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By Vijay Prashad

Sabah, Libya, is an oasis town at the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. To stand at the edge of the town and look southward into the desert toward Niger is forbidding. The sand stretches past infinity, and if there is a wind, it lifts the sand to cover the sky. Cars come down the road past the al-Baraka Mosque into the town. Some of these cars come from Algeria (although the border is often closed) or from Djebel al-Akakus, the mountains that run along the western edge of Libya. Occasionally, a white Toyota truck filled with men from the Sahel region of Africa and from western Africa makes its way into Sabah. Miraculously, these men have made it across the desert, which is why many of them clamber out of their truck and fall to the ground in desperate prayer. Sabah means “morning” or “promise” in Arabic, which is a fitting word for this town that grips the edge of the massive, growing, and dangerous Sahara.

For the past decade, the United Nations International Organization of Migration (IOM) has collected data on the deaths of migrants. This Missing Migrants Project publishes its numbers each year, and so this April, it has released its latest figures. For the past ten years, the IOM says that 64,371 women, men, and children have died while on the move (half of them have died in the Mediterranean Sea). On average, each year since 2014, 4,000 people have died. However, in 2023, the number rose to 8,000. One in three migrants who flee a conflict zone die on the way to safety. These numbers, however, are grossly deflated, since the IOM simply cannot keep track of what they call “irregular migration.” For instance, the IOM admits, “[S]ome experts believe that more migrants die while crossing the Sahara Desert than in the Mediterranean Sea.”

Sandstorms and Gunmen

Abdel Salam, who runs a small business in the town, pointed out into the distance and said, “In that direction is Toummo,” the Libyan border town with Niger. He sweeps his hands across the landscape and says that in the region between Niger and Algeria is the Salvador Pass, and it is through that gap that drugs, migrants, and weapons move back and forth, a trade that enriches many of the small towns in the area, such as Ubari. With the erosion of the Libyan state since the NATO war in 2011, the border is largely porous and dangerous. It was from here that the al-Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar moved his troops from northern Mali into the Fezzan region of Libya in 2013 (he was said to have been killed in Libya in 2015). It is also the area dominated by the al-Qaeda cigarette smugglers, who cart millions of Albanian-made Cleopatra cigarettes across the Sahara into the Sahel (Belmokhtar, for instance, was known as the “Marlboro Man” for his role in this trade). An occasional Toyota truck makes its way toward the city. But many of them vanish into the desert, a victim of the terrifying sandstorms or of kidnappers and thieves. No one can keep track of these disappearances, since no one even knows that they have happened.

Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated Io Capitano (2023) tells the story of two Senegalese boys—Seydou and Moussa—who go from Senegal to Italy through Mali, Niger, and then Libya, where they are incarcerated before they flee across the Mediterranean to Italy in an old boat. Garrone built the story around the accounts of several migrants, including Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou (from Côte d’Ivoire, now an activist who lives in Caserta, Italy). The film does not shy away from the harsh beauty of the Sahara, which claims the lives of migrants who are not yet seen as migrants by Europe. The focus of the film is on the journey to Europe, although most Africans migrate within the continent (21 million Africans live in countries in which they were not born). Io Capitano ends with a helicopter flying above the ship as it nears the Italian coastline; it has already been pointed out that the film does not acknowledge racist policies that will greet Seydou and Moussa. What is not shown in the film is how European countries have tried to build a fortress in the Sahel region to prevent migration northwards.

Open-Air Tomb

More and more migrants have sought the Niger-Libya route after the fall of the Libyan state in 2011 and the crackdown on the Moroccan-Spanish border at Melilla and Ceuta. A decade ago, the European states turned their attention to this route, trying to build a European “wall” in the Sahara against the migrants. The point was to stop the migrants before they get to the Mediterranean Sea, where they become an embarrassment to Europe. France, leading the way, brought together five of the Sahel states (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) in 2014 to create the G5 Sahel. In 2015, under French pressure, the government of Niger passed Law 2015-36 that criminalized migration through the country. G5 Sahel and the law in Niger came alongside European Union funding to provide surveillance technologies—illegal in Europe—to be used in this band of countries against migrants. In 2016, the United States built the world’s largest drone base in Agadez, Niger, as part of this anti-migrant program. In May 2023, Border Forensics studied the paths of the migrants and found that due to the law in Niger and these other mechanisms the Sahara had become an “open-air tomb.”

Over the past few years, however, all of this has begun to unravel. The coup d’états in Guinea (2021), Mali (2021), Burkina Faso (2022), and Niger (2023) have resulted in the dismantling of G5 Sahel as well as the demand for the removal of French and U.S. troops. In November 2023, the government of Niger revoked Law 2015-36 and freed those who had been accused of being smugglers.

Abdourahamane, a local grandee, stood beside the Grand Mosque in Agadez and talked about the migrants. “The people who come here are our brothers and sisters,” he said. “They come. They rest. They leave. They do not bring us problems.” The mosque, built of clay, bears within it the marks of the desert, but it is not transient. Abdourahamane told me that it goes back to the 16th century, long before modern Europe was born. Many of the migrants come here to get their blessings before they buy sunglasses and head across the desert, hoping that they make it through the sands and find their destiny somewhere across the horizon.

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

6 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jordan Shilton

In the aftermath of Monday’s targeted killing of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers by the Israel Defence Forces, the White House and media outlets internationally have gone into overdrive to convince everyone that a significant shift in Israel’s policy towards Gaza’s Palestinians is taking place. Friday’s announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an additional border crossing for aid deliveries to the north of the Gaza Strip will be opened and temporary deliveries will be allowed to depart Israel’s Ashdod port was widely reported as a newfound humanitarian commitment to 2.3 million starving Gazans.

In reality, the move is a face-saving gesture aimed at quelling an eruption of popular outrage around the world to Israel’s barbaric war crimes, while allowing US imperialism to hypocritically posture as a restraining force in the ongoing genocide. Netanyahu’s announcement was closely coordinated with Washington, coming just hours after a phone call between Biden and Netanyahu. Media reports presented the call as tense, with Biden supposedly urging the adoption of “specific, concrete and measurable” steps to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. However, leading Biden administration officials, including National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, made clear that there would be no change to the supply of weaponry to Israel and that Washington’s support was “iron clad.” Referring to Netanyahu’s announcement later Friday, Biden bluntly told a reporter, “I asked them to do what they’re doing.”

The opening of an extra border crossing and a temporary maritime route into Gaza is a moot point if there are no aid workers to deliver desperately needed food and medical supplies. The Israel Defence Forces stopped all aid deliveries to northern Gaza by the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) last week. Following the massacre of the aid workers, WCK, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have suspended aid operations in Gaza. WCK was supposed to have played a central part in the maritime aid corridor from Cyprus that was touted by the Biden administration in March, when it announced plans to construct a floating dock off the enclave’s coast. The Cypriot government stated Monday that a ship organised by WCK returned from Gaza without offloading the 332 tons of humanitarian aid it was carrying.

Data from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli government agency that controls access to Gaza, reveal that WCK was responsible for 60 percent of non-governmental aid deliveries in Gaza before it suspended its operations. ANERA reportedly delivered an average of 150,000 meals each day since October. The UAE has supplied 25 percent of all aid from foreign countries.

Other aid organisations still operating have underscored that it is more or less impossible to maintain their activities. “We go on a mission where we are told we would be safe and then we are delayed for hours, our staff is interrogated, they are put in harm’s way or they are killed and that’s not acceptable,” commented Tess Ingram, a spokeswoman for UNICEF, the UN children’s agency.

Even if one accepts Israel’s propaganda about aid deliveries under Netanyahu’s latest announcement, they will continue to fall well short of what is required. Israel Army Radio reported that 350 aid trucks could now reach Gaza each day, up from the current level of 200. This would amount to just 70 percent of the 500 aid trucks that arrived in Gaza each day prior to Israel’s assault. The claim that 200 trucks are currently arriving each day is rejected by independent sources, with Oxfam stating that an average of 105 trucks reach Gaza daily.

Since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal onslaught, government officials have made no secret about their intention to ethnically cleanse Gaza and use starvation as a weapon of war. From Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s infamous remark describing Palestinians as “human animals,” to former Israeli National Security Council head Giora Eiland’s statement that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers,” and Finance Minister Bezalil Smotrich’s demand for “the voluntary emigration of the Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world,” the Zionist regime has left no doubt about its determination to kill a large portion of Gaza’s population and forcibly expel the rest.

In this context, the most plausible explanation is that the massacre of the WCK workers was a carefully considered decision taken at the highest levels of the Israeli state in consultation with Washington aimed at sabotaging aid supplies into Gaza and thereby escalating the genocide. The three clearly marked vehicles were struck separately along a 2.4-kilometre stretch of road. Biden and Netanyahu are now trying to manage the diplomatic fallout.

According to OXFAM, the approximately 300,000 people believed to be stranded in northern Gaza have been surviving on just 12 percent of the recommended daily calorie intake since January. The 245 calories consumed on average equate to less than a can of fava beans. For the Gaza Strip as a whole, aid deliveries allowed in by Israel since the start of its bombardment account for just 41 percent of the recommended calories required by the entire population. The aid organisation’s 3 April press release noted, “The Israeli government has known for nearly two decades exactly how many daily calories are needed to prevent malnutrition in Gaza, calculating this according to both age and gender within its Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Line document. Not only did it use a higher calculation of 2,279 calories per person, it also took into account domestic food production in Gaza, which the Israeli military has now virtually obliterated.”

Figures from the UN and Palestinian Red Crescent Society estimate that 50,000 children are acutely malnourished. Malnourishment has claimed the lives of 31 children so far, with the figure expected to rise as famine sets in. Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar stated what is becoming increasingly obvious to millions of people around the world, “Israel is making deliberate choices to starve civilians. Imagine what it is like, not only to be trying to survive on 245 calories day in, day out, but also having to watch your children or elderly relatives do the same. All whilst displaced, with little to no access to clean water or a toilet, knowing most medical support has gone and under the constant threat of drones and bombs.”

The bombs supplied to Israel by US imperialism and its European allies continue to rain down on Gaza. AT least 54 Palestinians were confirmed dead in the previous 24 hours Friday, taking the official death toll to 33,091. A strike that demolished a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza later in the day killed three. According to UNRWA’s latest figures, 62 percent of all residences in Gaza have either been destroyed or damaged since the genocide began.

Amid such horrific crimes, the imperialist powers remain fully committed to participating in the “final solution” of the Palestinian question. American imperialism supports the genocide as part of a broader plan to wage a region-wide war with Israel’s support against Iran with the aim of consolidating its dominance over the energy-rich Middle East.

At a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council Friday, both the United States and Germany voted against a resolution calling for a halt of arms sales to Israel. The non-binding declaration, which passed by 28 votes to 6 with 13 abstentions, also urged that Israel be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Washington and Berlin cannot support such propositions because any genuine war crimes tribunal would have to include President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, Chancellor Scholz, and Foreign Minister Baerbock alongside Netanyahu in the dock. While the Biden Administration has delivered over 100 shipments of high-powered weaponry to Israel since October, Germany increased its weapons shipments ten-fold to Israel after Netanyahu’s fascistic government launched the genocide. On Monday and Tuesday next week, the International court of Justice in The Hague will hold hearings in a case brought by Nicaragua accusing Germany of complicity in genocide due to its arms shipments to Israel and declarations by government officials of unconditional support for the Zionist regime as it massacred civilians.

6 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nick Turse

Dressed in green military fatigues and a blue garrison cap, Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to local television last month to criticize the United States and sever the long-standing military partnership between the two countries. “The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees,” he said, insisting that their 12-year-old security pact violated Niger’s constitution.

Another sometime Nigerien spokesperson, Insa Garba Saidou, put it in blunter terms: “The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer.”

The announcements came as terrorism in the West African Sahel has spiked and in the wake of a visit to Niger by a high-level American delegation, including Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee and General Michael Langley, chief of U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM. Niger’s repudiation of its ally is just the latest blow to Washington’s sputtering counterterrorism efforts in the region. In recent years, longstanding U.S. military partnerships with Burkina Faso and Mali have also been curtailed following coups by U.S.-trained officers. Niger was, in fact, the last major bastion of American military influence in the West African Sahel.

Such setbacks there are just the latest in a series of stalemates, fiascos, or outright defeats that have come to typify America’s Global War on Terror. During 20-plus years of armed interventions, U.S. military missions have been repeatedly upended across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, including a sputtering stalemate in Somalia, an intervention-turned-blowback-engine in Libya, and outright implosions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This maelstrom of U.S. defeat and retreat has left at least 4.5 million people dead, including an estimated 940,000 from direct violence, more than 432,000 of them civilians, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. As many as 60 million people have also been displaced due to the violence stoked by America’s “forever wars.”

President Biden has both claimed that he’s ended those wars and that the United States will continue to fight them for the foreseeable future — possibly forever — “to protect the people and interests of the United States.” The toll has been devastating, particularly in the Sahel, but Washington has largely ignored the costs borne by the people most affected by its failing counterterrorism efforts.

“Reducing Terrorism” Leads to a 50,000% Increase in… Yes!… Terrorism

Roughly 1,000 U.S. military personnel and civilian contractors are deployed to Niger, most of them near the town of Agadez at Air Base 201 on the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Known to locals as “Base Americaine,” that outpost has been the cornerstone of an archipelago of U.S. military bases in the region and is the key to America’s military power projection and surveillance efforts in North and West Africa. Since the 2010s, the U.S. has sunk roughly a quarter-billion dollars into that outpost alone.

Washington has been focused on Niger and its neighbors since the opening days of the Global War on Terror, pouring military aid into the nations of West Africa through dozens of “security cooperation” efforts, among them the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, a program designed to “counter and prevent violent extremism” in the region. Training and assistance to local militaries offered through that partnership has alone cost America more than $1 billion.

Just prior to his recent visit to Niger, AFRICOM’s General Langley went before the Senate Armed Services Committee to rebuke America’s longtime West African partners. “During the past three years, national defense forces turned their guns against their own elected governments in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger,” he said. “These juntas avoid accountability to the peoples they claim to serve.”

Langley did not mention, however, that at least 15 officers who benefited from American security cooperation have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the Global War on Terror. They include the very nations he named: Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, and 2021); and Niger (2023). In fact, at least five leaders of a July coup in Niger received U.S. assistance, according to an American official. When they overthrew that country’s democratically elected president, they, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as governors.

Langley went on to lament that, while coup leaders invariably promise to defeat terrorist threats, they fail to do so and then “turn to partners who lack restrictions in dealing with coup governments… particularly Russia.” But he also failed to lay out America’s direct responsibility for the security freefall in the Sahel, despite more than a decade of expensive efforts to remedy the situation.

“We came, we saw, he died,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joked after a U.S.-led NATO air campaign helped overthrow Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the longtime Libyan dictator, in 2011. President Barack Obama hailed the intervention as a success, even as Libya began to slip into near-failed-state status. Obama would later admit that “failing to plan for the day after” Qaddafi’s defeat was the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

As the Libyan leader fell, Tuareg fighters in his service looted his regime’s weapons caches, returned to their native Mali, and began to take over the northern part of that nation. Anger in Mali’s armed forces over the government’s ineffective response resulted in a 2012 military coup led by Amadou Sanogo, an officer who learned English in Texas, and underwent infantry-officer basic training in Georgia, military-intelligence instruction in Arizona, and mentorship by Marines in Virginia.

Having overthrown Mali’s democratic government, Sanogo proved hapless in battling local militants who had also benefitted from the arms flowing out of Libya. With Mali in chaos, those Tuareg fighters declared their own independent state, only to be pushed aside by heavily armed Islamist militants who instituted a harsh brand of Shariah law, causing a humanitarian crisis. A joint French, American, and African mission prevented Mali’s complete collapse but pushed the Islamists to the borders of both Burkina Faso and Niger, spreading terror and chaos to those countries.

Since then, the nations of the West African Sahel have been plagued by terrorist groups that have evolved, splintered, and reconstituted themselves. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on motorcycles armed with Kalashnikov rifles regularly roar into villages to impose zakat (an Islamic tax) and terrorize and kill civilians. Relentless attacks by such armed groups have not only destabilized Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, prompting coups and political instability, but have spread south to countries along the Gulf of Guinea. Violence has, for example, spiked in Togo (633%) and Benin (718%), according to Pentagon statistics.

American officials have often turned a blind eye to the carnage. Asked about the devolving situation in Niger, for instance, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel recently insisted that security partnerships in West Africa “are mutually beneficial and are intended to achieve what we believe to be shared goals of detecting, deterring, and reducing terrorist violence.”  His pronouncement is either an outright lie or a total fantasy.

After 20 years, it’s clear that America’s Sahelian partnerships aren’t “reducing terrorist violence” at all. Even the Pentagon tacitly admits this. Despite U.S. troop strength in Niger growing by more than 900% in the last decade and American commandos training local counterparts, while fighting and even dying there; despite hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into Burkina Faso in the form of training as well as equipment like armored personnel carriers, body armor, communications gear, machine guns, night-vision equipment, and rifles; and despite U.S. security assistance pouring into Mali and its military officers receiving training from the United States, terrorist violence in the Sahel has in no way been reduced. In 2002 and 2003, according to State Department statistics, terrorists caused 23 casualties in all of Africa. Last year, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, attacks by Islamist militants in the Sahel alone resulted in 11,643 deaths – an increase of more than 50,000%.

Pack Up Your War

In January 2021, President Biden entered the White House promising to end his country’s forever wars.  He quickly claimed to have kept his pledge. “I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war,” Biden announced months later. “We’ve turned the page.”

Late last year, however, in one of his periodic “war powers” missives to Congress, detailing publicly acknowledged U.S. military operations around the world, Biden said just the opposite. In fact, he left open the possibility that America’s forever wars might, indeed, go on forever. “It is not possible,” he wrote, “to know at this time the precise scope or the duration of the deployments of United States Armed Forces that are or will be necessary to counter terrorist threats to the United States.”

Niger’s U.S.-trained junta has made it clear that it wants America’s forever war there to end. That would assumedly mean the closing of Air Base 201 and the withdrawal of about 1,000 American military personnel and contractors. So far, however, Washington shows no signs of acceding to their wishes. “We are aware of the March 16th statement… announcing an end to the status of forces agreement between Niger and the United States,” said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh. “We are working through diplomatic channels to seek clarification… I don’t have a timeframe of any withdrawal of forces.”

“The U.S. military is in Niger at the request of the Government of Niger,” said AFRICOM spokesperson Kelly Cahalan last year. Now that the junta has told AFRICOM to leave, the command has little to say. Email return receipts show that TomDispatch’s questions about developments in Niger sent to AFRICOM’s press office were read by a raft of personnel including Cahalan, Zack Frank, Joshua Frey, Yvonne Levardi, Rebekah Clark Mattes, Christopher Meade, Takisha Miller, Alvin Phillips, Robert Dixon, Lennea Montandon, and Courtney Dock, AFRICOM’s deputy director of public affairs, but none of them answered any of the questions posed. Cahalan instead referred TomDispatch to the State Department. The State Department, in turn, directed TomDispatch to the transcript of a press conference dealing primarily with U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Philippines.

“USAFRICOM needs to stay in West Africa… to limit the spread of terrorism across the region and beyond,” General Langley told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March.  But Niger’s junta insists that AFRICOM needs to go and U.S. failures to “limit the spread of terrorism” in Niger and beyond are a key reason why.  “This security cooperation did not live up to the expectations of Nigeriens — all the massacres committed by the jihadists were carried out while the Americans were here,” said a Nigerien security analyst who has worked with U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

America’s forever wars, including the battle for the Sahel, have ground on through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden with failure the defining storyline and catastrophic results the norm. From the Islamic State routing the U.S.-trained Iraqi army in 2014 to the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan in 2021, from the forever stalemate in Somalia to the 2011 destabilization of Libya that plunged the Sahel into chaos and now threatens the littoral states along the Gulf of Guinea, the Global War on Terror has been responsible for the deaths, wounding, or displacement of tens of millions of people.

Carnage, stalemate, and failure seem to have had remarkably little effect on Washington’s desire to continue funding and fighting such wars, but facts on the ground like the Taliban’s triumph in Afghanistan have sometimes forced Washington’s hand. Niger’s junta is pursuing another such path, attempting to end an American forever war in one small corner of the world — doing what President Biden pledged but failed to do. Still, the question remains: Will the Biden administration reverse a course that the U.S. has been on since the early 2000s?  Will it agree to set a date for withdrawal? Will Washington finally pack up its disastrous war and go home?

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Type Media Center.

3 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

“We will die here, we will be buried here” a Palestinian woman bellows outside the destroyed Al Shifa Hospital

EDITOR’S NOTE: What follows is pledge from a Palestinian lady, who came to witness the destruction of the Al Shifa health complex just after the Israeli army pulled out after 14 days of mayhem, killing and disaster beginning 18 March, 2024. Her comments are slightly edited for brevity.

“We remain steadfast here and we will not leave our homeland,” a Palestinian lady outside Al Shifa Hospital tells the camera after the Israeli army left the complex after totally devastating the area.

She tells people around her to say “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) which they immediately do as heard in the videoclip.

“We are remaining in this country and we will never leave it,” she emphasizes.

“We will never leave here. We will rebuild it, and we will put it back together again and return to our homes once again.” These are the ones that were decimated by the Israeli war machine since 7 October.

“Anyone who leaves this place is wrong, so please: No one must think of leaving this land,” whilst calling on the people of Gaza, the great majority of whom were displaced from their homes and made into internal starving refugees to “stay steadfast on this land.

We will die here, we will be buried here,” she added defiantly in the videoclip.

“This land is the country of our ancestors, we will never leave it, Inshallah (God willing) we will firmly stay here despite what you see here” (in terms of carnage and destruction).

“The martyrs killed here are martyrs in heaven. My son is a martyr, my husband is a martyr killed in this war. My house of five-stories perished…it was hellish, I went from house to house, wherever we went were missiled. I moved to Al Shifa Hospital, the Israelis trapped me, I went outside, they surrounded me, I came here, they trapped me again, but I remain steadfast, I will never leave my homeland.

We will not wait for the world [to do something], We seek help only from God…we don’t want anything from the world, we have Allah on our side, Our God, there is no despair from the spirit of Allah.”

Dr Marwan Asmar is a writer from Amman, Jordan

3 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

On Monday night, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed seven international aid workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK) in Gaza in an airstrike on their vehicle convoy as it was returning to their warehouse.

The attack used precision munitions directly targeting the roofs of the vehicles, which displayed large logos clearly identifying their occupants as humanitarian workers.

World Central Kitchen had informed the Israeli military of its travel plans, meaning that the Israeli military would have been fully aware of the vehicles it was attacking.

Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff of Israel’s armed forces, claimed that the attack was a “grave mistake” and a “misidentification.” While White House spokesman John Kirby declared that “there’s no evidence” that the attack was “deliberate.”

These claims are belied both by the direct circumstances of the attacks and by Israel’s systematic targeting of food distribution workers as part of its systematic effort to starve the population of Gaza.

In a statement condemning the attack, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the attack brings the number of humanitarian workers killed in Gaza “to 196 – including more than 175 members of our own UN staff.”

Over the past month, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza at food distribution centers in so-called “flour massacres,” including one in late February that killed at least 112 and injured more than 700.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement on Tuesday, “Knowing how Israel operates, my assessment is that Israeli forces intentionally killed #WCK workers so that donors would pull out and civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly.”

In its investigation of the killing, Al Jazeera found that the three vehicles transporting the aid workers were targeted one at a time.

After leaving the World Central Kitchen’s warehouse, the first vehicle in the convoy was struck approximately one mile down the road. Al Jazeera reported that “the injured were transferred from the first targeted car to another armoured vehicle to expedite their transport.”

Al Jazeera’s investigation found that “the second vehicle was targeted approximately 800 metres (2,525 feet) away from where the first was hit. The third car was targeted about 1.6km (nearly a mile) away from the second car.” Based on these facts, Al Jazeera’s Sanad Verification Agency “found that the attacks were, in fact, intentional.”

World Central Kitchen CEO Erin Gore said in a statement, “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable.”

The aid organization said the victims were from Australia, Poland, United Kingdom, a dual citizen of the US and Canada, and Palestine.

After World Central Kitchen released the names and photos of the aid workers later in the day on Tuesday, Gore added, “These are the heroes of World Central Kitchen. These 7 beautiful souls were killed by the IDF in a strike as they were returning from a full day’s mission. Their smiles, laughter, and voices are forever embedded in our memories. And we have countless memories of them giving their best selves to the world. We are reeling from our loss. The world’s loss.”

In a statement Tuesday, US President Joe Biden attempted to verbally distance himself from the massacre, saying, “I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen.”

But when asked whether the killing was a war crime, White House spokesman John Kirby categorically asserted that it was not and that Israel has not committed any violations of international law during the entire conflict.

“To date,” Kirby said, the US government “have not found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.”

When asked by a shocked reporter whether the White House was really claiming that Israel has “never violated international humanitarian law ever in the past five to six months,” Kirby replied, “the State Department has looked at incidents in the past and has yet to determine that any of those incidents violate international humanitarian law.”

The latest massacre comes as Israel is moving ever closer to its planned assault on Rafah, where over 1 million displaced refugees are sheltering. The city, which has swelled into a massive tent camp, is being bombarded on a daily basis.

In a statement over the weekend, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention warned that Israel’s ongoing bombing of Rafah “could be the opening salvo to Israel’s promised ground invasion of the town, which is home to the critical crossing to Egypt.” The institute concluded, “This bombing is a genocidal act conducted by Israel against a trapped civilian population.”

It concluded, “There is no way to ensure that protection in urban combat with an army that has proved to be motivated by genocidal zeal.”

Over the past 48 hours, US officials effectively gave Israel a green light to proceed with its assault on Rafah. On Monday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the scenario in which “Israel does nothing about the Hamas fighters that continue to exist in Rafah” is not an “acceptable alternative.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added, “We also know that there are Hamas operatives in Rafah as well. But if they’re going to move forward with military operations, we have to have this conversation. We have to understand how they’re going to move forward.”

The damage that has been inflicted on the Gaza Strip with the full backing of the Biden administration is beyond devastating. In a report published Tuesday, the United Nations and World Bank found that Israel caused $18.5 billion worth of damage to infrastructure in Gaza in just the first month of the onslaught.

This figure is equivalent to 97 percent of the combined gross domestic product of all of the Palestinian territories in 2022. The report concluded, “An estimated 26 million tons of debris and rubble have been left in the wake of the destruction, an amount that is estimated to take years to remove.”

It noted that over a million people are without homes, and 75 percent of the population has been displaced.

A staggering 84 percent of health facilities have been damaged or destroyed, and virtually the whole sanitation system has collapsed. Almost the entire student population is out of school, as the education system has been shattered.

In a statement Tuesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Education said that 6,050 Palestinian students have been killed by Israel since October 7.

3 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Alex Lantier

Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Monday, which killed three senior leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and three others, is an act of war against Iran for which Washington and its NATO allies bear political responsibility.

The bombing marks a major new stage in the Israeli war on Iran, because its target is Iranian territory, according to international law. The Israeli regime has long conducted a lawless foreign policy of targeted murder, repeatedly bombing Iranian and Syrian officials—particularly after the US murder of IRGC General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 in Iraq. Its latest action, however, threatens to provoke a direct war between Iran and Israel, as well as Israel’s NATO imperialist backers.

Yesterday, Iranian officials vowed retaliation. “We will make [Israel] regret this crime and others it has committed,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said. The Russian, Chinese and Saudi foreign ministries also issued statements condemning the strike.

The Biden administration reportedly contacted Iranian officials just after the strike, denying responsibility and claiming Israeli officials had only notified it of the strike until only minutes before it took place. However, that Israel felt it could take such action, whether or not it notified Biden, is because Washington and its NATO imperialist allies have given it a blank check throughout six months of genocide against Gaza.

It is difficult to believe that Israel would have taken this action without coordination with the White House. If that was the case, it would indicate that the Biden administration is seeking an enormous escalation of war in advance of the November election.

In any case, the United States, Britain and France all refused to denounce the Israeli strike last night in a UN Security Council meeting. Effectively endorsing Israel’s rationale for the strike, US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said he was “concerned by reports that terrorist leaders and elements were allegedly present at this facility and condemn Iran’s continued coordination, training and arming of terrorists and other violent extremists.”

This week, US officials brazenly defended the Israeli army’s massacre of 400 people at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre baldly declared, “Hamas should not be operating out of hospitals.” US State Department spokesman Mike Matthews also indicated he would endorse an Israeli assault on Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinian refugees are living in tent cities, stating that a scenario where “Israel does nothing about the Hamas fighters that continue to exist in Rafah” is “not acceptable.”

Washington and its NATO allies green-light the Israeli genocide, which has killed 32,000 Palestinians, because they are preparing similar crimes across the Middle East. At the outset of the Gaza genocide, Washington sent carrier battle groups and nuclear missile submarines to the region that were explicitly targeted at Iran. Today, as Israeli officials discuss invading Lebanon to attack the Hezbollah militia, plans are well advanced for the NATO imperialist powers to use Israel as a proxy in new neo-colonial wars against Lebanon, Syria and beyond.

For a decade, Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah forces have fought in Syria alongside government forces against NATO-backed “rebel” Islamist or Kurdish nationalist militias. The 13 years of the NATO war for regime change in Syria have devastated the country, leaving a half million dead and over 10 million refugees.

Israel decapitated the Iranian military command in Syria and Lebanon Monday amid a global war the imperialist powers are waging for domination of Eurasia. While Washington and its NATO allies fight Russia in Europe, arming the far-right Ukrainian regime in Kiev, they are also attacking Russia and its allies in the Middle East. Covering fighting between US and Iranian IRGC forces in Syria, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote:

Americans may not know they’re at war with Iran, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guards know for sure they are in a shadow war with America through their proxies. And if one of these Iranian proxies gets “lucky” and creates a mass casualty event by striking a US warship or the barracks of one of the US bases in Jordan or Syria … [it would] become a direct shooting war in the region the world most depends on for its oil. Just thought I’d let you know.

Workers across America and the world must be alerted to the imminent danger of catastrophic military escalation. The war Friedman is discussing would have devastating consequences even beyond the global economic collapse caused by the blocking of Persian Gulf oil trade. Amid the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine and after the signing of a $400 billion Chinese-Iranian trade and military treaty in 2017, it would risk drawing all the major nuclear powers into a global conflict.

Indeed, US officials increasingly do not hide the fact that the confrontation with China is now their central concern. Last month, US Central Command head General Michael Kurilla denounced the unstable defensive alliance emerging against NATO between the Iranian, Chinese and Russian regimes.

“Collectively, Iran, Russia and China are strengthening their relationships and fostering a chaotic landscape favorable to their exploitation,” Kurilla said. “The ramifications of this partnership will have global implications.” Referring to Iranian drone exports to Russia for the Ukraine war and Russian and Iranian oil exports to China, he complained: “Iran sells 90 percent of its oil, all US-sanctioned, to China.”

The imperialist powers’ support for the genocide in Gaza emerges from their drive to subjugate the globe through war targeting Russia, China and Iran. This was starkly revealed in the recent outburst of US Congressman Tim Walberg, who called for dropping nuclear bombs on Gaza “like Nagasaki and Hiroshima” and for “the same in Ukraine” to “wipe out Russian forces.” Unable to resolve conflicts created by decades of war and plunder, imperialist politicians increasingly see no way out besides the mass murder of those standing in the way.

Opposition to the Gaza genocide must be developed as an international movement in the working class against the US-NATO imperialist war and the capitalist system. In its New Year’s statement, the World Socialist Web Site warned:

Taken as a whole, the normalization of different forms of social barbarism signifies that the capitalist class has arrived at a dead end. A class whose policies consist of different forms of sociocide has clearly exhausted its historical, economic, social and political legitimacy.

The decisive question is arming the growing opposition among workers and youth to the Gaza genocide, revealed in mass protests in Israel and across the Middle East as well as in the NATO countries, with a socialist perspective. This requires building a Trotskyist leadership in the working class, sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, in every country. This is the basic and urgent task posed by the escalation of war in the Middle East.

3 April 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

4 Apr 2024 – The Western press is filled with stories of foreboding about the Chinese economy. We are told regularly that China’s fast growth is over, that China’s data are manipulated, that a Chinese financial crisis looms, and that China will suffer the same stagnation as Japan during the past quarter century. This is U.S. propaganda, not reality. Yes, the Chinese economy faces headwinds — mainly created by the United States. Yet China can — and I believe will — overcome the U.S.-created headwinds and continue on its path of rapid economic development.

The basic fact is that China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at 5.2 percent in 2023, compared with 2.5 percent in the United States. On a per capita basis, the growth gap is even larger: 5.4 percent in China compared with 2 percent in the United States. In 2024, China will again significantly outpace the United States. There is no great growth crisis despite the fervid rhetoric in the U.S. press. Yes, China is slowing as it gets richer, but it is still growing considerably faster than in the United States and Europe.

There are problems to be sure, but the main ones come from the United States, not from inside China’s economy.

First, there is the perception problem. The United States is pushing a negative narrative about China. We actually learned recently that former U.S. President Donald Trump tasked the CIA with spreading malicious propaganda about the Chinese economy on social media starting back in 2019. One specific CIA tactic was to bad-mouth China’s important Belt and Road Initiative.

Second, there is the rise of U.S. protectionism. During the 20 years from 2000 to 2020, China was busy building up its new green and digital industries: mastering electric vehicles, 5G, battery supply chains, solar modules, wind turbines, fourth-generation nuclear power, long-distance power transmission, and other cutting-edge technologies. The White House and Congress, in the meantime, were in the hands of the oil, gas, and coal lobbies, and therefore without a strategy for the new energy technologies. Finally, U.S. President Joe Biden and Congress agreed to protect U.S. industries to give America time to recover some lost ground.

Third, there is the U.S. “Grand Strategy” to maintain U.S. “primacy” over China. For the U.S. security establishment, it’s not good enough to compete with China on an honest basis. The U.S. government also puts obstacles in the way of China’s economy. It seems incredible that the United States would go out of its way to undermine China’s economy, and yet it actually does so. Such an approach was spelled out by a senior U.S. diplomat, former Ambassador Robert Blackwill, in March 2015, in an article for the Council on Foreign Relations published with co-author Ashley Tellis. The article, in my view, was the public launch of a new Washington policy towards China, one that has been followed by Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden.

It is worth quoting Blackwill and Tellis at length to understand the U.S. game plan:

Since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals, first on the North American continent, then in the Western hemisphere, and finally globally…

Because the American effort to “integrate” China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to U.S. primacy in Asia — and could eventually result in a consequential challenge to American power globally — Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy.

These changes, which constitute the heart of an alternative balancing strategy, must derive from the clear recognition that preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of the United States’ grand strategy in the twenty-first century.

Sustaining this status in the face of rising Chinese power requires, among other things, revitalizing the U.S. economy to nurture those disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States asymmetric economic advantages over others; creating new preferential trading arrangements among U.S. friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously exclude China; recreating a technology-control regime involving U.S. allies that prevents China from acquiring military and strategic capabilities enabling it to inflict “high-leverage strategic harm” on the United States and its partners; concertedly building up the power-political capacities of U.S. friends and allies on China’s periphery; and improving the capability of U.S. military forces to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition — all the while continuing to work with China in diverse ways that befit its importance to U.S. national interests.

These statements by Blackwill and Tellis are remarkable for two reasons. First, they explicitly spell out America’s “Grand Strategy” in no uncertain terms: to preserve America’s “primacy” in the global system, including over China. Second, they listed — already in March 2015 — the actual policies pursued by the United States during the past decade.
Consider the five policies recommended by Blackwill and Tellis.

First, revitalize the U.S. economy. Okay, that’s fair enough. The United States needs to get its economic house in order.

Second, create new U.S. trade arrangements with Asia that “consciously exclude China.” That’s an absurd idea, since China is the largest economy in Asia, yet Obama tried (and failed) to create the Trans-Pacific Partnership to exclude China, while both Trump and Biden pursued blatant protectionism against China, especially in the form of unilateral tariff increases in violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments.

Third, recreate a “technology-control regime” to limit China’s access to high-tech. That is currently underway, most notably with the new limits on the export of advanced semiconductor technology to China.

Fourth, build up political-military alliances on China’s borders. This is the U.S. strategy with AUKUS (Australia-UK-United States), the Quad (Australia-India-Japan-United States), and the United States-Japan-Philippines Triad.
Fifth, build up the U.S. military along the Asian rimlands “despite Chinese opposition.” This too is happening with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and elsewhere.

America’s aim of “primacy” is dangerously misguided. Since China has four times the U.S. population, the only way for the U.S. economy to stay larger than China’s would be for China to remain stuck at less than one-fourth of the U.S. GDP per person. There is no reason for that to happen. If it did, it would mean a lot of suffering in China and a great loss of global dynamism.

Primacy should not be the U.S. goal, or China’s goal, or indeed the goal of any country. The only sensible goal for the major powers is mutual prosperity, common security, and global cooperation regarding common challenges such as environmental sustainability and peace.

The American playbook — using trade, technology, financial, and military policies to stop another country — is not new for the United States. It was, of course, the U.S. game plan to “contain” the Soviet Union during the 1950s-1980s. It was rolled out again in the late 1980s to stop the rapid growth of Japan, an American ally, because Japan was outcompeting the U.S. industry. The United States forced Japan to agree to “voluntary” export restraints and an overvalued Yen. Thus, Japan’s economic growth plummeted and Japan entered a prolonged financial crisis.

China, however, is not Japan. It is far larger, more powerful, and not subservient to the United States. Unlike Japan in the 1990s, China need not and will not sit idly by as the United States pursues trade and technology policies to slow China’s economic growth.

To understand China’s policy choices, recall the national income account identity that GDP equals C+I+G+X-M. That is, China’s GDP can be consumed, C; invested, I; consumed by the government, G; exported, X; or used to replace imports, M; China’s exports can go to the United States and Europe or to the rest of the world.

In recent years, the U.S. and European markets have become increasingly closed to China’s exports. In 2023, the United States imported 427 billion U.S. dollars of goods from China, down from 536 billion dollars in 2022. As a share of U.S. GDP, imports from China were 2.6 percent in 2018, but have declined to only 1.6 percent in 2023, as the result of U.S. protectionism under Trump and Biden.

Now, here then are the policy choices facing China. With the production of goods and services continuing to rise in China, and with exports to the United States falling, China faces an overall excess supply of goods. That excess supply will lower GDP and could even create a recession in China if policy measures are not taken to offset it.

The United States tells China to increase consumption to offset the fall in its exports. For example, China could cut taxes to stimulate consumption. The problem with the U.S. recommendation is that China would likely shift to lower growth and higher budget deficits, as in the United States.

A second option would be for China to increase domestic investments, for example to accelerate China’s shift to a zero-carbon economy. There is some merit to boosting domestic investment to offset part of the reduction of exports to the United States.

A third option would be to boost government consumption. That policy too would likely entail slower growth and higher budget deficits.

A fourth option is to increase exports to the developing countries. That approach has a great deal of merit. If the U.S. market is closed, and the European market is closing (as Europe becomes more protectionist), then China can shift exports to the emerging markets. Some of that will happen automatically. As the United States buys less from China and more, say, from Vietnam, then Vietnam will buy more intermediate goods from China to process and export to the United States.

Some of the reorientation of exports, however, will require new Chinese policies. The purchasing power of the emerging economies is generally lower than in the United States and Europe. Yes, the emerging economies would like to buy what China has on offer — solar modules, wind turbines, 5G, and the rest — but will need more loans to do so. For China to sell substantially more to the emerging economies, it will have to boost loans and foreign direct investments to those economies, for example by expanding the Belt and Road Initiative and lending by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank.

There may be some resistance among China’s policy-makers to increasing loans to the emerging economies, since some of those economies are already debt-distressed. Yet, the emerging economies generally have a very high growth potential. Their debt is not too high — as long as the debt has a long enough pay-back period (maturity). The emerging economies mainly need time to grow and thereby to be able to repay China for the loans.

Here, then, is my own summary of the economic situation in China. The supply side of China’s economy continues to grow rapidly. China’s potential GDP continues to rise at 5 percent per year or faster. Moreover, the quality of that output is high and rising. China is the world’s low-cost producer of goods that the rest of the world needs: zero-carbon energy systems, 5G digital networks, and high-quality infrastructure (such as fast inter-city rail).

China’s problem is not on the supply side, but on the demand side. China faces demand constraints mainly because the United States has put up barriers against China’s exports to the U.S. market, and Europe seems likely to follow the United States in this. While China could potentially offset that slowdown in exports by increasing domestic consumption, it would be well advised to increase its exports to the emerging economies, in part by expanding important programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative. To do so prudently, China would have to increase its long-term lending to the emerging economies.

I don’t deny that there are other challenges facing China’s economy, such as some temporary over-investment in real estate, or some over-borrowing by some local governments. Yet, I believe that such problems are short-term and cyclical, not long-term and structural. There are also areas that need further reform, to be sure, such as the hukou (urban residence) system. Yet here too, such reform challenges are ongoing and very likely to be solved successfully.

I would like to see China continue its rapid growth, and yes, overtake the United States in GDP at current market prices and exchange rates, befitting a country that is four times larger than the United States in population. I note that in purchasing-power terms, China already overtook the United States in 2017 (according to IMF data) and nothing awful befell the United States.

China’s economic growth benefits not only China but the whole world. China has brought forward new and effective technologies ranging from a modern cure for malaria (artemisinin) to low-cost zero-carbon energy systems and low-cost 5G systems. We should be rooting for China’s continued rapid development. We should put aside childish ideas of “primacy” and adopt adult ideas of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and global cooperation to protect the planet. The world does not want or need a single dominant country. Indeed, that’s not even feasible in our world today. The absolute best solution for the world economy would be for China, the United States, and Europe to maintain open trade and mutually agreed industrial policies. Yet if the United States and Europe turn strongly protectionist against China, then the best response for China is to hasten its successful and growing trade and financial relations with the emerging economies.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

8 April 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

Israel isn’t being “forced” to kill Palestinian children, it is knowingly choosing to.

5 Apr 2024 – One aspect of the recent revelations about the IDF’s Lavender AI system that’s not getting enough consideration is the fact that it is completely devastating to the narrative that Israel has been killing so many civilians in Gaza because Hamas uses “human shields”.

If you missed this story, a major report from +972 revealed that Israel has been using an AI system called Lavender to compile kill lists of suspected members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad which have been carried out with hardly any human verification. One automated system, psychopathically named “Where’s Daddy?”, tracks suspects to their homes so that they can be killed along with their entire families. The IDF has been knowingly killing 15 to 20 civilians at a time to kill one junior Hamas operative, and up to 100 civilians at a time to take out a senior official.

+972’s Yuval Abraham writes the following:

“Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called ‘Where’s Daddy?’ also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.”

(Another +972 report by Abraham back in November revealed that IDF AI systems ensure that the Israeli military is fully aware of every child it’s going to be killing in each airstrike, and that it deliberately targets civilian infrastructure as a matter of policy.)

When questioned about these systems by +972, the IDF Spokesperson responded that “Hamas places its operatives and military assets in the heart of the civilian population, systematically uses the civilian population as human shields, and conducts fighting from within civilian structures, including sensitive sites such as hospitals, mosques, schools and UN facilities. The IDF is bound by and acts according to international law, directing its attacks only at military targets and military operatives.”

The “human shields” narrative that’s become so popular in Israel apologia insists that the reason the IDF kills so many civilians in its attacks on Gaza is because Hamas intentionally surrounds itself with noncombatants as a strategy to make the innocent Israelis reluctant to drop bombs on them. But as The Intercept’s Ryan Grim recently observed on Twitter, this is soundly refuted by the revelation that Israel has been intentionally waiting to target suspected Hamas members when it knows they’ll be surrounded by civilians.

“Israel’s argument that they kill so many civilians because Hamas uses ‘human shields’ is torn apart by the revelation that the IDF prefers to attack its ‘targets’ when they are at home with their families,” tweeted Grim. “It is not Hamas using human shields, it is Israel deliberately hunting families.”

“A human shield is only a shield if your enemy values human life and seeks to minimize civilian deaths,” Grim adds. “Israel deliberately maximizes the number of civilians it can kill by waiting until a target is with his entire family. Palestinians are not shields to Israel, they are all targets.”

Debunking Israel’s ‘Human Shield’ Defense in Gaza Massacre

This is such an important point. Advocates for Palestine like Abby Martin have for years been presenting compelling arguments against Israel’s “human shields” claims, and common sense shows that the presence of civilians is clearly not a deterrent to Israeli airstrikes, but because of these +972 revelations the lie has now been thoroughly, irrefutably debunked. Civilians aren’t getting killed because Hamas hides behind them, civilians are getting killed because the IDF waits until suspected Hamas members are around civilians to target them with high-powered military explosives.

A popular quote attributed to former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir says “Someday we may be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we will never forgive them for making us kill their children.” You see this quote pop up all the time in varying iterations, shared approvingly by Israel apologists around the world as though it’s something wise and brilliant instead of a horrific defense of murdering children. But it turns out this morally depraved quote isn’t even true by the most generous of interpretations: Israel isn’t being “forced” to kill Palestinian children, it is knowingly choosing to.

The “human shields” narrative is just one more instance in which Israel pretends to be the victim while actually being the victimizer. They lied about beheaded babies so that they could get away with murdering babies. They lied about mass rapes so that they could get away with committing rape. They lied about Hamas using civilians as human shields so that they could kill civilians. They lie about being victims so that they can victimize.

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

8 April 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Antony Loewenstein

Israel is live-testing the most sophisticated killing machines and surveillance in its war of aggression against the population of Gaza.

3 Apr 2024 – Deadly robot dogs are in our future. Israel is using and testing them, both made in Israel and the US, in its destruction of Gaza.

It’s just one example, and there are so many more, of Israel not wanting to “waste” the opportunity in Gaza to show off its military hardware to an excited global market. My latest book, The Palestine Laboratory, examines this globally (pre 7 October 2023).

It fits into a broader and mainstream Israeli narrative that Palestinians in Gaza don’t deserve safety or security. They’re not Jewish and therefore sub-human. If this sounds extreme, you haven’t been paying attention to Israel for a very long time.

The dehumanisation of Palestinians has been so complete that most Israelis, and many in the Jewish Diaspora, believe that destroying Gaza will make them safer. If anything, it’s achieving the complete opposite. Jewish lives are now vastly less safe after months of genocidal violence in Gaza.

Look at this to understand a very common view in Israel and the Zionist world:

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE Go to Original – antonyloewenstein.substack.com

8 April 2024

Source: transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

3 Apr 2024 – Half a year of insulting our intelligence. Half a year of insulting our humanity. Half a year of unfathomable suffering. Half a year of irreparable trauma.

Six months of this now. Half a year.

Half a year of genocide apologia.

Half a year of the most outrageous lies you can possibly imagine.

Half a year of seeing children’s bodies ripped to pieces and starved to skeletons on our social media feeds.

Half a year of atrocities justified by something that happened way back in October, and didn’t even happen the way the news media tell us it happened.

Half a year of western government officials pretending obvious evidence of war crimes is just some ineffable mystery that we’ll hopefully have answers to someday.

Half a year of Israeli officials openly stating their genocidal intentions in Hebrew for their Israeli audience and paying lip service to human rights and compassion in English for their western liberal audience.

Half a year of seeing reports that the IDF did something unbelievably evil, thinking “That can’t be right, let me check it out,” and then going “Oh, nope, it’s actually even more evil than I thought.”

Half a year of the western political-media class trying to frame the direct sponsorship of an active genocide as something other than what it is.

Half a year of passive-language “Palestinian child walks into bullet” headlines from the mainstream press.

Half a year of insulting our intelligence.

Half a year of insulting our humanity.

Half a year of unfathomable suffering.

Half a year of irreparable trauma.

Half a year of irreplaceable loss.

This fucking sucks, man. It sucks so bad. I’ve always enjoyed doing commentary on the crimes of the empire, but these last six months have been truly harrowing. It’s awful having to stare directly at hell on earth from day to day with compassion in your heart. The only thing keeping this project going is the fact that it needs to be done, and the knowledge that my own suffering isn’t the faintest shadow of what the Palestinians are going through right now.

This needs to end. It needs to end with desperate urgency. But we’re seeing no signs that it’s about to.

I don’t have anything wise or insightful to add to any of this right now. Some days all you can do is point to the nightmare and call it what it is, and we can all just be real about reality and feel our feelings about that.

I guess all I can really say is that at least we’re not alone in seeing what we’re seeing. The whole world is watching Israel commit a horrifying mass atrocity backed by the full might of the empire, and more and more eyes are opening to the reality of what this means for their society and everything they’ve been told to believe about it.

Every positive change in human behavior is always preceded by an expansion of consciousness, and Gaza is expanding western consciousness like nothing ever before.

So at least there’s that. At least there’s the possibility that something good might one day grow out of this steaming pile of shit.

And that’s all I’ve got for you. That’s the best I can do right now.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com

8 April 2024

Source: transcend.org