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By Andre Damon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

10 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By David Boyajian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Punish and Humiliate

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

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

And yet:

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

Tellingly, the Kremlin was unruffled.

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

The Kremlin, again, voiced no particular alarm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Punishment Without End

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then came September 19’s genocidal cleansing.

Genocidal Cleansing

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

Russian “peacekeepers” let it happen. No surprise.

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

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

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

The Geopolitical Future

Russia has certainly not finished punishing Armenia and PM Pashinyan.

Invasions by Azerbaijan and even Turkey are quite possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

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

By Tom Suárez

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jim Miles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Embargo and the makings of the petrodollar

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

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

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

Oil embargo and the end of empire?

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

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

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

 Financial embargo and the end of empire?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper.

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

On October 20, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, stood on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, between Egypt and besieged Gaza.

Guterres was not the only international figure to travel to the Gaza border, hoping to mobilize the international community in the face of an ongoing genocide, in an already impoverished and besieged Strip.

“Behind these walls, we have two million people that is suffering (sic) enormously,” Guterres said.

These efforts, however, paid little dividends.

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qudra, said in a statement on October 24, that the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza is “too slow (for it to) change the reality” on the ground.

This means that the seemingly endless UN Security Council debates, General Assembly resolutions and calls for action did little to alter the tragic situation in Gaza in any meaningful way.

This begs the question, what is the use of the elaborate international political, humanitarian and legal systems, if they are unable to stop, or even slow down a genocide that is being aired live on TV screens all across the world?

In previous genocides, whether those accompanying the Great Wars or that of Rwanda in 1994, various justifications were offered to explain the lack of immediate actions. In some cases, no Geneva Conventions existed and, as in Rwanda, many pleaded ignorance.

But, in Gaza, no excuse is acceptable. Every international news company has correspondents or some presence in the Strip. Hundreds of journalists, reporters, bloggers, photographers and cameramen are documenting and counting every event, every massacre and every bomb dropped on civilian homes. It is important here to note that scores of journalists have already been killed in Israeli attacks.

Scientific approximations are telling us, for example, that nearly 25,000 tons of explosives have been dropped on Gaza by Israel in the first 27 days of war. It is equivalent to two atomic bombs, like those dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

When US President Joe Biden callously tried to question the numbers of the Palestinian dead, the Gaza medical staff, who are forced to perform life-saving surgeries on the dirty grounds of hospitals, took the time to prove him wrong. On October 26, they produced a list containing the names of 6,747 Palestinian casualties who were killed in the first 19 days of war.

Thousands have been killed and wounded since then, yet Washington and its Western allies insist that “Israel has the right to defend itself” even if this comes at the expense of a whole nation.

The Israelis are not masking their language in any way. The New York Times reported on October 30 that “in private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II … to try to defeat those countries.” A few days later, Israeli Minister Amichai … has openly declared that nuking Gaza is an option in his country’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people.

On the day the NYT report appeared, Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), arrived at the Egyptian side of the Rafah border.

He still used the same guarded language, as if not to offend the sensibilities of Israel and its Western allies.  “Crimes allegedly committed in both places have to be looked into,” he said, referring to both Israel and Gaza.

One could excuse Khan by arguing that legal jargon must be restrained until a thorough investigation is conducted. But thorough investigations are rarely conducted when it comes to Israeli crimes in Gaza or anywhere else in Palestine.

When an investigation is carried out, international judges frequently find themselves accused by the US and Israel of bias or worse, anti-Semitism. In the case of the investigation spearheaded by a respected South African judge, Richard Goldstone in 2009, the man was forced to retract part of his report.

Khan knows this too well because he is currently sitting on a large and growing file of Israeli war crimes in Palestine, insisting on delaying the procedure under various excuses. Obviously, the US does not favorably view ICC judges who advance war crime cases against Israel. The anti-ICC sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration in 2020 are an example.

Many officials in Western institutions are becoming aware of this hypocrisy. On October 28, Craig Mokhiber resigned from his position as the Director of the New York office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights in protest of the UN’s failure to stop “a genocide unfolding before our eyes in Gaza.”

On October 20, around 850 members of the EU staff signed a letter to EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, criticizing her “unconditional support” for Israel.

The letter was polite and diplomatic, considering the horrendous moral failure of Von der Leyen, especially when her gung-ho approach to the Russian war in Ukraine is compared to her blind support of Israeli crimes in Gaza. “Only if we acknowledge Israel’s pain, and its right to defend itself, will we have the credibility to say that Israel should react … in line with international humanitarian law,” she said.

The International Olympic Committee, which insists on separating between politics and sports, has no problem meddling in politics when the enemy is a Palestinian.

The IOC issued a statement on November 1, warning any participant in the Paris Olympics, scheduled for 2024, from engaging in any “discriminatory behavior” against Israeli athletes, because “athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments”.

The word ‘hypocrisy’ here does not even begin to describe what is taking place, and the repercussions of this moral failure will be felt around the world for years to come. Never again should the West be allowed to play the role of the mediator, the impartial politician, the judge or even the self-serving humanitarian.

This is not a difficult conclusion to reach. Gaza has been turned into a Hiroshima as a result of Western bombs and the blank political check handed to Israel by Western governments and leaders from the onset of the war, in fact, 75 years prior.

Nothing will ever alter this fact, and no ‘strongly worded’ future statements will ever help the West redeem its collective moral failure.

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

9 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party are seeking a fourth consecutive term and are accused of harassing the rival BNP party

By Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Thousands of other political prisoners have already been inside these cells for months, many facing dozens, perhaps hundreds, of criminal charges. Rajshahi central jailhas a capacity of about 4,000 prisoners. It now holds more than 13,600.

As Bangladesh heads to elections in January, with Hasina and her Awami League party seeking a fourth consecutive term in office, the authorities have overseen a ruthless crackdown on the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP). Few believe the election will be free, fair or remotely democratic; the BNP have stated that as long as Hasina is in charge, they will not even participate.

While the harassment of the opposition has been ongoing for months, a BNP rally held in Dhaka on 28 October to demand Hasina’s resignation prompted the government crackdown to intensify further.

In the days leading up to the rally, hundreds of BNP leaders were detained. On the day, as hundreds of thousands of supporters took to the streets, activists from Hasina’s Awami League, accompanied by police, were seen attacking the rallies, armed with sticks, iron rods, machetes and other weapons. At least three people died in the violence, including a BNP activist, a police officer and a journalist.

Ali Riaz, professor of political science at Illinois State University, said the violence appeared premeditated by the authorities as a means to crack down on the BNP.

“The response of the police, which triggered the violence, seemed to be planned well ahead of the rally,” he said. “Internet services were blocked, not only to disrupt communication among the activists but also to prevent live transmission of the police actions.”

“The response of the police, which triggered the violence, seemed to be planned well ahead of the rally,” he said. “Internet services were blocked, not only to disrupt communication among the activists but also to prevent live transmission of the police actions.”

In the aftermath, BNP leaders and rank-and-file members say they have been subjected to a relentless witch-hunt to prevent them campaigning against Hasina’s government.

“The sheer number of arrests of opposition leaders, activists and protesters in Bangladesh in the past few weeks is a good indicator of how extreme the crackdown on dissent has become,” said Angelita Baeyens, vice-president of international advocacy and litigation at the Robert F Kennedy human rights organisation.

Among the thousands who have been arrested was one of the BNP’s most senior leaders, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir. Speaking to the Guardian hours before he was detained on 29 October, he had expressed his fears of being picked up on false charges.

“We have seen countless incidents where our activists were arrested on trumped-up charges, and the police and judiciary seem to be working together with the Awami League to silence us,” said Alamgir, who has more than 100 cases against him. “It is clear that the government’s goal is to put all of our leaders behind bars and hold a one-sided election.”

An endless cycle of arrest and release

The few BNP leaders to have evaded arrest are now in hiding. Habibun Nabi Khan Sohel, the BNP’s joint secretary general, now has more than 450 cases filed against him and is among 170 leaders accused of violence and murder after the 28 October protests. For the past week, he has gone underground.

From an undisclosed location, Sohel described how the past few months of his life had been defined by endless politically motivated cases being filed against him, forcing him in and out of the courts, consuming his life. He faced a similar scenario in the run-up to the 2018 elections – which were also widely documented as rigged to re-elect Hasina in a landslide – when he was found guilty in an allegedly politically motivated case and was prevented from running.

“Since June, I have had to present myself in different courts from morning to evening, in connection with the hearings of five to seven cases every day,” he said. “Many of my senior party colleagues are attending hearings and spending long hours in court every day.”

Others, such as Azizur Rahman Muchabbir, 41, a mid-level BNP leader, are stuck in a Kafkaesque cycle of arrest and release.

He was first arrested on 8 December 2022, after violence broke out in a rally. He was charged with violent activities and granted bail in February, but was rearrested by police outside the prison gates. He was released on bail again in March, and again was immediately rearrested, a cycle that continued again in April. He is now back in jail, facing 70 different charges.

“The government has detained him in jail simply to keep him away from political activities,” said his wife, Suraiya Begum. “We all are victims of harassment and torture.”

Since Hasina was first elected in 2008, she has been credited for overseeing an economic revival in Bangladesh that has seen the country rise to become one of the strongest economies in south Asia. But her four terms in office have also been defined by democratic backsliding and increasingly authoritarian measures against dissent or any form of political opposition.

According to the office of the BNP, since 2009 more than 138,000 cases have been filed against more than 5 million leaders, activists and supporters of the BNP and its member organisations.

Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman of the Capital Punishment Justice Project, who has been documenting human rights abuses in Bangladesh for over a decade, said that “gross human right violations” had systematically been used against the opposition “including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, maiming, torture, ill-treatment, and massive arbitrary detention of the opposition activists in fake criminal cases to crush the opposition whenever the elections ensued in Bangladesh.”

The previous election in 2018 was marred with allegations of opposition harassment and widespread vote-rigging, and was widely decried as non-democratic. Most now assume that similar scenes will unfold in January.

The international community has been attempting to step in and pressure Hasina into holding free and fair elections. This week the British high commissioner met BNP leaders to call to “eschew violence … and hold free, fair and participatory elections”. The US government recently imposed visa restrictions on unnamed government officials “for undermining the election process” and last month the US ambassador to Bangladesh called for Hasina to have a dialogue with the BNP.

Hasina hit back, accusing the US administration of hypocrisy. “Is Biden having a dialogue with Trump? The day they have a dialogue, I will also have a dialogue with the opposition,” she said.

Analysts say that Hasina’s government now has the judiciary and the police fully under its control, and has weaponised them in her fight against the opposition. This week, a video clip captured police officers patrolling with a group of armed Awami activists chanting “capture BNP people, one by one, and slaughter them all”.

The government and police deny that the mass arrests of the BNP members are connected to the forthcoming elections. “These criminal cases have no connection with politics,” said the law and justice minister, Anisul Huq. Senior Awami League leadership figures did not respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.

Mohammad Faruk Hossain, spokesperson of Dhaka Metropolitan police, said that they had filed cases “only after it is found that they have been involved in criminal activities” and said that the arrests were of those responsible for the killing and injuring of police officers on the 28 October rally.

Yet Mubashar Hasan, a political analyst, said that Hasina’s oppressive methods were only fuelling momentum behind the BNP, which is experiencing a groundswell of grassroots support in the wake of the faltering economy and soaring inflation. As well as political activists, labourers and poorer workers turned out in droves at the 28 October rally.

“The BNP rallies have successfully tapped into the pulse of the common people,” he said. “The government’s heavy-handed crackdown appears to be a calculated move aimed at dissuading BNP’s burgeoning momentum from evolving into a full-blown mass movement against the existing administration.”

By Prof. Yakov M. Rabkin

A profound division exists between Zionist advocates of Israel on the one hand, and both secular and religious Jews, on the other, who reject Zionism and thus the very idea of a separate state for the Jews. Most Jews must be somewhere in between. For years, they have cringed at Israel’s actions without, however, questioning the ethnocratic nature of the Israeli state.  For them, “Israel’s right to exist” is sacred because they fear that the only alternative is a physical destruction of Israeli Jews. Even though most of them live in liberal democracies, it is hard for them to fathom that Israel may change its nature, like South Africa did a few decades ago, and become a liberal state with equal rights for everyone on the entire territory under Israeli control between the Mediterranean and the river Jordan.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has made many Jews worldwide, particularly the young, to recoil from any association with the state of Israel. But at least just as many refused to remain “Jews of silence” and came to denounce Israel’s vengeful response to Hamas’ attack on its territory on October 7, 2023.

Especially in the United States, Jews have prominently cried out against the violence in Gaza. Hundreds of protesters closed down New York’s Central Station asking for an immediate ceasefire.

A week earlier, Jews wrapped in prayer shawls staged a sit-in at the U.S. Congress in Washington. After demanding an end to the violence, they opened prayer books and began reciting the ancient words that have steadied Jews for generations. Just a few days ago, Jews unfurled banners reading “Palestinians should be free” at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York.

Anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox Jews have burned Israeli flags at their protests around the world. They believe that the Zionist state is not simply an ‘appropriation’ of their Jewish symbols and identity, but the root cause of a bloody conflict in which innocent Jews and Palestinians suffer.

Indeed, Israel is a Zionist state. Calling it Jewish only creates a confusion because it is hard to define it. Israel embodies European ethnic nationalism shaped in late 19^th century, rather than Judaism that has developed for millennia. From the start, Zionists despised Jews and Judaism as they aimed at breeding a new species: the intrepid Hebrew warrior farmer. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Israel has built a mobilized society and a formidable high-tech war machine. As Israeli society has moved steadily to the right, it has consolidated the support of right-wing extremists and racists, including antisemites, around the world, such as white supremacists in the United States.

Israel is the most recent settler colony. Rhodesia and Algeria are now a distant memory. South Africa has freed itself from the official apartheid. While settlers in the Americas and Oceania perpetrated genocide against the aboriginals in the 19^th century, Israel initiated massive ethnic cleansing rather late, only in 1947. Some, like the Israeli historian Benny Morris, who documented it, regretted that the Zionists did not complete the job like the white Americans, Argentines or Australians, who wiped out most of the local populations. Indeed, Israel now has under its control approximately equal numbers of Palestinians and Jews, but most Palestinians don’t have political rights.

Many Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere, have been trying to come to terms with the contradictions between the Judaism they profess to adhere to and the Zionist ideology that has taken hold of them. A new variety of Judaism has taken root in Israel: National Judaism, dati-leumi in Hebrew. For some Jews, this new faith assuages these contradictions.

Among its most fervent followers one finds the assassin of prime minister Itzhak Rabin who had attempted to find an accommodation with the Palestinians, and prominent members of today’s Israeli government. National Judaism is also the ideology of many vigilante settlers who, since the onset of the war on Gaza, have intensified the harassment, dispossession, and murder of Palestinians on the West Bank. The vigilantes armed with rifles are proud to complement what the Israeli army is doing with tanks, bombs, and rockets in Gaza.

Quite a few Jews now wonder if this separate state for the Jews chronically generating violence is “good for the Jews.” The tardiness of this questioning reflects the success of Israel’s masquerading as “the Jewish and democratic state”, a theoretical and ideological oxymoron. The bombing of Gaza has punctured that propaganda balloon and exposed Israel’s character as a bellicose settler colony, victim of its own practice of exclusion and oppression.

Many Jews deplore this practice because it contradicts all that Judaism teaches, particularly the core values of humility, compassion, and kindness. They realize that those Jews – in truth, the vast majority of them – who rejected Zionism over a century ago, may have been right. Other Jews also find themselves in an emotional bind. Deeply saddened by Hamas’ attack on Israel and likewise devasted by Israel’s implacable response, they are also worried about the surge in anti-Jewish sentiment all around them.

The deadly Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 shows how Israel’s displacement and oppression of the Palestinians breeds their hatred.  Consequently, it physically endangers Jews in Israel. The subsequent killing of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza imperils Jews both in Israel and elsewhere. (Muslims do become targets too, as the tragic killing of a six-year-old American Palestinian shows.)

When Israel claims to be the state of all the Jews it turns them into hostages of its policies and actions. When Jewish community organizations declare “We stand with Israel!” they act as proxies for Israel rather than representatives of Jews. To be more precise, they represent those Jews whose identity has become mainly political: believers in Israel, right or wrong.

Israel and Zionism have long polarized the Jews. While Jews worldwide are largely split between these “Israel-firsters” and those who denounce Israel, neither camp influences Israel’s actions. They are akin to fans, rooting for one or the other side, watching from the outside as the situation unfolds. Blaming and attacking Jews for Israel’s actions is wrong and antisemitic. It also strengthens the core Zionist claim that Jews can be safe only in Israel.

It remains to be seen whether the fracture between those who hold fast to Jewish moral tradition and the converts to ethnic nationalism may one day be repaired. However fateful for Jews and Judaism, this fracture is less important for Israel, which nowadays counts many more evangelical Christians than Jews among its unconditional supporters.

Massive world-wide protests have so far affected neither Israelis’ vengeful violence in Gaza nor the supply of American weapons to support it. There is reason to despair. But Judaic tradition encourages Jews to continue, even in seemingly hopeless circumstances: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it…” (Pirke Avot 2:16) This is why many Jews remain at the forefront of the struggle against Israel’s wanton violence. But when the violence ends, many will realize that their protests have emancipated them from Israel’s emotional stranglehold.

This emancipation from the Zionist state has been observed in very different Jewish communities, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, strictly observant and more liberal. Thus, an ultra-Orthodox critic of Israel, usually antagonistic to Reform Judaism, commends a Reform rabbi for saying that “when Israel’s Jewish supporters abroad don’t speak out against disastrous policies that neither guarantee safety for her citizens nor produce the right climate in which to try and reach a just peace with the Palestinians … they are betraying millennial Jewish values.”

The nuclear armed Israel endangers not only the Palestinians and the Jews. It threatens an Armageddon for the region and the Samson option for the world. These apocalyptic scenarios may be triggered if an Israeli government decides that the country cannot cope with an existential threat. This may mean not only the threat of physical destruction but also the looming end of the institutionalized dominance of Israeli Jews over the Palestinians, the end of ethnocracy.

There is hope. England oppressed Ireland for centuries. France and Germany bitterly fought many wars. What will it take for Israelis and Palestinians to live peacefully side by side? Many Jews and many more Palestinians believe that the apartheid-like structure of the Zionist state, which explains why it has lived by the sword since its inception, must change. They know that only when all the inhabitants of the Holy Land enjoy equal rights and have a stake in whatever political arrangement is reached (one state, two states or something else) will the cycle of death stop.

*

Yakov M. Rabkin, author of “A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism” and “What is Modern Israel?” is professor emeritus of history and associate of the Centre for International Studies at the University of Montreal (CERIUM).

9 November 2023

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Satya Sagar

For all those who think that Israel is run by the most despicable, racist and repressive regime in the world here is some very bad news indeed.

Not only are the Israeli state and its ruthless methods here to stay they are also, very frighteningly, a prototype of our collective global future.

Watching the unbelievable destruction wrought by the Israelis in Gaza a simple question very high on many minds must be ‘ How in hell does this illegitimate child of European guilt and American ambition get away with all this again and again and again?’

The answer is that, instead of being a strange historical aberration, Israel is a model state that global elites want to spread around the world in the days to come.

A world where a tiny, wealthy elite will be the ‘chosen people’ like the Israelis and the rest of the planet’s population become Palestinians – caged into unliveable spaces, crushed like dispensable arthropods.

A world where the ruling classes live off the stolen resources and labour of those they contemptuously deem ‘lesser human beings’, in a system of institutionalized apartheid.

A world where the forces of the militarized State can routinely shoot anybody, even entire populations and call them ‘terrorists’ with complete impunity.

A world where the process of nation building automatically involves smashing the sovereignty of every other nation, reducing their people to a faceless, nameless, helpless mass.

The question of why Israel’s brazen crimes against humanity have been tolerated by the so called ‘international community’ is not new at all, being one asked from the very day this nation was violently forged seven decades ago. The legacy of Zionist terrorism, the numerous pogroms against the Palestinians, the systematic usurpation of their land, the routine bombing of civilians, the murder of peace activists— any other fledgling nation even contemplating crimes on this scale would have been ostracized out of existence by now.

Many have attempted to answer this conundrum in different ways. Israel is the bulldog of the US in the Middle-East ‘ there to keep an eye on the region’s oil wealth, promote the sales of Western arms and intimidate Arab regimes into meek submission’. And in all its actions Israel merely imitates its mentors in the United States, whose own list of crimes against humanity make that of its protégé pale into nothing.

For some others it is Israel, run by Jewish supremacists, that is manipulating the West for its own devious purposes. They are abetted in all this by Christian fundamentalists in the US who believe in some complicated bull about the role of Zionists in bringing about rapture, the return of Jesus Christ and Armageddon. (An end of the world hastened deliberately by these strange bed fellows themselves)

In yet another version the formation of Israel, aided and encouraged by Western powers, was a historical fobbing off of Europe’s much abused Jewish masses onto the heads of the hapless Palestinian people- fulfilling the Nazi dream of a Europe ‘sanitised’ of the Jews. A cynical pitting of the victims of European racism against the victims of European colonialism.

There is no doubt of course that the history of Europe and post-Second World War geopolitics of the United States have a lot to do with the creation of Israel.

In many ways the State of Israel carries over into our era all the baggage of 19th century Europe, from its simplistic understanding of race and biology, the crude equation of national interest with conquest of territory, the brutal trappings of the colonial state and worst of all the tryst with fascism, of which Zionism has become a mirror image.

But all this focus on historical trends obscures the fact that contemporary Israel today has become the template of a terrible global future. Here is where the accumulated burdens of the past, stoked to the right temperatures in the crucible of the present, are shaping the contours of the  wider world emerging before our eyes.

Already, the aggressive Israeli ‘whatever the cost’ pursuit of self-interest – unfettered by any principles of civilized behaviour and contemptuous of all international law- has become the role model for governments in many other parts of the world. Every indicator points to this sordid trend. The way the ‘masters of the world’ have openly acquiesced in the Israeli assault on the Palestinians in recent days is testimony to the fact that elites everywhere find this violence a useful exercise, not just in the context of the Middle-East itself but on their own home turf too.

Just take your eyes off for a minute from Israel and look around the globe and you can see what I mean. Look at the mini-Israels that governments everywhere are operating within their own national boundaries against the poor, the ethnic or religious minorities, the historically marginalized or any population that can be enslaved at low cost. For the votaries of the hard state and the preservers of privilege everywhere Israel is the pioneering trendsetter in newer and more brazen ways of exercising illegitimate power.

That is why even as many governments condemn Israel in public, they are also slyly figuring out how best to incorporate elements of similar repression within the apparatus of their own states. This includes the Arab states, which pay lip service to the Palestinian cause and do secret deals to ‘normalize’ relations with the Israeli regime. There is so much to learn, it seems, while they earn!

In India, the discourse on ‘cross border terrorism’ repeatedly descends into clamour by neo-Nazi politicians to ‘do it like the Israelis’  and bomb all suspects, wherever, unmindful of the consequences. In Sri Lanka, when the country’s armed forces massacred over 40,000 Tamil civilians in the last few days of the civil war in 2009 it is the Israeli ‘best practice’ they cited – kill now, shill later.

Given the discontent produced by the forces of globalization throughout the world and the need of the elites for controlling the ‘rebellious masses’ Israel’s approach to law and order are also a ‘valuable’ contribution towards maintenance of the unjust status quo everywhere. While Israel certainly did not invent the concept of kidnapping, torture and assassination of its opponents it has done more than any other regime in the world to legitimize such behaviour internationally.

All you need to do is to close your eyes, shut your conscience out, pretend to be the Israeli government and imagine all your opponents ‘ workers, farmers, students anyone- as Palestinians. In that sense it is not just nation states but also corporations – the main shareholders of the Empire – that seek guidance from Israel for ideas on how to put down dissent and rule the world.

After all, at the core of global capitalism lies a fierce authoritarian urge that seeks to monopolise everything that exists but is unable to do so because the little people of the world have fought and established some basic norms of human and social behaviour. If Israel keeps demolishing these ‘barriers’ and advances the forces of lawlessness – it makes complete world domination by the moneyed that much easier.

It is a different matter that imitating Israel, in everything it does, is a recipe for perpetual World Wars. This may suit the designs of some countries and their rulers perhaps but not of a majority of this planet’s residents.

What emerges then is that, given the importance of Israel to global elites, a solution to the Palestinian question can never really be achieved through a struggle that focuses exclusively on the politics of the Middle-East itself.

Instead, a just peace is possible only when there is a Global Intifada against war mongers in powerful Western nations like the US, UK and France, who profit from death and destruction around the planet.

A just peace is possible only when the millions marching on the streets of world capitals calling for a ceasefire turn against the Israeli model represented by their own ruling classes.

A just peace is possible only through a global movement that takes on deeply entrenched vested interests, wherever they exist,  that are bent on making our entire world look like one large State of Israel.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker. He can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com

Note: This article is based on a piece written originally by the same author in 2006 for ZNet, when Israel carried out the deadly bombing of Lebanon, under the pretext of ‘eliminating the Hezbollah’. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

8 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

When Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists, religious zealots, ultranationalists and crypto-fascists in the apartheid state of Israel say they want to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth, believe them.

I covered the birth of Jewish fascism in Israel. I reported on the extremist Meir Kahane, who was barred from running for office and whose Kach Party was outlawed in 1994 and declared a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States. I attended political rallies held by Benjamin Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s supporters chanted “Death to Rabin.” They burned an effigy of Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Netanyahu marched in front of a mock funeral for Rabin.

Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 by a Jewish fanatic. Rabin’s widow, Lehea, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters for her husband’s murder.

Netanyahu, who first became prime minister in 1996, has spent his political career nurturing Jewish extremists, including Avigdor Lieberman, Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett, and Ayelet Shaked. His father, Benzion — who worked as an assistant to the Zionist pioneer Vladimir Jabotinsky, who Benito Mussolini referred to as “a good fascist” — was a leader in the Herut Party that called on the Jewish state to seize all the land of historic Palestine. Many of those who formed the Herut Party carried out terrorist attacks during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and other Jewish intellectuals, described the Herut Party in a statement published in The New York Times as a “political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties.”

There has always been a strain of Jewish fascism within the Zionist project. Now it has taken control of the Israeli state.

“The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here,” Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and Israel’s foremost authority on fascism, warned in 2018, “the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people.” Sternhell added, “[W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.”

The decision to obliterate Gaza has long been the dream of Israel’s crypto-fascists, heirs of Kahane’s movement. These Jewish extremists, which make up the ruling coaltion government, are orchestrating the genocide in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians are dying daily. They champion the iconography and language of their homegrown fascism. Jewish identity and Jewish nationalism are the Zionist versions of blood and soil. Jewish supremacy is sanctified by God, as is the slaughter of the Palestinians, who Netanyahu compared to the Biblical Ammonites, massacred by the Israelites. Enemies — usually Muslims — slated for extinction are subhuman who embody evil. Violence and the threat of violence are the only forms of communication those outside the magical circle of Jewish nationalism understand. Millions of Muslims and Christians, including those with Israeli citizenship, are to be purged.

A leaked 10-page document from the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence dated Oct. 13, 2023 recommends the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

It is a grave mistake not to take the blood curdling calls for the wholesale eradication and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians seriously. This rhetoric is not hyperbolic. It is a literal prescription. Netanyahu in a tweet, later removed, described the battle with Hamas as a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”

These Jewish fanatics have begun their version of the final solution to the Palestinian problem. They dropped 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza in the first two weeks of assault to obliterate at least 45 percent of Gaza’s housing units, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian office. They have no intention of being detoured, even by Washington.

“It became evident to U.S. officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign,” The New York Times reported.

“In private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries,” the paper continued.

The goal is a “pure” Israel, cleansed of Palestinian contaminants. Gaza is to become a wasteland. The Palestinians in Gaza will be killed or forced into refugee camps over the border in Egypt. Messianic redemption will take place once the Palestinians are expelled. Jewish extremists call for the Al-Aqsa mosque – the third holiest shrine for Muslims, built on the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE by the Roman army – to be demolished. The mosque is to be replaced by a “Third” Jewish temple, a move that would set the Muslim world alight. The West Bank, which the zealots call “Judea and Samaria,” will be formally annexed by Israel. Israel, governed by the religious laws imposed by the ultra-orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, will be a Jewish version of Iran.

It is a short step to total Israeli control over Palestinian land. Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements, restricted military zones, closed highways and army compounds have seized over 60 percent of the West Bank, turning Palestinian towns and villages into ringed ghettos. There are over 65 laws which discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the occupied territories. The campaign of indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, many by rogue Jewish militias, along with house and school demolitions and the seizure of remaining Palestinian land will explode. Over 133 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army and Jewish settlers since the Oct. 7 incursion by Hamas and thousands of Palestinians have been rounded up by the Israeli military, beaten, humiliated and imprisoned.

Israel, at the same time, is turning on “Jewish traitors” who refuse to embrace the demented vision of the ruling Jewish fascists and who denounce the horrific violence of the state. The familiar enemies of fascism — journalists, human rights advocates, intellectuals, artists, feminists, liberals, the left, homosexuals and pacifists — are already being targeted. The judiciary, according to plans put forward by Netanyahu, will be neutered. Public debate will wither. Civil society and the rule of law will cease to exist. Those branded as “disloyal” will be deported.

Fascists do not respect the sanctity of life. Human beings, even from their own tribe, are expendable to build their deranged utopia. The zealots in power in Israel could have exchanged the hostages held by Hamas for the thousands of Palestinian hostages held in Israeli prisons, which is why the Israeli hostages were seized. And there is evidence that in the chaotic fighting that took place once Hamas militants entered Israel, the Israeli military decided to target not only Hamas fighters, but the Israeli captives with them.

“Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen,” Max Blumenthal writes in The Grayzone.

Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, Blumenthal notes, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army.

Escapa told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

The newspaper reported that Israeli commanders were “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base housed Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers.

Israel, in 1986, instituted a military policy called the Hannibal Directive, apparently named for the Carthaginian general who poisoned himself rather than be captured by the Romans, following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. The directive is designed to prevent Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands through the maximum use of force, even at the cost of killing the captured soldiers and civilians.

The directive was executed during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge. Hamas fighters on Aug. 1, 2014 captured an Israeli officer, Lt. Hadar Goldin. In response, Israel dropped more than 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells on the area where he was being held. Goldin was killed along with over 100 Palestinian civilians. The directive was supposedly rescinded in 2016.

Gaza is the start. The West Bank is next.

Israelis who cheer on the Palestinian nightmare will soon endure a nightmare of their own.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper.

7 November 2023

Source: countercurrents.org