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By Prof Richard Falk, Prof Joseph Camilleri and Dr Chandra Muzaffar

The genocidal violence unleashed by Israel in Occupied Palestine since October 7 has produced unspeakable tragedy and suffering for the Palestinian people. Such barbaric behaviour places the State of Israel outside the bounds of a civilized world. Israel has become a pariah state, and must be treated as such by the international community

Sadly, the response of many governments, especially in the global West, has been less than exemplary. The active support for Israel’s misdeeds extended by the United States and a good many of its allies can only be described as criminal complicity. Those governments and their leaders must also be brought to account.

The time is long past for debates about whether genocide has been committed or the US and other NATO members have been actively involved in the orgy of violence against the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

The evidence clearly indicates that the Israeli use of force satisfies the legal requirements of genocide, and Western governments have to varying degrees supported the commission and persistence of this crime of crimes. Bemoaning this ugly reality is necessary, but woefully short of enough.

We unreservedly condemn all forms of political violence directed at civilians, including the criminal elements of the Hamas attack of 7 October.  However, that attack provides no legal or moral justification for the genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people, which has paved the way for ethnic cleansing and land grabbing. Every Israeli action since 7 October has accentuated the most objectionable features of its long occupation, and earlier policies of forced evacuation.

Saving Humanity and Planet Earth (SHAPE) BELIEVES THE TIME HAS COME FOR A BOLD RESPONSE, which is why we issue this call for urgent action on two different but closely related fronts.

The first front has to do with the immediate steps needed to stop the genocidal assault on Gaza. To this end:

• We call on governments everywhere to actively press, not just through words but by all nonviolent means at their disposal, for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and wholesale economic reconstruction in Gaza and the West Bank funded primarily by Israel and its Western backers, with the Palestinian people given full control of the rebuilding process.
• We call on Western publics to demand of their governments that they:
  • Join without delay the international call for an immediate ceasefire;
  • Stop all forms of diplomatic, economic and military support for Israel’s use of force in Gaza and the West Bank
  • Support South Africa’s application instituting proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which argues that Israel’s conduct in Gaza violates its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
• We commend and support the widespread and passionate public support for the suffering people of Palestine in Arab and other Muslim countries, and we remind the governments of those countries that they will be judged not by their words but by their deeds. Their response thus far leaves much to be desired.

Individual governments and key multilateral bodies, especially the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation but also BRICS, should:

• Spearhead a series of sharply worded resolutions at the United Nations, both in the General Assembly and the Security Council, with the primary aim of driving home the increasing diplomatic isolation of both Israel and its primary backer the United States
• Express their firm support for South Africa’s application to the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide and requesting the Court to order an immediate stop to violent actions of a genocidal character
• Support the appeal by Algeria and Chile to the International Criminal Court to indict those Israelis responsible for perpetuating acts of genocide.
• We urge all governments to consider the severing or at least suspension of diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, and launch an international campaign for an international embargo on arms sales and other forms of military assistance to Israel.

The second front has to do with creating the conditions for a just and sustainable peace, respectful of Palestinian rights under international law.

To this end we call on civil society everywhere – NGOs, religious and cultural organisations, labor unions, professional bodies, corporations and banks – to:

• Implement policies within their spheres of concern and influence supportive of Palestinian rights
• Consider the formation of an independent, non-governmental Commission of Peace, Justice, and economic reconstruction that brings together an eminent international panel of thought leaders and practitioners. Its brief would be to consult widely with Palestinian groups and intellectuals and propose a detailed transition to a new Palestine/Israel reality that fully respects the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and remedies the wrongs of the past, notably Israel’s illegitimate and brutal occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.
• Establish a separate panel, comprised of eminent jurists, other experts and representatives of civil society organisations to consider ways in which the United Nations system can effectively exercise its authority in the resolution of the Palestinian question. Every avenue within the UN system should be considered: the UN Security Council, but also the General Assembly, including the possibility of using a Uniting for Peace mechanism (modelled on Resolution 377A), UN agencies, and importantly the office of the UN Secretary-General, with greater space given within the UN system for a prominent, concerted and sustained civil society intervention.

Issued by

SHAPE conveners:

Prof Richard Falk,
Prof Joseph Camilleri
Dr Chandra Muzaffar.

14 January 2024

Website: https://www.theshapeproject.com/

16 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Phil Pasquini

Following the “National March on Washington For Gaza,” San Francisco saw its own massive protest on January 14 calling for an immediate ceasefire in ending the Israeli genocide that has been underway for the past 100 days.

Several thousand protesters gathered outside of City Hall demanding action for an immediate ceasefire. Among the numerous groups sponsoring the protest and involved in organizing weekly protests since the beginning of Israel’s invasion of Gaza were members of the trans-national Palestinian Youth Movement.

Ahmad, a spokesperson for the group, related that they were intent on bringing “Our people home to Palestine after 75 years of occupation.” And that the “March for Gaza” action was also about commemorating the 24,000 plus deaths by the IDF of Palestinians and “to demand that the United States cease its cowardly military and diplomatic cover for this genocide. For 100 days the United States has been sending our tax money to fund weapons that kill our families back home in Palestine and Gaza.”

Among the crowd were a group of healthcare workers dressed in doctors’ white coats demanding that the IDF stop bombing hospitals. Since the invasion began on October 7, there have been more that 606 healthcare workers killed and another 700 plus injured. One healthcare worker held a sign in the shape of a watermelon that said, “When you bomb a watermelon you spread its seeds.”

The watermelon is a powerful and significant symbol of resistance since the Palestinian flag, or its colors, were outlawed in 1967 in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war. As the fruit embodies the flags four colors, it was seen as a symbol of identity and resistance by the Israelis who outlawed its image as well.

Among others who have been singled out and targeted by the IDF in Gaza are journalists and media professionals, 82 of whom have been killed thus far. Acknowledging their sacrifice were several protesters who held signs calling for ending the killing of journalists. And most poignantly and sadly was a woman who held a handmade sign that listed six members of her family between the ages of 10-16 who have been killed in Gaza.

Several strides have been made this past week in the efforts of human rights defenders and peace activists along with others in the Bay Area who have been protesting, marching and demonstrating since the Israeli invasion in calling for an end to the carnage.

On Tuesday January 9, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted on and passed Supervisor Dean Preston’s resolution calling for a “sustained” ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all hostages taken by Hamas. The bill passed by a vote of 8-3 followed in the footsteps of both the city of Oakland and Richmond who also had recently passed resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Later in the week on January 13, activists were able to shut down the Port of Oakland for the entire day as the U.S. military ship the “Cape Orlando” scheduled to be loaded with arms destined for the Israeli military was closed by its blockage by more than 1,000 activists. Joining them were several members of the International Longshoreman’s Union (ILWU) Local 10 who showed their support by not crossing through the crowd.

And in one other major move against the Israeli war, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague heard two days of testimony in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Pakistan Link and Nuze.ink.

16 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

Hundreds of millions of people across the world have been deeply moved by the atrocity of the Israeli war on Palestine. Millions have attended marches and protests, many of them participating in such demonstrations for the first time in their lives. Social media, in almost all the world’s languages, is saturated with memes and posts about this or that terrible action. Some people focus on the Israeli attack on Palestinian children, others on the illegal targeting of Gaza’s health infrastructure, and yet others point to the annihilation of at least four hundred families (more than ten people in each family killed). The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing. Holidays in December went by, but the intensity of the protests and the posts remained steady. No attempt by social media companies to turn the algorithm against the Palestinians succeeded, no attempt to ban the protests—even the display of the Palestinian flag—worked. Accusations of antisemitism fell flat and demands for the condemnation of Hamas were dismissed. This is a new mood, a new kind of attitude toward the Palestinian struggle.

Never before in the 75 previous years has there been such sustained attention to the cause of the Palestinians and of Israeli brutality. Israel has launched eight bombing campaigns on  Gaza since 2006. . And Israel has built up an entire illegal structure against the Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (an apartheid wall, settlements, checkpoints). When Palestinians have tried to resist—whether through civic action or armed struggle—they have faced immense violence from the Israeli military. Ever since social media has been available, images from Palestine have circulated, including of the use of white phosphorus against civilians in Gaza, and including the arrest and murder of Palestinian children across the Occupied Palestine Territory. But none of the previous acts of violence evoked the kind of response from around the world as this violence that began in October 2023.

Genocide

The Israeli armed violence against Gaza since October has been in a qualitatively different form than any previous violence. The bombardment of Gaza was vicious, with Israeli aircraft hitting residential areas with no concern for civilian life. The number of dead increased day by day at a rate not seen before. Then, when Israeli ground forces entered Gaza, they effected an illegal mass eviction of the Palestinian civilians from their homes and pushed them further and further south toward the border with Egypt. The Israelis violated their own promises of “safe zones,” hitting areas more densely packed than before because of the internal displacement. It was this scale of violence that provoked an early use of the term “genocide” to describe what was happening in Gaza. By early January, more than 1 percent of the entire Palestinian population in Gaza had been killed, while over 95 percent had been displaced. The kind of violence used here was not seen in any contemporary war, neither in Iraq (where the U.S. disregarded most laws of war) nor in Ukraine (where the death toll of civilians is far smaller despite the war now lasting two years).

The momentum of mass protest pushed the government of South Africa to file a dispute in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for the crime of genocide. Both countries are parties to the 1948 Convention Against Genocide, and the ICJ is the venue for dispute settlements. The 84-page filing by the South African government documents many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel, and also, crucially, the words of Israeli high officials. Nine pages of this text (pp. 59 to 67) list the Israeli officials in their own words, many of them calling for a “Second Nakba” or a “Gaza Nakba,” a use of the term “Nakba” or Catastrophe that refers to the 1948 Nakba of the Palestinians from their homes that led to the creation of the State of Israel. These words are chilling, and they have been widely circulated since October. Racist language about “monsters,” “animals,” and the “jungle” shape the speeches and statements by these Israeli government officials. Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9, 2023, that his forces are “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” This, along with the character of the Israeli military strikes, is sufficient as a benchmark for the accusation of genocide. At the hearing at the ICJ, Israel was unable to respond credibly to the South African complaint.

It is a combination of the images from Gaza and the words of these Israeli high officials—backed fully by the United States government and many of the governments of European states—that provoked the sustained anger and desolation that has driven these mass protests.

Legitimacy

Over the course of the past two years—from the start of the war in Ukraine until now—there has been a rapid decline in the legitimacy of the West, notably the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the United States. These wars are not the cause of this drop in legitimacy, but they have accelerated the decline in the legitimacy of the NATO countries, particularly in the Global South.

Since the start of the Third Great Depression in 2007, the Global North has slowly lost its control over the world economy, over technology and science, and over raw materials. Billionaires in the Global North deepened their “tax strike” and withdrew a large share of social wealth into tax havens and into unproductive financial investments. This left the Global North with few instruments to maintain economic power, including by making investments in the Global South. That role was slowly taken up by China, which has been recycling global profits into infrastructural projects across the world. Rather than contest China’s Belt and Road Initiative, for instance, through its own commercial and economic project, the Global North has sought to militarize its response with massive spending (three-quarters of global military spending is by the NATO states). The Global North has used Ukraine and Taiwan as levers to provoke Russia and China into military conflicts so as to ‘weaken’ them rather than contest growing Russian energy power and Chinese industrial and technological power through trade and development.

It is clear to the majority of people in the world that it is the Global North that has failed to address the crises in the world, whether the climate crisis or the consequences of the Third Great Depression. It has tried to substitute a language of euphemism for reality, using terms such as “democracy promotion,” “sustainable development,” “humanitarian pause,” and—from UK Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock—the ridiculous formulation of a “sustainable ceasefire.” Empty words are no substitute for real actions. To speak of a “sustainable ceasefire” while arming Israel or to speak of “democracy promotion” while backing anti-democratic governments now defines the hypocrisy of the Global North’s political class.

The Israelis say that they will continue this genocidal war for as long as it takes. As each day goes by of this war, the legitimacy of Israel deteriorates. But behind that violence itself is the much deeper end of the legitimacy of the NATO project, whose sanctimonies sound like nails being dragged across a bloodied chalkboard.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

13 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

What a show.  As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was promoting a message of calm restraint and firm control in limiting the toxic fallout of Israel’s horrific campaign in Gaza, a decision was made by his government, the United Kingdom and a few other reticent collaborators to strike targets in Yemen, including the capital Sana’a.  These were done, purportedly, as retribution for attacks on international commercial shipping in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

The wording in a White House media release mentions the operation’s purpose and the relevant participants.  “In response to continued illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi attacks against vessels, including commercial shipping, transiting the Red Sea, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom, with support from the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, conducted joint strikes in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense”.

US Air Forces Central Command further revealed that the “multinational action targeted radar systems, defense systems, and storage and launch sites for one way attack unmanned aerial systems, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.”

The rationale by the Houthis is that they are targeting shipping with a direct or ancillary Israeli connection, hoping to niggle them over the barbarities taking place in Gaza.  As the Israeli Defence Forces are getting away with, quite literally, bloody murder, the task has fallen to other forces to draw attention to that fact.  Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdusalam’s post was adamant that “there was no threat to international navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas, and the targeting was and will continue to affect Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine.”

But that narrative has been less attractive to the supposedly law-minded types in Washington and London, always mindful that commerce trumps all.  Preference has been given to such shibboleths as freedom of navigation, the interests of international shipping, all code for the protection of large shipping interests.  No mention is made of the justification advanced by the Houthi rebels and the Palestinian plight, a topic currently featuring before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Another feature of the strikes is the absence of a Security Council resolution from the United Nations, technically the sole body in the international system able to authorise the use of force under the UN Charter.  A White House statement on January 11 attributes authority to the strikes much the same way the administration of George W. Bush did in justifying the warrantless, and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  (Ditto those on his same, limited bandwidth, Tony Blair of the UK and John Howard of Australia.)  On that occasion, the disappointment and frustrations of weapons inspectors and rebukes from the UN about the conduct of Saddam Hussein, became vulnerable to hideous manipulation by the warring parties.

On this occasion, a “broad consensus as expressed by 44 countries around the world on December 19, 2023” and “the statement by the UN Security Council on December 1, 2023, condemning Houthi attacks against merchant and commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea” is meant to add ballast.  Lip service is paid to the self-defence provisions of the UN Charter.

In a separate statement, Biden justified the attack on Houthi positions as necessary punishment for “unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea – including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”  He also made much of the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, “a coalition of more than 20 nations committed to defending international shipping and deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.”  No mention of the Israeli dimension here, at all.

In addition to the pregnant questions on the legality of such strikes in international law, the attacks, at least as far as US execution was concerned, was far from satisfactory to some members of Congress.  Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashita Tlaib was irked that US lawmakers had not been consulted.  “The American people are tired of endless war.”  Californian Rep. Barbara Lee warned that, “Violence only begets more violence.  We need a ceasefire now to prevent deadly, costly, catastrophic escalation of violence in the region.”

A number of Republicans also registered their approval of the stance taken by another Californian Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna, who expressed with certitude the view that Biden had “to come to Congress before launching a strike against the Houthis in Yemen and involving us in another middle eastern conflict.”  Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah was in full agreement, as was West Virginia Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.  “Only Congress has the power to declare war,” Massie affirmed.

Unfortunately for these devotees of Article I of the US Constitution, which vests Congress approval powers for making war, the War Powers Act, passed by Congress in November 1973, merely requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of military action, and the termination of such action within 60 days of commencement in the absence of a formal declaration of war by Congress or authorisation of military conflict.  These days, clipping the wings of the executive when it comes to engaging in conflict is nigh impossible.

There was even less of a debate about the legality or wisdom of the Yemen strikes in Australia.  Scandalously, and with a good deal of cowardice, the government preferred a deafening silence for hours in the aftermath of the operation.  The only source confirming that personnel of the Australian Defence Forces were involved came from Biden, the commander-in-chief of another country.  There had been no airing of the possibility of such involvement.  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had, in not sending a warship from the Royal Australian Navy to join Operation Prosperity Guardian, previously insisted that diplomacy might be a better course of action.  Evidently, that man is up for turning at a moment’s notice.

In a brief statement made at 4.38 pm on of January 12 (there was no press conference in sight, no opportunity to inquire), Albanese declared with poor conviction that, “Australia alongside other countries has supported the United States and the United Kingdom to conduct strikes to deal with this threat to global rules and commercial shipping.”  He had waited for the best part of a day to confirm it to the citizenry of his country.  He had done so without consulting Parliament.

Striking the Houthis would seem, on virtually all counts, to be a signal failure.  Benjamin H. Friedman of Defense Priorities sees error piled upon error: “The strikes on the Houthis will not work.  They are very unlikely to stop Houthi attacks on shipping.  The strikes’ probable failure will invite escalation to more violent means that may also fail.”  The result: policymakers will be left “looking feckless and thus tempted to up the ante to more pointless war to solve a problem better left to diplomatic means.”  Best forget any assuring notions of taking the sting out of the expanding hostilities.  All roads to a widening war continue to lead to Israel.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

13 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

The International Court of Justice may be all that stands between the Palestinians in Gaza and genocide.

The exhaustive 84-page brief submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with genocide is hard to refute. Israel’s campaign of indiscriminate killing, wholesale destruction of infrastructure, including housing, hospitals and water treatment plants, along with its use of starvation as a weapon, accompanied by genocidal rhetoric from its political and military leaders who speak of destroying Gaza and ethnically cleansing the 2.3 million Palestinians, makes a strong case against Israel for genocide.

Israel’s smearing of South Africa as “the legal arm” of Hamas exemplifies the bankruptcy of its defense, a smear replicated by those who claim that demonstrations held to call for a ceasefire and protect Palestinian human rights are “anti-Semitic.” Israel, its genocide live streamed to the world, has no substantial counter argument.

But that does not mean the judges on the court will rule in South Africa’s favor. The pressure the U.S. will bring – Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called the South African charges “meritless” – on the judges, drawn from the member states of the U.N., will be intense.

A ruling of genocide is a stain that Israel – which weaponizes the Holocaust to justify its brutalization of the Palestinians – would find hard to remove. It would undercut Israel’s insistence that Jews are eternal victims. It would shatter the justification for Israel’s indiscriminate killing of unarmed Palestinians and construction of the world’s largest open air prison in Gaza, along with the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It would sweep away the immunity to criticism enjoyed by the Israel lobby and its Zionist supporters in the U.S., who have successfully equated criticisms of the “Jewish State” and support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism.

Over 23,700 Palestinians, including over 10,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas and other resistance fighters breached the security barriers around Gaza. Some 1,200 people were killed – there is strong evidence that some of the victims were killed by Israeli tank crews and helicopter pilots that intentionally targeted the some 200 hostages along with their captors. Thousands more Palestinians are missing, presumed buried under the rubble. Israeli attacks have left over 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of them women and children. Thousands more Palestinian civilians, including children, have been arrested, blindfolded, numbered, beaten, forced to strip to their underwear, loaded onto trucks and transported to unknown locations.

A ruling by the court could be years away. But South Africa is asking for provisional measures that would demand Israel cease its military assault – in essence a permanent ceasefire. This decision could come within two or three weeks. It is a decision that is not based on the final ruling by the court, but on the merits of the case brought by South Africa. The court would not, by demanding Israel end its hostilities in Gaza, define the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocide. It would confirm that there is the possibility of genocide, what the South African lawyers call acts that are “genocidal in character.”

The case will not be determined by the documentation of specific crimes, even those defined as war crimes. It will be determined by genocidal intent – the intent to eradicate in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group – as defined in the Genocide Convention.

These acts collectively include the targeting of refugee camps and other densely packed civilian areas with 2,000-pound bombs, the blocking of humanitarian aid, the destruction of the health care system and its effects on children and pregnant women – the U.N. estimates there are around 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, and that more than 160 babies are delivered every day – as well as repeated genocidal statements by leading Israeli politicians and generals.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu equated Gaza with Amalek, a nation hostile to the Israelites in the Bible, and cited the Biblical injunction to kill every Amalek man, woman, child or animal. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called Palestinians “human animals.” Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated, as the South African lawyers told the court, that everybody in Gaza is responsible for what happened on Oct. 7 because they voted for Hamas, although half the population in Gaza are children who are too young to vote. But even if the entire population of Gaza did vote for Hamas this does not make them a legitimate military target. They are still, under the rules of war, civilians, and entitled to protection. They are also entitled under international law to resist their occupation via armed struggle.

The South African lawyers, who compared Israel’s crimes with those carried out by the apartheid regime in South Africa, showed the court a video of Israeli soldiers celebrating and calling for the death of Palestinians – they sang as they danced “There are no uninvolved civilians” – as evidence that genocidal intent descends from the top to the bottom of the Israeli war machine and political system. They provided the court with photos of mass graves where bodies were buried “often unidentified.” No one – including newborns – was spared, the South African lawyer Adila Hassim, Senior Counsel, explained to the court.

The South African lawyers told the court the “first genocidal act is mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza.” The second genocidal act, they stated, is the serious bodily or mental harm inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza in violation of Article 2B of the Genocide Convention. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another lawyer and legal scholar representing South Africa, argued that “Israel’s political leaders, military commanders and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent.”

Lior Haiat, spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called Thursday’s three hour hearing one of the “greatest shows of hypocrisy in history, compounded by a series of false and baseless claims.” He accused South Africa of seeking to allow Hamas to return to Israel to “commit war crimes.”

Israeli jurists, in their response on Friday, called the South African charges “unfounded, “absurd” and amounting to “libel.” Israel’s legal team said it had – despite U.N. reports of widespread starvation and infectious diseases from a breakdown in sanitation and shortage of clean water – not impeded humanitarian assistance. Israel defended attacks on hospitals, calling them “Hamas command centers.” It told the court it was acting in self-defense. “The inevitable fatalities and human suffering of any conflict is not of itself a pattern of conduct that plausibly shows genocidal intent,” said Christopher Staker, a barrister for Israel.

Israeli leaders accuse Hamas with carrying out genocide, although legally if you are the victims of genocide you are not permitted to commit genocide. Hamas is also not a state. It is not, therefore, a party to the Genocide Convention. The Hague, for this reason, has no jurisdiction over the organization. Israel also claims the Palestinians are warned to evacuate areas that will come under attack and provided with “safe areas,” although as the South African lawyers documented, “safe areas” are routinely bombed by Israel with numerous civilian casualties.

Israel and the Biden administration intend to prevent any temporary injunction by the court, not because the court can force Israel to halt its military assaults, but because of the optics, which are already disastrous. The ICJ’s ruling depends on the Security Council for enforcement – which given the veto power by the U.S., renders any ruling against Israel moot. The second objective of the Biden administration is to make sure Israel is not found guilty of committing genocide. It will be unrelenting in this campaign, heavily pressuring the governments that have jurists on the court not to find Israel guilty. Russia and China, who have jurists in The Hague, are battling their own charges of genocide and may decide it is not in their interests to find Israel guilty.

The Biden administration is playing a very cynical game. It insists it is trying to halt what, by its own admission, is Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians, while bypassing Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including “dumb” bombs. It insists it wants the fighting in Gaza to end while it vetoes ceasefire resolutions at the U.N. It insists it upholds the rule of law while it subverts the legal mechanism that can halt the genocide.

Cynicism pervades every word Biden and Blinken utter. This cynicism extends to us. Our revulsion for Donald Trump, the Biden White House believes, will impel us to keep Biden in office. On any other issue this might be the case. But it cannot be the case with genocide.

Genocide is not a political problem. It is a moral one. We cannot, no matter what the cost, support those who commit or are accomplices to genocide. Genocide is the crime of all crimes. It is the purest expression of evil. We must stand unequivocally with Palestinians and the jurists from South Africa. We must demand justice. We must hold Biden accountable for the genocide in Gaza.

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

13 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Thousands of miles separate Uganda and Congo from the Gaza Strip, but these places are connected to Palestine in ways that traditional geopolitical analyses would fail to explain.

On January 3, it was revealed that the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is actively discussing proposals to expel millions of Palestinians to African countries, in exchange for a fixed price.

The discussion on expelling millions of Gazans has supposedly entered the mainstream thinking in Israel starting on October 7. But the fact that this discussion remains active over three months since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza indicates that the Israeli proposals are not an outcome of a specific historical moment, for example, Al-Aqsa Flood operation.

Even a quick glance at Israeli historical records point to the fact that the mass expulsion of Palestinians – known in Israel as ‘Transfer’ – was, and remains, a major Israeli strategy which aims at fixing Israel’s so-called ‘demographic problem’.

Long before fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian movements stormed the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel on October 7, Israeli politicians discussed, in fact on many occasions, how to reduce the overall Palestinian population to maintain the demographic Jewish majority in historic Palestine.

The idea was not only confined to Israel’s extremists, but was discussed even by the likes of former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman when he suggested in 2014 a proposal for ‘population exchange plan’.

Even supposedly liberal intellectuals and historians have supported this idea, both in principle and practice.

A top Israeli historian, Benny Morris, has regretted in an interview with the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz in January 2004, that Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, failed to expel all Palestinians during the Nakba – the catastrophic event of murder and ethnic cleansing that led to the creation of the state of Israel on top of Palestinian towns and villages.

Another proof that the idea of ‘Transfer’ was not concocted on the spur of the moment is the fact that comprehensive plans were immediately produced after October 7. They include a position paper published by the Israeli think tank the ‘Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy’ on October 17 and a report released three days later by the Israeli news outlet, Calcalist, which outlined a document proposing the same strategy.

The fact that Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries openly and immediately declared their total rejection of expelling Palestinians indicates the degree of seriousness of those official Israeli proposals.

“Our problem is (finding) countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it,” Netanyahu said on January 2.

These comments were followed by others, including a statement by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich when he said “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration.”

It was then that the Israeli official discourse adopted the term ‘voluntary migration’. But there is nothing voluntary about the starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians, who continue to face an ongoing genocide, and are being pushed systematically toward the border region between Gaza and Egypt.

In its legal case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the government of South Africa included the planned ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Tel Aviv as one of the main points listed by Pretoria, accusing Israel of genocide.

Due to the lack of enthusiasm on the part of pro-Israel Western countries, Israeli diplomats are circumventing the globe looking for governments which are willing to accept ethnically-cleansed Palestinians.

Imagine if this behavior stemmed from any other country in the world; a country that murders people en masse, yet shops around looking for other states to accept the expelled survivors in exchange for cash.

Not only has Israel made a mockery of international law, but they have also set whole new standards of despicable behavior by any state, anywhere in the world, in any time in history, ancient or modern.

And yet, the world continues to watch, support, as in the case of the US, or gently or vehemently protest, but without taking a single meaningful action to stop the bloodbath in Gaza, or to block the terrifying scenarios that could truly follow if the war does not end.

But there is one thing that many people might not know, the Zionist movement, the very ideological institution that established Israel had attempted to move the world’s Jewery to Africa, to establish a state, prior to the choice of Palestine as the ‘Jewish homeland’.

This was called the ‘Uganda Scheme’ of 1903. It was raised by Theodor Hertzl, the founder of Zionism, at the Sixth Zionist Congress. It was based on a proposal put forth by British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain.

The Uganda Scheme eventually fell through, but the Zionists continued to shop for some other place, finally, to the misfortune of the Palestinians, settling on Palestine.

If one is to compare the genocidal language of Israeli leaders of today, study their racist references to Palestinians, one is to locate a major overlap between their collective perception and the way that Jewish communities were perceived by Europeans for hundreds of years.

The sudden Zionist interest in Congo as a potential ‘homeland’ for Palestinians further illustrates the point that the Zionist movement continues to live in the shadow of its own history, projecting the racism practiced against Jews in Israel’s own racism against innocent Palestinians.

On January 5, Israel’s Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu proposed that Israelis “must find ways for Gazans that are more painful than death.” One does not need to struggle to find historical references of similar language, used by German Nazis in their depiction of Jews in the early half of the 20th century.

If history does repeat itself, it has an odd, and unkind way of doing so.

We have been told that the world has learned from the mass killings of previous wars, including the Holocaust and other WWII atrocities. Yet, it seems that the lessons have largely gone unlearned. Not only is Israel now assuming the role of the mass killer but the rest of the Western world continues to play the role assigned to them in this historical tragedia. They are either cheering, politely protesting, or doing nothing at all.

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

11 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

On January 11th, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is holding its first hearing in South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention. The first provisional measure South Africa has asked of the court is to order an immediate end to this carnage, which has already killed more than 23,000 people, most of them women and children. Israel is trying  to bomb Gaza into oblivion and scatter the terrorized survivors across the Earth, meeting the Convention’s definition of genocide to the letter.

Since countries engaged in genocide do not publicly declare their real goal, the greatest legal hurdle for any genocide prosecution is to prove the intention of genocide. But in the extraordinary case of Israel, whose cult of biblically ordained entitlement is backed to the hilt by unconditional U.S. complicity, its leaders have been uniquely brazen about their goal of destroying Gaza as a haven of Palestinian life, culture and resistance.

South Africa’s 84-page application to the ICJ includes ten pages (starting on page 59) of statements by Israeli civilian and military officials that document their genocidal intentions in Gaza. They include statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Herzog, Defense Minister Gallant, five other cabinet ministers, senior military officers and members of parliament. Reading these statements, it is hard to see how a fair and impartial court could fail to recognize the genocidal intent behind the death and devastation Israeli forces and American weapons are wreaking in Gaza.

The Israeli magazine +972 talked to seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials involved in previous assaults on Gaza. They explained the systematic nature of Israel’s targeting practices and how the range of civilian infrastructure that Israel is targeting has been vastly expanded in the current onslaught. In particular, it has expanded the bombing of civilian infrastructure, or what it euphemistically defines as “power targets,” which have comprised half of its targets from the outset of this war.

Israel’s “power targets” in Gaza include public buildings like hospitals, schools, banks, government offices, and high-rise apartment blocks. The public pretext for destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is that civilians will blame Hamas for its destruction, and that this will undermine its civilian base of support. This kind of brutal logic has been proved wrong in U.S.-backed conflicts all over the world. In Gaza, it is no more than a grotesque fantasy. The Palestinians understand perfectly well who is bombing them – and who is supplying the bombs.

Intelligence officials told +972 that Israel maintains extensive occupancy figures for every building in Gaza, and has precise estimates of how many civilians will be killed in each building it bombs. While Israeli and U.S. officials publicly disparage Palestinian casualty figures, intelligence sources told +972 that the Palestinian death counts are remarkably consistent with Israel’s own estimates of how many civilians it is killing. To make matters worse, Israel has started using artificial intelligence to generate targets with minimal human scrutiny, and is doing so faster than its forces can bomb them.

Israeli officials claim that each of the high-rise apartment buildings it bombs contains some kind of Hamas presence, but an intelligence official explained, “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so.” As Yuval Abraham of +972 summarized, “The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks.”

Two days after South Africa submitted its Genocide Convention application to the ICJ, Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich declared on New Year’s Eve that Israel should substantially empty the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and bring in Israeli settlers. “If we act in a strategically correct way and encourage emigration,” Smotrich said, “if there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza, and not two million, the whole discourse on “the day after” will be completely different.”

When reporters confronted U.S. State Department spokesman Matt Miller about Smotrich’s statement, and similar ones by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Miller replied that Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have reassured the United States that those statements don’t reflect Israeli government policy.

But Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s statements followed a meeting of Likud Party leaders on Christmas Day where Netanyahu himself said that his plan was to continue the massacre until the people of Gaza have no choice but to leave or to die. “Regarding voluntary emigration, I have no problem with that,” he told former Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon. “Our problem is not allowing the exit, but a lack of countries that are ready to take Palestinians in. And we are working on it. This is the direction we are going in.”

We should have learned from America’s lost wars that mass murder and ethnic cleansing rarely lead to political victory or success. More often they only feed deep resentment and desires for justice or revenge that make peace more elusive and conflict endemic.

Although most of the martyrs in Gaza are women and children, Israel and the United States politically justify the massacre as a campaign to destroy Hamas by killing its senior leaders. Andrew Cockburn described in his book Kill Chain: the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins how, in 200 cases studied by U.S. military intelligence, the U.S. campaign to assassinate Iraqi resistance leaders in 2007 led in every single case to increased attacks on U.S. occupation forces. Every resistance leader they killed was replaced within 48 hours, invariably by new, more aggressive leaders determined to prove themselves by killing even more U.S. troops.

But that is just another unlearned lesson, as Israel and the United States kill Islamic Resistance leaders in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, risking a regional war and leaving themselves more isolated than ever.

If the ICJ issues a provisional order for a ceasefire in Gaza, humanity must seize the moment to insist that Israel and the United States must finally end this genocide and accept that the rule of international law applies to all nations, including themselves.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.

10 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

US and UK officials made their most direct statements to date Wednesday threatening to attack Yemen, from which Houthi rebels have targeted shipping through the Red Sea and US warships facilitating the genocide in Gaza.

“We’ve made clear, and many other countries have made clear, that there will be consequences for the Houthis’ actions,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press briefing in Manama, Bahrain during his trip through the Middle East.

Behind the aggressive statements against the Houthi’s in Yemen is the escalating campaign against Iran. US imperialism’s backing of Israel’s genocide is connected to the broader war drive in the entire Middle East, with Iran the principal target.

“We’ve also repeatedly tried to make clear to Iran,” Blinken said, as other countries have as well, that the support that they’re providing to the Houthis, including for these actions, needs to stop.”

In a separate statement, UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps declared, “This cannot continue and cannot be allowed to continue… If this doesn’t stop, then action will be taken. So I’m afraid that the simplest thing is to say, ‘Watch this space.’”

At a briefing Wednesday, US National Security spokesman John Kirby threatened that the Houthi rebels will “bear the responsibility for consequences should they continue to threaten lives.”

Kirby noted that the US has built an international naval coalition of more than 20 countries as part of the militarization of the Red Sea region.

On January 3, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US military has “prepared options” for attacking mainland Yemen.

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

On Friday, Politico carried an article reporting that Biden administration officials admit that “the war in Gaza has officially escalated far beyond the strip’s borders.”

Politico reported, “Biden administration officials are drawing up plans” for “scenarios that could potentially draw the US into another Middle East war.”

The plan “includes striking Houthi targets in Yemen, according to one of the officials, an option the military has previously presented.” The US is also seeking to “anticipate and fend off possible attacks on the US by Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria, according to one of the officials.”

US and UK officials said Wednesday that the Houthi rebels had carried out their largest attack on shipping in the Red Sea to date. US Central Command said that the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and four other warships intercepted more than 20 drones and missiles over the previous 24 hours.

Yahya Sarea, a spokesperson for the Houthi rebels, said Wednesday that they had launched “a large number” of weapons to target a US warship “that was offering support to the Zionist entity.”

The US has concentrated a massive armada in the Middle East in support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Over the past three months, the US has provided Israel with 10,000 tons of military equipment, including armored vehicles, armaments and ammunition. The US and the UK have carried out drone surveillance flights over Gaza.

On Wednesday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning attacks by the Houthis, with Russia and China abstaining. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said the actions of the Houthis will merit a “global response.” She also threatened Iran, which she declared was the “root of the problem.” She concluded, “Iran has long encouraged the Houthis’ destabilizing actions.”

These statements come on the eve of a hearing in the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel. The hearing is scheduled to take place on Thursday and Friday.

Despite claims by Israel that the war against Gaza had entered a “new phase,” there has been little let-up in the systematic bombardment and starvation of the civilian population of Gaza.

In a briefing Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was forced to cancel a planned medical mission to Gaza due to the ongoing bombing.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyes said in a statement, “Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortage, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach those in need.”

Sean Casey, the WHO’s emergency medical team coordinator in Gaza, said, “I’ve been in Gaza for five weeks… I have not seen a lowering of the intensity of the conflict.”

In its update on the genocide, the United Nations reported, “Intense Israeli bombardments from air, land, and sea continued across much of the Gaza Strip on 9 January, resulting in further civilian casualties and destruction.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office said Wednesday that another three journalists were killed by Israel in Gaza, bringing the total to date to 115. The GMO said the names of the slain journalists were Ahmed Badir, Sherif Okasha and Heba Al-Abadla.

Asked whether the growing international opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza had led to tensions between the US and Israel, Kirby, the White House National Security spokesman, declared, “believe me the connective tissue between the United States and Israel. Very, very tight, very strong.”

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

11 January 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Tom Stevenson

The Red Sea is usually one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Nearly 30 per cent of maritime container trade, and a significant quantity of oil, passes through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandab. Or it used to, before the Houthis in Yemen began trying to shut it all down last month.

In October, they launched a number of ballistic missiles at Israel. Some were intercepted by Israel’s Hetz missile defence system; others were shot down by US Navy destroyers. But where these attacks failed the Houthis have enjoyed more success in the Red Sea.

The distance between the Red Sea’s jagged coral coasts is relatively narrow. Southbound ships usually keep west and northbound ships stay east, passing closer to Yemen. On 19 November, videos showed Houthi forces boarding and commandeering the Galaxy Leader, a ship flying a Bahaman flag, chartered in Japan and, according to the Houthis, Israeli-owned (though the Israeli authorities said the ship’s owners were British and it had nothing to do with them). The raid was followed by near daily attacks on passing commercial ships.

By mid-December, the world’s four largest shipping companies – MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM and COSCO – had suspended the Red Sea transit. Maersk has decided to reroute all its ships ‘for the foreseeable future’. Some smaller shipping companies have persisted.

The Red Sea has been the main maritime route between the east and west of the old world since the opening of the Suez canal in 1869. In the 19th century, the British Empire built a coaling station and colonial outpost at Aden to control trade between Bombay and London. The alternative is to sail round the Cape of Good Hope, adding thousands of miles to the journey.

The Houthis have made clear their ‘comprehensive blockade in the Red Sea’ is a direct response to Israeli crimes in Gaza. It is also a direct challenge to US naval dominance in the Middle East. Ineffectual missile attacks on a US protectorate were bad enough. Defying American power in the region’s second most important waters (after the Persian Gulf) was bound to provoke a response.

On 18 December, the US and a few allies declared Operation Prosperity Guardian to escort commercial ships through the Red Sea. US forces have been shooting down anti-ship missiles launched by the Houthis. Helicopters from the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower and the destroyer USS Gravely have seen off small attack boats. The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Diamond shot down a drone. No commercial ship has suffered very serious damage since the start of the operation, but that hasn’t been enough to get the giant shipping companies to return.

The Houthis are often still described as ‘rebels’, a term that might have been appropriate a decade ago but isn’t any longer. In the chaotic aftermath of the 2011 uprisings in Yemen, the Houthis – a composite movement of political, religious and tribal groups from the north of the country – were the qualified victors. They did not win a complete national victory. But by 2014 they were in control of the capital, Sanaa, and most of the densely populated parts of the country except Aden. They have survived a concerted and bloody assault designed to remove them from power, led by Saudi Arabia and backed by Britain and the US. They are the closest thing Yemen has to a government – much closer than the so-called Presidential Leadership Council concocted by the Saudis, which does most of its business out of the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh.

In Britain there have been calls to increase the Royal Navy’s involvement. The Telegraph columnist Tom Sharpe has published five articles calling for the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to be deployed to the Red Sea, and for ‘offensive strikes into Houthi territory’. The years of brutal war in Yemen, sustained by Britain and the US, with a death toll in the hundreds of thousands, go unmentioned.

On 3 January, the US and UK issued a ‘final warning’ to the Houthis to stop the attacks. The Houthis responded the following day by sending an ‘unmanned explosives-packed surface boat’ into the shipping lanes. Another round of Anglo-American attacks on Yemen has become likely. But the Houthis have already shown they cannot be cowed. Last night they launched what is said to be their biggest attack yet, intercepted by American and British forces. A larger war isn’t getting any less likely.

The Red Sea crisis has revealed the absence not only of purported ‘middle powers’ but also of China. The shipment of manufactured goods from Shanghai to Rotterdam is the emblematic trade route of the modern world. Yet Beijing has issued a single bland pro forma statement, from the deputy director of the information department at the Foreign Ministry, urging ‘all sides’ to play a constructive role. In practice, the situation is left to the flailing violence of the US and its lesser allies.

Tom Stevenson is a contributing editor at the LRB. Someone Else’s Empire, a collection of essays, many of which first appeared in the paper, was published in November.

10 January 2024

Source: www.lrb.co.uk