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By Andre Damon

US and Israeli officials openly endorsed a large-scale attack on Iran Tuesday, following a strike by Tehran on Israel with 185 ballistic missiles the same day.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called for strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, a move that has been planned by Israel and the US for decades.

“We must act *now* to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime,” Bennett declared, demanding that Israel must “strike the head of the octopus of terror.”

He was joined by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said, “I would urge the Biden administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran’s ability to refine oil,” implying a damaging US attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure.

He was joined by Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who declared, “I urge the reimposition of a maximum pressure campaign against Iran and fully support Israel’s right to respond disproportionately to stop this threat.”

The warmongering comments were bipartisan. Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said in a statement, “My voice and vote follow Israel to ensure they have whatever resources they need—whether that’s military, financial, or intelligence—to prevail over terror.”

Nearly one year after the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, which were facilitated by a deliberate stand-down of the Israeli military and intelligence services and the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, it has become clear that the United States and Israel have seized upon the events of that day as a pretext to carry out a long-planned regional war throughout the Middle East, with Iran as the central target.

Iran’s missile strike on Israel took place just one day after Israel launched a ground offensive in Lebanon, following days of escalating air bombardments that left thousands of people dead.

On Saturday, Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, using 85 massive bombs that completely leveled high-rise residential buildings, killing hundreds.

Iran’s foreign minister released a statement saying the attack was a response to “the assassination of the head of Hamas’ political office in Tehran, who was an official guest of the Iranian government, as well as the assassination of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah in Lebanon and General Nilforoushan, a senior Iranian military advisor, in Beirut.”

Both the US and UK’s military forces participated in efforts to shoot down missiles used in the strike, which was larger, more sophisticated and less telegraphed than an earlier strike on Israel by Iran in April. US and Israeli officials sought to present the strike as having no impact, despite widespread footage on social media showing missiles impacting Israeli military bases.

Iran’s top military official, Mohammad Bagheri, stated on state TV that the missiles fired at Israel were aimed at three military bases—Nevatim, Hatzerim and Tel Nof—as well as the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. He emphasized that civilian areas and infrastructure were intentionally not targeted.

All sections of the US political establishment restated their support for Israel’s actions in Gaza and its broader attack throughout the Middle East. “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” said US President Joe Biden. He added, “The attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective, which is a testament to Israeli military capability and the US military.”

Responding to Iran’s missile strike, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared, “Israel, with the active support of the United States and other partners, effectively defeated this attack,” adding, “We demonstrated, once again, our commitment to Israel’s defense.”

US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ candidate for president in the November election, added that the US would “never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend US forces and interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.” She added, “I’m clear-eyed. … Iran is a destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East, and today’s attack on Israel only further demonstrates that fact.”

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “The United States will continue to stand by our ally Israel in support of Israel’s right to defend itself. … Iran and its proxies must be held accountable.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Lebanon continued, with at least five Israeli airstrikes attacking the southern suburbs of Beirut on Wednesday. The number of people killed by Israel in Lebanon in the past 12 months is approaching 2,000, compared to the 1,200 people killed in Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

And in Gaza—where the official death toll since last October has surpassed 41,000 but is likely over 186,000—at least 37 people were killed in two separate Israeli’s airstrikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp and a school in Gaza City, where displaced families were sheltering.

The escalating calls for massive strikes on Lebanon came amid a report by Politico that US officials authorized Israel’s ground offensive on Lebanon.

Politico reported, “Senior White House figures privately told Israel that the US would support its decision to ramp up military pressure against Hezbollah—even as the Biden administration publicly urged the Israeli government in recent weeks to curtail its strikes.”

The report continued, “Presidential adviser Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told top Israeli officials in recent weeks that the US agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad strategy to shift Israel’s military focus to the north against Hezbollah. … Behind the scenes, Hochstein, McGurk, and other top US national security officials are describing Israel’s Lebanon operations as a history-defining moment—one that will reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.”

2 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Laura Tiernan

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange delivered a powerful speech Tuesday in Strasbourg, France during a 90-minute session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). He described 14 years of extra-judicial persecution, lawfare and imprisonment against him by the United States and Britain and its chilling effects on media freedom worldwide.

Assange travelled from Australia to appear before PACE in person. He was seated alongside his wife Stella and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson. It was Assange’s first public speech since his release from Belmarsh prison four months ago after a plea deal with the US Department of Justice.

Assange said of the deal, in which he pleaded guilty to conspiring with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain and disclose classified documents: “I eventually chose freedom over unrealizable justice after being detained for years and facing a 175-year sentence with no effective remedy.” He emphasised, “I am not free today because the system worked, I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.”

He said that without an unprecedented global campaign for his freedom, waged by activists, citizens, legal and medical professionals and political representatives, “I never would have seen the light of day.”

Assange was appearing at a specially convened parliamentary session on his detention and conviction. It was introduced by Icelandic representative Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, general rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders for the Council of Europe and member of the Pirate Party. On Wednesday, PACE will debate her report, “The detention and conviction of Julian Assange and their chilling effects on human rights.”

The personal toll on Assange wreaked by the US-led vendetta against WikiLeaks was evident. Assange told PACE:

The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey. It strips away one’s sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence. I am yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured, the relentless struggle to stay alive both physically and mentally. Nor can I speak yet about the death by hanging, murder and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners.

He continued:

Isolation has taken its toll, which I am trying to unwind, and expressing myself in this setting is a challenge. However, the gravity of this occasion and the weight of the issues at hand compel me to set aside my reservations and speak to you directly.

Assange used his appearance to warn of the far-reaching implications of his prosecution under the Espionage Act, which had criminalised journalism and ushered in a regime of “transnational repression.” His conviction meant that any journalist anywhere in the world could be charged, extradited and imprisoned for exposing war crimes and other human rights abuses by the US government.

After 14 years’ incarceration in Britain, under house arrest, inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and then prison, Assange described emerging from “the dungeon of Belmarsh” and finding “how much ground has been lost during that time … how expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self-censorship.

“It is hard not to draw a line from the US government’s prosecution of me, it’s crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism, to the chilled climate for freedom of expression that exists now.”

Assange said WikiLeaks had “obtained and published the truth about tens of thousands of hidden casualties of war and other unseen horrors, about programs of assassination, rendition, torture and mass surveillance. We revealed not just when and where these things happened, but frequently the policies, the agreements and the structures behind them.”

He recalled how WikiLeaks’ Collateral Murder video published in 2010—showing US Apache helicopter crew “eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and their rescuers”—had exposed the reality of modern warfare and “shocked the world.”

Assange described the persecution that followed, including covert actions by the CIA:

It is now a matter of public record that under [CIA Director Mike] Pompeo’s explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and authorized going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks and the planting of false information.

My wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife, and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six-month-old son’s nappy. This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former US intelligence officials.

He concluded:

The CIA’s targeting of myself, my family and my associates through aggressive extra-judicial and extra-territorial means provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organizations engage in transnational repression.

In the Q&A period that followed, Assange responded to a question about his plans for the future. He spoke of the transformed political climate facing WikiLeaks:

Where we once released important war crimes videos that stirred public debate, now every day there are livestreamed horrors from the wars in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. Hundreds of journalists have been killed in Gaza and Ukraine combined. The impunity seems to mount, and it is still uncertain what we can do about it.

Asked whether he had known at the start how few legal protections were available to WikiLeaks in Europe, Assange said he had expected legal harassment and was prepared to fight. But he added:

My naivete was believing in the law. When push comes to shove, laws are just pieces of paper, and they can be reinterpreted for political expediency. They are the rules made by the ruling class more broadly, and if those rules don’t suit what it wants to do, it reinterprets them.

Another PACE representative asked whether, in retrospect, Assange would have done anything differently. He replied: “Once I was trapped in the United Kingdom, it took me time to understand what UK society was about—who you could trust, who you couldn’t trust, the different types of manoeuvres that are made in that society. There are different media partners that perhaps we could have chosen differently.”

Assange’s then media partners, led by the Guardian newspaper and the New York Times, published WikiLeaks’ explosive revelations before promptly breaking relations with Assange. They conspired with the Pentagon, CIA and the British state in a decade-long slander campaign aimed at destroying Assange and contributing directly to the “chilling environment” of state terrorism and precision-guided assassination of journalists in Gaza and beyond, armed, financed and directed by the imperialist powers of Europe, the United States and Australia.

2 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Hiren Gohain

Now that the top leadership of the Hezbullah headed by Hasan Nasrallah have been liquidated in one fell swoop and Netanyuhu is chortling that such will be the end of all enemies of ‘the free world’ ,it is  clear that the fateful occurrence had not been just a happy accident for him and his backers,but the outcome of an elaborate and meticulously planned and executed campaign.One only awaits the apparently episodic and haphazard expansion of the war to Iran,with rulers of major Arab states watching complacently from a ‘safe’ distance.Not realizing that it is also going to pinion them to the American strategy and squeeze them to an insignificant role in the middle east.

While the American war machine seemed to sweep all before it Hezbullah had emerged in the aftermath of the second Gulf War in Iraq as a major force of resistance to American hegemony.The organization was not simply a small fighting group aiming at inflicting injuries on the apparently invincible American forces.It received popular support,clearly had precise well-defined goals and caused much headache to the Americans.Its leader emerged as one of the most effective leaders of serious popular and military resistance to American goals.They have been on his trail since then.Now Israel has acted as a star sniper for Americans.That is why Netanyuhu has been invited to speak to the US Congress twice and  applauded.Pentagon seems to have been complicit in not only the determination of the military goals,but also the actual planning of the campaign.

In the meanwhile the advent of new electronic devices in the shadow war of intelligence had radically altered the nature of the larger war.The capacity for gathering vital intelligence on location and movements of targeted people whether from mobile watchtowers in space or from snoopers below on earth has qualitatively altered the balance of power in favour of America and its most favoured ally.The allies on the other side have been caught napping.The dividends that technological advance in war preparations received from lavish expenditure on electronic and weapons research by the West had been neglected by them as they sat snugly in their triumph about their temporary local successes.It is a war to the death, not  a struggle for pockets of influence.The power and success of Israel in inflicting  serious damage deep inside enemy territory with the help of advanced gadgetry and powerful American weapons must not from now on to be discounted.For the Hezbullah is not going to disband itself and go into monastic retreat.

The rising clamour for ceasefire and the hypocritical ambiguously worded American advocacy for such a settlement is hardly a cure for the infected wound.It will settle nothing but will give Israel time to consolidate its gains and prepare for the next assault.Every Palestinian attempt to regain advantage may be turned into an opportunity to widen the war and further weaken the enemies of Israel.The next target is likely to be Iran.

The idea is not in my view a total victory over a dangerous enemy but an expansion of area under control in an unending war.Keeping the issue alive brings more political dividends than a conclusive victory or settlement.Only a rabid jingoistic and insatiable blood-thirsty  government in Israel will serve this purpose.This might not ensure some sort of monopoly control of the world’s petroleum reserves(recent discoveries the world over no longer support such a view),but it will certainly ensure control of the world’s major trade route. Besides it will keep at bay such unsettling alien initiatives as the Chinese moves for peace and reduction of conflict among countries of the region.Thousands of people,including children,women and the elderly, might be incinerated every year.But in the accounts of the managers of this war such collateral damage is considered unavoidable.Crooked politicians who had raised such a hue and cry about the ‘acts of terror’ by Hamas a year ago have not even raised an eyebrow at the flagrant terrorist attack on Hezbolla planting miniature  explosive devices in electronic gadgets like mobiles and walki-talkies which did not confine its  toll to combatants.

Now what does it signify for the targeted nations and countries?They must have in use and in store effective electronic devices to offset the current advantage of Israel and its senior partner.Such pinpointed accuracy of successful attacks not only indicate systematic and effective surveillance from space but also a humming network of collaborators on the ground to relay precise and instantaneous information.To locate and disarm such an elaborate and efficient network highly effective jamming devices must be put to work.The vacancy on the ground where enemy agents can perform at will is a major disadvantage for the target nations or armies.

Facial and physical recognition technologies as well as the capacity to relay such information second by second must have helped the enemy to score such spectacular successes.Old methods of direct contact and conflict are perhaps no longer so vital.Or perhaps these can no longer serve as an all-purpose approach.

The backwardness of science education and research against such a background in the countries concerned must be admitted as a disadvantage.The major and senior partner in this alliance against American hegemony and Israeli brutality,Iran has turned half of its population against itself with its blind religious dogmatism.The religious control over education is unlikely to ensure advances in science, research and technology.

The people are certainly a mighty force in themselves.But had they been armed with science they could have performed much much better.Besides the iron-fisted attitude to those not inclined to orthodoxy is bound to breed disgruntled infomers. Now that a charismatic popular leader with a clear mind and broad outlook as well as an incomparable strategic grasp,as well as his immediate successors, have been martyred, the next generation of leadership must address such fundamental problems creatively and energetically. The technological gap must be narrowed.

Israel is hard at work trying to throw its opponents off its  scent by declaring that thanks to double agents in the ranks of Hamas or Hezbullah it has had the prompt and precise information that enabled it to hunt down the enemy commanders.While the chaos of insecurity and confusion lasting years on the ground might have bred the odd traitor or two,the main loophole appears to be the edge in technological or electronic advance as well as the reliance on accurate intelligence that helped elimination of key figures in the command of the enemy forces.

Nor must it be taken for granted that there  cannot be any native innovative skill to outwit sophisticated Israeli and American electronic warfare.Vietnam made up for lack of radar with big funnel-shaped cavities on the ground with prostrate  individuals with keen ears could hear the drone of aircraft from a distance way ahead of its actual appearance in the skies of a particular area. Israel has to be fought to a standstill and America robbed of its power to terrorise the world.

Hiren Gohain is a political commentator

2 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jordan Shilton

The Israeli military launched its ground incursion into southern Lebanon early Tuesday morning. While Israeli officials claimed that ground operations would be limited in scope, scale and duration, the claims are no more believable in the case of Lebanon than in Gaza.

Underscoring the central involvement of American imperialism in the escalating region-wide war, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington is in “continuous conversation” with the Israeli military about its invasion, while public broadcaster Kan referred to “intensive coordination” between Israel and the US on how to deal with an Iranian attack.

Reuters reported late Monday that Lebanese army units were seen leaving positions on the Lebanon-Israel border and were retreating 5 kilometres inside Lebanese territory. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced a “closed military zone” encompassing several northern communities along the border, emphasising that entering the area was forbidden. An official told the Times of Israel that one goal of the operation would be to eliminate Hezbollah positions along the border. A meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet later Monday decided to proceed with the operation.

Heavy shelling and air strikes targeted several locations along the border. The IDF ordered residents in Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut and a traditional Hezbollah stronghold, to leave their homes. Shortly afterwards, major explosions were heard as at least eight strikes occurred shortly after midnight Tuesday morning, according to Lebanese news agency NNA, destroying several residential buildings.

The invasion of southern Lebanon follows a weekend of unrestrained violence by the Zionist regime, including the massacring of hundreds of civilians in air strikes across the country. The targeted assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah Friday claimed some 300 civilian lives, as six multi-story buildings were flattened in Beirut’s southern suburbs. In the 24 hours to Monday, 136 people were reportedly killed by Israeli strikes. The intensive bombing, which included the first strike on central Beirut Sunday night, has forced some 100,000 people to flee to neighbouring Syria, where a fratricidal conflict stoked by US imperialism for over a decade is ongoing.

Israel also struck the ports of Hodeidah and Ras Issa in Yemen, some 2,000 kilometres from its border, Sunday. The strikes, which targeted power plants and facilities used by the Houthis to import oil, killed six people and injured 57.

While Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, the sustained attacks of the past two weeks appear to have seriously undermined its capabilities. Brussels-based military analyst Elijah Magnier told Al Jazeera that Israel has struck at least 3,000 to 3,500 Hezbollah missile units. “There are thousands of Hezbollah operatives who’ve lost their hands or their eyesight, and they’ve been evacuated to hospitals in Syria and Iran. Therefore, these fighters are out of the equation and can no longer participate in any potential war,” he added, referring to the consequences of Israel’s terrorist attack on September 17, when hundreds of communication devices exploded. In addition to Nasrallah, dozens of top Hezbollah commanders have been murdered.

In an indication of the indiscriminate character of the onslaught, akin to the ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza, 14 Lebanese paramedics were killed in two days of bombing up to Sunday. On Monday, the health ministry reported the deaths of a further six paramedics in renewed air strikes.

Asked at a press briefing about the reports of a ground invasion, Miller confirmed US imperialism’s intimate involvement in the major escalation of the war. “They have informed us about a number of operations,” said Miller, referring to Israel. “They have at this time, told us that those are limited operations focused on Hezbollah infrastructure near the border, but we’re in continuous conversations about it.” With breathtaking cynicism, he added, “Military pressure can at times enable diplomacy.”

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken became the latest US official to revel in the mass slaughter, hailing the assassination of Nasrallah. The Hezbollah leader was a “brutal terrorist” and “the region, the world are safer without him.”

Behind the bogus public statements about a “limited” operation, Israel’s far-right regime is clearly launching a massive offensive to revenge the setback it suffered during the month-long 2006 war on Lebanon, when Hezbollah mobilised broad popular support against an IDF invasion. The United Nations confirmed that its 10,000-strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which was tasked with monitoring the ceasefire agreement that brought the 2006 war to an end, was no longer in a position to carry out patrols due to the intensity of fighting.

Speaking to troops in northern Israel, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who infamously labelled Gaza residents as “human animals” as Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians began, declared, “the elimination of Nasrallah is a very important step, but it is not everything.

“We will use all the capabilities we have. If someone on the other side did not understand what the capabilities mean, it is all capabilities, and you are part of this effort.”

Netanyahu’s far-right regime intends to annex parts of Lebanon, alongside Gaza and the West Bank, as part of its US-backed drive to restructure the entire Middle East. Netanyahu and other leading officials have bluntly laid out this agenda, including in speeches to the US Congress in July and UN General Assembly last week.

Israel’s aggressive expansion of the conflict, which is rapidly assuming the dimensions of a Middle East-wide war, is made possible by the unflinching support it enjoys from US imperialism. As the World Socialist Web Site explained within days of Israel launching its destruction of Gaza, Washington endorsed the genocide because it viewed it as a critical component of the preparations for a region-wide war with Iran. In a October 23, 2023 perspective taking note of the US surging of troops and naval vessels to the region following the commencement of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the WSWS wrote,

The Biden administration is escalating the war in the Middle East and threatening to directly attack Iran as part of what it sees as a globe-spanning conflict for world hegemony, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and the Pacific. American imperialism, confronted with the economic rise of China and the global decline of the US economy, sees war as the means to assert world domination.

Over the past year, Washington has supplied billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel, including the 2,000-pound bombs that have turned Gaza into a wasteland and are now devastating Beirut and southern and eastern Lebanon.

The Pentagon announced Monday that Washington will send “a few thousand” more US troops to the region, increasing the number of US soldiers in the Middle East to 43,000, according to the AP. The bulk of the new forces consist of squadrons of fighter jets and attack aircraft. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated Sunday that he had extended the deployment by a month of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East. A second aircraft carrier strike group, the USS Harry Truman, recently departed from Virginia and is expected to arrive in the region in a week.

With their repeated escalatory actions, Israel and its US paymaster are attempting to goad Iran into some sort of response, which can then be used to launch a vicious attack on Tehran. Already this year, Israel assassinated seven Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members in Damascus and humiliated Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime by killing Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was visiting Tehran as a guest at the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. For their part, the Iranian regime and its bourgeois-nationalist allies throughout the region have nothing to offer in the face of this imperialist-led onslaught, other than vain pleas for an accommodation with the imperialist powers.

The only social force capable of preventing the plunging of the entire Middle East into a bloodbath with incalculable consequences for its long-suffering population is the international working class mobilised in struggle against imperialist war. Rejecting reactionary Zionism and bankrupt bourgeois nationalism, the workers of the Middle East, whether Arab, Persian, or Jewish, must unite on the basis of the fight for socialism in alliance with their class brothers and sisters in the imperialist centres to put an end to the capitalist profit system and war.

1 October 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Two historical events regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine have taken place on July 19 and September 18.

The first was a most comprehensive ‘advisory opinion’ by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which reiterated that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal and must come to an immediate end.

The second, by the United Nations General Assembly, two months later, set, for the first time in history, an exact time frame of when the Israeli occupation of Palestine must end.

Many Palestinians welcomed the international consensus that essentially declared, as null and void, any Israeli attempt at making what is meant to be a temporary military occupation a permanent one.

However, many understandably were not impressed, simply because the international community has proven ineffectual in bringing the catastrophic Israeli war on Gaza to an end, or in enforcing its previous resolutions on the matter.

Israeli media largely ignored both events, while mainstream western media repeatedly emphasized that both the advisory opinion and the resolution are ‘non-binding’.

Though it is true that international law without enforcement is largely useless, one must not be rash to conclude that the latest actions by the ICJ and the UNGA deserve no pause.

To appreciate the importance of both dates, we must place them within proper context.

First, the ICJ’s legal opinion. Unlike the ICJ’s advisory opinion of 2004, the latest opinion does not focus on a specific issue, for example, the illegality of the Israeli so-called Separation Wall in the West Bank.

Indeed, the latest decision by the world’s highest Court was the outcome of a specific request by the UNGA on January 20, 2023 to opine “on Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Second, the ICJ reached its conclusions after listening to the testimonies of representatives of 52 countries and three international organizations, which fully sided with the Palestinians in their historic quest for freedom, justice and respect for international law.

Third, the ICJ’s opinion touched on numerous issues, leaving no space for any misinterpretation on the part of Israel and the United States.

For example, it called on Israel to end its “unlawful presence” in occupied Palestine,  and for it to “withdraw its military forces; halt the expansion of settlements and evacuate all settlers from occupied land; and demolish parts of a separation wall constructed inside the occupied West Bank.”

Fourth, the ICJ’s opinion follows years of supposed Israeli achievements in marginalizing the Palestinian cause, and exacting American support, which effectively recognized Israeli sovereignty over occupied Palestinian and Arab land.

If the ICJ pressed the reset button on the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the UNGA pressed the political button.

Indeed, UN Resolution A/ES-10/L.31/Rev.1 on September 18 has ended any Israeli illusions that it will be able, through pressure, threats or the passage of time, to end the conversation on its military occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

The resolution “calls for Israel to comply with international law and withdraw its military forces, immediately cease all new settlement activity, evacuate all settlers from occupied land, and dismantle parts of the separation wall it constructed inside the occupied West Bank.”

124 countries voted in favor of the resolution, while 14 voted against it, thus, once again, separating between those who believe in the primacy of international law in conflict resolution and those who don’t.

Also significant is that the UN has, for the first time, set a time frame of when the Israeli occupation must come to an end: “no later than 12 months from the adoption of the resolution”.

In international law, military occupations are meant to be a temporary process, regulated through numerous treaties and legal understandings including the Fourth Geneva Conventions, among others.

Israel, however, has turned that temporary process into a permanent one.

If the Israeli military occupation does not end within the resolution’s specified time frame, Israel would then be in violation of two sets of laws: previous UN resolutions on the matter, including the ICJ’s advisory opinions, and the latest resolution as well.

The emphasis by western media on the ‘non-binding’ element of these resolutions does not, in any way, alter the illegality of the Israeli occupation, or undermine the unanimity of the international community regarding the righteousness of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and all other injustices.

Ultimately, Palestine will not be liberated by a UN resolution. UN resolutions are merely an expression of the balances of power that exist on the international stage. Therefore, Palestinians and their supporters should not expect that a UN resolution, binding or otherwise, will drive the Israeli military out of the West Bank and Gaza.

Indeed, the Palestinians will liberate themselves. But the position of the international community remains significant as it re-emphasizes the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle, creates space for solidarity and helps further marginalize Israel for its continued violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinian people.

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

30 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Marwan Asmar

With the bombing of Wafa al-Udaini’s house, the number of Palestinian journalists killed in this Israeli genocide shoots up to 174 in under a year.

The Israeli occupation forces assassinated this prominent media following a treacherous Israeli bombardment of her home in Deir Al-Balah.

Wafa al-Udaini, her husband Munir Attia Darwish Al-Adini, and their two children Tamim and Balsam, were killed after the bombing of their home in central Gaza.

In a statement, the Palestinian Media Forum (PMF) pointed out Israeli warplanes killed a media activist who was in the forefront of conveying the Palestinian narrative and story to the foreign media, adding the family were killed as a result of a treacherous Israeli bombardment according to the Palestine Information Center.

The forum stated journalist Wafa al-Udaini devoted her life and efforts through working with the international media via writing articles, dialogue and interaction with foreign activists, online conferences, photo exhibitions, and short film competitions to explain the Palestinian story.

The PFM continued with the martyrdom of this prominent media figure, the national media has lost a free voice for Palestine and its people struggling for freedom and self-determination.

Wafa al-Udaini joins the caravan of media martyrs whose number swelled to 174 journalists since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip soon after 7 October, 2023 and which resulted in over 41,000 martyrs being killed and over 96,000 injured.

The Palestinian Media Forum renewed its call to protect journalists and enable them to perform their professional duty in accordance with international laws and humanitarian charters, and called for holding the Israeli occupation accountable for its ongoing crimes.

The Palestinian Media Forum stressed the continuation of the message and media coverage, no matter how great the sacrifices and challenges, indicating that the deliberate Israeli targeting of Palestinian journalists will not weaken their resolve or divert their compass from Palestine.

The PMF renewed its call for the protection of journalists in Gaza whilst allowing them to perform their professional duties in accordance with international laws and humanitarian charters, and called for holding the Israeli occupation accountable for its ongoing crimes against Palestinian journalists.

Dr Marwan Asmar writes from Amman, serving as an editor of the https://crossfrirearabia.com website

30 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The ongoing Israeli operation against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia group so dominant in Lebanon, is following a standard pattern.  Ignore base causes.  Ignore context.  Target leaders, and target personnel.  See matters in conventional terms of civilisational warrior against barbarian despot.  Israel, the valiant and bold, fighting the forces of darkness.

The entire blood woven tapestry of the Middle East offers uncomfortable explanations.  The region has seen false political boundaries sketched and pronounced by foreign powers, fictional countries proclaimed, and entities brought into being on the pure interests of powers in Europe.  These empires produced shoddy cartography in the name of the nation state and plundering self-interest, leaving aside the complexities of ethnic belonging and tribal dispositions.  Tragically, such cartographic fictions tended to keep company with crime, dispossession, displacement, ethnic cleansing and enthusiastic hatreds.

Since October 7, when Hamas flipped the table on Israel’s heralded security apparatus to kill over 1,200 of its citizens and smuggle over 200 hostages into Gaza, historical realities became present with a nasty resonance.  While Israel falsely sported its credentials as a peaceful state with dry cleaned democratic credentials ravaged by Islamic barbarians, Hamas had tapped into a vein of history stretching back to 1948.  Dispossession, racial segregation, suppression, were all going to be addressed, if only for a moment of vanguardist and cruel violence.

To the north, where Lebanon and Israel share yet another nonsense of a border, October 7 presented a change.  Both the Israeli Defence Forces and Hezbollah took to every bloodier jousting.  It was a serious affair: 70,000 Israelis displaced to the south; tens of thousands of Lebanese likewise to the north. (The latter are almost never mentioned in the huffed commentaries of the West.)

The Israeli strategy in this latest phase was made all too apparent by the number of military commanders and high-ranking operatives in Hezbollah the IDF has targeted.  Added to this the pager-walkie talkie killings as a prelude to a likely ground invasion of Lebanon, it was clear that Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, figured as an exemplary target.

Hezbollah confirmed the death of its leader in a September 27 strike on Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh and promised “to continue its jihad in confronting the enemy, supporting Gaza and Palestine, and defending Lebanon and its steadfast and honourable people.”  Others killed included Ali Karki, commander of the organisation’s southern front, and various other commanders who had gathered.

Israeli officials have been prematurely thrilled.  Like deluded scientists obsessed with eliminating a symptom, they ignore the disease with habitual obsession.  “Most of the senior leaders of Hezbollah have been eliminated,” claimed a triumphant Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called the measure “the most significant strike since the founding of the State of Israel.”  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated with simplicity that killing Nasrallah was necessary to “changing the balance of power in the region for years to come” and enable displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north.

Various reports swallowed the Israeli narrative.  Reuters, for instance, called the killing “a heavy blow to the Iran-backed group as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks.”  Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr opined that this “will be a major setback for the organisation.”  But the death of a being is never any guarantee for the death of an idea. The body merely offers a period of occupancy.  Ideas will be transferred, grow, and proliferate, taking residence in other organisations or entities. The assassinating missile is a poor substitute to addressing the reasons why such an idea came into being.

A dead or mutilated body merely offers assurance that power might have won the day for a moment, a situation offering only brief delight to military strategists and the journalists keeping tabs on the morgue’s latest additions.  It is easy, then, to ignore why Hezbollah became a haunting consequence of Israel’s bungling invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982.  Easy to also ignore the 1985 manifesto, with its reference to the organisation’s determination to combat Israel and those it backed, such as the Christian Phalangist allies in the Lebanese Civil War, and to remove the Israeli occupying force.

Such oblique notions as “degrading” the capacity of an ideological, religious group hardly addresses the broader problem.  The subsequent shoots from a savage pruning can prove ever more vigorous.  The 1992 killing of Hezbollah’s secretary-general Abbas al-Musawi, along with his wife and son, merely saw the elevation of Nasrallah.  Nasrallah turned out to be a more formidable, resourceful and eloquent proposition.  He also pushed other figures to the fore, such as the recently assassinated Fuad Shukr, who became an important figure in obtaining the group’s vast array of long-range rockets and precision-guided missiles.

Ibrahim Al-Marashi of California State University, San Marcos, summarises the efforts of Israel’s high-profile killing strategy as shortsighted feats of miscalculation.  “History shows every single Israeli assassination of a high-profile political or military operator, even after being initially hailed as a game-changing victory, eventually led to the killed leader being replaced by someone more determined, adept and hawkish.”  Another Nasrallah is bound to be in tow, with several others in incubation.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

29 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ali Abunimah

Israel’s assassination of Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hizballah, in an apocalyptic bombing attack on Beirut’s southern suburb on Friday is likely, at least in the short term, to cause enormous shock, despair and demoralization among supporters of the resistance to Zionism in Lebanon and across the region.

That is exactly what it is intended to do.

Confirmed by Hizballah on Saturday, Nasrallah’s killing comes after a series of tactical successes in the early stages of Israel’s unfolding full-scale attack on Lebanon, an open-ended assault that may well equal in barbarity Tel Aviv’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

These are terrible and difficult thoughts to absorb after almost a year of genocide.

First there were the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, followed by a series of assassinations of Hizballah’s senior leaders, and now the head of the organization itself.

As Nasrallah himself admitted in his final speech, the organization suffered a severe blow with the pager attacks. Even worse was to come. Clearly there were serious breaches in security.

Nasrallah’s stature as a tactical and strategic thinker, as the most prominent and trusted leader of the Axis of Resistance, and as a personality capable of inspiring and reassuring supporters even in the worst of times, cannot be overstated.

The euphoria in Israel, Washington and some Arab capitals, will be exceeded only by the grief of Nasrallah’s supporters, who are far more numerous.

And there is no doubt that the loss is real and great from the perspective of a resistance that faces not only Israel’s formidable arsenal, but all the resources of the United States and the collective West.

Israel’s ability to carry out this series of attacks in quick succession will shake the confidence of many in Hizballah’s legendary prowess and operational security.

The attacks will go some way to restoring the prestige Tel Aviv has lost among its Western and Arab backers after a year of military failure in Gaza, and its failure to prevent the Hamas military offensive that wiped out the Gaza division of Israel’s army on 7 October 2023.

And although Hizballah has been hammering Israeli military assets and settlements in the north of historic Palestine with rockets, many in the region are asking why the resistance group’s response to Israel’s escalating aggression has not been harder and harsher – even as Israel intensifies its bombardment of civilians across Lebanon and within its capital.

Another question on many lips is why Iran, which vowed retaliation after Israel’s murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, has acted with such restraint. There is a growing perception that its lack of response only encouraged Israel’s ever more brazen violence.

“Shock and awe” is not victory

Amid the rapidly changing situation and the torrent of emotions after a year of livestreamed genocide in Gaza, now being extended by Israel to Lebanon, it is hard to maintain a long view. But doing so is essential for sound analysis.

It is worth remembering this: In almost any asymmetrical war, when the strongest side – the invader or colonizer – goes on the offensive, it often appears to achieve quick and stunning success.

Indeed “shock and awe” is the name of a Western, specifically American, military doctrine, developed in the 1990s and explicitly touted when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

Also called “rapid dominance,” its aim is to demoralize and paralyze the adversary with the use of overwhelming and spectacular displays of violence.

The goal according to the doctrine’s authors, is to so “overload an adversary’s perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels.”

We’ve seen this time and again in recent decades and we’re witnessing it now.

Just weeks after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the United States attacked Afghanistan, quickly toppling the Taliban government under the pretext that it had sheltered Osama bin Laden.

American confidence following this swift apparent success undoubtedly spurred Washington to go on to its next project: the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

With the government of Saddam Hussein quickly overthrown and American tanks in control of Baghdad, President George W. Bush gave his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on 1 May of that year – words that came to haunt him as the United States became bogged down in a war of attrition against resistance in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

These rapid victories, or so they appeared, sparked real fears at the time that the American forces would roll onwards towards Damascus and Tehran, or perhaps other “rogue states” on America’s hit list.

We know now, from the so-called Afghanistan Papers, that the warmongers in Washington recognized all along that they had lost the war, but lied to the American public for almost two decades that they were winning.

And when the American withdrawal from Afghanistan came in August 2021, the humiliating departure from Kabul airport was widely compared to the chaotic scenes of the defeated Americans evacuating in helicopters from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, Vietnam.

With respect to Israel too, this pattern has been evident. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 – an assault it dubbed “Operation Peace for Galilee” – its forces quickly swept north to Beirut, besieging and occupying an Arab capital for the first time in the Zionist settler state’s history.

Israel murdered tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and expelled the Palestine Liberation Organization. But success, from Tel Aviv’s perspective, quickly turned to failure.

During a long occupation, resistance to Israel grew, especially from Hizballah, which did not even exist at the time of the Israeli invasion.

Hizballah and other resistance groups bled Israeli occupation forces for two decades in a grueling war of attrition, until Israel withdrew from occupied southern Lebanon in defeat in May 2000.

Even in the context of the American-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, Israel’s constant professions that it has placed this or that part of Gaza under its total control, quickly crumble. The fact is that the resistance continues to fight in every part of Gaza.

So far every Israeli-American “day after” plan, in which a defeated Hamas would be replaced by an Arab-backed Palestinian collaborator force, has collapsed.

Distracting from an exhausted Israel’s ongoing failure in Gaza, is perhaps one of the factors spurring Israel to seek spectacular “success” in Lebanon.

Turning point

This sobering moment is a turning point in the long regional war for liberation from racist, Western-backed settler-colonial Zionism. But after a century of Zionism’s depredations and horrors, neither the people of Lebanon nor Palestine have surrendered, and there’s no reason to believe they will now.

On the contrary, after the initial shock, the determination of the resistance will only increase, and its circle will expand, as it has in every phase of the liberation struggle.

Nor does the assassination of Nasrallah, with American bombs and American warplanes, and perhaps other assistance from Washington, change the trajectory of the downward decline of US global power – the power on which Israel relies for its survival.

Let’s recall too that the Zionists have always used assassination as a primary tactic. However, their war is not against individual leaders, but against entire peoples whose determination cannot be so easily snuffed out.

Nasrallah himself assumed the leadership of Hizballah after Israel murdered his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi in 1992. Nasrallah grew the organization to unprecedented strength.

That strength is not based on the will of one individual, but on a base of support deeply committed to the cause and willing – as Nasrallah himself never failed to point out – to make enormous sacrifices on the road to liberation.

If the Israeli army has admitted Hamas cannot be destroyed because “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party,” then what about Hizballah?

What is most sobering is that the war to liberate Palestine and the region from Zionism will be no less brutal on the people of the region than the wars to liberate Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa and so many other places targeted by the Euro-American empire.

After all, the occupiers and colonizers are the same countries, and the genocidal hatred their ruling classes bear towards the people whose land and rights they seek to usurp has never dimmed.

Like others before him, Nasrallah gave his life on the road to liberate Palestine, and that struggle did not end today.

Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.

29 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Max Lane

September 15 marked the third anniversary of the announcement of the AUKUS (Australia, the UK, the U.S.) agreement. The purpose of this agreement is for Australia to buy nuclear-powered submarines from the UK and the U.S. This increases interoperability with U.S. forces that are projecting their power in the region along the Chinese coast. Furthermore, Australia is participating in the QUAD and SQUAD, “[i]nformal Alliances in the Indo-Pacific.” The city of Darwin in northern Australia has been opened up for the U.S. forces, including planes carrying nuclear weapons. In addition, Australia has long housed bases for U.S. spy satellite systems. (For details of all these agreements, visit antiaukuscoalition.)

All this is consistent with history. The Australian capitalist class shares the understanding of the Global North versus Global South relationship and realizes that the ruling class’s best interest is in the Global North’s continued domination. The increased capacity of China to resist the U.S. hegemony, even if it is unable to defeat it, is seen as a threat. The hegemonic discourse in the media always refers to China as an adversary. In Australia, this is accentuated when talking about Australian imperialism’s “own backyard.”

Member of the Global Imperialist Club

For at least 150 years, Australia has been integrated into the network of rich industrialized countries much of whose wealth comes from colonial and modern imperialist exploitation of what is now called the Global South. Although a small imperialist economy, some of its biggest capitalists have investments in Global South countries, as far apart as Indonesia and Chile.

Australia has one of the highest GDP per capita in the world. Its wealth stems from this exploitation and from sharing in the exploitation of the Global South by the imperialist bloc. Its initial wealth, accumulated in the 18th and 19th centuries, was based on and boosted by a genocidal invasion. The latter enabled the theft of the continent’s land from its original inhabitants.

In foreign and security policies, the Australian state and the majority of the capitalist class have always believed that they shared the same strategic interests of the imperialist bloc. Since World War II, they have also shared the strategic interests of the United States.

In relation to Asia, the Australian state has shared the understanding with the United States that a socialist revolution in Asia is a threat to all imperialist interests. Since 1945, the Australian ruling class has waged a massive propaganda campaign among the Australian people on the “yellow peril” of communist China and the left-wing movements in southeast Asia. In addition, Australian troops were involved in South Korea, Malaya, and Indonesia before Vietnam. Even before the United States committed to the war in Vietnam, the Australian government was urging the United States to get involved.

Contradictions for Australia’s Capitalist Class

There is a contradiction for the Australian capital as a whole. “Over the past five years, the exports of Australia to China have increased at an annualized rate of 7.76 percent, from $84.8 billion in 2017 to $123 billion in 2022,” according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. China usually tops the list of countries that Australia exports to. The current Australian government is doing all it can to improve business ties with China, including recently feting the Chinese Premier and other delegations. Commercial relations have also improved. At the same time, in the political sphere, anti-Chinese propaganda continues strongly. Open public dissent against AUKUS or similar policies from within the capitalist class or pro-capitalist politicians is minimal. The one outspoken critic is former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating who argues: that China is no security threat to Australia; that Taiwan belongs to China; and that the Australian economy needs the best possible economic relations with China.

Opposition to AUKUS

The opposition is weak and comes from the left and some center-left Greens parliamentarians. There are two main elements to the Australian left. The Greens party is a moderate left-of-center party with a small representation in the Senate and House of Representatives. They oppose AUKUS, emphasizing the waste of money, erosion of defense sovereignty to the United States, and the environmental impacts of storing nuclear waste. While it publishes progressive statements on China not being a threat, it does not seem to stress the same. The Greens do not initiate or lead mass campaigns or protests.

The peace movement and the far left include the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network and the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition. While active, these organizations are small and weak, with minimal public profile or impact. This reflects the 20-year decline of radical left organizations in Australia, especially those whose political perspective makes the Global North versus Global South struggle (imperialism) a major or basic framework.

These groups’ statements are therefore often slightly more radically worded versions of the Greens’. Nobody campaigns around the slogan: “China is not an enemy” nor links U.S. containment of China to imperialism.

Solutions

There is no magic solution to this weakness. The only way to undo the damage is by patiently explaining and helping build actions and a movement against imperialism.

One factor that may help this process is increasing the voices of the peoples’ movements of Asia on these questions among the Australian public, and especially among Australian youth who are beginning to raise questions on this issue. More visits to Australia by Asian friends would educate people with an imperialist perspective on the destabilizing impact of U.S. and Australian policies. This is urgent and very useful, and we must figure out how to overcome the infrastructural and financial challenges involved in achieving this goal.

Max Lane is a writer and commentator on Asian and southeast Asian affairs and Australia’s relations with Asia.

28 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org

By Maureen Clare Murphy

All of humanity is less secure after a year of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank and as Israel now unleashes its wrath on Lebanon.

“The region is on the brink of a catastrophe,” the spokesperson for the UN secretary-general warned last Friday after Israel escalated attacks in Lebanon in previous days.

But Israel’s unchecked aggression – leaving some 500 people dead, the overwhelming majority of them civilians, and forcibly displacing tens of thousands in Lebanon on Monday alone, and the apparent use of bunker buster bombs in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday, bringing entire apartment blocks to the ground without warning – will have profound repercussions felt far beyond western Asia as Tel Aviv drags Washington into a regional war.

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The failure of states to meet their legal and moral obligations to end the genocide against the Palestinian people “jeopardizes the entire edifice of international law and rule of law in world affairs,” dozens of independent UN experts recently warned.

They added that the world stands on a knife’s edge and “either we travel collectively towards a future of just peace and lawfulness – or hurtle towards anarchy and dystopia, and a world where might makes right.”

Israel’s actions over the past days and months amount to a full assault on the fundamental precepts of international humanitarian law – the rules governing the conduct of belligerents during war.

Modern international humanitarian law is based in large part on the Geneva Conventions, the first of which was signed by 16 European nations in 1864.

Today, nearly 200 states are party to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which build on earlier treaties to protect war victims. The broad endorsement of the conventions demonstrates the universality of the principle that civilians, including health and aid workers, and civilian objects such as hospitals and schools, must be protected during war.

The laws of war represent “the very minimum rules to preserve humanity in some of the worst situations known to mankind,” according to Eric Mongelard, an official at the UN human rights office.

Litany of war crimes

Respect for international humanitarian law has never been absolute and victims of war the world over have yet to receive justice for violations of those rules.

But in the case of Israel, blatant disregard for international law is at the core of its military doctrine and the normalization of its crimes degrades the security of all humanity, with terrible precedents now set in Gaza.

Nearly 300 humanitarian aid workers, most of them UN staff, are among the nearly 42,000 Palestinians confirmed to have been killed in Gaza over the past year amid “the total absence of an effective protection of civilians,” according to António Guterres, the UN secretary-general.

Israel has systematically attacked Gaza’s hospitals and other medical facilities, categorizing them as military objects in a total affront to the laws of war and more than 500 health workers have been killed since last October.

Hundreds of health workers have been detained and disappeared, many of them during raids on hospitals, including hospital directors. Prominent Palestinian doctors, including Adnan al-Bursh and Iyad al-Rantisi, have died in Israeli detention after being subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

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Israel has increasingly targeted UN facilities used to shelter displaced civilians in order to pressure Hamas during ceasefire and prisoner swap negotiations, with more than 1,100 Palestinians killed in such attacks.

Israel has conferred de facto combatant status on all Palestinian men of “military age” in Gaza, stripping teens and men not participating in hostilities of their status as protected civilians.

International doctors who volunteered in Gaza report that children are being deliberately shot in the head and stomach by Israeli troops.

Videos from Gaza show Israeli troops gunning down grandmothers and other civilians carrying white flags or while they otherwise pose no conceivable threat (three Israeli citizens held captive in Gaza were also executed by Israeli troops in similar circumstances).

More than 170 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza, according to the government media office in the territory, alleging in some cases that the targeted media workers were operatives of armed groups.

Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, said after the killing of an Al Jazeera reporter and cameraman in early August that “the Israeli military seems to be making accusations without any substantive evidence as a license to kill journalists, which is in total contravention of international humanitarian law.”

Dahiyeh Doctrine

This is an utterly incomplete list of ways that Israel has shredded the protection of civilians sanctified under international humanitarian law during its nearly year-long campaign in Gaza.

And now it is doing the same in Lebanon.

During a briefing to the UN Security Council last Friday, Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said that the explosion of thousands of communication devices in Lebanon days earlier represented “a new development in warfare.”

Those attacks – which reportedly killed at least 37 people, including two children, and injured more than 3,400, many of them permanently – have been widely attributed to Israel, though it has not officially claimed responsibility.

“Law exists to defend values central to our societies, and to our world,” Türk told the Security Council.

He said that the “simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of the attack” violates international law.

Türk said it was “difficult to conceive how … such attacks could possibly conform” with the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution – the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

He called the attack “a war crime to commit violence intended to spread terror among civilians” – in other words, terrorism.

Although unprecedented in its scale and manner, the communication device attack is hardly the first time that Lebanon – which was invaded by Israel in 1978, 1982 and in 2006, and occupied by its troops for 15 years – has been subjected to wholesale violations of the laws of war.

The use of overwhelming force against civilians is known as the “Dahiyeh Doctrine” – named for the southern Beirut suburb heavily bombarded by Israel in 2006.

By using indiscriminate and disproportionate force and by deliberately inflicting suffering on noncombatants – an inherently criminal strategy – Israel aims to restore deterrence and turn the targeted civilian population against the armed resistance, whether it be Hizballah in Lebanon or Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Mowing the grass

The Dahiyeh Doctrine has never succeeded in turning the people against the resistance, despite the increasingly high cost paid by Palestinians in Gaza since the term was coined nearly 20 years ago, around the same time that Israel imposed a devastating blockade of collective punishment on the territory.

This failure has compelled Israel to periodically “mow the grass” in Gaza – in the horrifying term used by Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir, who prescribed the strategy in a 2013 paper – to degrade the capabilities of the resistance and achieve temporary deterrence in a longer low-intensity war of attrition against Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Those episodes of intensive attacks on Gaza by air, land and sea ever since Israel redeployed to the territory’s periphery in 2005 have invariably involved the targeting of civilian infrastructure, including residential and mixed-use high-rise buildings.

In the days leading up to a ceasefire ending the 51-day war in the summer of 2014, Israel ordered the evacuation and then bombed four residential and mixed-use towers in Gaza, leveling three of them to the ground and causing significant damage to a fourth tower that was eventually demolished. No one was killed in the attacks on those four buildings.

The attacks on the landmark buildings – described by Amnesty International as “extensive, wanton and unjustified” – were aimed at pressuring Palestinians to accept a ceasefire deal “on Israel’s terms,” according to Al Mezan, a human rights group based in Gaza.

That tactic is being used in Gaza today at a horrifically distorted scale in the repeated massacres of displaced civilians sheltering at schools to increase pressure on Hamas during now moribund indirect negotiations with Israel.

Strategic failure

But amid all the death and destruction, Israel has not won any obvious decisive victories in Gaza while it transfers an elite brigade from that territory to the Lebanese front.

It is often said that in asymmetrical warfare, all a guerrilla or resistance organization needs to do to win is to not lose. In the case of Gaza, that calculus is confirmed by Israeli and American insistence from the outset that any permanent ceasefire before Hamas is completely destroyed would amount to a defeat for Israel.

After almost a year of Israel’s merciless onslaught, Hamas’ persistence, ability to regroup and sustain the fight, denying Israel effective control over any part of Gaza, represents a strategic failure for Israel.

That failure is not mitigated by Israel’s mass murder, wanton destruction or the assassination of senior Hamas figures, any more than Washington’s killing of millions of people in Southeast Asia changes the fact that it lost the war in Vietnam.

Eitan Shamir, one of the Israeli professors who coined “mowing the grass,” stated that the strategy had “completely collapsed” following Hamas’ surprise attack on 7 October 2023.

According to Shamir, writing that same month, the only way to reverse the “severe defeat” suffered by Israel that day would be to “dismantle the Hamas regime in Gaza and destroy its military capabilities.”

“If the threat in Gaza is not removed when the war ends,” Shamir warned, Israelis living in communities near the boundary with Gaza “will not return to their homes.” People may not return to Israeli settlements evacuated along the Lebanese border either, he added – “an unprecedented achievement for Israel’s enemies.”

Israel has not succeeded in eliminating Hamas as a military force in Gaza, despite what some of its defense figures are telling the press in an apparent effort to curry public favor for a deal to release the Israeli captives still held in the territory.

Netanyahu’s cabinet is meanwhile considering a proposal to forcibly transfer civilians from the north of the territory before laying siege on it. The logic is that this would reverse the severe strategic defeat of 7 October by de facto annexing more occupied Palestinian territory.

But at present, the Israeli military is turning its attention to its more formidable foe in the north, Hizballah, with the stated aim of “bringing the residents of the north back to their homes safely,” according to defense minister Yoav Gallant.

Israel also seeks to delink the battle with Hizballah in Lebanon from the fight with Hamas in Gaza, thereby breaking the unity of fronts maintained over the past year and fragmenting the regional resistance.

Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of the Lebanese resistance group, reportedly the target of Israel’s massive strikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday, has consistently reiterated over the past year that Hizballah’s rocket fire from the north will not stop without a ceasefire in Gaza in the south.

“Displacement and paralysis”

A prevailing analysis in the Israeli press holds that Nasrallah, who has said that Hizballah is ready for a high-intensity war with Israel, but does not seek one, had recently found himself isolated and in a bind.

According to this analysis, as Israel climbs ever higher up the escalation ladder, eliminating Hizballah’s top commanders, Nasrallah was left with few options for retaliation that won’t lead to an all-out war that would presumably leave Lebanon destroyed.

But what this analysis doesn’t account for is that time is on the side of Hizballah, which “is aiming for longer term strategic objectives despite some tactical losses it has endured over the past week,” analyst Amal Saad said on Tuesday.

“While Israel’s approach has been one of displacement and massacre, Hizballah’s strategy has focused on displacement and paralysis,” Saad added.

“Its resistance forces aim to weaken the [Israel military’s] resolve and erode the resilience of Israel’s home front through a strategy of combined military and economic attrition.”

Justin Podur, another close observer, said in a situation report on his YouTube channel on Thursday that “Hizballah is doing operations that they believe will lead to winning the war.”

“What I think is the calculation is this: On the Israel side, terrorize civilians, and eventually victory follows, or commit genocide and victory will follow,” Podur said.

“The resistance calculation and Hizballah’s calculation is that we are going to demilitarize northern Israel or what the resistance calls northern occupied Palestine,” he added.

Israel’s escalated attacks on Lebanon by its already tired and demoralized military will only prolong the evacuation of residents and has actually increased the number of people displaced from the northern settlements.

Meanwhile, some family members of Israelis being held captive in Gaza say that the offensive in Lebanon will also delay a deal to release their loved ones – whose return Netanyahu claimed to be a “sacred mission” during his speech at the UN General Assembly on Friday

Having already initiated a de facto war, Israel has no more rungs on the escalation to climb, and a ground invasion of Lebanon seems ever more likely. This would not be advantageous to Israel, to say the least, as it would leave its troops “sitting ducks for the resistance’s advanced hybrid warfare tactics,” as analyst Amal Saad put it.

In the event of a ground invasion, the euphoria experienced by Israel’s military establishment after several days of major blows against Hizballah will in all likelihood become a distant memory and memories of the humiliation and retreat of 2006 will soon come flooding back.

From tactical success to strategic defeat

Tactical achievements aside, in neither Lebanon or Gaza will Israel find a clear victory or surrender by the resistance. In any event, no matter the fate of Hamas or Hizballah, there will always be resistance to the settler-colonial state violently implanted and maintained in the region.

Israel’s pre-state forces used military force and terrorism to conquer and hold on to Arab land, and that violence has been a through line throughout the state’s history.

“There is no room in the Middle East for weakness,” according to Eitan Shamir of “mowing the grass” infamy, reflecting a mentality that has informed Israeli decision-making since the state’s inception.

“This war might not be existential in the immediate sense of a threat to conquer all of Israel’s territory,” Shamir wrote back in October, “but it is certainly existential in the long-term sense of proving Israel’s ability to continue to exist in this region.”

The increasingly high cost being paid in human lives to maintain a Jewish state in Palestine is also coming at a dear price to Israel in terms of international legitimacy.

The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted in favor of the dismantlement of the occupation this month following a watershed World Court advisory opinion asserting the illegality of Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders anticipate that the International Criminal Court will issue arrest warrants against them any day now.

It may not seem like decisions made in international fora have any bearing on what happens on the ground. But Israel has cemented itself as an international pariah, leaving itself isolated on the world stage and enabled by and dependent on the US – a situation that will eventually prove unsustainable.

Existential war

Any security achieved by Israel through force will prove temporary and illusory at a time when Israel’s existence is as fragile as ever.

Both Hamas and Hizballah were formed in response to Israeli occupation and the brutal oppression of any and all attempts to liberate their land.

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Israel’s existential wars against the two resistance organizations stem from its precarity as a colony populated by foreign settlers that was founded after the mass expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian population – a reality that will never be accepted by people in the region, no matter how many normalization deals Israel reaches with Washington’s regional allies.

“Israel’s war is not with you, it’s with Hizballah,” Netanyahu told Lebanese citizens in a video message on Tuesday.

“Don’t let Hizballah endanger Lebanon,” he added in a thinly veiled threat implying that civilians and the state itself would bear the brunt of war.

After rejecting a truce proposed by the US, Netanyahu said that Israel was “fighting for its life,” with the “curse” of Iran behind the “savage enemies” at its doorstep during his speech at the UN General Assembly on Friday.

Netanyahu made the preposterous claim that Hizballah fires “rockets and missiles after they place them in schools, in hospitals, in apartment buildings and in the private homes of the citizens of Lebanon.”

The Israeli prime minister thereby made it clear that Tel Aviv’s target bank in Lebanon would primarily be civilians and civilian objects, causing the same levels of death and destruction as it wrought in Gaza over the past year – “effectively a call to genocide,” according to Amal Saad.

Underlining the existential nature of its wars with Hamas and Hizballah, Netanyahu said that “Israel will win this battle. We will win this battle because we don’t have a choice.”

[https://twitter.com/alijla2021/status/1839709932704137217]

The Israeli prime minister reiterated that Israel’s war was with Hizballah, not against the Lebanese people. But as Saad stated, Netanyahu’s “declaration that Israel must defeat Hizballah and that it can’t accept a ‘terrorist army’ on its doorstep is a declaration of forever war on Lebanon.”

She added that “unable to destroy Hizballah directly, Israel strives to eradicate the ‘resistance community’ and social fabric which supports and sustains it.”

There is no separation between people and the resistance, with the former giving rise to the latter, whether in Gaza or Lebanon. And that is why Israel puts the weight of its military on the necks of civilians in both places.

The inherent human reaction to resist brutal subjugation by any means necessary, now organized and sharpened with decades of experience in both Palestine and Lebanon and elsewhere in the region, is why Israel has not and will not find any decisive victory in either.

If the US doesn’t force Israel to choose diplomacy over warfare, and there is little reason to believe Washington will, “we may witness the onset of a ‘Great War’ that could consume the entire region and pose an existential threat to Israel itself,” Saad stated.

Israel is destroying any semblance of international law, but it is also destroying itself. Only once it goes the way of other pariah colonial regimes, like Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, will it be possible to build anew from the ashes and ruin the Zionist project will leave behind in Palestine.

Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada.

Ali Abunimah contributed analysis.

28 September 2024

Source: countercurrents.org