Just International

In Choosing to Ban UNRWA, Israel Has Entrenched Itself as a Pariah State

By Mohammad Abu Hawash

Introduction

In choosing to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israel has permanently branded itself as a pariah state. However, what is more important is what this ban means for millions of Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation and rely on UNRWA for daily essential services like education, medical care, and life-saving humanitarian aid in times of crisis.1 The international community’s response to this travesty must be two-pronged; there should be immediate measures taken to force Israel to backtrack before more Palestinians die as a result of reduced humanitarian aid, but there should also be consequences for Israel’s other actions. This attempt to curtail UNRWA’s operations is part of a wider strategy and hence should not be seen in isolation of the atrocities that Israel committed in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

How did Israel Justify the Ban? And was this Justification Merited?

Last week, the Israeli parliament passed two laws that essentially prevent UNRWA from carrying out its internationally approved mandate of providing life-saving relief and essential services to millions of Palestinians. The first law ordered an immediate halt of all Israeli government communication with UNRWA, while the second law prohibits UNRWA from conducting any activities within annexed Israeli territory.

These laws are part of a long-running campaign by the Israelis to discredit and destroy the agency, which failed to gather momentum for years, until Donald Trump cut funding to UNRWA in 2018 despite global outcry. The Biden administration resumed funding in 2021, only to cut it again after Israel claimed that a “significant number” of UNRWA staff were involved in the Gaza uprising of October 7, 2024 (in fact, the Israelis could only name 12 out of 13,000+ UNRWA staff in Gaza, which is hardly a significant number, and most of those named were only marginally implicated). Had it been true, such an accusation would have constituted a breach of the agency’s neutrality. However, an independent investigation absolved UNRWA of this accusation, showing that less than 0.001% of its Gaza staff had been implicated (even marginally) in the events of October 7—all of whom had their contracts terminated and none had any influence on the agency’s policies. Although the investigation did note that some UNRWA staff unions have become politicized, it is important to note that those unions are independent of the agency’s governing structure and have no bearing on its neutrality framework.

Unfortunately, however, Israel doubled down on its claim with the passage of these two laws, and the damage has already been done.

Repercussions of the UNRWA Ban

This ban comes at a time when the ethnically cleansed and plausibly genocided Palestinian communities of the Gaza Strip need aid and essential services more than ever. The ban is already hampering the deconfliction of humanitarian work in Gaza and complicating the agency’s activities in the occupied West Bank.

Israel strategically scheduled the ban to take effect right after the ascension of the next US president in January 2025. This was presumably done to minimize the global backlash against the ban, although that is turning out to be a failed strategy as the delay in implementation gave the other side an opportunity to rally and plan a counterstrategy.

Israel is already facing global condemnation for its actions against UNRWA, although it appears that its leadership has become desensitized to international sentiments thanks to political cover from a handful of complacent, hegemonic governments (namely the US, UK, Germany, France, and a few others).

The chief of the United Nations Children’s Relief Fund (UNICEF), Martin Griffiths, lamented the UNRWA ban in the harshest possible terms, saying that Israel found a “new way of killing children.” The spokesperson of the League of Arab States, Jamal Rushdi, said that the implications of this ban would amount to “confiscating the future of millions of Palestinians.” A group of sixteen countries including Ireland, South Africa, Norway, Jordan, and others also issued a joint statement in which they deplored the measures taken.2 Even countries that Israel claims to have friendly ties with, like the United Arab Emirates, slammed Israel’s decision to ban UNRWA. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry described the move as emblematic of Israel’s “persistence in committing crimes of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people and erasing the Palestinian identity, and stifling efforts to achieve comprehensive and just peace.”

The condemnations go far beyond that; some of Israel’s closest allies – Germany, Canada, France, Australia, and the United Kingdom – who have shamefully defended its most atrocious actions in the last year, joined Japan and South Korea in calling on Tel Aviv to preserve UNRWA’s’ ability to provide “sorely needed basic services.” Even US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller—dubbed ‘Count Smirkula’ (a play on ‘Dracula’) on social media for smirking when questioned about reports that as many as 186,000 have died in Gaza in the past year—stressed that the ban of UNRWA could have legal implications for Israel under US law. But such tame, tone-deaf statements are reminiscent of the complacency of Western Europe and the US in the apartheid regime of South Africa. As Israel’s staunchest enablers, they should not be praised for doing the bare minimum.

However, there is cause for hope. The leniency of Israel’s western hegemonic allies is having an adverse effect on the country’s future. Israel is becoming more isolated and creating more mortal enemies. In doing so, Israel’s leaders are sowing the seeds of their own demise, which will resemble the demise of apartheid South Africa. However, ending this injustice will not be possible without the continued active involvement of the sympathetic masses and world leaders.

How to Respond to Israel

International solidarity is the most effective pathway to bringing justice to the Palestinian people after nearly a century of colonization, oppression, and daily humiliation. In addition to issuing condemnations, conscientious world leaders should finally cross the fear barrier and use all diplomatic leverage against Israel. Closing embassies in Israel is an essential first step, followed by issuing sanctions and endorsing popular boycotts. We must cross the point of no return: either Israel dismantles its repressive regime and ends the massacres, or the international community steps in to do that.

Arab countries should take the lead, with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan withdrawing from the Abraham Accords. Egypt and Jordan should also take measures to penalize Israel, although they are in a weaker position because Israel’s energy and water exports to Amman and Cairo give Tel Aviv significant leverage; Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could inflict harm on Jordanian and Egyptian civilians by cutting off water and natural gas in response to the Jordanian and Egyptian governments choosing to annul their peace agreements with Israel. However, the Jordanian and Egyptian leadership should at the very least endorse the highly popular (and successful) boycott movements in their countries and step-up their support of South Africa’s genocide tribunal against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

Sympathetic countries throughout Asia, Africa, and South America should follow suit, closing their embassies in Israel and severing all diplomatic ties until Israel dismantles its repressive apartheid regime. This is necessary to give Arab countries cover when the expected backlash from the US and its allies comes. Joint action could be coordinated through the non-aligned movement, which is currently chaired by Uganda. Other multilaterals should also step up their solidarity efforts, particularly the League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The horrifying acts of indiscriminate murder, domicide, urbicide, and ecocide in Gaza must have consequences. Otherwise, a dangerous precedent will be set for Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other areas where grave human rights violations are being perpetrated. Additionally, failing to act on Gaza will delegitimize the international rules-based order in irreparable ways.

This is why it is important to hold Israeli officials at all levels accountable for the violence they sanctioned regardless of whether they cave in to global pressure and end their military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon or not. The war has already gone on for too long and irreparable damage has been done. Therefore, Israeli leaders must answer for the crimes they sanctioned. Lower-ranked Israeli military commanders and soldiers such as those implicated in torture and sexual violence at the Sde Teiman concentration camp should also answer for their crimes.

Conclusion

What the UNRWA ban has shown is that Israel will not stop its onslaught until the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are either killed, displaced, or completely subjugated. Israel is isolating itself through its own actions, but we still need to act to stop the flagrant disregard of human rights, international norms, and basic decency. The key to success here, as was seen in the case of apartheid South Africa, is in coordinated and sustained international action. If Israel is turning itself to a pariah state, then the rest of the world should treat it as one.

__________________________

  1. It is assumed that UNRWA’s operations outside of Israeli-controlled territory will continue unimpeded, which is essential for the stability of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. ↩︎
  2. The full list of sixteen countries is: Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Guyana, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Qatar, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain and the State of Palestine. ↩︎

Mohammad Abu Hawash is a Senior Research Assistant in the governance and development program at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. Previously, he was a research and communications officer at the embassy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Washington, DC.

30 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

The Public Life of Noam Chomsky

By Michael K Smith

“A man of stupendous brilliance.”

—–Norman Finkelstein

“A gargantuan influence.”

—–Chris Hedges

“ . . . brilliant . . . unswerving . . . relentless . . . heroic.”

—–Arundhati Roy

“Preposterously thorough.”

—–Edward Said

“[A] fierce talent.”

—–Eduardo Galeano

“An intellectual cannon.”

—–Israel Shamir

“A lighthouse over a sea of hogwash.”

—–Kathleen Cleaver

He had a disarming frankness, a toothy grin, a dazzling mind that never rested.

He always felt completely out of tune with the world. At ten, he published his first article (in the school paper) – a lament on the fall of Barcelona to Franco. At thirteen, he was haunting anarchist bookstores in New York City and working a newsstand with his uncle, eagerly soaking up everything a brilliant mix of immigrant minds had to offer, by far the richest intellectual environment he was ever to encounter. At sixteen, he went off by himself at the news of Hiroshima, unable to comprehend anyone else’s reaction to the horror. At twenty-four, he abandoned a Harvard fellowship to live on a kibbutz, returning only by chance to fulfill an academic career. At twenty-eight, he revolutionized the field of linguistics with his book, Syntactic Structures. At twenty-nine, he became associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and full professor three years later), though his competence with technology was limited to the tape recorder. At thirty-five, he threw himself into anti-war protest, giving talks, writing letters and articles, promoting teach-ins, and helping to organize student demonstrations and draft resistance against the Vietnam War. At thirty-eight, he risked a five-year jail term protesting at the Pentagon, spending the night in jail alongside Norman Mailer, who described him in Armies of the Night as “a slim sharp-featured man with an ascetic expression, and an air of gentle but absolute moral integrity.”[1]At forty, he was the only white face in the crowd at Fred Hampton’s funeral, after the young Black Panther leader was gunned down by the FBI in a Gestapo-style raid.[2]

Such was the early life of America’s greatest dissident intellectual, raised in a deeply anti-Semitic German-Irish neighborhood in Quaker Philadelphia, later awarded an elite linguistics professorship at the center of the Pentagon system at MIT.

Fulfilling a brilliant academic career at the pinnacle of the Ivory Tower, Chomsky railed against his fellow intellectuals’ subservience to power, dismissing pious declarations of Washington’s alleged commitment to freedom, equality, and democracy, with abundant demonstrations of its actual values – greed, domination, and deceit. He forensically examined the claim that the establishment media operate as an objective check on the excesses of the powerful, marshalling overwhelming evidence showing that in fact they are a propaganda service working on their behalf. Laboriously debunking the flood of lies and distortions targeting mass audiences, he transformed dangerous misperceptions of U.S. benevolence into insightful comprehension of imperial reality.

Thus we learned that the Vietnam War was not a noble quest to defend freedom, but a quasi-genocidal assault on a former French colony designed to subjugate a defenseless peasantry; that Israel was not a glorious example of uniquely decent democratic socialism, but a modern Sparta on a path to self-destruction; that the Cold War was not a contest between freedom and slavery, but a shared opposition to independent nationalism, in which a galaxy of neo-Nazi U.S. client states masqueraded as the “Free World.”[3]

Such insights were anathema in academia, and Chomsky quickly earned a reputation as a political crank among his more subservient colleagues (the vast majority), even as he gained considerable stature as a public intellectual in American society at large and internationally. These contrasting perceptions of his credibility made for a striking schizophrenia in how he was evaluated: dismissed as a lunatic by pundits and professors, Chomsky’s political lectures were sold out years in advance to overflow general audiences throughout the world.

Elite commentators who wrote him off as a novice for his lack of credentials in political science contradicted themselves by recognizing him as a genius for his linguistics work, though he had no formal credentials in that field either. Nevertheless, they were right about his genius. When Chomsky first entered linguistics the prevailing model of language acquisition was behaviorist, the assumption being that children acquire language by imitation and “reinforcement” (gratifying responses from others for the correct use of language), which Chomsky immediately realized couldn’t begin to account for the richness of even the simplest language use – obvious from an early age in all healthy children – who routinely manifest patterns of use they’ve never heard before.

When Chomsky subjected the behaviorist paradigm to rational scrutiny it promptly collapsed, replaced by recognition that language capacity is actually innate and a product of maturation, emerging at an appropriate stage of biological development in the same way that secondary sex characteristics not evident in childhood emerge during puberty. Like so many other Chomsky insights, the idea that language capacity is part of the unfolding of a genetic program seems rather obvious in retrospect, but in the 1950s it was a revolutionary thought, vaulting the young MIT professor to international academic stardom as the most penetrating thinker in a field his un-credentialed insights utterly transformed.[4]

At the time, Chomsky appeared to be living the perfect life from a purely personal standpoint. He had fascinating work, professional acclaim, lifetime economic security, and a loving marriage with young children growing up in a beautiful suburb of Boston, an ideal balance of personal and professional fulfillment. But just then a dark cloud called Vietnam appeared on the horizon, and Chomsky – with supreme reluctance – launched himself into a major activist career, sacrificing nearly all of his personal life along the way.[5]

In the Eisenhower years the U.S. had relied on mercenaries and client groups to attack the Vietminh, a communist-led nationalist force that had fought the French and was seeking South Vietnamese independence with the ultimate goal of a re-unification of South and North Vietnam through national elections. Though the U.S. was systematically murdering its leaders, the Vietminh did not respond to the violence directed against them for many years. Finally, in 1959, came an authorization allowing the Vietminh to use force in self-defense, at which point the South Vietnamese government (U.S. client state) collapsed, as its monopoly of force was all it had had to sustain itself in power.

Plans for de-colonization proceeded. The National Liberation Front was formed, and in its founding program it called for South Vietnamese independence and the formation of a neutral bloc consisting of Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, with the ultimate goal of peacefully unifying all of Vietnam. At that point there were no North Vietnamese forces in the South, and no North-South military conflict.[6] That would emerge later, as a direct result of U.S. insistence on subjugating the South.

To head off the political threat of South Vietnamese independence, President Kennedy sent the U.S. Air Force to bomb rural South Vietnam in October 1962 and drive the villagers into “strategic hamlets” (concentration camps), in order to separate them from the nationalist guerrilla movement Pentagon documents conceded they were willingly supporting. This overt act of U.S. aggression was noted in the press, but without a flicker of public protest, which would only come years later.[7]

When Chomsky first began speaking out on Vietnam, venues were scarce and public support for the effort virtually nil. He was actually grateful for the customary police presence, which prevented him from getting beaten up. “In those days, protests against the war meant speaking several nights a week at a church to an audience of half a dozen people,” Chomsky remembered years later, “mostly bored or hostile, or at someone’s home where a few people might be gathered, or at a meeting at a college that included the topics of Vietnam, Iran, Central America, and nuclear arms, in the hope that maybe participants would outnumber the organizers.”[8] The quality of his analysis was extraordinary and Chomsky placed himself “in the very first rank” of war critics (Christopher Hitchens) from the start, helping to spark a mass anti-war movement over the next several years.[9] Unlike “pragmatic” opponents of the war, who justified U.S. imperialism in principle but feared it would not bring military victory in Vietnam, Chomsky called out U.S. aggression by name, sided with its victims, and urged the war be terminated without pre-conditions.

Though a radical departure from establishment orthodoxy, Chomsky’s positions on the war were always carefully thought out, never blindly oppositional. For example, though he opposed the drafting of young men to fight in a criminal war, he was not opposed to a draft per se. In fact, he emphasized that a draft meant that soldiers could not be kept insulated from the civilian society of which they were a part, leading to what he regarded as an admirable collapse of soldier morale when the anti-war movement exposed U.S. intervention in Vietnam as naked aggression. When the draft was terminated in 1973, the Pentagon shifted to a “volunteer” army, that is, a mercenary army of the poor and low-income, which Chomsky regarded as one much less likely to be affected by popular anti-war agitation, even aside from the more serious issue of unjustly assigning responsibility for “national defense” to the most economically exploited sector of the population. For these reasons he felt that a universal draft was to be preferred to a “volunteer” army brought into being by strongly coercive economic forces.[10]

Unlike his establishment critics, Chomsky did not consider class analysis a conspiracy theory, but rather, an indispensable tool in properly accounting for known facts. For example, while there was no national interest in attacking South Vietnam, there very much was an elite interest in suppressing the contagious example of a successful national independence movement in Southeast Asia, as the failure to do so might encourage other countries in the Pacific to “go communist” (i.e., seek independence), which could ultimately have reversed the outcome of WWII in the Pacific had Japan ended up accommodating the officially socialist world instead of Washington.[11]

Given the unanswerable nature of this type of (anti-capitalist) analysis, Chomsky was kept well away from mass audiences. On the rare occasions he did appear in the corporate media, his overwhelming command of relevant fact meant that he couldn’t be distracted or derailed. When interviewers attempted to get him off track, they were quickly confronted by the soft query – “Do the facts matter?” – followed by an informational tsunami leading inexorably to a heretical conclusion.

Given his mastery of evidence and logic, it was frankly suicidal for Chomsky’s establishment critics to confront him directly, which probably accounts for why so few of them ever did. The handful that tried were promptly obliterated by a massive bombardment of inconvenient fact. Since “facts don’t care about your feelings,” all of the latter group were obligated to examine which irrational emotions had encouraged them to adopt the erroneous conclusions Chomsky showed them they held, but none of them did.

William F. Buckley had his error-riddled version of the post-WWII Greek civil war exposed on his own show – Firing Line. “Your history is quite confused there,” commented Chomsky to Buckley’s face, after the celebrated reactionary referred to an imaginary Communist insurgency prior to the Nazis’ Greek intervention.[12]

Neo-con Richard Perle tried to divert his discussion with Chomsky from U.S. intervention and denial of national independence around the world to an analysis of competing development models, an entirely different topic. With no answer for fact and reason he was reduced to rhetorically asking the audience if it really didn’t find establishment mythology more plausible than what he called Chomsky’s “deeply cynical” arguments revealing the shameful truth.[13]

Boston University president John Silber complained that Chomsky hadn’t provided proper context when mentioning that the U.S. had assassinated Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, blown up the church radio station, and cut the editor of the independent newspaper to pieces with machetes. Silber neglected to disclose what context could possibly redeem such atrocities.[14]

Dutch Minister of Defense Frederick Bolkestein dismissed Chomsky and Edward Herman’s thesis on capitalist media as a conspiracy theory and Chomsky’s anarchist convictions as a “boy’s dream.” In the course of their debate, however, Chomsky refuted every one of Bolkestein’s charges, while pointing out their complete irrelevance to evaluating the thesis advanced in Chomsky and Herman’s book, “Manufacturing Consent,” which was the purpose of the debate.

The term “Manufacturing Consent” derives from the public relations industry, the practices of which more than amply confirm Chomsky and Herman’s thesis that under capitalism the broad tendency of the mass media is to function as a propaganda service for the national security state and the private interests that dominate it. In any case, Bolkestein himself confirmed Chomsky and Herman’s propaganda model in his very attempt to refute it, objecting to Chomsky’s allegedly undercounting of killings attributable to Pol Pot (an official enemy of the U.S.) while completely ignoring U.S. client Indonesia’s massacres in East Timor, to which Chomsky had compared the killings in Cambodia. This is exactly what the propaganda model predicts: crimes of state committed by one’s own side will be ignored or downplayed while those of official enemies will be exaggerated or invented, while occasioning great moral indignation, which is never in evidence when one’s own crimes are under discussion.[15]

These four intellectual knockouts by Chomsky appear to have deterred the rest of the establishment pack from even entertaining debating with him.[16] A story told by the late Alexander Cockburn suggests they were actually afraid to do so. “One prominent member of the British intellectual elite,” related Cockburn, warned him not to get into a dispute with Chomsky on the grounds that he was “a terrible and relentless opponent” who confronted central issues head-on and never ceded ground as part of a more complicated maneuver. That was why, explained Cockburn, the guardians of official ideology so often targeted Chomsky with gratuitous vilification and childish abuse: “They shirk the real argument they fear they will lose, and substitute insult and distortion.”[17] (emphasis added)

So unprepared were these establishment mouthpieces to engage in substantive discussion that they actually refused Chomsky the customary right to defend himself even against their repeated personal attacks. After demonstrating that elite assertions about him were no more than vulgar smears, Chomsky found his letters to the editor went unprinted or were mangled beyond recognition by hostile editing.

Rather than take offense, Chomsky shrugged off such treatment as only to be expected. If he hadn’t received it, he often said, he would have had to suspect that he was doing something wrong.

As unperturbed as he was by personal attacks, the same cannot be said of his reaction to propaganda passed off as news. Christopher Hitchens and Alexander Cockburn both told the story of how Chomsky once went to the dentist and was informed that he was grinding his teeth in his sleep. Consultation with Mrs. Chomsky determined that this was not the case. Further investigation found that Chomsky was indeed grinding his teeth, but in the daytime – every morning when he read the New York Times.[18]

The explanation for these disparate reactions is straightforward. Chomsky could see that vilification was infantile and inconsequential and therefore easily dismissed it. But the deadly impact of mass brainwashing made him react with the whole of his being, unconsciously gnashing his teeth at elite hypocrisy.

This fury fed his boundless reading appetite, equipping him with the insurmountable advantage of a lifetime of determined preparation. An avid reader from early childhood, he devoured hundreds, if not thousands, of books growing up, checking out up to a dozen volumes at a time from the Philadelphia public library, steadily working his way through the realist classics – Austen, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Eliot, Hardy, Hugo, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Twain, and Zola – as well as Hebrew literature, including the Bible, and Marxist and anarchist texts.[19]

This insatiable appetite for books continued throughout his life, supplemented by countless other print sources. At home or at work he was always surrounded by enormous stacks of books, more than anyone could read in several lifetimes. The practical results of such a studious life could be amusing. Chomsky himself told the story of how he and his first wife Carol once heard a loud crash at 4:30 a.m., thinking it was an earthquake. In fact, it turned out to be a mountain of books cascading to the floor in an adjoining room.[20]

Though Chomsky could only read a portion of all that he would liked to have read, that portion was of staggering dimensions for any ordinary reader. Aside from the mountain of books he read growing up, according to his wife Carol he read six daily newspapers and eighty journals of opinion, in addition to thousands of personal letters he received from the general public, an important part of his reading load.[21] Before 911, Chomsky spent an average of twenty hours a week on personal correspondence, a figure that probably increased after 911 when interest in Chomsky’s work surged.[22] His longtime personal assistant Bev Stohl confirms that he answered e-mails every night until 3:00 a.m.,[23] while Chomsky himself used to say he wrote 15,000 words a week responding to personal letters, which he drily claimed was “a C.I.A. estimate.” Even subtracting out the writing time for private correspondence, one can see that Chomsky’s reading was beyond enormous, and not at all recreational, a preference that manifested itself early in life when he read a draft of his father’s dissertation on David Kimhi (1160-1236) a Hebrew grammarian,[24] which turned out to be the first step on a complicated path to intellectual stardom sixteen years later with the publication of Syntactic Structures.

Chomsky’s boundless reading appetite appears to have been matched by the public’s appetite to hear him speak. He probably spoke to more Americans in person than anyone else in history, giving political lectures and talks at a staggering rate for nearly sixty years. In the pre-zoom era that meant considerable travel, the demands of which he embraced without complaint, whether driving, flying, or taking the train. In addition to destinations all over the U.S. he also went to Colombia, Palestine, Nicaragua, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, Britain, Spain, France, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, Japan, Italy, Turkey, and South Africa, among other places activists invited him to visit.

The talks were brilliant, and standing ovations routinely followed them. But the question and answer periods were where Chomsky’s unparalleled mastery stood out. Hour after hour questions were put to him on dozens of different topics, from labor history to union organizing to guerrilla tactics to drone warfare to economic theory to counter-insurgency and popular resistance, and hour after hour he patiently answered with illuminating precision and fascinating detail, at the same time providing an astonishing array of book titles, article summaries, history lessons, revealing quotes, and clarifying context about a seemingly limitless number of political conflicts past and present. His prodigious power of recall was vastly superior to any merely photographic memory, which overwhelms with irrelevant detail, whereas Chomsky always selected from a vast trove of information just what was immediately and historically relevant to a single person’s inquiry, before moving on to the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, in city after city, decade after decade after decade.

The size of his audiences mattered little to him, whether he spoke on a tiny college radio station or in front of thousands at a prestigious university. If anything, the larger audiences – though routine for Chomsky – were less desirable, as they highlighted the discouraging fact that too few intellectuals were willing to take up the challenge of political education and popular organization, a conformist constriction of supply in relation to strong public demand. In short, libertarian socialist Chomsky had no interest in being a “hot commodity,” and the fact that he could be regarded as such represented a failure of the intellectual class to politically engage with the public more than it did any personal merit on his part. Furthermore, as far as merit to his speaking ability goes, Chomsky deliberately refused to cultivate it, shunning oratory and rhetorical flourish in preference for what he called his “proudly boring” style of relying solely on logic and fact. Swaying audiences with emotion, he thought, was better left to propagandists.

This preference for the analytical over the emotionally gratifying was always in evidence with Chomsky. For example, in the early eighties a massive build-up of first-strike nuclear weapons sparked the emergence of the Nuclear Freeze movement, which mobilized enormous popular support for a bilateral freeze (U.S.-U.S.S.R.) in the production of new nuclear weapons by relentlessly focusing public attention on apocalyptic visions of nuclear annihilation.

From the moment the incineration of Hiroshima was publicly announced, of course, Chomsky, too, had recognized the danger of a world wired-up to explode in atomic fury, but he dissented from the view that paralyzing visions of utter destruction were an effective way of achieving nuclear disarmament. On the contrary, Chomsky felt that public attention needed to be focused on imperial policy, not military hardware, as it was policy that produced outcomes.[25] When the Nuclear Freeze movement attracted more than a million people to New York City in 1982 to protest the accelerating nuclear arms race, Chomsky withdrew from the event when no mention was made of Israel’s ongoing invasion and devastation of Lebanon, including the killing of Soviet advisers, a direct incitement to potentially terminal superpower confrontation.[26]

While the Freeze continued to focus laser-like on the awesome destructiveness of nuclear bombs, Chomsky found the approach insultingly simplistic, and expressed no surprise when its efforts were ultimately absorbed into the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, then headed by Kenneth Adelman, who was given the position after saying in his confirmation hearings that he had never given any consideration to the idea of disarmament.

In spite of dissenting in such ways even from the views of popular movements he sought to encourage, Chomsky’s public stature continued to grow. While subject to an almost complete blackout in the corporate media (for years after the end of the Vietnam War his writings could most reliably be found in the pages of the right-wing magazine Inquiry and the worker-owned and managed South End Press), Chomsky nevertheless won widespread acclaim for his analytical brilliance, tireless activism, and unflagging commitment to exposing the truth. Though he himself downplayed personal accolades, he won praise from a dazzling array of admirers, from learned professors and radical journalists to students, activists, authors, spiritual leaders, political hopefuls, movie directors, musicians, comedians, world champion boxers, political prisoners, international leaders, and awestruck fans throughout the world. With their constant compliments ringing in his ears, it’s doubly remarkable that he never lost his humility.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss remembered being deeply impressed by Chomsky’s consistent willingness to spend an hour of his time talking to him whenever Krauss dropped by his office as a young student at MIT, though Chomsky had no professional obligation to students outside of linguistics. “He showed me a kind of respect I wasn’t anticipating,” said an appreciative Krauss years later, while pronouncing Chomsky’s work “incisive, informative, provocative, and brilliant.”[27]

Activist and journalist Fred Branfman was impressed by Chomsky’s apparent ability to X-Ray vast reams of print and extract the essence for immediate practical use. When Chomsky visited Laos in 1970 to learn about refugees of U.S. saturation bombing of the region, Branfman gave him a 500-page book on the war in Laos at 10:00 one night, and was amazed to see him refute a propaganda point in a talk with a U.S. Embassy official the next day by citing a footnote buried hundreds of page into the text. Branfman was also struck by the fact that, unlike many intellectuals, Chomsky retained access to his deepest emotions. While witnessing Laotian peasants describing the horrific effects of U.S. bombing, he openly wept.[28]Overall, Branfman found Chomsky to be intense, driven, and unrelenting in combating injustice, but also warm, caring, wise, and gentle.

A documentary about Chomsky released in 2003 saluted his amazing productivity, calling him “[a] rebel without a pause,” which was the title of the film. After four decades of public intellectual work featuring eighteen-hour workdays, the MIT professor was well-known for working through the night drinking oceans of coffee, yet somehow still making himself available for morning interviews.[29]

Journalist and friend Alexander Cockburn emphasized Chomsky’s provision of a coherent “big picture” about politics, “buttressed by the data of a thousand smaller pictures and discrete theaters of conflict, struggle and oppression,” all the product of his extraordinary responsiveness to injustice. “Chomsky feels the abuses, cruelty and hypocrisies of power more than anyone,” wrote Cockburn. “It’s a state of continual alertness.”[30]

Famed American author and wilderness defender Edward Abbey wrote that Chomsky deserved the Nobel Prize for Truth, if only one had existed.[31]

British philosophy professor Nick Griffin declared Chomsky “extraordinarily well-informed,” and found the experience of simply talking to him “astonishing.” “He’s read everything and remembered what he’s read,” he marveled.[32]

Referring to the dissident classic, “American Power and the New Mandarins,” historian and gay rights activist Martin Duberman hailed Chomsky’s seemingly Olympian detachment, his tone so “free of exaggeration or misrepresentation,” his avoidance of “self-righteousness,” and his rare ability “to admit when a conclusion is uncertain or when the evidence allows for several possible conclusions.” Perhaps most remarkably, Chomsky was able, said Duberman, “to see inadequacies in the views or tactics of those who share his position – and even some occasional merit in those who do not,” a rare talent in the best of times and virtually non-existent in the frenzied tribalism so prevalent today.[33]

The brilliant Palestinian scholar Edward Said expressed admiration for Chomsky’s tireless willingness to confront injustice and for the awesome extent of his knowledge. “There is something deeply moving about a mind of such noble ideals repeatedly stirred on behalf of human suffering and injustice. One thinks here of Voltaire, of Benda, or Russell, although more than any of them Chomsky commands what he calls ‘reality’” – facts – over a breathtaking range.”[34]

Pantheon editor James Peck noted a kind of intellectual vertigo in reading Chomsky, finding his critiques “deeply unsettling” and impossible to categorize, as “no intellectual tradition quite captures his voice” and “no party claims him.” Always fresh and original, “his position [was] not a liberalism become radical, or a conservatism in revolt against the betrayal of claimed principles.” He was “a spokesman for no ideology.” His uniqueness, said Peck, “fits nowhere,” which was in itself “an indication of the radical nature of his dissent.”[35]

People’s historian Howard Zinn resorted to leg-pulling irony to describe the Chomsky phenomenon: “I found myself on a plane going south sitting next to a guy who introduced himself as Noam Chomsky. . . . It occurred to me, talking to him, that he was very smart.” Zinn, a popular speaker himself, was sometimes asked for the latest count of the learned professor’s staggering output of books. He would begin his reply with the qualification, “As of this morning,” and then pause for dramatic effect, drolly suggesting that any number he might offer stood a good chance of being abruptly rendered obsolete by Chomsky’s latest salvo.[36] Daniel Ellsberg was of similar mind, once saying that keeping up with Chomsky’s political work was a considerable challenge, as “he publishes faster than I can read.”[37]

Establishment liberal Bill Moyers was impressed by Chomsky’s apparently greater admiration for the intelligence of ordinary people than for the specialized talents of his elite colleagues. In an interview at the end of the Reagan years he told Chomsky: “[It] seems a little incongruous to hear a man from the Ivory Tower of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a scholar, a distinguished linguistics scholar, talk about common people with such appreciation.” Chomsky found no paradox at all in this, replying that his appreciation flowed naturally from the evidence provided by language study itself, which demonstrated overwhelmingly that ordinary people have deep-seated creative intelligence that separates humans from every other known species.[38]

Where paradox does exist is in elite intellectuals’ apparently boundless capacity to pervert natural human intelligence into specialized cleverness at serving the ends of power. However, this makes them not the most intelligent part of the population, as they believe themselves to be, but, on the contrary, the most gullible and easily deceived, a point Chomsky made often.

In Chomsky’s final public years the fruit of using our species intelligence to serve institutional stupidity manifested itself in growing threats of climate collapse, nuclear war, and ideological fanaticism displacing all prospect of democracy, calling into question the very survival value of such intelligence.

Helpfully, Chomsky has left us with sage advice about which direction our intelligence should take and also avoid, in order to escape looming catastrophe. As to the first, he said, “You should stick with the underdog.”[39] About the second, he said, “We should not succumb to irrational belief.”[40]

In June 2023, Chomsky suffered a massive stroke, leaving him paralyzed down the right side of his body, and with limited capacity to speak.

His appetite for news and sensitivity to injustice, however, remain intact. When he sees the news from Palestine, his wife reports, he raises his remaining good arm in a mute gesture of sorrow and anger.[41]

Still compassionate and defiant at 96.

Incredibly well done, Professor Chomsky.

Happy Birthday.[42]

Michael K Smith is the author of “Portraits of Empire.” He blogs with Frank Scott at www.legalienate.blogspot.com

[1]Mailer quoted in Robert F. Barksy, “Chomsky – A Life of Dissent,” (MIT, 1997) p. 129.

[2] Chomsky’s childhood, see Mark Achbar, ed. “Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky and the Media,” (Black Rose, 1994) pps. 44-50. Also, Robert F. Barsky, “Noam Chomsky – A Life of Dissent,” MIT Press, 1997) Chapter 1. Chomsky at Fred Hampton’s funeral see Christopher Hitchens, Covert Action Information Bulletin event at the University of the District of Colombia, C-SPAN 1995 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODfic8Z818

[3]On U.S. neo-Nazi client states, see Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, “The Washington Connection And Third World Fascism,” (South End, 1979), and many subsequent works. On Vietnam, see Noam Chomsky, “American Power and the New Mandarins – Historical and Political Essays; (Vintage, 1969); Noam Chomsky; “At War With Asia – Essays on Indochina,” (Pantheon, 1970); and Noam Chomsky; “For Reasons of State,” (The New Press, 2003). On the Middle East, see Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle – The United States, Israel & The Palestinians,” (South End, 1983); Noam Chomsky & Gilbert Achcar, “Perilous Power – The Middle East And U.S. Foreign Policy,” (Paradigm, 2007); Noam Chomsky, “Middle East Illusions,” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). On the Cold War, see Noam Chomsky, World Orders Old and New, (Columbia, 1994).

[4]Chomsky appears to never have confused symbols of knowledge (credentials) with knowledge itself, and he had early evidence that the brightest minds were often without credentials. The uncle whose newsstand he helped work was extremely intelligent and well-read, even had a lay practice in psychoanalysis, but never went beyond fourth grade. Similarly, though his mother never went to college, Noam agreed that she was “much smarter” than his father and his friends, who he said “were all Ph.Ds, big professors and rabbis,” but “talking nonsense mostly.” On Chomsky’s uncle, see Mark Achbar ed.,“Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media,” (Black Rose, 1994), p. 50. On Chomsky’s mother, see Noam Chomsky (with David Barsamian), “Imperial Ambitions – Conversations On The Post-9/11 World,” (Metropolitan Books, 2005), p. 158.

[5]Chomsky found political activism distasteful, and hated giving up his rich personal life. See Mark Achbar ed., “Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky and the Media,” (Black Rose, 1994) pps. 65-6.

[6]Noam Chomsky interviewed by Paul Shannon, “The Legacy of the Vietnam War” –Indochina Newsletter, Issue 18, November-December, 1982, pps. 1-5, available at www.chomsky.info.net

[7]Noam Chomsky, “The Chomsky Reader,” (Pantheon, 1987) pps. 224-5.

[8]Chomsky quoted in Milan Rai, “Chomsky’s Politics,” (Verso, 1995), p. 14.

[9]Christopher Hitchens, Covert Action Information Bulletin event at the University of the District of Colombia, C-SPAN, 1995, available on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODficd8Z818

[10]Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, eds. “Understanding Power – The Indispensable Chomsky,” (New Press, 2002) pps. 35-6

[11]See Noam Chomsky, “Vietnam and United States Global Strategy,” The Chomsky Reader, (Pantheon, 1987) pps. 232-5.

[12]“Firing Line with William F. Buckley: Vietnam and the Intellectuals,” Episode 143, April 3, 1969.

[13]“The Perle-Chomsky Debate – Noam Chomsky Debates with Richard Perle,” Ohio State University, 1988, transcript available at www.chomsky.info.net.

[14]“On the Contras – Noam Chomsky Debates with John Silver,” The Ten O’clock News, 1986, transcript available at www.chomsky.info.net

[15]Mark Achbar, “Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky and the Media,” (Black Rose, 1994) pps. 128-31

[16]There was also a “debate” between Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz in 2005 on the future of Israel/Palestine, although Dershowitz’s performance was not much more than intellectual clowning, with repeated “I” declarations demonstrating his inability to move beyond narcissistic fantasy (“I believe,” “I think,” “I call for,” “I propose,” “I support,” “I have written,” “I can tell you,” “I favor,” “I see,” “I hope,” etc.). He irrelevantly quoted Ecclesiastes, called for a “Chekhovian” as opposed to “Shakespearean” peace, and ignored decades of total U.S.-Israeli opposition to anything remotely like national liberation for Palestinians. Chomsky wryly congratulated him for the one truthful statement he made, i.e., that Chomsky had been a youth counselor at Camp Massad in the Pocono Mountains in the 1940s. See “Noam Chomsky v. Alan Dershowitz: A Debate on the Israel-Palestinian Conflict,” Democracy Now, December 23, 2005

[17]Alexander Cockburn in David Barsamian, “Chronicles of Dissent – Interviews with Noam Chomsky,” (Common Courage, 1992) p. xii

[18]An understandable reaction given the “Newspaper of Record’s” grotesque distortions. On Chomsky’s teeth-grinding, see Alexander Cockburn in David Barsamian, “Chronicles of Dissent – Interviews with Noam Chomsky,” (Common Courage, 1992) p. ix; Christopher Hitchens, Covert Action Information Bulletin event at the University of the District of Colombia, C_SPAN, 1995, available on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODficd8Z818

[19]Robert Barsky, “Chomsky – A Life of Dissent,” (MIT, 1997) pps. 13, 19; Mark Achbar ed., “Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky and the Media,” (Black Rose, 1994) p. 44

[20]Noam Chomsky in David Barsamian, “Class Warfare – Interviews With David Barsamian,” (Common Courage, 1996) p. 26

[21] “Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause,” 2003 Documentary

[22] Robert Barsky, “Noam Chomsky – A Life of Dissent,” (MIT, 1997) p. 45

[23] Bev Bousseau Stohl, “Chomsky And Me – A Memoir,” (OR Books, 2023) p. 53

[24] Robert F. Barsky, “Noam Chomsky – A Life of Dissent,” (MIT, 1997,) p. 10

[25]“A narrow focus on strategic weapons tends to reinforce the basic principle of the ideological system . . . that the superpower conflict is the central element of world affairs, to which all else is subordinated.” Noam Chomsky, “Priorities For Averting The Holocaust,” in “Radical Priorities,” (Black Rose, 1984) p.

  1. 283

[26]“The conclusion is that if we hope to avert nuclear war, the size and character of nuclear arsenals is a secondary consideration.” Noam Chomsky, “The Danger of Nuclear War and What We Can Do About It,” “Radical Priorities,” (Black Rose, 1984) p. 272.

[27]“Chomsky and Krauss: An Origins Project Dialogue,” You Tube, March 31, 2013

[28] Fred Branfman, “When Chomsky Wept,” Salon, June 17, 2012

[29]Bev Boisseau Stohl, “Chomsky And Me – A Memoir,” (OR Books, 2023) p. 92

[30]Alexander Cockburn in David Barsamian, “Chronicles of Dissent – Interviews with Noam Chomsky,” (Common Courage, 1992) pps. x – xi

[31]Edward Abbey, ed., “The Best of Edward Abbey,” (Counterpoint, 2005), preface.

[32]Quoted in the documentary Rebel Without a Pause, 2003.

[33]Martin Duberman quoted on the back cover of “American Power and the New Mandarins,” 1969 (first Vintage Books edition).

[34]Edward Said, “The Politics of Dispossession,” (Chatto and Windus, 1994) p. 263

[35]James Peck, introduction to The Chomsky Reader, (Pantheon, 1987) pps. vii – xix

[36]Howard Zinn, “The Future of History – Interviews With David Barsamian,” (Common Courage, 1999), pps. 39-40. Though Chomsky’s total book count has ended up around 150 (with collaborations with activist friends still coming out), it’s possible nobody knows the exact figure with certainty. Lifelong activist and friend Michael Albert tells the story of how Chomsky’s immense body of work once convinced a group of activists in Eastern Europe that there were two different Chomskys, one a linguist, and the other a political activist. Given Chomsky’s preposterous output and far from unusual surname in that part of the world, it was perhaps an understandable error. See Michael Albert, “Noam Chomsky at 95. No Strings on Him,” Counterpunch, December 8, 2023.

[37]Paul Jay, “Rising Fascism and the Elections – Chomsky and Ellsberg,” The Analysis News, You Tube November 2, 2024

[38]Bill Moyers, “A World of Ideas – Conversations With Thoughtful Men and Women,” (Doubleday, 1989). The interview is also available online on You Tube. See “Noam Chomsky interview on Dissent (1988),” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEYJMCydFNI>

[39]Milan Rai, “Chomsky’s Politics,” (Verso, 1995) p. 6

[40] Chomsky in “Chronicles of Dissent – Interviews With David Barsamian,” (Common Courage, 1992) p. 159

[41] “Noam Chomsky, hospitalizado en Brasil,” La Jornada, June 12, 2024 (Spanish)

[42]Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928.

28 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

US Reportedly Plans to Approve $680 Million in Arms to Israel

By Jessica Corbett

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

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

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

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

[https://twitter.com/tariqhabash_/status/1861813690812493828]

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

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

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

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

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

[https://twitter.com/imeupolicy/status/1861819051879637347]

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

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

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

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

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

According to the Financial Times:

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

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

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

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

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

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

28 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

Israel blocks entry of blankets, clothes and shoes amid cold weather, intensifying Gaza’s catastrophic humanitarian crisis

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

28 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

No More ‘Deals’ – What Palestinians Want and Will Fight to Achieve

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

28 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

Israel carpet bombs Beirut after Biden announces ceasefire

By Kevin Reed

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

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

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

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

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

A report by the New York Times said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

27 November 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

The United States Raises a Middle Finger to the International Criminal Court

By Vijay Prashad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

In 1982, the South African freedom fighter and poet Mongane Wally Serote (born in 1944), who lived in Botswana and worked with the Medu Art Ensemble (about which we wrote a dossier last year), published ‘Time has run out’ in his epic book The Night Keeps Winking. ‘[M]any of us have gone mad’, he wrote, because ‘we are human and this is our land’. Serote was writing of South Africa, but we can expand his vision now to Palestine, and indeed to the entire earth. And then Serote writes:

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

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

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

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

And then it ends…

Ah Palestine!
Be.

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

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

UN: Israel Denied 90 Percent of Aid Deliveries to North Gaza in November

By The Cradle

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

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

More attempts were unsuccessful because of “denials of specific locations or specific supplies,” he said in a statement reported by The Washington Post on 26 November.

The aid that has reached Gaza is being looted by criminal gangs, which are able to operate freely after Israel began killing members of the Gaza police attempting to secure aid deliveries earlier this year.

“It is tactical, systematic, criminal looting,” Petropoulos told the BBC.

He says this is leading to “ultra-violence” from “the looters towards the truckers, from the IDF towards the police, and from the police towards the looters.”

“Hamas’ security control dropped to under 20 percent,” the former head of Hamas police investigations told the BBC.

“We are working on a plan to restore control to 60 percent within a month.”

The BBC was told that “thefts often happen in clear sight of Israeli soldiers or surveillance drones but that the army fails to intervene.”

“Stolen goods are apparently being stored outside or in warehouses in areas under Israeli military control,” the BBC wrote.

As a result, hunger and malnutrition among Palestinians are increasing.

“My children are very hungry every day. We can’t afford the basics. It’s constant suffering. No food, no water, no cleaning products, nothing,” Gaza resident Umm Ahmed told the BBC.

“We don’t want much, just to live a decent life. We need food. We need goods to come in and be distributed fairly. That’s all we’re asking for.”

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

Conscientious Objectors Refuse to Enlist in the Israeli Army: “Get Out of Gaza Now!”

By Mesarvot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave Gaza.

Thank you for your time

***********

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mesarvot is a network of Israeli conscientious objectors.

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org

Ukrainians and North Americans Are Done with This War, but It Keeps Escalating Anyway

By Caitlin Johnstone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 December 2024

Source: transcend.org