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By Bharat Dogra

In recent days the death of at least 22,000 people and enormous other distress including the displacement of a vast majority of the people of Gaza have been caused as a result of the highly disproportionate response of Israel to the terrible attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

While several aspects of this tragic situation have been widely discussed, perhaps one aspect which should have received more attention relates to the oil and gas reserves of the region as a motivating cause of this entire tragedy, just as oil and gas resources have been an important factor in several earlier tragedies of this region.

A study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has provided very useful background information in this context and has been extensively quoted. This study is titled ‘The Economic Costs of the Israeli Occupation for the Palestinian People—The Unrealized Oil and Natural Gas Potential’. This study was made as a part of studies and technical papers on Palestine.

This study says—Geologists and natural resources economists have confirmed that the Occupied Palestinian Territory lies above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth, in Area C of the Occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza strip. However occupation continues to prevent Palestinians from developing their energy fields so as to exploit and benefit from such assets.

This study has stated that the accumulated losses resulting from this amount to billions of dollars.

Further this study states—the new discoveries of oil and natural gas in the Levant basin, amounting to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas at a net value of $453 billion (in 2017 prices) and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil at a net value of about $71 billion, offer an opportunity to distribute and share a total of about $524 billion among the different parties.

So what this report is saying is not that the entire resources should belong only to Palestine, but on the basis of the principles of international law and sharing common pool of resources, these should be shared and used in a very fair way to end poverty and deprivation among the Palestinian people, in Gaza as well as in the West Bank.

However if the people of Gaza are displaced on a mass scale by bombing their land on a massive scale and to a large extent indiscriminately, then a situation may emerge in which the people of Gaza are no longer in place to claim their rights to these resources. This is precisely what appears to be happening in recent times.

More recently, reports in several newspapers of Israel and other neighboring countries have also appeared that the Israeli establishment are also considering the possibility of sending several people of Gaza to distant areas. In this context the transfer to the Congo has been particularly mentioned, with reports mentioning attempts being made to reach deals with this and other countries. To give an example The Times of Israel reported on January 3 in a report titled ‘Israel in talks with Congo and other countries on Gaza ‘voluntary migration’ plan’—Netanyahu told a faction of Likud Party “our problem is (finding) countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it.”

However there have been some denials too and the USA has stated that it does not support such displacement.

On the whole it is clear that there has been a big push in recent times by Israel to either move a big share of the people of Gaza towards the border with Egypt, or elsewhere.

A question that needs to be asked is—is this also part of a larger design to grab all benefits of gas and oil reserves while denying the due share to the Palestinians?

Here it may be added that after the Oslo accords the Palestinian Authority had gone ahead with the exploration and tapping work in terms of contract with a reputed company. However later due to increasing domination of Israel the commercial interests started inter-acting more and more with Israel.

With Europe’s need for gas increasing with the sanctions on Russia and the sabotaging of Nord Stream, the profits to be made from tapping the gas and oil reserves and exporting to Europe have increased considerably.

Could this be one of the factors behind the entire chain of recent tragic events, resulting in entirely avoidable loss of human lives among the Palestinians as well as Israelis?

As is well-known by now, there was such amazing neglect of repeated intelligence received from internal as well as external sources by the Israeli security establishment (including neglect of repeated reports sent by Israeli women surveillance officers regarding Hamas training camps close to the fence) that suspicions of deliberate neglect of received intelligence have arisen. Hence a possible sequence could have been—allowing a terrorist attack with the prior plan to use it as a pretext for such a disproportionate response that most people of Gaza are displaced in such a way that their rights to their resources are even more difficult to realize, while Israel can go ahead with using the oil and gas resources for its economic gain, including exports to Europe and elsewhere. This is only one of the several possible explanations of the extremely tragic events here which have thrown up several big questions. These need a fair and unbiased investigation for the truth to be known with certainty.

However the policy recommendation should be definitely only for justice-based sharing of resources for the common benefit of the people of Palestine and Israel. There should be only restrained exploitation of fossil fuels keeping in view the considerations of climate change, and whatever is tapped should be shared equitably, but with a somewhat higher share for the Palestinians keeping in view their higher levels of poverty and the enormous injustice suffered by them in the past at many levels. If only the forces of peace can assert on both sides, there is enough for everyone to share and live happily and peacefully with mutual cooperation, but the forces of aggression and grabbing are not allowing the people to live with peace and cooperation. As Mahatma Gandhi would have said, earth has enough for meeting the needs of all, but not for greed. Greed and grab only lead to aggression and war, as we have seen time and again.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now.

10 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jake Johnson

An Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Sunday killed two Palestinian journalists and seriously wounded a third, adding to the war’s grisly toll on media workers.

The Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement that the Israeli military targeted the journalists’ car as they were driving through the northern part of Rafah. The strike killed Hamza Dahdouh, the 27-year-old son of Al Jazeera‘s Gaza bureau chief, and Mustafa Thuraya, a freelance videographer working with Agence France-Presse. Hazem Rajab was injured in the Israeli strike.

“The assassination of Mustafa and Hamza, Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh’s son, whilst they were on their way to carry out their duty in the Gaza Strip reaffirms the need to take immediate necessary legal measures against the occupation forces to ensure that there is no impunity,” the network said, imploring the international community to “hold Israel accountable for its heinous crimes.”

Hamza is the fifth member of Wael Dahdouh’s family killed in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. Earlier in the war, Israeli strikes killed Dahdouh’s wife, younger son, daughter, and grandson. Wael himself was wounded by an Israeli drone strike that killed Al Jazeera journalist Samer Abu Daqqa.

“Hamza was everything to me, the eldest boy, he was the soul of my soul,” Wael said in anguished remarks from the cemetery where his son was buried. “These are the tears of parting and loss, the tears of humanity.”

Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders, expressed “shock” in response to news of Dahdouh and Thuraya’s killing.

“This unbearable massacre must stop,” Deloire wrote on social media. “Israel must be held accountable for this eradication of journalism in Gaza. We will continue to refer to the International Criminal Court so that maximum priority is given to crimes against journalists. Justice must be served.”

Since October 7, Israeli forces have killed dozens of media workers in the Gaza Strip, where around 1,000 journalists were working before the assault. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), more journalists were killed in the first 10 weeks of the war “than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.”

“CPJ is particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families by the Israeli military,” the group said last month. An investigation by Reporters Without Borders concluded that Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah and his colleagues were deliberately targeted in October 13 strikes in southern Lebanon.

Reporters Without Borders has filed two war crimes complaints with the International Criminal Court since early October. The second complaint, submitted last month, accuses the Israel Defense Forces of intentionally killing seven Palestinian journalists.

“Targeting reporters is a war crime,” the group wrote in a social media post on Sunday.

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

8 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Marjorie Cohn

For nearly three months, Israel has enjoyed virtual impunity for its atrocious crimes against the Palestinian people. That changed on December 29 when South Africa, a state party to the Genocide Convention, filed an 84-page application in the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) alleging that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

South Africa’s well-documented application alleges that “acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent … to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group” and that “the conduct of Israel — through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”

Israel is mounting a full-court press to prevent an ICJ finding that it’s committing genocide in Gaza. On January 4, the Israeli Foreign Ministry instructed its embassies to pressure politicians and diplomats in their host countries to make statements opposing South Africa’s case at the ICJ.

In its application, South Africa cited eight allegations to support its contention that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza. They include:

(1) Killing Palestinians in Gaza, including a large proportion of women and children (approximately 70 percent) of the more than 21,110 fatalities and some appear to have been subjected to summary execution;

(2) Causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza, including maiming, psychological trauma, and inhuman and degrading treatment;

(3) Causing the forced evacuation and displacement of about 85 percent of Palestinians in Gaza — including children, the elderly and infirm, and the sick and wounded. Israel is also causing the massive destruction of Palestinian homes, villages, towns, refugee camps and entire areas, which precludes the return of a significant proportion of the Palestinian people to their homes;

(4) Causing widespread hunger, starvation and dehydration to the besieged Palestinians in Gaza by impeding sufficient humanitarian assistance, cutting off sufficient food, water, fuel and electricity, and destroying bakeries, mills, agricultural lands and other means of production and sustenance;

(5) Failing to provide and restricting the provision of adequate clothing, shelter, hygiene and sanitation to Palestinians in Gaza, including 1.9 million internally displaced persons. This has compelled them to live in dangerous situations of squalor, in conjunction with routine targeting and destruction of places of shelter and killing and wounding of persons who are sheltering, including women, children, the elderly and the disabled;

(6) Failing to provide for or ensure the provision of medical care to Palestinians in Gaza, including those medical needs created by other genocidal acts that are causing serious bodily harm. This is occurring by direct attacks on Palestinian hospitals, ambulances and other healthcare facilities, the killing of Palestinian doctors, medics and nurses (including the most qualified medics in Gaza) and the destruction and disabling of Gaza’s medical system;

(7) Destroying Palestinian life in Gaza, by destroying its infrastructure, schools, universities, courts, public buildings, public records, libraries, stores, churches, mosques, roads, utilities and other facilities necessary to sustain the lives of Palestinians as a group. Israel is killing whole families, erasing entire oral histories and killing prominent and distinguished members of society;

(8) Imposing measures intended to prevent Palestinian births in Gaza, including through reproductive violence inflicted on Palestinian women, newborns, infants and children.

South Africa cited myriad statements by Israeli officials that constitute direct evidence of an intent to commit genocide:

“Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything,” Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. “If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”

Avi Dichter, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, declared, “We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” a reference to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to create the state of Israel.

“Now we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth,” Nissim Vaturi, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Member of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee proclaimed.

Israel’s Strategy to Defeat South Africa’s Case at the ICJ

Israel and its chief patron, the United States, understand the magnitude of South Africa’s ICJ application, and they are livid. Israel usually thumbs its nose at international institutions, but it is taking South Africa’s case seriously. In 2021, when the International Criminal Court launched an investigation into Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza, Israel firmly rejected the legitimacy of the probe.

“Israel generally doesn’t participate in such proceedings,” Prof. Eliav Lieblich, an international law expert at Tel Aviv University, told Haaretz. “But this isn’t a UN inquiry commission or the International Criminal Court in the Hague, whose authority Israel rejects. It’s the International Court of Justice, which derives its powers from a treaty Israel joined, so it can’t reject it on the usual grounds of lack of authority. It’s also a body with international prestige.”

A January 4 cable from the Israeli Foreign Ministry says that Israel’s “strategic goal” is that the ICJ reject South Africa’s request for an injunction to suspend Israel’s military action in Gaza, refuse to find that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and rule that Israel is complying with international law.

“A ruling by the court could have significant potential implications that are not only in the legal world but have practical bilateral, multilateral, economic, security ramifications,” the cable states. “We ask for an immediate and unequivocal public statement along the following lines: To publicly and clearly state that YOUR COUNTRY rejects the outragest [sic], absurd and baseless allegations made against Israel.”

The cable instructs Israeli embassies to urge diplomats and politicians at the highest levels “to publicly acknowledge that Israel is working [together with international actors] to increase the humanitarian aid to Gaza, as well as to minimize damage to civilians, while acting in self defense after the horrible October 7th attack by a genocidal terrorist organization.”

“The State of Israel will appear before the ICJ at The Hague to dispel South Africa’s absurd blood libel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spokesperson Eylon Levy declared. South Africa’s application is “without legal merit and constitutes a base exploitation and contempt of court,” he said.

Israel is pulling out all the stops, including disingenuous accusations of “blood libel,” an anti-Semitic trope that erroneously accuses Jews of the ritual sacrifice of Christian children.

“How tragic that the rainbow nation that prides itself on fighting racism will be fighting pro-bono for anti-Jewish racists,” Levy added ironically. He made the astonishing claim that Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza is designed to prevent the genocide of the Jews.

As the old adage goes, when you’re being run out of town, get in front of the crowd and act like you’re leading the parade.

The Biden regime rose to defend its staunch ally Israel. U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby lambasted South Africa’s ICJ application as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” Kirby claimed, “Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel is not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat,” echoing Israel’s preposterous assertion.

Kirby’s contention that Israel is trying to prevent genocide is particularly absurd, given the fact that since Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 22,100 Gazans, about 9,100 of whom are children. At least 57,000 persons have been wounded and at least 7,000 are reported missing. Untold numbers of people are trapped beneath the rubble.

Provisional Measures Against Israel Can Have Immediate Impact

South Africa is requesting that the ICJ order provisional measures (interim injunction) in order to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention.” South Africa is also asking the court “to ensure Israel’s compliance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide.”

The provisional measures South Africa seeks include ordering Israel to “immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza” and to cease and desist from killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians, inflicting on them conditions of life intended to destroy them in whole or in part, and imposing measures to prevent Palestinian births. South Africa wants the ICJ to order that Israel stop expelling and forcibly displacing Palestinians and depriving them of food, water, fuel, and medical supplies and assistance.

The judicial arm of the United Nations, the ICJ is composed of 15 judges elected for a nine-year term by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council. It is not a criminal tribunal like the International Criminal Court; rather it resolves disputes between countries.

If a party to the Genocide Convention believes that another party has failed to comply with its obligations, it can take that country to the ICJ to determine its responsibility. This was done in the case of Bosnia v. Serbia, in which the Court found that Serbia violated its duties to prevent and punish genocide under the Convention.

The obligations in the Genocide Convention are erga omnes partes, that is, obligations owed by a state towards all the states parties to the Convention. The ICJ has stated, “In such a convention the contracting States do not have any interests of their own; they merely have, one and all, a common interest, namely, the accomplishment of those high purposes which are the raison d’être of the Convention.”

Article 94 of the UN Charter says that all parties to a dispute must comply with the decisions of the ICJ and if a party fails to do so, the other party may go to the UN Security Council for the enforcement of the decision.

An average ICJ case from start to finish can last several years (it was nearly 15 years from the time that Bosnia first filed its case against Serbia in 1993 to the issuance of the final judgment on the merits in 2007). However, a case can have an immediate impact. The filing of a case in the ICJ sends a strong message to Israel that the international community will not tolerate its actions and seeks to hold it accountable.

Provisional measures can be issued quickly. For example, the ICJ ordered measures 19 days after the Bosnian case was initiated. Provisional measures are binding on the party against whom they are ordered, and compliance with them can be monitored by both the ICJ and the Security Council.

Judgments on the merits rendered by the ICJ in disputes between parties are binding on the parties involved. Article 94 of the United Nations Charter provides that “each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of [the Court] in any case to which it is a party.” The judgments of the court are final; there is no appeal.

Public hearings on South Africa’s request for provisional measures will take place on January 11 and 12 at the ICJ which is located in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. The hearings will be livestreamed from 4:00-6:00 a.m. Eastern/1:00-3:00 a.m. Pacific on the Court’s website and on UN Web TV. The court could order provisional measures within a week after the hearings.

Other States Parties to the Genocide Convention Can Join South Africa’s Case

Other states parties to the Genocide Convention can either request permission to intervene in the case filed by South Africa or file their own applications against Israel in the ICJ. South Africa’s application identifies several countries that have referred to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They include Algeria, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, Türkiye, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Egypt, Honduras, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Pakistan and Syria.

On January 5, Quds News Network tweeted, “Jordan’s minister of Foreign Affairs, Ayman Safadi, announces that his country backs South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the ICJ. He added that the Jordanian government is working on a legal file to follow up on the case. Turkey, Malaysia, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) had announced that they back the case too.”

The newly formed International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine, endorsed by more than 600 groups throughout the world, has convened to urge states parties to invoke the Genocide Convention.

The coalition contends, “Declarations of Intervention in support of South Africa’s invocation of the Genocide Convention against Israel will increase the likelihood that a positive finding of the crime of genocide will be enforced by the United Nations such that actions will be taken to end all acts of genocide and those who are responsible for the acts will be held accountable.”

During the first week of January, delegations of “grassroots diplomats,” spearheaded by CODEPINK, World Beyond War and RootsAction, mounted a campaign across the United States urging nations to submit Declarations of Intervention in South Africa’s case against Israel in the ICJ. Activists traveled to 12 cities, visiting UN missions, embassies and consulates from Colombia, Pakistan, Bolivia, Bangladesh, the African Union, Ghana, Chile, Ethiopia, Turkey, Belize, Brazil, Denmark, France, Honduras, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Mexico, Italy, Haiti, Belgium, Kuwait, Malaysia and Slovakia.

“This is the rare case where collective social pressure urging governments to support the South African case can be a sharp turning point for Palestine,” said Lamis Deek, a Palestinian attorney based in New York, whose firm convened the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation’s Commission on War Crimes Justice, Reparations, and Return. “We need more states to file supporting interventions — and we need the court to feel the watchful eye of the masses so as to withstand what will be extreme U.S. political pressure on the Court.”

Suzanne Adely, president of the National Lawyers Guild, noted, “The increasing global isolation of Israel and the U.S. and their European allies is an indicator that this is a key moment for popular movements to move their governments in the direction of taking these steps and being on the right side of history.” Indeed, since October 7, millions of people throughout the world have marched, protested and demonstrated in support of Palestinian liberation.

RootsAction and World Beyond War have created a template that organizations and individuals can use to urge other states parties to the Genocide Convention to file a Declaration of Intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the ICJ.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

8 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

The number of journalists killed by Israel in Gaza grew to 109 on Sunday with a targeted drone strike on the car of Al Jazeera reporter Hamza al-Dahdouh, killing him alongside fellow journalist Mustafa Thuraya.

Hamza was the eldest son of the Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief, Wael al-Dahdouh, and the fifth member of al-Dahdouh’s family to be killed in a series of deliberate and targeted murders by the criminal US-backed Israeli regime.

“Hamza was everything to me, the eldest boy, he was the soul of my soul,” Dahdouh told Al Jazeera on Sunday. “These are the tears of parting and loss, the tears of humanity.”

In a statement published after hours of silence in the face of questions by reporters, the Israeli military confirmed that it deliberately targeted the journalists’ vehicle, referring to the murdered men as “suspects.”

The statement declared:

An Israeli military aircraft identified and struck a terrorist operative who was operating an aircraft that posed a threat to troops. We are aware of reports that during the strike, two other suspects who were in the same vehicle as the terrorists were also hit.

The third man in the car was Hazem Rajab, a photojournalist whose responsibilities include operating photographic drones. The group of journalists was in reality targeted for performing their professional obligations in what Israel officially designated a “safe zone” for civilians.

Speaking in Qatar on Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked whether the United States condemned the targeting of journalists by Israel.

Blinken refused to condemn either the murder of Hamza or Israel’s practice of deliberately killing journalists, instead shedding crocodile tears about what a “tragedy” his death was.

“I am deeply, deeply sorry for the almost unimaginable loss suffered by your colleagues,” Blinken said. “I am a parent myself. I can’t begin to imagine the horror that he’s experienced not once, but twice. This is an unimaginable tragedy.”

Blinken is a key enabler and supporter of Israel’s policy of massacring journalists. The United States has never condemned the practice and maintains its position that there are no “red lines” for what Israel is allowed to do. The United States has provided Israel with 10,000 tons of military equipment over the past three months, delivered by over 200 cargo planes.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military repeatedly targeted and killed Al Jazeera journalists. In a 2003 diary entry, UK Home Secretary David Blunkett urged UK Prime Minister David Cameron to attack Al Jazeera journalists. Blunkett said that the UK should not “rule out” targeting journalists because “they are attempting to win a propaganda battle on behalf of your enemy.”

On October 25, Axios reported that Blinken asked the prime minister of Qatar to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement,” and then bragged about it in a meeting.

However the Qatari government responded to Blinken’s demand, Israel has been working to “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage” by systematically murdering Al Jazeera correspondents and their families in Gaza.

In October, Israel murdered the wife, two children and infant grandson of Wael al-Dahdouh in an airstrike on their home. In December, a drone strike injured Wael and killed his camera operator near Khan Younis.

In a gesture of heroism and resistance, al-Dahdouh continued to work the day after each attack.

In a statement, Al Jazeera condemned Sunday’s strike:

The assassination of Mustafa and Hamza, Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Al-Dahdoh’s son, while they were on their way to carry out their duty in the Gaza Strip reaffirms the need to take immediate necessary legal measures against the occupation forces to ensure that there is no impunity.

The statement continued:

The assassination of his son Hamza in January 2024 confirms without a doubt the Israeli forces’ determination to continue these brutal attacks against journalists and their families, aiming to discourage them from performing their mission, violating the principles of freedom of the press and undermining the right to life.

It concluded:

We urge the International Criminal Court, governments, human rights organizations, and the United Nations to hold Israel accountable for its heinous crimes and demand an end to the targeting and killing of journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called for an investigation into the killing. Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee said in a statement:

The Al Dahdouh family and their journalist colleagues in Gaza are rewriting what it means to be a journalist today with immensely brave and never-before-seen sacrifices.

Agence-France Presse global news director Phil Chetwynd declared, “We vigorously condemn all attacks against journalists doing their jobs and it is essential we have a clear explanation as to what happened.”

On Friday, The Euro-Med Monitor reported that 30,676 Palestinians have been killed in Israel Defense Forces attacks since October 7, taking into account both those whose bodies have been identified and those who have been missing for more than two weeks, most buried under the rubble of demolished buildings.

To date, 1.9 million Palestinians have been internally displaced, amounting to 90 percent of the population of Gaza. Many have been forced to flee multiple times, and Israel has destroyed or damaged approximately 70 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

8 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Binu Mathew

I’m informed of the passing of John Scales Avery (1933-2024). He was 91 and passed away on January 4. He was a fierce peace activist. John was part of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs that shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for their work. He was also Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy. John was a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen.

He was a great friend and well-wisher of Countercurrents.org. He worked till the end. His knowledge was copious, it spanned from theoretical chemistry to Greek literature. In his later years, he wrote without rest. Producing book after book on various topics from peace activism to literature, painting, and the lives of great thinkers and philosophers. He wanted to share as much knowledge as possible with future generations before his passing. I was fortunate enough to compile most of his work on a website in his name https://www.johnavery.info.

I was fortunate enough to meet him at his Copenhagen home. He welcomed me and my friend John Graversgaard warmly and treated us to a sumptuous meal. Without doubt, he was one of the greatest intellectual and peace activists of our time. The world is poorer by his passing.

The family writes:

As you know, for the last four months he was plagued by a broken hip, infections and many hospital stays, but through it all he maintained his characteristic humor, warmth, kindness, great intellect and spirit.

Binu Mathew is the editor of Countercurrents.org

8 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Maung Zarni

Three months into the relentless bombardment of Gaza, the Republic of S. Africa, a signatory state (or “state party”, in legalese) of the (binding) Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (or Genocide Convention), has filed its “application” (or legal case) against Israel, a fellow signatory, with the United Nations’ principal judicial organ The International Court of Justice in The Hague.

S. Africa provided the directly relevant and detailed contextual information about Israel’s policies and deeds with respect to Palestinian residents of Gaza, over nearly a quarter of a century from 2000 to 2023.

It is worth noting that S. Africa’s application of the Genocide Convention came amidst “the Merit Phase” (that is, the two parties in dispute present the Court its evidence and counter-evidence) of the precedent-setting genocide case, namely Gambia vs. Myanmar. The Gambia vs. Myanmar is precedent setting because the signatory African state Gambia which initiated the legal dispute did not, and does not, suffer the impact of Myanmar’s crimes against Rohingya as a victim, residential population of the Southeast Asian country while Myanmar’s failure to prevent and punish the genocide on its own territories is in and of itself tantamount to violating Myanmar’s own treaty obligations towards both other signatory states of the Genocide Convention and the entire family of nations.

On the strength of the apparent or prima facie evidence, the ICJ’s judges granted, in an extraordinary show of unanimity, Gambia’s request for “provisional (or immediate and short-term) measures” ordering Myanmar to stop any and further state acts harmful to the remaining victim population of predominantly Muslim Rohingya which the court officially deemed “a protected group” under the Convention.

The physical destruction of Gaza 70% of which have been turned into rubble is reminiscent of what really was the carpet-bombing of major German cities (for instance, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Dresden) by the British and American Air Forces.

By way of a historical comparison, the British war-planners were initially for the more “accurate” arial attacks against German cities and ordered more discriminatory bombings of military targets. But, when the precision proved elusive in the face of Nazi air defences the British Air Force leadership shifted its gear and went all out for the carpet bombing of all targeted cities.

In sharp contrast, from the get-go, Israeli senior officials have made it clear that they had absolutely no moral or humanly qualm about the wholesale physical destruction of entire neighbourhoods complete with hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and other sites in Gaza whose population was overwhelmingly civilians – and women and children at that. “Accuracy” in military operations against the Hamas is not a factor in Israel’s official planning. The number of civilian deaths including thousands of children, babies, pregnant women, the elderly speak louder than Israel’s well-rehearsed media mantra of “reducing civilian death tolls”.

In commenting on the genocides in Israel and Myanmar, a word about my professional and personal background may be in order because I am not a legally trained professional. And I do not concern myself with law, as such, here.

I am a long-time human rights activist with over 35 years of involvement in international human rights activism. Academically, for 6 years (1992-98), I was a doctoral student of the pioneering expert on (Nazi) SS and its leader Himmler, the late Robert L. Koehl, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. My historian mentor interrogated, in his capacity as a US Army Military Intelligence officer, surrendered junior SS officers in the American section of the defeated Nazi Germany. Upon resuming his studies at Harvard after the war, Koehl wrote his PhD thesis in 1953 on the SS and its Himmler, based on both the archival materials from two of the chambers of the Nuremberg Trials, and personal interactions with former SS officers under his custody.

Both Koehl and I shared a lifelong interest in viewing the mass crimes of murderous organizations through the eyes of the perpetrators. He was a German American, born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and grew up bilingual, German and English, and I, an ethnically dominant Bama from the nationalist heartlands of Myanmar, with 3-generations of family ties with the instrument of Myanmar genocide, the country’s armed forces.

My primary activism has always been focused on ending the military dictatorship in my native country of Burma – now Myanmar. But I devoted the last 10 years of my activism and research to the study of genocides, when I discovered, through numerous United Nations and NGO reports on Myanmar, that the military there was not simply committing egregious human rights crimes against dissidents and other defiant ethnic minorities but, in fact, committing “a textbook case of genocide” against a tiny minority population of Rohingya in Western Myanmar.

My wife and researcher colleague Dr Natalie Brinham and I conducted the first-ever study (of 3 years) of Myanmar’s persecution of Rohingya using genocide as our conceptual framework.

Additionally, and equally important, as an ethnically dominant Myanmar with deep roots in the genocide-perpetrating Myanmar, the crime of genocide is not “simply” a matter of academic or professional interest. It has become a consuming existential matter. Myanmar genocide calls into serious question my sense of Burmese-ness and my attachment to the land from which I have been exiled. For this heinous crime is committed in my ethnic name.

More broadly, genocide is an affront to all who consider themselves decent humans. With such existential dimension to those of us with conscience, from the population of perpetrators, genocide cannot, and must not be left, in the hands of international lawyers, genocide scholars and ultimately national and international courts.

After all, the UN member states – 153 out of the total of nearly 200 – that pledge to uphold the binding Genocide Convention have typically failed to either prevent genocides or punish perpetrating states throughout the Cold War, and thereafter.

That said, after the Cold War Era lull, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations known as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and based in The Hague, Netherlands, where states bring their legal disputes, has rediscovered its institutional mission, centrality and role, with respect to what is generally perceived as “the crime of all crimes”, genocide, more recently with Gambia vs. Myanmar.

The court was absent in many a cases of state crimes. Enter Suharto’s genocide of 1965 in Indonesia, many an atrocity crime throughout Latin America and Africa, Khmer Rouge of 1975. That’s a story for another day.

The real consequences of the ICJ genocide cases

While the UN’s Court lacks any instrument to enforce its rulings, failures to comply with the court orders will most certainly exact a heavy reputational and moral price for any offending state.

Unlike the International Criminal Court (and any other special ad hoc international criminal tribunals, involving genocide allegations, for instance, Rwanda or former Yugoslavia), the ICJ does not concern itself with the individual criminal responsibility of military, civilian or political leaders with command responsibilities.

However, the immense and unrepairable damage to international, national and moral standing awaits these leaders who were seen or deemed responsible for policies and practices of the state which the ICJ finds to be in breach of its treaty or convention obligations. Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Laureate and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, herself in captivity since the coup 3 years ago, is a recent case in point.

With respect to S. Africa’s attempts to institute the legal case against Israel, the proceedings will certainly empower the campaigners worldwide striving to end Israel’s international illegal annexation of all lands which it has occupied since the end of its war with the Arab states in 1967 war.

More concretely, the case will give the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against anything Israel worldwide a greater momentum. Additionally, the public proceedings at the court will keep in the international spotlight not only Israel’s physical destruction of Gaza but also the continuing Occupation of that land that the world know to belong to Palestinians as a people.

Without getting mired in the legalese – for and against the genocide case – the lay public, activists and scholars alike, can still comprehend what genocide is.

Despite ICJ’s crucial differences vis-a-vis the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46 which sought to establish criminal responsibility of individual senior Nazi leaders including the Air Force Chief Hermann Goring, Martin Bormann and J. Ribbentrop, and Hans Frank, the ICJ case against Israel is most certainly going to have intergenerational consequences, both morally, social psychologically and institutionally for Israel (and its public) in particular, and the Jewish diaspora worldwide in general. For centuries, the old Christian Europe and, more recently, the Nazis of the “Enlightened Europe” have inflicted upon the world’s Jewry an intergenerational trauma while the State of Israel is inflicting a profound sense of shame and disdain amongst “the Jews with conscience” towards Netanyahu’s “One and Only Jewish State”. In their view, and as a matter of fact, the Zionist State has weaponized “Never again!”, mobilized Nazi Genocide Memorial museums (including Auschwitz and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum) and resorted to the Bible to justify its genocidal settler colonialism which rests on the land, displacement, mass deportation and corpses of an uncountable number of Palestinian.

Beyond the future legal arguments and counterarguments at the ICJ, and the already raging debate outside amongst genocide scholars, lawyers and lay public, Israel’s physical destruction, as a matter of state policy, of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza will become personal – as it should.

For me, the accompanying genocidal ideologies of which “self-defence” is a commonly shared justificatory narrative amongst perpetrating and collaborating states and society. The language of “self-defence” was present in Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1924), just as it was in my native country’s genocidal narrative against Muslim Rohingyas, a decade ago.

As warped as Hitler was, one of his thematic concerns was the presence of the inferior race of Jude who would contaminate the Aryan nation of racially “superior” Germans. Writing several years before Hitler and the Nazi emerged as a marginal ideological force, Kaiser Wilhem II wrote to one of his generals that the Jews (of Germany) were the “parasites” which grew on the beautiful German oak tree. Apparently, Hitler took it upon himself the national duty of self-defence against the parasite. According to the 2-part BBC Documentary Series, the SS Colonel Eichman told, in reems of recorded interview in Argentina, the Dutch Nazi journalist, Hitler uttered the operative word “physical destruction” of what the Nazis considered the contaminating race of the Jews as the “solution”.

And we know what ensued.

To my deepest disgust, Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, of all the institutions in the world, officially echoed this Hitlerite “self-defence” narrative in its 20 November statement (which received 15.7 million views) supporting unequivocally Israel’s “right to self-defence.

As recent as 3 January, Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, had publicly spelled out Hitlerite’s wholesale physical destruction of the unwanted racial population of 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza, already under total siege subjected to the day and night arial, naval and ground attacks by the Israeli Defence Forces.

n his 4th January-dated letter to David Cameron, UK’s Foreign Secretary, MP for Manchester Afzal Khan wrote, “(s)peaking to Iain Dale (of LBC radio), the Ambassador claimed that in Gaza, “every school, every mosque, every second house, has access to tunnels and munition.” When asked by the presenter whether this was effectively a call for “destroying the whole of Gaza”, the Ambassador simply asked, “do you have another solution?”

No two (genocidal) solutions to the unwanted populations are identical. Not all genocidal racisms and the mono-racialized political states build gas chambers, nor do they copycat the acts of population destruction.

But all genocides in essence seek to destroy a human group or population, marked and unwanted.

Beyond law and courts, and scholarly debates, I will give Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), the Polish Jewish scholar who studied law at the then Polish city of Lwow (now the Ukrainian city of Lviv, several hours’ drive from the Polish border and Auschwitz) in the early 1920’s and coined the word “genocide” even before the Nazi genocide gathered steam. In his book Axis Rul in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (originally published by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, Division of International Law, 1944; Second Edition by Lawbook Exchange Ltd., 2008), Lemkin wrote:

By “genocide” we mean the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. … (Genocide) is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group (p.79).

Here Lemkin proceeded to illustrate his point.

The following illustration will suffice. The confiscation of property of nationals of an occupied area on the ground that they have left the country may be considered simply as a deprivation of their individual property rights. However, if the confiscations are ordered against individuals solely because they are Poles, Jews, or Czechs, then the same confiscations tend in effect to weaken the national entities of which those persons are members (p.79).

In Lemkin’s extremely substantial conception of genocide as a process, “(g)enocide has two phases: one destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain, or upon the territory alone, after the removal of the population and the colonization of the area by the oppressor’s own nationals.”

A “textbook genocide” is taking place

In conclusion, those legal scholars and practitioners who oppose Israel’s conduct in Gaza since October 7, 2023 argue that Israel is perpetrating “a textbook genocide” while holding up the legally framed Genocide Convention designed to “legislate” different large scale crimes targeting identity-based groups, racial, ethnic, national or religious. They are not necessarily wrong except that they fall far short of Lemkin’s comprehensive articulation of genocide, which includes even the post-physical destruction of the colonized under the occupation of the oppressor.

Lemkin as the Jewish refugee intellectual who fled the Nazi-occupied Europe and was acutely concerned about the kind of state-organized atrocity crimes (that is, crime against humanity, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and genocide) that the Ottoman Turks committed against the Armenian population amongst them, and that the Nazis were preparing to perpetrate against “racially inferior stocks” to make Lebensraum or “living space” for the Aryan race in East Europe – replace the word “living space” with “settlements” in the Israel Occupied Territories.

Turning his attention to “our own ranks”, Albert Einstein, another Jewish emigre to the United States,  saw through the “Fascist” nature of settler colonial state and the “Terrorism” as a means to this end (of building the Jewish homeland in biblical Zion).

Just listen to the talk of post-Gaza “conflict” administration and demographic arrangement of the residents of Gaza (and West Bank) by Israel and the collaborating states and multilateral bodies – the likes of which include USA, UK, Germany, France, Canada, and the European Union.

What an irony that it is the world’s “One and Only Jewish State” that is morphing into Lemkin’s worst nightmare!

Whatever the ICJ’s eventual ruling, the conceptual words of the Jewish legal genius who bestowed upon our world the almost sacrosanct Law against genocide are proving chillingly prophetic.

The silver lining is this, however: there are “Jews with conscience” – thousands of them in the diaspora, for instance, under the banner of the Jewish Voice for Peace – who feel so incensed and violated that Israel is perpetrating, in the name of the Jews and Judeaism, “this crime of all crimes” against the entire population of people whose land the Israeli political state has “confiscated” – or stolen, to put it in plain English – and whose national culture and ethnic identity have been framed as “inferior” or “human animals”. They will most likely support S. Africa’s genocide case against apartheid Israel, help advance Palestinians’ liberation struggle and work in solidarity with campaigners for a Free Palestine.

Dr Maung Zarni is a scholar, educator and human rights activist with 30-years of involvement in Burmese political affairs, Zarni has been denounced as an “enemy of the State” for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide.

5 January 2024

Source: forsea.co

By Rima Najjar

It is beyond me how Israel has failed to figure out that a martyred Palestinian leader exerts a vastly more powerful hold on his people’s imagination and will to resist than a living one.

After decades of targeting and killing a long list of Palestinian leaders (or imprisoning them), Israel has not learned that another generation of leaders, stronger and fiercer than their predecessor, emerges inevitably. It makes me wonder if Israel is merely stupid or insane. There is a saying that goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

To people following Israel’s war on Gaza and unaware of Israel’s policy of targeted killing, the assassination in Lebanon of Saleh al-Arouri, Deputy Chair of the Political Bureau of Hamas and founder of the Martyr Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, may have come as a surprise. My own reaction included an element of surprise but for a different reason. I had been betting incorrectly that Israel and the US were smarter than to risk a war with Hezbollah.

Some Israeli ministers who had not received Netanyahu’s memo to keep their mouths shut about the killings foolishly tweeted congratulations to Mossad and Shin Bet on the deed, thus proving that they are not motivated by deterrence, but rather by revenge and hubris.

Not that targeted killing of Palestinian leaders has ever been effective as a deterrence measure. A few days before the assassination of al-Arouri and several of his comrades (collateral damage?), I had watched a presentation on al-Jazeera Arabic showcasing the various families of home-made rockets in the possession of the Palestinian armed resistance. Each slide showed a group of rockets with the picture next to it of an assassinated leader after whom the class of rockets was named.

Image: Ayyash Rocket, named after martyred engineer Yahya Ayyash; Ranteesi Rocket, named after martyred leader Abdel Azziz al-Ranteesi; Abu Shammaleh Rocket, named after martyred leader Mohammad Abu Shammaleh; Attar Rocket, named after martyred leader Raed al-Attar; Ja’abari Rocket, named after martyred leader Ahmad al-Ja’abari; Rocket M90, named after martyred leader Ibrahim al-Maqadmeh

I am certain soon we can look forward to a family of al-Qassam Brigades’ rockets named after martyred leader Saleh al-Arouri.

Image: Al-Qassam Rocket, named after Sheikh Izzedine al-Qassam

Israel has used extrajudicial executions (aka targeted killing) of Palestinian leaders openly since 2001, giving itself a license to kill, including in the territories of other States. By re-characterizing individuals as “terrorists” (al-Arouri was also on the US terrorism list with a bounty of $5m (£4m) on his head since 2018), Israel and the US justify such killing within the framework of the law of armed conflict, thus blurring and expanding that law (also known as international humanitarian law) and making the global order less safe for everybody. Read “10 things the rules of war do” published by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and you will immediately notice that the US and Israel are violating every single rule in Gaza.

In an article titled, ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 76: Extrajudicial Killings of Men in Front of Their Families in Gaza, we learn that “Israeli forces have reportedly conducted extrajudicial executions in front of families in Gaza as international leaders continue to discuss Israel’s conduct with little to no action, while negotiations between Israel and Hamas waver as war rages on.”

Extrajudicial executions are illegal under international law and are considered a fundamental violation of human rights and an “affront to the conscience of humanity.” In the same way that Israel argues falsely (most recently as it defends itself against genocide accusation at ICJ) that its policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza or the West Bank is consistent with international law, “because Israel is engaged in armed conflict with terrorists,” it lies about the people it targets by saying they are “usually killed by conventional military means, not through deception, and the targets of the attacks are not civilians but combatants or are part of a military chain of command.”

The following statistics give an idea of how this policy works in bolstering Israel’s repressive measures against Palestinians: “… from the beginning of the second intifada, on 29 September 2000, to the end of 2010, Israeli security forces killed 4,927 Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, 970 of them minors (under age 18). At least 2,227 of the fatalities were not taking part in hostilities. Another 239 were the object of a targeted killing. Thousands more were injured. [These figures do not include the casualties in Operation Cast Lead.]”

Palestinians have yet to be deterred by Israel’s policies and the cover of impunity the US gives them. Predictably, the reaction is quite the opposite as is evident in the following press statement issued by the joint leadership of the People’s Democratic Party and the Arab Socialist Labor Party in Lebanon on Jan 3, following the assassination of al-Arouri and his comrades. The two parties offered their condolences and affirmed “The natural response to the crime will be to escalate the resistance in Gaza, the West Bank and all supporting fronts, and the enemy entity will be under the fire of resistance from southern Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.”

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

5 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jim Miles

It should be obvious by now for those with any level of critical thinking skills that the Israeli-US narrative on Palestine and Gaza in particular is made up of lies, obfuscation, and dissimulation, the latter two a form of lying by using large and misleading words.

The incessant attacks on Gaza by bombing, missiles, and ground forces clearly demonstrates what the Israelis are now openly declaring.  After decades of a slower more methodical means of removing Palestinians from their native land, the Israelis are now clearly announcing their plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians – many already ‘cleansed’ from their previous homes, some several times – while openly disregarding any semblance of reason by calling for killing all Gazans and beyond, all Palestinians in the occupied territories (of which the whole area of Israel is truly occupied Palestinian land).

Israel is not alone.

The U.S. as Israel’s prime benefactor has contributed huge amounts of armaments to keep the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) supplied with all manner of ordinance.  Regardless of civic disputes domestically, the U.S. political position is unified in its support of the violence carried out by Israel with the same calls for genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Two naval ensembles are assisting in the genocide, not directly by shooting and killing, but indirectly serving as a warning to other parties – Hezbollah, Iran, and all other Arab countries – to not become involved in the war.  The Houthis, who have not much left to lose after a decade of fighting off the U.S. backed Saudi attacks, have effectively blocked the southern Red Sea, and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait leading up to the Suez Canal and Israel’s port of Eilat.

While perhaps perceived as being militarily dominating, they are also somewhat ineffectual, more by the ramifications of their own direct involvement should it come, and the broader war it would generate.  Operation Prosperity Guardian has exposed the weakness of a U.S. naval operation in a modern-day world of asymmetric warfare with drones, and the implications of several supposed strong allies not wanting to participate (Japan, Australia, France, Spain, and all Arab countries except Bahrain, home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command).

Those ships, along with those positioned in the Mediterranean do have a subduing effect on anyone considering entering the conflict on the side of Palestine.  However, it is also recognized they are all susceptible to modern missile attacks, with swarming attacks followed by precision guided hypersonic missiles serving as a strong equalizer in the balance of power in the region.

But Israel still holds all the power, as they do not care about what others think and will continue with its relentless attacks on Palestinians until they are either all dead or all removed, supported by sycophantic politicians from the U.S. empire, the EU, and NATO in particular (while disregarding the sycophantic and useless Abbas PA dictatorship).

There are many narratives to the Israeli mythology: a land without people; making the desert bloom; no one to negotiate with for peace; always the victim; self-defense.  All these and others are subsumed under two major narratives:  that of having the “most moral army” and of being a “democracy”.

Narrative gone – most moral army

Israel has forever proclaimed its army to be the most moral army in the world.  Many have accepted that, and many still do – especially the Christian evangelicals calling for Armageddon – but the reality demonstrates clearly there is nothing moral about the Israeli army.  Its history of extrajudicial murders, support for settler activities ranging from land confiscation to immolation of Palestinians, its known, recorded, and archived history of previous massacres and ethnic cleansing has not, for whatever reason, been enough to quell the “most moral army” lie.

The IOF began its ethnic cleansing of Palestine before they declared independence on May 14, 1948, and after that continued the elimination of around 500 Palestinian towns and villages, creating a massive refugee crisis that has endured and deepened over the decades.  It acted preemptively in the ill-fated attack on Egypt along with Britain and France in order to gain control of the Suez Canal.

The Six Day War, the Nakba, was a preemptive strike by Israel against Egypt, whose main forces at that time were fighting in Yemen (poor Yemen, same old story).  The continuation of that war into Syria to later annex the Golan Heights was an Israeli initiative.  Mostly ignored and clearly a victim of willful ignorance is the associated Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, a clearly marked US spy ship.  This also defines the beginnings of U.S. subservience to Israeli interests over the lives of its own people.

The only war Israel did not start was the Yom Kippur war in 1973, but with much assistance once again from the U.S..  Even then, it was not a war to “defend itself” as Israel at the time occupied Egyptian territory captured in the Six Day war.

After that Israel invaded Lebanon to eliminate the PLO forces under Yassir Arafat, and also to fulfill part of the Ersatz Israel plan to have the land south of the Litani River as part of Israel.  Many years later, and after the creation and defiance of Hezbollah, a resistance organization against Israeli occupation, Israel withdrew.

The first intifada troubled the military as well as the politicians (wherein at the time most politicians were products of the military).  It settled down and disappeared with the false hopes generated by the Oslo accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and different areas of control, in fact dividing Palestine even more into noncontiguous bantustans.

In 2005 Abbas was elected leader of the PA in elections hampered by Israeli interference, some of it from the IOF.  In 2006 elections for the PA legislative assembly led to a very strong success for Hamas.  This was firmly rejected by Israel, the U.S., Canada, and many other countries.  It eventually resulted in Hamas – originally a religious-social network established in part by Israel – controlling the Gaza strip while the PA controlled the West Bank.

While Gaza is the current focus, the slow ethnic cleansing of other Palestinian areas has continued throughout, culminating in attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian towns under the watchful eye of the IOF.

From this point forward the narrative becomes one of continued IOF aggression and attacks against Gaza.  Since 2008 Israel has attacked Gaza four times, “mowing the lawn” as they called it, killing mostly civilians, women and children.   Gaza rather quickly became fully isolated with much of its civic structure destroyed, and at the time of the current conflict being the most densely populated prison camp in the world.  There is nothing in these actions that are “self- defense”, these are actions of an occupying power and its desire for ethnic cleansing.  While other countries call for a “proportionate” response, Israel has always declared that it will hit back disproportionately, and civilians remaining in the line of fire (where else can they go, only to be bombed again) are considered to be terrorists along with those leading the insurrection.

Operating against all military standards as negotiated with the Geneva Accords and the UN Charter and other international laws, Israel’s actions in Gaza are clearly genocidal in word and in deed.  Only those willfully ignorant and incapable of critical thinking can argue that the IOF is a moral army.

Narrative gone – democracy

This narrative is very strongly supported by external sources.  Both Britain in its initial setup of the Palestinian Mandate, and the U.S. after taking over financial and military support, have voiced their idea that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, an island of civilization in a savage part of the world.  The narrative above on the moral army is enough in itself to dispel the idea of Israel being a democracy.

A democracy does not use its army and air forces to control an indigenous population.  A democracy does not have separate rules and regulations, both in the so-called military zones and in the green line state, to control the livelihoods, movements, and all aspects of civil life.  A democracy does not have separate roads, hundreds of checkpoints, and hundreds of kilometers of a separation barrier to control an unwanted demographic.  A democracy does not consider itself to have a god given right to do whatever it likes to its indigenous residents.

Currently, the extreme right wing of Israeli politics is denying democracy itself, calling for a theocratic state governed by whatever rules its rabbinical authorities can concoct in the name of god.  Above all, the calls by current politicians in both Israel and the U.S. to eliminate Hamas and also eliminate Palestinians through ethnic cleansing or genocide, are so far beyond anything remotely humane, and arguably so far beyond anything a god would want its people to be doing.

The U.S. argues that it is the indispensable nation, the leader of the free world.  Events have proven it to be a powerful but not a dominant power – as in the sense of full spectrum dominance desired by the neocons.  Its absence from the world would be beneficial to all as its financial and corporate powers would not be backed up by the “hidden fist” of the U.S. military.  With its strange domestic electoral system, essentially a long running theater of domestic power politics, the U.S. is arguably not a democracy itself.  With its foreign affairs and history of meddling in other countries affairs it is inarguably non-democratic.  Its sycophantic support for Israel furthers this non-democratic tradition, as the interplay between the two is a mix of theocracy and power politics.

Conclusion

With all the information available on social media, on the internet, and the strong media presence outside of the western countries, the ideas that Israel has a moral army and that it is a democracy should be well put to rest by anyone able to think critically.  The U.S., while proclaiming “indispensability”, mainly demonstrates it too has no morals when it comes to ethnic cleansing and genocide, as indeed it is part of their own history since its inception.

To retain the notion that Israel’s army is moral and that Israeli politics are democratic is to be willfully ignorant of the reality of tens of thousands of dead and wounded, and millions displaced in a “war” that is all about the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population for the self-righteous Israeli theocrats.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator

5 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

The White House has warned that the potential for higher shipping costs to affect the U.S. economy amid diversion of ships from the Red Sea will depend on how long Houthi rebels sustain their attacks on commercial vessels.

A FreightWaves report said on Thu, Jan. 4, 2024:

“If we were not concerned, we would not have stood up an operation in the Red Sea, now consisting of more than 20 nations, to try to protect that commerce,” White House spokesman John Kirby said at a White House press conference on Wednesday, referring to the U.S.-led military force Operation Prosperity Guardian.

“The Red Sea is a vital waterway, and a significant amount of global trade flows through it. By forcing nations to go around the Cape of Good Hope, you are adding weeks and weeks onto voyages, and untold resources and expenses have to be applied in order to do that. So obviously there is a concern about the impact on global trade.”

Asked if those impacts will become a “pocketbook” issue for Americans, Kirby responded that the administration is not yet seeing that.

“It would depend on how long this threat goes and on how much more energetic the Houthis think they might become,” he said. “Right now we have not seen an uptick or a specific effect on the U.S. economy. But make no mistake. This is a key international waterway. Countries more and more are becoming aware of this increasing threat to the free flow of commerce.”

Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications for the National Security Council, was at the White House to announce a multinational ultimatum directed at rebel attackers and condemning recent attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The U.S. and 12 other countries issued the ultimatum.

“These actions directly threaten freedom of navigation and global trade, and they put innocent lives at risk,” Kirby said. “This joint statement demonstrates the resolve of global partners against these unlawful attacks and underlines our commitment to holding maligned actors accountable for their actions.”

The report said:

The statement points out that nearly 15% of global maritime trade passes through the Red Sea, including 8% of global grain trade, 12% of seaborne-traded oil and 8% of the world’s liquefied natural gas.

Rerouting vessels around Africa’s Cape of Good hope imperils “the movement of critical food, fuel, and humanitarian assistance throughout the world,” it read.

Maersk, the world’s second-largest ocean carrier, announced on Tuesday that it would suspend Red Sea transits indefinitely and reroute ships around the Cape of Good Hope after Houthi rebels launched a missile against one of its container ships on Saturday.

Three major maritime shipping groups — the World Shipping Council, the International Chamber of Shipping and BIMCO — praised the 13-country condemnation of the attacks.

“On behalf of our members and their seafarers and customers throughout the world, the organizations thank these … nations for their strong commitment to defending rules-based international order and to holding malign actors accountable for unlawful seizures and attacks,” the groups stated.

“The shipping associations call on all nations and international organizations to protect seafarers, international trade in the Red Sea, and to support the welfare of the global commons by bringing all pressure to bear on the aggressors so that these intolerable attacks cease with immediate effect.”

In addition to the U.S. the countries warning against further attacks in the joint statement are Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.

Shipping Costs Have Jumped 250%

A report by BBC News said:

“Some of our costs have gone up 250%”.

That is the reality for Thomas O’Brien, boss of family-run Boxer Gifts, which designs games and seasonal presents.

Their products are made in China so the Leeds-based firm relies heavily on global shipping. But attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea have prompted long diversions to avoid one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Mr O’Brien is among business owners who have told the BBC this could lead to delays and price rises.

It follows a warning from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) that the disruption could have a knock-on effect on product availability and prices.

Chief executive Helen Dickinson said this was “as a result of higher transportation and shipping insurance costs”.

“Over the coming months, some goods will take longer to be shipped,” she added.

Guy Platten, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping warned “we won’t see much of an impact until later on in January”.

The report said:

The attacks are being carried out by the Houthi group which has declared support for Hamas and has said it was targeting ships travelling to Israel. It is not clear if all the ships that have been attacked were actually heading to Israel.

Because of this and the threat of future assaults, several of the world’s largest shipping firms, including Mediterranean Shipping Company and Maersk, have diverted vessels away to a much longer route around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and then up the west side of the continent.

Mr O’Brien said this had led to shipping companies increasing their container costs. For Boxer Gifts that has amounted to a 250% increase in shipping rates in the past two weeks, he said.

The company said it would continue to absorb rising costs as much as possible, but if that prices rose further, the cost would have to be passed on. Delays are a problem too.

“We just about got used to shipments arriving on time after Covid, but at the moment with the Red Sea, that’s adding another 10 to 14 days to shipments,” Mr O’Brien said.

“You end up with a two or three week delay. We have got Valentine’s Day products that are likely to be delayed and miss Valentine’s Day.

“The same effect is going to be felt on Mother’s Day meaning a huge chunk of our selling time for these games is missed”.

The German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd told the BBC it would continue to avoid the Red Sea route until at least 9 January. It sends an average of 50 ships a month through the Suez Canal. Some 25 ships were diverted in the last half of December and 15-20 more will be impacted by today’s decision.

MSC and Maersk two of the largest shipping lines in the world have paused journeys through the Red Sea until further notice. While, France’s CMA-CGM is increasing its rates between Asia and the Mediterranean.

While there has been some disruption to supply chains already, Mr Platten, from the International Chamber of Shipping said it would take a few weeks before the problems are really noticed.

He said while insurance and fuels costs have gone up for shipping lines “goods are still getting through” because there is an alternative route available.

For Mr O’Brien, the financial hit of the ongoing disruption could be hundreds of thousands of pounds, but he said his main concern is letting customers down.

“That damage your reputation for a lot longer than the short term pain of some money,” he said.

‘Nightmare’

The report said:

Rachael Waring said some of her customers were waiting for furniture to arrive

Rachael Waring’s furniture business has been hit with disruption too.

A container filled with her imported products was due to pass through the Red Sea before Christmas. Instead, it has been diverted around the Cape of Africa, along with many other cargo ships.

“I have got customers that most of the goods on one of the container was destined for, which is a nightmare because they would not have furniture,” she said.

“It has a knock on effect for cash flow because that furniture has been paid for in advance, whereas I should be delivering and invoicing the customer now I can’t for another month”.

Ms Waring said the cost of paying for a container have trebled, and she expected prices to rise further.

“That increased shipment cost has to be taken into account for creating customers going forward. And that obviously is going to cause problems for inflation,” she added.

Peter Sand, chief analyst at the Copenhagen-based shipping analytics platform Xeneta, said: “One extra million dollars of fuel costs is put on top of every voyage that goods around the Cape of Good Hope instead of Suez Canal.”

But he said the increased charges should not become fixed after the threat of attack on ships has subsided.

“Everyone needs to have their costs covered from an escalation, but they cannot become embedded,” he said.

Red Sea Fallout Much Greater For Containers Than Tankers, Bulkers

Another FreightWave report said on Dec. 20, 2023:

Tuesday’s announcement of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a joint military operation to protect commercial shipping in the Red Sea, was met with skepticism — and jokes about the Seychelles, a popular island honeymoon destination off the coast of Africa.

The existing naval security operation in the Red Sea, Combined Task Force 153, is a 39-nation partnership. Operation Prosperity Guardian has just 10 partners: the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Bahrain and the Seychelles.

As of Wednesday, there were no details available on what Operation Prosperity Guardian will do beyond expanded patrols, or how long it will take for escorted convoys to be put in place, if at all.

“Officials have played down the idea that they will provide naval escorts for commercial vessels,” said ship brokerage Braemar on Tuesday.

According to Evercore ISI shipping analyst Jon Chappell, “The number of ships that transit the Red Sea is large enough that the U.S. is reportedly guiding against the idea that 100% convoy escort is viable.”

The report said:

Current fallout from the Red Sea crisis is focused much more on container shipping than other vessel segments.

Virtually all container vessels are rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope. Container ships that had already transited southbound through the Suez but had yet to reach the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait are now turning back, paying another toll to get to the Mediterranean.

Numerous bulk commodity ships are heading to the Cape, as well, but not to the extent container ships are. That could change with a military escalation, which could increase reroutings across all shipping sectors.

“We see the outcomes as fairly binary here,” said Chappell in a research note on Tuesday. “Either the creation of the task force substantially restores confidence in shippers using the Red Sea/Suez route, or further escalation largely closes the route.

“The former is the dominant base case, but it is worth being attentive to the latter risk case, as the consequences could be macro-significant,” Chappell warned.

He sees the “strong base case” as “we revert to something tolerably close to business as usual.” But he believes the risk of escalation is “non-trivial.”

In a worst-case scenario, in which Red Sea transits for all ship types are heavily curtailed, “we could see freight prices go up multiples — think five to 10 times,” said Chappell.

“These costs would be passed through to the consumers and shippers and supply chain bottlenecks would re-emerge as the greater distances around Africa would tie up extreme amounts of shipping capacity.”

In the unlikely event of a full closure of the Red Sea/Suez route for more than a week, Chappell said it “would start to have global effects.”

Diversions Require More Container-ship Capacity

The report added:

Automatic Identification System (AIS) ship-position data from Kpler-owned MarineTraffic shows how different vessel segments are dealing with the Houthi threat differently.

Larger container lines have rerouted all of their services to the Cape of Good Hope. Ship-position data on Wednesday morning showed no container ships transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Longer voyages will ultimately require more container ships to maintain the same service levels. According to Sea-Intelligence, the switch to the around-Africa route will require 1.45 million to 1.7 million twenty-foot units of additional ship capacity.

That, in turn, will help container lines absorb new building capacity that is now being delivered, which should keep container freight rates higher than they would have been minus the Houthi attacks.

Bulkers And Tankers Continue To Transit

The report said:

In contrast to container shipping, AIS data shows that the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait remained heavily trafficked by dry bulk carriers on Wednesday.

Dry bulk carrier positions as of Wednesday morning. (Map: MarineTraffic)

MarineTraffic ship-position data on tankers — including crude and product tankers as well as carriers — also showed ongoing traffic through the strait.

Tanker positions as of Wednesday morning. (Map: MarineTraffic)

“Few tankers have thus far been rerouted via South Africa,” reported Braemar. “One or two fixtures via the Suez have failed in recent days, and we know of at least two Suezmaxes [tankers with capacity of 1 million barrels] that have been asked to delay passage through the Suez Canal until the situation settles down.

“We are still fixing cargoes via the Canal without Cape options,” confirmed Braemar. “Most owners we talk to are assessing [transits] on a case-by-case basis, even some of those that have publicly stated that they would not transit the Suez.”

Routing of laden tankers is determined by the ship charterer. Oil companies BP and Equinor have announced that they won’t route their cargoes through the Red Sea, but they are in the minority.

Lars Barstad, CEO of tanker owner Frontline, told S&P Global Commodity Insights: “Shipowners have limited opportunity to reroute when the vessel is already under contract, if safety is deemed acceptable. Disappointingly few oil majors have adopted BP’s and Equinor’s policy.”

Another reason crude tanker flows are not seeing a big effect yet: Much of it is Russian crude, and the Houthis are backed by Russian ally Iran.

According to Ioannis Papadimitrou, senior freight analyst at Vortexa, “Of the approximately 1,200 laden crude voyages that transited the Red Sea in 2023, 60% originated in Russia. Given that Russian barrels are increasingly being carried by non-EU/Western operators, these flows face minimal risk amid the ongoing Houthi attacks.

“Additionally, these barrels are heading to non-EU/Western buyers, which further decrease the likelihood of disruption for these flows.”

Rates Up For Tankers Transiting Red Sea

The report said:

On the plus side for tanker markets, rates are rising for vessels that do take the Red Sea route.

According to Braemar, “While the attacks have failed to influence the broader tanker market, for vessels looking to transit the Suez Canal, the conversation — and the cost — has changed dramatically over the past few days. Suezmax charterers looking to fix Med-to-Far East via the Suez are looking at a jump of $850,000.”

Brokerage Fearnleys said Wednesday that Suezmax rates from the Middle East Gulf to Europe transiting the Red Sea “have firmed significantly … which is no surprise given developments there.”

Effect On Shipping Stocks

It said:

The container-centric effect of the Red Sea crisis is being reflected in near-term stock pricing.

Shares of container lines — particularly Israeli carrier Zim — are rising faster than shares of owners of Suezmax crude tankers and product tankers.

Between Dec. 12 and mid-day Wednesday, shares of Zim were up 42%, albeit off highly depressed levels.

In contrast, shares of product-tanker owners Scorpio Tankers, Torm and Ardmore Shipping were up 16%, 15% and 11%, respectively, over the same period.

Shares of Suezmax owners Nordic American Tankers and Teekay Tankers were up 15% and 12%, respectively, since Dec. 12. Stock prices of mixed-fleet owners Frontline and International Seaways were up 11% and 10%, respectively.

(Chart: Koyfin)

5 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

Several leading Middle-East analysts have been warning about the possibilities of the Gaza war escalating and also an even wider regional conflict emerging. The killing of a Hamas commander in Beirut and an Iranian military leader in Syria (allegedly by Israel), attacks in the Red Sea on merchant ships by the Houthis and the US-led response, the growing tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border and the exchange of rockets between the Hezbollah and the Israeli forces, the attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria and the US response to this, the US bringing two aircraft carriers and their striking units within the regional waters—all these have been seen by some as signs which indicate the emergence of a wider crisis or even a wider war. However the risks of a wider conflict have increased much more with the powerful bomb blast in Iran, resulting in over 80 deaths, on January 3, on the sensitive occasion of the death anniversary of the Iran General Quassem Soleimani who as Quds leader had played a very important role in taking Iran’s influence to a wider Middle-East area, particularly through various militant organizations like the Hezbollah, and who was killed in a US air raid on Baghdad airport in 2020. Although on January 4, it was reported that the IS had taken responsibility for it, there still continued to be other allegations, including of Israeli involvement.

Trita Parcy of the Quincy Institute, USA, has stated, “This is a very dangerous time. A region-wide war appears more likely by the day.”

Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara has stated that there are ‘dark clouds’ gathering near the Middle-East after several days of escalating regional tensions. He said, “anything could happen now in this region. There is so much pent-up violence, so much pent-up tension, so many conflicts and so many moving parts. From the Red Sea to the Iranian Iraqi border to Yemen to Gulf, basically everyone in the region now is a candidate to further escalation.”

This is deeply worrying, and all possible efforts should be made to prevent a further escalation and widening of the present day main conflict or smaller conflicts in the Middle-East.

Escalation and widening may be caused broadly in two ways. Firstly, there can be non-intentional widening or escalation. This may happen if and when in an already tense and sensitive situation an event or even at times a statement can have a different or a much bigger impact than was expected or intended. This can also happen when in situations of great tensions and deep suspicions, some action is misinterpreted, provoking a very hostile response that was not justified. Such possibilities increase because of a lot of disinformation being spread.

On the other hand, deliberate escalation or widening can also be caused if one of the bigger forces in the conflict, or one of the big leaders of this force, takes actions which are actually aimed in a conscious way to broaden or escalate the conflict. To give one example, Israel may do something which may increase further the hostility between Iran and the USA, or between Iran and Saudi Arabia, or it may do something that forces Iran into a more direct confrontation with it, thereby also drawing in the USA, as per expectation. A former Prime Minister of Israel has written recently that instead of allowing Iran-supported militias to bleed Israel and even USA as proxies of Iran, it is much better for these countries to confront Iran directly. To give another example of the possibilities of intended escalation, Hamas may do something that will escalate hostility either between Israel and Iran, or between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Terrorist organizations like the IS may have their own reasons for escalation and widening of conflict.

Some leaders may be guided even by personal self-interest while seeking war escalation and widening. Netanyahu, for example, will face a lot of domestic problems if war ends very soon, including very uncomfortable questions over the failure of intelligence prior to the October 7 attack, but if the war widens and then can end on a note of victory for Israel, then probably his domestic criticism will tone down a lot.

This being the year of Presidential election in the USA is also a factor to be reckoned with. The military-industrial complex is generally interested in wider and prolonged wars.

Whatever be the narrow calculations that could possibly instigate a widening of the Middle-East conflict, what should not be forgotten is that this is like playing with fire, and those who seek to injure others may themselves get very badly hurt in the efforts, as a widening conflict can also spiral out of control and have consequences very different from those which guided the instigators of the escalation.

What is clear beyond doubt is that the way forward is that of checking and controlling conflict at all levels, with the end as early as possible of the Gaza conflict and the Gaza humanitarian crisis being at the core of such efforts. Keeping in view this overwhelming aim, any evidence against those trying to escalate and widen the conflict should be examined carefully and exposed at an early date before such instigation can cause much harm. It is from this perspective that the early and unbiased identification of the culprits of the most terrible bomb blast on January 3 in Kerman, Iran, which has claimed over 100 human lives apart from injuring a large number of people, should be attempted.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now.

5 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org