Archives: Articles

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, is rarely one to be cryptic. “Day X is here,” she posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter.  For those who have followed her remarks, her speeches, and her activism, it was sharply clear what this meant.  “It may be the final chance for the UK to stop Julian’s extradition.  Gather outside the court at 8.30am on both days. It’s now or never.”

Between February 20 and 21 next year, the High Court will hear what WikiLeaks claims may be “the final chance for Julian Assange to prevent his extradition to the United States.”  (This is qualified by the prospect of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.)  Were that to take place, the organisation’s founder faces 18 charges, 17 of which are stealthily cobbled from the aged and oppressive US Espionage Act of 1917.  Estimates of any subsequent sentence vary, the worst being 175 years.

The WikiLeaks founder remains jailed at His Majesty’s pleasure at Belmarsh prison, only reserved for the most hardened of criminals.  It’s a true statement of both British and US justice that Assange has yet to face trial, incarcerated, without bail, for four-and-a-half years.  That trial, were it to ever be allowed to take place, would employ a scandalous legal theory that will spell doom to all those who dive and dabble in the world of publishing national security information.

Fundamentally, and irrefutably, the case against Assange remains political in its muscularity, with a gangster’s legality papered over it.  As Stella herself makes clear, “With the myriad of evidence that has come to light since the original hearing in 2018, such as the violation of legal privilege and reports that senior US officials are involved in formulating assassination plots against my husband, there is no denying that a fair trial, let alone Julian’s safety on US soil, is an impossibility were he to be extradited.”

In mid-2022, Assange’s legal team attempted a two-pronged attempt to overturn the decision of Home Office Secretary Priti Patel to approve Assange’s extradition while also broadening the appeal against grounds made in the original January 4, 2021 reasons of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser.

The former, among other matters, took issue with the acceptance by the Home Office that the extradition was not for a political offence and therefore prohibited by Article 4 of the UK-US Extradition Treaty.  The defence team stressed the importance of due process, enshrined in British law since the Magna Carta of 2015, and also took issue with Patel’s acceptance of “special arrangements” with the US government regarding the introduction of charges for the facts alleged which might carry the death penalty, criminal contempt proceedings, and such specialty arrangements that might protect Assange “against being dealt with for conduct outside the extradition request”.  History shows that such “special arrangements” can be easily, and arbitrarily abrogated.

On June 30, 2022 came the appeal against Baraitser’s original reasons.  While Baraitser blocked the extradition to the US, she only did so on grounds of oppression occasioned by mental health grounds and the risk posed to Assange were he to find himself in the US prison system.  The US government got around this impediment by making breezy promises to the effect that Assange would not be subject to oppressive, suicide-inducing conditions, or face the death penalty.  A feeble, meaningless undertaking was also made suggesting that he might serve the balance of his term in Australia – subject to approval, naturally.

What this left Assange’s legal team was a decision otherwise hostile to publishing, free speech and the activities that had been undertaken by WikiLeaks.  The appeal accordingly sought to address this, claiming, among other things, that Baraitser had erred in assuming that the extradition was not “unjust and oppressive by reason of the lapse of time”; that it would not be in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (inhuman and degrading treatment)”; that it did not breach Article 10 of ECHR, namely the right to freedom of expression; and that it did not breach Article 7 of the ECHR (novel and unforeseeable extension of the law).

Other glaring defects in Baraitser’s judgment are also worth noting, namely her failure to acknowledge the misrepresentation of facts advanced by the US government and the “ulterior political motives” streaking the prosecution.  The onerous and much thicker second superseding indictment was also thrown at Assange at short notice before the extradition hearing of September 2020, suggesting that those grounds be excised “for reasons of procedural fairness.”

An agonising wait of some twelve months followed, only to yield an outrageously brief decision on June 6 from High Court justice Jonathan Swift (satirists, reach for your pens and laptops). Swift, much favoured by the Defence and Home Secretaries when a practising barrister, told Counsel Magazine in a 2018 interview that his “favourite clients were the security and intelligence agencies”.  Why? “They take preparation and evidence-gathering seriously: a real commitment to getting things right.”  Good grief.

In such a cosmically unattached world, Swift only took three pages to reject the appeal’s arguments in a fit of premature adjudication.  “An appeal under the Extradition Act 2003,” he wrote with icy finality, “is not an opportunity for general rehearsal of all matters canvassed at an extradition hearing.”  The appeal’s length – some 100 pages – was “extraordinary” and came “to no more than an attempt to re-run the extensive arguments made and rejected by the District Judge.”

Thankfully, Swift’s finality proved stillborn.  Some doubts existed whether the High Court appellate bench would even grant the hearing.  They did, though requesting that Assange’s defence team trim the appeal to 20 pages.

How much of this is procedural theatre and circus judge antics remains to be seen.  Anglo-American justice has done wonders in soiling itself in its treatment of Britain’s most notable political prisoner.  Keeping Assange in the UK in hideous conditions of confinement without bail serves the goals of Washington, albeit vicariously.  For Assange, time is the enemy, and each legal brief, appeal and hearing simply weighs the ledger further against his ailing existence.

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

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jay Janson

Global corporate capitalism led by the hegemonic state, the United States, is a fundamentally immoral and irrational system. In capitalism, both states and corporations are designed to maximize short-term power and profits for the super-wealthy corporate elite. [1]

For two and a half months, Israeli military forces, with the full backing of the US government, have dropped more than 40,000 tons of explosives—the equivalent of more than two nuclear bombs—on Gaza destroying residential buildings, hospitals, schools and refugee camps and deliberately targeting hundreds of medical workers, journalists, teachers and other civilians for assassination. [2]

At least 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and 54,000 wounded, the majority women and children. Many more face death in the coming weeks, as Israel lays siege in the south and deprives Gaza’s 2.2 million people of food, water and medical care. Hunger and disease are rapidly spreading through their makeshift shelters.

US vetos have blocked international calls for a ceasefire. The US government is fully supporting Israel politically, financially and militarily.

A recently leaked Pentagon document stated that US “security assistance” was arriving in Israeli on a near-daily basis. The US has delivered 36,000 rounds of 30mm artillery shells, 1,800 M141 Bunker-buster bombs and other munitions to Israel in late October alone, according to the document. [2]

Under the rubble, alongside the buried bodies of children, Palestinian rescue workers have found bomb fragments with the manufacturing codes of Boeing and other US defense companies. There is unchallengeable evidence that the Biden administration and both corporate-backed U.S. political parties are just as guilty as the Netanyahu government for perpetuating the greatest war crime of the 21st century.

Why all this death and destruction? Because corporate war investors ruled America needs to be assured of its continuing to have that US armed powerful Israeli military outpost in the midst of the oil rich nations of the Middle East. Something America established in 1946 when American power over an incipient United Nations of only 56 nations, produced the genocidal stratagem of torching the Holy Land with a phony, never expected nor intended to be implemented resolution for a crazy quilt partition of Palestine into six noncontiguous areas; the Arab areas entirely noncontiguous; the Jewish areas contiguous by a thread; the designated major area for Jews containing more Arabs than Jews, and meant to immediately provoke a civil war prepared for and expected by the Colonial Powers supported and well armed Revisionist Zionists leadership. With the announcement of the UN vote for partition (adopted by a vote of only 25 in favor versus 32 against, abstaining or absent), the fully expected bloodshed had begun. The partition resolution awarded the proposed Jewish State 51% of the land even though Jews owned only 6% and made up only 33% of the population. [Map of the UN proposed partition at Click Here ]

Item:

Western Media Never Questions Why U.S. Well Armed Israel Could Not Just Defend Itself Instead of Claiming It Must Destroy Hamas and Murder Tens of Thousands of Women and Children. 

Is there a risk for U.S.A. that the Israeli tail might be waving the America dog?

The destruction of Gaza’s homes and buildings makes the 2.3 million citizens of Israeli prison-enclosed Gaza homeless. Without  food, water, fuel electricity and sanitation infrastructure, the survivors will be forced to leave. (Neighboring Egypt and Jordan are well aware of the increasing threat of having to care for more than two million impoverished Gaza refugees seeking asylum.)

Once Gaza is obliterated has become a desolate and de-populated land, while the West Bank Palestinian land is further settler colonized beyond the half million Israeli settler enclaves already making life difficult for Palestinians, Israel will be close to its goal of eventually having complete control and ownership of all the land that once was the British Mandate of Palestine. Then Israel could expel the Arabs from their last enclave in East Jerusalem.

Haaretz, Israel News, Nov. 5, 2023

Rabbi at Israeli Military Training Base Says ‘Whole Country’ Is ‘Ours,’ Including Gaza and Lebanon.’

The Israel-Hezbollah conflict is intensifying! Could Netanyahu decide to settle old scores with Hezbollah and even Iran while U.S. aircraft carriers are committed to defend Israel?

Item:

Western Media Ignores Palestinian Fight for Freedom & Israeli Killing to Continue Its Murderous Illegal Occupation & Colonization.

Item:

Western Media Hides Truth Palestinians Fight for Freedom & Israel Kills to Continue Occupation & Colonization

Item:

Western Media Questions Gaza’s Future Never Israel’s Illegal Occupation & Colonization of Palestine 

Item:

Turkey’s President Erdogan calls Israel a ‘terror state’, criticizes the West and calls for Israeli officials to be tried for war crimes. Has said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Nov. 1, 2023 Aljazeera

Israel in its supporting CIA-overseen Western media[3] have concocted grotesque fables to present Palestinians as bloodthirsty savages in order to justify its horrific genocide in Gaza.

Barely a day has passed since the 7 October attack by Hamas when the western media has not revisited those events, often to reveal what it claims are new details of astonishing atrocities carried out by the Palestinian group.

These disclosures have served to sustain public indignation in the West, and kept Palestinian solidarity activists on the back foot.

In turn, the outrage has smoothed Israel’s path as it has leveled vast swaths of Gaza; killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children; and denied the enclave’s population of 2.3 million access to food, water and fuel.

Critically, it has also made it far easier for western governments to throw their weight behind Israel – and arm it – even as Israeli leaders have repeatedly engaged in genocidal talk and carried out ethnic cleansing operations.

Many of the claims about 7 October have been shocking beyond belief, such as stories that Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even described in graphic detail – and wholly falsely – a Hamas attack on an Israeli family: “The father’s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed.”

As to Israel’s using the Israelis killed in the Hamas Oct 7th attack to justify the Israeli response of murdering at the time already 12, 500 Palestinian civilians, resent investigations find that a large fraction of the bodies recovered had been charred beyond all recognition, making it very difficult to distinguish between Israelis and Hamas attackers. Since the Hamas fighters had only been carrying rifles, Kalashnikov rifles and other small arms, all those victims must have been killed by explosive tank shells and Hellfire missiles. Indeed, newly released video footage revealed that hundreds of Israeli cars had been incinerated by such munitions, suggesting that many or most of the Israelis killed fleeing the dance festival had probably died at the hands of trigger-happy Apache pilots, who reported that they had blasted anything that moved.

Israel admits apache helicopters fired on their own civilians running from the Supernova music festival. 

“The pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian… The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.” [4]

Last week the BBC and others led again with stories of systematic Hamas mass rapes on 7 October. Efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims are being obstructed by Israel.

The media’s amplification of Israel’s version of 7 October continues to breathe life into the Israeli case that wrecking Gaza to eliminate Hamas is morally justified

Media readiness to re-examine 7 October long after those events took place

Only claims that support Israel’s narrative about what happened that day are being aired.

Unknown to most western audiences, there has been a steady trickle of evidence from Israeli sources over the past two months implicating Israel’s own military in at least some of the killings attributed to Hamas.

The Israeli military has finally conceded that it had killed its own civilians on October 7 “in immense and complex quantity”.

Regev told MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan:

“There were actually bodies that were so badly burned we thought they were ours. In the end, apparently, they were Hamas terrorists.”

How did so many Hamas fighters end up burned – and in exactly the same locations as Israelis, meaning their remains could not be identified separately for many weeks?

Shelled by Israel

Yasmin Porat, who fled the Nova festival and ended up hiding in Be’eri, was one of the few to survive that day. Her partner, Tal Katz, was killed.

She has repeatedly explained to the Israeli media what happened.

According to Porat’s account to Kan radio on 15 November, the Hamas fighters in Be’eri barricaded themselves into a house with a group of a dozen or so Israeli hostages – either planning to use them as human shields or as bargaining chips for an exit.

The Israeli military, however, was in no mood for bargaining. Porat escaped only because one of the Hamas fighters vacated the house early on, using her as a human shield, before giving himself up.

Porat describes Israeli soldiers engaging in a four-hour firefight with the Hamas gunmen, despite the presence of Israeli civilians. But not all of the hostages were killed in the crossfire. Israel ended the clash with an Israeli tank firing two shells into the house.

In Porat’s account, when she asked why this had been done, “they explained to me that it was to break the walls, in order to help purify the house”.

The only other survivor, Hadas Dagan, who was lying face down on the lawn in front of the house during the firefight, reported to Porat what happened after the two shells hit the house. Dagan saw both of their partners lying near her, killed by shrapnel from the explosions.

Survivor of Kibbutz Be’eri incident reveals harrowing details of Israeli forces’ assault

Hadas Dagan, the only survivor of the Kibbutz Be’eri incident on 7 October, has broken her silence, recounting the horrific events. During the Israeli forces’ arrival, a fierce exchange of gunfire ensued, followed by missile strikes. Amidst this chaos, Dagan recalls the children’s desperate screams for help. Her testimony brings to light the targeted assault on civilians by the Israeli army, including her partner Adi, who was killed in the attack. Dagan vividly describes the terrifying moments,

A 12-year-old girl, Liel Hatsroni, who had been screaming inside the house throughout the firefight, also fell silent.

Hatsroni and her aunt, Ayalan, were both incinerated. It took weeks to identify their bodies.[5]

Confused pilots

Porat’s testimony is far from the only source showing that Israel is likely to have been responsible for a significant proportion of the civilian deaths that day – and for the burned bodies.

The security coordinator at Be’eri, Tuval Escapa, effectively confirmed Porat’s account to the Haaretz newspaper. He said: “Commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

The burnt-out cars at the Nova festival and their occupants appear to have suffered a similar fate. Worried that Hamas gunmen were fleeing the area with hostages in cars, it seems, helicopter pilots were told to open fire, incinerating the cars and all the occupants.

The Ynet news website cited an Israeli air force assessment of its two dozen attack helicopters in the skies above the Nova festival: “It was very difficult to distinguish between terrorists and [Israeli] soldiers or civilians.” Nonetheless, pilots were instructed “to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence” with Gaza.

Pilots emptied the ‘belly of the helicopter’ in minutes, flew to re-arm and returned to the air, again and again.

Challenge to official story

Although they are rarely given a voice, Palestinians have their own, alternative narrative of what happened that day – and parts of it are being bolstered by accounts from Israeli sources.

In this telling, Hamas long trained for its breakout, and with a strategic aim in mind. The goal was to launch a commando-style assault on four military bases surrounding Gaza to kill or take hostage as many Israeli soldiers as possible, and a similar assault on local Israeli communities to seize civilian hostages.

The aim, according to this narrative, was to trade the hostages for Palestinian prisoners, thousands of whom are in Israeli jails, including women and children, often held without a military trial or even charges.

To the Palestinian public, these prisoners are no less hostages than the Israelis held in Gaza.[6]

Your 92 year old writer, is unable to stop thinking of the mass of fellow civilian human beings and their children being murdered, maimed and starved in Gaza with the weapons and munitions supplied by my government.

Seems like minded people, especially fellow Americans, should make this a topic of conversation among family, friends and co-workers, for none of us are safe from future crimes of our government.

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”  Leonardo da Vinci

“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.” –Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Archbishop of South Africa Desmond Tutu

America will not be ruled by corporate investors in war dis-informing and shaming its citizens by U.S. genocidal military crimes in other peoples countries forever. The whole world is getting fed up with it.

The vast majority of Humankind in the Global South cannot but be aware of having suffered genocide and military occupation by U.S./NATO similar to that being suffered by Palestinians today.

Ih our space age of instant world wide communication the five centuries of White race rule of planet Earth will come to an end.

There are more Chinese than the total population of U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. There are also now more Indians than Chinese and more Africans than Indians. Imagine how this human majority feels about this continuing American hegemony.

End Notes

1. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/07/16/us-corporate-elite-killing-democracy-and-planet

2. World Socialist Web Site

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/21/cdxa-d21.html

3.“Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A,” December 26, 1977, New York Times

4. https://middleeastmonitor.com/20231030-report-7-october-testimonies-strikes-major-blow-to-israeli-narrative/… 4.

5. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0tKA-stHb0/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=5d0d1e79-4f79-4d93-ab5a-803ed391531e

6. ‘Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel’s own actions on 7 October?’ By Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at http://www.jonathan-cook.net . Via Middle East Eye

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989.

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

Following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, the U.S. government rushed to evacuate its citizens from Israel. Flights to Europe were chartered from Tel Aviv. A Royal Caribbean cruise ship, the Rhapsody of the Seas, was chartered, taking 2,500 people from Haifa to Cyprus. U.S. citizens, green card holders, their family members and others in the Gaza Strip, though, weren’t so lucky. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in northern Gaza heeded the warning of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to flee to southern Gaza, only to learn that Israel was bombing there as well. No place is safe in Gaza for the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped there.

“My mother was an old lady who was living safely in her home. She was displaced many times. Every time…the Israeli forces are threatening to bomb the house,” Narmin AbushaBAN, a Palestinian American in Detroit, explained on the Democracy Now! news hour. “She was paralyzed. She was on medications. Due to the air forces threatening to displace them many times…Even when they were in the south, in Khan Younis, they were threatened in the middle of the night to leave their house. They had to displace her again, until they reached Rafah. There, her health was getting worse and worse. She didn’t have the right medication, due to the Israeli forces preventing medical supplies from getting into Gaza. So she had to switch to another medication that did not help her at all. And she passed away.”

Rather than a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Narmin Abushaban’s mother got a hole in the ground.  Abushaban still has twenty family members trapped in Gaza, who she has been unable to reach.

“My clients’ family members need immediate evacuation from Gaza to reunite with their families and to escape near-certain death due to Israel’s brutal war on Palestine,” Narmin’s attorney, Sophia Akbar, said on Democracy Now! “We need the U.S. government to create immigration pathways for Palestinians to come to the U.S. to escape deadly and inhumane conditions.”

Journalist Fadi Abu Shammalah works as the Outreach Associate in Gaza for the Washington, DC-based non-profit Just Vision. He applied for a J-1 exchange visitor visa for a fellowship in the US. In November, Fadi was able to cross into Egypt from Gaza, but his wife and three children were prevented. What followed were weeks of hell, while they moved from camp to camp for displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

“On December 6, while I don’t have connection with my wife and my kids, I knew that from the news that Israel  bombed the Shaboura refugee camp, exactly where my family evacuated,” Fadi said on Democracy Now! from Cairo. “For two hours and a half, I was waiting any sign that my family are alive. I had to go through the news of WhatsApp thread to look for my kids’ photo. I had to look into the photos of the killed children, because I knew that there’s 20 women and kids were killed in this bombing. I had to open the photos and zoom in to determine if one of these photos is one of my kids.”

Sophia Akbar sees disparities in the treatment of Palestinians and other asylum seekers:

“Under the Uniting for Ukraine program, all requirements of having connections to green card holders and U.S. citizens were waived. So, Ukraine, about — over 270,000 Ukrainians were allowed to come to the United States under this program. As advocates on the ground right now serving our clients who have families in Gaza, we cannot even get U.S. citizens out. Our advocates had to sue the Biden administration just to get U.S. citizens evacuated.”

In a note to Democracy Now!, Reverend Seth Kaper-Dale of Interfaith-RISE, a New Jersey refugee aid agency, wrote, “When a conflict arises in the world…we’ll be asked by the federal government to receive an influx of refugees.  Kabul fell, hundreds came here to our agency. The war between Ukraine and Russia started, 800 Ukrainians entered our program. We’ve received 1500+ Haitians. The earthquake in Turkey, immediately we saw an influx of dozens of Syrian refugee families. So why no Palestinian refugees?”

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Congressmember Pramila Jayapal of Seattle were joined by 100 colleagues, urging President Biden to expand TPS, Temporary Protected Status, for Palestinians already in the US, to prevent their potential deportation back to the killing fields of Gaza, or to Israeli military and settler violence in the West Bank.

Israel has killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7th, 8,000 of them children. This “indiscriminate bombing,” as President Biden called it, has to stop now. Biden has the power to end it, with a simple Christmas phone call to Netanyahu.

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 1,400 public television and radio stations worldwide.

Denis Moynihan has worked with Democracy Now! since 2000. He is a bestselling author and a syndicated columnist with King Features.

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By P.S. Sahni

Several petitions have been filed in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for proceedings against Israel. The Public Prosecutor of the ICC has visited Israel, Palestine (Gaza Strip) and even talked to families of victims. As the Israeli government has not ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC it claims to remain outside the jurisdiction of ICC. However the UK and Germany have ratified the Rome Statute. It is public knowledge that Sunak and Olaf Scholz did visit the scene of ongoing crime in Israel in October 2023 and promised to stand by Israel in this war. The UK government has sent arms and ammunition (see here).

The German government followed suit (see here).

The ICC has thus the jurisdiction to investigate the complicity of these two individuals viz. Sunak and Olaf Scholz and the governments they represent viz. UK and Germany. As suppliers of arms and ammunition to Israel in the ongoing Holocaust-II of Palestinians, they/their respective governments are indeed complicit in the crime against humanity. After satisfying that arms and ammunition were supplied to Israel through its own independent investigations, the ICC could issue warrants of arrest against the two entities.

Meanwhile the USA and Israel are smarting under the fig leaf of an excuse that they are both not signatories to the Rome Statute and are outside the purview of ICC. Even the mere issuance of warrants of arrest against Sunak and Olaf Scholz would be a moral victory for the international community. Why, even the act of pressing for legal proceedings at ICC alone would change global power equations.

France had strengthened its naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. This announcement was made by Macron on October 25 according to Le Monde:

“The move marks a significant reinforcement of France’s military posture in the war between Israel & Hamas.”

However the French government is at pains to explain that the naval presence is for humanitarian aid only.

There are positive signals all round. The ongoing worldwide mass protests against the Israeli government; the 153 countries opposing Israel at UNGA; the European Parliament election in 2024; and the domestic pressure in Israel, USA, UK –  countries due for general elections in 2024 could eventually lead to a Nuremberg-II Trial!

P.S. Sahni is a qualified orthopaedic surgeon.

22 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman

It was 6:00 am on 15 December, when my mother woke me to take our turn in the line at a nearby bakery, 15 minutes away on foot.

There are two lines, one for women and one for men. My mother was number 29, I number 30. We had arrived before the bakery opened to ensure our turn.

The number of waiting men soon tripled, far surpassing the number of women. The bakery’s proprietor decided that every customer could purchase just 10 pieces of bread each, since hundreds were already queuing by the time he opened at eight.

There were six employees in the bakery, including the proprietor. Each one was assigned a certain task.

One rolled the dough into balls and placed them in a wooden tray. Another moved those trays to a third employee, who fixed the dough before it was baked and divided into portions. A cashier took money.

I stood in the queue for six hours. One advantage of getting there early was that I managed to grab a chair for my mother, who cannot stand for extended periods as she has severe pain in her legs and back.

After four hours of standing, I felt lightheaded. I couldn’t see anyone in front of me and was barely able to keep myself from collapsing. Did I feel this weak because I was starving or because I was thirsty?

Exhaustion

I had gone to the bakery on an empty stomach. I had eaten my last meal, a can of peas, 18 hours prior.

I am used to it now, in this, the third month of Israel’s genocidal aggression. I eat only one meal, usually around midday. It’s hard to find food in Rafah’s stores and markets. Israel continues to prevent the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and only a trickle of food for the more than 1 million displaced people in Rafah enters any given day.

Supermarkets are empty. There is no food – not even snacks and beverages – on their shelves, and they stay open only to sell internet bundles.

There are also no longer any vegetables or fruit available in the markets. Rafah’s marketplaces typically depend on the produce harvested in the fields on the eastern boundary of Khan Younis. However, these lands are now off-bounds to farmers.

Back at the queue, I managed to leave my place for a moment to get some falafel and water from nearby stores. The sustenance cleared my head, and my mother and I eventually managed to get our bread.

That alone, after six hours, felt like an achievement. And it doesn’t always work out that way. My brother-in-law did not manage to get to the front of the queue in time a day earlier, and we missed out on any bread that day.

When we got back to the flat where we are seeking shelter, I had to lie down. My feet were red and swollen. Luckily, my father had managed to get some painkillers a while back, so he gave me those. The pain still took hours to dissipate.

Desperation

The struggle for food has grown acute. Israel cut food, water, electricity and fuel supplies early in the attack.

At first there was still flour in the marketplace and bakeries were still working, selling a rabta of bread, 30 pieces, for $1.90, same as it cost before the war.

But as the south started filling with those displaced from the north, the wait began to get longer. And as individuals ran out of fuel to cook with, more and more people began to rely on the bakeries.

Some resorted to wood fires to make bread. Costs began to rise steeply, and a single rabta became unaffordable for most people, deprived of work and any income.

A month into Israel’s aggression, my father began to see that he could no longer afford to come to the bakery at the usual time. Some were starting to queue as early as 2:00 am. By then, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, had distributed flour to bakeries, stipulating that they now sell a rabta for just $1.10, affordable to most people.

During this period, we bought a rabta twice a week, as one was enough for three or four days for my 10 family members – my sister Samah, her three kids, her husband Abed, and my parents.

By then, my dad would go get a number at the bakery at 2:00 am and wait until sunrise when Abed would take over for another three hours to get the bread. Sometimes he returned empty-handed as either his patience or the flour ran out.

Deprivation

My father also registered us with an UNRWA school for flour. It took two weeks, but eventually he secured the family a 25 kg bag. It was a joyful moment that we thought might at least secure us all bread for a while.

It only brought more torment.

When my dad received the flour, I went to a Rafah market to buy salt, yeast and coal to make bread. But there was no yeast and no salt. I returned home carrying only a bag of coal, whose price had nearly doubled at that time.

It took days of me searching in every market in Rafah before I managed to get hold of a small packet of yeast, the price of which had risen four-fold, from just above a dollar to $4.30. Salt has become even more expensive. One kg now costs $5.40, 20 times its normal price of 25 cents.

At that point, we had adjusted to eating meals without bread, typically rice, canned peas and pasta. We’d try to ensure that my three nephews and my sister – whose youngest, Muhammad, is just three-months-old – had two meals a day each. The rest of us would share one meal along with a few biscuits. Occasionally we could get falafel.

We tried to keep Fridays – the weekend in Gaza – special, as much as possible purchasing rice with chicken when available.

This gave some stability to the children. Aya, one of my nephews, said Fridays allowed him to remember happy weekends before the war, when chicken and other meats were freely available.

Starvation

The flour lasted three weeks. Then we had to get back to lining up outside the bakeries.

But in the past week, Rafah’s bakeries have gradually closed. The last bakery finally shut on 16 December. There is no longer, it seems, any flour in the Gaza Strip.

Yesterday, we wasted a whole day searching Rafah’s neighborhoods for a bakery, a shop or just someone selling some bread.

We had just given up when, at sunset, we saw a group of people gathering around a fire inside an UNRWA school. There, a man was making bread on an open fire. I was over the moon when I managed to purchase enough bread for my family for three days.

I don’t know what awaits us after these next three days. The bakeries are closed. The stores are closed.

We go to bed hungry. We wake up hungry.

UNRWA has begun distributing flour again. But when is it our turn? What will happen to us if they run out?

I fear that if we die, we will die of starvation before we can secure any flour in Rafah.

Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman is a journalist living in Gaza.

20 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ranjan Solomon

Gaza is going through a murderous genocide at the hands of a barbaric Israeli army assault. It is in this context that Christians around the world must find solidarity in the call of the Heads of Churches in Palestine who have called on their people to desist from Christmas celebrations.

It’s a hard-hitting call that demands sacrifice and a deep understanding of what it means to be a human community. While bright lights, fancy decorations, classy gifts, (an imaginary Santa Claus), parties, booze and dances are the culture of modern Christmas, this has been deprived to the people of Palestine who live in uncertainty not knowing when their homes will be bombed or a random sharp shooter will kill a kid. Every 30 minutes, a child is killed.

At least 18,787 people, including more than 7,700 children, have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to Palestinian officials in less than six weeks. Schools, hospitals, and offices, of relief agencies lie in ruins making welfare and relief near-impossible.

It is easy for Churches, priests, and Christian leaders to insist that we must live in hope. The anguish in Gaza and in multiple cities in the West Bank leave the notion of hope looking empty.

What is the sacrifice we can each make in the here and now for the children of Gaza who have no shelter? No crib for a bed. Not even a cow-shed.

But we’re not talking about Gaza alone or Bethlehem, or Jenin or Jerusalem or a dozen other cities and villages where people live in terror and anxiety. Around the world, the Manger scene is played out for migrants, the rural and urban poor, street children, slum dwellers living under polluted conditions.

It is not a Merry Christmas for millions upon millions. Their tragedy drags on for an eternity – even until they die. Hope is the only instrument we have in this dire state of affairs?

We are saddened at how those who have no hope survive this cold shelter less Christmas time. Our hearts are heavy with the burdens our suffering sisters and brothers live through. We can utter all the words of sadness at the killing of our brothers and sisters. The challenge is to lift up our eyes and fix them on Christ alone. (Heb 12:2.). Amidst persecution, we must worship in spirit and truth, and continue to worship and offer our treasures like the wise men to Him, who has set us free and secured life and eternity before us.

Meanwhile cancel Christmas celebrations because this is not time to celebrate!

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator

19 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Press Release

As the brutal slaughtering in Gaza unfolds in increasingly horrific proportions, we, as an experienced research foundation for peaceful conflict resolution and peace-making since 1986, feel the urge to contribute our analytical points, sentiments and constructive conflict-resolution ideas.

The Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research (TFF) also wants to be on record with this Statement so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see who stood with whom and who advocated peace instead of ongoing genocide.

The killing has to stop, and we call, together with the UN and so many others, for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

The horrific attack of Hamas on October 7, 2023, with the death of over 1100 people, is indefensible. There is no excuse for the killing of absolutely innocent people. While there is a painful history of 75 years of brutal occupation and apartheid regime against the Palestinian people, there is no justification for such an act of senseless violence.

However, Israel’s response can by no means be seen as practising the right to self-defence. It is an utterly out-of-proportion massacre of civilians, mainly women and children, executed by the military of the most totalitarian and racist government Israel ever had since it was established. It is an unprecedented murderous revenge. It is genocide.*

Despite the strongest condemnation by the UN, despite the unprecedented calls of its Secretary General, Israel continues with its systematic high-tech slaughter, and the Western governments are standing silent or, like Germany, declare their ”unwavering support for Israel.“ EU leaders declared immediately that ’Europe’ is ”standing with Israel.” The US voted against a ceasefire.

It is heartbreaking and painful beyond words to helplessly watch the unfolding of this massacre.

After two months, these are the facts:

> 7.900 children bombed to pieces, hundreds of them trapped under the debris, thousands of children mutilated, a whole young generation traumatised forever.

> 17.500 dead. Crying doctors in utterly dysfunctional hospitals, operating without anaesthetics.

> The homes of tens of thousands of people in shambles, 24 of 36 hospitals, schools, mosques, libraries, the beautiful university of Gaza – destroyed, erased to the ground.

> 1,9 million out of 2.2 million people forced out of their homes into the streets, deliberately starved of food, water and medical help, trapped under more and more bombing without any possibility to escape – it is a war crime of monstrous proportions.

> More than 100 UN staff members and over 60 journalists and media people have been killed, 54 of them Palestinians.

But while much of Israel and many of the Western governments seem to be blinded by the idea of eternal victimhood of Jews and Israel, that can’t be used as an equally eternal excuse for just every atrocity. Fortunately, hundreds of thousands of Jews in and outside Israel show in unequivocal terms, that this is not happening in their name.

Hundreds of Jews with kippas packed New York Central Station as early as three weeks after the beginning of the forced exodus of 1 million Palestinians and the following slaughtering and blocked the whole station for hours, all of them in black t-shirts with huge letters ”This Jew is for immediate ceasefire“. And they keep protesting.

35 Jewish-Palestinian organisations in Israel are calling for an unconditional ceasefire, and the International Jewish Voice for Peace is raising its voices everywhere around the globe.

Hundreds of Rabbis all around the world, including in Israel, have been condemning the unparalleled killing and are calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Little do you read in the Western mainstream media about this, nor about the millions of other people around the world who manifest their solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Amnesty International condemned Israel in non-mistakable terms, and the Security Council nearly unanimously called for an immediate ceasefire – vetoed shamefully by the United States alone.

The WHO called out Israel and urged for an immediate ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu repeatedly states that he will not be moved: the ”war on Hamas” (the Western media’s deceptive narrative for the genocide) will continue. Palestine did not exist on the map of the New Middle East he showed at the UN.

By all means available, this Israeli government should be isolated until it stops the genocide. Its political and military leaders must be held accountable for the horrible crimes against humanity and be brought to justice. What is at stake is the strength of international law, several conventions and UN Charter norms.

Every country that has delivered and continues to deliver the military means enabling this immoral, illegal and barbaric policy must be seen as complicit and likewise be held accountable. Without the ongoing military and political support of the US and Western States, Germany in particular – that 10-folded its weapon deliveries since October 23 – this horrible war and the unlawful occupation would be over soon.

There is no doubt that this will backfire on Israel and the West.

The whole world is watching the slaughtering and the collaboration of the Western states with horror and disgust. The arrogance of the ”leading nations” and their claim to act in the name of democracy, freedom, and human rights – as well as their ’rules-based international order’ – is fast falling apart.

How can we move towards long-term peace?

• We still believe that Jews and Palestinians can live together – and so do many of them themselves. Even under shocking conditions, people and organisations on both sides still insist that their lives are inextricably linked and that peaceful coexistence is possible.

It will be a long and painful path to make this happen – and it will only be possible with equal rights for all.

And it will need tremendous pressure from the outside and a non-violent revolution from the inside to change Israel into a just, human rights and law- respecting true democracy.

• We need to look at the entire Middle East as a region – we need its dense network of economic, cultural, and political ties to set up an all-regional conflict-resolution mechanism á la the OSCE. This way, over several years, all parties can dialogue their way through to something they can live with in the long term.

There are many possible elements – tie peace into economic and political mechanisms and relations; think of cantons and autonomies; think of mutually beneficial/cooperative uses of territories; think of the relations of it all with the Rest of the World, including the Global South. Tie it in with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, BRI.

Warfare requires no intellect or creativity; peace-making requires both.

• The violence must die down to move towards such a civilised process. We need an immediate ceasefire.

Ideally, we need a huge UN mission to disarm Israel and Hamas to such a level that neither can re-start a war. And then all the good offices around the world, governmental but certainly more so non-governmental, to help mediate, consult, dialogue every detail: What do the many parties fear and what do they want?

And then – at the end, after years of such a peace-building process – the parties would come to a final negotiation table and then sign an agreement of peaceful coexistence with all its civilian and military modalities.

• Conflict resolution means solving problems that stand between the parties. It cannot succeed by violence, looking to the past, or tit-for-tat for what was done yesterday.

It is, instead, one big, complex and long peace workshop where better futures/visions/ scenarios are brought up, evaluated, and sorted out – ending in combining the best elements into a comprehensive future arrangement.

You can’t change the past, but you can change the future. And – no! – everybody will not be happy, but all can be happy with something – and see a better future for their children.

And this is also where truth and reconciliation commissions come in – the healing and forgiveness that is found in all religions.

Peace is still possible.

Signed by TFF Associates:

Christina Spännar – PhD in sociology, founder, Sweden.

Jan Oberg – PhD in sociology, founder and director, Sweden.

Annette Schiffmann – Veteran peace activist & organiser of numerous international conferences on alternatives to war and violence: Iraq, Death Penalty, Israel/Palestine, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Heidelberg, Germany.

David Swanson – Co-Founder, Executive Director, and a Board Member of World Beyond War, author, activist, journalist, and radio host, the United States.

Liu Jian – Co-founder of Ichi Foundation, Beijing, China.

Erni Friholt – Secretary, the Orust Peace Movement, Orust, Sweden.

Claus Kold – PhD, senior researcher, director of TurningPoints, Denmark.

Biljana Vanskovska – Professor, Head of the Global Changes Center, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia.

Farhang Jahanpour – Retired professor and Editor for Middle East and North Africa at BBC Monitoring, England.

Radmila Nakarada – Professor, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Distinguished Fellow, New South Institute, Johannesburg, Belgrade, Serbia.

Ola Friholt – Chairman, the Orust Peace Movement, Orust, Sweden.

Richard Falk – Professor Emeritus, Princeton University, public intellectual and former UN Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, US/Turkey.

Elaheh Pooyandeh – MA in peace studies, peace educator and mediator, Tehran, Iran.

Ina Curic – Sociologist, M.A. in Gender Studies as well as Peace and Conflict Studies; former TFF project coordinator in Burundi, creator of Imagine Creatively story-telling for peace, Romania.

David Loy – Retired professor of Buddhist and comparative philosophy, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism.

Chantal Mutamuriza – Former TFF project coordinator in Burundi, human rights advocate and humanitarian worker, Switzerland and Ethiopia.

Chaiwat Satha-Anand – Professor emeritus, Faculty of Political Science, Thammasat University and prolific writer on Islam and nonviolence, Bangkok, Thailand.

Brajna Greenhalgh – PhD Researcher; MSc in psychology, licensed counsellor, Bangor University, Wales.

Mairead Maguire – Nobel peace laureate, co-founder of Peace People, Northern Ireland, Kilcief County Down.

Gareth Porter – historian, independent investigative journalist, author and policy analyst specializing in U.S. national security issues, the United States.

Shastri Ramachandaran – Independent Journalist, editor, writer, publication & media consultant, New Delhi, India.

Peter Peverelli – Retired professor, School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and lifelong expert on China, The Netherlands.

Neelakanta Radhakrishnan – Dr., The Gandhi Peace Mission, India; former Director of Gandhi Darshan and International Centre of Gandhian Studies in New Delhi, India.

Jorgen Johansen – Editor at Irene Publishing, independent peace researcher and writer, Sweden.

Majken Sorensen – Associate Professor of Social Science at Østfold University College and Karlstad University, Sweden.

Jake Lynch – Associate Professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He also writes, reports and broadcasts regularly as a journalist working in peace journalism, as well as making documentary films.

* Appendix: Why we use the word ”genocide.”

The use of the word ’genocide’ is controversial in many circles and may evoke emotional reactions. We are also aware that it has been used by some for political purposes to denigrate some other country or people.

But we do not use the term lightly or for political purposes. Given the links we provide below to trustworthy sites and organisations, legal documents such as the Genocide Convention, as well as expert opinion, we believe this is the term that best summarises what has unfolded in Gaza and subjected the Palestinians to unspeakable, unprecedented suffering as a people.

One central criterion is intentionality – that there is a deliberate intention to harm, eradicate, humiliate, displace or make life impossible for a nation – in part or, over time, in whole.

Most of the links provided by professor John Mearsheimer here, in which various Israeli leaders are on record, make it abundantly clear that the suffering cannot be explained merely by ’collateral damage,’ i.e. civilian casualties caused by unintended consequences of bombings and other warfare activities.

Furthermore, according to the Genocide Convention of 1948 – “Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as … “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

All these criteria do not have to be present – as the word ”any” indicates. In the case of Gaza, it should be abundantly clear that the Israeli government’s activity falls within criteria a, b and c.

To that can be added a multi-decade occupation (since 1967), apartheid, humiliation and other elements that, in and of themselves, do not constitute genocide.

Finally, it is extraordinarily important to note that – as pointed out by UN experts:

“The international community has an obligation to prevent atrocity crimes, including genocide, and should immediately consider all diplomatic, political and economic measures to that end.”

We believe that this obligation does place the West’s complicity in the genocide – thanks to arms and ammunition export and political side-taking statements – in a particularly tragical light.

Links on genocide

The Convention

The Convention

Wikipedia about the Convention

Arguments and judgements

Oct. 12, 2023
Gaza: UN experts decry bombing of hospitals and schools as crimes against humanity, call for prevention of genocide

Oct. 15, 2023
Public Statement: Scholars Warn of Potential Genocide in Gaza
On 15 October 2023, over 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies signed a public statement warning of the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Oct. 20, 2023
Genocide Scholars and 100 Palestinian and International Civil Society Organisations Call on Prosecutor Khan to Issue Arrest Warrants, Investigate Israeli Crimes and Intervene to Deter Incitement to Commit Genocide in Gaza

Oct. 24, 2023
The Guardian: Israel is clear about its intentions in Gaza – world leaders cannot plead ignorance of what is coming

Nov. 7, 2023
Washington Post – Israel’s war in Gaza and the spectre of ‘genocide.’

Nov. 12, 2023
Aljazeera – Genocide in Gaza: A call to urgent global action. What is happening in Gaza fits the definition of genocide.

Nov. 13, 2023
Center for Constitutional Rights
Stop the Genocide: United States Complicity and Failure to Prevent the Israeli Government’s Unfolding Genocide of Palestinians

Nov. 14, 2023
Time
Is what is happening in Gaza a genocide. Experts weigh in.

Nov. 16, 2023
United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, OHCHR
Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent genocide on the Palestinian people

Dec. 1, 2023
Aljazeera – Former ICC chief prosecutor: Israel’s siege of Gaza is a ‘genocide’
Luis Moreno Ocampo discusses accusations of war crimes and genocide against both Hamas and Israel.

Dec. 6, 2023
As part of its genocide in Gaza, Israel escalates its targeting of schools housing displaced people

Dec. 11, 2023
‘Time for Action to Prevent Genocide Is Now’:
The 56 scholars said in their open letter that Palestinians in the West Bank and those who are citizens of Israel also faced “grave danger” if Israel’s attack on Gaza were to continue and escalate.

Dec. 12, 2023
International Middle East Media Center, IMEMC
Euro-Med Monitor: “In Gaza, Israel’s Army Replicates the Crimes Committed by Zionist Gangs in 1948.”

Finally, another statement, ”Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals on Gaza Genocide,” drafted by world-renowned Princeton University Professor Emeritus of International Law and TFF Associate Richard Falk, together with former Turkish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, determines that the word ’genocide’ describes the situation in Gaza. It is signed by many scholars, diplomats, former ministers, etc. and addresses the world community, including the UN (forthcoming).

17 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Friday 15 December will be remembered as another black day for the Palestinian people. The killing of Samer Abu Daqqa by Israeli forces is another nail in the coffin of freedom from occupation and free speech.

Ever since the war on Gaza started a few days after 7 October, the Israeli military has been targeting Palestinian journalists and seeking to muzzle their words and reporting. Abu Daqqa, a cameraman for the Arabic Al Jazeera becomes journalist no 89 to have been targeted and killed by the Israeli big guns and sophisticated gadgetry.

He was killed on day 70 of Israel’s war on Gaza when its army continued bombarding the Strip, day and night. By late November, Israel dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on different parts of Gaza and it continues to do so till today.

For him, Friday 15 September proved to be a fateful day, an end to a career long dedicated to the Palestinian cause and revealing oppression experienced by the people of Gaza under Israeli occupation and siege imposed since 2007.

On that day, together with his colleague Wael Al Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza Bureau Chief, were in the field covering the Israeli military strikes of the Farhanah UNRWA school in the vicinity of Khan Younis.

Israeli warplanes were striking at the school, beginning Friday early morning, telling the displaced people there to move further south to the city of Rafah on the border of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. This had been the policy of the Israeli military ever since they unleashed their war on Gaza of ordering people first, from the north of Gaza, to move to the south.

An Israeli drone

They were returning to the school having been in an ambulance that was struck by an Israeli drone having been given permission to transport people whose house had just been bombed.

But suddenly, and according to reports an Israeli reconnaissance drone appeared, armed with missiles and targeted the ambulance that reached the school. Both Al Dahdouh and Abu Daqqa were hit by shrapnel’s and injured, chaos ensued, people around started running asunder and the two got separated.

Al Dahdouh retreated quickly out of the area; Al Duqqa couldn’t, he was too badly hurt and stayed laying on the ground bleeding with the other civilians.

They were besieged by more Israeli firepower and warplanes and were stuck in the school. At that moment any human movement would be fatal, thuds from above continued and the cameraman stayed helpless on the ground whiles hemorrhaging.

Meanwhile, Al Dahdouh said he walked for at least 10 minutes – hundreds of meters – before a rescue teams got to him. He was struck in the arm and abdomen and in great pain. He told them about rescuing his friend but after intense firepower, they told him it would be better to get him to the hospital and send another ambulance for his colleague.

Meanwhile, and caught on camera, he was beseeching the doctors and nurses to get to Al Duqqa through the Red Cross. He said the man was laying in the courtyard of the school bleeding profusely, it was imperative that help be sent, not only for him but the rest of the displaced people also hurt.

And so, the long waiting begun while the channels of communications wired, trying to persuade the Israeli politicians, their military people and air force to send an ambulance to rescue the bleeding man in the middle of the school ground.

According to the Israelis, the area was already declared a military zone which meant the are was under bombardment. The chains of command moved painfully slow. Who to contact, which to contact, who has the ability to make the decision, all these issues took around five hours to sort out.

In the end an ambulance was given permission to enter the area but had to move slowly. The anti-climaxes continued, it was a long drive, for such a short period to the Nasser Hospital. The ambulance had to turn back because the road was potholed with craters from bombs and missiles.

It was then that Samer Al Duqqa, a long-dedicated hero to the word and the image said goodbye to the world and declared dead. He last breath was on the ground of the school because of Israeli military-bureaucratic wrangles who didn’t care which Palestinians they killed and/or maimed.

After all, they had been bombing and missiling Gaza for the last 70 days non-stop with the number of those killed at over 18,000 not to say anything about the injured at over 50,000 as well as the thousands –estimated at 7000 – under the rubble and waiting for burials.

The cameraman’s life was dedicated, working for Al Jazeera since 2004. In 2021 his hand was injured during similar Israeli strikes on Gaza but insisted on continuing to work in the field, although he was offered a job by the station in its Belgium office where his family lives.

Al Duqqa was quoted as saying that, during this latest onslaught, he slept for less three hours a day but it was enough for him to continue coverage of the merciless war.

Annoyed

The Israelis are annoyed with Al Jazeera as they long made that clear to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who conveyed the message to the Qataris who own the satellite station during his frequent trips to the region. But Al Jazeera wouldn’t relent.

On 25 October, Al Dahdouh’s family were targeted. For safe reasons, not that there is really any safe place in Gaza, his family moved to the Al Nuseirat camp – one of eight refugee camps in the 365-kilometer enclave – but they were targeted. His wife was killed so was his son, daughter and grandbaby.

In early December, Israeli warplanes targeted the family of two Al Jazeera correspondents. First, it was Momen Al Sharafi, his father, mother and 20 of his relatives were killed in an Israeli strike. As well, and in a separate attack days later, the 65-year-old father of Anas Al-Sharif was also killed in the Jabalia refugee camp which had been the subject of untense Israeli bombing.

This is not to say anything about the other local journalist who are constantly at the end of the Israeli barrel. Their lives continue to be in danger so long as the war on Gaza continues, and the bombing is likely to be longer than expected with talk now of “precision targeting” as a new phase and as conveyed to the Americans who seem to take that as winding down the conflict.

Marwan Asmar is a journalist from Amman, Jordan

18 December 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ben Norton

10 Dec 2023 – The US government has paralyzed the United Nations, voting alone against the rest of the world and preventing peace in Gaza by vetoing three different resolutions in the Security Council. Meanwhile, Washington [the Good Guys] continues giving weapons to Israel.

The United States has used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council three times in less than two months to kill resolutions calling for peace in Gaza.

Meanwhile, Washington is sending billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel, directly assisting the country as it commits war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

US blocks Gaza peace proposal at UN for 3rd time, holding world hostage

On December 8, the Security Council voted on a resolution that called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and the unconditional release of all hostages.

The United States was the only country on the 15-member council that voted against the measure.

This resolution had been introduced by the United Arab Emirates, and had the support of more than 90 UN member states.

The 13 Security Council members that voted for the measure were Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Russia, Switzerland, and the UAE.

Close US ally the United Kingdom was the only country to abstain in the vote.

The United States helped to design the United Nations after World War II, concentrating power in the Security Council and giving permanent seats with veto power to the victors: the US, UK, France, USSR (now Russia), and China.

Many countries in the Global South have called to expand the Security Council and to eliminate the veto.

China and Russia have repeatedly expressed support for expanding the council. But Washington has adamantly opposed the initiative.

Global South leaders are particularly frustrated by the fact that the UK and France, each of which has a population of fewer than 70 million people, both have permanent seats on the Security Council, but not many of the most populous countries on Earth, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, or Brazil.

Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva stressed this November that the failure of the UN to bring peace to Palestine demonstrates that the system is “broken” and has a “lack of credibility”.

“The UN needs change”, Lula said, calling to expand the Security Council and remove the veto.

“The UN of 1945 does not work in 2023”, the Brazilian leader added.

US Rebukes UN Secretary-General’s Historic Invocation of Article 99

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has publicly called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but was rejected by Washington.

Guterres took the extraordinary measure of invoking article 99 of the UN Charter, for the first time in five decades.

Article 99 states, “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

The Associated Press noted, “Article 99 is extremely rarely used. The last time it was invoked was during fighting in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh and its separation from Pakistan”.

In the case of the Bangladeshi national liberation war of 1971, Pakistan’s right-wing military regime ethnically cleansed and committed genocide against Bengalis, with the support of the US government – specifically President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

The genocidal situation in Palestine is strikingly similar today.

This November, top UN experts warned that “grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians… point to a genocide in the making”.

The UN experts wrote:

[Israeli officials] illustrated evidence of increasing genocidal incitement, overt intent to “destroy the Palestinian people under occupation”, loud calls for a ‘second Nakba’ in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, and the use of powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts, resulting in a colossal death toll and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.

The Wall Street Journal reported on December 1 that the “U.S. has provided Israel with large bunker buster bombs, among tens of thousands of other weapons and artillery shells”.

In less than two months, Washington sent Israel approximately 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.

In fact, Gaza is now one of the most heavily bombed areas in history, according to a report in the Financial Times.

US Vetoed Two Other Security Council Resolutions on Gaza

The United States voted against two similar resolutions in October.

On October 16, the US and its allies the UK, France, and Japan voted against a measure introduced by Russia that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original – geopoliticaleconomy.com

18 December 2023

Source: www.transcend.org

By Craig John Murray

Why the Genocide Convention has not been activated at the ICJ? It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful, but that it will succeed. It follows that not only Benjamin Netanyahu but also “Genocide Joe” Biden and Rishi Sunak will be criminally liable for complicity.

13 Dec 2023 – Al Jazeera are leading their news with the execution of Palestinian civilians, including women and toddlers, inside the school in Jabalia where they were sheltering. They were all shot at point blank range, with no signs of a bomb or missile strike.

On the BBC, the Daily Politics show – which consists of discussion between senior British MPs – does not discuss Palestine at all, because the British political class supports the genocide, so for them there is nothing to discuss.

Also in Jabalia, the Israelis today destroyed the last remaining bakery.

It is worth stating why this is plainly a genocide in Gaza:

1) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure which supports the civilian population, including water treatment, electricity, sewerage systems, bakeries and fishing boats;

2)  Deliberate destruction of almost all medical facilities;

3) Deliberate destruction of educational facilities, from universities to primary schools;

4) Deliberate destruction of the infrastructure of civil society, including Supreme Court, Parliament, Ministries and Council buildings and deliberate destruction of administrative records;

5) Deliberate blocking of food aid inducing mass starvation;

6) Massive and indiscriminate bombardment. In wars the general percentage of children among those killed varies from 6 to 8 percent. In Ukraine it is 6 percent. In Gaza it is 42 percent. This is indiscriminate destruction of an ethnic group;

7) Mass executions of civilians;

8) Acts of dehumanisation of the Palestinians, including parading prisoners naked for public and media show and humiliation, beating and sexually abusing them;

9) Forced mass movement of population;

10) Deliberate targeting of religious and cultural heritage buildings;

11) Deliberate targeting of intellectual leadership, including journalists, doctors, poets, university lecturers and senior administrators;

12) Numerous declarations of open genocidal intent from the President and Prime Minister down through almost the entire fabric of both civilian and military establishment.

This is the official definition of Genocide in international law, from the

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

On Tuesday [12 Dec] I attended a session called by Palestine at the United Nations in Geneva. Over 120 states attended. While the formal session consisted of statements of national position with few surprises, I was able to discuss with a large number of delegates in the corridors why the Genocide Convention has not been activated triggering a reference to the International Court of Justice.

The answer is now clear to me. It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed. There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide in the terms outlined above.

The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are Benjamin Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely plain that “Genocide Joe” Biden, Rishi Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide.

The International Criminal Court cannot ignore a judgment of genocide from the International Court of Justice and will have no choice but to issue arrest warrants.

A genocide is the worst of crimes. Just how appalling this one is has been shown to the world like never before, through the power of social media.

But to the global 1 percent whose interests rule the world, no number of dead Palestinians makes any real difference to their interests. On the other hand, the ramifications for the international system of wealth concentration, if western political elites start to be held accountable for their crimes, are uncertain and therefore carry more risk.

This is particularly the concern of ruling classes of both Western and Arab states.

It may sound astonishing, but to the world’s diplomats the enormity of a genocide appears less troubling than the enormity of doing something about it.

Craig John Murray (born 17 Oct 1958) is a Scottish author, human rights campaigner, journalist, and former diplomat for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

18 December 2023

Source: www.transcend.org