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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

By Andre Damon

The US carried out an illegal missile strike on Baghdad, Iraq, on Thursday in the latest escalation of the US-Israeli rampage throughout the Middle East.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed that the US killed its target, identified as Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari. Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces said that al-Jawari was the head of the Iranian-backed militia group Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and that the strike also killed an Iraqi official and wounded five people.

Iraqi officials condemned the attack, making it clear that the US has no mandate to carry out attacks inside Iraq. The strike is thus a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and an act of aggression in violation of international law.

The United States illegally invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, and US proxy forces executed its president, Saddam Hussein, in 2006, following what Amnesty International called an “unfair trial.”

The United States maintains 2,500 troops inside Iraq, but the Iraqi government asserts that the United States does not have authorization to carry out military strikes inside the country.

Iraq’s foreign ministry issued a “strong condemnation” of what it called a “blatant attack” on Iraq’s military headquarters.

“The attack on a security formation linked to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and subject to the authority of the state is a dangerous escalation,” read the statement, adding, “we affirm that Iraq reserves its right to take a firm stance and all measures that deter anyone who tries to harm its territory and its security forces.”

An Iraqi official called the strike a “flagrant violation of the sovereignty and security of Iraq” and “no different from a terrorist act.”

Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, absurdly claimed that “It is important to note that the strike was taken in self-defense.”

The same day as Ryder admitted US responsibility for the attack in Iraq, the Islamic State Sunni terrorist group claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s bombing that killed 84 people in Kerman, Iran, at a memorial for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who was killed four years ago by a US drone strike in Iraq.

These attacks set the stage for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s week-long trip to the Middle East, including a prominent visit to Israel.

A State Department spokesman said Thursday that this will be Blinken’s fourth trip to the Middle East in the past three months. Blinken will visit “Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank, and Egypt.”

These moves come as Israeli officials are openly advocating the ethnic cleansing of Gaza through the expulsion of the Palestinian people.

On Tuesday, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for the Palestinian population to be expelled from Gaza, declaring in a Twitter post that “the migration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow the residents of the enclave to return home and live in security and protect [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers.”

This followed a statement on Sunday by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration.” He added, “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different.”

In an interview Monday on the British LBC talk show program, Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely refused to deny that Israel was intent on “destroying the whole of Gaza” in an interview.

″I really want to mention that Gaza has an underground tunnel city, and in order to get to this underground tunnel city, those areas must be destroyed,” she said, adding, “every school, every mosque, every second house, has access to the tunnels. And of course, ammunition.”

LBC presenter Iain Dale asked, “That’s an argument for destroying the whole of Gaza, every single building in it.”

To this, Hotovely replied, “So, do you have another solution?”

US officials have attempted to distance themselves from the statements by Smotrich and Gvir, falsely claiming that their statements do not represent the official position of the Israeli government.

This assertion contradicts multiple public statements by Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said in a meeting of his parliamentary faction, “Regarding voluntary immigration… This is the direction we are going in.”

In private, Netanyahu has been lobbying countries, including Egypt and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to accept the transfer of the population of Gaza onto their territory.

On Wednesday, the Times of Israel reported, “The ‘voluntary’ resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the government, with a senior official saying that Israel has held talks with several countries for their potential absorption.”

At the White House daily briefing on Thursday, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby was asked to respond to assertions by multiple UN officials that Israel was engaging in systematic war crimes.

He was asked by a reporter, “Have you taken any action to this day to assess whether Israel is following the rules of war or not?”

To this, Kirby replied, “I am not aware of any kind of formal assessment being done by the United States government to analyze the compliance with international law by our partner Israel.”

Having made this statement, Kirby declared, “I would just tell you that we have not seen anything that would convince us that we need to take a different approach.”

This declaration follows the admission by President Joe Biden on December 12 that Israel has carried out indiscriminate bombing—by definition a violation of the laws of war, which require that efforts be taken to limit civilian casualties.

Kirby’s statement constitutes an endorsement of all of Israel’s war crimes up to this point, including the systematic bombing of densely populated areas that has killed nearly 30,000 people, the mass displacement of 1.9 million people, the deliberate mass starvation of the population of Gaza, and the deliberate targeting of housing, schools, hospitals and religious buildings.

On Thursday, Tariq Habash, a political appointee at the Department of Education, issued an open letter announcing his resignation from the Biden administration, condemning it for enabling Israel’s war on the population of Gaza.

The letter declared, “Over the last three months, our government has aided in the indiscriminate violence against Palestinians in Gaza—over 22,000 civilians killed, thousands more buried under rubble, and the vast majority displaced from their homes.”

It continued, “Meanwhile, the President has publicly questioned the integrity of Palestinian death counts frequently used by our own State Department, the United Nations, and numerous humanitarian non-governmental organizations. Our representatives at the United Nations have repeatedly voted against the vast majority of the international community, including vetoing resolutions calling for a ceasefire. And administration leaders have even repeated unverified claims that systematically dehumanize Palestinians.”

On Thursday, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees warned that disease is spreading throughout Gaza amid mass starvation, noting that there are more than 180,000 people in Gaza with upper respiratory infections, and over 136,000 cases of diarrhea have been reported, half of them in children under five.

On Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said that he was “very disturbed by high-level Israeli officials’ statements on plans to transfer civilians from Gaza to third countries.” He added, “85 percent of people in Gaza are already internally displaced. They have the right to return to their homes. International law prohibits forcible transfer of protected persons within or deportation from occupied territory.”

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

5 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Mariam Abu Daqqa is a press photographer in the Gaza Strip. She gives us below her daily morning view of the carcass-ridden Strip. She reflects the feelings of all Gazans when they get up in the morning under the Israeli war machine pounding above their heads:

“I want to talk to you about how the mornings start in Gaza, here its different than any mornings in the world,” she tells the camera.

Good mornings to martyrs

“It starts with saying goodbyes to martyrs, warplane strikes of houses on civilians, mornings start with being enveloped by the injured, sadness on the face of everyone, of hunger, exhaustion because of intermittent sleep by the whole of the people of the strip,” Abu Daqqa adds.

“From 7 October till now, it has been 90 days of anguish. Every day starts with strikes, martyrs, goodbyes, sadness, injuries and the fear that grips everyone,” counting one-by-one the misery Gaza has been reduced to.

“People have stopped saying good morning to each other, but say Al Hamdulilah (Thanks be to God) that I have survived, a prayer they have survived from a fierce night of military strikes on top of their heads and their homes.”

Ninety days of getting up each morning to the same sounds of thudding, tireless momentum that never stops, but keep pounding on and on and on.

“Gaza is not well, 90 days of people going to bed and waking up in fear, of people hoping that they will make it through the night, so they can get up in the morning and say Thank God I am still alive, but we are actually not alive because of the situation we are in and what surrounds us, the bombing, the destruction, the debris, the devastation on us.”

In Gaza, we live one day at a time and see what happens next. Living, minute-by—minute, hour-by-hour and if we are lucky, day-by-day,” the young journalist can be heard saying.

“Mornings in the world or other countries are about good mornings, mornings to work, mornings to coffee, it’s about mornings to go to work, mornings to see relatives and parents, the exchanges, odd comments here and there, strolls on the beach, a normal life for everyone but not in Gaza.

Life here is not normal at all.”

Genocide

The Israeli military machine has ruined Gaza, it has devastated the enclave from its north to the south, turning its rubble, wreckage and debris as if a meteorite hit it not once but a hundred time as 80,000 tons of explosives (but who is counting!) were dropped on its cities, towns, villages and refugee camps. This is glaring, apparent genocide on helpless people.

But people are not relenting. They say we will live and stay where we are even in our displaced status.

Already, over 21,000 people have been killed indiscriminately, around 7000 under the rubble of their once-existing homes while over 55,000 people have been injured.

Israel is truly a pariah state, it doesn’t care, but may in a way. It wants controlled massacres, deaths and destruction because it doesn’t want its allies to look too bad. That’s why it has sought to kill as many journalists as possible.

In its three months massacre of Gaza, Israel has killed 106 journalists, most of whom in the enclave because they don’t want the word to get out about their butchery in Gaza. But they are wrong. Everybody knows in the world of their heinous acts. And the finger is pointed at them.

Marwan Asmar, who has a Phd from the UK’s Leeds University, has long worked in journalism in Jordan and the Gulf countries.

4 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Salim Nazzal

It is impossible to talk about the end of history without thinking about the beginning of a new history. Human history does not usually follow a straight line, but is subject to great fluctuations and changes. These changes are often like a new climate that drives out the old climates that become unacceptable.

In the past, slavery was a natural and acceptable system, and seeing European ships transporting thousands of Africans to the New World was a normal event that did not shake the feelings of those who went to church every Sunday in Europe.

Colonization was also an acceptable system in a certain historical period. It was normal to see representatives of European countries sitting and drinking coffee in front of maps as they divided the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with all their people and wealth, among themselves.

Britain’s giving Palestine to the Jews happened in the last historical stages when this matter was acceptable in the world. And the world was the West, which succeeded in determining the fate of humanity for more than two centuries, so much so that we still use the expression “world public opinion” and we mean the West, as if anything other than the West had no opinion.

The saying “history is written by the strong” is a common saying that suggests that the dominant forces in society are the ones who shape the historical narrative. This is often true, as the strong have the power to control the production and dissemination of historical knowledge. However, the saying is not absolute. There are many examples of weak or marginalized groups who have been able to write their own history, often through the use of oral traditions, literature, and other forms of cultural expression.

We now see how the Zionist narrative, which has dominated for decades, has begun to crumble, and the Palestinian narrative has begun to emerge, especially in front of the young generation.

Tإhere are a number of factors that have contributed to the decline of the Zionist narrative. One factor is the increasing availability of information and perspectives from the Palestinian side. The internet and social media have made it easier for people to learn about the Palestinian experience, and this has led to a more nuanced understanding of the conflict.

The Palestinian attack on October 7 was a small attack, but it came as an announcement that old history had ended and that a new history was about to begin.

Though I do not agree with the view that Israel is finished, but I firmly believe that a major blow has been dealt to the Zionist idea, which is based on the cancellation of the Palestinian people and bringing the Jews of the world to Palestine.

We are witnessing a new history in Palestine, the Middle East, and indeed the whole world.

Questions have begun to be raised that go beyond Gaza and Palestine, especially after the exposure of the falsehood of Western positions towards the genocide of Gaza, and these questions have become to raise major issues about the formation of the United Nations, the dominance of the dollar, and the exploitation of the resources of the Third World by the Western world, and other issues that concern all of humanity.

Mahatma Gandhi was right when he said that the tyrants and murderers seem invincible but in the end, they always fall.

Dr Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad. Palestine in heart.

4 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

A famous quote by Franz Kafka says, “Every thing you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”

The same principle, I believe, applies to any other powerful feeling, including resentment, hate, anger, even rage.

American officials should know this well as they continue to support Israel with billions of dollars of military and economic aid, and anything and everything that would allow Israel to continue with its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Arabs, the Muslims – in fact, the whole world – are watching, listening, reading and are getting angrier by the day, at the direct American role in facilitating the Gaza bloodbath.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza “has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II” and “now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history,” the Associated Press reported, based on recent satellite data analysis.

Aside from the tens of thousands of dead and missing in the rubble, even a higher number of people have been injured and maimed, including thousands of children. Countless children are left “grappling with the loss of an arm or a leg,” according to UNICEF.

This agony of Gaza is being watched on television and is also being viewed through every possible medium of communication. It is as if the world is suffering along with the Gaza children, but without being able to stop or slow down the genocide.

And, yet, even when all European countries, save a few, reversed their position on the war, joining the rest of the world in demanding an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire, Washington continued to reject these calls.

This is how US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, justified her country’s use of the veto, striking down the first serious attempt by the UN Security Council to achieve a permanent truce on October 18: “Israel has the inherent right of self-defense as reflected in Article 51 of the UN Charter.”

That same logic has been repeated many times by US officials since then, even when the extent of the Gaza tragedy became known to everyone, including the Americans themselves.

This self-serving logic goes against the very spirit of international and humanitarian law, which vehemently rejects the targeting of civilians during times of war and conflict, and the prevention of humanitarian aid from reaching civilian victims of war.

Indeed, the vast majority of Gaza’s victims are civilians and, according to UNICEF, over 70 percent of all of those killed and wounded are women and children.

Moreover, due to the inhumane Israeli practices, Gaza survivors are now dealing with an actual famine, an unprecedented event in the modern history of Palestine.

Yet, Israel continues to prevent the access to food, medicine, fuel and other urgent supplies to Gaza, thus violating Washington’s own laws on the matter.

“No assistance shall be furnished to any country when it is made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance,” the US Foreign Assistance Act (Section 620I) states.

The Biden Administration has done nothing to pressure – let alone force – Israel to adhere to the most basic humanitarian laws in its ongoing genocide in Gaza. Worse, President Biden is furnishing Israel with the needed tools to prolong this destructive war.

According to a December 25 report by Israel’s Channel 12, more than 20 ships and 244 US airplanes have delivered over 10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel since the start of the war.

These military supplies include, according to the Wall Street Journal, at least 100 BLU-109, 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, which have been repeatedly used throughout the Israeli war, killing and wounding hundreds each time.

The only tangible action that the US has taken since the start of the war was to create a coalition, named ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’, with the sole purpose of ensuring the safety of ships crossing the Red Sea, into or from Israel.

The US, however, seems to have learned nothing from the past, from its devastating wars on Iraq, from the so-called ‘war on terror’, from its failure to find a balance between its support for Israel and its respect for Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. To the contrary, some US officials seem to be entirely detached from this reality.

At a press conference at the White House on December 7, US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, proclaimed: “Tell me, name me, one more nation, any other nation, that is doing as much as the United States to alleviate the pain and suffering of the people of Gaza. You can’t. You just can’t.”

But how are ‘dumb bombs’, ‘smart bombs’, bunker busters and tens of thousands of tons of explosives “alleviating the pain and suffering” of Gaza and her children?

If Kirby is unaware of his country’s role in the genocide in Gaza, then the crisis in American foreign policy is worse than we could have imagined. If he is aware, and he should be, then his country’s moral crisis is arguably unprecedented in modern history.

The problem in US politics is that American administrations have a segmented view of reality, as they are intently focused on how their action, or inaction, is going to affect their political parties in future elections.

But Americans who care about their country and its position in a vastly changing Middle East and rapidly shifting global geopolitics should remember that history neither starts nor finishes on a fixed November date, once every four years.

“In the end, love will return in a different way,” Kafka wrote. He is right. But hate, too, tends to return as well, manifesting itself in myriad ways. More than any other country, Washington should have come to that realization on its own.

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

4 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

The US military has “prepared options” for attacking Yemen, the Wall Street Journal reported, amid a major escalation of war throughout the Middle East.

The Journal reported that “potential targets could include launchers for antiship missiles and drones, targeting infrastructure such as coastal radar installations, and storage facilities for munitions.”

In a threat to Yemen, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday the US will not “shrink from the task of defending ourselves, our interests, our partners, and the free flow of international commerce.”

He added, “To accomplish these goals we have established and will continue to maintain a significant force presence in the Middle East. This includes an aircraft carrier strike group centered around the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, with its embarked air wing of some 80 aircraft, as well as an amphibious ready group with its embarked 26 Marine Expeditionary Unit.”

These ships, Kirby said, contain “more than 4,000 sailors and more than 50 aircraft.” He added, “These ships and their Marines are augmented by three additional squadrons of fighter and attack aircraft that are based ashore and additional highly capable warships at sea.” These ships, Kirby said, represent “offensive … military power.”

The belligerent statements cap two days of major escalations of tensions throughout the Middle East. On Tuesday, Israel carried out a strike in Beirut, Lebanon, killing Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas’s political committee. While Israel denied its responsibility for the strike, US officials later confirmed to Al Jazeera that the attack was conducted by Israel.

The US effectively endorsed the murder of al-Arouri, with White House spokesman Kirby declaring that Israel “has a right and responsibility to go after the threat that Hamas poses, which means they have a right and a responsibility to go after the leadership of Hamas.” He added, “I would just tell you that al-Arouri was a noted ‘designated global terrorist.’ And if he is, in fact, dead, nobody should be shedding a tear over his loss.”

Then, on Wednesday, over 100 people were killed at a memorial ceremony for Maj. Gen. Qassemi Soleimani, the Iranian general murdered by US President Donald Trump while on a diplomatic mission in Iraq four years ago. While Israel has for years carried out a string of bombings throughout Iran, in this case both the United States and Israel denied responsibility.

Mojataba Zolnouri, Iran’s deputy Parliament head, said that it was “clear from the style of the attacks that it is the Zionist regime” which is responsible for the bombing. But White House spokesman Kirby declared, “We have no indication that Israel was in any way involved in this.”

Last week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that Israel is at “war” with multiple countries. “We are in a multi-front war. We are being attacked from seven fronts—Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran,” he said. “We have already responded and acted on six of those fronts,” in a clear threat to Iran.

The US media continues to incite direct war against Iran. On the day in which 100 people were killed in a terror attack on Iran, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial calling Iran “the fulcrum of Mideast violence,” and declaring, “Sooner or later the US and its allies will have to reestablish deterrence if they want a more stable Middle East, and that means dealing with Iran.”

This week, Israel announced that thousands of troops would be withdrawn from Gaza, raising the prospect that they will be used in an attack on Lebanon. Israel has evacuated 70,000 residents from its northern border with Lebanon and has amassed troops and tanks there. Israeli forces have launched daily bombardments across the Lebanese border since October 7.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will depart Thursday to the Middle East, including a trip to Israel. The death toll in Israel’s genocide is quickly nearing 30,000, with Gaza’s Government Media Office declaring that 29,313 people in Gaza are either killed or missing since October 7.

Against the backdrop of escalating war throughout the region, the US has been thrown into crisis by the Israeli regime’s openly genocidal rhetoric. In a statement on Tuesday, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield declared, “There should be no mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, and we reject the recent inflammatory statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.”

In a separate statement, the US State Department declared, “The United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible. We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.”

Regardless of what the United States claims it was told in private, Netanyahu has categorically endorsed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza in public, telling a meeting of his parliamentary faction, “Regarding voluntary immigration… This is the direction we are going in.”

Of course, these statements do in fact represent the policies of the Israeli government, which is engaged in a conscious genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign against Gaza. The United States, which declares it has no “red lines” on what Israel is allowed to do, is fully complicit in this genocide.

On Thursday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) announced that it will hold public hearings January 11 and 12 on South Africa’s accusation that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The United States, however, continues to deny that Israel is committing genocide and that the US is an accomplice to it. “We have not at this point seen acts that constitute genocide,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

Asked to comment on the filing by South Africa with the ICJ, White House spokesman Kirby called the submission “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

(Unlike the International Criminal Court [ICC], which hears charges against individuals, the International Court of Justice hears charges by UN member states against other states. The US government does not recognize the ICC but does recognize the ICJ, and its current chair, Joan Donoghue, is an American.)

Public denunciations of Israel’s genocide by human rights experts are mounting. In a statement on Twitter, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, declared, “Forcible transfer of Gazan population is an act of genocide especially given the high number of children.”

On Wednesday, the Euro-Med Human Rights monitor declared in a statement that “Israel is determined to carry out the forcible displacement of civilians in the Gaza Strip, beyond the bounds of international law.”

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

4 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Salim Nazzal

This phrase has been repeated by many observers and analysts to a degree that we have never heard it before in all the wars that have taken place over the past seventy-five years.

So the question that now arises is what makes several observers consider the October 7 war to be the beginning of the end of Zionism?

To answer this question, it is important to say that the blow by the Palestinian resistance forces, despite its success, is limited militarily from a purely military perspective, but its repercussions and results were much greater, perhaps even more than those who planned it expected.

The importance of this attack and the rapid collapse of the Zionist forces was a fatal blow to the Zionist propaganda that it possesses one of the best armies in the world. But what we saw was fighters in modest clothes and modest weapons literally defeated, a whole division which made many in the Arab world say sarcastically, “Is this the army that defeated the Arab armies in war after war?”

The October 7 war was a major setback for Israel, and it is likely that it had a significant impact on the Israeli psyche. The war also led to a change in international opinion about Israel, and it made it more difficult for Israel to justify its occupation of the Palestinian territories.

However, it is important to note that the October 7 war was not the only factor that contributed to the decline of Zionism. Other factors that is connected to it, such as the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza, the growing international isolation of Israel,

However it can be said that in the year 2000, when Israel withdrew from Lebanon without condition that the time of Zionist retreat began. It is true that reaching the stage of the collapse of Zionism may require a decade or even more time. But it is sure the blow of October 7 may have killed the spirit of Zionist pride and arrogance.

Only time will tell whether the October 7 war was truly the beginning of the end of Zionism. However, it is clear that the war was a major turning point in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it is likely to have a lasting impact on the future of the region.

Dr Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad. Palestine in heart.

3 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jordan Shilton

Israel’s far-right government carried out the assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Tuesday. This brazen act of aggression increases the danger of an escalation of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza into a region-wide war, for which US imperialism and its European imperialist allies have long been preparing.

Al-Arouri, reportedly Hamas’ closest link with Hizballah in Lebanon and Iran, was targeted in a suspected drone strike on an apartment building where he was meeting secretly with other senior Hamas officials in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh. Among the seven casualties were two commanders of the Qasem Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, Samir Findi and Azzam al-Aqraa. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh announced that the assassination meant a halt to negotiations with Israel over the release of the hostages remaining in Gaza.

Following the common practice in its long list of previous assassinations, Israel did not officially claim responsibility for the strike. An anonymous US Defence Department official speaking to the Washington Post said Israel was responsible for the assassination. The US State Department confirmed that a planned trip by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Israel later this week will be delayed until the beginning of next week, underscoring that Washington intends to determine Israel’s next steps in the conflict.

Responding to the assassination, Hizbollah reportedly fired missiles towards Israel’s northern border late Tuesday. Two Israeli soldiers were lightly injured.

Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stated in an August 2023 speech that any Israeli assassination on Lebanese territory would result in a “decisive response” to prevent Lebanon from becoming “a new killing field for Israel.” A statement from the militant group following al-Arouri’s killing vowed that it would not “pass without response or punishment.”

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati also denounced the targeted killing of al-Arouri, accusing Israel of dragging Lebanon into a “new phase of conflict.” In 2006, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched a massive invasion of southern Lebanon, triggering a month-long war in which Israel carried out barbaric war crimes against the civilian population. In 1982, supported by the Christian fascist Falange, Israel directed the bloody massacre of over 3,000 Palestinian refugees in the Sabra neighbourhood of Beirut and the Shatila refugee camp. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon claimed the lives of some 18,000 people.

Israel’s extra-judicial killing of al-Arouri, a violation of international law, provides yet another example of the Zionist regime’s utter criminality. Since 7 October, it has flattened hospitals and schools, deliberately targeted journalists and medical workers, and used food, water, and fuel as weapons of war. All of these policies are part of a genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

This fascistic policy was underscored again in comments calling for the “voluntary emigration,” i.e., ethnic cleansing, of Gaza’s residents by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir earlier this week. Speaking at his Jewish Power’s weekly faction meeting, Ben Gvir stated that the war provides an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza.” He added that a “correct, just, moral and humane solution” would include the return of Israeli settlements to Gaza, which were abandoned in 2005.

Al-Arouri’s assassination was timed to prove Israel’s readiness to escalate and broaden the war. In Gaza, the IDF’s savage bombardment continues, with over 200 Palestinians killed over the preceding 24 hours, according to figures released Tuesday by the Gaza Health Ministry. Strikes and fighting on the ground persisted in Khan Younis, where hundreds of thousands of civilians remain trapped. Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza where over 1 million people are now crammed, was also hit. The ongoing bloodshed underlines how Israel is persisting with its genocidal policy even as it modestly reduces the number of troops deployed in the north of the Gaza Strip.

In Khan Younis, the IDF bombed the al-Amal Hospital, which is used by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society for its training programmes. The strike killed five people, including a five-day-old baby. World Health Organisation head Tedros Ghibreyesus criticised the bombing, saying, “Today’s bombings are unconscionable. Gaza’s health system is already on its knees, with health and aid workers continuously stymied in their efforts to save lives due to the hostilities.” Some 14,000 people are sheltering in and around the hospital.

In the West Bank, an Israeli raid Monday night in the small town of Azzun resulted in the deaths of four Palestinian militants and the arrest of seven. Over 320 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank since 7 October.

The provocative escalation of the war represented by Israel’s assassination of al-Arouri plays into the hands of the far-right Netanyahu government, which is increasingly unpopular domestically. Its failure to secure the release of over 120 hostages still in Gaza has fuelled popular anger. On Monday, Netanyahu suffered a significant setback when Israel’s Supreme Court overturned a judicial reform law that would have altered Israel’s constitutional basic laws to weaken judicial oversight over the government. The authoritarian reform, imposed by Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and his fascistic allies, triggered mass protests for a year prior to Hamas’ 7 October attacks.

Fully confident of American imperialism’s unrestrained support, demonstrated with the steady supply of high-powered weaponry for its Gaza onslaught, Israel has repeatedly struck targets in Lebanon and Syria since launching its genocide on the Palestinians. Last week, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant asserted that Israel was engaged in a “multi-front war” covering Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The assassination of al-Arouri in Beirut came just eight days after the targeted killing in Syria December 25 of Brigadier General Seyed Razi Mousavi, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

US imperialism has made preparations to wage a wider regional war, whose main target would be Iran. Over the past three decades, it has waged one war after another, from Iraq, to Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, in the Middle East and Central Asia as it seeks to offset its economic decline by deploying its military might. Washington sees Israel’s onslaught as an opportunity to consolidate its hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East by defeating its major geostrategic rivals, China and Russia.

The Biden administration has ramped up the deployment of naval and air power to the region, most recently under the guise of protecting the flow of trade through the Red Sea following a series of attacks on merchant ships by the Houthis in Yemen. US troops are also deployed in significant numbers in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Syria, and Iraq.

On Sunday, US helicopters associated with the Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group fired on and sunk three boats used by Houthi militants in the Red Sea. A fourth boat fled the scene. The carrier strike group has operated in the Persian Gulf since the Hamas-led uprising against Israel on 7 October. A second carrier strike group led by the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is due to be withdrawn from the eastern Mediterranean this week. A UN Security Council meeting to discuss mounting tensions in the Red Sea is expected to take place Wednesday.

As the smouldering conflicts across the Middle East threaten to ignite in a broader conflagration, the necessity of the independent political mobilisation of the working class against imperialist war is posed with renewed urgency. The mass protests involving millions of workers and young people that swept the world in the last months of 2023 against Israel’s genocide demonstrated that mass opposition to war exists and is growing. But this opposition must be armed with a clear orientation to the international working class and socialist programme. It must fight to link the struggle against imperialist war with the strikes involving workers in all the major imperialist countries over the past year for improvements to wages and conditions.

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

3 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Yvonne Ridley

“Why?” is one of the most loaded and powerful questions in anyone’s language, and it is the first that springs to mind when journalists face breaking news stories. Unbelievably few asked the question following the events of 7 October in Israel. It was America and 9/11 all over again. If you want to get to the bottom of an issue, and you want to discover the real story, you must ask “why?”

I wonder why no one appeared to be that curious in the aftermath of 7 October. Could it be that the Israeli government decided that there was no need to ask “why” because if someone did, then their citizens might discover the real reason such a living nightmare was visited upon their loved ones at the Supernova music festival and kibbutzim bordering the Gaza Strip? More than 260 bodies were reportedly recovered from the festival site, according to rescue agency Zaka, but subsequent reporting by Al Jazeera revealed a different story. It transpired that the much-vaunted — but now forever tarnished — Israel “Defence” Forces fired on festival-goers from helicopter gunships. Perhaps in error; perhaps not.

New information surfaced weeks after the “Hamas killed them all” narrative pushed by the lying IDF spin doctors. The charred corpses shown to the gullible Western media were caused, it seems, by so-called friendly fire when the Israeli military responded belatedly to the surprise Hamas attack. By the time that the media caught up with the true narrative, they still failed to ask the question why: why did it happen? And what made Hamas launch such an attack?

How could nobody, apart from a few seasoned Middle East journalists such as the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, fail to see why 7 October happened and why, especially after Israel’s genocidal response, it will almost certainly happen again?

The undeniable truth is that the Palestinians have been living their lives in pressure cooker conditions for 75 years since the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba. They finally erupted when Hamas fighters broke out of the Gaza concentration camp and attacked Israeli army barracks and settlements.

It didn’t take much to put two and two together and realise that this was the legitimate resistance response to decades of cruelty and oppression under Israel’s brutal military occupation. Every single day for the past 20 years, I have received evidence of this in my inbox, including videos exposing the violence meted out by the Israel Occupation Forces on innocent Palestinians.

I’ve watched heavily armed and protected Israeli soldiers stand over injured Palestinians and kill them in cold blood. I’ve watched footage of the killings of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and other professional journalists going about their legitimate work. I’ve watched videos of anonymous Palestinian women having their hijabs ripped off their heads. I have also watched in terror and revulsion as Israeli soldiers stormed into Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem firing tear gas and pistol-whipping worshippers as they knelt in prayer.

The examples of such cowardice, cruelty and pornographic violence visited upon innocent Palestinians are seemingly endless. And to this we must add the latest horrors of the genocide in the Gaza Strip. When more than 20,000 civilians have been killed by one of the world’s best equipped armed forces, and more than half of those killed are children and women, then we all know that something, somewhere, is very seriously wrong.

Palestinian children are constantly exposed to Israeli violence, and have been for decades. Brutal arrests, beatings and field executions; we’ve seen too many killed in this way by occupation soldiers. Those who survive witness scenes that nobody should ever have to see, let alone children.

That’s why if ordinary Israelis, politicians and journalists had taken the time to look at the same sort of images that I have seen as a journalist of many years standing, they would have known “why” 7 October happened almost immediately. To me and others like me fed on a daily diet of the evidence of atrocities, the “why” was blindingly obvious and certainly not unexpected. It was only a matter of time. For most Israelis, though, the occupation is something that happens to other people “over there, in the territories”; it is pushed to the back of their minds; out of sight, out of mind.

This is the shame of it all, because the images that I have seen which are too difficult to watch are images of the victims of the armed forces acting in the name of all Israelis, whether they like it or not. It’s the Israel Defence Forces, remember? And they defend all Israelis, don’t they?

The subjects of those awful images, though, cannot just switch off and pretend it is happening to someone else, in someone else’s name. They’re certainly never allowed to forget the Israeli occupation of their land, try as they might. The IDF makes sure of that.

The Israeli authorities seized and controlled the 7 October narrative before citizens and journalists could ask the awkward questions. It is a fact that anyone daring to ask such questions about what happened on that day is made to feel like a traitor; non-Israelis face being labelled anti-Semites for daring to suggest that all is not as Israel and its sycophantic allies claim it to be.

As with 9/11, few people have bothered to take a step back and seek answers. What happened in America in 2001, and on 7 October in Israel were both regarded as the beginning of something. In reality, though both were the predictable responses to years of state violence, terror, oppression and persecution.

The familiar warning not to poke a bear with a stick because it will inevitably turn on you hasn’t been heeded. Israel has spent a lifetime — literally — humiliating, oppressing and abusing Palestinians, and an undeniable and entirely understandable resentment has grown over the decades. Concessions have been made by the people of occupied Palestine, who have been given nothing in return. Commitments to agreements and timelines in a bogus “peace process” have been reneged upon by the occupation state. Promises by treacherous Zionist supporters in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin have raised false hopes — does anyone really think, in hindsight, that the Oslo Accords were meant to bring peace? — only for them to be cruelly dashed. And the Palestinians were just supposed to play along with the humanitarian paradigm and see their right to self-determination disappear over the horizon, never to return. Just like the Palestinian refugees and their legitimate right to return to their land. It will never happen as long as Zionism dominates in Israel.

Why, then, was anyone really surprised at what happened on 7 October? Israel has spent seven decades and more sewing poisonous seeds of discontent; it has always known that one day it would have to reap the bitter harvest. Just as America must have suspected that a 9/11 catastrophe would happen sooner or later.

US presidents are promoted as the leaders of a peace-loving nation, the leaders of the “free world”, yet most occupants of the White House have initiated and launched wars, and invaded and bombed more than 200 places since World War II. They have meddled in countless elections in foreign lands and installed despots heading tyrannical regimes from East to West and North to South.

President George W Bush’s so-called “War on Terror” saw the Geneva Conventions trashed, human rights ignored and international laws violated with impunity. America and its people are still damaged psychologically as a result of 9/11. Nothing else explains Guantanamo Bay, which is still in operation. US imperialism filled Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan with hundreds of thousands of corpses. Then 9/11 happened. You reap what you sow.

Until Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden declared war on America, US citizens had little or no interest in what was being done in their name overseas. As they reeled in shock over 9/11 it would take some years before the truth finally dawned on them why their beloved Stars and Stripes flag was being burned regularly in streets across the Global South. Many Americans began to lose their appetite for military adventures overseas, just as they did during the Vietnam War.

It seems that Israelis have yet to come to terms with 7 October, although angry family members of the hostages taken on that day realise that they’ve got more chance of seeing their loved ones returned alive through negotiations rather than Netanyahu’s saturation bombing. Maybe the people will wake up one day and ask themselves why their flag is also being trashed around the world.

Back in June 2021 I wrote about the great Albert Einstein. I believe that if he was alive today, he would not be at all shocked by events unfolding in occupied Palestine.

The genius predicted the demise of Israel when he was asked to fundraise for its terrorist cells. Ten years before the Zionist State declared its “independence” in 1948 on land stolen from Palestine, Einstein described the proposed creation of the state as something that conflicted with the “essential nature of Judaism.” As a Jew himself he fled Hitler’s Germany, and needed no lessons in what fascism looked like.

Supported by other high-profile Jewish academics, Einstein spotted the flaws and fault lines in 1946 at the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on the Palestinian issue. He couldn’t understand why Israel was needed. “I believe it is bad,” he told the committee. Two years later, he and several Jewish colleagues sent a letter to the New York Times in which they denounced Menachem Begin’s Herut (Freedom) Party, “a political party closely akin in its organisation, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.”

While investigating Einstein’s views, I discovered a brief letter from him — no more than 50 words — which foretold the “final catastrophe” facing Palestine at the hands of Zionist terror groups. It was addressed to Shepard Rifkin, the Executive Director of American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, based in New York. They promoted the anti-British ideas of the terrorist Stern Gang, and raised money in America to buy weapons to drive the British out of Palestine. Rifkin was urged to court Einstein for funding, but in the wake of the Deir Yassin massacre, the world-renowned physicist crafted the following letter to him:

Dear Sir,

When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build [sic] up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.

Sincerely yours,

Albert Einstein.

Such a conclusion was not rocket science and it shouldn’t have taken a genius to explain the blindingly obvious. Albert Einstein knew the “why” 75 years before the events of 7 October. The “final catastrophe” he predicted is the demise of the rogue state born out of violence and terrorism.

So, despite much hysteria invoked over “from the river to the sea” meaning “kill all of the Jews” — it doesn’t; it means “Palestine will be free” of Zionism, the pernicious ideology underpinning the state of Israel — it is entirely feasible that the state is in terminal decline by its own hand.

It is interesting to note, though, that Einstein said that those “first responsible” for the “final catastrophe” will be “the British.” Britain basically delivered Palestine to the Zionists on a plate, so maybe ministers in London will finally develop a conscience and seek to right the terrible wrong that their predecessors inflicted upon the people of Palestine with the creation of the apartheid state of Israel.

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

22 December 2023

British journalist and author Yvonne Ridley provides political analysis on affairs related to the Middle East, Asia and the Global War on Terror.

Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com