radiofree.asia

Category: South Africa

  • South African Election 2024: The People’s Minimum Demands

    Beginning at the General Assembly held in Durban on the first Sunday in February Abahlali baseMjondolo has held an extensive process of meetings and discussions at all levels of our movement, and in all our 87 branches in good standing across the four provinces where we have members, to develop a collective strategy for the election to be held on 29 May 2024. The Youth League and Women’s League also held their own discussions. The discussions in our monthly General Assemblies have all been open to the public and have been attended by representatives from a number of other organisations. We also held a successful voter registration drive with the aim of mobilising all of our more than 120 000 members in good standing to participate in the election, and to encourage others to do the same.

    There were three starting points to our engagement around this election, all agreed on in the General Assembly in February. They were as follows:

    • The ANC has been assassinating our leaders since 2013 and in 2022 we lost three leaders to assassination and a fourth to a police murder. It is therefore imperative that the ANC be given a very strong message that repression will not be tolerated, and preferable that it be removed from power altogether. The new MK party is an off-shoot of the ANC in which some of its worst people and tendencies are present. It has taken some dangerously right wing positions. It must also be considered as a serious threat to society and to our movement.

    • We are a socialist organisation committed to building socialism from below via the construction of popular democratic power. However there is no left party on the ballot and so we cannot vote for the programme of any party or with any confidence in its allegiance to the people and to progressive principles. It is not possible to vote for our key principles such as the full decommodification of land or the right to recall.

    • Given the seriousness of the crisis of repression, a crisis that poses an existential threat to our movement, abstentionism is not a viable strategy and it is therefore necessary to make a purely tactical vote against the ANC and MK. No tactical considerations can enable a vote for the DA as it opposes land occupations, puts the commercial value of land before its social value and refuses to condemn the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

    Although the imperative to deal a serious blow to the ANC in this election is urgent, and a literal matter of life and death, there are limits to how far we can compromise with a tactical vote. In the past we have called on people to vote against the ANC according to their conscience but there is a possible benefit in voting as a bloc in that whichever party we collectively decide to give our tactical support will know that this support is conditional on accepting some key principles. We are aware, of course, of the risk that any party that we choose to support in this election with the tactical aim of weakening or removing the ANC may hand our votes back to the ANC, to the people who are assassinating us, during coalition negotiations.

    These demands are not a statement of our full political vision or our political practices. They are a statement of the minimum criteria for us to be able to offer a party our tactical support as we take our struggle against political repression onto the electoral terrain.

    The set of twenty minimum demands that emerged from two months of intensive discussions involving thousands of people are as follows:

    Election 2024: The People’s Minimum Demands

    1. Well located urban land must be made available for people to be able to build homes and other community infrastructure, including community gardens. This will require a land audit to make planning effective.

    2. Those who wish to receive government housing and meet a reasonable income criteria should be placed on the housing list. Government housing must be built at scale and with urgency and must be decent and fit for human beings. Transit camps must be rejected as an insult to the dignity of the people. The housing list must be transparent and neither renters nor any other particular group of residents should be excluded from the list. 

    3. There must be a serious commitment to affirming and defending the dignity of the people, of all the people including the poor and all vulnerable groups.

    4. There must be a clear and viable plan to provide either decent jobs or a liveable income for all. While youth unemployment is a particularly severe crisis for people over 35 must be included in this plan. Informal forms of work should be respected, supported and, where there is danger and exploitation, regulated to ensure safety and fair labour practices. This must include sex work.

    5. There must be an end to the criminalisation of land occupations which need to be understood as a form of grassroots urban planning. When there are genuine social complications around land use these must be resolved with negotiation and not with state violence.

    6. Existing shack settlements and new occupations must receive collective tenure and the provision of non-commodified access to basic services such as water, electricity, sanitation and road access, and refuse collection must be undertaken as an urgent priority. 

    7. There should be extensive state support for community gardens including seeds, tools, irrigation and fencing, as well as participatory workshops in agroecological farming methods. The state should also support a system of community controlled markets for produce to be sold. People receiving grants from the state should be able to use their cards to buy at these markets.

    8. There must be a clear and viable plan to end load shedding that includes commitments to provision for access by the poor, to a responsible transition to socially owned and managed renewable energy and to ensure that workers in the current system are not discarded. 

    9. There must be lifelong, free and decolonised education available to all, irrespective of age. Education must include skills for people to be able to find employment and develop their communities as well as forms of education that are simply there for people to develop themselves. Community run creches and schools (along the lines of the Frantz Fanon School in eKhenana) should receive state support if they meet clearly elaborated criteria for democratic management and a social function.

    10. There must be state support for democratically run communes and cooperatives and the tendering system should, wherever possible, transition from supporting private business towards supporting cooperatives. 

    11. There needs to be a clear plan to address the crisis in the health care system, which must include employing many more doctors, nurses and other health care workers. The overcrowding of clinics and hospitals must be addressed.

    12. There needs to be a clear plan to address the crisis of violence in society, including violence against women, as well as other forms of socially damaging behaviour. This must not take the form of escalating the endemic state violence against the poor but should rather take the form of building a more peaceful, safe and just society.

    13. There needs to be a program to decentralise access to educational opportunities and possibilities for employment to ensure national access, including in rural areas.

    14. Political parties need to have a clear program to develop the intellectual strength and integrity of their leaders, and to do the same for government officials.

    15. Corruption needs to be understood as theft from the people and to be dealt with decisively. After due process any politician shown to be guilty of corruption must be suspended from their political party for a period of five years, after which rehabilitation can be considered if there is genuine acknowledgment of wrong doing. Any official seeking to extract bribes, to sell houses or to only allocate houses, services or any other benefits to members of a particular political party must be swiftly investigated and, after due process overseen by an elected jury from the affected community, dismissed from their position.

    16. There must be a serious commitment to dealing with the environmental crisis from a people centred perspective. This includes effective action to stop the dumping of rubbish in shack settlements.

    17. Participatory democracy – affirmed under the slogan ‘nothing for us without us’ – must be committed to as a clear principle to guide all engagements between the state and the people. This is particularly important at the community level. 

    18. There must be clear opposition to the genocide being carried out in Gaza, and a clear commitment to freedom and justice for the Palestinian people, and for all oppressed people everywhere.

    19. There must be a clear rejection of xenophobia, ethnic politics, sexism, discrimination against LGBQTI+ people and all other attempts to divide and weaken the people.

    20. There must be a clear commitment to oppose all forms of political violence and political repression in South Africa, no matter which person or organisation is suffering political violence or repression. This commitment cannot be limited to empty words and must be backed up with real action including mass mobilisation, media campaigns, legal action, etc. There must be a commitment to work against political violence and repression with all political forces opposed to political violence and repression.

    There was also a clear demand addressed to the movement rather than to the existing political parties. Our members are clear that while they understand that electoral politics is just one terrain of struggle and that it should never replace or distract from the work of building popular democratic power from below, of building socialism from below, they do want to be able to vote for a left party in the next election, and that the movement should, working with like-minded membership based organisations, begin a process of considering how to build a political instrument for the people, a political instrument that aims to put the people in power rather than a new set of individuals.

    A three day camp for leaders from all provinces was held from 22 to 24 March in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. At that camp it was resolved that we would:

    (a) Invite interested political parties other than the ANC, MK and the DA to the Abahlali General Assembly to be held on 7 April. It was decided that at this General Assembly we would present the People’s Minimum Demands in order for parties to respond to the demands carefully developed by the people through a democratic process as opposed to Abahlali listening to the parties’ manifestos. The parties would then respond to the people rather than the people responding to the parties. We will then collectively consider their responses before formulating our final position on the election.

    (b) Engage in mass mobilisation for the Unfreedom Day Rally to be held in Durban on 21 April. This mobilisation will include mobilising other progressive membership based organisations, progressive trade unions and other left organisations willing and able to work with organisations of the poor and working class on the basis of mutual respect.

    (c) A public announcement of the final movement position on the election will be made at the UnFreedom Day rally.

    We have just concluded the General Assembly at which the People’s Minimum Demands were presented to representatives from a number of political parties. The process of discussion in our movement, and engagement with other membership based organisations of the poor and the working class, will continue until 21 April.

    The post South African Election 2024: The People’s Minimum Demands first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Starvation in Gaza: The World Court’s Latest Intervention

    Rarely has the International Court of Justice been so constantly exercised by one topic during a short span of time.  On January 26, the World Court, considering a filing made the previous December by South Africa, accepted Pretoria’s argument that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was applicable to the conflict in so far as Israel was bound to observe it in its military operations against Hamas in Gaza.  (The judges will determine, in due course, whether Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the genocidal threshold.)  By 15-2, the judges noted that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.”

    At that point 26,000 Palestinians had perished, much of Gaza pummelled into oblivion, and 85% of its 2.3 million residents expelled from their homes.  Measures were therefore required to prevent “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.”

    Israel was duly ordered to take all possible measures to prevent the commission of acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Gaza populace; permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip; ensure the preservation of, and prevent destruction of, evidence related to acts committed against Gaza’s Palestinians within Articles II and III of the Convention; and report to the ICJ on how Israel was abiding by such provisional measures within a month.  The balance sheet on that score has been uneven at best.

    Since then, the slaughter has continued, with the Palestinian death toll now standing at 32,300.  The Israelis have refused to open more land crossings into Gaza, and continue to hamper aid going into the strip, even as they accuse aid agencies and providers of being tardy and dishonest.  Their surly defiance of the United States has seen air drops of uneven, negligible success (the use of air to deliver aid has always been a perilous exercise).  When executed, these have even been lethal to the unsuspecting recipients, with reported cases of parachutes failing to open.

    On March 25, the UN Security Council, after three previous failed attempts, passed Resolution 2728, thereby calling for an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan “leading to a lasting sustainable” halt to hostilities, the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”, “ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs” and “demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain”.

    Emphasis was also placed on “the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip”.  The resolution further demands that all barriers regarding the provision of humanitarian assistance, in accordance with international humanitarian law, be lifted.

    Since January, South Africa has been relentless in its efforts to curb Israel’s Gaza enterprise in The Hague.  It called upon the ICJ on February 14, referring to “the developing circumstances in Rafah”, to urgently exercise powers under Article 75 of the Rules of Court.  Israel responded on February 15.  The next day, the ICJ’s Registrar transmitted to the parties the view of the Court that the “perilous situation” in the Gaza Strip, but notably in Rafah, “demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024”.

    Throughout the following month, more legal jostling and communication took place, with Pretoria requesting on March 6 that the ICJ “indicate further provisional measures and/or to modify” those ordered on January 26.  The application was prompted by the “horrific deaths from starvation of Palestinian children, including babies, brought about by Israel’s deliberate acts and omissions … including Israel’s concerted attempts since 26 January 2024 to ensure the defunding of [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Israel’s attacks on starving Palestinians seeking to access what extremely limited humanitarian assistance Israel permits into Northern Gaza, in particular”.

    Israel responded on March 15 to the South African communication, rejecting the claims of starvation arising from deliberate acts and omissions “in the strongest terms”.  The logic of the sketchy rebuttal from Israel was that matters had not materially altered since January 26 to warrant a reconsideration: “the difficult and tragic situation in the Gaza Strip in the last weeks could not be said to materially change the considerations upon which the Court based its original decision concerning provisional measures.”

    On March 28, the Court issued a unanimous order modifying the January interim order.  Combing through the ghoulish evidence, the judges noted an updated report from March 18 on food insecurity from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative (IPC Global Initiative) stating that “conditions necessary to prevent Famine have not been met and the latest evidence confirms that Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024.”  The UN Children’s Fund had also reported that 31 per cent of children under 2 years of age in the northern Gaza Strip were enduring conditions of “acute malnutrition”.

    In the face of this Himalaya of devastation, the Court could only observe “that Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing a risk of famine, as noted in the Order of 26 January 2024, but that famine is setting in, with at least 31 people, including 27 children, having already died of malnutrition and dehydration”.  There were “unprecedented levels of food insecurity experienced by Palestinians in the Gaza strip over recent weeks, as well as the increasing risks of epidemics.”

    Such “grave” conditions granted the Court jurisdiction to modify the January 26 order which no longer fully addressed “the consequences arising from the changes in the situation”.  In view of the “worsening conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in particular the spread of famine and starvation”, Israel should take “all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”.

    The list of what is needed is also enumerated: food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene, sanitation requirements, and “medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary”.

    A less reported aspect of the March 28 order, passed by fifteen votes to one, was that Israel’s military refrain from committing “acts which constitute a violation of any rights of the Palestinians in Gaza as a protected group” under the Genocide Convention “including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.”

    In this, the Court points to the possible, and increasingly plausible nexus, between starvation, famine and deprivation of necessaries as state policies with the intent to injure and kill members of a protected group.  It is no doubt something that will weigh heavily on the minds of the judges as they continue mulling over the nature of the war in Gaza, which South Africa continues to insist is genocidal in scope and nature.

    The post Starvation in Gaza: The World Court’s Latest Intervention first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Amnesty International South Africa urges authorities to protect human rights defenders. 

    South African Flag in the wind
    Oleksii Liskonih / iStock

    The organisation released a statement to mark [South Africa’s] Human Rights Day on Thursday 21 March 2024. It said human rights defenders, such as the Abahlali baseMjondolo activists, continue to be threatened or killed for standing up for fighting for basic services or speaking against corruption.

    “Three Abahlali baseMjondolo activists were killed in eKhenana, KZN and more than 20 members have been killed since the formation of the movement in 2005,” said Amnesty’s spokesperson Genevieve Quintal. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/03/30/2021-per-anger-prize-to-south-african-housing-rights-defender-zikode/]

    “Currently, the movement’s general secretary Thapelo Mohapi is in hiding and facing threats because of his activism.“

    Quintal says the attacks on those fighting for basic rights are a violation of human dignity. 

    “It is imperative that our government takes decisive action to ensure the protection of these individuals and enacts strong legislation to safeguard their rights…There is an urgent need for legislative measures to safeguard the lives of human rights defenders.”

    https://www.jacarandafm.com/news/news/govt-must-safeguard-human-rights-defende

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Still No Human Rights for the Poor

    The poor and marginalised have not seen any gains in almost 30 years of democracy. The poor remain poor and unemployment, poverty and inequality are worse today than at the end of apartheid. Many more people live in shacks than in 1994.

    Those who live in shack settlements continue to be denied access to basic services such as water and sanitation. Violent evictions continue. Those in the rural areas continue to walk long distances to the nearest health facilities. Those who live in farms continue to be abused by farmers who see them as less than human.

    For almost thirty years we have been treated as human waste and not as human beings. For as long as our dignity and our existence as humans is not recognised we will not be celebrating Human Rights day. For as long as rights on paper do not mean rights in reality we will not celebrate. Instead we are mourning the betrayal of democracy by the ANC, a democracy that so many ordinary people fought so hard for.

    The ANC is a corrupt government with immoral leaders who have no integrity. They came to power claiming to represent the people but have made themselves the enemy of the people. They have vandalised our humanity.

    The ruling party will be using this holiday that is held on the anniversary of the massacres in Sharpeville and Langa in 1960 for its own electioneering. It will do so despite the fact that it perpetrated its own massacre in Marikana in 2012, and despite the fact that it has never acted to stop the assassinations of grassroots activists. It will do so despite the fact that the people of Sharpeville and Langa continue to live under inhuman conditions, like so many other poor people across the country.

    The rights to equality, dignity and justice – as well as the more concrete rights to land and housing – have not been realised because the ANC is led by people who do not care about society. They continue to steal from the poor and deprive us of even basic services such as water, sanitation, electricity and refuse collection. They continue to deny us access to land, to a fair share of the wealth of the country and to a right to participate in all relevant discussions and decision making. Thirty years of rule by the ANC has been thirty years of shame.

    When we organise to build our power from below to struggle for justice we are met with repression, including assault, arrest, imprisonment and assassination. Even our most basic rights to political freedom are denied under the ANC. For us the rights and freedoms on paper do not exist in reality. Repression ensures that we remain oppressed.

    For this reason it is essential to use our collective vote to remove the ANC from power and to give a clear lesson to all politicians in all parties that if they disrespect the people and repress their struggles they will also be removed. We know that there is no socialist or even progressive party on the ballot and that we cannot vote for freedom and justice in this election. All the political parties are funded by factions of the elite and not one of them is on the side of the people. Not one of them is a mass democratic formation. We know very well that whatever coalition of parties rules us after the election we will have to keep struggling against them from the day that they form a new government.

    However we can vote against repression, against the political party that has murdered our comrades and the government that has allowed it to happen and often acted in support of repression. We will be using our collective vote as the poor to remove the ANC.

    Outside of the electoral process we will be organising to keep building our collective democratic power from below and using it to advance towards a more just society.

    The post Still No Human Rights for the Poor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • South Africa Will Arrest Citizens Fighting for Israel – official

    South Africa will arrest citizens fighting for Israel – officialFILE PHOTO. ©  Aris MESSINIS / AFP

    South Africans fighting alongside the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza, where thousands of civilians have been killed since October, will be arrested when they return home, Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor has warned.

    She reportedly made the statement at a Palestinian solidarity event in the South African capital, Pretoria, over the weekend. Pandor added that IDF troops with dual nationality would be stripped of their South African citizenship as punishment.

    “I have already issued a statement alerting those who are South African and who are fighting alongside or in the Israel Defense Forces. We are ready. When you come home, we’re going to arrest you,” said the foreign minister, according to the Associated Press.

    Pretoria previously warned South Africans against joining the IDF in the Israel-Hamas conflict last December, citing the risk of violating domestic and international law. According to the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation, people must obtain government approval before joining Israeli forces, and failure to do so will result in criminal prosecution.

    More than 31,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli air and ground attacks in Gaza since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the Palestinian militant group’s cross-border attack on October 7.

    Hamas launched raids on southern Israeli villages, killing more than 1,100 people and taking hundreds of hostages back to Gaza. According to the UN, 570,000 people in the besieged Palestinian territory are starving, with up to 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced by Israel’s five-month-long bombing campaign.

    The Israel-Hamas war has strained diplomatic relations between Israel and South Africa, which has long supported the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty, comparing it to Pretoria’s own battle against Apartheid in the 20th century.

    Pretoria has filed a legal action at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for allegedly committing “systematic” war crimes in Gaza. The top UN court has yet to issue a final ruling but it ordered Israel to take steps to prevent genocide and improve humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s population in January.

    Last month, the South African government accused Israel of violating the ICJ order. Pandor also claimed that Israeli intelligence had been attempting to intimidate her in response to the genocide investigation.

    The post South Africa Will Arrest Citizens Fighting for Israel – official first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ICJ Wraps Up Hearings on Legality of Israeli Occupation. What Happens Now?

    Israel and its allies moved heaven and Earth to prevent a legal debate over its military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem from happening. This past week in The Hague, the debate finally took place. On Monday, February 19, in response to a late December request from the UN General Assembly for an authoritative opinion, the UN’s supreme judicial body convened oral hearings on…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Leaders Condemn Israel’s War on Gaza at African Union Summit

    Leaders at this year’s African Union summit have condemned Israel’s assault on Gaza and called for its immediate end. Kenyan writer and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola explains the long history of African solidarity with Palestine, continuing with today’s efforts to end the destruction of Gaza. African countries “see really an identical experience between Palestinian occupation and what they…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Echoes of Conflict

    Europe was burning. Or so I had heard in many media outlets before I boarded a flight to Europe. According to various hysterical outlets in the West, philistines were surging up through Gibraltar and other southbound nodes of ingress to destabilize European culture, that high-flown redoubt of wine and song and literature and art. Lisbon, as I discovered somewhat disappointedly, was serene. No flaming cathedrals. No barricades on the boulevards. Only the prosaic reproduction of daily life, at work in a thousand pastelerias and padarias. Hordes of tourists, like arctic ice floes, coursed through the cobblestone streets with a practiced regularity.

    Echoes

    These first-world problems felt embarrassingly inconsequential when I turned on the television and saw, with the tiresome predictably of political failure, the latest urgent update on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The airwaves had been crammed with urgent reports from Gaza for some four months now. Hamas had attacked and killed ___. The IDF had attacked and killed ___. All the usual suspects lined up, waiting their cue to go before the cameras. The reporters, always posing as impartial journalists who were deeply concerned for the safety of civilians in the conflict zone, found perches with skyline views where they could point to bombed buildings and streets (hopefully still smoking from the latest attack). Aid workers were summoned to issue urgent appeals for humanitarian assistance and an immediate ceasefire, a demand that felt as feckless as it was rote. Various intellectuals were brought on to gravely explain the roots of the conflict. Several spoke of heartbreak. And lastly the political actors, tiresome in their strident assurances of a just and fierce response. Their singular purpose appeared to be maintaining a posture and position that brooked no dissent, no counterpoint, and yielded to no mitigating circumstances.

    The television flickers with images of aftermath. These crises emerged semi-annually for as long as I could remember. Violence was met with violence. Human madness was as strong as ever. The Israeli-Palestine war was the longest running drama in the theater of hate. The principled college freshman I had seen accusing Starbucks of facilitating genocide did not know the weariness of talking truth for years to no effect.

    Veteran independent journalist Chris Hedges put it best, bitterly noting: “How can you trap 2.3 million people in Gaza, half of whom are unemployed, in one of the most densely populated spots on the planet for 16 years, reduce the lives of its residents, half of whom are children, to a subsistence level, deprive them of basic medical supplies, food, water and electricity, use attack aircraft, artillery, mechanized units, missiles, naval guns and infantry units to randomly slaughter unarmed civilians and not expect a violent response?”

    Assigning blame is the ne plus ultra of Middle East politics. Lately the fault lies with the settler colonial regimes. Here the Israelis take after the Americans, of course, with their unexampled template of having exterminated an entire population in order to claim a continent. They also follow the National Socialists of Hitler’s Germany, which waged a devastating and fatal war on Russia because, according to some accounts, the Nazis too wanted their lebensraum, a backyard, to put it plainly. A resource rich hinterland that all empires surely require (United States and Latin America; the Brits and India; France and North Africa). Everyone needs a backyard. An “inevitable expansion” was the birthright of all imperial powers and superior races, as der fuhrer put it. In this case, Israel says it is reclaiming lost territory.

    The historian Samuel Huntington put it like this:

    The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

    The numbers suggest as much: 26,000 dead; 63,000 injured; 360,000 housing units destroyed; 1.7M people displaced; 93 percent of the population face a hunger crisis.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. vetoes UN Security Council resolutions demanding a ceasefire and the resumption of aid deliveries to defenseless civilians, including food, water, medical supplies, electricity, communications technology, and so on.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a fairly damning if disappointingly opaque ruling last month. The ruling on the case nobly introduced by South Africa, which knows about the deprivations of apartheid, established that Israeli actions against Palestinians could reasonably fall within the provisions of the Genocide Convention.

    Israel argued self-defense. But as most ambitious nations learn, often too late, as the collapse of their empires bury their ambitions, force does not ensure the security of a people, as the erstwhile French Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin said not long after the October surprise. He went on. Neither force nor vengeance ensures peace and security; what ensures peace and security is justice. Of course this astute if not self-evident statement will be scrupulously ignored as Netanyahu and his radical minions feverishly advance the razing of Gaza. Hamas, elected by Palestinians years ago, will plot their next furious attacks, and scurry through underground tunnels as the bombs rattle the air above them.

     A Failed Media Strategy

    The coverage of the atrocity weighs in the balance against the essential construct of the occupation, and the dysfunctional relationship between occupier and the occupied. The former is forbidden by international law to attack those it has brutally colonized; the latter conversely has the legal right to resist the occupation, even violently. This fact changes the conversation; it changes the understanding of Palestinian violence; it reduces the condemnatory impulse in sympathizers. Even if to understand is not to forgive and to forgive is not to forget.

    Israel and Western media have attempted to elide the wider context from the discussion with a range of tactics. Principally, the “conflict” always seems to begin when Palestinians attack, not when Israel attacks, or oppresses, or suppresses. This conveniently establishes the chronological timeline of the present conflict with Palestinian violence, nicely bookending the story with timestamps that remove the historical backdrop from sight. It is as Theodor Adorno said in another context, “The violence done to them makes us forget the violence they did.” Other tactics include tarring critics with the broad brush of antisemitism; narratives that make Palestinians out to be irrational death cult aggressors and Israel as innocent victims; and a raft of disingenuous vocabulary such as the use of “conflict” for “occupation” and “atrocity” for “resistance.” While both terms may be true the former terms elide the crucial context.

    The ICJ ruling will predictably receive scant attention in the mainstream. At best coverage will be diversionary, like that of The Economist. Another story has taken its place. An accusation by Israel that a small group of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) employees helped plan the October 7th attacks on Israel. This claim, having been made by Israel for months, evidence having been obtained via military interrogations of prisoners, supplied by a country with a vested interest in limiting exposure of the ICJ ruling, commands the headlines. The Biden administration immediately cut funding to the UNRWA, which is the main UN organ of Palestinian aid, an act that violates collective punishment strictures in the Geneva Conventions which model international humanitarian law. But this media misdirection does its job of giving the media something else to talk about aside from the ICJ.

    This framing reflects the imperial ambitions of the West. The state of Israel was founded most likely not to establish a homeland for Jews but rather to establish a foothold in the Middle East controllable by Washington. Perhaps this is too cynical, but the amount of intolerable behavior countenanced and enabled by Washington suggests as much.

    As such, the mainstream media presents the perspective of its owners, elite capital interests that are the true rulers of society. The ruling ideas of any society are the ideas of the ruling class. It is the corporate media that disseminates the ideas. You can be sure the storylines will flatter the owners and protect their interests, locating them neatly beneath an umbrella of moral piety.

    But it is not working. The rise of social media has expanded the world’s understanding of the situation: the original ethnic cleansing of the Nakba, the brutal occupation, a mix of apartheid reservations and furious efforts to drive Palestinians into Egypt, cruelty and deprivation the common feature. The world population knows enough now about the settler colonial ambitions of Israel and the concentration camp conditions it imposes on a group of people that appear, quite rightly, to have a clear grievance. The weight of this emerging social consciousness—driven by non-mainstream reportage—is changing the debate in the West. But it has not yet been enough to stop the carnage.

    I saw a quote in Lisbon from Nietzsche scrawled on a white tile in a neighborhood bar that said, “He who has a why can bear any how.” The quote is truncated; the “a why to live for” and “almost any how” are shortened; the meaning is changed. But it made me think of Israel-Palestine. The religious zealotry; the intra-semite enmity; the blood in the soil; the whys make some appalling hows bearable.

    The post Echoes of Conflict first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Wenda accuses Indonesia of more human rights atrocities in Papua

    Asia Pacific Report

    A West Papuan pro-independence leader has accused Indonesia of new human rights atrocities this week while the republic has apparently elected a new president with a past record of violations in Timor-Leste and West Papua.

    Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto has declared victory in the presidential election on Wednesday after unofficial vote counts showed him with a significant lead over his rivals, reports Al Jazeera.

    The 72-year-old former Kopassus special forces commander, who had run unsuccessfully for president twice before, was given a dishonourable discharge in 1998 after claims that his force kidnapped and tortured political opponents of Soeharto as his regime crumbled.

    Former Kopassus general Prabowo Subianto
    Former Kopassus general Prabowo Subianto … declared victory in Indonesia’s presidential election this week after unofficial polls gave him at least 57 percent of the vote. Image: Politik

    He has also been accused of human rights abuses in East Timor, which won independence from Indonesia amid the collapse of the Soeharto regime, and also in West West Papua.

    On the day that Indonesia went to the polls — Valentine’s Day, February 14 — Benny Wenda, president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), accused Jakarta’s military of continuing its “reign of terror” in rural West Papua.

    “The latest tragedy they have inflicted on my people occurred in the Puncak regency,” Wenda said in a statement.

    “Military raids on the February 3 and 4 devastated a number of highland villages.

    ‘Villagers tortured, houses burnt’
    “Numerous houses were burnt to the ground, villagers were tortured, and at least one Papuan died from his wounds — though Indonesian control of information makes it difficult to know whether others were also killed.”

    Wenda said that “as always”, the military had claimed the victims were TPNPB resistance fighters — “a grotesque lie, immediately denied by the villagers and their relatives”.

    Wenda also accused Indonesia of “hypocrisy” over Israel’s war on Gaza.

    “We have complete sympathy with [Palestinians over their suffering] in what is happening in Gaza,” he said.

    “But Indonesian hypocrisy on Palestine cannot be ignored. They are bringing a legal case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) about Israel’s occupation of Palestine while intensifying their own brutal and bloody military occupation of West Papua.

    “They are supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ while conducting their own genocide in West Papua.

    Denying West Papuan rights
    “They are crying about Palestinians’ right to self-determination while continuing to deny West Papuans that same right.”

    More than 500,000 West Papuans have been killed since the occupation began in 1963, says the ULMWP.

    In the past six years, more than 100,000 Papuans were estimated to have been displaced, made refugees in their own land as a result of Indonesian military operations.

    “Genocide, ecocide, and ethnic cleansing — West Papuans are victims of all three. The world must pay attention to our plight.”

    There were no reports of reaction from the Jakarta authorities.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • South Africa Urges ICJ Intervention to Stop Israel’s Assault on Rafah

    Israel’s bombardment of Rafah in southern Gaza and its stated plan to expand its attack with a ground assault puts the country in breach of a clear directive from the International Court of Justice, said South African officials on Tuesday, less than three weeks after the court ordered Israel to do everything in its power to prevent genocidal violence in Gaza. The South African government made an…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • McDonalds are Dumping their Rubbish in our Community

    The Lindokuhle Mnguni Occupation in Rosherville, Johannesburg, organised strikes on Monday and Wednesday last week. On Monday South Rand Road was blockaded the whole day, from 3:00 am till 4:00 pm. On Wednesday it was blockaded from 5:00 am till 12:30 am.

    The police were not violent to the protestors but some taxi drivers did assault comrades on the blockade.

    This press statement is to explain the demands that led us to strike and will lead us to continue striking until they are met.

    The Lindokuhle Mnguni Occupation is now one year old. The land was occupied in early February last year. Most of the comrades who first occupied the land were renting in Extension Five of the Good Hope shack settlement in Germiston, which is nearby. They could no longer afford to rent and did not believe that land should be bought and sold or rented. Also the Good Hope settlement is between a busy road, a mine dump and a scrapyard and the dust from the mine dump and the scrapyard is toxic. The dust is making people sick. Shacks have been built there without any community planning and it is massively and dangerously overcrowded with all the shacks on top of each other. Living there is very stressful.

    Other comrades have come from places like Soweto, Rosherville, Tembisa, Vosloorus, Katlehong, the Johannesburg CBD and the Germiston CBD. There are comrades from the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and other provinces as well as Swaziland, Mozambique and Malawi.

    We decided to find land where we could live well and safely and build a community. Dignity, community and homes all require land so occupying land is always the first step towards freedom. We prayed together asking God to show us the land that we needed to go to, the land where we could fight for our freedom and then we occupied together. Now we are working from this land with comrades across the country, Africa and the world to build a free, democratic and socialist society. Comrades from movements in countries like Swaziland and Argentina have visited the occupation to share ideas and experiences.

    We choose the land that we have occupied because it is not far from where we used to stay, because it is close to where we work and because it is a beautiful and peaceful place that is full of trees. Although there is a mine dump on one side it is covered with trees and other plants so there is not much dust. The land is close to industrial areas and people living here are mostly working piece jobs or selling vegetables, fruit and amagwinya nearby. However, some of the children are going to school in Ekurhuleni and so we need scholar transport.

    We named the occupation after Lindokuhle Mnguni, the leader of the eKhenana Commune in Durban who was assassinated on 20 August 2022. Lindo had a vision of freedom for the oppressed, led the building of the eKhenana Commune and died fighting for poor people, for the forgotten people of this country, for people who are not even recognised as human beings. His spirit is always with us.

    The Eskom Rotek Industries head office is about 200 meters from the occupation but we do not have any electricity. We use wood fires to cook. We do have one people’s connection for water but the water comes very slow and residents of Elandspark keep sending Rand Water to disconnect us.

    There are no political parties here. Our occupation is democratic and our elected council meets on Saturdays and on Sunday all residents are invited to a big meeting, an assembly.

    There is no private ownership of land here and renting is not allowed. Shebeens and drug selling are also not allowed. Women led the decision to not allow shebeens as they are associated with rape, violence against women and robberies.

    There are 150 homes in the occupation. There are a number of small gardens growing crops like spinach and mielies. We are doing careful grassroots urban planning and have included open spaces and streets in our planning. We have measured out spaces for building, including future projects such as a community garden and poultry project, creche, workshop, community hall and political school. This land will not get overcrowded like Good Hope. It will be carefully planned and well managed like the eKhenana Commune.

    Our occupation is a democratic occupation that is moving towards becoming a commune.

    We are facing a number of serious problems though.

    The first serious problem is evictions. The City of Johannesburg has come to evict three times. The first time they came to evict us they didn’t talk to us. They came with metro police and red ants (private security). The metro police turned down their name tags. The red ants destroyed the homes on one side of the occupation. After the homes were demolished they destroyed the building materials. They destroyed many things in the homes and stole money, blankets and a phone. They stole our collective community money as well as money from individual comrades. We rebuilt.

    The second time they came to evict us they demolished every shack. Again we rebuilt.

    The third time they came to evict they engaged us. This time they destroyed 13 incomplete shacks.

    Another very serious problem is that rich people from Elandspark, building contractors and businesses, especially fast food restaurants such as McDonalds and KFC, are dumping their rubbish here at a huge scale. The building contractors dump rubble here but also broken glass which is dangerous to our children. McDonalds dump here every Monday and Friday. Dumpers have threatened to shoot us when we tell them not to dump here.

    They often dump building rubble on the road into the occupation and we have to continually work to keep the road open. We hired a grader to clear the building rubble but the guy took our money and ran away.

    It is very painful that all these people and businesses continue to dump rubbish in our community. There are dumps where rubbish should be taken, and one is not far away, but they just continue to dump their rubbish in our community. We do not count as human beings to them. We do not count as human beings to the municipality which leaves the rubbish here and does not stop the dumping. We are staying here with small children and everyone can see that and yet they continue to dump. It is clear that we are seen as rubbish, that our community is seen as rubbish and that our struggle to free ourselves by building a commune on this land is seen as rubbish.

    Another issue is that the zama zamas (informal miners) came to the occupation and offered money to be able to take the land to rent and sell it. They also dug holes, blasted rocks and threatened us. In Durban our comrades have been assassinated because local gangsterised ANC structures try to take over occupied land to rent and sell it. It is possible that there could be problems with the zama zamas in the future.

    There was also a problem with establishing whether or not the Ekhuruleni or Johannesburg municipalities have a responsibility to provide services to the land we are living on. For almost a year we got contradictory information. In December the ward councillor Faeeza Chame, who is a DA councillor, told us that the land we have occupied belongs to Ekhuruleni. We went to city planning in Johannesburg and Ekhuruleni and confirmed that the land belongs to the City of Johannesburg. On Monday, after the first day of the strike, the councillor agreed that we belong in Johannesburg so this issue has been resolved.

    We made the following demands during the two strikes:

    • The land must be left under the democratic and collective management of the residents. There must be no more evictions.
    • The municipality must provide electricity, water, sanitation and waste collection.
    • We need scholar transport for our children to travel to and from schools
    • The massive amount of rubbish that has been dumped on the land must be removed and the dumping must be stopped.
    • We need to be given an address so that we can apply for grants, jobs and schools and register to vote.
    • There must be an accessible voting station

    On the second day of the strike Nokuthula Xaba from the Premier’s Office came. She is deployed in Ekurhuleni and said that she would refer us to the right person in the Johannesburg Municipality. The ward councillor Faeeza Chame refused to come.

    We are going to continue the strikes until our demands are met. We are not going to stop the struggle.

    When we came to this land it was bush. We opened the land. We brought ubuntu. We are no longer renting and we live peacefully here. We can live socialism here like in the eKhenana Commune.

    The post McDonalds are Dumping their Rubbish in our Community first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • What Happens Now That the ICJ Has Ordered Israel Not to Engage in Genocide?

    What comes next, now that the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, has handed down its near unanimous ruling that South Africa presented a “plausible” case that Israel was violating the Genocide Convention? The January 26 provisional ruling – which was a landmark victory for the Palestinian people, and indeed, for international law itself — now goes to the United…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Reasonings by the 2 Dissenting Judges on the ICJ’s Genocide Case by South Africa against Israel

    There were 17 judges ruling on this case, including one from South Africa and one from Israel. Both of those two judges were not regular members of the Court but were included only because this ‘International Court of Justice’ was treating this matter as-if not “justice” (in criminal law — which this case was supposed to be about) but instead equity (in civil law — which is irrelevant to this criminal case) were at-issue (and therefore needing to be ‘balanced’, instead of to be concerned only to determine in the case “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” as being the SOLE basis for valid judgment on the matter.

    Page 26 of the 29-page ruling has paragraph 85: “The Court deems it necessary to emphasize that all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip are bound by international humanitarian law. It is gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack in Israel on 7 October 2023 and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release.”

    The 84-page South African document that had brought criminal charges against Israel, titled “Applications Instituting Proceedings,” said in the opening paragraph of its Introduction:

    South Africa unequivocally condemns all violations of international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. No armed attack on a State’s territory no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can, however, provide any possible justification for, or defence to, breaches of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (‘Genocide Convention’ or ‘Convention’),1 whether as a matter of law or morality. The acts and omissions by Israel complained of by South Africa are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group, that being the part of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip (‘Palestinians in Gaza’).

    So: the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks against Israelis was not an issue or topic in the case that South Africa had brought to the Court.

    Nonetheless — and appealing to public sentiments instead of to the actual case that was supposed to be at hand — paragraph 85 of its decision on the case pandered by essentially accepting as true there what both South Africa and Israel agree upon — as-if it were even pertinent (relevant) to this case (which it is not). One isn’t supposed to bring up in a criminal trial — or any trial — a matter about which both the prosecution and the defense are in agreement. It distracts from the case-at-hand and can serve only to distort judgments.

    So: right there, in the paragraph that comes immediately before the Court’s judgment in the case, which is paragraph 86, the Court makes clear that the decision isn’t entirely excluding pandering. That is pandering to Israel’s side of this dispute. But South Africa had already accepted that detail of Israel’s side. It was irrelevant and was brought up by the judges purely pandering to public opinion — in Israel’s favor. It had nothing to do with whether or not Israel is, in fact, genociding Gazans.

    To what extent did the ruling pander, and was it fairly balanced in its (irrelevant but popular — among supporters of Israel) panderings?

    The next paragraph (86) is the one that everybody talks about, and so it is merely linked-to here as being on pages 26-29 of the pdf if you want to read it.

    As is indicated there, the two dissenting ‘Justices’ in the Court’s 6-part order to Israel were Julia Sebutinde (Uganda) and Aharon Barak (Israel), and Sebutinde dissented on all 6 whereas Barak dissented only on 3 out of those 6. In each of those two instances, the jurist summarized up-front in the decision what the supposed ‘reasoning’ for the dissent was. Here both of those two summaries are shown:

    DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE SEBUTINDE

    [T]he dispute between the State of Israel and the people of Palestine is essentially and historically a political one, calling for a diplomatic or negotiated settlement, and for the implementation in good faith of all relevant Security Council resolutions by all parties concerned, with a view to finding a permanent solution whereby the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can peacefully coexist — It is not a legal dispute susceptible of judicial settlement by the Court — Some of the preconditions for the indication of provisional measures have not been met — South Africa has not demonstrated, even on a prima facie basis, that the acts allegedly committed by Israel and of which the Applicant complains, were committed with the necessary genocidal intent, and that as a result, they are capable of falling within the scope of the Genocide Convention — Similarly, since the acts allegedly committed by Israel were not accompanied by a genocidal intent, the  Applicant has not demonstrated that the rights it asserts and for which it seeks protection through the indication of  provisional measures are plausible under the Genocide Convention — The provisional measures indicated by the Court in this Order are not warranted.

    SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE AD HOC BARAK

    1. South Africa came to the Court seeking the immediate suspension of the military operations in the Gaza Strip. It has wrongly sought to impute the crime of Cain to Abel. The Court rejected South Africa’s main contention and, instead, adopted measures that recall Israel’s existing obligations under the Genocide Convention. The Court has reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend its citizens and emphasized the importance of providing humanitarian aid to the population of Gaza. The provisional measures indicated by the Court are thus of a significantly narrower scope than those requested by South Africa.

    2. Notably, the Court has emphasized that “all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip are bound by international humanitarian law”, which certainly includes Hamas.

    Sebutinde was treating this matter as-if it were a civil trial over something such as whether an international contract had been fulfilled according to its terms by both sides, only one side, or no side. Is that type of reasoning appropriate in a case that had been brought by a third party against one party in a war against the other party in that war — specifically by South Africa against Israel as allegedly perpetrating genocide against (not “Palestinians” but instead) the residents in Gaza? If not, then Sebutinde is a dangerously unqualified person to be sitting on this Court. Furthermore: her factual allegations (such as “the acts allegedly committed by Israel were not accompanied by a genocidal intent”) are either demonstrably false or almost certainly false, such as by this evidence cited in South Africa’s case, which evidence she entirely ignored:

    The Israeli Prime Minister also returned to the theme in his ‘Christmas message’, stating: “we’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents … This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilization against barbarism”.445 On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”.446 The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxens and sheep, camels and asses”.448

    — President of Israel: On 12 October 2023, President Isaac Herzog made clear that Israel was not distinguishing between militants and civilians in Gaza, stating in a press conference to foreign media — in relation Palestinians in Gaza, over one million of whom are children: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”449 On 15 October 2023, echoing the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu, the President told foreign media that “we will uproot evil so that there will be good for the entire region and the world.”450 The Israeli President is one of many Israelis to have handwritten ‘messages’ on bombs to be dropped on Gaza.451

    — Israeli Minister of Defence: On 9 October 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an Israeli Army ‘situation update’ advised that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”452 He also informed troops on the Gaza border that he had released all the restraints”,453 stating in terms that “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.”454 …:

    — Israeli Minister for National Security: On 10 November 2023, Itamar Ben-Gvir clarified the government’s position in a televised address, stating: “[t]o be clear, when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means … those who support … — they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”456

    — Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure: ‘Tweeting’ on 13 October 2023, Israel Katz stated: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”457 On 12 October 2023, he ‘tweeted’: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. … And no one will preach us morality.”458

    — Israeli Minister of Finance: On 8 October 2023, Bezalel Smotrich stated at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet that “[w]e need to deal a blow that hasn’t been seen in 50 years and take down Gaza.”459

    — Israeli Minister of Heritage: On 1 November 2023, Amichai Eliyahu posted on Facebook: “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes … We must talk about the day after. In my mind, we will hand over lots to all those who fought for Gaza over the years and to those evicted from Gush Katif” [a former Israeli settlement].460 He later argued against humanitarian aid as “[w]e wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid”, and “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”.461 He also posited a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip.462

    — Israeli Minister of Agriculture: On 11 November 2023, Avi Dichter in a television interview recalled the Nakba of 1948, in which over 80 percent of the Palestinian population of the new Israeli State was forced from or fled their homes, stating that “[w]e are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.463 …

    She ignored every one of those quotations — yet each one of them was core to South Africa’s case. It was core to the motivation for this genocide that is occurring in Gaza.

    And the case isn’t merely about intention; it is very much also about what Israel is actually doing. For example: see this on that, which displays not the intent but instead the results of that genocidal intent.

    Barak’s reasoning was different but almost as scandalously bad: blaming South Africa for having even brought the case. Furthermore: since this ‘judge’ in the trial was actually serving instead as a defense attorney for his country Israel, he can be expected to have been serving atrociously as a judge — the ICJ had brought in as judges both a South African and an Israeli jurist so as to get a ‘balanced’ instead of a fair verdict in it. They were, at least to a large extent, treating this criminal case as-if it were instead a civil one.

    By contrast to Barack: Sebutinde, who is one of the 15 regular judges on that Court, is so scandalously inadequate that she ought to be fired post-haste. But clearly, the Court itself, from the top on down, simply cannot rationally be trusted. Its problems are deep and severe. The genocide case against Israel will drag on for years and yet even at its outset, South Africa had presented a more trustworthy verdict (its case) regarding Israel than the ICJ ever will be able to, unless the entire institution becomes radically changed so as to become decent.

    The post The Reasonings by the 2 Dissenting Judges on the ICJ’s Genocide Case by South Africa against Israel first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The ICJ’s Provisional Orders: The Genocide Convention Applies to Gaza

    On January 26, legal experts, policy wonks, activists and the plain curious waited for the order of the International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague. The topic was that gravest of crimes, considered most reprehensible in the canon of international law: genocide. The main participants: the accused party, the State of Israel, and the accuser, the Republic of South Africa.

    Filed on December 29 last year, the South African case focused on its obligations arising under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and those of Israel. Pretoria, in its case, wished that the ICJ adjudicate and declare that Israel had breached its obligations under the Convention, and “cease forthwith any acts and measures in breach of those obligations, including such acts or measures which would be capable of killing or continuing to kill Palestinians, or causing or continuing to cause serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians or deliberately inflicting on their group, or continuing to inflict on their group, conditions of life calculated to bring out its physical destruction in whole or in part, and fully respect its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.

    The latter words derive from Article II of the Convention, which stipulate four genocidal actions: the killing of the group’s members; the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to those group’s members; the deliberate infliction of conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction, in whole or in part, of that group and imposing measures to prevent births within the group.

    The sheer extent of devastation being wrought by Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza, justified by the Netanyahu government as necessary self-defence in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of October 7, led the South African team to also seek immediate provisional measures under Article 41 of the Court’s statute. (The review on the case’s merits promises to take much longer.) They included the immediate suspension of the IDF’s military operations in and against Gaza, the taking of all reasonable measures to prevent genocide, and desisting from committing acts within Article II of the Convention. The expulsion and forced displacement of Palestinians should also stop, likewise the deprivation of adequate food, water and access to humanitarian assistance and medical supplies and “the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza.”

    By 15-2, the court accepted that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.” (Over 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, extensive tracts of land in Gaza pummelled into oblivion, and 85% of its 2.3 million residents expelled from their homes.) Measures were therefore required to prevent “real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.”

    The grant of provisional measures was, however, more conservative than that sought by Pretoria. Conspicuously missing was any explicit demand that Israel pause its military operations. That said, the judgment did little to afford Israel’s leaders and the IDF comfort from the obligatory reach of the Genocide Convention, an instrument they had argued was irrelevant and inapplicable to the conduct of “innovative” military operations.

    To that end, Israel was obligated to take all possible measures to prevent the commission of acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention, including by its military; prevent and punish “the direct and public incitement to genocide” against the Palestinian populace in Gaza; permit basic services and humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip; ensure the preservation of, and prevent destruction of, evidence related to acts committed against Gaza’s Palestinians within Articles II and III of the Convention; and submit a report to the ICJ on how Israel was abiding by such provisional measures within one month.

    As is very much the form, the justice from the country in the dock, in this case, Israel’s Aharon Barak, could see nothing inferentially genocidal in his country’s campaign. South Africa, he insisted, had intentionally ignored the role played by Hamas in its October 7 attacks, and “wrongly sought to impute the crime of Cain to Abel.”

    Inevitably, the singular experience of the Holocaust survivor, the sui generis Jewish view of trauma, used as solid armour against any possibility that Israel might ever commit genocide, became a point of contention. Genocide “is the gravest possible accusation and is deeply intertwined with my personal life experience.” Israel had a firm commitment to the rule of law, and to accept that it was committing genocide “is very hard for me personally”. Tellingly, he suggested that Israel’s campaign in Gaza be examined, not from the viewpoint of the Genocide Convention but international humanitarian law.

    With classic casuistry, Barak did vote for the measure requiring Israel to do everything “within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza strip”. But having identified nothing in the way of such intent, the issue became a moot one. With some relief, Barak could state that certain measures sought by South Africa, including an immediate suspension of military operations, were rejected by the ICJ, which preferred “a significantly narrower scope”.

    From the other side of the legal aisle, the South African foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, wished that the ICJ had grasped the nettle to order a halt in military operations. But, with some deft reasoning, she was satisfied that the only way Israel could implement the provisional measures would be through a ceasefire. Much the same view was expressed by the Associated Press: “The court’s half-dozen orders will be difficult to achieve without some sort of cease-fire or pause in the fighting.” That logic is clear enough, but the actions, given the various statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his officials alleging slander and a blood libel against their country, are unlikely to follow.

    The post The ICJ’s Provisional Orders: The Genocide Convention Applies to Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ICJ’s stunning blow over Gaza war genocide charge ups pressure on Israel

    ANALYSIS: By Trita Parsi

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled against Israel and determined that South Africa successfully argued that Israel’s conduct plausibly could constitute genocide. The court has imposed several injunctions against Israel and reminds Israel that its rulings are binding, according to international law.

    In its order, the court fell short of South Africa’s request for a ceasefire, but this ruling, however, is overwhelmingly in favour of South Africa’s case and will likely increase international pressure for a ceasefire as a result.

    On the question of whether Israel’s war in Gaza is genocide, that will still take more time, but today’s news will have significant political repercussions. Here are a few thoughts.

    This is a devastating blow to Israel’s global standing. To put it in context, Israel has worked ferociously for the last two decades to defeat the BDS movement — Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions — not because it will have a significant economic impact on Israel, but because of how it could delegitimiSe Israel internationally.

    However, the ruling of the ICJ that Israel is plausibly engaged in genocide is far more devastating to Israel’s legitimacy than anything BDS could have achieved.

    Just as much as Israel’s political system has been increasingly — and publicly — associated with apartheid in the past few years, Israel will now be similarly associated with the charge of genocide.

    As a result, those countries that have supported Israel and its military campaign in Gaza, such as the US under President Biden, will be associated with that charge, too.

    Significant implications for US
    The implications for the United States are significant. First because the court does not have the ability to implement its ruling.

    Instead, the matter will go to the UN Security Council, where the Biden administration will once again face the choice of protecting Israel politically by casting a veto, and by that, further isolate the United States, or allowing the Security Council to act and pay a domestic political cost for “not standing by Israel.”

    So far, the Biden administration has refused to say if it will respect ICJ’s decision. Of course, in previous cases in front of the ICJ, such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Syria, the US and Western states stressed that ICJ provisional measures are binding and must be fully implemented.

    The double standards of US foreign policy will hit a new low if, in this case, Biden not only argues against the ICJ, but actively acts to prevent and block the implementation of its ruling.

    It is perhaps not surprising that senior Biden administration officials have largely ceased using the term “rules-based order” since October 7.

    It also raises questions about how Biden’s policy of bear-hugging Israel may have contributed to Israel’s conduct.

    Biden could have offered more measured support and pushed back hard against Israeli excesses — and by that, prevented Israel from engaging in actions that could potentially fall under the category of genocide. But he didn’t.

    Unconditional support, zero criticism
    Instead, Biden offered unconditional support combined with zero public criticism of Israel’s conduct and only limited push-back behind the scenes. A different American approach could have shaped Israel’s war efforts in a manner that arguably would not have been preliminarily ruled by the ICJ as plausibly meeting the standards of genocide.

    This shows that America undermines its own interest as well as that of its partners when it offers them blank checks and complete and unquestionable protection. The absence of checks and balances that such protection offers fuels reckless behavior all around.

    As such, Biden’s unconditional support may have undermined Israel, in the final analysis.

    This ruling may also boost those arguing that all states that are party to the Genocide Convention have a positive obligation to prevent genocide. The Houthis, for instance, have justified their attacks against ships heading to Israeli ports in the Red Sea, citing this positive obligation.

    What legal implications will the court’s ruling have as a result on the US and UK’s military action against the Houthis?

    The implications for Europe will also be considerable. The US is rather accustomed to and comfortable with setting aside international law and ignoring international institutions. Europe is not.

    International law and institutions play a much more central role in European security thinking. The decision will continue to split Europe. But the fact that some key EU states will reject the ICJ’s ruling will profoundly contradict and undermine Europe’s broader security paradigm.

    Moderated war conduct
    One final point: The mere existence of South Africa’s application to the ICJ appears to have moderated Israel’s war conduct.

    Any plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and send its residents to third countries appear to have been somewhat paused, presumably because of how such actions would boost South Africa’s application.

    If so, it shows that the court, in an era where the force of international law is increasingly questioned, has had a greater impact in terms of deterring unlawful Israeli actions than anything the Biden administration has done.

    Trita Parsi is the co-founder and executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. First published at Responsible Statecraft.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine Welcomes Today’s ICJ Order; Demands its Implementation

    In its provisional ruling issued today on the South African Genocide Convention case against Israel, the International Court of Justice (ICJ—also known as the World Court) demanded Israel stop killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure and medical facilities; prevent and punish incitement to genocide by its top officials; and permit the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. The International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine (ICSGP) applauds the Court’s Order as a crucial first step toward forcing Israel and its primary sponsor and strongest political ally—the United States—to end the months-long brutal assault on Gaza, and the decades-long denial to Palestinians of their rights to self-determination and return.

    However, the ICSGP also recognizes that Israeli and U.S. government officials have made repeated official declarations in the past week making clear their plan to ignore the ICJ’s legally binding ruling and rejecting the Court’s process as illegitimate, and that the U.S. has been threatening world governments with sanctions and war—a promise it is making good on already by bombing Yemen—for opposing the ongoing genocide. The ICSGP also recognizes that numerous powerful state allies of the U.S. and Israel, including Germany and Canada, have already made clear their intent to back Israel against an ICJ finding of genocide. The dangerous rejection by the United States, Israel and their allies of this process—which was set up through the United Nations precisely to prevent genocide—undermines the legitimacy of that institution and in particular the U.N. Security Council, where the U.S. has long used its veto power as a tool to promote war and genocide. The ICSGP calls upon social movements to demand that world governments uphold international law and protect the integrity of the United Nations by ensuring that the ICJ’s provisional measures are immediately enforced, and to hold Israeli war criminals and their powerful U.S. accomplices accountable for genocide.

    The ICSGP stands in full solidarity with its Palestinian coalition members, who have emphasized in their own statements today the need for governments and social movements around the world to double down in their efforts to bring the ongoing genocide in Gaza to an end. Dr. Luqa AbuFarah, North America Coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), an ICSGP member organization, states:

    “It’s clear we have a moral obligation to take action and end our government’s complicity with Israel’s Gaza genocide. We must have the courage to speak out and take action to advance the struggle for justice. We must end US military funding to Israel which at $3.8 billion USD a year could instead provide more than 450,000 households with public housing for a year or pay for 41,490 elementary school teachers. I also hope that every person outraged with the blatant disregard for Palestinian life will join and escalate our BDS Campaigns and make sure companies know that complicity with Israeli apartheid and genocide is unacceptable. We must take action now more than ever!”

    ICSGP, together with numerous legal and human rights organizations including coalition members The PAL Commission on War Crimes and The Global Legal Alliance for Palestine, held press conferences in New York and Chicago following the Court’s Order on the request for the indication of provisional measures this morning, expressing gratitude to South Africa for its steadfast support, and calling on all organizations and countries to support South Africa’s legal actions against the Israeli military campaign.

    Lamis Deek, cofounder the PAL Commission on War Crimes and convener of the Global Legal Alliance for Palestine, states:

    “This historic decision changes international and domestic approaches—military, legal, and political—to stopping the genocide in Palestine. This verdict profoundly reshapes the geopolitical and legal topography, regardless of whether Israel complies or not. Following the Court’s decision we must issue calls on state parties to the ICJ and the Genocide Convention as regards their compliance obligations, and address our legal colleagues and our communities regarding the next steps we think will be most critical on the heels of this decision.

    The brutal Israeli genocide and torture in Gaza, alongside the targeted assassinations, destruction of civilian infrastructure including all of Gaza’s hospitals and universities, blocking of aid, and use of starvation and spread of disease as a war tactic, constitute a grotesque series of the highest war crimes. We commend the Court’s positive decision. The question now is how to deal with the anticipated US-Israeli obstruction of that decision.”

    Monisha Rios, president of SOLI PR, an international network of Puerto Ricans focused on growing solidarity with the Puerto Rican struggle for independence and ICSGP member organization, states:

    As Puerto Ricans directly involved in the struggle against U.S.-led settler colonial violence, land grabs and the ongoing neoliberal assault, we have a special obligation to stand in firm, unwavering solidarity with our Palestinian cousins. Not only does the Zionist entity’s genocidal regime in Palestine owe its existence as such to U.S. financial and political backing since its inception, Israel has also directly contributed with military technologies, weapons and police training to the violent repression of peoples fighting for self-determination against the U.S. and its puppet regimes around the world, and of Indigenous Peoples and descendants of enslaved African Peoples subject to structural apartheid within the continental United States. Israeli Zionists themselves have recognized the parallels between Palestine and Puerto Rico, for example with the Minister of Heritage—who publicly called for using a nuclear bomb in Gaza—recently calling for a “Puerto Rican” solution to Palestine. The South African Case at the World Court, and the Court’s decision this morning provide Puerto Ricans and colonized peoples around the world a unique opportunity—in recognizing our common struggle and joining together to fight against Zionist fascism, we have tremendous power to both stop the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, and to contribute to our own liberation by shifting the balance of global power away from the U.S. and toward the Global South.

    The ICSGP calls upon the over 2,000 organizational signatories to its original letter, and to social movements everywhere, to hold the profiteers and promoters of the Zionist genocide to account through concrete actions of boycott, divestment, and sanctions; to mobilize to demand the immediate enforcement of the ICJ’s Order of Provisional Measures and denounce accomplices to the genocide; and to continue to pressure all state parties to the Genocide Convention to issue Declarations of Intervention in support of the South African case at the ICJ.

    Previous ICSGP press statements are available from January 17, January 8 and January 3, 2024.

    The post International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine Welcomes Today’s ICJ Order; Demands its Implementation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • International Court of Justice Rules That Israel Must Cease Fire

    The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel must cease its warmaking in Gaza — cease committing and inciting genocidal acts — and that the case charging Israel with genocide must proceed.

    This was a make or break moment for international law, or rather a break or make-a-first-step moment. There is hope for the idea and reality of international law, but this is only a beginning.

    The president of the International Court of Justice, who read the ruling, is Judge Joan Donoghue, former top legal advisor under Hillary Clinton at the U.S. State Department during the Obama Administration. She previously was the lawyer for the United States in its unsuccessful defense before the ICJ against charges by Nicaragua of minining its harbor.

    The court voted for portions of this decision by 15-2 and 16-1. The “No” votes came from Judge Julia Sebutinde of Uganda and Ad Hoc Judge Aharon Barak of Israel.

    The case presented by South Africa was overwhelming (read it or watch a key part of it), and Israel’s defense paper-thin. And the case just grew more overwhelming during the bizarre delay (yes, courts are slow, but this genocide is swift).

    People all over the world built the pressure to move South Africa to act and other nations to add their support. Over 1,500 organizations signed a statement. Individuals signed a petition by CODEPINK, and sent almost 500,000 emails to key governments’ United Nations consulates through World BEYOND War and RootsAction.org. Click those links because more emails are needed now. While several nations have made public statements in support of South Africa’s case, we need them to file papers officially with the International Court of Justice. To reach out to additional national governments, go here.

    Governments that have made statement in support of the case against genocide include Malaysia, Turkey, Jordan, Bolivia, the 57 nations of the Organization of Islamic Countries, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Maldives, Namibia, and Pakistan, Colombia, Brazil, and Cuba.

    Germany has backed Israel’s defense against the charge of genocide, which has been denounced by Namibia, victimn of a German genocide. Prominent Jews have denounced Germany’s shameful action.

    Mass demonstrations in the streets of the world have continued in support of peace and justice, and to a far greater extent than major media outlets have reported.

    Here’s a discussion of this campaign for justice with Sam Husseini on Talk World Radio.

    Prior to today’s ruling from the International Court of Justice, the U.S. government pointedly refused to say whether it would comply with ruling, despite insisting that other nations comply with rulings by the ICJ.

    Hamas said that it would cease fire if Israel does, and release all prisoners if Israel does

    Germany, to its credit, reportedly said that it would comply.

    Arming a genocide is complicity in genocide. While Israel gets most of its weapons from the United State, other weaponry comes from Germany, Italy, the UK, and Canada — at least some of which nations also provide parts to U.S. weaponsmakers that provide weapons to Israel. Italian opposition demanded an end to it. And then the Foreign Minister claimed Italy had stopped shipments on Oct 7. Meanwhile, Canada is coming under pressure to cease shipments and prevarications. In Canada, Members of Parliament are among over 250 people hunger striking for an arms embargo on Israel.

    People in the United States can tell Congress to stop arming Israel here or here.

    President Joe Biden already faces a lawsuit for aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza. In November 2023, Palestinian human rights organizations, along with Gaza- and U.S.-based Palestinians, filed suit in a U.S. federal court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the Biden Administration for failing to prevent genocide, and for aiding and abetting genocide. The plaintiffs seek an order to end U.S. military and diplomatic support to Israel. A hearing to address the government’s motion to dismiss will be held at 9 a.m. PT / 12 noon ET today, Friday. The hearing will be webstreamed to the public. You are encouraged to tune in and witness the U.S. government’s attempts at avoiding accountability and justify its support for the genocide that is happening in Gaza.

    The post International Court of Justice Rules That Israel Must Cease Fire first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Genocide Scholar: ICJ Ruling Is “Beginning of a Process of Isolating Israel”

    In a highly anticipated ruling, the International Court of Justice at The Hague has found that there is a “real and imminent risk” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and supported “at least some” of the provisional measures South Africa had requested when it brought the case in order to rein in Israel’s military assault. Though the ruling falls short of calling for an immediate ceasefire…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • World court’s interim ruling on genocide in Gaza: key takeaways

    Edict falls short of a ceasefire demand, but ICJ judges show keen interest in Israel’s war rhetoric

    The world’s court has ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza, including by its forces on the ground, and allow humanitarian aid into the territory.

    Here are some of the key takeaways:

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Mesmeric Weapons: South Africa’s Nuclear Program

    The lessons of the South African nuclear weapons program are deep, profound and largely ignored by non-proliferation dogmatists.  They show that a regime, even one subject to sanctions and exiled to the diplomatic cold room, can still show aptitude and resourcefulness in creating such murderous weapons.  The white regime of Apartheid South Africa was marginalised, the globe’s notorious pariah, yet managed to chug along, developing a formidable arsenal with external aid and local resourcefulness.  Where there is a pathological will, there will be a way.

    The South African example also shows that members of the nuclear club are an easily rattled lot.  The admission of new members is almost never allowed, tickets rarely granted.  If they do, they tend to be done in the breach of a perceived understanding, roguish challengers to the status quo of accepted nuclear-weapons states.

    Such an understanding, for decades, has been one of the great confidence tricks of international relations, with the clubbable nuclear powers essentially promising the eventual dismantling of their nuclear arsenals on the proviso that non-nuclear weapon states resist the urge of acquiring them.  The result: club members retain their hideous arsenals, modernise and refurbish them with avid seriousness, leaving concerned non-club members either unilaterally defy the status quo (North Korea) or flirt with the prospect of doing so (Iran).

    The parallels between South Africa and North Korea are disturbingly and relevantly cogent.  They also yield other lessons.  For example, if unpopular on the international stage or caught in the crosshairs of a dispute, never claim to have no weapons.  If anything, claim to have more, not fewer.  Keep such matters close to the chest.

    On August 6, 1977, US President Jimmy Carter received a message from Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev.  “According to information received, the Union of South Africa (USA) is completing work on the creation of a nuclear weapon and the carrying out of the first experimental nuclear test.”  To permit the apartheid state to acquire such weapons would “sharply aggravate the situation on the African continent and, as a whole, would increase the danger of the use of nuclear weapons.”  The policy of nuclear non-proliferation, he warned, would be imperilled, necessitating “energetic efforts toward the goals of preventing the emergence of new nuclear states and barring the proliferation of nuclear danger.”

    On August 18 that same year, an interagency study coordinated by representatives of the US intelligence community considered the policy considerations of a South Africa nuclear test, suggesting that “domestic political concerns would argue in favor of testing; and that these concerns weigh more heavily than foreign policy considerations in a decision whether or not to test”.  That said, there was “no over-riding pressure” on the country’s leadership to test a weapon with any sense of urgency.  A more “flexible approach” was being countenanced.

    This was not intended to give the non-proliferation sorts any cheer.  “While we thus ascribe some flexibility, or ‘give,’ to the South African position regarding the timing of a test, we do not see any circumstances which would lead to a termination of their long-standing program to develop a nuclear weapon.”  There was “no credible threat” posed by the West to discourage Pretoria from pursuing a test; indeed, they might have the opposite effect.

    Brezinski, in a memorandum to Carter, advises that Washington should “get as much information about what the South Africans are really doing, as soon as possible, and before the Lagos Conference where this will be a key issue.”  Doing so would involve “a demand for an on-site inspection of the Kalahari site,” and carried out preferably as a joint US-French effort, and if not, unilaterally by the US.  “We will not however wait for the French.  It was judged useless to try to get IAEA participation.”  Such views reveal snatches of Brezinski’s prickly disposition towards international bodies, preferring, as other national security advisors before and after him have, a freer hand for US power.  Such agencies, when required, could be sneered at.

    To show that he was also alert to the ceremonial deceptions that accompany diplomacy, Carter scrawled on the same document, “Zbig – what we want is: no test – If they have to lie about what their plans were, let them do so – Let them save face.”  The testing, and the lying, duly followed.

    Another aspect of the South African nuclear weapons program was its near perfect conditions of secrecy – at least when it came to knowledge among members of the US intelligence community.  Throughout the phases of weapons development, there remained a persistent ignorance about how advanced the program was.  Pretoria was also insistent in not joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would have brought them into an international regulatory orbit.  Staying outside the NPT regime meant that the program could also flourish without harassment.

    Through the 1980s, the apartheid state faced something of a paradox.  Domestically, its political-social system was proving increasingly unsustainable.  Internationally, Pretoria found Carter’s successor far more accommodating.  This was all part of President Ronald Reagan’s notion of “constructive engagement,” another term for calculated hypocrisy.  It was a hypocrisy that enabled smuggling to thrive, with outside companies and entities keen to make a buck with the apartheid regime.  But as the nuclear enterprise thrived, the political system was ailing.

    In 1993, South Africa’s last apartheid President F.W. De Klerk announced that all six operational nuclear weapons had been dismantled.  This reassured Western intelligence officials that a country controlled by the revolutionary African National Congress would never benefit.  A nuclear-armed Apartheid South Africa, officially condemned for its racialist regime, retained often clandestine collaborative ties with the United States, Israel and a number of European states, including West Germany.  But a South African nuclear state run by a black administration was simply too horrendous a notion, an intolerable aberration to the club.  Imagine, for instance, the possibility, as the London Sunday Times (August 15, 1993) put it, of South Africa becoming a supplier of enriched uranium “either to Libya, Iran, or the Palestine Liberation Organization, all of which gave the movement support during the years in exile.”

    The scenario is certainly worth imagining.  Libya would not have been attacked in 2011 under the feeble, fraudulent pretence of humanitarian intervention, leaving the rump state that it is today.  A terrified Israel, having ironically aided Pretoria’s own nuclear efforts (it takes one apartheid state to know another), would have been kept in check and compelled to make concessions as never before to the Palestinians.  Adding Iran to the mix would have fed the calculus of terror.

    As things transpired, a small group of engineers and scientists who had links with the program, rather than any enterprising ANC official, did moonlight on the proliferation stage.  They included Gotthard Lerch, Gerhard Wisser, Daniel Geiges and Johan Meyer.  Between the mid-1980s and 2004, the group supplied centrifuge equipment to Pakistan, Libya, India, and, it is suggested, Iran and North Korea.

    Subsequent studies have seen South African denuclearisation as a miracle, an exemplar of good, humane conscience.  “The case of South Africa shows that nuclear disarmament is possible even after a country has built nuclear weapons,” write David Albright and Andrea Stricker in their 2016 study on the program.  “Its extensive cooperation allowed a rigorous verification of denuclearization by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which were aided and supplemented by nations with a special stake in ensuring that all of South Africa’s weapons were dismantled and the highly enriched nuclear uranium accounted for.”  But other lessons of the project are equally significant: Why acquire these horrific yet mesmeric weapons in the first place, and under what conditions?

    The post Mesmeric Weapons: South Africa’s Nuclear Program first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • World Court or­ders Is­rael to take steps to pre­vent acts of geno­cide in Gaza

    Asia Pacific Report

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Israel to take steps to prevent acts of genocide in South Africa’s case over the war on the Gaza Strip.

    But it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire in what is being seen as a historical ruling on emergency measures requested by the South African government which analysts say will put pressure on Tel Aviv and its Western backers.

    The ICJ, also known as the World Court, ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide, and also to take immediate, effective measures to enable provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance in the besieged enclave.

    Hailing the emergency measures, South African Minister of International Relations Dr Naledi Pandor said outside the court in The Hague that Israel would have to halt fighting in Gaza if it wanted to adhere to the orders of the United Nations’ top court.

    “How else is it going to comply with the ruling?” she asked, adding that it was up to the global community to ensure the measures were applied to “stop the suffering of the Palestinian people”.

    “How do you provide aid and water without a ceasefire?” Dr Pandor said.

    “If you read the order, by implication a ceasefire must happen.”

    In South Africa, government officials welcomed the ruling.

    “It’s a watershed judgment for all those who want to see peace in Palestine,” Fikile Mbalula, secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress party, told reporters.

    Years to decide
    The ICJ judges have not ruled on the merits of the genocide allegations, which may take years to decide. However, they ruled that South Africa had presented a “plausible case” with its genocide allegations that led to the emergency measures.

    Since October 7 when Hamas launched a deadly raid on Israel, Tel Aviv’s military campaign has killed at least 26,083 people and wounded 64,487 others, according to officials in Gaza. Thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them presumed dead.

    Al Jazeera’s senior analyst Marwan Bishara told the network that “Israel is on trial for genocide”, saying that the provisional ruling would cause a seismic split between the Global North and South depending on which side people aligned, even if the ICJ had not called for an immediate ceasefire.

    He said Israel’s major backer, the United States, which had vetoed three UN Security Council resolutions seeking a ceasefire in recent months, now needed to “look in the mirror”.

    “The UK, Germany and other countries who supported Israel in the past three months unconditionally also need to look in the mirror and reconsider their decision because the World Court has taken up the case of genocide against Israel for its actions in the past three months,” Bishara said.

    The principle outcome was that the ICJ would take on the case and had put Israel “on notice” and demand that the state carry out a number of steps.

    “I think that legally and morally sends a strong message to Israel and its backers that they need to cease and desist — even if the court did not spell it out.”

    Plausible case of genocide
    Thomas Macmanus, director of international state crime initiative at Queen Mary University of London, stressed that the court had said there “is a plausible case of genocide in Gaza”.

    “So, we now have a serious risk of genocide,” he said, noting that the law stipulated that once there is “a serious risk”, then states needed to do “everything they can to stop enabling that genocide and to start taking all action in their capacity to prevent it”.

    Riyadh al-Maliki, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, issued a statement welcoming the ICJ’s provisional measures “in light of the incontrovertible evidence presented to the court about the unfolding genocide”.

    “The ICJ ruling is an important reminder that no state is above the law or beyond the reach of justice. It breaks Israel’s entrenched culture of criminality and impunity, which has characterised its decades-long occupation, dispossession, persecution, and apartheid in Palestine.”

    Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir mocked the ICJ after the court ended its reading.

    “Hague shmague,” the minister wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in the first comments by an Israeli official.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ICJ Will Announce Verdict Friday as Israel’s Assault on Gaza Continues

    A global human rights coalition expressed hope Thursday that the imminent verdict by the International Court of Justice will be a step toward “stopping the genocide in Palestine” as authorities in Gaza reported new attacks on civilians and alleged violations of international law. The ICJ said this week that it will announce its verdict on Friday at 7:00 am ET in the genocide case brought by South…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 62 House Dems Join GOP in Condemning South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel

    More than 60 House Democrats joined 148 Republicans on Tuesday in condemning South Africa’s genocide case against the Israeli government, which has continued to commit atrocities in Gaza in the two weeks since the International Court of Justice heard arguments in the closely watched proceedings. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Reps.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Will World Court’s Ruling in Genocide Case Signal the End of International Law?

    There is very little more we can say that the thousands of reports and images of death, destruction and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza have not. Israel, without a doubt — its genocide watched globally in real time — has already lost in the court of public opinion. But will the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — the UN’s highest legal organ — find Israel guilty of genocide?

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Our Lawyers Made Us So Proud at the ICJ

    Abahlali baseMjondolo commend the outstanding work by the South African legal team at the International Court of Justice in Hague. Many of us watched with great pride as our brilliant legal team stood in front of the world to protect humanity and end the devastating attacks against the people of Gaza that have led to the loss of more than 23 000 lives, including more than 8 000 children.

    We do not see the importance of this case as being restricted to proving to the ICJ that the Israeli state is committing genocide. It is also a statement of conscience to the people of the world, and encouragement to the huge numbers of people around the world who have taken to the streets in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

    We welcome the support of progressive governments in Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia for the action taken by the South African government. We also support the very strong statement issued by the government of Namibia condemning the decision by the German government to support the Israeli state at the ICJ.

    The western media continues to condone the attacks on civilians in Gaza with its obvious and crude biases towards the oppressors and against the oppressed. They continue to refer to the attacks as a war between Israel and Hamas. This is not a war, it is a cowardly and genocidal attack on civilians by a country with one of the most powerful armies in the world, an army backed by the United States, the most powerful and dangerous state in the world.

    Our movement has always been on the side of the oppressed. Until the South African government opened the case against Israel at the ICJ we had never taken a position or issued a statement commending our government in almost twenty years of struggle. We have faced severe repression under the South African government, ranging from illegal and violent evictions to the jailing and assassination of our leaders. However, politics must be guided by principles and when the South African government took the decision to stand up for justice for Palestine we offered our full support for that decision. We will continue to support any further actions motivated by genuine solidarity with the people of Gaza, and with any other oppressed people anywhere in the world.

    We have a long and great tradition of radical lawyering in South Africa. Our movement has worked with a number of brilliant and committed radical lawyers since 2005. We were so proud to see this tradition show itself to the world in the struggle to insist that the humanity of every person must be recognised and defended.

    The great step that the South African government has taken on the global stage to end genocide must also be undertaken internally to end oppression. They must treat their own people with the same dignity. Brutal evictions, cuts to social spending, corruption and political repression cannot continue to be the order of the day. Singalingisi ihlamvu lona elishanela kude kube kungcolile eduze.

    The post Our Lawyers Made Us So Proud at the ICJ first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Back SA over genocide case, ‘don’t yield to pressure’, Hania tells NZ

    By David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report

    A Palestinian advocate has appealed to the New Zealand government to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to back the South African genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

    “A sovereign state like New Zealand that has historically stood for what is morally correct must not bend to foreign pressure, and must reject policies aligned with the United Kingdom of Israel and the United States of Israel which blindly endorse and support the apartheid regime,” said Billy Hania of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

    He was speaking at the pro-Palestinian rally and march in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau yesterday as the Gaza death toll rose above 25,000 dead, mostly women and children.

    Palestinian advocate Billy Hania
    Palestinian advocate Billy Hania speaking in Aotea Square yesterday . . . “The Zionist project is failing in Palestine.” Image: David Robie/APR

    Belgium is among the latest of 61 countries — and the first European nation — to support the genocide case and a growing number of other lawsuits are also being brought against Israel.

    Chile and Mexico have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes against civilians in the war and Indonesia has filed a new lawsuit in the ICJ against Israel for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

    Swiss prosecutors have also confirmed that a “crimes against humanity” case has been filed against Israeli President Isaac Herzog during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. No further details were given.

    “The Zionist project is failing in Palestine — the apartheid entity with 75 years of colonial terror has achieved nothing for the Jewish people, oppressing and killing Palestinians through a violent settler colonial approach,” Hania said.

    “Mass killing of Palestinians will achieve nothing for the Jewish people. Without respect for Palestinian rights and respect for life in Palestine, there will be no peace period.”

    ‘One holocaust not enough?’
    Constrasting the shrinking support for Israel with massive citizen protests “in their millions” taking place around the world, Hania criticised Germany’s intervention in the genocide case supporting Tel Aviv while also planning to provide 10,000 tank munitions to “the apartheid regime with which to massacre Palestinians — as if one holocaust was not enough”.

    “We are calling on the New Zealand government to support the South African ICJ case in addition to supporting the recent Chile-Mexico ICC war crimes initiative. This initiative is technically important with Israel being a signatory to the ICC,” Hania said.

    He also thanked Indonesia for its legal initiative.

    "Stop the genocide now" placard
    “Stop the genocide now” placard in yesterday’s Auckland rally calling for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR

    “More than 100 days of targeting Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure to exterminate Palestinian life is committing genocide, the crime of all crimes and with total impunity,” Hania said.

    “More than 60,000 tons of explosives dropped over Gaza in 100 days equals three nuclear bombs, more than the infamous nuclear tragedy on Japan that led to its immediate surrender. It’s fundamentally different for Gaza as surrendering does not exist in Palestine vocabulary.”

    He said the more than 100 Israel hostages would remain in Gaza until the “thousands of Palestinian hostages are freed”.

    “The Gaza siege must end, West Bank Israeli settler extremist violence must end, there must be respect for worshippers and Muslim religious sites attacks by Israeli extremists is well documented and must end.”

    Pro-Palestinian protesters march down Auckland's Queen Street
    Pro-Palestinian protesters march down Auckland’s Queen Street yesterday calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the killing of children in the Israeli war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR

    24 massacres cited
    Hania stressed that the current war did not start on October 7 with the deadly Hamas resistance movement attack on southern Israel as claimed by the Israeli government.

    He cited a list of 24 massacres of Palestinians by Zionist militia that began at Haifa in 1937 and Jerusalem the same year, including the Nakba – “the Catastrophe” — in 1948 when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and lands with the destruction of towns and villages.

    Hania also referred to a recent New York Times article that warned Israel was in a strategic bind over its failed military policies, saying Israel’s objectives were “mutually incompatible”.

    The cited New York Times article saying Israel's two main goals in its war on Gaza were "mutually incompatible".
    The cited New York Times article saying Israel’s two main goals in its war on Gaza are “mutually incompatible”. Image: NYT screenshot APR

    “Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza,” wrote the authors Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley.

    Israel had established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this stage of the war than originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion, which were reviewed by The Times.

    Citing Dr Andreas Krieg, a war analyst at King’s College London, from the article, Hania quoted:

    “It’s not an environment where you can free hostages.

    “It is an unwinnable war.

    “Most of the time when you are in an unwinnable war, you realise that at some point — and you withdraw.

    “And they didn’t.”

    "Adolf and his zombie" poster at the rally in Auckland yesterday
    “Adolf and his zombie” poster at the rally in Auckland yesterday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • When “Leftists” use “Antisemitism” Smears to weaken Palestinian Solidarity 

    While it’s near impossible to sidestep nationalist, imperialist and supremacist ideas, “leftists” should at least not promote prevailing anti-Palestinian ideological strictures. Despite the horrors Israel’s unleashed in Gaza, some who ‘stand with Palestine’ still prioritize Jewish sensitivities over opposing Canadian support for genocide.

    In a hundred days 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, 60,000 seriously injured and 2 million displaced in Gaza. Half a million in Gaza are facing famine conditions and basically everyone is hungry. If Israeli-imposed hunger, disease and lack of medical care persists hundreds of thousands may end up dying. And the state perpetrating this genocide has long encaged, occupied and ethnically cleansed those it is slaughtering.

    Amidst the genocide that Canada has enabled, some self-declared leftists still devote significant energy to smearing anti-genocide activists or trying to have their speaking events cancelled for purported “antisemitism”. Two months ago, some individuals associated with Independent Jewish Voices pushed to cancel my participation in a Palestinian Youth Movement and International League of People’s Struggles event in Ottawa. More recently, the anonymous X account Jane Austen Marxist posted, “In case there’s any doubt about Yves Engler’s antisemitism at this point (there isn’t)” atop a screenshot highlighting a passage from one of my articles. It noted, “With outsized influence in Hollywood and other domains, Jewish cultural influence is significant.” (Anyone interested in the broader context can read my full article here.) A hodgepodge of rightists and leftists liked or retweeted the statement.

    There was no attempt to show how my statement was incorrect or even to explain how it was anti-Jewish. For them, stating that Jews have outsized influence in Hollywood can only be a “trope” or “dog whistle” and thus unmentionable. But my statement is factual, as this 2014 Globe and Mail article demonstrates. In a stunning 2008 Los Angeles Times article headlined “Who runs Hollywood? C’mon” Joel Stein writes:

    How deeply Jewish is Hollywood? When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp. President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish). If either of the Weinstein brothers had signed, this group would have not only the power to shut down all film production but to form a minyan with enough Fiji water on hand to fill a mikvah. The person they were yelling at in that ad was SAG President Alan Rosenberg (take a guess). The scathing rebuttal to the ad was written by entertainment super-agent Ari Emanuel (Jew with Israeli parents)… The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies. When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.

    The demographic make-up at the top of the US entertainment/media industry would have had to shift dramatically for my innocuous “outsized influence” statement to be incorrect. Do those smearing me have alternative data or any coherent rebuttal? No. In fact, they would likely respond to my quoting Stein’s story about Jewish influence in Hollywood by doubling down on their smear. For them presenting any data that demonstrates “outsized Jewish influence” anywhere is another act of antisemitism. The effect is to be unable to describe how widespread and effective anti-Palestinianism is and why, which, of course, are necessary steps in combatting this form of racism.

    A near universal, if undeclared, rule when discussing antisemitism in Canada is that one can only cite a single sociological indicator for status/oppression. Of the twenty most commonly employed categories in discussions of racism — income levels, incarceration rates, educational attainment, life expectancy, home ownership, positions on corporate boards, etc. — hate crime data is the only indicator one can mention. It’s no coincidence that hate crimes is the only widely used indicator of discrimination in which the Jewish community fairs poorly. While the genocide lobby exaggerates the scope of the problem, Canadian Jews are substantially over represented as victims of hate crimes. But they fare better (often significantly so) than other groups on the other indicators commonly employed to identify status/oppression.

    A broader discussion of the community’s standing doesn’t excuse acts of hate or prejudice against Jews, but it does relativize the impact of antisemitism in Canada. This is important when the genocide lobby explicitly counterposes antisemitism with Palestine solidarity. In a stark example, the Trudeau government recently criticized South Africa’s case to the International Court of Justice against Israel for purportedly impacting Canadian Jews. The government statement noted, “We must ensure that the procedural steps in this case are not used to foster Antisemitism and targeting of Jewish neighbourhoods, businesses, and individuals.” So, an international legal case to end a genocide is objectionable because it may impact Canadian Jews!

    When lobbyists, politicians and the media are explicitly counterposing antisemitism with stopping a genocide, internationalist and anti-racist minded individuals must avoid fueling the antisemitism panic and reinforcing the nationalist, imperialist and supremacist bias towards Canadian Jewish sensitivities. Even if one believed all the apartheid lobby’s most outlandish claims about the anti-genocide movement’s contribution to antisemitism, they barely register compared to the horrors Canada has enabled in Gaza. Let’s say Ottawa seriously pushing back against Israel’s atrocities — by calling it genocide, suspending arms permits and seeking to staunch the flow of subsidized charitable donations — restrained Israel’s barbarity by 1%. This would have saved 300 lives and led to 20,000 fewer Palestinians displaced and 5,000 fewer facing famine conditions. Anyone professing internationalist, humanist and anti-racist values would easily accept all (and some) of the apartheid lobby’s bigotry claims in exchange. But our political culture is highly nationalistic, imperialistic and supremacist. (In reality the Palestine solidarity movement is responsible for little antisemitism and there’s no reason why Canada couldn’t end its genocidal complicity with little spillover.)

    Those implying that antisemitism is a major problem in Canada and that one must be hyper sensitive about “tropes” when discussing the Jewish community’s relations to Palestine are requiring those opposed to colonialism to fight with a hand tied behind their backs. They are saying we must be hyper sensitive to a form of discrimination, but can’t investigate the socioeconomic status of the community purportedly under threat. They are saying it’s illegitimate to cite “outsized Jewish influence” at the upper echelons of Hollywood even when it helps explain the cultural weight of antisemitism accusations and why few in the generally liberal movie industry have publicly denounced the genocide. They are saying mentioning Jewish wealth and power is antisemitic despite it contributing to the effectiveness of the apartheid lobby.

    How many Palestinians have to be slaughtered before we stop prioritizing the sensitivities of a generally well-off Canadian group over a colonized people facing genocide?

    …
    The post When “Leftists” use “Antisemitism” Smears to weaken Palestinian Solidarity  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “Not Wanting” A Wider Middle East War, the U.S. Has Started One

    You have to hand it to the U.S. and its henchmen for brazenness.  In order to protect their client state Israel and its genocide in Gaza, the U.S., together with the UK, have in one week launched air and sea attacks on the Houthis in Yemen five times, referring to it as “self-defense” in their Orwellian lingo.  The ostensible reason being Yemen’s refusal to allow ships bound for Israel, which is committing genocide in Gaza, to enter the Red Sea, while permitting other ships to pass freely.

    To any impartial observer, the Houthis should be lauded.  Yet, while the International Court of Justice considers the South African charge of genocide against Israel that is supported by overwhelming evidence, the U.S. and its allies have instigated a wider war throughout the Middle East while claiming they do not want such a war.  These settler colonial states want genocide and a much wider war because they have been set back on their heels by those they have mocked, provoked, and attacked – notably the Palestinians, Syrians, and Russians, among others.

    While the criminalization of international law does not bode well for the ICJ’s upcoming ruling or its ability to stop Israeli’s genocide in Gaza, Michel Chossudovsky, of Global Research, as is his wont, has offered a superb analysis and suggestion for those who oppose such crimes: that Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter – “The fact that a person [e.g. Israeli, U.S. soldiers, pilots] acted pursuant to order of his [her] Government or of a superior does not relieve him [her] from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” – should be used to supplement the South African charges and appeal directly to the moral consciences of those asked to carry out acts of genocide. He writes:

    Let us call upon Israeli and American soldiers and pilots “to abandon the battlefield”, as an act of refusal to participate in a criminal undertaking against the People of Gaza.  

    South Africa’s legal procedure at the ICJ should be endorsed Worldwide. While it cannot be relied upon to put a rapid end to the genocide, it provides support and legitimacy to the “Disobey Unlawful Orders, Abandon the Battlefield”  campaign under Nuremberg Charter Principle IV.

    While such an approach will not stop the continuing slaughter, it would remind the world that each person who participates in and supports it bears a heavy burden of guilt for their actions; that they are morally and legally culpable.  This appeal to the human heart and conscience, no matter what its practical effect, will at least add to the condemnation of a genocide happening in real time and full view of the world, even though no one will ever be prosecuted for such crimes since any real just use of international law has long disappeared.  Yet there is a edifying history of such conscientious objection to immoral war making, and though each person makes the decision in solitary witness, individual choices can inspire others and the solitary become solidary, as Albert Camus reminded us at the end of his short story, “The Artist at Work.”

    With each passing day, it becomes more and more evident that Israel/U.S.A. and their allies do want a wider war.  Iran is their special focus, with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen targets on the way.  Anyone who supports the genocide in Gaza, explicitly or through silence, bears responsibility for the conflagration to come.  There are no excuses.

    And the facts show that it is axiomatic that waging war has been the modus operandi of the U.S./Israeli alliance for a long time.  Just as in early 2003 when the Bush administration said they were looking for a peaceful solution to their fake charges against Sadam Hussein with his alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” the Biden administration is lying, as the Bush administration lied about September 11, 2001 to launch its ongoing war on terror, starting in Afghanistan.  Without an expanded war, President Biden – aka the Democrats, since he will most probably not be the candidate – and his psychopathic partner Benjamin Netanyahu, will not survive.  It is bi-partisan war-mongering, of course, internationally and intramurally, since both U.S. political parties are controlled by the Israel Lobby and billionaire class that owns Congress and the “defense” industry that thrives on never-ending war to such an extent that even the notable independent candidate for the presidency, Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is running as an anti-war candidate, fully supports Israel which is tantamount to supporting Biden’s expanding war policy.

    Biden and Netanyahu, who are always claiming after the fact that they were surprised by events or were fed bad advice by their underlings, are dumb scorpions. They are stupid but deadly.  And many people in the West, while perhaps decent people in their personal lives, are living in a fantasy world of “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” in MLK, Jr.’s words, as the growing threat of a world war increases and insouciance reigns.

    Neither the Israeli nor American government can allow themselves to be humiliated, U.S./NATO by the Russians in Ukraine and the Israelis by the Palestinians.  Like cornered criminals with lethal weapons, they will kill as many as they can on their way down, taking their revenge on the weakest first.

    Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned.  They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence.  They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. They miscalculate the perfidy of the moneyed elites whom allegedly they oppose while pocketing their cash and ushering them into the national coffers out of necessity since they are too big to fail.  They never see the storm coming, even as they create it.  Their incompetence or the perfidy of their enemies is the retort to all those “nut cases” who conjure up conspiracy theories or plain facts to explain their actions or lack thereof.  They are innocent.  Always innocent.  And they can’t understand why those they have long abused reach a point when they will no longer impetrate for mercy but will fight fiercely for their freedom.

    All signs point to a major war on the horizon.  Both the U.S.A. and Israel have been shown to be rogue states with no desire to negotiate a peaceful world.  Believing in high-tech weapons and massive firepower, neither has learned the hard lesson that anti-colonial wars have historically been won by those with far less weapons but with a passionate desire to throw off the chains of their oppressors.  Vietnam is the text-book case, and there are many others.  Failure to learn is the name of their game.

    The Zionist project for a Greater Israel is doomed to fail, but as it does, desperate men like Biden and Netanyahu are intent on launching desperate acts of war.  Exactly when and how this expanded war will blaze across the headlines is the question.  It has started, but I think it prudent to expect a black swan event sometime this year when all hell will break loose.  The genocide in Gaza is the first step, and the U.S./Israel, “not wanting” a wider war, have already started one.

    (For an excellent history lesson on the Zionist oppression of Palestinians and the current genocide, listen to Max Blumenthal’s and Miko Peled’s impassioned talk – “Where is the War in Gaza Going? – delivered from the heart of darkness, Washington D.C.  Two Jewish men who know the difference between Zionism and Judaism and whose consciences are aflame with justice for the oppressed Palestinians.)

    The post “Not Wanting” A Wider Middle East War, the U.S. Has Started One first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Global South Takes Israel to Court

    Tarek al-Ghoussein (Palestine), Untitled 9 from the series Self Portrait, 2002.

    On 11 January, Adila Hassim, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, stood before the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said: “Genocides are never declared in advance. But this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts”. This statement anchored Hassim’s presentation of South Africa’s 84-page complaint against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and South Africa are parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention.

    The filing by the South African government documents many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel as well as, crucially, the declarations of intent to conduct genocide made by senior Israeli officials. Nine pages of this text (pp. 59 to 67) list ‘expressions of genocidal intent’ made primarily by Israeli state officials, such as calls for a ‘Second Nakba’ and a ‘Gaza Nakba’ (Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, refers to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homes that led to the creation of the state of Israel). These chilling declarations of intent have appeared repeatedly in the Israeli government’s speeches and statements since 7 October alongside racist language about ‘monsters’, ‘animals’, and the ‘jungle’ to refer to Palestinians. In one of many such instances, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on 9 October 2023 that his forces are ‘imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly’.

    Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another advocate from South Africa, described these words as a ‘language of systematic dehumanisation’. This language, alongside the character of Israel’s assault – which has thus far claimed over 24,000 Palestinian lives, displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza, and plunged 90% of the population into acute food security – should provide a sufficient basis for the accusation of genocide.

    It is fitting that Adila Hassim’s first name means righteousness or justice in Arabic and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi’s first name means trustworthy in Xhosa.

    John Halaka (Palestine), Memories of Memories, 2023.

    At the ICJ hearing, Israel was unable to respond credibly to South Africa’s complaint. Tal Becker, a legal advisor to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spent his entire presentation trying to indict Hamas, which is not a party to the dispute. It was Hamas, Becker said, that created the ‘nightmarish environment’ in Gaza – not Israel.

    After Israel made its case, the fifteen ICJ judges began their deliberations. The presentations on 11–12 January were merely the prima facie hearing to ascertain whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to a trial, which – if it happens – would likely take years. However, South Africa asked the court to apply ‘provisional measures’, namely an emergency order from the ICJ judges calling on Israel to stop its genocidal attack on Palestinians. This would be a significant blow to Israel’s already diminished legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of its major backer, the United States of America. There is considerable precedence for this measure. In 2019, Gambia was able to get the court to order provisional measures against the government of Myanmar for its attacks on the Rohingya people. The world awaits the court’s verdict.

    Ibrahim Khatab (Egypt), Do What You Want Under the Trees, 2021.

    The day before the hearings began, the US released a statement saying ‘allegations that Israel is committing genocide are unfounded’. Once more, the US government fully backed Israel, intervening on its behalf not only in words but by providing arms and logistical support for the genocide. That is why South Africa is now preparing a filing against the United States and the United Kingdom to be submitted to the ICJ.

    In November 2023, when the genocidal character of the war was already widely accepted across the globe, US Congress passed a $14.5 billion package in military aid to Israel. While the ICJ held its hearing, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told the press that the US will ‘continue to supply [Israel] with the tools and capabilities they need’, which it did – again – as recently as 9 and 29 December, when it transferred additional arms to Israel. When asked about loss of life concerns within Congress, Kirby said that ‘we still see no indication that [Israel is] violating the laws of armed conflict’. Kirby, a former admiral, acknowledged that ‘there are too many civilian casualties’. However, rather than calling to end attacks on civilians, he said that Israel must ‘take steps to reduce that’. In other words, the US has given Israel the green light and carte blanche support, and arms, to do whatever it would like to Palestinians.

    When the people of Yemen, led by Ansar Allah, decided to block the movement of ships to Israel through the Red Sea, the US formed a ‘coalition’ to attack Yemen. On the day of South Africa’s presentation at the ICJ, the US bombed Yemen. The message was clear: not only will the US provide unconditional support for the genocide; it will also attack countries that try to put a stop to it.

    Shaima al-Tamimi (Yemen), So Close Yet So Far Away, 2018.

    The atrocities perpetrated by Israel, as well as the resistance of the Palestinian people, have moved millions across the world to take to the streets, many of them for the first time in their lives. Social media, in almost all the world’s languages, is saturated with content decrying Israel’s terrible actions. The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing, with 400,000 people marching on the US capitol last weekend in larger numbers than ever in the country’s history. The increasing fervour and scale of these demonstrations have provoked concerns in the Democratic Party that US President Joe Biden will lose not only the Arab American vote in such key states as Michigan, but that liberal-left activists will not support his re-election campaign.

    Chie Fueki (Japan), Nikko, 2018

    Over the course of the past two years, from the start of the Ukraine War until now, there has been a rapid decline in the West’s credibility. This drop in legitimacy did not begin with the Ukraine War or genocide in Palestine, though both events have certainly accelerated the decline in the authority of the NATO countries. Ansar Allah spokesperson Mohammed al-Bukhaiti posted a video of a pro-Palestine march in New York that is perhaps indicative of the mood in most of the world and wrote: ‘We are not hostile to the American people, but rather to the American foreign policy that has caused the death of tens of millions of people, threatens the security and safety of the world, and also exposes the lives of Americans to danger. Let us struggle together to establish justice among people’.

    Since the start of the Third Great Depression in 2007, the Global North has slowly lost its control over the world economy, technology and science, and raw materials. Billionaires in the Global North deepened their ‘tax strike’, siphoning a large share of social wealth into tax havens and unproductive financial investments. This left the Global North with few instruments to maintain economic power, including the ability it once held to make investments in the Global South. Later this month, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research will release a new dossier, The Churning of the Global Order, and a study, Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage, which detail the maladies of the present and the new mood created by the rise of the Global South. The ICJ complaint filed by South Africa and backed by several Global South states is an indication of this mood.

    Athier Mousawi (Iraq-Britain), A Point to A Potential Somewhere, 2014.

    It is clear to most people in the world that the Global North has failed to address planetary crises, whether the climate crisis or the consequences of the Third Great Depression. It has tried to substitute reality with euphemisms such as ‘democracy promotion’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘humanitarian pause’, and, from UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the ridiculous formulation of a ‘sustainable ceasefire’. Empty words are no substitute for real actions. To speak of a ‘sustainable ceasefire’ while arming Israel or to speak of ‘democracy promotion’ while backing anti-democratic governments now defines the hypocrisy of the Global North’s political class.

    On 12 January, the German government released a statement saying that it ‘firmly and explicitly rejects the accusation of genocide that has now been made against Israel’. In line with the new mood in the Global South, the government of Namibia reminded the Germans that they had ‘committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904–1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions’. This is known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide. Germany, said the government of Namibia, ‘is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil’. Therefore, Namibia ‘expresses deep concern with the shocking decision’ of the German government to reject the indictment of Israel.

    Israel, meanwhile, says that it will continue this genocide for ‘as long as it takes’, though its already tenuous justifications continue to deteriorate with increasing rapidity. Behind this violence is the waning legitimacy of the NATO project, whose sanctimonies sound like nails being dragged across a bloodied chalkboard.

    PS: Please do not miss the panel discussion based on our recent dossier, Culture as a Weapon of Struggle: The Medu Art Ensemble and Southern African Liberation, which widens the focus from South Africa to Palestine, featuring Wally Serote (poet laureate of South Africa and the founding chairperson of the Medu Art Ensemble), Judy Seidman (cultural worker and member of the Medu Art Ensemble), Clarissa Bitar (award-winning Palestinian oud musician and composer), and Niki Franco (cultural worker). The event will be hosted by our very own Tings Chak as well as Hannah Priscilla Craig of Artists Against Apartheid and livestreamed on 21 January via The People’s Forum YouTube page at 20:00 (Johannesburg), 18:00 (London), 15:00 (São Paulo), and 13:00 (New York). Register here.

    The post The Global South Takes Israel to Court first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Charge of Genocide

    South Africa’s willingness to file a case with the International Court of Justice is a sign that the old tactics used to police discourse about genocide have lost much of their power.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.