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By Dr Arun Mitra

The news that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, has been invited to address joint session of US Congress has come at a time when the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking warrants against Netanyahu and other Israeli and Hamas leaders for “war crimes.”  This invitation gives him the status of an honoured guest for which he is very excited as per the reports. As head of the government of Israel he is responsible for the death and misery of thousands of hapless children and women.  Inviting him to address the Congress session has exposed the hypocrisy of the US administration that has been talking of humanitarian assistance to the war affected people on one side and supplying huge cache of arms to Israel in the name of self-defence from Hamas.

No wonder Israel has condemned the ICC judgment.  The US President Joe Biden himself termed the ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants as “outrageous” stating that the US “will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that he fundamentally rejects the ICC Prosecutor equivalence between Israel and Hamas and that the United States has been clear since well before the current conflict that that ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter (1).

It is interesting to note that human rights attorney Amal Clooney who is among the experts who advised the ICC prosecutor to seek the arrest warrants, in a statement said “I served on this panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives. The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict,” The human rights lawyer who happens to be wife of actor George Clooney wrote of her participation in a letter on the website of the couple’s Clooney Foundation for Justice (2).

The decision to invite Benjamin Netanyahu has been rejected in strong words by Bernie Sanders who is American politician and senior US senator from Vermont and who is himself Jewish. The ICC is right, Sanders has said. “Netanyahu is a war criminal. He should not be invited to address a joint meeting of Congress. I certainly will not attend.”

It is well known that Netanyahu promoted Hamas to counter moderate Palestinian leadership and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In an article in the Times of Israel published on 8th October 2023, Tal Schneider, a Political Correspondent at The Times of Israel said that for years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces. Various governments headed by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group. The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state says Tal Schneider(3).

Now Israel has rejected US proposal for a ceasefire and end to war in Gaza. US President Biden has said the new proposal for a Gaza truce is “a roadmap to an enduring ceasefire and the release of all hostages”, adding that “it’s time to end this war.” At least 36,379 Palestinians have been killed and 82,407 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since 7th October 2023. Prime Minister Netanyahu released a statement following Biden’s remarks, claiming that Israel is still committed to “the elimination of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities,” in addition to bringing home all hostages.

Netanyahu’s talk of finishing Hamas is a farce. Release of hostages could have been done long back through negotiations. Defying all the international appeals the Israeli Defence Forces have attacked Rafah creating havoc in the area. As a result there is unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israel is continuously ignoring international opinion for free transport of humanitarian assistance to the war affected people. The UN has warned several times that there is spread of hunger and diseases. Situation is getting worse in the absence of medical aid as Israel has destroyed most of the hospitals, which is a complete violation of international conventions. All this points to Netanyahu’s bent of mind to annihilate the Palestinians.

Experts warn that 1.7 million people are internally displaced, mostly women and 600,000 children in the Rafah area alone, and they need food assistance, shelter, healthcare, education, water, sanitation and hygiene.

Till now “189 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff has been killed by Israel since 7 October 2023—the highest number of UN staff killed in any conflict since the UN’s founding in 1945.” Multiple UNRWA facilities have been targeted, besieged and demolished by the Israeli military, in apparent violation of the principle of the inviolability of UN premises, the experts said (4).

The UN has repeatedly warned that at this existential time for millions of Palestinians in Gaza, who are enduring famine coupled with unfathomable humanitarian conditions, UN operations and facilities must be protected.

It is time for the global community to act and develop broad vision. World has suffered too much when we get carried away and develop hatred towards others on the basis of ethnic or religious identities and even become ruthless towards others forgetting all humanitarian values. We have the examples of death of 800,000 people in Rawanda in tribal violence in a matter of just 100 days. South Asia has seen killings on communal lines several times. World community was unable to save Jews and others from Nazi crimes but the times have changed. We can save the people of Gaza or anywhere else during internal or external strife.

Our inaction can be disastrous. The Military Industrial Complex has its own interests of making profit. But the present day world has its moral duty to stop wars anywhere otherwise this would have serious consequences including use of nuclear weapons. It is duty of all the countries, who are signatories to the UN Human Rights Charter to come forward for restoration of peace in Gaza. Let the peace lovers world over rise to the occasion to save our planet from another catastrophe.

Dr Arun Mitra is a Practicing ENT Surgeon in Ludhiana, Punjab.

3  June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

In politics, context is crucial.

To truly appreciate the recent decision by Ireland, Spain and Norway to recognize the state of Palestine, the subject has to be placed in proper context.

On November 15, 1988, Yasser Arafat, then Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, declared Palestine as an independent state.

The proclamation took place within important and unique contexts:

One, the Palestinian uprising of December 1987 which ignited international support and sympathy with the Palestinian people.

Two, growing expectations that the Palestinian leadership needed to match the popular Intifada in the Occupied Territories with a political program so as not to squander the global attention obtained by the uprising.

There were other issues that are also worth a pause, including the growing marginalization of the PLO as the main political front of the Palestinian struggle.

This irrelevance was the natural political outcome of the forced exile of the PLO leadership from Lebanon to Algeria in 1982, which largely severed the connection between this leadership and an influential Palestinian constituency.

Though Arafat’s announcement was made in Algiers, Palestinians in occupied Palestine and across the world rejoiced. They felt that their leadership was, once more, directly involved in their struggle, and that their Intifada, which, by then, had cost them hundreds of precious lives, had finally acquired some kind of political horizon.

The countries that almost immediately recognized the state of Palestine reflected the geopolitical formation at the time: Arab and Muslim countries, which fully and unconditionally recognized the nascent state. Additionally, there were countries in the Global South which expressed their historic solidarity with the Palestinian people.

A third category, which also mattered greatly, was represented by countries in Asia and eastern Europe – including Russia itself – which revolved within the Soviet sphere, posing a direct challenge to American hegemony and Western militarism and expansionism.

Soon after the Algiers Declaration, the geopolitics of the world received its greatest shock since World War II, namely the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent fragmentation of pro-Soviet states, thus the isolation of the Global South amid growing Western hegemony.

That, too, had a direct impact on Palestine. Though Arafat and his PLO made their fair share of mistakes and political miscalculations – leading to the Oslo Accords, the formation of the Palestinian Authority and the fragmentation of the Palestinian front itself – the Palestinian leadership’s options, from a strict geopolitical analysis, were quite limited.

Back then, the PLO had one out of two options: either to continue with the struggle for freedom and independence based on the national liberation model or to adopt a purely political approach based on negotiations and supposed ‘painful compromises’.  They opted for the latter, which proved to be a fatal mistake.

Political negotiations can be rewarding when the negotiating parties have leverage. While Israel had the leverage of being the occupying power and receiving unconditional support from the US and its Western allies, the Palestinians had very little.

Therefore, the outcome was as obvious as it was predictable. The PLO was sidelined in favor of a new political entity, the PA, which redefined the concept of political leverage altogether, to essentially mean direct financial benefits to an Israeli-sanctioned ruling class.

Since 1988, more countries recognized the state of Palestine, though that recognition remained largely confined within the geopolitical formations at each phase of history. For example, between 2008 and 2011, more South American countries recognized Palestine, a direct outcome of new and assertive political independence achieved in that part of the world.

In 2012, Palestine was voted by the United Nations General Assembly as a non-member observer state, allowing it to officially use the name ‘State of Palestine’ for all political purposes.

All Palestinian efforts since then have failed to overcome the power paradigm that continues to exist at the UN, separating the UNGA from those with veto power at the Security Council.

The events of October 7, and the genocidal war that followed, have certainly ushered in a massive global movement that challenged the pre-existing geopolitical paradigm regarding Palestine.

If the war, however, had taken place, say ten years ago, the global response to the Palestinian plea for solidarity may have been different. But this is not the case, since the world is itself experiencing a major state of flux. New rising global powers have been boldly challenging, and changing, the world’s status quo geopolitics for years. This includes Russia’s direct confrontation with NATO in Ukraine, China’s rise to global power status, the growing influence of BRICS and the more assertive African and South American political agendas.

For its part, the Gaza war has also challenged the concept of military power as a guarantor of permanent dominance. This is now obvious in the Middle East and also globally.

The latter realization has finally allowed for new, significant margins to appear, allowing Western European countries to finally accept the reality that Palestine deserves to be a state, that the Palestinian aspirations must be honored and that international law must be respected.

Now, the challenge for Palestinians is whether they will be able to utilize this historic moment to the fullest degree. Hopefully, the precious blood spilled in Gaza would prove more sacred than the limited financial gains by a small group of politicians.

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

3  June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

The Israeli army is in a state of shock and worry despite the carnage they meted out on Gaza in the past eight months. Soldiers and officers are fighting with their arsenals but they are not feeling well about the state of the army bogged down in the different areas of the devastated enclave and whose civilians and Palestinian fighters show no signs of submitting to the Israeli bombardment and slaughter.

The slaughter they carried out on Gaza, now standing at 36,000 killed and rising, not to mention the mutilated babies, children bombed to pieces and shown on TV and social media with pictures, may have created a series of “psycholgical” disturbances among Israeli soldiers.

Its being termed as the Israeli gaza genocide. In the killing of civilians, Israeli pilots and those in the control room directing drones to shoot, kill and bomb swaths of housing may be starting to disturb the Israeli psychology and psyche with mental trauma setting in.

Israel soldiers have been turned into rabid heathens in this ugly war, ready to do anything, kill, maim and shoot while they watch with the mind playing up no matter how much you hate your enemy!

And as a result, different manifestations are beginning to show in the army’s rank-and-file. Israeli officers no longer want to serve in the army, voters are confused with many no longer believing in Israeli politics. The soldiers, many of whom experiencing massive injuries, are becoming psychologically disturbed and turning to psychiatry and therapy.

‘No army for me’

Only 42 percent of polled military officers say they intend to continue to serve in the Israeli army once the war on Gaza is over. That effectively means over 60 percent of the soldiers want to quit once this war is over.

This was recently reported by the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth based on the manpower directorate of the Israeli occupation forces.

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Further, Israeli officers’ requests to take early retirement has doubled in the last eight months of this war that began soon after 7 October 2023. As the ferocity of this war continued, more and more officers have opted out for early retirement.

The 42 percent figure has disturbed and shocked the Israeli military leadership who stand aghast as to what to do about this statistic that plummeted from a similar poll taken in August 2023 which stood at 49 percent.

Many on social media reported the recent poll. One suggested “the officers are haunted by a feeling of failure and they do not want to serve in a failing apparatus.”

[https://twitter.com/KalemiPost/status/1796526240649580546]

This feeling may be because the Israeli ground troops have been fighting in Gaza since 27 October with much manpower and material losses since with soldiers being killed and tanks and armory destroyed.

This is in addition to the thousands of injured including those with permanent disability. Israel’s Channel 12 revealed 20,000 were injured since 7 October. Of these 8,298 have been classified by the Israeli authorities as having permanent disability.  Such figures are being prized out because the Israeli army follows a strict policy of censorship.

Meanwhile, and in another poll conducted by Yedioth Ahronoth and Reichmann University, it showed most Israelis believe, broadly speaking, Hamas has won the war so far. On a political perspective, 37 percent of rightwing Israeli voters believe the Islamist organization has won while 16 percent of Israelis believe Israel is winning. This is while 40 percent of those voters – the middle and left of politics – say Hamas won hands down compared to only 4 percent who believe Israel won in the war in Gaza.

[https://twitter.com/amansouraja/status/1796998389009207512]

The poll was carried out on 810 Israeli voters. Noticable also – and this is despite the fact that America has been the main supplier of weapons in this war – 63 percent of the Israelis polled believe the United States has become less safe to travel to. This may be because of the ongoing student protests across American universities who want the Israeli war on Gaza to stop.

[https://twitter.com/Hyacinthedml/status/1794447591020572846]

Further to that, and in another poll 85 percent of Israeli voters expressed little or no faith in their government. This is a view almost daily articulated in the protests on Israeli streets, in Tel Aviv, Haifa and west Jerusalem which either call on the government to make a deal with Hamas to release the hostages – now down to around 125 – and/or for the government to resign.

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Real figures on the number of Israeli soldiers killed in the war on Gaza are carefully messaged by the Israeli army and not at all in keeping with what is happening on the ground. The Israeli army states since the start of the ground operation on 27 October, 293 Israeli soldiers were killed and 3,657 were injured whilst the condition of  568 soldiers is described as critical, 957 moderately injured, and 2,132 with minor injuries.

This is far less than what is happening on the battlefields of Gaza where soldiers are being killed by the day. Military expert Major-General Fayez Al Dwairi said the announcements of Israeli spokesman Daniel Hagari have no relations to what is happening on the ground in Gaza. He added on Al Jazeera the number of Israeli soldiers that killed in Gaza stood last March and based on Hebrew calculations, was already at 16,000.

That figure has continued to increase as the Israeli army stepped up its aggression on Rafah, and now in north Gaza, in places like Jabalia, Biet Lahia, Biet Hanoon and Tal Al Zaatar and Al Zaitoun in Gaza City. More Israeli soldiers are killed daily, with forced acknowledgement by the Israeli army despite messaging the actual figures.

Israeli soldiers have not had it easy in Gaza despite their planes, guns, tanks and machine guns. The psychological impact of the war on individual soldiers have been devastating.

The number of soldiers who are in need of psychological treatment is in the thousands and going up all the time.

Its been reported that in just one case more than 1,890 soldiers were sent to the Natal Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center because of psychological traumas and many of those enlisted are seeking mental health treatment all the time.

But more shocking is the fact that it has been reported that a soldier with severe psychological problems, and who had been fighting in Gaza, went to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and threw a grenade outside its headquarters.

Yedioth Ahronoth stated that since the outbreak of the war more than 6,400 injured soldiers required treatment 21 percent of which reqired psychological therapy. Further to that, since 7 October, 2023 around 30,000 soldiers called up a mental health hotline.

The Gaza war is tough for everyone. Whilst the Palestinian genocide can’t be compared, Israeli soldiers are feeling the heat of death, permanent injury and psychological problems coupled with anguish and contradictions.

Dr Marwan Asmar is based on Amman, Jordan and writes on Middle East Affairs

3  June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

Jabalia is a pile of ruins and destruction, thanks to the Israeli army. Pictures, images and videos show the Jabalia Camp in the north of Gaza has been reduced to a series of gorges and tumbled down buildings, concrete and wreckage.

This is after its mass bombing and missiles that pulverized blocks of flats and residential buildings.

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One video clip shows people running amidst their destroyed buildings and houses being shot at and bombed by Israeli quadcopters and tanks that thud and boom.

The voices of individuals can be heard shouting telling others to run and take care.

Nowhere to run to

But, here, there is nowhere to run to. It’s naked Israeli aggression. Sounds of Israeli machine gunfire and snipers as people scurry from one place to another are rife.

This is war in its ugliest form waged against ordinary civilians that don’t even have kitchen utensils.

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Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al Sharif is in a state of shock. “I swear to God that I can’t even begin to describe what is happening in the Jabalia camp.

Eyewitnesses told the Turkish news agency Anadolu bodies of Palestinians were recovered from the streets of the Jabalia camp and the Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip after the withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Israeli soldiers started withdrawing, Thursday, to the east of Jabalia after 20 days of total bombardment and destruction as covered by websites on the social media. Homes and infrastructure were blown up into smithereen, the burning of residential buildings torched to the delight of Israelis.

It was supposed to be a pull back from Jabalia camp, the arounding areas, Biet Lahia and Biet Hanoon.

But there was an element of double-dealing. Israeli snipers were heard frequently shooting at civilians who were returning to their destroyed homes as they heard of the atrocious pull out. Men, women, children were moving in between debris trying to identify the houses they once lived in.

In their destroyed state neigborhoods and residential areas looked so different.

[https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1796424678350962935]

The scale of destruction in Jabalia is unbelievable in its magnification and ruinous state as documented by another journalist who was in the camp during the three-week onslaught.

Mohammad Shaheen walks through the massive destruction of the camp built after 1948 when thousands of displaced Palestinians were forced to come here after the Israeli state was created.

[https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1796432984284807177]

One woman resident said the scale of destruction is mind-boggling. “The Israelis have destroyed us. They are testing their missiles on us,” she told the reporter.

Another resident says the vast destruction is the result of weapons being “tested on us with Jabalia and the rest of the Gaza Strip used as a testing ground for different armoury provided by the Americans.

The Israeli war machine unleashed on Jabalia included people, old, children and women. Of the infrastructure, the Israeli targetted the UNRWA headquarters that housed thousands of displaced persons. In a recent bombing of the al Nazla school outside Jablia 10 people were killed and 17 injured.

But it had been a tough fight for the Israeli army who faced missiles by the Palestinian resistance movement who shot, killed, maimed and injured Israeli soldiers and their tanks and other armoury destroyed.

In this battle, Israeli soldiers were killed and injured almost daily as reported by the the Izz Al Din Al Qassam fighters as well with 120 anti-tank missiles fired at Israel forces in the first few day of the start of the military slaughter of Jabalia.

In the first six days when Israeli soldiers started to enter Jabalia and the areas of northern Gaza that included Biet Lahia, Biet Hanoon and Al Zaitoun in Gaza City, the Israeli army reported it lost 95 soldiers between those killed and injured and with tanks, armed carriers and few bulldozers put out of action. The cost of one bulldozer is earmarked at $1 million.

Not Beaten

Despite the extent of destruction many say Jabalia will not be beaten for this is the home of the Palestinian resistance. It is here, in Jabalia, were the first Intifada in 1987 against Israeli occupation was first struck. The Intifada, a people’s uprising continued for five years until the belaguered 1991 peace conference in Madrid.

After more than eight months of war against Gaza, the number of Palestinians civilians killed stands at over 36,000 with over 81,000 injured.

Vast swathes of Gaza lies in ruin amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine with Israeli border guards refusing the entry of aid trucks into the enclave. The north of Gaza has long passed into the famine stage as a result and mass starvation is also creeping into south Gaza because of the Israeli control of the different crossing points in Rafah and elsewhere.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in its latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its operation in Rafah, where over a 1.4 million Palestinians sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

Major-General Fayez Al Dwairi comments the Israeli army has no morals or ethics because it destroyed everything in its path during its occopation of the camp. He added, it left tens of people dead in the streets of the camp and/or under the wreckage of buildings, destroying what was left of the camp and all the basics of life.

AL Dwairi pointed out the Israelis destroyed all of the UNRWA Schools, bulldozed the roads in the camp and dug up its cemetaries. He said they deserve to be called a bunch of gangs but nevertheless suffered great material and manpower losses and were not able to hold on to the land or stay there, and wherever they go they will suffer the same fate and will be defeated by the Palestinian resistance.

Dr Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based writer on Middle East affairs and currently blogs at https://crossfirearabia.com.

1 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Oscar Grenfell

The death toll from the Israeli offensive on Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza, and attacks throughout the Strip continues to grow with reports in recent days of widespread deaths and injuries to children, aid workers and other civilians.

Signaling their ongoing support for the murderous onslaught, the leaderships of the Democratic and Republican parties issued an effusive open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, hailing him as a leader of a global fight against “terrorism” and inviting him to address the US Congress.

That invitation was made a day after the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) issued a statement detailing the deliberate killing of two of its paramedics in the Tel Sultan area west of Rafah.

According to the PRCS, on May 29 a convoy of three ambulances was bombed by Israeli war planes. When one of the ambulances caught fire as a result and the paramedics attempted to extinguish the blaze, Israeli soldiers “opened heavy fire towards the teams, forcing them to withdraw from the site before they could retrieve the paramedics’ bodies, which were found in pieces this morning.”

The PRCS noted that with these latest killings, it has now lost 19 paramedics killed by Israel. An estimated 270 aid workers have been murdered throughout the genocide. The PRCS said that it “holds the international community fully responsible for the continued targeting by the Israeli occupation of the PRCS teams, facilities, and ambulances, clearly marked with the Red Crescent emblem, protected under international humanitarian law.”

The two paramedics were among at least 113 Palestinians killed between the afternoons of May 29 and 31, according to Gaza’s health ministry, along with 637 injured. They join the more than 36,000 recorded Palestinian deaths over the past seven months, but with reporting having broken down, estimates place the true death toll at tens of thousands more.

The United Nations and aid agencies are warning that in addition to the direct killings, the offensive against Rafah is creating a massive humanitarian crisis. The assault has displaced an estimated 1 million of Gaza’s 2.1 million people; deliveries of food and other essentials have been restricted, and humanitarian groups have been forced to withdraw.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization reported that just three of its aid trucks had been able to enter Gaza since the assault on Rafah began, with 60 more stuck at the Egyptian border.

That prompted the World Food Programme to warn that “Constrained access to southern parts of Gaza risks causing the same catastrophic levels of hunger witnessed in the north,” where there have been shocking scenes of death from starvation as hundreds of thousands have been forced to subsist on the equivalent of less than a small can of beans a day.

On Thursday, Médecins Sans Frontières closed its primary care centre in Al Mawasi, the desertous piece of land at the southwestmost point of Gaza, to which Israel is herding hundreds of thousands of people from Rafah. The doctors’ group reported that the centre had treated more than 33,000 people since February and stated that its forced closure marked “another step in Israel’s systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health system.”

Earlier in the week, it had been forced to end operations at a stabilisation centre in Tel Sultan. SOS Children’s Villages, which provides assistance to the displaced with a focus on children, also announced that it was evacuating from Rafah.

Meanwhile, the healthcare system there is on the brink of a complete collapse. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported yesterday that “key health services, such as dialysis, medical imaging, surgery, internal medicine, and maternity and pediatric care, are no longer available, and many of the highly skilled doctors and nurses have been displaced from the city. With Al Emirati Maternity Hospital ceasing operations, all three hospitals in Rafah that were partially functional prior to the Israeli military operation are now out of service.”

While Israel is besieging the people of Rafah, it is also intensifying operations in central and northern Gaza, from which many of them were forced to flee. The clear aim is to render the strip entirely uninhabitable and to complete its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

This week Israel ended a siege of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza that it began on May 11. In those three weeks, the Zionist forces had carried out mass roundups, executions and indiscriminate shootings, killing hundreds.

With the operation over, a Euro-Med Monitor field team that surveyed the damage reported that “not a single residential building was spared from bombing, bulldozing, or burning operations. The complete destruction of the area’s infrastructure was evident, as was the burning of the main market and shops in the streets surrounding it, to the point where walking on the roads of most of the camp’s ‘blocks’ has become impossible due to the rubble and massive destruction.”

The headquarters in the camp of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) had been completely demolished through systematic shelling and arson with petrol, along with six school buildings.

In the final stages of this destruction operation, at least four Palestinian civilians, including a child, were killed by Israeli forces on Tuesday.

The OCHA also reported that in central Gaza, “four Palestinians, including two women, were reportedly killed and 15 injured when a house was hit in Bloc C of An Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in Deir al Balah” on Thursday. Five were killed the day before in Gaza City when a bomb was dropped on a residential house.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, from which many now in Rafah fled, at least 12 civilians, including two children, were killed Wednesday in separate bombings of two residential buildings.

While US and other imperialist leaders have shed cynical crocodile tears over the onslaught against Rafah, they continue to oversee the genocide, which has been facilitated militarily, politically and diplomatically by American imperialism and its allies.

The ongoing line-up was underscored by the joint letter to Netanyahu, signed by the fascistic Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, together with Democratic Party Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer and House leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Inviting the Israeli mass murderer to address a special joint session of Congress, the Democratic and Republican leaders gushed: “To build on our enduring relationship and to highlight America’s solidarity with Israel, we invite you to share the Israeli government’s vision for defending democracy, combatting terror, and establishing a just and lasting peace in the region.”

The historical analogy that presents itself would be an invitation to Hitler or Mussolini to explain their “vision for peace.”

The letter linked this endorsement of the genocide with American imperialism’s broader war drive, including its moves to provoke a conflict with Iran in the Middle East and its confrontations with Russia and China. Those three countries were joined together as a threat to “security, peace and prosperity…around the world.”

The letter again makes plain that the US support for Israel is bound up with its broader program of global war, including the intensifying proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the continuous military build against China, which is viewed as the chief threat to US capitalist dominance. The Israeli “solution” of the “Palestinian problem” is viewed as a means of clearing the decks to enable the Zionist regime and the US to pursue this program more directly in the Middle East, including through a war with Iran.

In addition to backing an Israeli strike on Iran last month, the US is already engaged in war with Iran-aligned forces throughout the region. Yesterday, the Houthis reported that joint US and British strikes on Yemen the day before had killed at least 16 people and wounded 42 others. The Houthi statement claimed that air strikes had hit a building housing Hodeida Radio and civilian homes in the port city on the Red Sea.

US officials confirmed the strikes were carried out by F/A-18 fighter jets that took off from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, along with other US warships that are stationed in the region from which they can carry out attacks, not only against the oppressed Yemenis but potentially more broadly.

1 June 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahbaz Sharif, declared the 28th of May as a public holiday. Indeed, the House of Sharif, the family in control of one of the two dynastic political parties (the PML-N) of Pakistan, chose to remind the population that this was the day, in 1998, when Pakistan openly launched tests of its nuclear weapons. This was done in response to India’s nuclear test which was undertaken a few weeks before. Though the prime minister of the time, Nawaz Sharif, brother of today’s Shahbaz, wanted to remain in the good books of Washington, Pakistan’s rulers, especially the military top brass, felt it was absolutely essential to respond in kind to New Dehli’s brazenly dangerous act.

Islamabad was willing to face the repercussions of its behavior. Immediately, the US slapped devastating sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Pakistan’s ruling elite employed a nationalist narrative that attempted to affirm the country’s sovereignty. The reality was that – as in the case of most of these imperial sanctions – the only people who would have to endure and survive (or not) such Western economic warfare were the already disenfranchised and exploited, the vast majority of ordinary Pakistanis. Elites in politics and business would continue to enjoy lavish lifestyles. The rulers deployed the rhetorical rigmarole of ‘Pakistanis willing to eat grass’ in order to defend the country’s nuclear program. What this camouflaged and obfuscated was the fact that those already so impoverished were already on the brink of ‘eating grass,’ and that they would be the ones who would continue to do so after American sanctions on the country. The already comfortable would continue to eat their five-course meals – on the backs and blood of the social majorities.

Nevertheless, the hoopla invoked about this day by the current prime minister is just one more attempt to obtain a minimal level of legitimacy in a country that mostly detests this regime installed by Pakistan’s generals. This sentiment is not only found in ousted and jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party, the PTI – but also among other vast sections of society, of whatever ideological orientation. The population at large has had enough of the political musical chairs of either the House of Sharif or the House of Bhutto-Zardari – the latter being the family controlling the other major dynastic political party in the country, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

The celebration of the day of the nuclear tests by Sharif and the generals is meant to be a ‘show of strength’ of a country whose rulers are desperate to demonstrate how they can stand up to any power trying to interfere in – and violate – Pakistan’s sovereignty. At least, that’s what they want the country’s people to believe. In reality, such asinine theatrics conceal the colossal cowardice of the country’s military and civilian elite.

The fact that this clownish military-civilian regime prioritizes conveying its military prowess because of its nuclear tests in 1998, is not only absurd, but scandalous and criminal at this juncture. Pakistan has the world’s fifth largest population, and sixth largest military, nuclear armed. It seems that this regime, like others before it, loves to showcase its ostensible military strength via such meaningless gestures. And in this period of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, enacting a public holiday advertising the nation’s armed forces’ capability and gallantry reveals the shameful and tragic embarrassment characterizing the country’s rulers.

There has been a serious and necessary question over the past few months of what concrete actions can countries, particularly those of the Muslim world, undertake to assist in halting Israel’s savage assault on Gaza. The legitimate popular criticism and condemnation of Muslim rulers’ unwillingness to act beyond mere rhetorical flourishes – is palpable throughout the world of Islam.

Putting aside the valid claims of the pre-existing criminality of the Pakistani military top brass, the nation’s – and indeed, the world’s – population is absolutely irate that the enormous size and strength of the nation’s soldiers and officers are not deployed by the generals even as a warning that Islamabad will confront Tel Aviv in some way as long as this genocide continues. How difficult would it be if Pakistan’s armed forces, joined by perhaps others as well, merely announced that the country will be leading a protection force for the suffering people of Gaza? Even the hint of such a force would make Zionist actors think twice before continuing their butchery.

Alas, Pakistan’s generals remain fairly consistent in their worldview: facilitate (as best possible at any given time) imperial hegemony, and be more than willing to position and utilize the country’s troops to murder its own population – carried out abundantly in provinces such as KPK and Balochistan. The military high command had little qualms in submitting to the ‘War on Terror’ and losing tens of thousands of its own soldiers within the country’s own borders.

When one indulges in an even cursory and preliminary conversation with ordinary Pakistanis, it becomes obvious how incensed they are at Israel and Pakistan’s spineless rulers. In fact, the indignation – even among those sections of the population that face repression inside the country – is reaching levels wherein many are speaking of a ‘people’s army’ to intervene to defend the Palestinians from Israeli slaughter.

Until the generals and their civilian pals in the House of Sharif and House of Bhutto-Zardari use the country’s armed forces for something useful, like protecting a besieged population, they will correctly be ridiculed. But even a minimal moral-ethical impulse may be too much to ask the nation’s vicious elites. The country is now seen as a ‘paper tiger’ that has miraculously been able to degrade such a huge country to a joke, a basket case, and a banana republic.

Sadly, to many, the Islamic Republic has become the ‘Imbecilic Republic’…of Pakistan.

Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches religion, law, and global politics and is the Director of the Center for Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan.

30 May 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Even the most optimistic of political analysts did not expect that the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor would be uttering these words:

“I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu (…) and Yoav Gallant (…) bear criminal responsibility for (…) war crimes and crimes against humanity …”

Aside from the two Israelis, Karim Khan has included three Palestinians on his application requesting arrest warrants from the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber. That is important, but we must remember that, per western thinking, Palestinians have always been the guilty party.

Evidence of the above claim is that the west has long portrayed Israel as a country at war in self-defense. Consequently, Palestinians – though occupied, dispossessed and disinherited – are the aggressors.

This bizarre logic is not strange if seen within the larger power paradigm which has defined the west’s relationship with Palestine and, by extension, the Global South.

For example, out of 54 individuals indicted by the ICC since its inception in 2002, 47 are Africans, a fact that has rightly agitated governments, civil societies and intellectuals throughout the Global South for many years.

On western duplicity, Aimé Césaire, a Martinican intellectual and politician, wrote, “they tolerated (..) Nazism before it was inflicted on them, they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples”.

WWII inspired new thinking on the part of the west. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the ICC, among others, have been the direct outcome of that terrible western war. It was the west’s way of trying to protect the new status quo which was established by the victors.

The Global South joined in anyway. “Africa had a particular interest in the establishment of the court, since its peoples had been the victims of large-scale violations of human rights over the centuries,” a representative of the Organization of African Unity said in Rome, the birthplace of the Rome Statute, in 1998.

Predictably, however, the ICC turned into a platform where former colonial masters cast judgment on the non-European world. In that sense, justice was hardly served.

As always, Palestine has, and continues to serve as the litmus test of the international order. For over 15 years, Palestinians have been seeking to enlist the ICC’s help to hold Israel accountable for its military occupation and various crimes in Palestine.

The Palestinians have done so simply because any attempt at establishing a practical mechanism to end the Israeli occupation through the United Nations has been met with a cruel American veto.

As the Israeli occupation turned into a permanent one, and racial apartheid spread its tentacles to cover every inch of Palestine, the US’ support of Israel has become a first line of defense against any international criticism, let alone action, aimed at reining in Israel.

Even though the US has refused to join the ICC, it still has great influence over the organization, either through sanctions or pressure imposed by its allies which are members of the Court.

Thus, the ICC procrastinated. Decisions that should have taken only months, took years to be made. The institution, which was created to deliver swift justice, became a bureaucratic legal apparatus that did everything in its power to escape its responsibilities towards the Palestinians.

The persistence of Palestinians and the massive solidarity they have obtained from countries throughout the Global South, eventually paid off.

In 2009, Palestinians filed their first application to join the ICC. Yet, it took over three years for then-Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to reach his decision, in 2012, denying Palestinians such urgent membership on the account of their legal status as mere observers at the UN.

The rest of the world rallied behind Palestine again and, later that year, the UN General Assembly granted Palestine its ‘non-member observer state’ status.

It took another three years for Palestine to officially join the ICC. Four years later, in 2019, then-Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda stated that the so-called statutory criteria needed to begin an investigation in Palestine were satisfied. But, instead of opening an investigation, Bensouda sent the matter back to the Pre-Trial Chamber for further confirmation.

An official investigation was not opened until March 2021, but was grounded to a halt when Karim Khan replaced Bensouda as the chief prosecutor later that year.

So what happened between March 2021 and May 20, 2024 that allowed the ever-reluctant Khan to go as far as requesting arrest warrants?

First, the Israeli genocide in Gaza, where victims are measured in the tens of thousands.

Second, the credibility of the west-enshrined legal system which has governed the world since WWII, was at stake. This explains the emphasis made by Khan in his May 20 statement: “If we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally (…) we will be creating the conditions for its collapse.”

Third, the solidarity of the Global South, which has served as the backbone of all Palestinian efforts at international legal institutions.

After decades of a one-sided approach to global conflicts, the pendulum is finally shifting. Indeed, when we say that Gaza is changing the world, we mean it.

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

30 May 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

The Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi says he expects the war on Gaza to last for seven more months.

“We are expecting another seven months of fighting in the Gaza Strip,” he says.

One blogger called this on the X platform as Israel’s “unchecked insanity…” adding “this will only further isolate Israel and cost Biden” the coming US presidential elections in November. But besides, he points out, Biden has “already lost.”

[https://twitter.com/gregjstoker/status/1795859561183662284]

This piece of news has set many on social media talking despite the fact that Israeli army military officers have already said this war on Gaza could go on till 2026 or even 2027 because of the tough fighting of Hamas and the other Palestinian groups that include Islamic Jihad.

[https://twitter.com/SprinterFamily/status/1795851491502161936]

Kenneth Roth, a past Human Rights Watch Executive Director and is now a visiting professor at Prinston University says the reason for Hanegbi’s comment is he wants Donald Trump to get back into the White House and for Netanyahu to be kept out of prison because of the corruption charges he faces.

But that might be jumping the gun especially on the Trump front who may not be interested in forking out billions of dollars to keep this genocidal war on Gaza going as the Israelis would claim and which is what the Biden administration is doing through its air and sea bridge of mass bombs and military hardware to Israel.

[https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/1795887423295000926]

Hanegbi, described as a “Netanyahu yes man” and like his prime minister may be in a state of illusion, saying Israel wants “another seven months of fighting so as to deepen our achievement and achieve what we define” as the destruction of Hamas.

His illusion stems from the fact that Hamas and the Palestinian resistance in Gaza remain strong and the fact they are putting up a hard fight with Israeli soldiers getting killed by the day.

This is not to say anything about the fact that Hamas missiles and batteries are targeting Israeli tanks and troop carriers by the day with estimations so far, that the Islamist movement has destroyed and/or partially destroyed up to 1500 tanks and other vehicles on the streets of Gaza.

These numbers keep going up daily despite the Israeli sensors controlling what goes out to the media.

[https://twitter.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1795794188526608488]

Gadi Eisenkot also of the Israeli war cabinet says the idea that Hamas could be beaten, a view put forward by Netanyahu is sowing false illusions. Rather than attempting to end the existence of Hamas, Eisenkot says Netanyahu should be finding ways of bringing the hostages back home which are down to 125 killed through Israeli bombings on different residential areas in the Gaza Strip.

Hanegbi’s comment however continues to trend on the social media platforms. One says the Israeli war on Gaza like the war in Ukraine are part of prolonged conflicts that are likely to last for years and will generate new conflicts.

Dr Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based writer covering Middle East Affairs.

30 May 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

In a series of press briefings on Tuesday, the Biden administration fully endorsed the Israeli airstrikes on women and children in the Rafah refugee camps in southern Gaza that killed 45 people on Sunday and another 21 on Tuesday.

White House National Security spokesman John Kirby called Sunday’s airstrike “targeted” and justified the strike by claiming it killed members of the Hamas movement. “They killed Hamas operatives and a Hamas compound,” Kirby said. “I don’t know how anybody could dispute that they weren’t trying to go after Hamas in a targeted, precise way,” Kirby said of the bombardment that killed dozens and wounded hundreds of Palestinian civilians.

Kirby fully endorsed Israel’s ongoing aerial assault and ground offensive in Gaza, declaring, “If you think Hamas is just gone, they’re not gone from Rafah or from Gaza. And if you think they’ve abandoned their genocidal intent towards the nation of Israel, think again, they haven’t. So Israel has every right to not want to live next to that kind of threat. And yes, we’re going to continue to provide them the capabilities to go after it.”

Kirby explained that after the latest mass killings, there would be “no policy changes” on the part of the United States. Asked why the White House continued to provide unlimited support to Israel despite overwhelming popular opposition to this policy, Kirby declared, “The president does not make decisions or execute policy based on public opinion polling.”

In a separate briefing, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh called Israel’s attack on Gaza “limited.”

For weeks, the US media had promoted the claim that the Biden administration had set a “red line” prohibiting Israel from attacking Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza where over 1 million displaced people had sought shelter. In reality, while making statements that seemed critical of Netanyahu, the White House openly declared that it has a “shared objective” with Israel to see “Hamas defeated in Rafah.”

Before the eyes of the whole world, the Biden administration’s claims to oppose the killing of Palestinian civilians have been exposed as a total fraud, and Biden emerges clearly as the leading international sponsor of the Gaza genocide, complicit in war crimes alongside Netanyahu.

The series of massacres in Rafah and their open endorsement by the Biden administration mark the response by Israel and the United States to last week’s ruling by the International Court of Justice commanding Israel to stop killing Palestinians in Rafah. The Netanyahu and Biden administrations are asserting their right to commit any crime in defiance of both international law and mass popular opposition.

International human rights organizations were unequivocal in their denunciation of the Biden administration’s role in the genocide.

“Let us be clear: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The US is complicit in genocide,” wrote the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. “We are disgusted by Western leaders, especially in the USA, Germany, and the UK. They have demonstrated not only that they don’t care one bit about genocide prevention and human rights, but also that they are willing to allow an ally to commit atrocity crimes while they offer material and diplomatic support. … They should also be put on trial.”

In a statement on X, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wrote, “Day after day, massacre after massacre, and the Biden administration continues to ship bombs to the far-right, openly genocidal Israeli government that it uses to slaughter Palestinian children, women, medical personnel, journalists, international aid workers, and the sick and elderly, and continues to shield Israel from international accountability.”

The White House coupled its endorsement of the Rafah massacre with absurd and false statements about the situation on the ground. As Israeli forces published photos and videos of tanks occupying the center of Rafah, the White House spokespeople denied that ground forces had moved into the city.

“They are moving along something called the Philadelphi Corridor, which is on the outskirts of the town, not in the town proper,” Kirby said, declaring, “We have not seen a major ground operation.” This was the same day that the FT declared in its lead news story, “Israeli tanks enter central Rafah,” stating that Israel was “sending tanks into the heart of Gaza’s southernmost city despite growing international condemnation of the operation.”

On Tuesday, Israeli forces killed at least 21 people, including 13 women and girls, in an airstrike on a refugee camp in Rafah. Reporting on the strike in al-Mawasi, Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda said in a video, “Behind me, at least until now 18 people were killed only 30 minutes ago while a bomb targeted a tent with only civilians, only civilians, only women and children. All these people were in a tent getting ready to have their lunch, and they were bombed, they were targeted.”

Owda added, “People are shocked, people cannot talk, people found themselves gathering the remains of human bodies, of their beloved ones. So, I just cannot describe anything because I’m afraid of looking under my feet because people are still collecting human pieces.”

To date, 1 million people have been forced to flee the city of Rafah, the United Nations said Tuesday, with nowhere safe to go. The assault on Rafah has shattered the humanitarian food distribution system throughout Gaza, with next to no food entering the territory, which is on the verge of famine.

“There has been nothing limited about the suffering and misery that Israel’s military operation in Rafah has brought to the people of Gaza…” said UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths. “[It] has cut off the flow of aid into southern Gaza and crippled a humanitarian operation already stretched beyond its breaking point. It has halted food distributions in the south and slowed the supply of fuel for Gaza’s lifelines— bakeries, hospitals and water wells—to a mere trickle … [at] a time when the people of Gaza are staring down famine.”

29 May 2024

Source: countercurrents.org