG/N9611752.pdf
https://youtu.be/ergrmLKmv7IThe current prime Minister Netanyahu is well known for lying to foreigners. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (7/15/01) reported that: “… giving his audience (Likud leaders) a bit of advice on how to deal with foreign interviewers (Benjamin Netanyahu said): ‘Always, irrespective of whether you’re right or not, you must always present your side as right’”.
In private and thinking he is not taped, he gives a more candid assessment of where he stands: https://www.facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9/posts/10160919216451181
https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1711750682733355146

Israel’s history of lies
https://imeu.org/article/fact-sheet-israels-history-of-spreading-disinformation
Israel lies to manufacture a case for genocide

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/12/israel-is-manufacturing-a-case-for-genocide

By Richard Falk

Published in Middle East Eye on 3 Nov 2023 with the title “Israel-Palestine war: Israel’s endgame is much more sinister than restoring ‘security.’”

*******************************

3 Nov 2023 – UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was recently pilloried by Israel because he stated a truism, observing that the 7 October Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum”.

Guterres was calling the world’s attention to Israel’s long record of severe criminal provocations in occupied Palestine, which have been occurring ever since it became the occupying power after the 1967 war.

The occupier, a role expected to be temporary, is entrusted in such circumstances with upholding international humanitarian law by ensuring the security and safety of the occupied civilian population, as spelled out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel reacted so angrily to Guterres’ entirely appropriate and accurate remarks because they could be interpreted as implying that Israel “had it coming” in view of its severe and varied abuses against people in the occupied Palestinian territories, most flagrantly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

After all, if Israel could present itself to the world as an innocent victim of the 7 October attack – an incident that was itself replete with war crimes – it could reasonably hope to gain carte blanche from its patrons in the West to retaliate as it pleased, without being bothered by the restraints of international law, UN authority, or common morality.

Indeed, Israel responded to the 7 October attack with its typical skill in manipulating the global discourse that shapes public opinion and guides the foreign policies of many important countries. Such tactics seem almost superfluous here, as the US and EU swiftly issued blanket approval for whatever Israel did in response, however vengeful, cruel or unrelated to restoring Israeli border security.

Guterres’s UN speech had such a dramatic impact because it punctured Israel’s balloon of artfully constructed innocence, in which the terror attack came out of the blue. This exclusion of context diverted attention from the devastation of Gaza and the genocidal assault on its overwhelmingly innocent, and long-victimised, population of 2.3 million.

Extraordinary lapses

What I find strange and disturbing is that, despite the consensus that the Palestinian fighters’ attack became feasible only because of extraordinary lapses in Israel’s supposedly second-to-none intelligence capabilities and tight border security, this factor has rarely been discussed since that day.

Instead of the morning after being filled with vengeful fury, why wasn’t the focus within Israel and elsewhere on taking emergency action to restore Israeli security by correcting these costly lapses, which would seem to be the most effective way to assure that nothing comparable to 7 October could happen again?

I can understand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctance to stress this explanation or advocate this form of response, as it would be tantamount to a confession of his personal co-responsibility for the tragedy traumatically experienced by Israel at its supposedly impenetrable border.

But what of others in Israel, and among its supporting governments? Undoubtedly, Israel is in all likelihood devoting all means at its disposal, with a sense of urgency, to close these incredible gaps in its intelligence system, and to beef up its military capabilities along Gaza’s comparatively short borders.

It is not necessary to be a security wonk to conclude that dealing reliably with these security issues would do more to prevent and deter future Palestinian fighters attacks, than this ongoing saga of inflicting devastating punishment on the Palestinian population of Gaza, very few of whom are involved with the military wing of Hamas.

Genocidal fury

Netanyahu has lent further plausibility to such speculation by presenting a map of the Middle East without Palestine included, effectively erasing Palestinians from their own homeland, during a September UN speech, where he spoke of a new peace in the Middle East amid the prospect of Israel-Saudi Arabia normalisation. His presentation amounted to an implicit denial of the UN consensus on the two-state formula as a roadmap for peace.

Meanwhile, the genocidal fury of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack is enraging people across the Arab world, and indeed the world over, even in western countries. But after more than three weeks of merciless bombardment, total siege and mass forced displacement, Israel’s discretion to unleash this torrent of violence on Gaza has yet to be challenged by its western supporters.

The US in particular is backing Israel at the UN, using its veto as needed in the Security Council, and voting with almost no solidarity from major countries against a ceasefire at the General Assembly. Even France voted for the General Assembly resolution, and the UK had the minimal decency to abstain, both likely reacting pragmatically to the populist pressures mounted by large and angry street demonstrations at home.

It has also been forgotten in reacting to Israel’s tactics in Gaza that from day one, the extremist government has initiated a shocking series of violent provocations across the occupied West Bank. Many have interpreted this undisguised unleashing of settler violence as part of the endgame of the Zionist project, aimed at achieving victory over the remnants of Palestinian resistance.

There is little reason to doubt that Israel deliberately overreacted to 7 October by immediately engaging in a genocidal response, particularly if its purpose was to divert attention from the escalation of West Bank settler violence, exacerbated by the government’s distribution of guns to “civilian security teams”.

The Israeli government’s ultimate plan seems to be to end once and for all UN partition fantasies, lending authority to the Zionist maximalist goal of annexation or total subjugation of West Bank Palestinians. In effect, as morbid as it seems, the Israeli leadership seized the occasion of 7 October to “finish the job” by committing genocide in Gaza, under the guise that Hamas was such a danger as to justify not only its destruction, but this indiscriminate onslaught against the whole population.

My analysis leads me to conclude that this ongoing war is not primarily about security in Gaza or security threats posed by Hamas, but rather about something much more sinister and absurdly cynical.

Israel has seized this opportunity to fulfill Zionist territorial ambitions amid “the fog of war” by inducing one last surge of Palestinian catastrophic dispossession. Whether it is called “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” is of secondary importance, although it already qualifies as the predominant humanitarian catastrophe of the 21stcentury.

In effect, the Palestinian people are being victimised by two convergent catastrophes: one political, the other humanitarian.

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.

13 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Jeremy Corbyn

We need a ceasefire. The existence of the Palestinian people is at stake.

 6 Nov 2023 – My last visit to Al-Shati refugee camp was early 2013. Located on the Mediterranean coast in the north of Gaza, Al-Shati was otherwise known as “Beach Camp”. Vendors sold fruit under multi-coloured parasols. Cats slept in the middle of narrow alleys. Children jostled over skipping rope in the shade.

Beach Camp was established in 1948 after 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in the Nakba. Initially, the camp accommodated around 23,000 refugees. In the following seven decades, that number grew to 90,000, cramped inside 0.5 square kilometres (0.2 square miles) of land – 70 times more populated than London’s city centre.

People in Gaza have been living under a blockade for the past 16 years and the Israeli occupation controls most of what goes in and out of Gaza. Beach Camp was no different – and people there largely relied on aid and services from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to survive, including a health centre, a food distribution centre and several school buildings.

Beach Camp Primary School was beautifully maintained. I was allowed up onto the roof, where I could see the fence with Israel on one side. Out to sea were several Israeli patrol boats keeping Palestinian fishermen from sailing more than six nautical miles out.

The school was run by inspiring and hard-working teachers, whose philosophy was to create a calm atmosphere for discovery, music, theatre and art. Some of the students showed me their work. Many were drawings of planes, fences and bombs. But there were other drawings too: of their parents, their brothers, their sisters and their friends. All of the children, obviously, had underlying trauma, but they also had a desire to learn, share and play.

On October 9, two days after the deplorable attack by Hamas in southern Israel, there were reports of an Israeli air strike on Beach Camp. This wasn’t the first strike on the camp. In May 2021, at least 10 Palestinians, eight of whom were children, were killed in an air strike. Nor was it the last. Beach Camp has been repeatedly targeted in the past three weeks.

When I hear news of bombardment in Gaza, I think about that school at Beach Camp. I don’t know if it is still there. I don’t know if those children and teachers are still alive. I don’t know.

The Israeli army has dropped 25,000 tonnes of bombs onto a tiny strip of land, populated by 2.3 million people. There is no meaningful sense whatsoever that they are trying to avoid civilian deaths. More than 9,900 people in Gaza have been killed, including more than 4,800 children.

Survivors still under siege are running out of the basic means of survival: water, fuel, food and medical supplies. Doctors are performing surgery without anaesthesia. Mothers are watching their babies fight for survival in incubators running out of electricity. People are being forced to drink seawater. More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes.

The attack by Hamas, which killed 1,400 Israelis and took 200 hostages, was utterly appalling and must be condemned. The victims and hostages are young people who wanted to listen to music. They are nieces and nephews. They are jewellery designers. They are factory workers. They are peace campaigners. The pain and anguish that their families feel will last forever.

This cannot justify the indiscriminate bombing and starvation of the Palestinian people, who are being punished for a heinous crime they did not commit. In the aftermath of horror, we need voices for de-escalation and peace. Instead, politicians around the world continue to give the Israeli government the green light to starve and slaughter the Palestinian people in the name of self-defence.

Every person in Gaza has a name and a face; we grieve for babies in incubators just as deeply as we grieve for middle-aged men killed crossing the road. In any case, we are mourning the theft of beautiful, creative lives. Artists whose paintings we will never see. Singers whose songs we will never sing. Authors whose books we will never read. Chefs whose kunafa we will never eat. Teachers whose lessons we will never learn.

For as long as I can remember, Gaza has been reduced on our TV screens to a site of debris and despair, but underneath the rubble are the quiet, unremarkable foundations of our shared humanity. Morning coffee rounds, hot showers, shopping trips, card games and bedtime stories. Friendship, heartbreak, love, disappointment, boredom and suspense. Schools, mosques, theatres, universities, libraries, playgrounds and hospitals. Hopes, dreams, fears, cares and joys. We are not just witnessing mass death. We are witnessing the erasure of an entire culture, an identity and a people.

The International Criminal Court defines genocide according to several criteria. Genocide can be committed by killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, imposing measures intended to prevent births, or by forcibly transferring children. In each case, there must be an intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

On November 2, seven UN Special Rapporteurs said they “remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide”. This followed the resignation of Craig Mokhiber, the Director of the UN’s office in New York, who characterised the horrors in Gaza as a “textbook case of genocide” aimed toward “the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous life in Palestine”.

In his resignation letter, he referenced the “wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people…based entirely upon their status as Arabs”, as well as the continuing seizure of homes in the West Bank. He highlighted the “explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military”.

He did not cite a specific statement, perhaps because there are too many to fit in one letter. He could have been referring to Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir who posted that “as long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands – the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid”. Or perhaps he was referring to Galit Distel Atbaryan, an MP from Israel’s ruling Likud party, who called for Gaza to be “erased from the face of the earth”.

Genocide is a term that should be used carefully. There are many horrors in history that are hideous enough on their own terms without warranting that label. The term has a legal definition, a legal basis and legal implications. That is why, when international experts in this field warn us about genocide, we should sit up and listen. And that is why we need an immediate ceasefire, followed by an urgent investigation by the International Criminal Court.

The ICC should not just investigate the crime of genocide, but every single war crime committed by all parties over the past month. The UK government has the authority and responsibility to call for this investigation. So far, it has refused to call out the atrocities unfolding before our very eyes. Blackouts in Gaza may be temporary, but impunity is permanent and our government continues to give the Israeli army the cover it needs to commit its crimes in darkness.

We will carry on demonstrating as long as it takes to bring about a ceasefire. To secure the release of hostages. To stop the siege of Gaza. And to end the occupation. We make these demands because we know what is at stake: the curiosity, creativity and kindness of the Palestinian people.

I remember, on our way home from the school, we passed a food-growing project. The project had purchased 50 hectares of a former Israeli settlement. All the buildings had been destroyed by those who had since departed – and Palestinians had turned the debris into a cooperative farm. Soon, I was told, olives and fruits would grow.

I will never give up hope that these olives and fruits will grow. The people of Gaza have lent me their joy, empathy and humanity. One day, I hope I can give it back to them – in a free and independent Palestine.

Jeremy Corbyn – Member of UK Parliament for Islington North. He is the former leader of the UK Labour Party and a human rights advocate.

13 November 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Vijay Prashad

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

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

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

Pivot to Asia

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

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

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

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

Complications of the IMEC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kathy Kelly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org