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By Andre Damon

The United States has provided Israel with more than $6.5 billion in weapons since October 7, the White House said Wednesday, underscoring the scale of the Biden administration’s support for the continuing genocide in Gaza.

Doled out over just nine months, this figure is nearly double the US’s typical annual Israel military aid budget of $3.4 billion and will be further supplemented by $14 billion in weapons funding allocated by Congress this year.

The White House admitted the scale of its arms shipments to Israel in a closed briefing to reporters, with neither a video nor transcript made available to the public.

Washington Post reporter John Hudson described the content of the briefing on X: “The US has flooded Israel with more than $6.5 billion in security assistance since Oct. 7, said a senior administration official, a massive transfer of equipment and firepower despite recurring disagreements between the two nations over civilian casualties and aid access.”

The US official declared, “This is a massive, massive undertaking, and nothing is paused other than that one shipment” of 2,000-pound bombs.

Amid continuing mass protests against the Biden administration’s complicity in the Gaza bloodbath, the White House has sought to keep the scale of its arms transfers a secret. For this reason, it has broken up its arms shipments into more than 100 chunks in order to bypass congressional reporting requirements.

The announcement came the same day that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with senior White House officials.

Gallant was welcomed by senior White House officials Wednesday, after the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court applied for charges against him last month, accusing the Israeli defense minister, alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”

The visit follows last week’s assertion by a UN investigative committee that the Israeli government is responsible for the “extermination” of the Palestinian population, with commission member Chris Sidoti declaring that the “Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world.”

Gallant’s trip sets the stage for the visit by Netanyahu to Washington on July 24, when he is set to address both houses of Congress.

In a readout of the meeting between Gallant and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the White House wrote, “Mr. Sullivan reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security, including in the face of threats from Iranian-backed terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah.”

The statement continued, “The two also discussed President Biden’s unprecedented support for Israel since the Hamas attacks of October 7th. Mr. Sullivan reaffirmed President Biden’s commitment to ensure that Israel has all it needs to defend itself militarily and confront its Iranian-backed adversaries.”

The White House praised the purported humanitarian efforts of Gallant, the man who has pushed the population of the narrow enclave to the brink of starvation by declaring a “complete blockade” of food into Gaza because the Palestinians are, in his words, “human animals.”

The readout declared:

Mr. Sullivan and Minister Gallant discussed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the need to increase and sustain the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Mr. Sullivan recognized Minister Gallant’s personal efforts and leadership to support these efforts.

In a separate meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary “underscored the ironclad US commitment to Israel, as evidenced in part by the extraordinary defense of Israel against an unprecedented Iranian attack on April 13 and by the more than $14 billion in assistance in the Bipartisan National Security Supplemental that President Biden signed on April 24.”

Gallant, for his part, responded to the meetings by threatening war against Lebanon, declaring that Israel is “preparing for every scenario” and threatening to send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age.”

Israeli massacres of civilians in Gaza continued Wednesday, with 15 Palestinian civilians killed in a strike on a home in northern Gaza.

Israeli forces killed Fadi Al-Wadiya, a doctor and member of Doctors Without Borders, while he was on his way to work in Gaza City.

MSF reported:

The attack killed Fadi, along with five other people including three children, while he was cycling to work, near the MSF clinic where he was providing care.

Fadi was a 33-year-old physiotherapist and father of three. He joined MSF in 2018. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones. Fadi’s loss marks the sixth killing of an MSF staff member in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, famine is worsening in Gaza. In a Twitter statement, the United Nations Children’s Fund wrote, “Malnutrition in Gaza is wreaking havoc on children” and “Lack of food, water, and medical supplies is worsening the already desperate situation for Gaza’s children.”

Mass starvation and hunger in Gaza have been massively intensified by the closure of the Rafah border crossing, as part of the US-backed Israeli attack on Rafah. In a statement Wednesday, the World Health Organization said that no medical evacuations had taken place from Gaza since May.

Before the closure of the border, “approximately 50 critical patients a day left Gaza. … It means that since the 7th of May at least 2,000 people have been unable to leave Gaza to receive medical care,” said World Health Organization representative Rik Peeperkorn.

Separately, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) reported that at least 508 internally displaced people had been killed at its shelters in October.

27 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Chris Hedges

After 14 years of persecution, Julian Assange will go free. We must honor the hundreds of thousands of people across the globe who made this happen.

The dark machinery of empire, whose mendacity and savagery Julian Assange exposed to the world, spent 14 years trying to destroy him. They cut him off from his funding, canceling his bank accounts and credit cards. They invented bogus charges of sexual assault to get him extradited to Sweden, where he would then be shipped to the U.S.

They trapped him in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for seven years after he was given political asylum and Ecuadorian citizenship by refusing him safe passage to Heathrow Airport. They orchestrated a change of government in Ecuador that saw him stripped of his asylum, harassed and humiliated by a pliant embassy staff. They contracted the Spanish security firm UC global in the embassy to record all his conversations, including those with his attorneys.

The CIA discussed kidnapping or assassinating him. They arranged for London’s Metropolitan Police to raid the embassy – sovereign territory of Ecuador – and seize him. They held him for five years in the high security HM Prison Belmarsh, often in solitary confinement.

And all the while they carried out a judicial farce in the British courts where due process was ignored so an Australian citizen, whose publication was not based in the U.S. and who, like all journalists, received documents from whistleblowers, could be charged under the Espionage Act.

They tried over and over and over to destroy him. They failed. But Julian was not released because the courts defended the rule of law and exonerated a man who had not committed a crime. He was not released because the Biden White House and the intelligence community have a conscience. He was not released because the news organizations that published his revelations and then threw him under the bus, carrying out a vicious smear campaign, pressured the U.S. government.

He was released — granted a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, according to court documents — in spite of these institutions. He was released because day after day, week after week, year after year, hundreds of thousands of people around the globe mobilized to decry the imprisonment of the most important journalist of our generation. Without this mobilization, Julian would not be free.

Mass protests do not always work. The genocide in Gaza continues to exact its gruesome toll on Palestinians. Mumia Abu-Jamal is still locked up in a Pennsylvania prison. The fossil fuel industry ravages the planet. But it is the most potent weapon we have to defend ourselves from tyranny.

This sustained pressure — during a London hearing in 2020, to my delight, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser of the Old Bailey court overseeing Julian’s case, complained about the noise protestors were making in the street outside — shines a continuous light on injustice and exposes the amorality of the ruling class. This is why spaces in the British courts were so limited and blurry eyed activists lined up outside as early as 4 a.m. to secure a seat for journalists they respected, my spot secured by Franco Manzi, a retired policeman.

These people are unsung and often unknown.  But they are heroes. They move mountains. They surrounded parliament. They stood in the pouring rain outside the courts. They were dogged and steadfast. They made their collective voices heard. They saved Julian. And as this dreadful saga ends, and Julian and his family I hope, find peace and healing in Australia, we must honor them. They shamed the politicians in Australia to stand up for Julian, an Australian citizen, and finally Britain and the U.S. to give up. I do not say to do the right thing. This was a surrender. We should be proud of it.

I met Julian when I accompanied his attorney, Michael Ratner, to meetings in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Michael, one of the great civil rights attorneys of our era, stressed that popular protest was a vital component in every case he brought against the state. Without it, the state could carry out its persecution of dissidents, disregard for the law and crimes in darkness.

People like Michael, along with Jennifer Robinson, Stella Assange, WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristenn Hrafnsson, Nils Melzer, Craig Murray, Roger Waters, Ai WeiWei, John Pilger and Julian’s father John Shipton and brother Gabriel, were instrumental in the fight. But they could not have done it alone.

We desperately need mass movements. The climate crisis is accelerating. The world, with the exception of Yemen, stands passive watching a live streamed genocide. The senseless greed of limitless capitalist expansion has turned everything from human beings to the natural world into commodities that are exploited until exhaustion or collapse. The decimation of civil liberties has shackled us, as Julian warned, to an interconnected security and surveillance apparatus that stretches across the globe.

The ruling global class has shown its hand. It intends, in the global north, to build climate fortresses and in the global south to use its industrial weapons to lock out and slaughter the desperate the way it is slaughtering the Palestinians.

State surveillance is far more intrusive than that employed by past totalitarian regimes. Critics and dissidents are easily marginalized or silenced on digital platforms. This totalitarian structure — the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called it “inverted totalitarianism” —  is being imposed by degrees. Julian warned us. As the power structure feels threatened by a restive population that repudiates its corruption, amassing of obscene levels of wealth, endless wars, ineptitude and mounting repression, the fangs it exposed to Julian will be exposed to us.

The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Hannah Arendt writes in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because our emails, phone conversations, web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, because we are the most photographed and followed population in human history, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This constant surveillance and personal data waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.

The object of all totalitarian systems is to inculcate a climate of fear to paralyze a captive population. Citizens seek security in the structures that oppress them. Imprisonment, torture and murder are saved for unmanageable renegades such as Julian. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. The population is immobilized  by trauma. The courts, along with legislative bodies, legalize state crimes. We saw all this in the persecution of Julian. It is an ominous harbinger of the future.

The corporate state must be destroyed if we are to restore our open society and save our planet. Its security apparatus must be dismantled. The mandarins who manage corporate totalitarianism, including the leaders of the two major political parties, fatuous academics, pundits and a bankrupt media, must be driven from the temples of power.

Mass street protests and prolonged civil disobedience are our only hope. A failure to rise up — which is what the corporate state is counting on — will see us enslaved and the earth’s ecosystem become inhospitable to human habitation. Let us take a lesson from the courageous men and women who took to the streets for 14 years to save Julian. They showed us how it is done.

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

26 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

The word Muqawama in Palestinian lexicon does not need elaboration beyond the immediate meaning it generates among ordinary Palestinians. Only recently, and specifically after the Oslo peace accords and the sudden infusion of western-funded NGOs, did such terms as ‘peaceful resistance’ and ‘non-violent resistance’ begin to emerge within some circles of Palestinian intellectuals. These phrases, however, never truly registered as central to the collective discourse of Palestinians. For them, Muqawama remained: one – indivisible, all encompassing.

This assertion should hardly suggest that Palestinians did not resist, in the various stages of their struggle, using non-armed methods. In fact, they have done so for generations. The six-month general strike of April 1936 was a culmination of civil disobedience tactics that had been used for years prior to that date. It continued to be used, since then, throughout Palestine, for a century.

The difference between the Palestinian perception of resistance and the western-promoted notion is that Palestinians do not see Muqawama as a liability, nor do they seek to explain, contextualize or justify forms of collective resistance they use. Historically, only circumstances determine the type, time and place for armed or unarmed resistance.

The western notion, however, is predicated on the concept of preferentiality, as in one strategy is better than the other, and that one is ethical, while the other is not. In doing so, this judgmental attitude creates a clear distinction between the ‘peaceful’ Palestinians, dubbed moderate, and the violent ones, dubbed radical.

Moreover, western definitions of resistance are selective. The Ukrainians, for example, are permitted to use arms to repel the Russian army. Palestinians are condemned for doing so when Israel invades and carries out an unparalleled genocide in Gaza.

Though some promoters of certain types of resistance are, perhaps, well intentioned, they seem to fully ignore the historical roots of such language. Yet, by engaging in such condemnatory discourse, they, wittingly or otherwise, reproduce old colonial perceptions of the colonized. Similar language defined colonial Europe’s relationship with virtually all colonized spaces: those who resisted were perceived as savages or terrorists; those who did not, were granted no civil or political rights, only the occasional privilege of not being tortured or killed with impunity.

Gaza: Heart of Resistance

To fully fathom the concept of Muqawama in its Palestinian context, one only needs to look at Gaza. Though the Strip has historically served as the center of Palestinian Resistance in both discourse and action, al-Muqawama here is not entirely an outcome of geography, but rather the collective experience and identity of those occupying this tiny space of 365 square kilometers.

70 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees. They were ethnically cleansed, along with nearly 800,000 Palestinians, from historic Palestine during the Nakba, the catastrophic destruction and ethnic cleansing of Palestine and her people in 1948. They are survivors of massacres, which were part of a major military campaign that saw the ruin or emptying of whole villages, towns and communities.

Due to Gaza’s small size and the nature of its topography – flat land with little resources – the suffering of the refugees of Gaza was particularly extreme. Trapped between a persisting past of loss, suffering and unrestored rights and a present of siege and grinding poverty, it was only rational for Gaza to be the spearhead of Palestinian Resistance throughout the years. Often, the degree of Israeli brutality determined the degree of Palestinian response, since violence begets violence and deadly sieges and genocidal wars beget Al-Aqsa Flood type of resistance operations.

Though general strikes and other forms of civil disobedience were abundantly used by Gaza’s resisting population throughout the years – especially in the period between the Israeli occupation of 1967 and the so-called Israeli military ‘redeployment’ of 2005 –  armed resistance has always been a critical component of Palestinian Muqawama.

Despite its geographic isolation, which has long preceded the latest layer of Israeli siege imposed on the Strip in 2007, the Gaza population, as judged by the constant state of rebellion and political discourse, has always viewed itself as part of a larger and more coherent Palestinian whole. One of the reasons behind this is that collective Palestinian memory served as a generational bonding agent that kept Palestinian communities attached to Palestine as a tangible reality, and also as an idea.

The other reason pertains to the relationship that Gaza had with Egypt, the Strip’s former military administrator and once potential liberator.

Though Egypt administered Gaza between 1949 and 1967 – with a brief few months’ exception during the war of 1956 – Cairo did not exactly see Gaza as a territorial or even as a political extension that is permanently linked to the country’s body politic. True, Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser was the caretaker of Gaza and attempted to shape its political institutions, in fact, the very armed resistance – for example, the Palestine Liberation Organization (1964) and the Palestine Liberation Army (1964) – Gaza’s local leaderships and political elites largely embraced Egypt as strategic depth, not an alternative leadership, let alone homeland. If any confusion existed, the matter was resolved, anyway, following the humiliating defeat of Arab armies at the hands of the US-backed Israeli military in the June 1967 war, known as the Naksa or the ‘setback’.

Though the post-war version of the PLO remained largely reliant on Arab support and political validation, with time, it became more Palestinian in terms of decision-making. The PLA, on the other hand, which only operated under the auspices of other Arab militaries, became marginalized, if at all relevant. But even with the sidelining of the Arabs and marginalization of the PLA, Palestinians continued to resist. Their new resistance, however, was modeled around Palestinian historical experiences. This history of resistance is rife with examples, which started long before the establishment of Israel on the ruins of Palestine, and continued after the Nakba with the rise of the Fidayeen Movement, whose roots trace back to Gaza.

When Gaza fell under Israeli military occupation in 1967, so did the West Bank. Though all historic Palestine was now captive to Israel and its totalistic Zionist discourse, the occupation, coupled with the defeat of Arab armies, only accentuated a Palestinian identity that had little overlaps with regional Arab priorities – be it Jordanian, as was the case in the West Bank, or Egyptian, as in the case of Gaza.

This new reality did not automatically cancel the historic rapport between Palestine and the Arab world. However, it did underscore a growing sense of Arab political provincialism and a growing sense of Palestinian nationalism that began evolving into a new set of political significances and boundaries.

Ironically, armed Palestinian resistance, which developed outside the realm of Arab governments and armies, only grew stronger following the Naksa. This was true in the case of Jordan and Lebanon-based Palestinian Resistance. However, this seeming contradiction has been manifested in Gaza since October 7 more than any other time or place in the past.

Homegrown Palestinian resistance in Gaza has paralyzed the Israeli army to the point of failing to achieve any real military or strategic objective in its war on the Palestinians. Moreover, fighters, manufacturing most of their own weapons, have arguably inflicted more damage on the Israeli army than entire Arab armies in previous wars.

It will take years for the psychological outcomes of this war to be fully appreciated. However, numbers already speak of a changing perception. Over 70 percent of Palestinians now believe that armed resistance is the way forward, a direct and decisive challenge to the perceptions held immediately after the Oslo accords and during the early phase of the so-called peace process. Back then, many Palestinians genuinely believed that a negotiated solution is the shortest way to a Palestinian State.

Chances are armed resistance will continue to grow, not only in Gaza but in the West Bank as well. A nascent armed movement, mostly focused in the northern region of the West Bank, will likely continue to develop as well, modeling itself, whenever possible, around the ideas, strategies and values of the Gaza Resistance. Indeed, a different kind of Palestinian unity is now forming.

Changing Attitudes

But is this the end of the Palestinian quest for Arab liberators?

In a pre-recorded statement on October 28, the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades – the military wing of Hamas – uttered a few words that carried profound meaning. “We’re not asking you to defend the children of Gaza with your armies and tanks, God forbid,” he said, in a sarcastic message to Arab governments. Those few words were some of the most analyzed remarks made by Abu Obeida, whose popularity in the Arab world has soared since October 7, along with that of Hamas and other Palestinian movements in Gaza.

Though Abu Obedia’s language remained committed to religious, cultural and social values held in common with other Arab and Muslim nations, the masked fighter’s political language is now largely situated within a Palestinian discourse. His statements, however, are an obvious departure from Hamas’ own perception of the responsibilities of mostly Arabs, but also Muslim governments towards Palestine. Hamas’ original charter seemed aimed at mobilizing the Arabs as much as it did the Palestinians.

“Ya ummatuna al-Alarabiya” and “ya ummatuna al-Islamiyah” are the standard form through which Al-Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian resistance groups call upon Arabs and Muslims. However, considering the growing involvement of non-Arab and non-Muslim countries in standing up to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a third term is now almost always present in these statements: ‘Ya ahrar al-alem’ – a call to the ‘free people of the world’.

Equating between Arabs and any other nation anywhere in the world, and the cynical reference to Arab armies – let alone the near complete absence of any demand by Palestinian groups for Arab military intervention – have all signaled an obvious shift in the attitude of Palestinian Resistance. Gaza, the heart of this resistance, is now sending a message to all Palestinians, that liberation can only originate from Palestine itself.

This attitude is a relatively new phenomenon.

Back to the Start

One of the earliest and most powerful calls for resistance, then referred to as Jihad, was not made by a Palestinian, but a Syrian preacher at his final public sermon at the Al-Istiqlal Mosque in Haifa on November 9, 1935. Palestinians have been resisting for years. But what made the call by Izz al-Din al-Qassam particularly special is that it contributed to the three-year rebellion against British and Zionist colonialism which followed the strike of 1936.

Al-Qassam’s political thought may have matured in Palestine, but it developed in Syria and Egypt. Al-Qassam had fled French colonialism in 1920 only to engage in another anti-colonial struggle, this time involving the British and their Zionist allies in Palestine.

“I have taught you the matters of your religion,” the sheikh, now actively pursued by British police, said in his last sermon. “I have taught you the affairs of your homeland,” he continued, before raising his voice louder with an impassioned plea, “To the Jihad, o Muslims. To the Jihad.”

A Syrian Arab, urging Muslims from a Palestinian town to engage in a holy struggle was a perfectly accepted and rational notion back then. These layers of identity, since then, however, have fragmented to create alternative identities, thus relationships.

Al-Qassam himself was killed, along with a small band of his Palestinian followers in the orchards of Ya’bad, not long after he left Haifa in preparation for a countrywide revolt – one that only happened after his death.

When Al-Qassam Brigades was officially formed in Gaza in1991, it may have attempted to model itself after the Al-Qassamite bands of yesteryears. But their lack of means, Israel’s policy of assassination, in addition to the restrictions and crackdowns by the Palestinian Authority – which managed Gaza until the Hamas-Fatah clash of 2007 – made it difficult for such an army to exist.

Ultimately, the group managed to achieve what Al-Qassam himself could not, forming a resistance army consisting of small units of fighters that was able to fight and sustain a liberation war using guerrilla warfare tactics for a long time.

Unlike Al-Qassam’s old rag-tag army of poorly trained fighters, the new Qassamites are well-trained, make their own weapons and have managed to achieve what standing Arab armies and traditional warfare have failed. The same conclusion can be drawn about the Quds Brigades, the military branch of the Islamic Jihad in Palestine (IJP) Movement.

But even well-trained and equipped fighters cannot fight, let alone survive, the kind of Israeli firepower that has destroyed the majority of Gaza. According to The Washington Post, the number of bombs dropped on Gaza in a single week – between October 7 and October 14 – estimated at 6,000 bombs, was almost as many as what the US has dropped on Afghanistan in one year.

So, how did the Palestinian resistance survive? The answer here has less to do with military technology or tactics and more with intangible values. If this question is asked in Gaza, the answer is most likely to point towards such notions as ‘ruh al-muqawama’ – spirit or soul of the Resistance. Though such intangible concepts cannot easily be qualified, let alone quantified, according to western academia, the truth is that armed resistance in Palestine would have not survived the Israeli onslaught if it were not for the sumud – steadfastness – of the Palestinian people.

In other words, if it were not for the Palestinian people themselves, no group of Palestinian fighters, no matter how well-trained and prepared, would have sustained the task of fighting the Israeli military machine, backed by Washington and its other western partners.

Muqawama for Palestinians is not an intellectual conversation, or an academic theory. It is not an outcome of a political strategy, either. In the words of Frantz Fanon, referencing wars of liberation, “we revolt simply because (…) we can no longer breathe”. Indeed, Palestinian revolts and resistance are a direct outcome of the Palestinian people’s refusal to accept the injustices of settler-colonialism, military occupation, protracted sieges and the denial of basic political rights.

For Muqawama to be fully appreciated as a unique Palestinian phenomenon, it cannot be delinked from history; neither can it be explored separate from the ‘popular embrace’ –  Al-Hadina al-Sha’biyah lil-Muqawamah al-Filistiniyah –  of the Palestinian people themselves, who have always served as the original source and the main protector of Palestinian resistance in all of its forms.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a syndicated columnist, the author of six books and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter.

25 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Latheef Farook

Fair minded intellectuals from United States, Europe, Middle East and even Australia predict the inevitable collapse of Israel  in  view of its heinous crimes  on Palestinians for almost a century.

Many point out that Israel turned vengeful, tribal and adamant on destruction and expansion with total disregard for basic human decency and international law. Israel’s colonial war became a war on hospitals, schools, mosques and residential buildings, financed, armed and protected by the United States and other Western lackeys and killing thousands of Palestinian civilians – children, doctors, teachers, journalists, men and women, old and young, as if they were enemy combatants.

As a result this alien  entity has no chance of surviving among all the indigenous people of the region, who have coalesced more than ever before against the savage intruder. Israel can no longer use its fanciful theological claims to justify its violent racist practices. God does not sanction the slaughter of innocent children. And nor should Israel’s American and Western patrons.

American political scientist and international relations scholar    John J. Mearsheimer  said  “ it appears that Israel is losing its war in Gaza. At the same time, Israel is fighting Hezbollah on its northern border, the International Court of Justice has ruled that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Mearsheimer emphasizes the corrupting influence of occupation, asserting that treating the occupied population as subhumans is a consequence of political dynamics.

The ICJ hearings involve arguments from both Israeli and South African representatives, with the Israelis using the Holocaust argument and attempting to shift the focus to events on October 7th. The human shield argument is presented to deflect blame from the IDF for civilian casualties. The overall sentiment is that Israel is losing the global public relations battle, except in the United States.

Qatar based  Al Jazeera’s Senior political analyst  Marwan Bishara predicted  that Israel “has no future in the Middle East. The Gaza war may turn out to be the beginning of the end, but not for Palestine”. He added that Israel’s sadistic war on Gaza, the culmination of a long series of criminal policies, may well prove suicidal in the long term and lead to the demise of the mighty “Jewish State . Indeed, Israel’s deliberate, industrial-scale murder of the Palestinian people under the pretext of “self-defence” won’t enhance its security or secure its future. Rather, it will produce greater insecurity and instability, further isolate Israel and undermine its chances for long-term survival in a predominantly hostile region.

In an article titled  The end of a charade: Israel’s collapse under Global Condemnation retired professor Adrian Liberto said  “Israel is as good as finished. It has lost all credibility as a responsible nation in-the-making. From the onset its creation has depended on abusing superpowers, injustice and crime. It has been those three forces that have kept it enduring and spreading until now, while skilfully dodging every attempt to hold it to account, often by playing the victim. Despite the numerous massacres perpetrated along the way, something very different has happened now that has shaken its very foundations; mortally so: Gaza.

 Israel is a theocratic and apartheid state that was created through the theft of Palestinian lands, homes, livelihoods and lives. It has been allowed and supported to incrementally abuse the native population to the point where more and more Zionists are now claiming openly that the whole of Palestine should be theirs by divine right, despite the fact that most Israelis are postwar immigrants, their descendants and relatively new arrivals. So in a way what is happening in Gaza is no surprise, though the fact that Israel has so bullishly peeled off the mask is. What is utterly bewildering, however, is why the “West” is persisting in its aiding and abetting of these murderous crimes even though Israel no longer makes any attempts to hide them.

Long before the war on Gaza, a leading Israeli journalist, Ari Shavit, predicted the demise of Israel “as we know it”, if it continued on the same destructive path. And  Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet secret service, warned that the government’s war and territorial expansion will lead to “the end of Israel” as we know it. Both have written books warning Israel about the dark future ahead if it continues its occupation.

Like all other violent intruders, from the ancient crusaders to the modern-day colonial powers, this last colonial entity, Israel, as we know it, is destined to vanish, regardless of how much Palestinian, Arab and Israeli blood it sheds.

The Gaza war may turn out to be the beginning of the end, but not for Palestine. Just as apartheid South Africa’s bloody supremacist regime imploded, so will Israel’s, sooner or later.

In truth, I never thought Israel could have much of a future in the Middle East without shedding its colonial regime and embracing normal statehood.  Israel’s colonial nature dominated its behaviour at each and every turn. It wasted countless opportunities to end its occupation and live in peace with its  neighbours.

Instead of ending its occupation, it doubled down on its colonisation project in the occupied Palestinian territories. Thus as one apartheid was dismantled in South Africa, another was erected in Palestine.

In the absence of peace and in the shadow of  colonisation, Israel has slid further towards fascism, enshrining Jewish supremacy into its laws and extending it to all of historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In no time, the fanatical and far-right parties gained momentum and took over the reins of power under the opportunistic leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, undermining Israel’s own institutions, and all chances of peace based on coexistence between two peoples.

They rejected all compromise and have begun devouring the entirety of historic Palestine, expanding the illegal Jewish settlement on stolen Palestinian lands throughout the occupied West Bank in an attempt to squeeze the Palestinians out. They also tightened their siege of the Gaza Strip, the world’s largest open-air prison, and dropped all pretence of ever allowing it to unite with its Palestinian hinterland in a sovereign Palestinian state.

Then came the October 7 attack – a rude wake-up call reminding Israel that its colonial enterprise is neither tenable nor sustainable, that it could not lock in two million people and throw away the key, that it must address the root causes of the conflict with the Palestinians, namely their dispossession, occupation and siege.

Latheef Farook is a journalist from Sri Lanka

25 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Oscar Grenfell

Julian Assange walked free from Belmarsh Prison yesterday, where he has been incarcerated for more than five years. Footage posted by WikiLeaks showed the journalist at liberty as he boarded an international flight leaving Britain.

Assange has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to a single count under the US Espionage Act. He will appear tomorrow morning in a US court in Saipan, capital of the American territory of the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. When the agreement is signed off by a judge, Assange is set to be free under time served and to return to his native Australia.

The arrangement represents a massive victory for Assange, whose liberation will be welcomed by defenders of democratic rights and opponents of imperialist war around the world. It is an enormous climbdown by the American government, which since 2019 had sought Assange’s extradition so that he could be prosecuted under 17 Espionage Act charges carrying a maximum sentence of 170 years imprisonment, i.e., life.

The plea deal demonstrates there was never any legal basis to this attempted prosecution, even within the hollowed-out framework of bourgeois law and draconian national security legislation. It was always a brutal and politically motivated witch hunt, aimed at silencing and destroying Assange because he had exposed historic US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington’s criminal conspiracies the world over, and gross violations of human rights.

Assange is being freed as a result of his own extraordinary and courageous resilience in the face of vast state persecution, and the indefatigable efforts of his supporters, including his family, legal team and WikiLeaks colleagues. A protracted global campaign demanding Assange’s liberty won the sympathy and support of millions. For years, masses of people have regarded Assange as an heroic figure, and his persecution as unjust and criminal.

In a statement earlier today, WikiLeaks declared: “Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.”

WikiLeaks stated that this was the “result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders,” which had “created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice.” It added that: “After more than five years in a 2×3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.”

In a video prerecorded last week and released today, Stella noted that it was exactly twelve years since Assange had entered Ecuador’s London embassy to seek protection from the US vendetta. “This period of our lives, I am confident now, has come to an end,” she said.

Stella hailed an “incredible movement,” involving people from around the world, that was committed to Assange’s freedom, the wellbeing of his family and “what Julian stands for: truth and justice.” She appealed for ongoing support, including for an emergency fund to assist with Assange’s new life, including medical treatment he will require.

Acting WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristin Hraffnson added, “The cost to Julian, of course, has been to be deprived of freedom for all these years in the battle for journalistic freedom, the freedom to publish, the foundation of democracy.” He concluded: “I can say in earnest that without your support, this would never have materialised, this day of joy, this day of Julian’s freedom.”

The US persecution will be recorded as a milestone in the breakdown of democracy and the increasing criminality of the ruling elite.

For years, successive American governments and their allies in Britain, Australia and elsewhere proceeded with the pursuit of a journalist, as civil liberties and human rights groups globally condemned it as a mortal assault on press freedom.

In 2019, then United Nations Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer announced his finding that Assange had been the victim of medically verifiable psychological torture, perpetrated by the American and allied governments, along with official institutions and a complicit corporate media. The same year, hundreds of doctors first warned that Assange’s health was declining dramatically in Belmarsh Prison and that he could die behind bars.

Further exposures of the witch hunt followed. In 2021, Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, a convicted Icelandic criminal and star witness for the US government, admitted that his testimony against Assange had consisted of lies proffered in exchange for immunity from American prosecution.

Then, in September 2021, former US officials confirmed to Yahoo! News that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had spied on Assange while he was a protected political refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy. This included illegal surveillance of his privileged legal conversations. Most explosively, they stated that leaders of the CIA and then President Donald Trump had in 2017 discussed abducting Assange and rendering him to the US or assassinating him.

The US agreement to a plea deal was undoubtedly motivated by fears that these criminal activities and more would be exposed and that they would not stand up to scrutiny, even in a stacked national security court.

The deal was also struck under conditions of a major political crisis in the US, associated with this year’s presidential election. There were likely fears within the ruling establishment and state apparatus that Assange’s extradition could intensify this crisis and further inflame opposition to the bipartisan program of imperialist war and increasing authoritarianism.

A Department of Justice court filing stated that the federal District Court in Saipan had been selected to finalise the plea deal “in light of the defendant’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States” and its proximity “to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceedings.”

Assange had been compelled to plead guilty to a single Espionage Act charge of “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information.” That is one last act of petty vindictiveness by the Department of Justice and the Biden administration, directed against a journalist who has already had more than ten years of his life taken away in an illegitimate pursuit. It has the character of an attempt by the American government to save face amid its backdown.

Assange’s liberation is a major victory. The US decision to employ the Espionage Act in the plea deal, however, underscores that the American government has not repudiated the dire threat to press freedom and civil liberties contained in its protracted pursuit of Assange.

25 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Scott Ritter

By allowing the US government to compel Julian Assange to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, America has condemned itself to be a land where telling the truth is a crime.

“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

Justice Hugo Black, The New York Times versus The United States, 1971

Julian Assange is soon scheduled to appear before a US Court on the island of Saipan, where he is expected to plead guilty to a single violation of the Espionage Act, namely conspiring to obtain and disclose national defense information.

Assange is guilty of no crime. It is the United States government which operates in violation of the law and, by suppressing Julian Assange’s duty as a publisher to expose deception on part of the government about war crimes committed by American servicemembers in Iraq and other lies and deceptions perpetrated by the State Department and Department of Defense, in gross disregard for the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

By subjecting Julian Assange to five years of imprisonment under horrific conditions in a British maximum-security prison, where he was held under solitary confinement 23 hours a day, the US government broke the spirit and will of a man whose cause had come to personify the fundamental issue of free speech.

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Juan E. Mendez, has declared that

“[s]olitary confinement, [as a punishment] cannot be justified for any reason, precisely because it imposes severe mental pain and suffering beyond any reasonable retribution for criminal behavior and thus constitutes an act defined [as]…torture.”

Every American, whether they operate as a journalist or simply a citizen who believes in the fundamental right of free speech and a free press, must understand the significance of what Assange’s plea deal means—it is a frontal assault on free speech, effectively overturning the landmark Supreme Court decision in The New York Times versus The United States that spawned Hugo Black’s words in defense of this basic American freedom.

Let there be no doubt: Julian Assange is free, but free speech and the notion of a free press is dead in America today, killed by our collective passivity in the face of the brutalization of Julian Assange by the US government for the “crime” of exposing their crimes for all the world to see.

The truth no longer sets us free.

Rather, shining light on the inconvenient truth has become a crime.

America is a far worse place today than it was before our government compelled this plea agreement from Julian Assange.

This is a dark day in the history of our country.

Video:  Ask the Inspector Ep. 171

25 June 2024

Source: globalresearch.ca

Istanbul, Turkey. June 25, 2024.

“I believe that peace and justice in Kashmir are achievable only if tangible and pragmatic strategy is established to help set a stage to put the Kashmir issue on the road to a just and durable settlement. Since we are concerned at this juncture in Kashmir’s history with setting a stage for settlement rather than the shape the settlement will take, I believe it is both untimely and harmful to indulge in, or encourage, controversaries about the most desirable solution, be it accession or independence. Any attempt to do so at this time amounts to playing into the hands of those who would prefer to maintain status quo that is intolerable to the people of Kashmir and also a continuing threat to peace in South Asia. We deprecate raising of quasi-legal and pseudo legal questions during the preparatory phase about the final settlement. Such a discussion only serves to befog the issue and to convey the wrong impression that the Kashmir dispute is too complex to be resolved. Such an impression does great injury to the Kashmir cause,” this was stated by Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman, ‘World Forum for Peace & Justice’ during a seminar organized by Istanbul-based ‘Kashmir Monitoring Center & Asia-Pacific Workshop’ on the topic of, “Analyzing the will of the Kashmiri people between independence and joining either India or Pakistan.’ The seminar was moderated by a young and energetic researcher, Ms. Zahranur Ertek.

In response to a question that the UN resolutions have given Kashmiris only two choices – accession to India or Pakistan and not independence, Dr. Fai elaborated that it is commonly thought that the UNCIP resolution of January 5, 1949, limited the choice of the people of the State regarding their future to accession to either India or Pakistan. Though understandable, the impression is erroneous because the right of self-determination, by definition, is an unrestricted right. By entering into the agreement, India and Pakistan excluded, and rendered inadmissible, each other’s claim to the State until that claim was accepted by the people through a vote taken under an impartial authority. They did not, as they could not, decide what options for the people would wish to consider. No agreement between two parties can affect the rights of a third: this is an elementary principle of law and justice, which no international agreement, if legitimate, can possibly flout.

Dr. Fai added: To put it in everyday language, it was entirely right for India and Pakistan to pledge to each other, as they did, “Here is this large territory; let us not fight over it; let us make its people decide its status.”  But it would be wholly not legitimate for them to say, “Let one of us get the territory. Let us go through the motions of a plebiscite to decide which one”.  That would not be a fair agreement; it would be a plot to deny the people of Kashmir the substance of self-determination while providing them its form.  It would amount to telling the people of Kashmir that they can choose independently but they cannot choose independence.  It would make a mockery of democratic norms.

Dr. Fai highlighted that the possibility of the third option is reflected in the wording of more than one resolution of the Security Council. Those adopted on March 14, 1950, and March 30, 1951, refer to ” the final disposition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir (to be) made in accordance with the will of the people expressed by the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations.” The phrase “final disposition” is inclusive; it has a wider meaning than “accession to India or Pakistan”.  The Security Council used this expression not for convenience of drafting but because it would not be justified in foreclosing any option for the people of the State. These resolutions, which were adopted after the conclusion of the agreement between India and Pakistan, do not detract from the binding nature of that agreement as far as the obligations of these two parties are concerned. But they do imply a recognition of the inherent right of the people of Kashmir to decide their future independently of the contending claims of India and Pakistan.

When asked, what about the thinking in Indian public square about independence of Kashmir, Dr. Fai said that the idea of independence for Kashmir has in fact never been beyond the mental horizon of Indian leadership. When India first brought the issue to the United Nations, its representative, Sir Gopalaswami Ayyangar set out three options for Jammu and Kashmir on January 15, 1948: (a) accession to India, (b) accession to Pakistan and (c) independence.

Mr. Vir Sanghvi, Editorial Director of Hindustan Times wrote in the New Delhi based ‘Hindustan Times’ on August 16, 2008, “So, here’s my question: why are we still hanging on to Kashmir if the Kashmiris don’t want to have anything to do with us?” “I reckon we should hold a referendum in the Valley. Let the Kashmiris determine their own destiny. If they want to stay in India, they are welcome. But if they don’t, then we have no moral right to force them to remain.”  “It’s time to think the unthinkable.”

Columnist Swaminathan Aiyar wrote in New Delhi based ‘The Times of India’ in 2008, “We promised Kashmiris a plebiscite six decades ago. Let us hold one now, and give them three choices: independence, union with Pakistan, and union with India. Let Kashmiris decide the outcome, not the politicians and armies of India and Pakistan.”

In response to a question: if there has been any survey conducted in Kashmir to find out the preferences of the public, Dr. Fai quoted few surveys, like, New Delhi based ‘Outlook’ magazine conducted a survey in Kashmir which was released by the ‘United News of India (UNI)’ on November 5, 2004, in which 78 % people wanted ‘Azadi.’

One more survey was jointly conducted by Hindustan Times, CNN/IBN and Dawn newspaper on August 12, 2007, where in 87 % people want Azadi. And when a survey was conducted by a London-based think tank Chatham House, which was released by BBC on May 27, 2010, asking a simple question, what do you want? An overwhelming 90 to 95 percent of the people of the Valley of Kashmir demanded Aazadi.

(For those who do not know Urdu or Persian, Azadi means freedom from oppression and occupation of all forms.)

When Arundhati Roy, one of the internationally known novelists from India was asked on October 3, 2019, “What do the Kashmiris want?” She said, Kashmiris have been saying it for the last 70 years. They have been saying it with their blood. They demand right of self-determination.

In response to a question, Dr. Fai said that global Kashmir diaspora does realize its responsibilities, they are united in a common cause and their narrative is clear and concise: the right of self-determination of the people of the State of Jammu & Kashmir.

Dr. Fai concluded by saying that no solution of the Kashmir problem will be just or viable if it ignores the intense and popular sentiment of the people of all five zones of Kashmir – The Valley, Jammu, Ladakh, Azad Kashmir, Gilgat & Baltistan.  Justice and pragmatism require that no one of the conceivable options for the people of Jammu & Kashmir should be excluded.

Dr. Fai is also the Secretary General, World Kashmir Awareness Forum.

He can be reached at: WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435.   Or.  gnfai2003@yahoo.com

www.kashmirawareness.org

By Andre Damon

Israel intensified its mass displacement, ethnic cleansing and mass murder in Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, on Friday, killing 25 people in a strike on a refugee camp north of the city.

The attack by Israeli tanks took place immediately outside a Red Cross humanitarian facility in what the Israeli military had designated as a “safe zone.”

The Red Cross said in a statement that Israeli shells fell within a matter of feet from its offices, damaging them. The building had been “surrounded by hundreds of displaced people living in tents.”

One survivor of the attack told Al Jazeera, “We had just eaten and were about to sleep and take some rest, and the next we knew was the sound of resounding explosions destroying our places! We find ourselves alone not knowing what to do. We still can’t process what happened!”

The witness continued, “Oh Lord, look at us, oh world, see our condition. … The fire is consuming us from every direction.”

Another survivor told Al Jazeera, “Today, before the afternoon, a bomb was thrown near the Red Cross. My husband went out after hearing the sound of the explosion. The second bomb was near the Red Cross building. All the young men went there because some people were injured.”

Friday’s massacre is only the latest in the US-backed Isreali assault on Rafah which has displaced over a million people from the city—most of whom had been displaced from other parts of Gaza.

“Last night was one of the worst nights in western Rafah: drones, planes, tanks and naval boats bombarded the area. We feel the occupation is trying to complete the control of the city,” Hatem, a resident of Rafah, told Reuters.

While the Biden administration had previously said that an Israeli assault on Rafah would be a “red line,” the White House has fully endorsed both the ground attack on Rafah and ongoing airstrikes on civilians.

Two weeks ago, Israeli forces killed at least 274 Palestinians in a massacre at the Nuseirat refugee camp and injured more than 500 people. The White House called the Nuseirat strikes “limited” and “targeted.”

Friday’s massacre in Rafah was accompanied by mass killing throughout the whole of the Gaza Strip. Gaza’s health minister said that at least 35 people were killed over the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll since October to 37,431.

The assault on Rafah and Israel’s destruction of the Rafah crossing has brought the distribution of food in Gaza to the brink of collapse.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned Friday that it could be forced to suspend its operations in Rafah due to the near-total unavailability of medical supplies.

It blamed Israel’s attack on Rafah for the disaster, declaring, “The closure of the Rafah crossing following Israel’s offensive in the south of Gaza in early May, coupled with the endless red tape imposed by Israeli authorities, has led to a dramatically slow flow of humanitarian aid through the crossing that is open, Kerem Shalom entry point.”

Friday’s massacre came just two days after the United Nations’ commission of inquiry into the war in Gaza gave its official ruling, accusing the Israeli government of “extermination,” “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”

“The only conclusion you can draw is that the Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world,” said commission member Chris Sidoti.

Navi Pillay, the chairperson of the inquiry, implicitly condemned the United States for serving as the enabler of the Gaza genocide. “Had it not been for the help of powerful countries, Israel would not have been able to carry out this perpetual occupation as aggressively as it has,” Pillay said.

Even as Gaza’s health system collapses, the severely injured are left in Gaza to die. In a statement Friday, World Health Organization head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that not a single ill or wounded Palestinian has been allowed to leave Gaza since May 7.

“Since the closure of the Rafah crossing on May 7, no patients have been evacuated from the Strip,” Tedros said. “That means over 2,000 people have not received critical life-saving specialized healthcare.”

He added, “Medical evacuations must be facilitated through all possible crossings, including Rafah for transfers to Egypt, Karem Shalom for transfers to the West Bank and East Jerusalem referral hospitals, and when needed to other countries for specialized care.”

In addition to mass killing, the Israeli government is carrying out widespread torture of detainees. In a video that went viral Friday, Gaza resident Badr Dahlan described his torture by Israeli forces. “They [Israeli army] beat my hands and legs,” Dahlan testified, saying he was subjected to “violations and acts of torture.”

At least 36 prisoners in the Gaza Strip detained by Israeli forces have died due to torture and poor conditions, Gaza’s government media office said Thursday.

The media office said that “54 detainees from various Palestinian regions have died in Israeli prisons due to torture and inhumane detention conditions, amid systematic assaults on prisoners since the beginning of the genocidal war,” describing Israeli prisons as “mass graves for thousands of Palestinian prisoners, ignored by international institutions.”

22 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org