Just International

A Nail in Zionism’s Coffin?

By Franklin Lamb

Shatila camp, Beirut: The 72-hour ceasefire was supposed to get under way on 8/1/14 starting at 8 a.m. local time—but no sooner had it begun than it appeared to collapse. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 30 Palestinians were killed, and dozens more injured, in an Israeli attack near the southern town of Rafah.

If, against all odds, a genuine ceasefire were to actually take place, the pause would allow time for both sides’ fighters to regroup and re-arm. But what of the civilian population of a now substantially destroyed Gaza? Presumably many will try to visit their bombed homes to retrieve some belongings, as we have seen in Syria and Iraq, and many will try finding a place to hide, say, perhaps, a UN school—well, maybe that’s a bad choice. Others may simply stay in their homes and wait to die.

For the invading Zionist forces, they are insured of plenty of munitions both during and after any ceasefire—because the Obama Administration is supporting Israel’s aggression in the Gaza Strip, and it is doing so, in part, by allowing it to tap into local US arms stockpiles. The Israelis will be able to resupply themselves with 40mm grenades and 120mm mortar rounds, stocks that the Pentagon claims “need to be refreshed,” this according to Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon’s press secretary, who rejected out of hand this week’s Amnesty International demand that “the US government immediately end its ongoing arms deliveries to Israel, which are providing the tools to commit further serious violations of international law in Gaza.” And not only that. Earlier, the US Senate, by a vote of 100 to 0, passed a resolution drafted by AIPAC expressing support for Israel’s attack on Gaza, a resolution reading in part, “The United States Senate reaffirms American support for Israel’s right to defend its citizens and ensure the survival of the State of Israel”—and which says not a single word about Palestinian deaths.

Additionally, US politicians are working to provide millions of dollars in supplementary funding for Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile shield. The US Senate Appropriations Committee added $225 million for Iron Dome to a spending bill mainly intended to provide money to handle an influx of thousands of Central American children across the US-Mexico border.

“It is not that Iron Dome is all that effective, it fails 75% of the time,” said one Congressional staffer in an email to this observer earlier this week. “But Congress is under pressure to be seen as supporting Israel, and we’ve got to be seen doing something before we adjourn for five weeks.”

And likewise, as a sop to AIPAC, the White House announced on 7/31/14 that it “strongly opposes” a Republican-crafted emergency spending bill, in part because it contains no funds for Israeli missile defense and other presumed necessities. Earlier in the day the Senate had begun debating a $3.5 billion auxiliary spending measure that included the $225 million in additional funding for Iron Dome when suddenly the White House voiced its opposition to the House version, claiming it “does not include funding for the Department of Defense to support the government of Israel’s request for critical defense needs.”

It was also on 7/31/14, that Brian Wood, Head of Arms Control and Human Rights at Amnesty International, reminded Mr. Kirby, the illustrious rear admiral, of an unpleasant truth, one that doesn’t normally penetrate Washington’s deaf-dumb-and-blind bubble: “It is deeply cynical for the White House to condemn the deaths and injuries of Palestinians, including children, and humanitarian workers, when it knows full well that the Israeli military responsible for such attacks are armed to the teeth with weapons and equipment bankrolled by US taxpayers.”

But despite all the American government’s massive support for Israel, survival of the apartheid regime is not at all assured. Recently expressed antipathy toward the Zionist state from notables in Europe, South America and parts of Asia seems to be considerably more than just bluster. Israelis are correct in thinking they can no longer count on public opinion, not in Europe or even, to a lesser extent, perhaps, from the American public either. Increasingly the latter are pressuring their Zionist-bought politicians, admittedly on a modest scale still at this point, but in a manner causing them to ponder their electability as Israel continues its descent into a pariah state. A recent Gallup poll found a majority of Americans less than 30 years of age believe Israel’s actions in Gaza to be unjustified and criminal. This is because younger Americans have grown up witnessing a US-armed-and- propped-up Israel brutally occupying the West Bank, killing Palestinians, while also invading Lebanon in numerous, periodic attacks that claimed more than 30,000 lives between 1948 and 2006.

In aggregate, Americans still see Israel favorably…but in smaller numbers, while more are viewing it as illegitimate, as a 19th century colonial enterprise with no legitimate place in a civilized international society. “Delegitimisation,” says Einat Wilf, a former Israeli parliamentarian and one of the authors of an as-yet-unpublished study of the topic at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) in Jerusalem, is becoming “a strategic threat”.

As Robert Fisk pointed out this week, “Gaza, which is being so graphically covered by journalists that our masters and our media are suffering a new experience: not fear of being called anti-Semitic, but fear of their own television viewers and readers – ordinary folk so outraged by the war crimes committed against the women and children of Gaza that they are demanding to know why, even now, television moguls and politicians are refusing to treat their own people like moral, decent, intelligent human beings.”

From Antwerp to Warsaw, demonstrators’ placards have ranged from criticism of Israeli policy (“1,2,3,4, Occupation No More”) to condemning Israel itself (“5,6,7,8, Israel is a Terror State”). A growing percentage of the world’s population is coming to the conclusion that the regime occupying Palestine is a mistake and that history must be corrected. As The Economist recently reported, France is experiencing major unrest, which may be no surprise given that it claims the largest Jewish and Arab populations in Europe, but the extent of the tensions in France, including attacks on synagogues and raids on Jewish shops, has been shocking nonetheless. Even in normally sedate Oslo, the Jewish museum closed its doors.

Frankly, it comes as no great surprise then that many Jews feel that the world is against them, and view criticism of Zionist apartheid Israel as a mask for animosity towards Jews. In this they are very wrong. Let them visit the Middle East, in peace, and they will learn quickly that the rejection here is not at all about Jews, but only about Zionism as a fascist, racist creed. What people of good will reject, in the Middle East as elsewhere, is an antiquated movement that promotes a chosen people’s right to steal land belonging to others while ethnically cleansing an indigenous population; a movement that encourages chants of “Death to Arabs” among school children, whose settlers organize ‘fun-days,’ gathering as spectators to observe Zionist forces slaughtering Arab children in Gaza, as teachers hand out balloons and ice cream while leading the children in hate filled songs.

International public opinion matters. And much of it relating to the carnage being inflicted by those illegally occupying Palestine is right. The international public is increasingly aware that what is happening in Palestine today is not really about Hamas; it is not about rockets; it is not about “human shields” or terrorism or tunnels. It is about Israel’s permanent control over Palestinian land and Palestinian lives. It is about an unswerving, decades-long Israeli policy of denying Palestine self-determination, freedom, and sovereignty.

Having created a huge open-air prison in Gaza, PM Netanyahu now claims that Israel cannot relinquish security control of the West Bank for fear of Islamist attack—meaning that the Zionist occupiers intend to consolidate their illegal occupation, thus withdrawing all hope from Palestinians.

This region, and increasingly the global community as a whole, is planning for a post-Zionist Middle East and how best to achieve it without further suffering. The Zionist regime can stop the slaughter in Gaza; it can withdraw from Palestinian lands through agreement with international norms and UN resolutions, or, sooner or later, it will very likely cease to exist.

Franklin P. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut and Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC.

02 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

American Complicity In Israel’s War Crimes

By Alan Hart

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon was right when, after saying that “All the evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause” (of the attack on the UN school in the Jabaliya refugee camp where more than 3,000 Palestinians were taking shelter from Israeli bombs and shells), he added the following. “Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children.” But there is, I say, something as shameful – the complicity of America’s corrupt political system in Israel’s war crimes.

Initially the mainstream media attached great significance to the fact that the U.S. had “condemned” the attack, the implication of the first reports being that it had condemned Israel. It did not. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said only that America “condemned the shelling of the school.” She did not name Israel. Body language is all important and when I watched and listened to her speaking I thought she delivered the condemnation as a dismissive, throwaway line. What I mean is that her body language said to me something like, “What I’m saying is not really important but I have to say it.”

From President Obama himself there were just more empty words – another call for an immediate ceasefire. I imagine the unspoken response of Israel’s leaders was something like: “We know you had to make that call, Mr. President, and you know that we are going to ignore it.”

Obama’s hypocrisy was on display (again) when he announced new sanctions on Russia. He said, “We stand up for rights and freedoms around the world.” What he didn’t add was “with the exception of the rights and freedom of occupied and oppressed Palestinians.”

I thought Chris Gunness, the spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), hit most of the right notes when he said: “It is beyond belief that in the 21st Century children, women and civilian men should be subjected to this kind of outrage. It (Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip) is an abomination, a barbarity that needs to end… The world should hang its head in shame.”

My own thought is that it’s President Obama and other so-called leaders, not the world, who should be hanging their heads in shame.

That said I still believe (perhaps naively) that Obama himself would like to use the leverage America has to try to cause Israel to be serious about peace on terms the Palestinians could accept, but he can’t because policy for the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel is controlled by a Congress that is answerable not to the American people but the Zionist lobby and its mad Christian fundamentalist allies.

In my analysis no president will ever be free to put America’s own best interests first by confronting the Zionist monster (a terrorist state) unless and until lobby funding is taken out of American politics. What America needs most of all is some real democracy.

On BBC Radio 4′s Today program Britain’s new foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said this. “I have explained to Israeli ministers, not only Netanyahu, that the world is rapidly turning against Israel.”

That made me wonder what would happen if all of Israel’s Jews and all members of Congress could be compelled to watch a lengthy compilation of film and video footage of the death and destruction Israel has delivered to the Gaza Strip. Would it make them understand why the world is turning against Israel and cause a change of hearts and minds in Israel and Congress?

Probably, almost certainly, not.

Since I wrote the above and sent it to other sites there have been two probably connected developments.

One was a statement from White House spokesman Josh Ernest. He said:

“The shelling of a UN facility that is housing innocent civilians who are fleeing violence is totally unacceptable and totally indefensible. It is clear that we need our allies in Israel to do more to live up to the high standards they have set for themselves“.

That was criticism and even condemnation of Israel for one of its actions. But again it was only words.

The other was an announcement that Hamas and Israel have accepted an unconditional humanitarian ceasefire for 72 hours. The question at the time of writing is this. Will it hold and, if it does, will Israel allow negotiations in Cairo to address both its security concerns and Hamas’s need and demand for an end to the siege (Israeli occupation by remote control) of the Gaza Strip…?

If agreement is not reached on both issues the war will be resumed.

Footnote

Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, has let a cat slip out of the bag. In an Al Jazeera program he said that Israel was enjoying “unprecedented” support from around the world. Why unprecedented? Because, he stated, Egypt and Saudi Arabia were fully supporting Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas. He also said that during his period at the UN (from 2003 to 2008) he couldn’t count the number of times Arab ambassadors and other Arab dignitaries had said to him: “Go, go. Don’t stop.”

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent.

02 August, 2014
Alanhart.net

 

Action Against Israel Requires A Global Uprising

By Nilantha Ilangamuwa

How many more bones are needed to satisfy the broth Netanyahu is preparing to feed his desire for land, power and revenge? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proved himself to be one of the most arrogant leaders produced in the history of the modern world. How can he and the people of Israel enjoy their meals when the odour of burning flesh permeates the very air they breathe?

What is happening in Gaza is not a matter of power or how technologically advanced the Israelis are but ra-ther a matter of humanity. It is a matter that will go down in history as a conflict in which one country denied another the right to exist for the simple reason of greed. Israel wants Palestine and that is all there is sot it. There is no question of security. It is simply greed.

Thousands of people have been killed or injured in the last few weeks. Most of them were women and chil-dren. As one writer portrayed, the place become the world’s largest concentrate camp. Everyone has to strug-gle in finding words to describe this nightmare as the common language has been distorted by those who are funding and arming the Israelis.

Almost the entire world including the almost paralysed world body, the United Nations, has spoken out against this inhuman cruel viciousness practice, that is, with the notable exception of the United States. Alas…, one officer of the world body cried when he was giving an interview to the Aljazeera Arabic service. Everyone who is opposed to this cannibalism is helpless. No one dare to stop it. Air attacks by rockets and fighter planes continue. Why is the world so helpless, how can the world sit back and watch the Israelis fulfil their desires at the cost of innocent lives?

The Israelis justify their attacks as being targeted against Hamas. They are destroying homes and shelters on the excuse that they are storing weapons to be used against them. However, there can be no justification for attacking a hospital, especially after the UN advised the Israelis that it was just that, a hospital. What murder-ous mind could justify such barbary.

There are more questions than answers. There is a quite simple but well-articulated political strategy. The ty-rant created many questions based merely on speculation as to why he needs to act against these people. Therefore he can continue to eliminate any real resistance against him.

However, what is being pointed out time and time again is that the people of Palestine are no threat to Israel. By continuously attacking, and killing women and children, all Israel is doing is creating martyrs and future enemies. What Israel needs to remember is that even in a devastating fire something always remains, a blade of grass, a shrub. Israel is militarily capable of throwing the Palestinians off their lands and taking it for their own. But they cannot kill every living Palestinian. And those that survive will have an enduring hatred for Israel for generations to come.

Prime Minister Netanyahu sends his black cats from the air as well as through the ground to find rats, the tunnel creators. It appears to be a hideous version of Tom and Gerry. But when the game involves human lives it becomes genocide.

Searching for tunnels, in actual sense the rat holes, isn’t practical but a tool to justify the barbaric motivated action against the people in the territory. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his soul mate the President Barack Obama can justify their whole catastrophic carnage against the people in the territory just because of the tun-nels. This is an arguments based on utter rubbish which is similar to what Gobbles did during the third Reich.

Does it mean there will is no war if there is no tunnel? If so what if Hamas and other people’s based resis-tance movements decided to close those tunnels? Would Israel halt their attacks? The answer is a resounding NO! Israel wants Palestine and they will not stop until they get it. The tunnels are only an excuse, get rid of the tunnels and they will find another.

What we can observe in the war is not only the loss of thousands of native people in the territory but that Netanyahu teaching a bitter arrogant lesson to the entire world. In these circumstances it will come as no surprise if there is another 9/11, this time against Israel in near future. Fortunately the Israel is able to con-quer every rocket coming from the Palestinian territory but the strategy may change overnight and without warning.

The dilemma created by Israel is universal. It crossed the boundaries decades ago, while the government of Israel is continuing her cruel policy because they have military capabilities (supplied by the US and Britain) as well as the financial assistance. This is the focal point of the inhuman practice against Palestinian and else-where.
How can the Obama administration tell other countries about human rights if his soul mate violating the ba-sic norms of the humanity? What is the meaning of having laws and other conventions if those are only rele-vant to the poor and powerless countries?

How long is the world going to sit back and watch? How scared must we become before we stand up against the tyrant? It is time to tame the unjust and this requires a global uprising to establish the real freedom among us. In other words, while we live let us live (Dum vivimus vivamus), is most important challenge which is screaming through those who lost their lives due to the occupation in the Gaza strip.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa edits the Sri Lanka Guardian, an online daily newspaper, and he also an editor of the Torture: Asian and Global Perspectives, bi-monthly print magazine.

03 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

The Return of George Orwell and Big Brother’s War On Israel, Ukraine and Truth

By John Pilger
The other night, I saw George Orwells’s 1984 performed on the London stage. Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell’s warning about the future was presented as a period piece: remote, unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said, “To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.”

Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other distractions beckoned. “What a mindfuck,” said the young woman, lighting up her phone.

As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular. In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in 1984. “Democracy” is now a rhetorical device. Peace is “perpetual war”. “Global” is imperial. The once hopeful concept of “reform” now means regression, even destruction. “Austerity” is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich: an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few.

In the arts, hostility to political truth-telling is an article of bourgeois faith. “Picasso’s red period,” says an Observer headline, “and why politics don’t make good art.” Consider this in a newspaper that promoted the bloodbath in Iraq as a liberal crusade. Picasso’s lifelong opposition to fascism is a footnote, just as Orwell’s radicalism has faded from the prize that appropriated his name.

A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that “for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life”. No Shelley speaks for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damns the corruption of the ruling class, no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin reveal the moral disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw have no equivalents today. Harold Pinter was the last to raise his voice. Among the insistent voices of consumer- feminism, none echoes Virginia Woolf, who described “the arts of dominating other people … of ruling, of killing, of acquiring land and capital”.

At the National Theatre, a new play, Great Britain, satirises the phone hacking scandal that has seen journalists tried and convicted, including a former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. Described as a “farce with fangs [that] puts the whole incestuous [media] culture in the dock and subjects it to merciless ridicule”, the play’s targets are the “blessedly funny” characters in Britain’s tabloid press. That is well and good, and so familiar. What of the non-tabloid media that regards itself as reputable and credible, yet serves a parallel role as an arm of state and corporate power, as in the promotion of illegal war?

The Leveson inquiry into phone hacking glimpsed this unmentionable. Tony Blair was giving evidence, complaining to His Lordship about the tabloids’ harassment of his wife, when he was interrupted by a voice from the public gallery. David Lawley-Wakelin, a film-maker, demanded Blair’s arrest and prosecution for war crimes. There was a long pause: the shock of truth. Lord Leveson leapt to his feet and ordered the truth-teller thrown out and apologised to the war criminal. Lawley-Wakelin was prosecuted; Blair went free.

Blair’s enduring accomplices are more respectable than the phone hackers. When the BBC arts presenter, Kirsty Wark, interviewed him on the tenth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, she gifted him a moment he could only dream of; she allowed him to agonise over his “difficult” decision on Iraq rather than call him to account for his epic crime. This evoked the procession of BBC journalists who in 2003 declared that Blair could feel “vindicated”, and the subsequent, “seminal” BBC series, The Blair Years, for which David Aaronovitch was chosen as the writer, presenter and interviewer. A Murdoch retainer who campaigned for military attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria, Aaronovitch fawned expertly.

Since the invasion of Iraq – the exemplar of an act of unprovoked aggression the Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson called “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” — Blair and his mouthpiece and principal accomplice, Alastair Campbell, have been afforded generous space in the Guardian to rehabilitate their reputations. Described as a Labour Party “star”, Campbell has sought the sympathy of readers for his depression and displayed his interests, though not his current assignment as advisor, with Blair, to the Egyptian military tyranny.
As Iraq is dismembered as a consequence of the Blair/Bush invasion, a Guardian headline declares: “Toppling Saddam was right, but we pulled out too soon”. This ran across a prominent article on 13 June by a former Blair functionary, John McTernan, who also served Iraq’s CIA installed dictator Iyad Allawi. In calling for a repeat invasion of a country his former master helped destroy , he made no reference to the deaths of at least 700,000 people, the flight of four million refugees and sectarian turmoil in a nation once proud of its communal tolerance.

“Blair embodies corruption and war,” wrote the radical Guardian columnist Seumas Milne in a spirited piece on 3 July. This is known in the trade as “balance”. The following day, the paper published a full-page advertisement for an American Stealth bomber. On a menacing image of the bomber were the words: “The F-35. GREAT For Britain”. This other embodiment of “corruption and war” will cost British taxpayers £1.3 billion, its F-model predecessors having slaughtered people across the developing world.

In a village in Afghanistan, inhabited by the poorest of the poor, I filmed Orifa, kneeling at the graves of her husband, Gul Ahmed, a carpet weaver, seven other members of her family, including six children, and two children who were killed in the adjacent house. A “precision” 500-pound bomb fell directly on their small mud, stone and straw house, leaving a crater 50 feet wide. Lockheed Martin, the plane’s manufacturer’s, had pride of place in the Guardian’s advertisement.

The former US secretary of state and aspiring president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, was recently on the BBC’s Women’s Hour, the quintessence of media respectability. The presenter, Jenni Murray, presented Clinton as a beacon of female achievement. She did not remind her listeners about Clinton’s profanity that Afghanistan was invaded to “liberate” women like Orifa. She asked Clinton nothing about her administration’s terror campaign using drones to kill women, men and children. There was no mention of Clinton’s idle threat, while campaigning to be the first female president, to “eliminate” Iran, and nothing about her support for illegal mass surveillance and the pursuit of whistle-blowers.

Murray did ask one finger-to-the-lips question. Had Clinton forgiven Monica Lewinsky for having an affair with husband? “Forgiveness is a choice,” said Clinton, “for me, it was absolutely the right choice.” This recalled the 1990s and the years consumed by the Lewinsky “scandal”. President Bill Clinton was then invading Haiti, and bombing the Balkans, Africa and Iraq. He was also destroying the lives of Iraqi children; Unicef reported the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five as a result of an embargo led by the US and Britain.

The children were media unpeople, just as Hillary Clinton’s victims in the invasions she supported and promoted – Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia — are media unpeople. Murray made no reference to them. A photograph of her and her distinguished guest, beaming, appears on the BBC website.

In politics as in journalism and the arts, it seems that dissent once tolerated in the “mainstream” has regressed to a dissidence: a metaphoric underground. When I began a career in Britain’s Fleet Street in the 1960s, it was acceptable to critique western power as a rapacious force. Read James Cameron’s celebrated reports of the explosion of the Hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, the barbaric war in Korea and the American bombing of North Vietnam. Today’s grand illusion is of an information age when, in truth, we live in a media age in which incessant corporate propaganda is insidious, contagious, effective and liberal.

In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mill wrote: “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” The “barbarians” were large sections of humanity of whom “implicit obedience” was required. “It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers,” wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, “but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature: its conviction that it represents a superior form of life.” He had in mind a speech by Blair in which the then prime minister promised to “reorder the world around us” according to his “moral values”.

Richard Falk, the respected authority on international law and the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, once described a “a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence”. It is “so widely accepted as to be virtually unchallengeable”.

Tenure and patronage reward the guardians. On BBC Radio 4, Razia Iqbal interviewed Toni Morrison, the African-American Nobel Laureate. Morrison wondered why people were “so angry” with Barack Obama, who was “cool” and wished to build a “strong economy and health care”. Morrison was proud to have talked on the phone with her hero, who had read one of her books and invited her to his inauguration.

Neither she nor her interviewer mentioned Obama’s seven wars, including his terror campaign by drone, in which whole families, their rescuers and mourners have been murdered. What seemed to matter was that a “finely spoken” man of colour had risen to the commanding heights of power. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote that the “historic mission” of the colonised was to serve as a “transmission line” to those who ruled and oppressed. In the modern era, the employment of ethnic difference in western power and propaganda systems is now seen as essential. Obama epitomises this, though the cabinet of George W. Bush – his warmongering clique – was the most multiracial in presidential history.

As the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to the jihadists of ISIS, Obama said, “The American people made huge investments and sacrifices in order to give Iraqis the opportunity to chart a better destiny.” How “cool” is that lie? How “finely spoken” was Obama’s speech at the West Point military academy on 28 May. Delivering his “state of the world” address at the graduation ceremony of those who “will take American leadership” across the world, Obama said, “The United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it. International opinion matters, but America will never ask permission …”

In repudiating international law and the rights of independent nations, the American president claims a divinity based on the might of his “indispensable nation”. It is a familiar message of imperial impunity, though always bracing to hear. Evoking the rise of fascism in the 1930s, Obama said, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being.” Historian Norman Pollack wrote: “For goose-steppers, substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while.”

In February, the US mounted one of its “colour” coups against the elected government in Ukraine, exploiting genuine protests against corruption in Kiev. Obama’s national security adviser Victoria Nuland personally selected the leader of an “interim government”. She nicknamed him “Yats”. Vice President Joe Biden came to Kiev, as did CIA Director John Brennan. The shock troops of their putsch were Ukrainian fascists.

For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas of state power in a European capital. No Western European leader has condemned this revival of fascism in the borderland through which Hitler’s invading Nazis took millions of Russian lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre of Jews and Russians they called “vermin”. The UPA is the historical inspiration of the present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelling Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has called for a purge of the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” and “other scum”, including gays, feminists and those on the political left.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato Enlargement Project. Reneging on a promise made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that Nato would not expand “one inch to the east”, Nato has, in effect, militarily occupied eastern Europe. In the former Soviet Caucasus, Nato’s expansion is the biggest military build-up since the Second World War.

A Nato Membership Action Plan is Washington’s gift to the coup-regime in Kiev. In August, “Operation Rapid Trident” will put American and British troops on Ukraine’s Russian border and “Sea Breeze” will send US warships within sight of Russian ports. Imagine the response if these acts of provocation, or intimidation, were carried out on America’s borders.

In reclaiming Crimea — which Nikita Kruschev illegally detached from Russia in 1954 – the Russians defended themselves as they have done for almost a century. More than 90 per cent of the population of Crimea voted to return the territory to Russia. Crimea is the home of the Black Sea Fleet and its loss would mean life or death for the Russian Navy and a prize for Nato. Confounding the war parties in Washington and Kiev, Vladimir Putin withdrew troops from the Ukrainian border and urged ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon separatism.

In Orwellian fashion, this has been inverted in the west to the “Russian threat”. Hillary Clinton likened Putin to Hitler. Without irony, right-wing German commentators said as much. In the media, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis are sanitised as “nationalists” or “ultra nationalists”. What they fear is that Putin is skilfully seeking a diplomatic solution, and may succeed. On 27 June, responding to Putin’s latest accommodation – his request to the Russian Parliament to rescind legislation that gave him the power to intervene on behalf of Ukraine’s ethnic Russians – Secretary of State John Kerry issued another of his ultimatums. Russia must “act within the next few hours, literally” to end the revolt in eastern Ukraine. Notwithstanding that Kerry is widely recognised as a buffoon, the serious purpose of these “warnings” is to confer pariah status on Russia and suppress news of the Kiev regime’s war on its own people.

A third of the population of Ukraine are Russian-speaking and bilingual. They have long sought a democratic federation that reflects Ukraine’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland. Separatism is a reaction to the Kiev junta’s attacks on them, causing as many as 110,000 (UN estimate) to flee across the border into Russia. Typically, they are traumatised women and children.

Like Iraq’s embargoed infants, and Afghanistan’s “liberated” women and girls, terrorised by the CIA’s warlords, these ethnic people of Ukraine are media unpeople in the west, their suffering and the atrocities committed against them minimised, or suppressed. No sense of the scale of the regime’s assault is reported in the mainstream western media. This is not unprecedented. Reading again Phillip Knightley’s masterly The First Casualty: the war correspondent as hero, propagandist and mythmaker, I renewed my admiration for the Manchester Guardian’s Morgan Philips Price, the only western reporter to remain in Russia during the 1917 revolution and report the truth of a disastrous invasion by the western allies. Fair-minded and courageous, Philips Price alone disturbed what Knightley calls an anti-Russian “dark silence” in the west.

On 2 May, in Odessa, 41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with police standing by. There is horrifying video evidence. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre as “another bright day in our national history”. In the American and British media, this was reported as a “murky tragedy” resulting from “clashes” between “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) and “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). The New York Times buried it, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic policies of Washington’s new clients. The Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”. Obama congratulated the junta for its “restraint”.

On 28 June, the Guardian devoted most of a page to declarations by the Kiev regime’s “president”, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko. Again, Orwell’s rule of inversion applied. There was no putsch; no war against Ukraine’s minority; the Russians were to blame for everything. “We want to modernise my country,” said Poroshenko. “We want to introduce freedom, democracy and European values. Somebody doesn’t like that. Somebody doesn’t like us for that.”

According to his report, the Guardian’s reporter, Luke Harding, did not challenge these assertions, or mention the Odessa atrocity, the regime’s air and artillery attacks on residential areas, the killing and kidnapping of journalists, the firebombing of an opposition newspaper and his threat to “free Ukraine from dirt and parasites”. The enemy are “rebels”, “militants”, “insurgents”, “terrorists” and stooges of the Kremlin. Summon from history the ghosts of Vietnam, Chile, East Timor, southern Africa, Iraq; note the same tags. Palestine is the lodestone of this unchanging deceit. On 11 July, following the latest Israeli, American equipped slaughter in Gaza – 80 people including six children in one family — an Israeli general writes in the Guardian under the headline, “A necessary show of force”.

In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; it was her Triumph of the Will that reputedly cast Hitler’s spell. I asked her about propaganda in societies that imagined themselves superior. She replied that the “messages” in her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on a “submissive void” in the German population. “Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked. “Everyone,” she replied, “and of course the intelligentsia.”

John Pilger is the author of Freedom Next Time. All his documentary films can be viewed free on his website

03 August, 2014
Johnpilger.com

 

We Shall Live To Tell The Stories Of War Crimes In Gaza

By Hana Baalousha

In all Holywood action films, when the enemy uses a civilian as a human shield, the policeman drops his gun and lets the enemy go in order to save the civilian. The innocent person’s life is always depicted as more important than the enemy’s death.

Clearly these morals are only for movies. The morals on the ground in Gaza, however, are totally different. Israel shoots and bombs children and young people, leaving them to bleed to death in front of their parents while bombarding ambulances that try to reach them.

In this horrendous aggression against Gaza, every Palestinian is a target and age isn’t an issue. As I hold my three-month-old Jolie close to my chest, I recall the pictures of babies her age with face injuries that hide their beauty and innocence, and others dead with amputated limbs, heads emptied from their contents, or burnt bodies.

As I squeeze her little defenseless body between my arms, I hear the voice of my cousin’s husband saying, “I found the leg of my son coming out of the wreckage.”

He lost his pregnant wife and two sons, four and six years old. I recall the picture of a man carrying the parts of his son’s body in a plastic bag, a human body that he raised and cherished had been turned — in a blink of an eye — into a pile of flesh gathered from under the rubble by an army that justifies it by saying “mistakes happen.”

“We’re sorry for any accidental civilian deaths but it’s Hamas that bears complete responsibility for such civilian casualties,” Benjamin Netanyahu has said.

Since 7 July, there have been more than 1,650 Palestinians killed in Gaza. Approximately 1,300 civilians slaughtered by Israel — not Hamas.

Does anyone seriously believe that these deaths were accidental?

No safe place

I recall the pictures of the four Baker family boys, all aged between nine and eleven. Killed by an Israeli missile on 16 July, their bodies were thrown all over the beach in front of a hotel mainly populated by journalists. The kids were playing on the beach in an attempt to take some time out of this chaos and enjoy their childhood. But they were not allowed to do so.

Resistance fighters aren’t stupid enough to launch rockets in front of a hotel where every single person carries a camera around the clock. In Gaza, there is no safe place.

As I comb my baby’s hair with my fingers, I imagine the three kids feeding their pigeons on the roof of their house the next day (17 July). They were killed along with their pigeons.

The voice of a boy about ten years old — or so it appears from his voice in a video clip — echoes in my ears: “Yemma, wen shebshebi?” (“Mom, where are my slippers?”). He shouted this while paramedics searched his house in an attempt to evacuate the family along with any others injured.

With the Israeli warplanes loudly hovering overhead, randomly hitting everywhere and the family fearfully trying to leave the targeted neighborhood in which he lives, his main concern was his slippers. He did not want to run in the street barefoot, and he repeated his question again. He is just a child.
Holiday in Gaza

Two years ago, I started a new job teaching Arabic to native speakers of English in the United Kingdom. My icebreaker on the first day was a question. I asked the students what they did that summer. Some said they spent the holiday visiting family in Jordan or Egypt. Others went on holiday in Europe.

Others even said they went on tour from Jordan to London to Paris. I had to hide my surprise.

I thought, “who are these people?” Definitely not Gazans. This is not how we holiday in Gaza. The best we can do is go to the beach. Not this summer. We get killed there.

Today, I’m trying to imagine what memories of this summer the students I know in Gaza will have to recount. One has lost an arm, and the other has lost a brother. A third has become homeless and a fourth has become an orphan. One may not be able to share his story because he lost his life.

Lost everything

During the onslaught, Ramadan, a month when we Muslims abstain from food and drink from dawn to dusk, came to an end. Eid al-Fitr is the first day after Ramadan, and it is usually a day of celebration.

Mothers cook delicious meals and bake special cookies. Children wear new clothes, buy candy and new toys and go to playgroups; they visit relatives and friends along with their parents to congratulate them for the end of this month which we spent worshipping God.

Children wait for this day all year long. They prepare their new clothes and count the days until they can put them on.

This year, there was no such day. No new clothes. No cookies. No toys. No candy. No playgroups. No family visits. Thousands of houses no longer stood in place. Thousands of families who still had their houses no longer lived in them.

They escaped the Israeli war machine and sheltered in schools. Mothers did not cook or bake luxury foods because, inside the schools, they waited for charitable organizations to send them basic staples. Hundreds of children neither wore new clothes nor bought new toys because they had lost the people who bought them these clothes, and those with whom they usually celebrated.

Some have lost everything, their family and their house. Others had to spend this special day alone on a cold bed in a hospital.

On the first day of Eid, ten children were killed in a playground.

No words can justify what is happening to children today in Gaza. Nothing can justify killing the innocence of our babies and children. And nothing can justify the world’s silence.

As long as this bloodshed continues, the whole world will be an accomplice in these war crimes. As long as we live, we shall not forgive.

And we shall live to tell the story.

Hana Baalousha is a Palestinian from Gaza currently living in the US.

03 August, 2014
The Electronic Intifada

The Experts’ Verdict: Every Israeli Missile Strike Is A War Crime

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: Today’s Guardian includes an article that appears to be excusing Israel of responsibility for the massive death tolll it has inflicted on Palestinian civilians. But, more significantly, it includes a lot of useful – and damning – information about just how “indiscriminate” Israel’s weapons really are. [ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/gaza-civilian-death-toll-military-training-experts ]

This interests me a great deal because I have been warning about problems with the interpretation of international law used by leading human rights groups on this very point since the 2006 Lebanon War.

At that time I got into a dispute with Human Rights Watch’s Middle East policy director, Sarah Leah Whitson. Her organisation argued that Hizbullah was committing war crimes by definition whenever it fired rockets at Israel, even if it hit military targets, because those rockets were primitive and inherently inaccurate.

By contrast, HRW claimed, Israel’s missiles were precise and therefore their use was not inherently inadmissible. Its view was that Israel did not commit war crimes by firing its missiles; the obligation was on observers to show that they had not been used within the rules of war – which is a much harder standard of proof. For more on this debate, see my articles here [ http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2006-09-07/how-human-rights-watch-lost-its-way-in-lebanon/ ] and here [ http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2006-09-25/human-rights-watch-still-missing-the-point/ ].

In practice, HRW’s argument was nonsense, as was clear even in 2006. During that war, Israel dropped millions of cluster munitions – little bomblets that serve effectively as land mines – all over southern Lebanon, endangering the whole civilian population of the area.

But Norman Finkelstein recently pointed out the more general problem with HRW’s argument:

“By this standard, only rich countries, or countries rich enough to purchase high-tech weapons, have a right to defend themselves against high-tech aerial assaults. It is a curious law that would negate the raison d’être of law: the substitution of might by right.”

It may not be entirely surprising that HRW and others interpret international law in a way that serves rich and powerful western states, however many civilians they kill, and criminalises developing states, however few civilians they kill.

The current fighting in Gaza illustrates this point in dramatic fashion. Some 95% of the 64 Israelis who have been killed during the current fighting are soldiers; some 75% of the nearly 1,500 Palestinians who have been killed are civilian.

But comments from experts in the Guardian article add another layer of insight into HRW’s dubious distinctions.

One should ignore the irritating framing used in the article, which seems to suggest that the high Palestinian death toll may be down to human or systems errors. Experts discount this theory in the article and also point out that Israel is often not checking whether its shooting is accurate. In other words, it gives every indication of not taking any precautions to ensure it is hitting only military targets (or rather targets it claims are military in nature). That recklessness makes it fully culpable.

But we also have experts cited here who make the point that much of Israel’s precise weaponry is not accurate at all.

Andrew Exum, a former US army officer and defence department special adviser on the Middle East, who has studied Israel’s military operations, says this:

“There are good strategic reasons to avoid using air power and artillery in these conflicts: they tend to be pretty indiscriminate in their effects and make it difficult for the population under fire to figure out what they’re supposed to do to be safe.”

“Pretty indiscriminate”! So doesn’t that mean Israel was committing war crimes by definition every time it made one of those thousands of air strikes that marked the start of Operation Protective Edge, and that continue to this day?

But it is not just strikes from the air that are the problem. There is more:

“However, military analysts and human rights observers say the IDF is still using unguided, indirect fire with high-explosive shells, which they argue is inappropriate for a densely populated area like Gaza …

“[Israel’s 155m howitzer] shells have a lethal radius of 50 to 150 metres and causes injury up to 300 metres from its point of impact. Furthermore, such indirect-fire artillery (meaning it is fired out of direct sight of the target) has a margin of error of 200 to 300 metres.”

Read that again: a margin of error of up to 300 metres, plus a lethal radius of up to 150 metres and an injury radius of 300 metres. So that’s a killing and injury zone of close to half a kilometre from the intended “precise” site of impact – in a territory that is only a few kilometres wide and long. In short, one of the main shells Israel is using in Gaza is completely imprecise.

Set aside what Israel is trying to do in Gaza. Let us assume it is actually trying to hit military targets rather than being either reckless about hitting civilian targets or deliberately trying to hit civilians, as much of the evidence might suggest.

Even if we assume total good faith on Israel’s part that it is trying to hit only Hamas and other military sites, it is clear it cannot do so even with the advanced weaponry it has. The inherent imprecision of its arsenal is compounded many fold by the fact that it is using these weapons in densely built-up areas.

So when are we going to hear HRW or the United Nation’s Navi Pillay stop talking about proportionality or Israel’s potential war crimes, and admit Israel is committing war crimes by definition – right now, as you read this.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

01 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org

Gaza Genocide And Arab Fratricide

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

Lets not mince words. Israelis are committing genocide in Gaza. But the United Nations is loath to use the “G” word and it us using the “C” (condemn) word instead. Why? Money talks. The top financier of the United Nations is America with a whopping 22.00% in direct funds (followed by Japan 10.83%, Germany 7.14%, France 5.59%, and GB 5.18%), if the United Nations called out the genocide in Gaza, its top financier would have to be punished for its complicity.

According to Article 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide , persons committing genocide or complicity in genocide shall be punish ed “ whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.” The United States not only supports and funds the ongoing genocide in Gaza, replenishes Israel with more funds and weaponry, but it also uses its political clout to enable Israel to continue its ruthless crimes against humanity.

While many have not been shy about calling these crimes genocide, they have come under attack for using the “G” word. Is genocide an appropriate term to use? Well, it is if one has respect for international law and the rules of the genocide convention. Article 2 of the Convention clearly spells out:

“In the present Convention, genocide means any [emphasis added]of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part [emphasis added], a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• (a) Killing members of the group;

• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

There is little argument and ample evidence that Israel’s actions against the people of Gaza in particular, and Palestine as whole, constitute the term genocide.

While the pro-Israel Western media has been unable to conceal the daily, indiscriminate killing of anything that breathes and moves in Gaza (Article 2a) and the terrorization of children, the young and the old (mental harm) with the constant bombardment, bulldozers, and drones (Article 2b), the media has been apt at hiding the horrific effects of the blockade – the deliberate infliction of condition of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part (Article 2c).

In 2010, Amnesty International’s report Suffocating Gaza – the Israeli blockade’s effects on Palestinians detailed the reality of life in Gaza including restricting the entry of basic goods, food and fuel . On January 28, 2014, the daily Haaretz ran an article entitled “ In Gaza, water – and time – are running out; Experts say Gaza water shortage likely to bring about illness.” The situation has only exasperated.

Yet, in spite of the evidence, the United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-Moon, ignoring all other atrocities, calls an attack on a UN school which killed innocent civilians “outrageous”. Perhaps he ought to be reminded of, and heed his predecessor, Kofi Annan who acknowledged responsibility for not having done more to prevent or stop the Rwanda genocide. In his July 2004 address to the Commission on Human Rights , Mr. Annan said:

“If we are serious about preventing or stopping genocide in future, we must not be held back by legalistic arguments about whether a particular atrocity meets the definition of genocide or not. By the time we are certain, it may often be too late to act. We must recognize the signs of approaching or possible genocide, so that we can act in time to avert it.”

Ban ki-Moon must have missed the speech and the memo; although in July 2012, he did appoint Adam Dieng of Senegal as his Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide – only to refrain from the “G” word it would seem.

The American government is not alone in its complicity in genocide or in its incitement. Mainstream media networks and commentators who paint a picture of an Israel “self-defense” to give room to the continued genocide are complicit and must be punished. But in the opinion of this writer, the vilest partners in this crime are the Egyptian and Saudi leaders committing fratricide.

Egypt’s military coup leader and the illegitimate president of Egypt, al-Sisi, whom the Israel ambassador called a ‘ hero for all Jews’ , has trapped the Gazans so that Israel can eliminate them all. Genocide will prove to be lucrative business for the Egyptians. Piping Israeli gas (stolen from Gaza) to liquefaction plants in Egypt to beconverted into LNG and exported across the world.

[SIDE BAR: In 2009, David Wurmser writing for the Jewish policy Center opined “ Israel and its neighbor now sit atop roughly two years’ worth of European consumption”. He further suggests “even modest amounts of Israeli gas exports can carry significant strategic leverage”. Citing Europe’s gas vulnerability, Wurmser wrote “Europe’s grim reality could represent a unique window of opportunity for Israel to nail down long-term agreements and align export policy with a broader effort to reset Israeli-European relations.”

The MH 17 was brought down four hours after Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza. Europeans reluctant to enforce further sanctions on Russia was no longer so reluctant. END SIDE BAR.]

Israel’s interest in Egypt and its opposition to the elected president of the Egyptian people, Mohammad Morsi, went beyond a gas transit and the Palestinians. On May 30, 2013, The Times of Israel reported that the construction on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (on the Blue Nile) had sparked a major diplomatic crisis with Egypt – a concern shared with Saudi Arabia and its plans to divert water from the Nile. In 2012, it was reported that Saudi Arabia had claimed a stake in the Nile.

The Saudi regime showered the coup government with aid after the overthrow of Morsi. In January, Egypt received a further $4 billion to Egypt, and in May, Saudi Arabia showered the Egyptians with another $3billion while Egypt trapped Gazans to be slaughtered by Israel.

Never has the world witnessed so much impunity. The United Nations refuses to acknowledge genocide and takes no part in preventing or punishing it. The silence of those guarding our rights and our laws makes them the silent partners in this crime against humanity. As Jonathan Swift said: “ “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups.

01 August, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

US Resupplies Israel With Weapons As Gaza Death Toll Hits 1390

By Ma’an News Agency

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The United States confirmed it had restocked Israel’s supplies of ammunition, hours after finally sharpening its tone to condemn an attack on a United Nations school in Gaza that killed 16 people sheltering there.

Israeli airstrikes and shelling continued overnight and into the morning leaving 27 Gazans dead and dozens injured, bringing the 24-day death toll to 1,390 with 8,000 injured, according to the Ministry of Health. The Israeli military confirmed that 20 “sites” had been hit overnight.

The dead included six people, including Majdi Fseifis, 22, Hani Abduallah Abu Mustafa, 44, Naji Abdullah Abu Mustafa, 31, Hanan Youssef Abu Tiema, Maher Najjar, and Mahmoud Fuad Najjar killed in a bombing that hit a crowd of people near a mosque in the Abasan area east of Khan Younis.

Two were killed in an Israeli strike on a car, identified as Hamza al-Haddad and Ibrahim al-Haddad.

Abudallah Abu Shabab, 20, and Alaa Alwah, 22, succumbed to wounds they sustained in Gaza City attacks.

Also in Khan Younis, one Palestinian was killed and four were wounded in a strike that hit a motorcycle in the Ma’an area south of the city.

Mahdiya Suleiman Omar Abu Luli, 58, was killed in an Israeli strike on Khan Younis as well.

Maha Abd al-Nabi Salim Abu Hilal was killed in a strike on her home that also “seriously” injured her husband and three children. She was brought to Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital.

Suleiman Baraka, 31, and Aref Baraka, 58, were also killed in a strike, and their bodies were both brought to the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

At least 55 were wounded after the al-Hamoud house in Beit Lahiya was hit at dawn. Injuries were also reported during an Israeli strike on the home of the al-Haw family as well as against Block 7 in Jabaliya.

Israeli aircraft also targeted a house east of al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip belonging to Abu Abdullah Abu Huwayshal, destroying it completely.

Violent clashes broke out between Palestinian fighters and Israelis forces in the Nabahin field east of al-Bureij.

The dead overnight included Yusuf Ibrahim, 19, son of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs who died of wounds sustained in an Israeli attack on Nuseirat refugee camp the day before. Ahmad al-Luh died early Thursday in al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital as a result of injuries as well.

The deaths in the besieged Gaza Strip come on the 24th day of an Israeli assault which has nearly topped the death toll from the 2008-9 Cast Lead, the bloodiest attack on the area in memory when Israel killed 1,400 in 22 days.

Israel launched the current assault — called Operation Protective Edge — in early July as part of what it said was an effort to combat rockets, but has since changed the focus to destroying what it say are tunnels dug from Gaza into Israel.

Rocket fire into Israel increased in late June and early July after Israel launched a sweeping assault on Hamas across the West Bank, killing nearly a dozen, injuring more than 100, and leading to more than 1,000 arrests, along with nightly airstrikes on Gaza.

Hamas has insisted that any ceasefire include an end to the eight-year Israeli blockade, which has severely crippled the tiny coastal enclave’s economy and led to recurring shortages of basic goods.

Israeli authorities, meanwhile, have signaled their refusal to end the assault without inflicting heavy damage on Palestinian military capabilities.

No blame for Israel

While both the White House and the State Department condemned the shelling of the UN-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Wednesday in which at least 16 Palestinians were killed, neither would assign blame to staunch US ally Israel.

“Obviously nothing justifies the killing of innocent civilians seeking shelter in a UN facility,” deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf acknowledged, in some of the toughest US comments since the start of the 23-day fighting in the Gaza Strip.

“Innocent Palestinians seeking refuge in these schools should not have shells dropped on them, should not come under attack.”

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said Israeli forces had hit the school, which had been sheltering some 3,300 Gazans.

But despite heated exchanges with reporters, Harf stressed that “we don’t know for certain who shelled this school, we need to get all the facts.”

National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also condemned “those responsible for hiding weapons in United Nations facilities in Gaza” and warned of rising fears that thousands of Palestinians who have been told by Israel to leave their homes increasingly had nowhere to go in the blockaded narrow coastal strip.

US officials also warned that patience with “crazy” Israeli criticism of would-be-peacemaker John Kerry had snapped.

New ammunition for Israel

The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defense Department approving the sale just three days later.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.

“This defense sale is consistent with those objectives.”

Two of the requested munitions came from a little-known stockpile of ammunition stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use. The War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel is estimated to be worth $1 billion.

The decision to provide ammunition to Israel could fuel controversy, coming just as Washington expresses growing concern about the deaths of more than 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, since the Israeli operation began on July 8.

Kirby said Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel told his Israeli counterpart that the United States was concerned about the deadly consequences of the spiraling conflict, including a “worsening humanitarian situation” in Gaza, and called for a ceasefire and end to hostilities.

He also renewed calls for the disarmament of Gaza’s Hamas rulers and “all terrorist groups.”

Relations between Israel and its staunch ally the United States have plunged in recent days after Kerry returned from a mission to the Middle East to try to broker a ceasefire between the Israelis and Hamas militants.

Anonymous Israeli officials have hit out at Kerry’s truce proposal, calling it “a strategic terrorist attack” and criticizing it for being a “Hamas wish-list” including moves to lift a long-standing Israeli blockade of Gaza while failing to address Israel’s security concerns, such as Hamas rocket fire and a network of underground tunnels.

And on Tuesday a fabricated transcript of a call between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went viral on social media.

Out to hurt ties?

Stressing the “unprecedented” US support for Israel, Harf hit out at Israeli elites’ “offensive and absurd” claims that Kerry backs Hamas.

She rubbished the fake transcript as “complete crap,” adding “there’s clearly people … who are putting out false and defamatory and absurd information.”

“I don’t know what else you can assume about the intentions except that they’re designed to hurt our relationship,” she added.

Washington, which has provided billions in military aid to Israel, including funding the Iron Dome shield protecting the country from Hamas rockets, was “very committed” to Israel’s security, which is “why these vicious attacks on the secretary are just crazy,” she added.

And US lawmakers are working on a package of additional military support from Washington to commit $225 million for the Iron Dome missile defense shield.

More than 100 people died in Israeli strikes across Gaza Wednesday, medics said, including 17 at a crowded marketplace, sending the Palestinian toll from the 23 days of fighting to 1,363.

On the Israeli side, the conflict has cost the lives of 56 Israeli soldiers, and two civilians, as well as that of a Thai national.

31 July, 2014
Maannews.net

 

Flight MH17: What You’re Not Being Told

By SCG

Within minutes of the crash of MH17, the U.S. government and the Western media pinned the responsibility Russia, long before investigators had time to even arrive at the scene, much less provide any actual conclusions.

The geopolitical implications of this event are immense. Depending on how much mileage Washington can get out of it, the downing of flight MH17 could end up being pivotal.

Anyone who knows their history, knows that media coverage of events like these often lay the psychological groundwork for war.

So who was REALLY responsible for the downing of flight MH17? First let’s start by asking some obvious questions.

Why was flight MH17 routed over directly over a War Zone? This was not its normal flight path. In fact, it was 300 miles off course. Normally, planes this flight path is significantly further south. The decision to allow MH17 to fly over Donetsk was the decision of the authorities in Kiev.

To fully understand the implications of this decision, we have to realize that for the past month and a half, Eastern Ukraine has been an Active War Zone.

In THIS context, Kiev’s decision to route a civilian airliner 300 miles north of its normal flight path, putting it directly over an Active War Zone – a War Zone where they, themselves were the primary aggressor, wasn’t just stupid – it was CRIMINAL.

Remember, the guys in Kiev are the US-EU puppets, installed last Spring.

Eastern Ukraine became a War Zone because they held referendum to declare their independence from the Western-installed government in Kiev. They had a massive voter turn-out (much higher, in fact than the official elections that Washington endorsed).

Kiev responded by attempting to bomb them into submission. The so called “international community” has just stood by and watched.

So let’s tread carefully and just ask a few more questions that these so-called journalists in the mainstream media are neglecting to ask. For example: Why hasn’t the US government released its satellite pictures of the area right after the event?

Russia has released many satellite images. These first two images (seen in the video, above) are dated July 14, and according to Russia they show Buk missile launch systems located about 8 kilometers northwest of the city of Lugansk (an area under the control of the Western-backed Ukrainian military).

The next two images were taken on July 17th. The first one shows that the Ukrainian military’s Buk systems are no longer in their previous position, and the last image shows them in a new position 5 kilometers north of Donetsk.

Washington has not responded to this information, and interestingly has lowered its tone since.

On July 21 Russia also released a radar image showing what they claimed to be an SU-27 fighter jet in close proximity to flight MH17. Ukraine had previously denied that there were any military aircraft near MH17, but they then reversed their story and said that the SU-27 was “escorting” the flight.

Investigative journalist Robert Parry, who’s best known for his work exposing the Iran Contra scandal in the 1980s has published an article stating that one of his trusted sources has informed him that “US intelligence agencies do have detailed
satellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms.”

Does this mean that we should just take Robert Parry and his source at their word? No, of course not.

But by the same token, why is the Western media taking the US government’s word at face value without demanding evidence?

Washington is a den of pathological liars. Their word is less than worthless, and it certainly doesn’t count as proof. Robert Parry’s account, on the other hand is validated by the satellite images released by Russia, and like it or not, this is the strongest evidence that has been released so far.

If Washington actually had evidence to support their case, don’t you think they would have released it by now?

You might be thinking, “If any of this is true, why on Earth would the US go out of their way to target Russia like this? This is really extreme.” Might it have something to do with the fact that just this month, the BRICS nations met and put together an international development bank specifically designed to rival the World Bank and the IMF? Could it be because Russia is now openly pushing for the de-dollarization of international trade?

Russia poses a threat to the dollar. That’s all the motive the US government has ever needed. – See more at: http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/videos/neocon-nwo-ww3/flight-mh17-what-youre-not-being-told.html#sthash.eoFVFDVb.dpuf

28 June 2014
Heavily Redacted by Alexandra Bruce
Sources and Full Transcript here:
http://scgnews.com/flight-mh17-what-youre-not-being-told

 

WORLD CONDEMNS ISRAEL

By Sara Flounders

Palestine resists genocide

The crimes are staggering, the destruction massive. Israel is creating a 3-kilometer strip of scorched earth around Gaza City that eats up about 44 percent of the Gaza Strip, already the most densely populated place on earth. (U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)

After more than three weeks of ground attacks, Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza using aerial bombardment, tank rounds and prohibited weapons. By United Nations estimates, 80 percent of the dead are civilians. UNICEF says 226 children have been killed and 1,516 injured.

Whole neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Some 3,175 homes have been destroyed, along with five hospitals and six clinics. Sixty-four mosques and two churches were bombed. The al-Wafa Geriatric Hospital was completely leveled.

Doctors charge that Israel may be using weapons such as white phosphorous, flechettes (small pointed metal darts in tank shells) and Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). “The injuries we receive are unfamiliar to us,” said Muhammad Duaidar, a doctor in the intensive care unit at al-Aqsa hospital. “We have noticed bodies that look melted. We are calling for investigations into such injuries, which we have not [seen] in previous Israeli attacks.” (electronicintifada.net, July 28)

Israeli tank rounds killed 16 Palestinians at a U.N. school in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after hundreds of students sought shelter there. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said U.N. staff were among the casualties and that more than 100,000 Gazans have sought refuge in U.N. facilities.

Israel denied responsibility for all these attacks, claiming Palestinians are firing on their own people or misfiring rockets.

Determined to resist

Yet Israel’s brutal offensive has failed in its goal of destroying the collective will of the Palestinian people to resist.

Gaza, a flat, sandy strip of land the size of Brooklyn or Detroit, is an open-air concentration camp. Israel deploys high-tech drones, overflights and tracking of every electronic message; it uses torture to extract information. Yet it hasn’t been able to stop the missiles smuggled into Gaza or the hidden tunnels. The ability of resistance forces to carry out ambushes and sabotage has been a blow to the Israeli military machine.

Israel’s siege of Gaza has lasted for eight years. It has waged three wars there in the last five years. In this offensive, 52 Israeli soldiers have been killed so far by the resistance — three times the number in earlier attacks.

Palestinians have carried out successful military operations inside Israel at least six times. U.S. and European airlines suspended their Israeli flights and landings for 24 hours in fear of Gaza’s missiles.

The Israeli war on Gaza would be impossible without total U.S. support. This is as much a U.S. war as those against Iraq and Afghanistan. It is waged with U.S. equipment, dollars, and political and diplomatic support.

Secretary of State John Kerry has been frantically racing through the region trying to shore up Israel’s position. He is not engaged in talking up a ceasefire out of concern for the Palestinian people.

Hamas, the elected leadership of Gaza, is holding out in order to end Israel’s blockade. (See workers.org, “Hamas’ conditions for ceasefire.”) Their fight is for the very survival of Gaza.

The population is united around a minimum goal: Israel must end its blockade of imports and exports. All armed groups in Gaza are cooperating. With so many armed fighters, the government could not survive without this unity.

Israel agreed in 2012 to a ceasefire. It then violated every provision of the agreement, kept the strangling blockade in place and rearrested Palestinians it had released in a prisoner exchange.

This July 27 it declared a ceasefire and then announced it would continue with “limited operations” to clear tunnels. On July 28, it struck Gaza’s major hospital, al-Shifa. That’s when it also bombed the Shati refugee camp and killed 10 people, including eight children playing on a swing set.

Isolation in the face of outrage

Searing images that can’t be kept out of the world media are stoking international outrage against Israel. U.S. imperialism is virtually alone in backing Tel Aviv.

When the attack began, not only the U.S., but all the imperialist powers of Europe, plus the Gulf state monarchies and the Egyptian military dictatorship, supported it. But mass pressure from below has forced many states to recalibrate their public position.

On July 23, 29 members of the U.N. Human Rights Council voted to launch an independent commission to investigate violations of human rights unleashed by Israel’s assault on Gaza. Only the U.S. voted no. Washington’s European allies abstained.

The council condemned the “widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms” arising from Israeli military operations since July 13 and called for an immediate ceasefire. It demanded that Israel immediately reopen the occupied Gaza Strip and called upon the international community to provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance and services to the Palestinian people.

Uprising in West Bank

As the assault on Gaza intensified, tens of thousands marched in cities across the occupied West Bank on July 24 and 25, despite checkpoints, soldiers and settler/snipers gunning down demonstrators in Hebron. Nine Palestinians were killed near the West Bank cities of Nablus and Hebron. At the Qalandia checkpoint, Israeli soldiers shot approximately 200 protesters. The wounded were rushed to Ramallah Hospital where two died.

This uprising in the West Bank was the largest protest there since massive repression crushed the 2000-2005 Palestinian uprising, called the Second Intifada.

Among Israelis, a small but outspoken opposition rejects racism and brutal repression. Some 130 young people face jail for signing statements and refusing to enlist in the military. Udi Segal, a 19 year old from Kibbutz Tuval, was jailed on July 28 after saying he refused to accept a life filled with violence, occupation, fear and hostility.

Fifty former Israeli soldiers refuse to be part of the reserves and say they will support all those who resist being called up.

A large “Stop the War” rally in Tel Aviv held on July 26 by Palestinian and Israeli members of Combatants for Peace was attacked by right-wing Israelis. Israeli vigilante groups are targeting Palestinians and Jewish leftists. But Jews Against Genocide went to the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem to honor Palestinian children being systematically murdered.

The war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza today are the latest stage of an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Indigenous people of this land.

Dire warnings

Outrage is growing against U.S. imperialism for backing this criminal onslaught.

Lebanese resistance leader Hassan Nasrallah declared at a massive rally in Beirut that Israel is on a path toward “suicide” in Gaza and praised the Palestinian resistance.

A July 22 article by Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, was titled “Israel is being defeated in Gaza as it was in Lebanon.”

Anti-Zionist Israeli Gilad Atzmon writes: “The IDF’s defeat in Gaza leaves the Jewish State with no hope. The moral is simple. If you insist on living on someone else’s land, military might is an essential ingredient to discourage the dispossessed from acting to reclaim their rights. The level of IDF casualties and the number of bodies of Israeli elite soldiers returning home in coffins send a clear message to both Israelis and Palestinians.” (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com, July 21)

The rulers of Israel and the U.S. arrogantly assumed they had politically isolated Hamas through the coup in Egypt and war in Syria. Israel was determined to break the announced unity government of Hamas and Fatah and the armed opposition in Gaza.

This heroic resistance will resonate globally. It will strengthen the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. It is urgent that everyone opposed to war and oppression stand up for Palestine NOW!

28 July 2014