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By Jessica Corbett

Just hours after a cease-fire between the Israeli government and Lebanese group Hezbollah took effect, the Financial Times revealed that “U.S. President Joe Biden has provisionally approved a $680 million weapons sale to Israel,” which has also spent the past nearly 14 months decimating the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the British newspaper reported that “U.S. officials recently briefed Congress on the plan to provide thousands of additional joint direct attack munition kits to Israel, known as JDAMS, as well as hundreds of small-diameter bombs.”

The Biden administration’s decision to advance the sale was subsequently confirmed by Reuters, which reported that “the package has been in the works for several months. It was first brought to the congressional committees in September then submitted for review in October.”

Human rights advocates critical of Israel’s assaults on Lebanon and Gaza—which has led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—responded with alarm to the new reporting.

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“If these reports are true, it’s heartbreakingly devastating news,” said Amnesty International USA. “These are the weapons that our research has shown were used to wipe out entire families, without any discernable military objective.”

Amnesty highlighted a trio of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have halted some arms sales to Israel. Although they failed to pass the Senate last week, the group was among several that noted over the course of three votes, 17, 18, and 19 senators supported halting weapons sales, “sending a clear signal that U.S. policy must change.”

“Yet, the Biden administration seems to be ready and willing to keep piling more and more, despite Gaza descending into what President Biden just yesterday described as ‘hell,’” Amnesty added Wednesday. “Sending more weapons that have been used to maim and kill with impunity doesn’t just put in jeopardy Palestinian lives and the elusive cease-fire the president is seeking, but also President Biden’s own legacy.”

The Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project declared Wednesday that “President Biden is spending the final days of his presidency going against the will of most Americans, U.S. law, and international law.”

“The weapons included in this package have been used by Israel in numerous apparent war crimes,” the organization noted. “On July 13, 2024, Israel attacked a so-called ‘safe zone’ in al-Mawasi, in which internally displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing at least 90 people and injuring hundreds more. A CNN investigation found that Israel carried out this attack with at least one JDAM.”

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John Ramming Chappell, an adviser on legal and policy issues at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, similarly stressed that “these are the very same weapons that for months Israeli forces have used to kill Palestinian civilians and violate international humanitarian law.”

“Continuing arms transfers risks making the United States and US officials complicit in war crimes,” he said. “These arms sales are unlawful as a matter of both U.S. and international law. They are immoral. The congressional committees of jurisdiction can and must place a hold on the sales.”

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, pointed out that “aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity is itself a crime for which U.S. officials may (and should) face prosecution at the ICC.”

Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a state party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, though Palestine is. Both the Biden administration and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national security adviser have attacked the warrants for Israeli leaders.

In a speech to Israelis on Tuesday, Netanyahu said that one of the reasons for the cease-fire in Lebanon “is to give our forces a breather and replenish stocks. And I say it openly, it is no secret that there have been big delays in weapons and munitions deliveries. These delays will be resolved soon. We will receive supplies of advanced weaponry that will keep our soldiers safe and give us more strike force to complete our mission.”

According to the Financial Times:

U.S. officials have denied there is any explicit link between the cease-fire deal and approval for the latest weapons delivery. While the cease-fire deal includes a so-called side letter from the U.S. to Israel, setting out Washington’s support for a certain freedom of Israeli action, people familiar with the text said it included no guarantees of weapon sales.

U.S. officials also deny that there have been deliberate delays to weapons shipments, aside from shipments of 2,000-pound bombs, which Biden paused earlier this year over concerns about their use in densely populated areas of Gaza.

The Times of Israelreported that Biden’s State Department declined to confirm the advancement of the package but said that U.S. support for Israel in the face of Iran-backed threats is “unwavering” and all weapon transfers are carried out in line with federal law.

“We have made clear that Israel must comply with international humanitarian law, has a moral obligation and strategic imperative to protect civilians, investigate allegations of any wrongdoing, and ensure accountability for any abuses or violations of international human rights law or international humanitarian law,” the State Department said.

As of Wednesday, officials in Gaza said the death toll had hit at least 44,282 Palestinians with another 104,880 people injured.

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

28 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – Despite the advent of a harsh winter and dire humanitarian circumstances, Israel continues to prevent blankets, clothing, and shoes—including necessities for children—from entering the Gaza Strip. Israel has been blocking the entry of these items into the besieged enclave for over a year now.

As the second winter of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip begins, Palestinians are suffering from a severe lack of clothing and shoes, which have been banned from entering the Strip since the start of the genocide. The only exceptions are a small number of supplies that are allowed in as part of humanitarian aid and are given to a small percentage of the roughly two million displaced people in the enclave.

Euro-Med Monitor notes that Israel restricts the entry of such items as part of its efforts to impose harsh living conditions on the Palestinian people that will ultimately lead to their actual destruction, as part of the comprehensive crime of genocide it is committing in the Gaza Strip. There is no military necessity or justification under international law that permits the prevention of basic necessities from reaching a civilian population.

Israel has destroyed at least 70% of the homes in the Strip and the majority of shops and markets there, including those selling clothing, in addition to limiting Palestinian merchants’ ability to coordinate the entry of goods with Israeli authorities. Consequently, the total number of trucks entering the Gaza Strip in the past period contained aid that did not exceed 6% of the population’s daily needs—the majority of which are related to food supplies—and the clothing and shoes allowed to enter the enclave did not exceed 0.001% of residents’ needs.

The vast majority of displaced people in the Gaza Strip continue to live in tents that do not provide adequate protection from the cold and rain, while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including women, children, and the elderly, are left without enough appropriate clothing to protect them from the harsh weather as winter approaches. The lack of access to essential medical care in these dire circumstances also puts Palestinians at greater risk of contracting serious illnesses like respiratory infections and other cold-related conditions.

The situation is made worse by the acute lack of basic medications required to treat cold-related illnesses, which is directly related to Israel’s arbitrary blockade. Additionally, the population’s immune systems have been weakened by the scarcity of food and lack of variety, as well as their heavy reliance on canned foods, leaving them much more vulnerable than usual to viruses and illnesses.

Out of the roughly 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, about two million have been forcibly displaced from their homes; the majority of them are now living in tents, schools-turned-shelters, or the remains of their destroyed homes. Those who fled their homes were typically forced to leave their personal belongings and clothing behind, taking only what they were wearing as they left.

Most displaced families have lost the majority of their belongings as a result of Israeli bombardment, and have had to search for clothing and shoes in marketplaces that have also been bombed by the occupation army.

The Euro-Med Monitor field team has observed children in the Gaza Strip walking barefoot in sewage- and debris-filled streets in the rain while wearing only light, shabby clothing. Children who lack shoes are more likely to sustain wounds and injuries, leaving them susceptible to infection in an environment devoid of medical supplies and medications because of the strict blockade.

People turn to short-term, unsafe, and insufficient solutions that worsen their suffering, like making wooden and plastic shoes for their kids. Due to a lack of clothing, Gazans are currently compelled to sew or patch old clothing from old blankets, as only those with the means to do so can purchase any alternatives.

Due to the rainy weather over the past two days, the majority of the displaced have been unable to cover their tents and protect them from the rain, which has resulted in hundreds of tents flooding and the few belongings of the displaced becoming drenched in water. Notably, Israel also prohibits the entry of adequate quantities of tents, tarps, and nylon into the Strip, as well as other necessities to protect against the winter cold, such as blankets, firewood, fuel, and heating sources.

Israel’s continuous and severe deprivation of the fundamental necessities of life is an act of genocide, as it seeks to strip the Palestinian population of the most basic means of protection, with the aim of physically erasing their existence. Children and other vulnerable groups are specifically targeted by Israel as they are more affected by this deprivation, which exacerbates their suffering and raises the death rates among them; due to the lack of refuge from winter weather, these rates will undoubtedly spike without international intervention.

Denying basic necessities to all segments of the civilian population is an outright assault on people’s dignity and a deprivation of their humanity. Treating them as though they are undeserving of even the most basic rights has shattered their spirits, contributing to a sense of dejection felt by all Gaza Strip residents. In creating such inhuman conditions, Israel also expresses a clear aim to destroy Palestinians’ cultural and social identity.

International and United Nations organisations must work, by all possible means, to pressure Israel to allow the entry of basic materials into the Gaza Strip, and to publicly expose these crimes.

Given the grave worsening of the humanitarian situation, the international community must take responsibility for halting the genocide in the Gaza Strip and all related crimes being committed by Israel and its allies, as this is the only way to protect civilians and preserve what remains.

In addition to imposing sanctions on Israel and implementing the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against the Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defense as soon as possible, as well as their transfer to international custody, it is imperative that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip be given immediate and unhindered access to winter clothing, shoes, and the most basic tools of survival.

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

28 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

A major problem in American thinking in the Middle East is the utter rejection of the notion that Palestinian rights are fundamental, if at all relevant, to the coveted peace and stability.

Long before Donald Trump’s first ‘Deal of the Century’ was officially revealed on January 28, 2020, successive US administrations attempted to ‘stabilize’ the Middle East at the expense of Palestinians.

Earlier plans, or deals, rested on the premise of total marginalization of the Palestinian people and their cause. They included the Roger Plan of 1969 and Roger Plan II in the early 70s, which culminated in the Camp David Accords later that same decade.

When all had failed to subdue Palestinians, Israel and the US began investing in an alternative Palestinian leadership that would be compliant with Israeli will, often in exchange for money and a minimal share of power. The outcome was the Oslo Accords in 1993, which initially segmented Palestinians politically, yielding competing classes, but eventually failing to defeat the Palestinian quest for freedom.

Numerous other initiatives and plans, mostly by the US and other western entities, tried to conclude the Palestinian struggle in favor of Israel without having to deal with the inconveniences of pressuring Israel to respect international law. They all failed.

Trump’s so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ was another failed attempt. It was situated in previously thwarted Israeli plans centered around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s so-called ‘economic peace‘ in 2009. For Israel, the new ‘deal’ was meant to represent a win-win scenario: ending Israel’s regional isolation, amassing wealth, making the Israeli military occupation permanent, avoiding any accountability under international law, thus permanently defeating Palestinians.

The ongoing Israeli war and genocide in Gaza, the destabilization of the whole region and the ongoing Palestinian steadfastness and resistance are the final proof that there can never be real peace in the Middle East without justice for Palestinians and other victims of Israeli brutality. No number of future US-western deals and initiatives can ever alter this fact.

The same inference applies to those operating at a less official capacity, but still committed to the same perusal of creative ‘solutions’ to the so-called ‘conflict’. Such notions may suggest that the lack of solutions reflects the lack of imagination, resolve or the dearth of legal text that makes a just end to the ‘conflict’ impossible.

However, a solution is readily available. Indeed, the solution to military occupation, apartheid and genocide is ending military occupation, dismantling the racist apartheid regime and holding Israeli war criminals accountable for their extermination of Palestinians.

Not only do we have enough international and humanitarian laws and court orders to guide us through the process of holding Israel accountable, but more than the needed critical mass of international consensus that should make this ‘solution’ possible. The main obstacle is the stubborn and unconditional US support of Israel, which has allowed it to flout international law and consensus for decades.

International law regarding Palestine is not an outdated resolution, but a robust and growing legal discourse that refuses to entertain any Israeli or US interpretation of the war crimes, including the crime of genocide underway in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Last February, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began holding hearings that allowed representatives of over 50 countries to articulate their political, legal and moral stances on the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

While the acting legal adviser at the US State Department argued that the 15-judge panel at the Hague should not call for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied West Bank, China’s Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser, Ma Xinmin, contended that Palestinian ‘use of force to resist oppression is an inalienable right’.

Later in July, the ICJ issued a landmark ruling that the Israeli occupation in all of its expressions is illegal under international law, and that such illegality includes the occupation of East Jerusalem, all Israeli Jewish settlements, annexation attempts, theft of natural resources, and so on.

In September 2024, international consensus again followed, as the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution demanding Israel to end “its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” within 12 months.

This is but a footnote in the massive body of international law regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Yet more is constantly being added to the already clear discourse, including the latest arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of top Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu.

With such clarity in mind, why then should Palestinians, Arabs and the international community entertain or engage in any new deals, plans and solutions that operate outside the realm of international law and standards?

The issue is obviously not the lack of a roadmap to a just peace, but the lack of interest or will, namely on the part of the US and a few of its western allies. It is their relentless backing of Israel and financing of its war machine that makes a just solution in Palestine unattainable, at least for now.

As far as Palestinians are concerned, there can only be one acceptable ‘deal’, a deal that is predicated on the full implementation of international law, including the Palestinian people’s right of return and right to self-determination.

Continued US-Israeli attempts at circumventing this fact will never impede Palestinians from carrying on with their struggle for freedom.

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

28 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Reed

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carpet bombed Beirut and its southern suburbs on Tuesday, moments after US President Joe Biden announced a ceasefire between the Zionist regime and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Just before Netanyahu’s security cabinet was scheduled to meet on the deal, the Israeli military launched what has been described as a relentless air assault on the Lebanese capital city, including strikes on residential buildings that house displaced people.

One of the strikes completely leveled a building in central Beirut’s Nuwairi district less than an hour before the attacks on the suburbs began. Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said, “A fierce airstrike carried out on Tuesday by Israeli enemy warplanes targeted a building near Khatem al-Anbiyaa Mosque in Al-Nuwairi area of Beirut.”

An NNA correspondent said the raid on Nuwairi targeted a four-story building and at least seven people were killed and 37 wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. As rubble is removed and the search is underway for survivors, the death toll is expected to rise.

NNA said the apartment building that was struck was in central Beirut’s Hamra district. Hamra is the capital’s busiest commercial district and home to two American universities and multiple international nonprofit offices. NNA also reported “a hostile drone hit al-Qard al-Hassan in Zuqaq al-Blat,” referring to a Hezbollah-linked financial institution.

A report by the New York Times said:

The first Israeli airstrike that rattled Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Tuesday struck without warning, destroying a four-story building in the heart of the city. Then a barrage of airstrikes struck the city’s southern suburbs in quick succession: One strike, then two, then 20—all within minutes and all sending plumes of black smoke across the skyline.

Soon a city on edge was panicked, as the Israeli military issued warnings for four more imminent strikes in the capital. People jumped into their cars or took to the streets on foot trying to get out of the city, clogging the roads with crowds and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Few were certain of where to go or how to avoid the neighborhoods highlighted in the warnings.

Other press reports said that at least 25 were killed by the air strikes across Lebanon. The health ministry said at least 10 people were killed in central Beirut, six in the southern town of Shaqra, two in the southern town of Tyre, six in the Baalbek-Hermel region and one in Hadath in the Mount Lebanon area south of Beirut.

As per the modus operandi of Israel, the Zionist military justified its assault on unarmed civilians and refugees with references to “intelligence” about “nine terror targets that were components of Hezbollah’s financial management and systems in the areas of Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, and Beqaa, in continuation of earlier strikes.”

By around 4:00 p.m. US Eastern Time, media outlets began reporting that the Israeli security cabinet had approved the ceasefire. A statement from the prime minister’s office said the cabinet approved it by a majority of 10 ministers against one. However, the statement went on to say Israel “maintains its right to act against any threat to its security.” In other words, the US-backed ceasefire only applies to Hezbollah.

According to a statement by a senior Biden administration official, Israel will not immediately withdraw from Lebanon when the ceasefire begins, but “a 60-day period will start in which the Lebanese military and security forces will begin their deployment towards the south.”

A report by CNN said, “The Lebanese military will be ‘authorized and instructed’ by the Lebanese government to take positions in the south and ensure that Hezbollah both moves north and that all of their heavy weaponry is removed. The Lebanese military ‘will also be patrolling the area and ensuring that if there’s any remaining infrastructure or remaining weaponry, that it is removed and that no such infrastructure can be rebuilt again in that area,’ the official said.”

According to the latest figures released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, at least 3,768 people, including as many as 240 children, have been killed and at least 15,699 people have been injured by Israel since the simultaneous assault on the country to the north and the genocide in Gaza began on October 7, 2023.

While the Biden administration was claiming that the ceasefire in Lebanon will “create space” for a deal with Hamas in Gaza, the Israeli genocide against Palestinians continues. On Tuesday, Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip killed at least 14 Palestinians, pushing up the overall death toll since last year to 44,249, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

“Israeli forces killed 14 people and injured 108 others in three massacres of families in the last 24 hours,” the ministry said, adding, “Many people are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them.” A ministry statement also said that at least 104,746 other Gazans have been injured over the past 13 months of ethnic cleansing.

In Gaza City, at least 13 were killed by an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced families on Tuesday. Medics said dozens were wounded that hit the Al-Hurreya School in the Zeitoun neighborhood, one of the oldest suburbs of Gaza City.

Later Tuesday, a second Israeli air strike on a house also in Zeitoun suburb killed seven people and wounded others, and another strike killed at least one man in the southern city of Rafah.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that Israeli settlers are preparing to move into Gaza following the forced evacuation, starvation and mass murder of Palestinians from the area. The Guardian reported that a group of far-right Israeli settlers from the Nachala organization held a conference in the closed military zone of the strip’s periphery to discuss “moving into the Gaza Strip and taking over land there, to build their own homes.” Guardian Jerusalem correspondent, Bethan McKernan, attended the event and said members of the Israeli Knesset and cabinet ministers were present.

McKernan said although plans to “re-settle” Gaza are in the initial stages, the presence of politicians show the political support within the Israeli establishment that exists for the settler movement. McKernan explained that, while Netanyahu has claimed he does not support settlements in Gaza, “people in his own party, as well as the far-right elements of the government, his coalition partners have been talking about it like it is going to happen.”

27 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

As the ICC finally issues arrest warrants for Israeli leaders Netanyahu and Gallant, the US confirms it has no regard for international law or a genuine rules-based order.

28 Nov 2024 – Finally, before history ends, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment stated that there ‘are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity’. The court found sufficient reasons to believe that the two men ‘bear criminal responsibility’ for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, and the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population. Almost immediately, US President Joe Biden condemned the court’s actions, stating that the ‘ICC issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous’. The United States, Biden said, ‘will always stand with Israel’.

A short walk from Biden’s White House sits Freedom House, an institution set up in 1941 and predominantly funded by the US State Department. Each year, Freedom House releases its Freedom in the World index, which uses various data points to adjudge whether a country is ‘free’, ‘partly free’, or ‘not free’. Adversaries of the United States – such as China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Russia – are consistently found to be ‘not free’, even if they have electoral processes and legislative bodies of various kinds (in Iran’s 2024 legislative elections, for example, 15,200 candidates ran for 290 seats in the Consultative Assembly; while last year in Cuba, the 470 seats in the National Assembly of People’s Power were elected by 75.87% of eligible voters). Meanwhile, the 2024 index accords Israel with a ‘global freedom score’ of 74/100 and proclaims it to be the only ‘free’ state in the region, despite the authors noting that in Israel ‘the political leadership and many in society have discriminated against Arab and other ethnic or religious minority populations, resulting in systemic disparities in areas including infrastructure, criminal justice, education, and economic opportunity’. According to the measurements of this US State Department-funded index, which is routinely used to disparage countries around the world that it deems unfree, an apartheid system built on occupation and now genocide is considered an exemplary democracy.

Indices, such as the one from Freedom House, are not as innocent as they may appear. The design of the index – built on the subjective assessments of analysts and advisors selected from the world of Western establishment think tanks – produces outcomes that are often prescribed. While Freedom House claims to draw from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), it ignores the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). The latter would necessitate understanding democracy in a far more capacious way than the mere holding of elections and existence of multiple political parties. Article 11 of the second covenant, alone, would expand the idea of democracy to include the right to housing and the right to be free from hunger. As Article 4 notes, the purpose of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is to promote ‘the general welfare in a democratic society’. Democracy here is used with the broadest understanding, extending far beyond simple electoralism. And even with regard to electoralism, there is scant concern in the Freedom House index for the high rates of abstention across liberal democracies and for the collapse of a vibrant media culture to hold political parties and leaders to account.

But then, what do those behind such indices care? They think themselves masters of the universe. The reactions to the ICC indictment from the United States and Germany – the two countries with the largest arms transfers to Israel during this genocide – have been expected, but nonetheless shocking. Biden’s cavalier reaction confirms that the United States either does not understand or does not care about the gravity of its callousness and that the United States fails to grasp that its rejection of the ICC warrants is the final nail in the coffin of the US’s ‘rules-based international order’. On the issue of callousness: ahead of the 2024 US presidential election the Biden administration said that Israel had to allow aid into Gaza within thirty days or it would face a weapons’ freeze, but this deadline came and went without much concern. The ‘rules-based international order’ was always a bit of a farce. In 2002, during the US-driven War on Terror, the US Congress debated the possibility that a US soldier or CIA agent could be charged with a war crime. To immunise that soldier or agent, the US Congress passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which has been widely called the ‘Hague Invasion Act’. Although the act does not say that the US can invade the Netherlands to free its personnel from the ICC, it does say that the US president ‘is authorised to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person… who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court’. Around the time of the passage of this act, the United States formally withdrew from the Rome Statute (1998) that set up the ICC.

Both US Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham have invoked the Hague Invasion Act in response to the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, with Graham going so far as to say that the US Senate should place sanctions, even on allies such as Canada, for having the temerity to suggest that they would uphold the warrants. If the US throws the ICC warrants to the winds, then it has told the world with finality that it does not believe in the rules, or that the rules are only made to discipline others and not itself. It is remarkable to see the list of international treaties that the United States either never signed or never ratified. A few examples are sufficient to make the case about its disregard for a genuine rules-based international order:

1. Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1949, never signed).
2. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951, never signed).
3. Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960, never signed).
4. Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages (1962, signed but never ratified).
5. Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity (1968, never signed).
6. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982, never signed).
7. Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (1989, signed but never ratified).
8. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006, signed but never ratified).

Even more horrifying are the arms control conventions that the United States has either refused to sign or from which it has unilaterally withdrawn:

1. Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (1972, withdrew in 2002).
2. Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (1987, withdrew in 2019).
3. Mine Ban Treaty (1997, never signed).
4. Convention on Cluster Munitions (2008, never signed).
5. Arms Trade Treaty (2013, signed but withdrew in 2019).

It is because the US unilaterally left the ABM Treaty and the INF Treaty that the conflict over Ukraine has become so inflamed. Russia had made it clear on several occasions that the absence of any arms control regime regarding mid-range nuclear missiles would pose a threat to its major cities, were its neighbours to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). On 18 November, in a provocative and dangerous move, Biden allowed Ukraine to use intermediate-range missiles to strike Russian territory, which drew a powerful response from Russia against Ukraine. If Russia had decided to fire one of those missiles at a US base in Germany in retaliation, for instance, we might already be in midst of a nuclear winter. The US disregard for the arms control regime is only part of its absolute disregard for any international law, sealed in place by its raised middle finger to the ICC.

Too much blood has been spilled
Please my countrymen, can someone say a word of wisdom …
Ah, we’ve become familiar with horror
the heart of our country
when it makes its pulse
ticking time
wounds us
My countrymen, can someone who understands that it is now too late
who knows that exploitation and oppression are brains which being
insane only know violence
can someone teach us how to mount the wounds and fight.

It is time to revisit the ‘great wound’, as Frantz Fanon wrote in 1959, to ride the wound and fight.

Earlier this year, Serote wrote a poem for Palestine, part of which I reproduce for the International Day in Solidarity with Palestine (29 November); for this day, we at Tricontinental are organising an exhibition featuring the artwork of Palestinian artist Ibraheem Mohana and twenty children who he has been teaching art to in Gaza in the midst of Israel’s genocide.

We hear in our eyes the sounds of the siren and of the explosion
As it blasts our eye and hearing
and the red fire
flares its coming in the air with the power of a storm
The red-hot fire holds human flesh in its red-hot dance
It was preceded by a thick black smoke
Which bellows and rages
On
Oh
Human race

And then it ends…

Ah Palestine!
Be.

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

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

By The Cradle

The Israeli army is accused of allowing criminal gangs in Gaza to steal aid as Palestinians continue to starve.

27 Nov 2024 – Israel “outright denied” 82 out of 91 attempts since 26 October to deliver aid to besieged areas in northern Gaza, said Georgios Petropoulos, head of the UN humanitarian office in Gaza.

By Mesarvot

25 Nov 2024 – Soul Behar Tsalik and Iddo Elam, both 18-year-old, will refuse to enlist in the Israeli Army in protest over the war of destruction in Gaza and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands. The two will arrive this week at Tel-Hashomer enlistment camp and declare their refusal to become soldiers and their total objection to the Israeli policy of endless war, occupation, and death. They are expected to be sentenced to military prison.

On Wed 27 Nov 2024 at 10 a.m., a solidarity demonstration with the two will be held outside Tel Hashomer base, as they enter. They will be accompanied by activists from Mesarvot (refuser activist network) and BANKI (Communist Youth).

We Must End the War for the Israelis and the Palestinians – Soul Behar Tsalik’s Refusal Statement:

Hello, my name is Soul. I am 18 years old, and I refuse to enlist.

We must end the war and Israel’s presence in Gaza – for the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Human lives are equally valuable, no matter which side of an ethnic or political line we were born on. We all want and deserve to live in peace, quiet, and security. For over a year now, the IDF has increased its presence in Gaza and has conducted widespread military operations in the dense strip. For the sake of humanity and the safety of all, this must stop.

As a result of the increased military presence in Gaza, an unprecedented number of lives have been lost: soldiers, fathers, mothers, hostages, children, and civilians – both Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli government continues to pour vast sums of money into an ongoing military presence that only sustains the cycle of violence and puts everyone at risk. We must shift from violent confrontation to a political solution. Only then can we begin to build a lasting peace. No more sirens, no more kidnappings, no more wars, and no more death. All of this is possible, but only if we leave Gaza.

There may be attempts to shift our attention to Lebanon or Iran, but the reality in Gaza does not change – we are controlling Gaza. We continue the violence there and continue to forsake the hostages.

Ending the Israeli presence in Gaza is not only the right thing to do for the Palestinians. It is also what must be done for the security and future of Israelis.

To draw attention to this situation and to remain true to my humanist values, I choose to refuse to enlist in the IDF. I hope my refusal will resonate with others and encourage people to seek alternatives to the cycle of bloodshed and to work toward peace.

Leave Gaza.

Thank you for your time

***********

A Child is a child – Iddo Elam’s Refusal Declaration:

My name is Iddo Elam. I’m 18 years old and I love living here. That’s why I’m refusing.

I love this land. I love our culture and my Israeli and Palestinian friends. I want to believe that in 10 years I will still be here. I want to believe that the future of my country looks different, that the future generations will live in a future of Jewish and Arab partnership, of peace and of equality.

Unfortunately, in the direction my country is heading, I am having a hard time seeing this future. I am refusing because I want to live in security and I want the next generation to not face another 7.10. I want no child, no matter on which side of the wall they were born, be afraid of rockets or being kidnapped from their beds. A child is a child. A child isn’t born with a weapon in their hand or with the feeling of revenge. I want the next generation to only know our horrible reality, including the appalling war crimes we are committing in Gaza, as a lesson from history not to be repeated. We have to do everything in our power to make sure that the children of the future live in security.

At 18, I haven’t voted in an election yet. I finished high school just a moment ago. But I have already lived through 7 Gaza wars before this terrible year. I refuse because I want to be part of the change. I refuse because there’s no justice in sending young men to die on the battlefield, when there is no political horizon and when our government is eliminating any democracy we had while hiding its true intentions from the public.

The future is in our hands. Change has to come from us. As long as we continue to enlist, follow orders and enact our government’s rotten goals, we will live in a reality of war, annexation and hate. This is the moment to refuse, to work against them and enlist for peace. Many have said this before me. The road to peace won’t be easy, but in comparison to the reality of war that we live in, no matter how hard and painful the road will be, we have to take it.

No matter what background you come from, what you believe in or what you think a future peace should look like, one thing is true – this war will end. The only question is, what have we done to ensure it was the last one, and what would we have done to make it end as quickly as possible?

The war will end. The leaders will shake hands. And we will be left, those who have paid the price.

Mesarvot is a network of Israeli conscientious objectors.

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

And we were told this war was all about protecting democracy.

28 Nov 2024 – The IDF dramatically increased its bombing campaign in Lebanon on Tuesday in the hours preceding an expected ceasefire with Hezbollah.

Israel always does this, and it’s so gross. Normal people get a ceasefire agreement and think “Good, this means we can finally stop fighting.” Israel gets a ceasefire agreement and goes, “This means we have to hurry up and kill as many people as possible before it takes effect.”

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The Biden administration is now pushing Ukraine to lower its minimum draft age from 25 to 18 in order to provide more cannon fodder for the war against Russia.

Polls say that both Ukrainians and Americans want this US proxy war to end, but instead of ending it Washington is pressuring Kyiv to throw teenagers into the threshing machine of an unwinnable conflict.

And we were told this war was all about protecting democracy.

[https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1861517095621861542]

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Russia keeps getting hit by Ukraine with US-supplied long-range missiles and is now saying that “retaliatory actions are being prepared.” This happens as Trump appoints virulent Russia hawk Keith Kellogg as his envoy to the conflict, adding further weight to my concerns that these soaring tensions may continue to escalate after Trump gets into office.

I’ll say right now that if all this insane brinkmanship results in Russia hitting Ukraine with a tactical nuke or something I’ll be a lot more enraged at the western power structure I live under for giving rise to that horror than I’ll be at Vladimir Putin.

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Don’t side with the powerful. Don’t side with Israel against the Palestinians. Don’t side with the US empire against any nation it targets. Don’t side with cops against their victims. Don’t side with billionaires and politicians against the people. Don’t side with the powerful.

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Every four years Americans get to choose between the Republican Party and the party that consistently leaves them so disgusted that they then vote for the Republican Party.

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The way American liberals spent months trying to whip up support and enthusiasm for an administration that was committing an active genocide exposed the disdain western liberals have for non-western lives in ways that will be remembered for generations.

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Leftist indie media figures tend to drift to the right, either by shilling for liberal establishment politics or by promoting the faux populism of the Trump faction. This happens because when your business model is largely driven by clicks and views, you have an incentive to go where the mainstream numbers are. They don’t start off thinking “I can’t wait to sell out and covertly promote the interests of the power structures I claim to oppose,” they just see their virality go up when they talk one way compared to another and start putting out the kind of content that generates more.

Independent media does not exist in a vacuum, it exists in an information environment that’s saturated in empire propaganda which is designed to herd the public into two power-serving mainstream political factions. By changing their output to align with the mainstream liberal faction or the mainstream right wing faction, indie media creators are effectively surfing on the tide of these propaganda streams to carry them into fame and fortune.

This effect is further exacerbated by the fact that people tend to become more right wing the wealthier and more well-connected they become. The idea of fighting a class war against the ruling class is suddenly a lot less appealing when you’re a millionaire with a lot of rich celebrity friends and high-level political connections, so you’ll naturally find yourself pushing vapid culture war bullshit instead and restricting your criticisms of status quo politics to a much smaller zone. This happens to align perfectly with what the empire propagandists are doing, so you’ll still get plenty of clicks and views.

This doesn’t happen to you if you actually stand for something and get into indie media for principled reasons, but if you just got into it to have a cool job or whatever then you’re just going to do the job thing with it and do what makes you money. It’s pretty easy to see who lands where on this dynamic.

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If you’re interested in awakening and enlightenment, check out the work of Angelo DiLullo. Nobody in the English-speaking world is talking about the how-to of liberation so lucidly and skillfully and sharing helpful information so freely. He’s got an excellent YouTube channel with his videos categorized into playlists for whatever stage people are at on their awakening journey.

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

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Middle East Eye

29 Nov 2024

Tanya Haj Hassan, a pediatric intensive care MD, addressed the UNGA on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on Tue 26 Nov, sharing the harrowing realities faced by Palestinians trapped in Gaza.

Doctor who volunteered in Gaza tells UN: ‘Palestinians don’t need our pity’

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Fatima Hussein

30 Nov 2024 – President-elect Donald Trump today threatened 100% tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the U.S. dollar.

His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining.

While the U.S. dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed up with America’s dominance of the global financial system.

The dollar represents roughly 58% of the world’s foreign exchange reserves, according to the IMF and major commodities like oil are still primarily bought and sold using dollars. The dollar’s dominance is threatened, however, with BRICS’ growing share of GDP and the alliance’s intent to trade in non-dollar currencies — a process known as de-dollarization.

Trump, in a Truth Social post, said: “We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy.”

At a summit of BRICS nations in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of “weaponizing” the dollar and described it as a “big mistake.”

“It’s not us who refuse to use the dollar,” Putin said at the time. “But if they don’t let us work, what can we do? We are forced to search for alternatives.”

Russia has specifically pushed for the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network, SWIFT, and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.

Trump said there is “no chance” BRICS will replace the U.S. dollar in global trade and any country that tries to make that happen “should wave goodbye to America.”

Research shows that the U.S. dollar’s role as the primary global reserve currency is not threatened in the near future.

An Atlantic Council model that assesses the dollar’s place as the primary global reserve currency states the dollar is “secure in the near and medium term” and continues to dominate other currencies.

Trump’s latest tariff threat comes after he threatened to slap 25% tariffs on everything imported from Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% tax on goods from China, as a way to force the countries to do more to halt the flow of illegal immigration and drugs into the U.S.

He has since held a call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who said Thursday she is confident that a tariff war with the United States can be averted. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned home Saturday after meeting Trump, without assurances the president-elect will back away from threatened tariffs on Canada.

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org