Archives: Articles

By Palestinian Information Center

In Gaza, where daily life has become a battle for survival, the stories of Palestinians who lost their homes in the midst of the genocidal war waged by Israel on the Strip for the last 10 months reflect the suffering of an entire people, carrying with it bitter human details of what it means for someone to lose their home.

[https://twitter.com/assabeeldotnet/status/1813214053751222535]

The Al-Sayyid family was living in peace until that fateful night. “The night had fallen, and suddenly, we heard the sound of a huge explosion. Then the voices of the remaining neighbors shouted ‘I had to evacuate the area because there was a threat to blow up the residential tower opposite my house,’” Ahmed, the father, tells the Palestinian Information Center.

[https://twitter.com/LensVeritatis/status/1801650076726792395]

At first Ahmed’s family of a wife and seven children moved to a shelter school in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood south of Gaza City, and as the Israeli ground invasion expanded, they moved to Al-Aqsa University in Khan Younis but when the Israeli army withdrew from the city, they went back.

“I did not wait a minute after I learned of the occupation army retreat to the northern parts of Gaza Strip. Me and my brother rushed to inspect our three-story house. As soon as we arrived there, we were shocked by what happened to the place,” Ahmed told the PalestineIn formation Center Tuesday.

“I found a large part of the house destroyed by artillery shells and burning furniture. It was harsh moments. This is the first time I have faced such an experience like thousands of others who repeatedly lost their homes in previous Israeli wars.”

[https://twitter.com/TmarianG/status/1813191206844965192]

The man, who is in his 50s, stresses “losing a house is not an easy matter. You are not lose stones here. You feel as if someone has token you to a distant world, erasing a lifetime from your memory. In every corner of the house there are memories, feelings, emotions and life experiences.”

Israel has systematically and extensively destroyed homes in Gaza, completely destroying hundreds of thousands of housing units and in just 283 days,  it has turned their owners and residents into homeless people living in tents and shelters.

Israel warplanes bomb houses over the heads of their residents resulting in their instant deaths. In many times the people mostly women and children are deeply buried in the rubble of these homes. This is not to forget the aerial bombardment of blowing up residential blocks.

Residents ask why is this happening to us? There is no need for it. International organizations protest and condemn but to no avail.

[https://twitter.com/TheBigHeartUAE/status/1811045327320830437]

Ahmed points out the psychological and social pain is more severe than the material loss. “Many a time, my tongue twists and turns when my children ask ‘we are going to get back to our house, how long will it take to repair it, how long do we have to stay here?,” Ahmad waves his hands at a loss.

“How can children feel safe in a temporary shelter? They have lost everything, even their small toys.”

Satellite images by the United Nations Satellite Center show 35% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip are either completely destroyed or extensively damaged due to this Israeli war of annihilation. This means the number of buildings razed to the ground is 88,868.

In its last March assessment, the center used high-resolution images taken by satellites and collected on 29 February, and compared them with images taken before and after the outbreak of the war.

Dreams crushed

Whenever she remembers her home and her memories there, Aya Ahmad, is reduced to tears.  “I had a private room and/or a suite. All my memories, books, and office are gone now.”

“I am a medical student at the beginning of my third year, and at the beginning of my university studies, my father prepared the second floor of our house, bought me a large collection of medical books, and prepared a special room for me with an office, on the walls of which I wrote my hopes and ambitions,” Aya told the Palestinian Center

The 23-year-old girl lives in the city of Khan Yunis, and she has never been forced to move in previous Israeli wars on Gaza, as in this war.

[https://twitter.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/1804997864638103657]

“This is the first time I have been displaced, and when we were forced to do so at the beginning of December 2023, we cried a lot then. We took a few of the house’s belongings in the hope that we will get back.

But this wasn’t so, its been 10 months now since the war started, it hasn’t stopped, we were not able to return to our house which we lost subsequently due to the bombing, and we lost most of our personal belongings there. We moved between tents, and we lost many loved ones, and then the destruction of the house increased our pain. My certificates, my clothes, and my memories were all crushed, and with them many dreams were lost too.”

The garden of the house was Aya’s refuge after the rigors of a long university day. She had pleasant evenings with her parents under the palm and lemon trees on summer nights. But no more, for all of the family now are sheltering in tents of those that were forcefully displaced.

“My wish was to return home, I even wanted to return to it after the occupation forces retreated from our area. At the time, it was still standing and was only partially damaged, but the occupation army returned months later and bombed.”

Aya is still confident about rebuilding her house and whatever

the occupation destroyed, despite the pain she experiences whenever she looks at pictures of her former home and the social memories of each moment there.

A UN assessment found it would need a fleet of more than 100 trucks working for 15 years to remove the 40 million tons of rubble in Gaza. Such an operation could between $500 and $600 million.

According to the assessment by the UN Environment Programme, last month, 137,297 buildings were damaged in Gaza alone not to say anything about the destroyed buildings.

Not stones!

As for Abeer Abu Salem, resident in the Beit Lahia Project in the north Gaza, the smell of gunpowder still haunts her, as if it had just happened. “I will never forget what I experienced that evening, and it cannot be erased from my memory. I cannot describe the scene because of the horror of what I saw.”

Abeer recounts what happened: “I heard the sound of an explosion and saw the walls collapsing and columns flying. I tried to escape but could not, and with the air closing in, I found myself in the second room. I cannot imagine that I am still alive. It all happened in seconds, turning my life upside down.”

Abeer stayed in the Indonesian hospital for about a month, before the occupation army forced them to flee to the south of the Gaza Strip. When asked about what it means to lose a house, she answers:

“It is not easy to lose your house you grew up in. The house is full of precious memories. We worked hard for many years so that my father could build it for us as an apartment above the family home.”

She points out the fear she experiences is not related to their ability to rebuild the house that was leveled, as much as it is to the emotional feelings of seeing what happened to the family home.

“We are now displaced. We do not know the fate that awaits us after the end of this cursed war. We cannot think about whether we will truly return to Beit Lahia or whether we will live what our ancestors lived when they forcibly left their homes 76 years ago in the Nakba of 1948 and died on “I hope to return,” she laments.

This article has been translated into English by Dr Marwan Asmar from the original Arabic in from the Palestine Information Center website.

17 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Latheef Farook

Demonstrating its cruel and evil nature  sadistic form of torturing Palestinians has been underway in Israeli prisons ever since the artificial state of Israel was established in Palestinian lands for Jewish migrants   in 1948. However this cruelty intensified ever since Hamas attacked Southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

Innocent Palestinians have been arbitrarily arrested, detained and subjected to savage forms of torture by Israel with the support of United States and  Europe  supplying  latest destructive weapons and bombs to slaughter Palestinians .

Since the beginning of Israel’s air, land and sea military strikes in Gaza on   8  Oct. 2023 Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians, including women, children and members of health and civil defense teams. The fate of the majority remains unknown, with no official statistics available.

In an article titled “how an immoral global leadership allows Israel’s savage slaughter in Gaza to continue “columnist Ghada Agee said  Palestinians who manage to survive Israeli military attacks risk being abducted from their homes and taken from the open-air prison of Gaza to Israeli detention and torture centers.  If they do survive this collective punishment, Palestinians also risk being abducted and disappeared from their homes during the night?”.

A  joint article  by columnists Ahmed Aziz,Lubna Masarwa and Simon Hooper  in the website  Middle East Eye said  “iron bars, electric shocks, dogs and cigarette burns: How Palestinians are tortured in Israeli detention “ . Palestinian men detained by Israeli forces   told   how they were physically tortured with dogs and electricity, subjected to mock executions, and held in humiliating and degrading conditions.

Ramy Abdu, the chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor    said the testimonies of Palestinians released from Israeli detention  reveal a systematic pattern of abuse, including forced strip searches, sexual harassment, threats of rape, severe beatings, dog attacks  and denial of necessities such as food, water, and access to restroom facilities.  “The use of such brutal tactics, particularly against vulnerable groups such as women, children and the elderly, is reprehensible and constitutes a gross violation of human dignity and international law.”

In testimonies  one man, who was taken by Israeli forces from a school in Gaza where he had sought refuge with his family, described how he had been handcuffed, blindfolded and detained in a metal cage for 42 days. During  interrogations  he was given electric shocks, as well as scratched and bitten by army dogs. Other men also described being electrocuted, attacked by dogs, doused with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep and subjected to constant loud music.

“They did not spare anyone. There were 14-year-old boys and 80-year-old men,” said   Moaz Muhammad Khamis Miqdad, who was taken prisoner in Gaza City and held for more than 30 days.

According to Geneva based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor “Palestinian prisoners and detainees from the Gaza Strip are being subjected to premeditated murder and arbitrary execution outside the purview of the law and the judiciary”.

Euro-Med Monitor stated that Israeli prisons and detention centers have become more brutal replicas of Guantanamo. Ill treatment and degrading disregard of human dignity, deprivation of the most basic rights, and horrible forms of torture including those that result in murder have been documented despite numerous international condemnations and demands to ensure the rights and safety of prisoners and detainees.

Israeli forces physically assaulted and strangled a 14-year-old Palestinian boy Majid  in the Palestinian village of Qalqilya in the West Bank  in Israeli custody during detention and interrogation. Majd and his friends were walking in the western neighborhood of Azzoun when two Israeli military vehicles approached them.

“We felt very afraid and ran away, but the military vehicles chased us, and one of the military jeeps almost ran me over. I had to stop running, while my friends managed to escape and disappear,” Majd told  . “Around 10 soldiers exited the two military vehicles, pointing their guns at me and started physically assaulting me for 30 minutes.”

“I was screaming and crying in fear and pain. They cuffed my hands behind my back with a single plastic tie, and I was blindfolded, thrown inside a military vehicle,” Majd said, and added that two soldiers assaulted him inside the vehicle for about 10 minutes.

“One of them put his boot on my mouth while stomping on my chest with his other boot,” Majd said. The military vehicle stopped at an Israeli military checkpoint located at the northern entrance to Azzoun. Majd was taken out of the vehicle, forced to stand still and a soldier repeatedly assaulted him with the stock of his rifle on the chest, head, and waist while directing insults at him.

“I was begging him to stop hitting me but to no avail. He then wrapped his hands around my neck, pressed with all his strength, and said   in Arabic, ‘I’ll kill you by strangulation.’” Majd passed out and regained consciousness around 5 p.m. and found himself in a room, lying on the ground and surrounded by a soldier, a cat, and a military dog.

“I felt really scared, mostly because the sounds of the dog were terrifying. I started screaming out of fear because the cat scratched my face many times,” Majd told  . “The soldier said in Arabic, ‘I will let the dog eat you.’”

Israeli forces continued torturing Majd until around 2 a.m, slamming his head against a wall several times, causing him to collapse and ask for water, but his request was rejected and they forced him to remain silent.

Majd was released around 12:30 p.m. on April 30 at the intersection of Haris village, near Ariel settlement. He couldn’t move or stand and remained lying on the ground until a Palestinian vehicle pulled over and drove him to his village, then transferred him to Azzoun Hospital.

Israeli forces unleashed an attack dog on a four-year-old Palestinian boy   Ibrahim Hashash  in the northern occupied West Bank this week.

A 17-year-old Palestinian boy  Omar Ahmad Abdulghani Hamed,  was shot in the head  and killed. Israeli forces severely beat a 15-year-old Palestinian boy Amir  in Hebron on his way to buy bread. Three Israeli soldiers approached 15-year-old Amir and began beating him  near his home in Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank,

“Then, they dragged Amir  about 10 meters (33 feet) along the street towards a nearby wall, pushing him against it. While facing the wall, he continued to slaps, punched his face and   stomach. He has been suffering from breathing difficulties for a long time, and  targeted painful and forceful slaps to  face, causing him  to lose vision in   eyes due to the severity of the beating,” Amir told . 21 July 2024

Latheef Farook, Senior journalist, is based in Colombo. Sri Lanka

17 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bharat Dogra

The USA in the only country in the world where there are more firearms than people. 46% of all households have a firearm. This is the average. In some places this can be over 60%. About 48,000 people die in gun-violence in a year, the majority of this being suicide cases. When seen in the context of comparable rich countries, the US gun homicide rate is about 25 times higher while gun suicide rate is about 10 times higher. For every victim of shooting who dies, there are more than double the number who go to emergency rooms in hospitals for the treatment of their injuries.

Over the years the number of those killed or seriously injured in gun violence continues to accumulate. In surveys one out of five Americans have stated that a family member or someone very close has been fatally shot.

However the harm done by excessive number of firearms goes much beyond the actual shootings. Many people in certain communities say that due to the excessive number of people having or carrying firearms they live in perpetual fear and their life has become much more stressful than it would otherwise be without so many guns. Even within families the life of several family members is very adversely affected, particularly of women in families with a history of domestic violence. Schools have also come under the shadow of the stress caused by the wide spread of gun violence and gun culture, including most students as well as teachers.

While there is wide concern over the easy availability of guns and bullets, those people and social movements who have been campaigning against such easy and widespread availability of guns have not been successful so far in reducing the presence of guns and the supporters of easy and unhindered gun availability are known to be politically influential and powerful. They are known to often to take very aggressive positions.

While there is obvious need to curb gun violence and the wide presence of guns and gun-culture, supported by gun movies and other popular media, some other important questions also need to be raised. These relate to why such popular gun culture flourishes, who fuels it and why such a large number of people feel the need to have so many firearms. Unless such broader questions are also examined sincerely, it may not be possible to reduce the demand for guns and the supply of guns.

Of course the industry which feeds on the sales of such huge numbers of guns and bullets on a continuing basis is also likely to acquire a strong interest in such continuing sales and these powerful economic interests may also be fueling popular gun culture and keeping the demand and supply of civilian firearms at a very high level.

However there are also factors beyond this which also need to be considered. The aggression of the US establishment abroad has to be matched by a popular culture of aggression at home as these two trends feed off each other. It appears that maintaining and popularizing aggressive cultures, using Hollywood movies and other devices, is considered desirable by the establishment to create domestic perceptions and thinking that are supportive towards external aggression.

The military industrial establishment, which has emerged as a powerful force, is also fine with the continuation of external as well as internal aggression, both being supportive of each other.

Hence while gun control efforts and campaigns are obviously justified and deserve the support of people, these may not be able to progress much on their own, unless they become part of wider peace campaigns which seek to check internal as well as external aggressive trends of the USA. Such a broader peace movement can also be helpful in checking some other important social problems of the USA as well, while also contributing to world peace.

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

16 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Thomas Scripps

The massacres of Palestinian civilians by Israel over the weekend continued Monday.

Artillery, drone and airstrikes were launched against the Nuseirat, al-Bureij and al-Maghazi refugee camps, the cities of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Rafah in the south, and Gaza City in the north.

Two people were injured at a power station near Nuseirat, a day after the Abu Araban school in the camp was targeted—the fifth Israeli strike on a school-shelter in eight days—killing 15 people and wounding dozens. The Haza health ministry announced Monday that the death toll had increased to 22. Thousands of displaced Palestinians had been housed in the complex.

Shelling in al-Bureij landed in a schoolyard, of Abu Helu School, injuring one person.

The Abu Araban massacre followed the slaughter of 92 people at al-Mawasi, a supposed “safe zone”, on Saturday. Thirty-year-old Aya Mohammad, a survivor of the attack, described Monday how “the ground shook underneath my feet and the dust and sand rose to the sky and I saw dismembered bodies,” adding, “Where to go is what everybody asks, and no one has the answer.”

Multiple homes were destroyed in Rafah, with the Israel Defense Forces launching missiles from helicopters. Ten dead bodies were pulled out of the wreckage. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in the city.

Flaunting its genocidal intentions, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) levelled the Gaza headquarters of the United Nations Palestinian relief agency UNRWA. Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini posted images of the destruction with the comment, “UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, turned into a battlefield & now flattened. Another episode in the blatant disregard of international humanitarian law.”

[https://twitter.com/UNLazzarini/status/1812815014580928758]

This followed a fresh round of unsubstantiated allegations by Israel that the agency is harbouring hundreds of Hamas agents. Earlier accusations were the pretext for the imperialist powers to cut all funding to the organisation responsible for feeding, educating and providing healthcare to 5.9 million Palestinians across the Middle East.

UNRWA’s head of external relations Tamara al-Rifai told Al Jazeera the images were “shocking” and noted that 190 UNRWA facilities, “most of which served as shelters for displaced people”, had now been attacked, with 500 killed in these facilities protected by international law, and 1,600 wounded.

Another four Gazans were killed in a strike that destroyed a house on as-Salam Street in Deir al-Balah, five in al-Maghazi, and three on al-Mansoura Street in Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood, reduced to ruins by a continuous Israel Defense Forces assault in the last two weeks.

Describing the attack in Deir al-Balah, Walid Thabet said, “My mother, an elderly woman, was sitting with me upstairs. She went downstairs and after five minutes I pulled her out from under the rubble. We also pulled my sister out and my sister’s children too.

“Those who died are my mother, my sister, and my sister’s children. Children! One was two and a half years old, and the other two.”

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported an “intensification of bombardment” in the city, leaving behind “a trail of destruction, causing a great deal of panic and frustration among the residents of neighbouring houses. Deir al-Balah is where Palestinians have been told to go and seek refuge.”

The local municipality has warned it is no longer able to provide 700,000 people in the area with drinking water after running out of fuel.

Gaza’s water supply across the enclave, restricted by Israel’s siege even before the war, has been devastated. According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs says 67 percent of the strip’s water and sanitation system had been destroyed as of last month.

New and expectant mothers are especially affected. The UN reports that 95 percent do not have enough to eat, with miscarriages already three times more likely than before the war in February, according to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.

More than 13,000 women will give birth in Gaza in the next month and will have to rely on the three of the strip’s thirteen remaining hospitals (23 no longer function) providing any pregnancy care at all.

Madeleine McGivern of Care UK told the Guardian: “Women are giving birth without any pain relief whatsoever, living in fear, not being able to access any doctor or antenatal care, not knowing whether they’ll give birth in a boiling hot tent or, if they are able to go to a hospital, risk being hit by a bomb or shot by a sniper on the way there or the way back.”

Compounding the food and water crisis is the pollution caused by mountains of solid waste piling up amid the evisceration of Gazan society—330,000 tons across the whole territory, often within feet of refugee tent cities. Many Palestinians are forced to scavenge these sites for anything useful or saleable.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr Ahmed al-Fari, head of the children’s departments at Nasser Hospital, commented, “It is no secret that the biggest cause of intestinal infections currently occurring in the Gaza Strip is the contamination of the water supplied to these children.”

Piles of waste join mountains of earth and debris. According to a UN assessment, the near 140,000 destroyed building in Gaza (65 percent of them residential) have produced roughly 40 million tons of rubble, more than 15 years’ work for a fleet of 100 lorries to clear.

“The actual topography has changed,” one UN official told the Guardian last week, “There are hills where there were none. The 2,000lbs bombs dropped [by Israel] are actually altering the landscape.”

The United States has sent 14,000 of these 2,000lb bombs to Israel since October.

Roughly 10 percent of weapons dropped on Gaza fail to detonate on impact, according to Pehr Lodhammar, a former UN Mine Action Service chief for Iraq, leading, says Gaza’s Civil Defence agency, to “more than 10 explosions every week” of unexploded ordnance.

Amid the latest killings, it was the turn of David Lammy, foreign secretary in Britain’s new Labour Party government, to tour Israel and sprinkle perfumed phrases about “peace” and “stability” on its fascist regime and genocidal war.

Arriving in Israel Sunday, he waded through the blood to shake the hand of murderer-in-chief Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and say, “I’m here to push for a ceasefire. The loss of life over the last few months… is horrendous. It has to stop.”

A few more massacres later, he told the media ahead of a meeting with Netanyahu’s partner in crime President Isaac Herzog on Monday, “It’s important that, whilst we are in a war, that war is conducted according to international humanitarian law.”

Herzog told the press conference after the meeting, “The foreign secretary made clear that his country will continue to work and demand for the release of all the hostages … The bonds between the British and Israeli peoples are as strong and robust as they are historic and impactful—especially now, in facing the challenges ahead of us.”

Lammy told reporters an “assessment” into arms sales to Israel had “begun”.

To underscore the cynical character of such a pose, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that Lammy had given assurances that the UK would not withdraw its objections to the International Criminal Court’s application for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The objection to the arrest warrants for crimes against humanity and war crimes was first raised by the former Conservative government of Rishi Sunak, but at the time Lammy said Labour would drop the legal challenge. The US was reported as lobbying Labour to reverse this position, with all too predictable success.

16 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian territory – During its four-day incursion into the western parts of Gaza City, the Israeli army committed horrific atrocities against Palestinian civilians, including willful killings, extensive destruction and burning of civilian buildings and homes, and forced evacuation as part of the ongoing crime of genocide for the tenth consecutive month.

After invading the area at dawn on Monday, 8 July, Israeli army forces began to withdraw early on Friday, 12 July, from the Universities Area and the Sinaa’ Area, west of Gaza City. During this time, they launched numerous fire belts and engaged in indiscriminate shelling, stormed homes, and harassed residents. Reports indicated that over sixty people had been killed, with many bodies found in the streets and alleys, some of which were charred.

Euro-Med Monitor field crews are investigating reports that the Israeli army forces committed extrajudicial killings and unlawful executions of numerous residents, the majority of whom were women. These victims included two sisters, Maysoon Yaqoub Al-Ghalayini and Arwa Yaqoub Al-Ghalayini, as well as their sister Rafida Al-Ghalayini, who was left bleeding to death for two days without the Israeli forces allowing medical teams to reach her.

According to preliminary reports, the Israeli army killed entire families after raiding their homes in the Al-Sina’a area west of Gaza City. Those killed included Mustafa Ahmed Zaidiyeh, the two brothers Imad Khaled Zaidiyeh and Mahmoud Khaled Zaidiyeh, Abu Youssef Nasser Zaidiyeh, Fahmi Lulu, Jamalat Al-Shawa and her two sons, Ahmed Maher Al-Badri and Suha Maher Al-Badri, as well as six members of the Al-Khatib family.

Euro-Med Monitor teams documented the Israeli army torturing and severely beating Khaled Darwish Muhammad Zaidiyeh, 58, while he and several of his relatives were besieged in his home close to the industrial area, which was the army’s point of incursion on Monday, 8 July.

Khaled Zaidiyeh stated the following in his testimony to the Euro-Med Monitor crews: “(The soldiers) peed, put coffee on their urine, and made us drink it.” The children and women were forced out while crying. We were tortured and tied up, and the scars from the chains are still visible on us.  My nephew Mustafa, who was killed, asked to have his handcuffs taken off or loosened. But the soldiers refused and beat him all over his body. Anybody attempting to speak would face severe beating.”

He went on, “One of the soldiers put his leg over my head and started repeatedly stomping on it with full force. He then went to torture one more of the twenty-one people there before returning. My nephew’s face has swollen, despite suffering a heart problem, while the second who has special needs and was permitted to accompany the women. While I was lying on my stomach, one of the soldiers got up on top of me and began hitting me with his combat boots. I tried to calm down and be patient, but he kept jumping on top of me with his heavy weight and pressing his legs, aiming to break my bones.”

The soldiers then got a call and began to withdraw, while one of them threatened to return to me. All we could hear was our own voice as the soldiers broke the window glass of one of the houses. I thought they would make us step on the shattered glass, but they started shooting. Then they withdrew and left the area, threatening to kill us with quadcopters and snipers.”

A woman who wished to remain anonymous told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “The army opened fire on the house. We opened the door while raising the white flag. They forced the men to take off their clothes and assaulted them in front of us. My son was tired, so they beat him severely. Without bringing anything with us, we were forced to flee to the southern part of the Gaza Strip.”

According to documentation provided by Euro-Med Monitor teams, the Friends of the Patient Hospital was destroyed by the Israeli army for the second time, following its restoration approximately one month ago to serve the Gaza residents’ medical needs. The Israeli army also bombed the Al-Salam clinic, the only health centre in the Al-Sabra neighbourhood, south of Gaza City.

Along with demolishing and setting a number of homes on fire, the Israeli army also destroyed UNRWA schools near the industrial area, extensively damaging the classrooms, particularly the ground floors.

Based on observations and follow-up conducted by the Euro-Med Monitor team, it appears that the lack of equipment is making it difficult for rescue workers to recover victims from under the debris of the homes and buildings that were targeted by the Israeli army.

Additionally, testimonies were provided to Euro-Med Monitor regarding widespread thefts and robberies by Israeli army forces during home raids and forced evacuation of the locals, including large amounts of money and valuables.

The Israeli army has been looting gold jewellery and cash from homes it raids and from residents it forced to relocate to the south of the Gaza Valley, where they were forced to leave their bags and all of their belongings seized by the soldiers. These operations have been routinely carried out by the Israeli army when storming residential areas, raiding homes, and initiating random arrest campaigns against civilians.

Families Khudair and Jadallah members told the Euro-Med Monitor team that the Israeli army forces amassed and pilfered their personal belongings in bags, beating and detaining the men before driving the women and children out of the area and forcing them to evacuate to the central Gaza Strip.

Since the early hours of Monday, 8 July, the Israeli army has been waging a war of intimidation and forced displacement against the people of the Gaza City and its northern region. This has resulted in yet another massive wave of forced evacuation following military assaults and intense raids that the army has carried out as part of the genocide it has been committing since 7 October.

Under heavy rocket and shell fire in the industrial area, the Israeli army launched a ground incursion, directly targeting the nearly completely destroyed UNRWA headquarters and the headquarters of several other destroyed universities in western Gaza.

Subsequently, the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of large areas of Gaza City and forced the staff of the “Ahly Baptist” hospital to leave the area entirely. As a result, the only major hospital operating in Gaza for months was turned out of service.

Based on the aforementioned, all nations are required to fulfil their international obligations by enacting strong sanctions against Israel and severing all other types of political, financial, and military support and cooperation. This includes immediately halting arms transfers to Israel, including export permits and military aid; otherwise, these nations will be held accountable for the crimes that have been committed in the Gaza Strip, including genocide.

In order to ensure accountability, a comprehensive and impartial international investigation is required into the serious crimes and violations committed by the Israeli army forces against the Gaza Strip’s population and their property. These crimes and violations amount to fully-fledged, self-contained war crimes and crimes against humanity that cause serious harm and destruction to civilians and their livelihoods without justification or military necessity,

Additionally, the International Criminal Court ought to keep looking into any and all crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip; broaden its investigation into criminal responsibility, in order to hold all perpetrators accountable; issue arrest warrants for those responsible; and acknowledge and address Israel’s crimes in the Strip, as they are international crimes that fall under the purview of the International Criminal Court and are clearly crimes of genocide.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

14 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Julia Conley

The United Nations’ top expert on human rights in Palestine condemned the Israeli military as it resorted to a familiar excuse for the killing of nearly 100 Palestinians on Saturday in an area that had been designated as a “humanitarian zone”—just the latest massacre of dozens of people whom the Israel Defense Forces dismissed as collateral damage in attacks they claimed were targeting Hamas.

“The justification is always the same: ‘targeting Palestinian militants,’” said Francesca Albanese, U.N special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. “When is the world going to stop this death machine?”

Albanese was referring this time to the bombardment of al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis where hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents have been sheltering after fleeing cities including Rafah.

Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum described the attack as “a new massacre committed by the Israeli military,” with “five bombs and five missiles” hitting the area where Palestinians have been sheltering in makeshift tents for months.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported that at least 90 people had been killed in the attack, which the IDF claimed was based on “precise intelligence” and targeted Hamas commanders Mohammed Deif and Rafa Salama.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1812050444299985391]

“We have seen time and time again attacks on areas where there are displaced Palestinians in the tens of thousands,” reportedAl Jazeera‘s Hamdah Salhut. “This is a tactic that is commonly used by Israeli forces, saying civilians are being used as ‘human shields’ for Hamas figures, using that as justification for killing dozens of civilians.”

The Washington Post reported that it was “unclear” whether Deif, who has survived multiple assassination attempts by Israel, was killed in the attack.

Paramedics and children were reportedly among nearly 300 people who were wounded, and an official at Nasser Hospital told Al Jazeera that the facility had no more capacity to treat wounded patients.

The British charity Medical Aid for Palestine reported that it was “forced to temporarily evacuate one of our medical points near the area, which is intended to provide primary healthcare services, due to the insecurity.”

“MAP’s Mohammed Al Khatib in Khan Younis reports: ‘Al-Mawasi is heavily crowded and has a big market where people move around to try and secure their basic needs,’” said the group. “We have been warning for months that there is no safe place for anyone in Gaza amid Israel’s military bombardment.”

“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them,” the Health Ministry told the Associated Press.

The AP assessed footage that showed a “huge crater” in the area where thousands of people had been ordered to evacuate to when the IDF began its full-scale assault on Rafah in May. Burnt-out cars, household belongings, and charred tents—like those seen in previous attacks on so-called “humanitarian zones” in al-Mawasi and Rafah—were left after the bombings.

Academic and writer Ori Goldberg said it was “impossible to exaggerate the level of criminality, immorality, and crass, murderous stupidity that come together in the massacre Israel carried out in al-Mawasi this morning.”

“Israel used wildly disproportionate force [to] assassinate two people,” said Goldberg. “Israel pushed the displaced Palestinians to Mawasi, defining it a ‘safe zone.’ Then, assuming it had a chance to assassinate Muhammad Deif, one of the most senior Hamas leaders supposedly hiding there, Israel bombed the ‘safe zone.’ Dozens were killed. The death of a single person does not legitimize the slaughter of dozens.”

Goldberg noted that the massacre came shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden announced Hamas and Israel were inching closer to a truce, with both sides agreeing to a “framework” for a cease-fire.

“There is a hostage deal on the table. Deif’s death will not bring about the collapse of Hamas; it will only make Hamas less willing to compromise,” said Goldberg. “Israel forces ‘evacuation,’ Israel bombs, Israel knows, Israel attacks and kills, Israel sets conditions, Israel balks. Israel has run out of options. It knows only death.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that as with previous attacks on designated safe zones, the IDF’s massacre was made possible partially by the political and material support of the United States and other Western countries.

“Israel’s far-right government carries out this mass slaughter of Palestinians secure in the knowledge that it will be supported and excused by the Biden administration and that American bombs and taxpayer funds will continue to flow,” said Nihad Awad, national director of CAIR. “President Biden’s continuing support for and silence about the genocide gives a green light for more Israeli abuses and war crimes. President Biden must stop enabling these daily massacres and end our nation’s complicity in genocide.”

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

14 July 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof Ilan Pappé

The sight of the children buried under the rubble, salvaged by older children, is enough for me and, I am sure, for anyone who was ever silenced by the lobby, not to cave in but to overcome any hurdles they put in our way of speaking truth to power. 

9 Jul 2024 – Nine months into the Israeli genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, it seems that its parallel attack on freedom of speech on Palestine is continuing with intensity, making it difficult for the general public to appreciate the reality in Palestine beyond the manipulated and distorted coverage offered by mainstream media.

It is clear that we are facing a coordinated campaign led by the pro-Israeli lobby and aimed at continuing the historical denial of the ongoing Nakba.

The campaign began with a warning to many journalists and academics in the West not to mention the historical, let alone moral, context to the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7. A warning was even directed at the General Secretary of the United Nations for merely mentioning the historical context.

Analyzing the unnoticed acts of repression put in place since October 7 is very important because it allows us to raise an important question: is the pro-Israeli lobby still powerful enough to silence free speech on Palestine or has the October 7 events exposed its deficiencies?

This question prodded me to write a 500-page history of the lobby, as I believe the answer can be best given by providing a historical context, which enables us to appreciate the nature of the lobbying efforts today and predict their future impact.

Immediately after October 7, not only it was prohibited to mention the context, but also any criticism of the Israeli actions in Gaza was silenced.

All over the global north, universities ousted students simply for being members of outfits such as Students for Justice in Palestine. They even disinvited academics or authors who dared to criticize Israel. Similar actions were taken against journalists and people in public services, even those who accompanied their criticism with a condemnation of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

In the first wave of suppression, some venues across the United States canceled pre-planned film festivals or annual conferences on human rights.

It felt like being back in the 1960s when the word ‘Palestine’ in the US was equated with terrorism. This equation, at least in the US, is not valid anymore among the general public, painfully only once the full picture of the horrors of Gaza reached the American television screens. The censorship and suppression, however, are still there.

The assault on freedom of speech on Palestine also appeared in cyberspace. Meta, which runs most of the social media platforms, was and still is active in silencing voices in support of the Palestinians on both Instagram and Facebook.

The non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch recorded more than 1,000 takedowns of Palestine-related content on these two platforms by the end of 2023. According to the organization, only one of the contents removed could have been considered inappropriate.

What is even more worrying is the claim by the organization that the suppression of free speech by Meta is systematic and global.

Suppression was also intensified at a legislative level. The American Congress is discussing a bill under the name “anti-Semitism Awareness Act”. There are already bills against antisemitism, so the aim of the new legislation is merely to weaponize antisemitism and remove any criticism of Israel from the categories protected by the First Amendment.

Unbelievably, according to the new bill, antisemitism can also be defined as accusing someone of double standards over Israel or “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination”.

Such legislation was translated into brutal police actions in many parts of the world against pro-Palestinian protests and encampments. This was accompanied by intensive scrutiny of messages, on any platform, of employees in private and public sectors who dared to show solidarity with the Palestinian victims of the genocide in Gaza.

I do not recall being asked to help, just in Britain alone, with so many different cases of lawyers trying to defend clients who were persecuted for their messages online. Most of these messages stated well-known facts and legitimate emotions of anger, sorrow, and hope.

As readers may know, my own freedom of speech on Palestine was curtailed in more than one way.

Here are just a few examples: the French publisher Fayard, bought by a Zionist billionaire in 2023, stopped printing and disseminating my book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

In just another example, I was detained for a couple of hours at the Detroit airport to be interrogated. Additionally, most of my lectures in Germany and the Czech Republic, to mention a few countries, were canceled. Luckily, activists and organizers were good enough to find new venues at the last moment.

Just recently, I learned that Amazon UK (unlike Amazon US) is doing everything in its power not to sell my book Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, probably because the British e-commerce giant is indeed, under the influence of the lobby the book describes. So far, none of my books on Amazon were treated that way, but here we are now.

A similar experience to the one I had in the US was faced by Ghassan Abu Sitta, the rector of Glasgow University when he traveled to Germany and the Netherlands. It seems no one is immune to such a treatment, regardless of their academic position or professional reputation. All in the service of a lobby that attempts to prevent us from speaking freely on Palestine in the West.

Thus, nine months since October 7, the efforts to silence support for the Palestinians in general and those in the Gaza Strip in particular have intensified.

These efforts are not motivated by moral imperatives and are not articulated as moral arguments. They are exercised through the employment of sheer force of mafia-like intimidation to silence all messengers whose message is disliked by the lobby.

This, however, should not be seen only as a challenge or a setback. The ferocity with which the lobby assaults any attempt to show solidarity with the Palestinians cannot hide its failure to manage the swelling support that is exponentially growing by the day.

The abundance of Palestinian flags in all the celebrations of the popular front after their amazing success in the French national elections; the growing isolation of the Israeli academia; the rulings of the ICJ and ICC are just a few of many indications that show that it would be impossible to deny Palestine or silence the Palestinians and their solidarity movement.

The lobby does not have enough resources and capacity to deal with the widespread solidarity. It is indeed the success of the mobilization of so many people on behalf of Palestine that forces the lobby to use its most destructive weapons and tactics.

As I am writing this piece, I read the news of the fourth Israeli attack on an UNRWA school in Nuseirat, which left sixteen people dead.

The school hosted refugees from other parts of the Strip who were told that was a safe space.

The sight of the children buried under the rubble, salvaged by older children, is enough for me and, I am sure, for anyone who was ever silenced by the lobby, not to cave in but to overcome any hurdles they put in our way of speaking truth to power.

After all, when it comes to the truth, Palestinians have nothing to lose.

Prof Ilan Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel in 1954. He graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 1984.

15 July 2024

Source:  transcend.org

By Steven Sahiounie

Lesson to be learned from Syria: never participate in any U.S. [proxy] war abroad using terrorists as assets.

8 Jul 2024 – Kessab is a tiny Syrian village on the Turkish border. In February 2011, Em Ahmad, a 30-year plus resident of Kessab, was coming back to Kessab through the international border crossing at Kessab. She and her family were shocked to see white tents set-up in Turkey on the border as the passed by. The so-called ‘popular uprising’ in Daraa, Syria did not begin until March 2011, and Em Ahmad had no inkling of the purpose of the empty tent community set-up waiting for Syrian refugees.  Later, she would understand the role those tents played, and the fact they were ready long before any Syrian in Daraa, 371 kilometers away, would take to the streets.

Syria is now in the first steps toward ending the nightmare that destroyed many parts of the country, caused the largest migration since WW2, caused millions to become refugees living in tents in neighboring countries, displaced half of the country, and killed and injured hundreds of millions.

Recently, Turkey has changed their policy on Syria in an effort to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus. The Prime Minister of Iraq, al-Sudani, announced he expects a meeting between the Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad very soon.

In order to restore the relationship, Turkey must stop its support of terrorists, must withdraw its troops and mercenaries from all areas in Syria, which include Idlib and north of Aleppo. The first steps have been taken by Turkey as they have ended support of the terrorists in Idlib, and ended support of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) north of Aleppo.

This drastic change by Turkey was met recently by violent clashes between Turkish soldiers and Turkish civilians, and terrorists and their Syrian civilian supporters, who pulled down Turkish flags and step-on them, attacked Turkish vehicles and Turkish drivers, and attacked a Turkish soldier and made him kneel and kiss the 3-stared flag of the FSA. In Idlib, the terrorists burned up Turkish vehicles owned by Turkish citizens working in Idlib officially, which resulted in all Turkish civil servants being evacuated from Idlib. Syrian refugees in Turkey were attacked by angry Turkish citizens who view the Syrians as unwelcome vandals.

North of Aleppo, there had been roads controlled by the Turkish backed FSA, but a new order came from Ankara to relinquish the roads back to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). These beginning steps pave the way to a restored relationship between Ankara and Damascus.

The UN played a role in maintaining Idlib as a bastion for the armed opposition.  Repeatedly, the UN pressured Russia and Syria to allow humanitarian aid to enter Idlib from Turkey. The UN argued there were 3 million civilians who needed food and medical supplies, and while that is true, the aid passed exclusively through the hands of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). If you were a civilian supporter of HTS, you got your aid, but if you had any complaint, you got nothing.  Civilians were forced to buy the food they needed from the shopping mall, Al Hamra, where HTS leader, Mohammed al-Julani warehoused surplus aid to be sold. All the major international charities were in Idlib, and a number of them had serious problems with the terrorists who controlled their work there.  For example, the terrorists would not allow female civilians to participate in aid programs which would teach them employment skills.  According to the FSA, once called “McCain’s Army”, women were to stay at home in the kitchen and bedroom.

Turkey was a close ally of the US and a fellow NATO member. Turkey was directed to play a vital role in the ‘regime change’ project orchestrated by US President Barak Obama. The Syrian project was just one piece in the larger ‘Arab Spring’ in which the US and NATO attempted to create a ‘New Middle East’.

Libya was attacked and destroyed by the US-NATO war machine, and has not recovered. Tunisia was transformed into a Muslim Brotherhood administration, Egypt’s election was rigged by the US in order to place a Muslim Brotherhood president at the helm, and Syria was attacked in a ‘regime change’ project which failed. Tunisia and Egypt have both since recovered from the US meddling in ‘Arab Spring’ and have kick-out the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria fought back and refused to change a secular government into a sectarian nightmare to suit US interests.

General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander, said in a video, that he visited the Pentagon and was told they had plans to ‘take out seven countries’. Syria was one of them.

Serena Shim, an American-Lebanese journalist in Turkey on assignment, witnessed a UN World Food Program truck delivering armed terrorists from Jibhat al-Nusra (now called HTS) across the border from Turkey to Syria. After reporting her explosive news, she was killed in Turkey when a cement truck rammed her small rental car, and the driver of the truck has never been located.

HTS has occupied Idlib, and holds 3 million residents as human shields. Idlib is the last remaining territory occupied by the armed Syrian opposition. Recently, the residents of Idlib took to the streets to protest their treatment under the Julani iron-fist rule. Qatar, one of the last bastions of Muslim Brotherhood influence, stated they no longer support Julani, and were sympathetic of the protesters who voiced their grievances after arrests and torture of civilians by Julani’s terrorists.

Despite the $10 million bounty on the head of Julani, issued by the US FBI, American media has visited Julani to interview him, while he sported a western suit and tie, in an effort to re-brand his image. In the end, the US project to morph a Radical Islamic terrorist into a Washington approved leader in Syria failed, as did the entire Obama war on Syria.

Robert S. Ford, former US Ambassador to Syria, has been very critical of Obama’s failure in Syria. Ford feels the US seriously underestimated the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), and bet that the army would break under the pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the street. The SAA never broke. Ford had wanted the US to enter Syria militarily, but Obama refused to fulfill his promises.

US Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was the biggest force behind arming and funding the terrorists fighting in Syria. McCain made several illegal visits to Idlib and met personally with the terrorists and their commanders. Even though he hated the Mexican migrants coming into Arizona illegally, that didn’t stop him from doing the same and crossing from Turkey into Idlib without any visa or border controls. He believed in the FSA, and lobbied for them in Congress. The FSA sold fellow Arizonian, Kayla Mueller, to ISIS in Aleppo. She was later raped and tortured by the ISIS leader, Baghdadi, and died in a US airstrike.

Syria is now in a period of transition. The battlefields have been silent since 2017, but the recovery process was not allowed to begin due to US sanctions on Syria which prevent supplies, or investments being sent to Syria other than strictly humanitarian aid.

Lessons to be learned from Syria: never participate in any US war abroad using terrorists as assets; never support sectarian conflicts; never force democracy on any people from the barrel of a gun.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist.

15 July 2024

Source:  transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

The brain rot of their worldview has a guy with an actual rotting brain as its official representative.

13 Jul 2024 – At the NATO summit in Washington on Thu [11 Jul] the US president referred to Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “President Putin”, referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump”, and said he is “following the advice of my commander-in-chief” on important military decisions.

This man’s brain clearly does not work. It is done. Finito. No mas. Dementia has sunk in the rear naked choke, and Joe Biden’s neurology is tapping.

Americans are watching live proof that their country does not require a president with functioning gray matter in order for decisions to get made and policies to be enacted in the Executive Branch of the US government. The wars and militarism have ticked on uninterrupted, the authoritarian agendas keep getting rolled out, and the same political status quo continues to be advanced. You could not ask for more conclusive proof that for all the fuss that gets made about US presidents and presidential elections, it is nothing more than a figurehead position for an empire that is not actually run by its official elected government.

And it’s only fitting that the US president’s brains should be leaking out his ears even as the brain rot of the ideology which gave rise to him is exposed in front of the entire world.

There is a kind of poetical beauty in the fact that the so-called “moderates” of western liberalism are cheerleading for the re-election of a half-dead dementia patient while his administration facilitates an active genocide in Gaza, perpetuates a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine, prepares for war with Lebanon, and militarizes with increasing aggression against Russia and China, all while killing the earth’s ecosystem and contributing to the poverty, sickness and oppression of the American people at home. The brain rot of their worldview has a guy with an actual rotting brain as its official representative.

The Biden administration has completely discredited every value that western liberals claim to uphold. Peace. Justice. Human rights. A free press. Opposition to racism. Opposition to tyranny. These freaks just plum forgot that genocide is a bad thing on October 7, and probably won’t remember again until the imperial propaganda machine needs to use that accusation against the next government that the empire has targeted for regime change.

The “moderates” and “centrists” of the western world are in reality violent extremists, and not just violent extremists but the most murderous and destructive extremist group on the face of this planet. Not one group on Washington’s list of designated terrorist organizations has a body count that’s even a tiny fraction of what the US empire has racked up just in the 21st century alone.

This is the political ideology that Biden has aligned with throughout the entirety of his far-too-long career, from when he was just a baby swamp monster elected to the Senate at the age of 30 all the way until now as he watches all the cognitive flotsam and jetsam of his decades of Beltway soul-selling blur together like oil paints on the palette of his ruined cerebral matter.

This is who Joe Biden is. This is who western liberals are. They are the carnage, starvation and disease in Gaza. They are the biosphere strangling to death under the boot of ecocidal capitalism. They are the nuclear missiles being rolled into position around the world. They are a dying brain and a dying heart on a dying world of their own making.

Hopefully the death of this toxic, omnicidal ideology won’t be too far behind the death of Joe Biden.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper.

15 July 2024

Source:  transcend.org

By Richard Falk

9 Jul 2024 – This is a modified version of the questions/answers by Washington-based Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Elmenshawy about the plea bargain release of Julian Assange.

****************************

1- What do you make of the plea deal reached between the US government and Assange?

The release of Julian Assange is long overdue, although it would have been more widely welcomed at this time if it had not been achieved within the framework of a plea bargain. More appropriate, and far less ambivalent, would have been a presidential pardon that kept the door open for future investigative journalists with the courage to reveal and comment upon inconvenient truths.

As it was, Assange after being released from prison was obliged to stop in the small city of Saipan in an Northern   Marianas Island in the Western Pacific, which is actually US territory, and face espionage charges in a criminal court. To gain his freedom after 14 years on the run and in various types of confinement, Assange’s guilty plea bargain required him to plead guilty on one of a series charges against him. The US Government seemed content with Assange’s acceptance of the charge of conspiring unlawfully to obtain and disseminate classified materials.

Despite securing this guilty plea, the prosecution had agreed that it would not seek to have Assange made subject to any further punishment. His time in the UK maximum security prison at Belmarsh Prison for the past five years was apparently treated as sufficient jail time, allowing the government to claim that US espionage laws were being enforced in response to Assange’s unlawful behavior. Assange’s long confinement in the Ecuador Embassy in London for the nine years preceding confinement in Belmarsh during the long extradition legal process amounted also to a punishment for the dubious contention that Wikileaks rather than being dissident journalism was espionage, despite Assange’s diligent redaction of any material that might endanger the safety of persons named in the released classified documents. Assange was also imprisoned for 50 weeks in the UK after jumping bail to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face some alleged criminal  charges  of an ambiguous sexual assault.

While there exist humanitarian and principled political reasons to celebrate Assange’s freedom there are also grounds for concern and criticism. To begin with there were rather well-sourced reports that the CIA considered kidnapping or even assassinating Assange during his prolonged stay in Ecuador’s Embassy. These concerns were aggravated by insinuations that the US had helped engineer a change of government in Ecuador that resulted in the withdrawal of its grant of asylum to Assange in London. The most damaging materials that was disclosed by Wikileaks came to Assange by way of a US Army Intelligence Officer, Chelsea Manning (previously known as Bradley Manning), who transmitted 750,000 classified and diplomatic documents to Assange relating to various incidents in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that confirmed and documented US reliance on criminal tactics that amounted to international war crimes. Manning was court-martialed for violating the Espionage Laws and was imprisoned from 2010-1017 for leaking classified materials to Assange. Her prison sentence was commuted by Obama in 2017, releasing Manning from serving out her sentence.

By treating such disclosures as espionage, as is the effect of Assange’s guilty plea, is to send all dissident journalists an intimidating signal that they could be subject to a criminal prosecution in the future. Mainstream journalists frequently address pro-government issues that are shaped by privileged access to classified government documents without facing such threats. The difference in treatment of dissident journalists whose views rarely are represented on influential establishment media platforms in the West arises from their political slant rather than from their classified character. In this instance the media performs, especially in relation to foreign policy and national security, operate as an instrument of state propaganda. In contrast, Wikileaks is primarily motivated by a radical anti-state, left populist orientation supportive of greater transparency with respect to government policy in the conduct of foreign policy.

This dissident identity leads some commentators on the political right to consider Assange to be an ‘anarchist hacker’ rather than a true journalist, and as such, deserving of punishment to the full extent of the law. They even object to the current arrangement governing his release as endangering future national security interests and the safety of those citizens who might be exposed by public disclosure, as well as those with whom US intelligence, diplomatic, and military personnel collaborate in foreign countries.

Other notable commentators argue that there exists an inevitable fuzzy line separating journalism from espionage, ‘a gray zone’ that exhibits overlapping tensions between guarding legitimate state secrets and protecting free expression. Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School has described this as a tension between ‘national security hawks’ and ‘First Amendment absolutists,’ implying that those sensible moderates who allegedly determine policy must make contextual judgments based on the character of information disclosed, the sincerity and prudence of the actor charged with release, and the effects on US credibility and security of the disclosures.

Such reasonableness, in my judgment, undermines the importance of safeguarding those that take risks to inform the citizenry about the wrongdoings of government, which contributes to the democratic quality of state/society relations. There are limits to permissible disclosure, but they should be administered with a due regard for restoring democratic vitality in an era where most of what governments hide is to keep these inconvenient truths from being known by the national citizenry and to avoid accountability procedures by what social forces ensure that government policy is respectful of applicable law. In this sense, the whistleblowing rationale challenges government claims that state secrets are integral to national security. Statist apologists purport to be concerned about sensitive information being accessed by foreign enemy governments in ways that hamper the discretion of the state to adopt pragmatically justified policies and practices.

The balancing of relevant opposing interpretations would be more persuasive if it took account of the specific identity of the state whose secrets were being revealed and the purposes of the disclosure. In this instance, the United States was acting extraterritorially in ways that harmed the people and public interests of a variety of foreign states. This is quite different from the effort of vulnerable countries, such as Iran, to view breaches of its national security plans and capabilities as crimes that deserved punishment. Such distinctions lend support to views that regard violations of constraints on disclosure as being in a grey zone that depends on interpretation and analysis of specific cases.

2- And what do you make of its timing?

It is impossible to separate the timing of this plea bargain from the presidential elections in the US. Releasing Assange relieves Biden of the burden of answering questions about a seemingly vindictive pursuit of a public spirited individual who as Australian citizen acting outside was arguably not even subject to US espionage laws, and has been forced to live a fugitive existence for the past 14 years. It is helpful to appreciate that Assange was a non-citizen acting outside the United States whose behavior and alleged criminal acts that would normally be treated as beyond the proper reach of US espionage laws, especially as the classified documents were voluntarily transmitted to him rather than stolen.

A final point powerfully made by Chris Hedges is that Assange owes his freedom, belated and grudging as it is, to the sustained support of people demonstrating on his behalf throughout the world. Without this display of people power exercised on behalf of the global public interest Hedges argues that there is every reason to suppose that if US prosecutors had earlier succeeded with their extradition efforts, Assange would be prosecuted and sent to jail for the rest of his life (he could potentially have been sentenced to 175 years in prison if found guilty by a court of all charges brought against him), or at best made to hide shamefully from American law enforcement efforts virtually forever. As important as it is to acknowledge the role of people in the streets demonstrating to demand Assange’s  freedom is a recognition of the degree to which the demonstrators were affirming the acts of Assange as well as the individual. Assange was disclosing to the world what citizens of a genuine democratic world order were entitled to know and act upon.

The Assange case, following the example of Daniel Ellsberg in relation to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, shows us above all, how important it is to have brave individuals dedicated to transparent governance that is respectful of international law. It also reveals the strong support ordinary people lend to those truth-tellers and whistleblowers like Assange and Chelsea Manning.  A viable democracy, more than ever in this digital age of robotics and AI, depends on governmental truthfulness and maximum transparency, this depends on protecting the role of dissident journalism and engaged citizenries. A frightening dimension of danger in these days are  growing credible fears of stumbling into World War III. This is becoming a major public concern in the US and elsewhere as war mongers in Washington seem to be pushing tension toward military confrontations in a whole series of flashpoints around the world. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has repeatedly warned of such dangers, suggesting the world is but one calculation away from a war fought with nuclear weapons.

Especially, in relation to geopolitical actors, formally freed from a legal duty to act within the framework of the UN Charter, we the people need to lend populist forms of support to the Assanges and Ellsbergs among us.

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

15 July 2024

Source:  transcend.org