Category: Weaponry

  • Protesters block the entrance to the BAE factory in Kent, UK. (Photo credit: Reuters)

    On May 8, 2024, as Israel escalated its brutal assault on Rafah, President Biden announced that he had “paused” a delivery of 1,700 500-pound and 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, and threatened to withhold more shipments if Israel went ahead with its full-scale invasion of Rafah.

    The move elicited an outcry from Israeli officials (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted “Hamas loves Biden”), as well as Republicans, staunch anti-Palestinian Democrats and pro-Israel donors. Republicans immediately prepared a bill entitled the Israel Security Assistance Support Act to prohibit the administration from withholding military aid to Israel.

    Many people have been asking the U.S. to halt weapons to Israel for seven months, and, of course, Biden’s move comes too late for 35,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza, mainly by American weapons.

    Lest one think the administration is truly changing its position, two days after announcing the pause, the State Department released a convoluted report saying that, although it is reasonable to “assess” that U.S. weapons have been used by Israeli forces in Gaza in ways that are “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, and although Israel has indeed delayed or had a negative effect on the delivery of aid to Gaza (which is illegal under U.S. law), Israel’s assurances regarding humanitarian aid and compliance with international humanitarian law are “credible and reliable.”

    By this absurd conclusion, the Biden administration has given itself a green light to keep sending weapons and Israel a flashing one to keep committing war crimes with them.

    In any event, as Colonel Joe Bicino, a retired U.S. artillery officer, told the BBC, Israel can “level” Rafah with the weapons it already has. The paused shipment is “somewhat inconsequential,” Bicino said, “a little bit of a political play for people in the United States who are… concerned about this.” A U.S. official confirmed to the Washington Post that Israel has enough weapons already supplied by the U.S. and other allies to go ahead with the Rafah operation if it chooses to ignore U.S. qualms.

    The paused shipment really has to be seen in the context of the arsenal with which the U.S. has equipped its Middle Eastern proxy over many decades.

    A Deluge of American Bombs

    During the Second World War, the United States proudly called itself the “Arsenal of Democracy,” as its munitions factories and shipyards produced an endless supply of weapons to fight the genocidal government of Germany. Today, the United States is instead, shamefully, the Arsenal of Genocide, providing 70% of the imported weapons Israel is using to obliterate Gaza and massacre its people.

    As Israel assaults Rafah, home to 1.4 million displaced people, including at least 600,000 children, most of the warplanes dropping bombs on them are F-16s, originally designed and manufactured by General Dynamics, but now produced by Lockheed Martin in Greenville, South Carolina. Israel’s 224 F-16s have long been its weapon of choice for bombing militants and civilians in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

    Israel also has 86 Boeing F-15s, which can drop heavier bombs, and 39 of the latest, most wastefully expensive fighter-bombers ever, Lockheed Martin’s nuclear-capable F-35s, with another 36 on order. The F-35 is built in Fort Worth, Texas, but components are manufactured all over the U.S. and in allied countries, including Israel. Israel was the first country to attack other countries with F-35s, in violation of U.S. arms export control laws, reportedly using them to bomb Syria, Egypt and Sudan.

    As these fleets of U.S.-made warplanes began bombing Gaza in October 2023, their fifth major assault since 2008, the U.S. began rushing in new weapons. By December 1, 2023, it had delivered 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells.

    The U.S. supplies Israel with all sizes and types of bombs, including 285-pound GBU-39 small diameter glide bombs, 500-pound Mk 82s, 2,000-pound Mk 84s and BLU-109 “bunker busters,” and even massive 5,000-pound GBU-28 bunker-busters, which Israel reportedly used in Gaza in 2009.

    General Dynamics is the largest U.S. bomb manufacturer, making all these models of bombs. Most of them can be used as “precision” guided bombs by attaching Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s Paveway laser guidance system or Boeing’s JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munitions) GPS-based targeting system.

    Little more than half of the bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza have been “precision” ones, because, as targeting officers explained to +972 magazine, their Lavender AI system generates thousands of targets who are just suspected rank-and-file militants, not senior commanders. Israel does not consider it worth “wasting” expensive precision munitions to kill these people, so it uses only “dumb” bombs to kill them in their homes—obliterating their families and neighbors in the process.

    In order to threaten and bomb its more distant neighbors, such as Iran, Israel depends on its seven Lockheed Martin KC-130H and seven Boeing 707 in-air refueling tankers, with four new, state-of-the-art Boeing KC46A tankers to be delivered in late 2025 for over $220 million each.

    Ground force weapons

    Another weapon of choice for killing Palestinians are Israel’s 48 Boeing Apache AH64 attack helicopters, armed with Lockheed Martin’s infamous Hellfire missiles, General Dynamics’ Hydra 70 rockets and Northrop Grumman’s 30 mm machine guns. Israel also used its Apaches to kill and incinerate a still unknown number of Israelis on October 7, 2023—a tragic day that Israel and the U.S. continue to exploit as a false pretext for their own violations of international humanitarian law and of the Genocide Convention.

    Israel’s main artillery weapons are its 600 Paladin M109A5 155 mm self-propelled howitzers, which are manufactured by BAE Systems in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. To the layman, a self-propelled howitzer looks like a tank, but it has a bigger, 155 mm gun to fire at longer range.

    Israel assembles its 155 mm artillery shells from U.S.-made components. One of the first two U.S. arms shipments that the administration notified Congress about after October 7 was to resupply Israel with artillery shell components valued at $147.5 million.

    Israel also has 48 M270 multiple rocket launchers. They are a tracked version of the HIMARS rocket launchers the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, and they fire the same rockets, made by Lockheed Martin. U.S. Marines used the same rockets in coordination with U.S. airstrikes to devastate Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, in 2017. M270 launchers are no longer in production, but BEA Systems still has the facilities to produce them.

    Israel makes its own Merkava tanks, which fire U.S.-made tank shells, and the State Department announced on December 9, 2023, that it had notified Congress of an “emergency” shipment of 14,000 120 mm tank shells worth $106 million to Israel.

    U.S. shipments of artillery and tank shells, and dozens of smaller shipments that it did not report to Congress (because each shipment was carefully calibrated to fall below the statutory reporting limit of $100 million), were paid for out of the $3.8 billion in military aid that the United States gives Israel each year.

    In April, Congress passed a new war-funding bill that includes about $14 billion for additional weapons. Israel could afford to pay for these weapons itself, but then it could shop around for them, which might erode the U.S. monopoly on supplying so much of its war machine. That lucrative monopoly for U.S. merchants of death is clearly more important to Members of Congress than fully funding Head Start or other domestic anti-poverty programs, which they routinely underfund to pay for weapons and wars.

    Israel has 500 FMC-built M113 armored personnel carriers and over 2,000 Humvees, manufactured by AM General in Mishawaka, Indiana. Its ground forces are armed with several different types of U.S. grenade launchers, Browning machine-guns, AR-15 assault rifles, and SR-25 and M24 SWS sniper rifles, all made in the USA, as is the ammunition for them.

    For many years, Israel’s three Sa’ar 5 corvettes were its largest warships, about the size of frigates. They were built in the 1990s by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, but Israel has recently taken delivery of four larger, more heavily-armed, German-built Sa’ar 6 corvettes, with 76 mm main guns and new surface-to-surface missiles.

    Gaza Encampments Take On the Merchants of Death

    The United States has a long and horrific record of providing weapons to repressive regimes that use them to kill their own people or attack their neighbors. Martin Luther King called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and that has not changed since he said it in 1967, a year to the day before his assassination.

    Many of the huge U.S. factories that produce all these weapons are the largest employers in their regions or even their states. As President Eisenhower warned the public in his farewell address in 1960, “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” has led to “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

    So, in addition to demanding a ceasefire, an end to U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel, and a restoration of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the students occupying college campuses across our country are right to call on their institutions to divest from these merchants of death, as well as from Israeli companies.

    The corporate media has adopted the line that divestment would be too complicated and costly for the universities to do. But when students set up an encampment at Trinity College in Dublin, in Ireland, and called on it to divest from Israeli companies, the college quickly agreed to their demands. Problem solved, without police violence or trying to muzzle free speech. Students have also won commitments to consider divestment from U.S. institutions, including Brown, Northwestern, Evergreen State, Rutgers and the Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

    While decades of even deadlier U.S. war-making in the greater Middle East failed to provoke a sustained mass protest movement, the genocide in Gaza has opened the eyes of many thousands of young people to the need to rise up against the U.S. war machine.

    The gradual expulsion and emigration of Palestinians from their homeland has created a huge diaspora of young Palestinians who have played a leading role in organizing solidarity campaigns on college campuses through groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Their close links with extended families in Palestine have given them a visceral grasp of the U.S. role in this genocide and an authentic voice that is persuasive and inspiring to other young Americans.

    Now it is up to Americans of all ages to follow our young leaders and demand not just an end to the genocide in Palestine, but also a path out of our country’s military madness and the clutches of its deeply entrenched MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media- academia-think-tank) complex, which has inflicted so much death, pain and desolation on so many of our neighbors for so long, from Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan to Vietnam and Latin America.

    The post The Arsenal of Genocide: the U.S. Weapons That Are Destroying Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • It truly is pushing the envelope of lunacy to assume that this latest revelation was revelatory.  US weapons, the wonks in Washington find, are being used by the Israeli Defense Forces to kill their opponents, many of them Palestinians, and most of them civilians.  These are detailed in a report ordered by the White House pursuant to National Security Memorandum 20, also known as “National Security Memorandum on Safeguards and Accountability With Respect to Transferred Defense Articles and Defense Services”.

    NSM-20 requires the Secretary of State to obtain credible and reliable assurances within 45 days from any country engaged in armed conflict in which US defence articles are used.  The NSM-20 report, in addition to Israel, considers Colombia, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Ukraine.  But Israel, by far, is the most significant, given that it is the most prominent recipient of US weapons.  As John Ramming Chappell notes for Just Security, these include reported transfers of “bombs, artillery shells, precision guidance kits (which are attached to bombs for targeting purposes), tank ammunition, guided missiles, firearms, drones, various types of ammunition, and other weapons”.

    The Israeli entry starts off with various qualifying conditions about the horror of the Gaza conflict.  Hamas is blamed for embedding “itself deliberately within and underneath the civilian population to use civilians as human shields.”  The scene is set.

    In a pitiful dodge, the report claims it is “difficult to determine facts on the ground in an active war zone”, a state of mind that is bound to lend itself to justifications.  “The nature of the conflict in Gaza and the compressed review period in this initial report amplify those challenges.”

    The report acknowledges various “reported incidents to raise serious concerns” that US weaponry is being used in a manner not in conformity with international law.  While it was “difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents,” it was “reasonable to assess that defense articles covered under NSM-20 have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with IHL [International Humanitarian Law] obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm”.

    The discussion is filled with softening qualifiers.  Israel had “the knowledge, experience, and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations” but “results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions as to whether the IDF is using them effectively in all cases.”

    Despite concerns about IHL violations, the report accepts that in Israel, there are “a number of ongoing, active criminal investigations pending and there are hundreds of cases under administrative review.”  Surely this would be a troubling, rather than assuring fact.

    The report goes on to reveal the view of the US Intelligence Community (IC) that, while Israel had “inflicted harm on civilians in military and security operations, potentially using US-provided equipment”, it had “no direct indication of Israel intentionally targeting civilians.”  It could, however, “do more to avoid civilian harm.”  How high a body count does one need before the intention to kill is evinced?

    Mindful of the image of an ally, the report is seemingly less concerned by the staggering civilian death toll than “the impact of Israel’s military operations on humanitarian actors.”  Despite the intervention of the US government and engagement between humanitarian organisations with Israeli officials regarding deconfliction and coordination procedures, “the IDF has struck humanitarian workers and facilities.”

    Inexplicably, Israel gets a clean bill of health in terms of section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars military aid to a state that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United states humanitarian assistance.”  This, despite the acceptance that Israeli actions had “delayed or had a negative impact in the delivery of aid to Gaza”. Current levels of aid reaching Palestinian civilians “while improved” remained “insufficient”.

    The assessment of Israel’s use of US weapons, all in all, is paltry.  It glaringly omits making any specific adverse findings regarding breaches of international law.  This proved to be a satisfactory state of affairs for Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who agreed with the “assessment that Israel has not violated International Humanitarian Law and that military assistance to support Israel’s security remains in the US interest and should continue.”

    Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen begged to differ, noting the report’s failure “to do the hard work of making an assessment and ducks the ultimate questions that the report was designed to determine.”

    In a fuller statement, Van Hollen identifies the “continuation of a disturbing pattern where the expertise and analyses of those working most closely on these issues at the State Department and at USAID have been swept aside to facilitate a predetermined policy outcome based on political convenience.”

    While the Biden administration recently paused the transfer of a weapons shipment to Israel comprising 1,800 2000-pound bombs, and 1,700 500-pound bombs, Congressional sentiment is seemingly in favour of the status quo.  Despite the grumbling of some lawmakers, the general view is that the business of supplying the IDF is a sound one.  The killing of Palestinian civilians can, in all its ghoulishness and cruelty, continue.

    The post Dodging the Issue: The Biden Administration Report on Israel’s Use of US Weapons first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • On April 30, when Columbia University student protesters took over Hamilton Hall, they renamed it “Hind’s Hall,” dropping a large banner out the windows above the building’s entrance. This was a hall famously occupied by students in the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War and against Jim Crow racism in the United States. The students are risking suspension and expulsion, and a very real blacklist has already been generated against them, with Congress joining in to define criticism of genocide as a form of antisemitism that state universities and state-linked employers will not be allowed to tolerate.

    I believe their love for Hind Rajab guides the movement so desperately needed to resist militarism. Hind was six years old when Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons to kill her.

    If our civilization survives a looming ecological collapse that is helping to drive catastrophic nuclear brinkmanship, I hope future generations of students will study the “Hind’s Hall” occupation in the way that students of the civil rights movement have studied the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the story of Emmett Till. Hind’s story is tragically emblematic. Her cruel murder has befallen many thousands of children throughout the decades of Israel’s fight to maintain apartheid. Just in our young century, from September 2000 to September 2023, Israel’s B’tselem organization reports that 2,309 Palestinian minors were killed by Israelis and some 145 Israeli minors were killed by Palestinians, with these numbers excluding Palestinian children dead from deliberate immiseration via blockade or traumatized as hostages in prisons. We hear reports that thirty-eight Israeli children and some 14,000 Palestinian children have been murdered since October 7, deaths which can all be laid on the doorstep of the ethnostate project so lethally determined to keep one ethnicity in undemocratic governance.

    No six-year-old poses any threat to anyone. Like the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children starved to death during the U.S. imposition of economic sanctions against Iraq, none of these children could be held accountable for the actions of their government or military.

    Hind Rajab committed no crime, but she was made to watch her family die and wait for death surrounded by their corpses. When the ambulance crew asked safe passage to come rescue her, she was used as bait to kill them as well. Her story must be remembered and told over and over.

    As Jeffrey St. Clair writes, Hind was a little girl who liked to dress up as a princess. She lived in the neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa, an area south of Gaza City.

    “Hind Rajab was in her own city when the invaders in tanks came,” St. Clair notes. “What was left of it . . . Hind’s own kindergarten, from which she’d recently graduated, had been blown up, as had so many other schools, places of learning, places of shelter and places of safety in Gaza City.”

    On January 29, when the Israelis ordered people to evacuate, her mother, Wissam Hamada, and an older sibling set off on foot. Hind joined her uncle, aunt, and three cousins who traveled in a black Kia automobile.

    The uncle placed a call to a relative in Germany which initiated the family’s contact with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). After the initial connection with the PRCS switchboard, the car was targeted and hit, killing Hind’s uncle, her aunt, and two of her cousins.

    Hind and her fifteen-year-old cousin, Layan, were the only survivors.

    Switchboard operators handling the phone contact with Layan had immediately notified ambulance workers that the little girls needed to be rescued.

    But it would have been suicidal for a rescue crew to enter the area without first working out coordinates with the Israeli military.

    Similar to the World Central Kitchen workers killed on Monday, April 1, they waited hours for the coordinated rescue plan.

    On the audio tape shared by the PRCS workers, Layan’s petrified voice can be heard. The tank is coming closer. She is so scared. A blast is heard and Layan no longer speaks. PRCS workers call back and Hind answers.

    She pleads, “Please come and get me. I’m so scared.”

    St. Clair writes, “The [PRCS] dispatched an ambulance crewed by two paramedics: Ahmed al-Madhoon and Youssef Zeino. As Ahmed and Youssef approached the Tel al-Hawa area, they reported to the Red Crescent dispatchers that the IDF was targeting them, and that snipers had pointed lasers at the ambulance. Then there was the sound of gunfire and an explosion. The line went silent.”

    The tank-fired M830A1 missile remnant found nearby had been manufactured in the United States by a subsidiary of the Day and Zimmermann Corporation. Day and Zimmermann prides itself on having once received the U.S. National “Family Business of the Year” award—an Internet search for the award chiefly produces references to this company. The company states that it believes in civic and community service, with core values of safety and integrity; emphasizing their success as a team that hits its targets. But since last October, their business has been killing families like Hind’s.

    Although Israel predictably insists that Layan and Hind, and the additional slain paramedics, were all lying with their final breaths and that no IDF tanks were present to attack them, Al Jazeera’s analysis of satellite images taken at midday on January 29 corroborates the victims’ accounts and puts at least three Israeli tanks just 270 meters (886 feet) from the family’s car, with their guns pointed at it.

    When rescuers were finally allowed to approach the remains of Hind and her family on February 10, the car was riddled with bullet holes likely coming from more than one direction.

    Hind’s mother couldn’t go to the site until February 12.

    On May 5, Israel raided the offices of Al Jazeera at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem and moved to shut down the television network’s operations in Israel.

    To remember Hind’s story is an act of resistance. Commemorating her short life builds resolve to confront profiteers who benefit from developing, manufacturing, storing, and selling the weapons that prolong wars—robbing children of their precious right to live.

    Universities should, in theory, be places to learn things of importance, and we can learn from the students of Hind Hall to throw comfort and ambition out the window while keeping hold of love, as the students clung to that banner and to the name of Hind Rajab. We can learn to keep hold of our humanity. We learn by doing, as these students are learning to do, drawing wisdom from people like Phil Berrigan who famously said, “Don’t get tired!”

    The list of Gaza solidarity encampments grows each day. Conscious of increasing famine in Gaza, students at Princeton University launched a water-only fast on May 4 as they continue to call for their University to divest from corporations selling weapons to Israel. The United Nations warns of a potential collapse of aid delivery to Palestinians with Israel’s May 7 closure of the two main crossings into Gaza. These crossings are critical entry points for food, medicine, and other supplies for Gaza’s 2.3 million people. The disruptions come at a time when officials say northern Gaza is experiencing a “full-blown famine.

    With thousands of innocent lives in the balance, promoters of peace should take advantage of this crucial opportunity to follow the young people, learning alongside the students whose hunger for humanity reveals stunning courage.

     Hind Rajab (Image provided, family photo)

    Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance crew (Photo Credit: PCRS)

    This article first appeared in The Progressive Magazine

    The post Unfurling Love from the Window first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • In a letter 18 April to President Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace cited existing federal law that gives the President “…no discretion whatsoever to allow any military assistance of any form to be delivered to Israel,” based on that country’s “serial violations of the Symington-Glenn Amendments, codified at 22 U.S.C. § 2799aa.”

    The letter cites a lengthy list of credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, goes into effect, including:

    • termination of assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act, except for humanitarian assistance or food or other agricultural commodities;
    • termination of defense sales and licensing of Munitions List exports;
    • termination of foreign military financing;
    • denial of U.S. government credit, credit guarantees, or other financial assistance (except for medical and humanitarian assistance and agricultural exports from the United States);
    • U.S. government opposition to any loan or financial or technical assistance from international financial institutions (IFIs);
    • prohibition of any loan or credit from U.S. banks to the foreign government (except for the purchase of food or other agricultural commodities); and
    • prohibition under the Export Administration Act of exports to that state of specific goods and technology licensed by the Commerce Department (except for food and other agricultural commodities).

    The letter states, “The President may not waive the cutoff of the above aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the President to waive some or all of these sanctions.”

    VFP National Director, Mike Ferner, said, “Israel’s possession of The Bomb and the U.S.’ refusal to take appropriate action is yet another example of how the Madmen Arsonists – the Raytheons, Boeings, General Dynamics – actually govern our country and determine policy. The law is quite simple – Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does.  Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘will you obey the law or the Madmen?’”

    Ferner added, “This election year our members will ask their Congressional representatives, ‘Will you hold hearings to enforce existing law, or let the Madmen Arsonists continue to run our country?’”

    Highlights of the letter:

    • Senator John Glenn was prompted to seek a change in the law because of a reported theft of 100 kg of highly enriched uranium from an NRC vendor in 1968, later traced to the Dimona reactor complex in Israel. (pg. 3)
    • Repeated CIA assessments and remarks of Colin Powell in 2016 that the U.S. knew Israel had at least 200 warheads at that time. (pgs. 4-9)
    • Israel prosecuted and jailed Mordecai Vanunu for his courageous whistleblowing disclosure in the 1980’s that Israel has The Bomb. (pg. 7)
    • Benjamin Netanyahu was identified by the FBI as being directly involved in an Israeli smuggling operation in the 1980’s that successfully stole 800 krytrons, a prized device used for triggers in nuclear weapons. (pg. 7)
    • The Symington-Glenn amendment has been implemented by previous administrations. (pg. 4)
    • What the President must do (pg. 10)
    • Contrary to other instances where the Biden administration is allowed to ignore aid limitations, this one may be litigable in court. (pg. 10)

    Veterans For Peace members across the U.S. are telling their members of Congress to vote NO on any more weapons for Israel and hold hearings to hold the Biden administration accountable  They have participated in numerous protests and acts of civil disobedience to highlight Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine.

    The post Veterans to Biden: US Law Says No Weapons to Nations with A-Bombs if They’ve Not Signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That Means Israel first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, April 26, 2024. Photo: Xinhua

    A foreboding article was published on April 24. It was pointed out that China had provided a berth to a Russian ship Angara that is purportedly “tied to North Korea-Russia arms transfers.”

    Reuters cited Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) – that boasts of itself to be “the world’s oldest and the UK’s leading defence and security think tank” – which claims Angara, since August 2023, has transported “thousands of containers believed to contain North Korean munitions,” [italics added] to Russian ports.

    Container ships transport containers, and along the way they dock in certain harbors. Until satellite photos have X-ray capability any speculation about what is inside a container will be just that: speculation. Discerning readers will readily pick up on this.

    Despite China repeatedly coming out in favor of peace, Reuters, nonetheless, plays up US concerns over perceived support by Beijing for “Moscow’s war” (what Moscow calls a “special military operation”) in Ukraine.

    And right on cue, US secretary-of-state Antony Blinken shows up in Beijing echoing a list of US concerns vis-à-vis China.

    Blinken had public words for China: “In my meetings with NATO Allies earlier this month and with our G7 partners just last week, I heard that same message: fueling Russia’s defense industrial base not only threatens Ukrainian security; it threatens European security. Beijing cannot achieve better relations with Europe while supporting the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War. As we’ve told China for some time, ensuring transatlantic security is a core US interest. In our discussions today, I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will.”

    It would seem clear that the Taiwan Straits is a core China interest, no? Or is it only US core interests that matter?

    Blinken: “I also expressed our concern about the PRC’s unfair trade practices and the potential consequences of industrial overcapacity to global and US markets, especially in a number of key industries that will drive the 21st century economy, like solar panels, electric vehicles, and the batteries that power them. China alone is producing more than 100 percent of global demand for these products, flooding markets, undermining competition, putting at risk livelihoods and businesses around the world.”

    It sounds like sour grapes from the US that China’s R&D and manufacturing is out-competing the US. Take, for example, that the US sanctions Huawei while China allows Apple to sell its products unhindered in China. China has hit back at the rhetoric of “overcapacity.”

    Blinken complained of “PRC’s dangerous actions in the South China Sea, including against routine Philippine maintenance operations and maritime operations near the Second Thomas Shoal. Freedom of navigation and commerce in these waterways is not only critical to the Philippines, but to the US and to every other nation in the Indo-Pacific and indeed around the world.”

    Mentioning freedom of navigation implies that China is preventing such. Why is freedom of navigation in the South China Sea critical to the US? Second Thomas Shoal is a colonial designation otherwise known as Renai Jiao in China. The “routine Philippine maintenance operations and maritime operations” that Blinken speaks of are for a navy landing craft that was intentionally grounded by the Philippines in 1999. Since then, the Philippines has been intermittently resupplying its soldiers stationed there.

    Blinken: “I reaffirmed the US’s ‘one China’ policy and stressed the critical importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

    How does the US stationing US soldiers on the Chinese territory of Taiwan without approval from Beijing reaffirm the US’s commitment to a one-China policy? The Shanghai Communiqué of 1972 states “the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position.”

    Blinken: “I also raised concerns about the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratic institutions as well as transnational repression, ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, and a number of individual human rights cases.”

    Evidence of human rights abuses in Xinjiang? This is a definitive downplay from the previous allegations of a genocide against Uyghurs. It would be embarrassing to continue to accuse China of a genocide in Xinjiang due to a paucity of bodies which is a sine qua non for such a serious allegation as a genocide; meanwhile the US-armed Israel is blowing up hospitals and schools with ten-of-thousands of confirmed Palestinian civilian bodies. Even if there are human rights abuses in Xinjiang (which should be deplored were there condemnatory evidence), the US would still be morally assailable for its selective outrage.

    Blinken: “I encouraged China to use its influence to discourage Iran and its proxies from expanding the conflict in the Middle East, and to press Pyongyang to end its dangerous behavior and engage in dialogue.”

    Is the US militarily backing a genocide of Palestinians a “conflict.” Are US military maneuvers in the waters near North Korea “safe behavior”?

    Blinken responded to a question: “But now it is absolutely critical that the support that [China’s] providing – not in terms of weapons but components for the defense industrial base – again, things like machine tools, microelectronics, where it is overwhelmingly the number-one supplier to Russia. That’s having a material effect in Ukraine and against Ukraine, but it’s also having a material effect in creating a growing [sic] that Russia poses to countries in Europe and something that has captured their attention in a very intense way.”

    Are the ATACMS, Javelins, HIMARS, Leopard tanks, drones, artillery, Patriot missile defense, etc supposed to be absolutely uncritical and have no material effect on the fighting in Ukraine? And who is posing a threat to who? European countries are funding and arming Ukraine and sanctioning Russia not vice versa? It sounds perversely Orwellian.

    *****

    From Biden to Harris to Yellen to Raimondo to Sullivan to Blinken, US officials again and again try to browbeat and put down their Chinese colleagues.

    At the opening meeting on 18 March 2021 of the US-China talks in Anchorage, Alaska, the arrogance of Blinken and the US was put on notice by the rebuke of Chinese foreign affairs official Yang Jiechi: “[T]he US does not have the qualification to say it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.” It doesn’t seem to have sunk in for the American side.

    The Russia-China relationship is solid. China’s economy is growing strongly. Scores of countries are clamoring to join BRICS+ and dedollarization is well underway. Yet, the US continues to try to bully the world’s largest – and still rapidly growing – economy. This strategy appears to affirm the commonly referred to aphorism about the definition of insanity: trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

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  • The US Congress authorized a $95 billion military aid package for continuing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as for war preparations against China. This represents, in effect, a downpayment on World War III. US President Joe Biden, reading from a playbook that could well have been scripted by George Orwell, announced: “it’s a good day for world peace.” And in order to dispel any doubt, he added, “for real.”

    Biden proclaimed: “It’s going to make the world safer.” In fact, the bipartisan authorization, passed on April 23, could nudge the doomsday clock a little closer to midnight.

    Lest there be any confusion about what the head of the US empire means by making the world safer, Biden explains: “it continues America’s leadership in the world.”

    US leadership is the crux of the matter. That is, at a time of increasingly challenged US hegemony, the official US strategy is still global “full spectrum dominance.” No longer does the empire justify itself as leading the crusade against communism, or even against what it considered “terrorism,” or its “war on drugs.” Today, the official national security doctrine is naked “great power competition.”

    Continuing the Orwellian theme, the US president backed up his claim about US world leadership, saying, “everyone knows it.”  This was not reflected in the UN General Assembly vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where the US side was trounced by an overwhelming 153 in favor. Besides the US and Israel, only eight others voted against and a mere 23 abstained.  On any number of issues, the majority of the world’s population opposes the US.

    Biden’s boast that “Ukraine has regained over half the territory that Russia took from them” is not particularly reflected by the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, which concluded that the current deadlock “plays to Russia’s strategic military advantages and is increasingly shifting the momentum in Moscow’s favor.”

    Hailing the “brave Ukrainians,” Biden overlooks that 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country.

    Diminishing prospects for a decisive US/NATO victory in Ukraine have precipitated a particularly dangerous response from Washington, which rejects a negotiated settlement. The current administration’s plan is not to pull for peace but to push for more war. This is spun as a strategy “to stop Putin from drawing the United States into a war.” Yet it is the US, which is doing its part feeding the conflict by giving yet more armaments to the military effort.

    The expansion of NATO, contrary to earlier US assurances not to advance east, is hailed in Biden’s speech. Yet, this march of NATO toward the Russian border is the very cause that Russian President Putin gave for his country’s incursion into Ukraine. This abundantly articulated Russian “redline” should be well known in Washington.

    Yet, Biden in his speech goes on to ominously raise NATO’s Article Five for mutual defense which declares “an attack on one is an attack on all.” This is plainly a taunt for a war with another nuclear power. Veterans for Peace antiwar activist and author Dee Knight calls the military aid package “an open-ended commitment to the NATO war against Russia.”

    In yet another spin on reality, Biden condemns “a brutal campaign” that has “killed tens of thousands” and “bombed hospitals.” If you think he is referring to Israel’s US-enabled war on Gaza, guess again.

    Biden is not about to call a halt on the genocide of the Palestinians, though he could. In 1982, for instance, Israel bombed civilians. Then US President Ronald Reagan called his counterpart in Tel Aviv and told him to stop what he explicitly called a “holocaust.”

    Twenty minutes later Israel ordered cessation of its bombardment. In contrast, The New York Times reports that a member of Israel’s war cabinet predicts the current war may last “a year, a decade or a generation.”

    “My commitment to Israel, I want to make clear again, is ironclad,” says the US politician who is by far the “biggest recipient in history of donations from pro-Israeli groups.”

    The aid package schizophrenically commits tax-payer dollars to both lethal weapons and humanitarian aid for “the innocent people of Gaza, who are suffering badly.” No recognition is given to what is obvious – that an immediate and permanent ceasefire is the first step for relieving the suffering.

    War may not be good for most of humanity, but it is bonanza for US military contractors. As Biden brags, the weapons are “made by American companies here in America…in other words, we’re helping Ukraine while at the same time investing in our own industrial base.” That is, our own merchants of death are making a killing.

    Biden has over-performed in his promise to make sure the weapons shipments “start right away.” Without legal pre-authorization, the US has supplied both Ukraine and Israel with proscribed weaponry.

    Most of the funds, according to economist Jack Rasmus, are for weapons that have already been delivered or from military stocks that are in the process of being shipped. “Only $13.8 billion of the $61 billion is for weapons Ukraine doesn’t already have!” In a tweet embarrassing to the US-backed war effort and subsequently deleted, CBS News suggested only about 30% of US military aid for Ukraine ever reaches the front lines, in part due to pervasive corruption.

    “Everything we do,” the US president explains is, “setting the conditions for an enduring peace.” The question his proclamation raises is what does this vision of a militarily imposed pax Americana look like?

    Is it Haiti, where under Yankee benevolence they do not even have a government and even the disgraced appointed prime minister just resigned? Or is it Libya, where a US-led colonial coalition overthrew a major force for African unity and replaced it with military factions allowing slaves to be openly bartered on the streets? Or is it Afghanistan, where the US engineered the overthrow of a socialist government that stood for women’s emancipation, occupied the land for two decades, and then withdrew leaving a humanitarian disaster?

    In short, the Biden’s promise of “enduring peace” looks a lot like chaos and “endless war.” “History will remember this moment,” he predicts. And well it may.

    The post US Congress Makes Downpayment on World War III first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Tourists visiting Spanish cities like Córdoba, Toledo and Sevilla have the option of whiling away an hour or so at a ‘Museum of the Inquisition’, sometimes known as a ‘Gallery of Torture’. For around three euros, visitors can view an exotic range of devices used to impale, immolate, strangle and dismember human beings in the name of God.

    It’s tempting to reassure ourselves that these are relics of a far-distant past, horrors that could never happen now. But did the Dark Ages ever really end? Noam Chomsky commented:

    ‘Part of the tragedy of the Palestinians is that they have essentially no international support. For a good reason – they don’t have wealth, they don’t have power. So they don’t have rights. It’s the way the world works – your rights correspond to your power and your wealth.’

    It is indeed the way the world works. It is also the way the medieval world worked. UK Foreign Secretary, Lord David Cameron (Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton), recently passed judgment on the war in Ukraine at a Washington press conference:

    ‘It is extremely good value for money… Almost half of Russia’s pre-war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life. This is an investment in the United States’ security.’

    According even to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, 31,000 Ukrainians have been killed in the conflict. US officials estimate 70,000 dead, while Russia claims to have killed 444,000. Are these deaths ‘good value for money’?

    And what about the 50,000 Russians estimated by the BBC to have died? Do they matter? After all, European civilisation is supposed to be founded on Christ’s teaching that we should love, not just our ‘neighbour’ but our ‘enemy’. On Britain’s Channel 5, BBC stalwart Jeremy Vine offered a different view to Bill, a caller from Manchester:

    ‘Bill, Bill, the brutal reality is, if you put on a uniform for Putin and you go and fight his war, you probably deserve to die, don’t you?’

    Elsewhere, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, commented after Iran retaliated to Israel’s bombing of an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing 16 people, including two senior Iranian generals:

    ‘The attacks on Israel by Iran this weekend were wrong. They risked civilian lives and they escalated the already dangerous tensions in the region. I pray for the peace and security of Israel’s people at this time and I appeal to all parties both for restraint and to act for peace and mutual security.’ (Our emphasis)

    If Christ had done political commentary, he would have declared both the Iranian and Israeli attacks wrong, and he would have prayed ‘for the peace and security’ of the peoples of Israel and Iran, and also Palestine.

    Cameron responded on the same issue:

    ‘[It was] a reckless and dangerous thing for Iran to have done, and I think the whole world can see. All these countries that have somehow wondered, well, you know, what is the true nature of Iran? It’s there in black and white.”

    He was immediately asked: ‘What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates?’

    Cameron’s tragicomic response:

    ‘Well, we would take, you know, we would take very strong action.’

    Naturally, ‘we’ would do the same or worse, but it’s a grim sign of Iran’s ‘true nature’ when ‘they’ do it. The ‘Evil’ have no right even to defend themselves when attacked by the ‘Good’. Standard medieval thinking.

    ‘Murderous’ And ‘Brutal’ – Tilting The Language

    In idle moments, we sometimes fantasise about opening our own Media Lens Chamber of Propaganda Horrors, a Hall of Media Infamy. It would be a cavernous space packed with examples of devices used to strangle and dismember Truth.

    A special section would be reserved for the sage effusions of BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, who wrote recently of Israel:

    ‘It responded to the murderous Hamas-led attacks of 7 October… and then spent the next six months battering the Gaza Strip.’

    The Hamas attack was ‘murderous’, then, with Israel administering a mere ‘battering’ with its attack that has caused at least 30 times the loss of life. A ‘battering’ is generally bruising but not necessarily fatal. The term is certainly not synonymous with genocide. Is this biased use of language accidental, or systemic?

    Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) commented on their careful study of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal:

    ‘Looking at all attributions, 77% of the time when the word “brutal” was used to describe an actor in the conflict, it referred to Palestinians and their actions. This was 73% of the time at the Times, 78% at the Post and 87% at the Journal. Only 23% of the time was “brutal” used to describe Israel’s actions…’

    The Intercept reported on a leaked memo which revealed that the New York Times had ‘instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land’. The Intercept added:

    ‘The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” and to steer clear of the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.’

    The memo was written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies. A Times newsroom source, who requested anonymity ‘for fear of reprisal’, said:

    ‘I think it’s the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel.’

    Our Chamber of Propaganda Horrors might feature this barely believable sentence from a BBC report by Lucy Williamson, which reads like something from the film ‘Dr. Strangelove’:

    ‘If you wanted to map the path to a healthy, functioning Palestinian government, you probably wouldn’t start from here.’

    Probably wouldn’t start from where? From the middle of a six-months genocide, with two million civilians starving, with children literally starving to death, with tens of thousands of children murdered, with Gaza in ruins? It is hard to imagine a more ethically or intellectually tone-deaf observation. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen added to the sense of surreality:

    ‘The decision not to veto the Ramadan ceasefire resolution is also an attempt by the Americans to push back at accusations that they have enabled Israel’s actions.’

    Is it an ‘accusation’ that the US has supplied billions of dollars of missiles and bombs without which Israel could not conduct its genocide? Is there any conceivable way the US could ever ‘push back at’ that unarguable fact? The Guardian described how the US has worked hard to avoid Congressional oversight:

    ‘The US is reported to have made more than 100 weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the start of the war in Gaza, but the deliveries escaped congressional oversight because each transaction was under the dollar amount requiring approval.

    ‘The Biden administration… has kept up a quiet but substantial flow of munitions to help replace the tens of thousands of bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny coastal strip, making it one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history.’

    These hidden sales are in addition to the $320m in precision bomb kits sold in November and 14,000 tank shells costing $106m and $147.5m of fuses and other components needed to make 155mm artillery shells in December.

    In response to the latest news of a massive additional supply of arms to Israel, Edward Snowden posted on X:

    ‘ok but you’re definitely gonna hold off on sending like fifteen billion dollars’ worth of weapons to the guys that keep getting caught filling mass graves with kids until an independent international investigation is completed, right?

    ‘…right?’

    Because we no longer live in the Dark Ages, right?

    Waiting For The Hiroshima Bombing Scene

    People are generally not tortured on the rack in Western societies, but are we really any less callous?

    Christopher Nolan’s film ‘Oppenheimer’ has been lauded to the skies. It earned 13 nominations at the Academy Awards, winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. It also won five Golden Globe Awards.

    And yet the film is a moral disgrace. It focuses on the life of physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer, and particularly, of course, on his key role in developing the first atomic weapons. The direct results of his efforts were the dropping of nuclear fireballs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan that killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people.

    These were the first acts of nuclear terrorism, by far the greatest single acts of terrorism the world has ever seen. Although the moral doubts haunting the ‘Manhattan Project’ then and since feature strongly in the film, a portrayal of the hideous impact of Oppenheimer’s invention on civilians is almost completely absent. This single, dignified comment from an elderly Japanese viewer reported by the Guardian says it all:

    ‘“I was waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to appear, but it never did,” said Mimaki, 82.’

    Although the BBC sought out the opinion of cinemagoers in Hiroshima, ‘only meters away’ from where the bomb exploded, the film’s shocking moral failure was not mentioned.

    On reflection, our museum might be better called, The Museum Of Media Madness. Thus, the BBC reported on the refusal of event organisers, The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), to ban Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest. The EBU opined:

    ‘We firmly believe that the Eurovision Song Contest is a platform that should always transcend politics, promote togetherness and bring audiences together across the world.’

    The BBC claims to be obsessed with reporting ‘both sides of the story’, but it conveniently forgot to mention that Russia has been banned from the song contest since 2022 for a reason that did not ‘transcend politics’ – its invasion of Ukraine.

    Martin Österdahl, EBU’s executive supervisor for Eurovision, was asked to explain the contradiction. He responded that the two situations were ‘completely different’. True enough – Israel’s crimes in Gaza are much worse even than Russia’s crimes in Ukraine. Österdahl’s casual brush off:

    ‘We are not the arena to solve a Middle East conflict.’

    Media and political voices seeking to challenge the reigning brutality are not burned alive, but they are buried alive in high security prisons like Julian Assange, beaten up on the street like George Galloway, and forced into exile like Edward Snowden. Dissidents may not be pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables in the stocks, but they are pelted with relentless media attacks intended to discredit them.

    In the Guardian, John Crace greeted the news that Galloway had returned to parliament, with a piece titled:

    ‘The Ego has landed: George Galloway basks in his swearing in as MP’

    Crace wrote:

    ‘Wherever he goes, his giant ego is there before him. Like most narcissists, the only fool for whom he makes allowances – for whom he has a total blindspot – is himself.’

    He added:

    ‘… there is a lot about Galloway to dislike. His self-importance is breathtaking. Most MPs suffer from an excess of self-regard, but George is off the scale. It has never crossed his mind that he is not right about everything.’

    Before Galloway’s victory, a Guardian news piece commented:

    ‘“A total, total disaster”: Galloway and Danczuk line up for Rochdale push – Two former Labour MPs are back to haunt the party in what has been called “the most radioactive byelection in living memory”’

    As we have discussed many times, this is the required view, not just of Galloway, but of all dissidents challenging the status quo – they (and we) are all toxic ‘narcissists’. Thus, the BBC observed of Galloway, a ‘political maverick’:

    ‘To his critics and opponents, he is a dangerous egotist, someone who arouses division.’

    What percentage of Tory and Labour MPs under (and including) Sunak and Starmer are not dangerous egotists? Are the thousands of MPs who, decade after decade, line up to vote for US-UK resource wars of aggression of first resort, for action to exacerbate climate collapse, not dangerous egotists?  Of course they are, but they are not labelled that way. The only egotism perceived as ‘dangerous’ by our state-corporate media system is one that threatens biocidal, genocidal and suicidal state-corporate narcissism.

    We have to travel far from the ‘mainstream’ to read a more balanced view of Galloway. Former British ambassador Craig Murray commented:

    ‘I have known George Galloway my entire adult life, although we largely lost touch in the middle bit while I was off diplomating. I know George too well to mistake him for Jesus Christ, but he has been on the right side against appalling wars which the entire political class has cheer-led. His natural gifts of mellifluence and loquacity are unsurpassed, with an added talent for punchy phrase making.

    ‘… But outwith the public gaze George is humorous, kind and self-aware. He has been deeply involved in politics his entire life, and is a great believer in the democratic process as the ultimate way by which the working classes will ultimately take control of the means of production. He is a very old-fashioned and courteous form of socialist.’

    We strongly disagree with Galloway’s views on fossil fuel production and climate change – in fact, he blocked us on X for robustly but politely challenging him on these issues. Nevertheless, it is clear to us that Murray’s view of Galloway is far more reasonable.

    Neon-Lit Dark Age

    In ‘Brave New World Revisited’, Aldous Huxley wrote:

    ‘The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.’ (Huxley, ‘Brave New World Revisited’, archive.org, 1958, p.109)

    This is certainly true of corporate journalists. Borrowing illiberally from authentically dissident media, a recurring Guardian appeal asks readers to support its heroic defence of Truth. The declared enemy:

    ‘Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see.

    ‘Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and other established science.

    ‘Authoritarian states with no regard for the freedom of the press.

    ‘Bad actors spreading disinformation online to undermine democracy.

    ‘But we have something powerful on our side.

    ‘We’ve got you.

    ‘The Guardian is funded by its readers and the only person who decides what we publish is our editor.’

    They have indeed ‘got you’, many of you, and not in a good way. The real threat to truth in our time, quite obviously, is the fact that profit-maximising, ad-dependent corporate media like the Guardian cannot and will not report the truth of a world dominated by giant corporations. The declared aspiration is a sham, a form of niche marketing exploiting the gullible.

    The truth is that ‘mainstream’ media and politics are now captured in a way that is beyond anything we have previously seen. All around the world, political choices have been carefully fixed and filtered to ensure ordinary people are unable to challenge the endless wars, the determination to prioritise profits over climate action at any cost. The job of the corporate media system is to pretend the choices are real, to ensure the walls of the prison remain invisible.

    The only hope in this neon-lit Dark Age is genuinely independent media – the blogs and websites that are now being filtered, shadow-banned, buried and marginalised like never before.

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  • The skin toasted Australian Minister of Defence, Richard Marles, who resembles, with each day, the product of an overly worked solarium, was adamant.  Not only will Australians be paying a bill up to and above A$368 billion for nuclear powered submarines it does not need; it will also be throwing A$100 billion into the coffers of the military industrial complex over the next decade to combat a needlessly inflated enemy.  Forget diplomacy and funding the cause (and course) of peace – it’s all about the weapons and the Yellow Peril, baby.

    On April 18, Marles and Defence Industry Pat Conroy barraged the press with announcements that the defence budget would be bulked by A$50.3 billion by 2034, with a A$330 billion plan for weapons and equipment known as the Integrated Investment Program.  The measures were intended to satisfy the findings of the Defence Strategic Review.  “This is a significant lift compared to the $270 billion allocated for the 10-year period to 2029-30 as part of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update and 2020 Force Structure Plan,” crowed a statement from the Defence Department.

    Such statements are often weighed down by jargon and buoyed by delusion.  The press were not left disappointed by the insufferable fluff.  Australia will gain “an enhanced lethality surface fleet and conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines”, an army with “littoral manoeuvre” capabilities “with a long-range land and maritime strike capability”, an air force capable of delivering “long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” with “an enhanced maritime, land and air-strike capability” and “a strengthened and integrated space and cyber capability”.  The glaring omission here is the proviso that all such policies are being essentially steered by Washington’s defence interests, with Canberra very  much the obedient servant.

    The defence minister was firmly of the view that all this was taking place with some speed.  “We are acting very quickly in relation to [challenges],” Marles insists.  “I mean, the acquiring of a general-purpose frigate going forward, for example, will be the most rapid acquisition of a platform that size that we’ve seen in decades.”  Anyone who uses the term “rapid” in a sentence on military acquisition is clearly a certified novice.

    The ministers, along with the department interests they represent, are certainly fond of their expensive toys.  They are seeking a fourth squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters as replacements for the F/A-18 Super Hornets.  The EA-18G Growler jets are also being replaced.  (That said, both sets of current fighters will see aging service till 2040.)  Three vessels will be purchased to advance undersea war capabilities, including the undersea drone prototype, the Ghost Shark.

    The latter hopes to equip the Royal Australian Navy “with a stealthy, long-range autonomous undersea warfare capability that can conduct persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike.”  Importantly, such acquisitions and developments are always qualified by how well they will work in tandem with the imperial power in question.  The media release from the Department of Defence prefers a more weasel-worded formula.  The Ghost Shark, for instance, “will also enhance Navy’s ability to operate with allies and partners.”

    The new militarisation strategy is also designed to improve levels of recruitment.  Personnel have been putting down their weapons in favour of other forms of employment, while recruitment numbers are falling, much to the consternation of the pro-war lobby.  A suggested answer: recruit non-Australian nationals.  This far from brilliant notion will, Marles suggests, take some years.  But a good place to start would be the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders resident in Australia.  Sheer genius.

    The announcement was also meant to offer budget trimmers a barely visible olive branch, promising “to divest, delay or re-scope projects that do not meet our strategic circumstances.” (They could start with the submarines.)  A$5 billion, for instance, will be saved from terminating naval transport and replenishment ships intended to refuel and resupply war vessels at sea.

    Hardly appropriate, opined some military pundits keen to keep plucking the money tree.  Jennifer Parker of the National Security College suggested that, “The removal of the Joint Support ship means there is no future plan to expand Australia’s limited replenishment capability of two ships – which will in turn limit the force projection capability and reach of the expanded surface combatant fleet if the issue is not addressed.”

    The focus, as ever, is on Wicked Oriental Authoritarianism which is very much in keeping with the traditional Australian fear of slanty-eyed devils moving in on the spoils and playground of the Anglosphere.  Former RAAF officer and executive director of the Air Power Institute, Chris McInnes, barks in aeronautical terms that Australia’s air power capability risks being “put in a holding pattern for the next 10 years.”  Despotic China, however, was facing no such prospects.  “There is a risk of putting everything on hold.  The People’s Liberal Army is not on hold.  They are going to keep progressing their aircraft.”  (The air force seems to do wonders for one’s grammar.)

    China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian was cool in his response to the latest promises of indulgent military spending Down Under.  “We hope Australia will correctly view China’s development and strategic intentions, abandon the Cold War mentality, do more things to keep the region peaceful and stable and stop buzzing about China.”  No harm in hoping.

    The post The Australian Defence Formula: Spend! Spend! Spend! 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.

  • Suddenly, western politicians from US President Joe Biden to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have become ardent champions of “restraint” – in a very last-minute scramble to avoid regional conflagration.

    Iran launched a salvo of drones and missiles at Israel at the weekend in what amounted a largely symbolic show of strength. Many appear to have been shot down, either by Israel’s layers of US-funded interception systems or by US, British and Jordanian fighter jets. No one was killed.

    It was the first direct attack by a state on Israel since Iraq fired Scud missiles during the Gulf war of 1991.

    The United Nations Security Council was hurriedly pressed into session on Sunday, with Washington and its allies calling for a de-escalation of tensions that could all too easily lead to the outbreak of war across the Middle East and beyond.

    “Neither the region nor the world can afford more war,” the UN’s secretary general, Antonio Guterres, told the meeting. “Now is the time to defuse and de-escalate.”

    Israel, meanwhile, vowed to “exact the price” against Iran at a time of its choosing.

    But the West’s abrupt conversion to “restraint” needs some explaining.

    After all, western leaders showed no restraint when Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus two weeks ago, killing a senior general and more than a dozen other Iranians – the proximate cause of Tehran’s retaliation on Saturday night.

    Under the Vienna Convention, the consulate is not only a protected diplomatic mission but is viewed as sovereign Iranian territory. Israel’s attack on it was an unbridled act of aggression – the “supreme international crime”, as the Nuremberg tribunal ruled at the end of the Second World War.

    For that reason, Tehran invoked article 51 of the United Nations charter, which allows it to act in self-defence.

    Shielding Israel

    And yet, rather than condemning Israel’s dangerous belligerence – a flagrant attack on the so-called “rules-based order” so revered by the US – western leaders lined up behind Washington’s favourite client state.

    At a Security Council meeting on 4 April, the US, Britain and France intentionally spurned restraint by blocking a resolution that would have condemned Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate – a vote that, had it not been stymied, might have sufficed to placate Tehran.

    At the weekend, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron still gave the thumbs-up to Israel’s flattening of Iran’s diplomatic premises, saying he could “completely understand the frustration Israel feels” – though he added, without any hint of awareness of his own hypocrisy, that the UK “would take very strong action” if a country bombed a British consulate.

    By shielding Israel from any diplomatic consequences for its act of war against Iran, the western powers ensured Tehran would have to pursue a military response instead.

    But it did not end there. Having stoked Iran’s sense of grievance at the UN, Biden vowed “iron-clad” support for Israel – and grave consequences for Tehran – should it dare to respond to the attack on its consulate.

    Iran ignored those threats. On Saturday night, it launched some 300 drones and missiles, at the same time protesting vociferously about the Security Council’s “inaction and silence, coupled with its failure to condemn the Israeli regime’s aggressions”.

    Western leaders failed to take note. They again sided with Israel and denounced Tehran. At Sunday’s Security Council meeting, the same three states – the US, UK and France – that had earlier blocked a statement condemning Israel’s attack on Iran’s diplomatic mission, sought a formal condemnation of Tehran for its response.

    Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, ridiculed what he called “a parade of Western hypocrisy and double standards”. He added: “You know very well that an attack on a diplomatic mission is a casus belli under international law. And if Western missions were attacked, you would not hesitate to retaliate and prove your case in this room.”

    There was no restraint visible either as the West publicly celebrated its collusion with Israel in foiling Iran’s attack.

    British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak praised RAF pilots for their “bravery and professionalism” in helping to “protect civilians” in Israel.

    In a statement, Keir Starmer, leader of the supposedly opposition Labour party, condemned Iran for generating “fear and instability”, rather than “peace and security”, that risked stoking a “wider regional war”. His party, he said, would “stand up for Israel’s security”.

    The “restraint” the West demands relates only, it seems, to Iran’s efforts to defend itself.

    Starving to death

    Given the West’s new-found recognition of the need for caution, and the obvious dangers of military excess, now may be the time for its leaders to consider demanding restraint more generally – and not just to avoid a further escalation between Iran and Israel.

    Over the past six months Israel has bombed Gaza into rubble, destroyed its medical facilities and government offices, and killed and maimed many, many tens of thousands of Palestinians. In truth, such is the devastation that Gaza some time ago lost the ability to count its dead and wounded.

    At the same time, Israel has intensified its 17-year blockade of the tiny enclave to the point where, so little food and water are getting through, the population are in the grip of famine. People, especially children, are literally starving to death.

    The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, chaired by an American judge, ruled back in January – when the situation was far less dire than it is now – that a “plausible” case had been made Israel was committing genocide, a crime against humanity strictly defined in international law.

    And yet there were no calls by western leaders for “restraint” as Israel bombed Gaza into ruins week after week, striking its hospitals, levelling its government offices, blowing up its universities, mosques and churches, and destroying its bakeries.

    Rather, President Biden has repeatedly rushed through emergency arms sales, bypassing Congress, to make sure Israel has enough bombs to keep destroying Gaza and killing its children.

    When Israeli leaders vowed to treat Gaza’s population like “human animals”, denying them all food, water and power, western politicians gave their assent.

    Sunak was not interested in recruiting his brave RAF pilots to “protect civilians” in Gaza from Israel, and Starmer showed no concern about the “fear and instability” felt by Palestinians from Israel’s reign of terror.

    Quite the reverse. Starmer, famed as a human rights lawyer, even gave his approval to Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza, its “complete siege”, as integral to a supposed Israeli “right of self-defence”.

    In doing so, he overturned one of the most fundamental principles of international law that civilians should not be targeted for the actions of their leaders. As is now all too apparent, he conferred a death sentence on the people of Gaza.

    Where was “restraint” then?

    Missing in action

    Similarly, restraint went out of the window when Israel fabricated a pretext for eradicating the UN aid agency UNRWA, the last lifeline for Gaza’s starving population.

    Even though Israel was unable to offer any evidence for its claim that a handful of UNRWA staff were implicated in an attack on Israel on 7 October, western leaders hurriedly cut off funding to the agency. In doing so, they became actively complicit in what the World Court already feared was a genocide.

    Where was the restraint when Israeli officials – with a long history of lying to advance their state’s military agenda – made up stories about Hamas beheading babies, or carrying out systematic rapes on 7 October? All of this was debunked by an Al Jazeera investigation drawing largely on Israeli sources.

    Those genocide-justifying deceptions were all too readily amplified by western politicians and media.

    Israel showed no restraint in destroying Gaza’s hospitals, or taking hostage and torturing thousands of Palestinians it grabbed off the street.

    All of that got a quiet nod from western politicians.

    Where was the restraint in western capitals when protesters took to the streets to call for a ceasefire, to stop Israel’s bloodletting of women and children, the majority of Gaza’s dead? The demonstrators were smeared – are still smeared – by western politicians as supporters of terrorism and antisemites.

    And where was the demand for restraint when Israel tore up the rulebook on the laws of war, allowing every would-be strongman to cite the West’s indulgence of Israeli atrocities as the precedent justifying their own crimes?

    On each occasion, when it favoured Israel’s malevolent goals, the West’s commitment to “restraint” went missing in action.

    Top-dog client state

    There is a reason why Israel has been so ostentatious in its savaging of Gaza and its people. And it is the very same reason Israel felt emboldened to violate the diplomatic sanctity of Iran’s consulate in Damascus.

    Because for decades Israel has been guaranteed protection and assistance from the West, whatever crimes it commits.

    Israel’s founders ethnically cleansed much of Palestine in 1948, far beyond the terms of partition set out by the UN a year earlier. It imposed a military occupation on the remnants of historic Palestine in 1967, driving out yet more of the native population. It then imposed a regime of apartheid on the few areas where Palestinians remained.

    In their West Bank reservations, Palestinians have been systematically brutalised, their homes demolished, and illegal Jewish settlements built on their land. The Palestinians’ holy places have been gradually surrounded and taken from them.

    Separately, Gaza has been sealed off for 17 years, and its population denied freedom of movement, employment and the basics of life.

    Israel’s reign of terror to maintain its absolute control has meant imprisonment and torture are a rite of passage for most Palestinian men. Any protest is ruthlessly crushed.

    Now Israel has added mass slaughter in Gaza – genocide – to its long list of crimes.

    Israel’s displacements of Palestinians to neighbouring states caused by its ethnic cleansing operations and slaughter have destabilised the wider region. And to secure its militarised settler-colonial project in the Middle East – and its place as Washington’s top-dog client state in the region – Israel has intimidated, bombed and invaded its neighbours on a regular basis.

    Its attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus was just the latest of serial humiliations faced by Arab states.

    And through all of this, Washington and its vassal states have directed no more than occasional, lip-service calls for restraint towards Israel. There were never any consequences, but instead rewards from the West in the form of endless billions in aid and special trading status.

    ‘Something rash’

    So why, after decades of debauched violence from Israel, has the West suddenly become so interested in “restraint”? Because on this rare occasion it serves western interests to calm the fires Israel is so determined to stoke.

    The Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate came just as the Biden administration was finally running out of excuses for providing the weapons and diplomatic cover that has allowed Israel to slaughter, maim and orphan tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza over six months.

    Demands for a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel have been reaching fever pitch, with Biden haemorrhaging support among parts of his Democratic base as he faces a re-run presidential election later this year against a resurgent rival, Donald Trump.

    Small numbers of votes could be the difference between victory and defeat.

    Israel had every reason to fear that its patron might soon pull the rug from under its campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza.

    But having destroyed the entire infrastructure needed to support life in the enclave, Israel needs time for the consequences to play out: either mass starvation there, or a relocation of the population elsewhere on supposedly “humanitarian” grounds.

    A wider war, centred on Iran, would both distract from Gaza’s desperate plight and force Biden to back Israel unconditionally – to make good on his “iron-clad” commitment to Israel’s protection.

    And to top it all, with the US drawn directly into a war against Iran, Washington would have little choice but to assist Israel in its long campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear energy programme.

    Israel wants to remove any potential for Iran to develop a bomb, one that would level the military playing field between the two in ways that would make Israel far less certain that it can continue to act as it pleases across the region with impunity.

    That is why Biden officials are airing concerns to the US media that Israel is ready to “do something rash” in an attempt to drag the administration into a wider war.

    The truth is, however, that Washington long ago cultivated Israel as its military Frankenstein’s monster. Israel’s role was precisely to project US power ruthlessly into the oil-rich Middle East. The price Washington was more than willing to accept was Israel’s eradication of the Palestinian people, replaced by a fortress “Jewish state”.

    Calling for Israel to exercise “restraint” now, as its entrenched lobbies flex their muscles meddling in western politics, and self-confessed fascists rule Israel’s government, is beyond parody.

    If the West really prized restraint, they should have insisted on it from Israel decades ago.

    • Article first published in Middle East Eye

    The post The West now wants “restraint” after months of fuelling a genocide in Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.


  • The bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes are buried in a mass grave in Khan Younis.
    Photo credit: Al-Jazeera

    The Israeli online magazine +972 has published a detailed report on Israel’s use of an artificial intelligence (AI) system called “Lavender” to target thousands of Palestinian men in its bombing campaign in Gaza. When Israel attacked Gaza after October 7, the Lavender system had a database of 37,000 Palestinian men with suspected links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). 

    Lavender assigns a numerical score, from one to a hundred, to every man in Gaza, based mainly on cellphone and social media data, and automatically adds those with high scores to its kill list of suspected militants. Israel uses another automated system, known as “Where’s Daddy?”, to call in airstrikes to kill these men and their families in their homes.

    The report is based on interviews with six Israeli intelligence officers who have worked with these systems. As one of the officers explained to +972, by adding a name from a Lavender-generated list to the Where’s Daddy home tracking system, he can place the man’s home under constant drone surveillance, and an airstrike will be launched once he comes home.

    The officers said the “collateral” killing of the men’s extended families was of little consequence to Israel. “Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” the officer said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”

    The officers explained that the decision to target thousands of these men in their homes is just a question of expediency. It is simply easier to wait for them to come home to the address on file in the system, and then bomb that house or apartment building, than to search for them in the chaos of the war-torn Gaza Strip. 

    The officers who spoke to 972+ explained that in previous Israeli massacres in Gaza, they could not generate targets quickly enough to satisfy their political and military bosses, and so these AI systems were designed to solve that problem for them. The speed with which Lavender can generate new targets only gives its human minders an average of 20 seconds to review and rbber-stamp each name, even though they know from tests of the Lavender system that at least 10% of the men chosen for assassination and familicide have only an insignificant or a mistaken connection with Hamas or PIJ.  

    The Lavender AI system is a new weapon, developed by Israel. But the kind of kill lists that it generates have a long pedigree in U.S. wars, occupations and CIA regime change operations. Since the birth of the CIA after the Second World War, the technology used to create kill lists has evolved from the CIA’s earliest coups in Iran and Guatemala, to Indonesia and the Phoenix program in Vietnam in the 1960s, to Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s and to the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

    Just as U.S. weapons development aims to be at the cutting edge, or the killing edge, of new technology, the CIA and U.S. military intelligence have always tried to use the latest data processing technology to identify and kill their enemies.

    The CIA learned some of these methods from German intelligence officers captured at the end of the Second World War. Many of the names on Nazi kill lists were generated by an intelligence unit called Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East), under the command of Major General Reinhard Gehlen, Germany’s spy chief on the eastern front (see David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, p. 268).

    Gehlen and the FHO had no computers, but they did have access to four million Soviet POWs from all over the USSR, and no compunction about torturing them to learn the names of Jews and communist officials in their hometowns to compile kill lists for the Gestapo and Einsatzgruppen.

    After the war, like the 1,600 German scientists spirited out of Germany in Operation Paperclip, the United States flew Gehlen and his senior staff to Fort Hunt in Virginia. They were welcomed by Allen Dulles, soon to be the first and still the longest-serving director of the CIA. Dulles sent them back to Pullach in occupied Germany to resume their anti-Soviet operations as CIA agents. The Gehlen Organization formed the nucleus of what became the BND, the new West German intelligence service, with Reinhard Gehlen as its director until he retired in 1968.

    After a CIA coup removed Iran’s popular, democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, a CIA team led by U.S. Major General Norman Schwarzkopf trained a new intelligence service, known as SAVAK, in the use of kill lists and torture. SAVAK used these skills to purge Iran’s government and military of suspected communists and later to hunt down anyone who dared to oppose the Shah. 

    By 1975, Amnesty International estimated that Iran was holding between 25,000 and 100,000 political prisoners, and had “the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture that is beyond belief.”

    In Guatemala, a CIA coup in 1954 replaced the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman with a brutal dictatorship. As resistance grew in the 1960s, U.S. special forces joined the Guatemalan army in a scorched earth campaign in Zacapa, which killed 15,000 people to defeat a few hundred armed rebels. Meanwhile, CIA-trained urban death squads abducted, tortured and killed PGT (Guatemalan Labor Party) members in Guatemala City, notably 28 prominent labor leaders who were abducted and disappeared in March 1966.

    Once this first wave of resistance was suppressed, the CIA set up a new telecommunications center and intelligence agency, based in the presidential palace. It compiled a database of “subversives” across the country that included leaders of farming co-ops and labor, student and indigenous activists, to provide ever-growing lists for the death squads. The resulting civil war became a genocide against indigenous people in Ixil and the western highlands that killed or disappeared at least 200,000 people.

    This pattern was repeated across the world, wherever popular, progressive leaders offered hope to their people in ways that challenged U.S. interests. As historian Gabriel Kolko wrote in 1988, “The irony of U.S. policy in the Third World is that, while it has always justified its larger objectives and efforts in the name of anticommunism, its own goals have made it unable to tolerate change from any quarter that impinged significantly on its own interests.”

    When General Suharto seized power in Indonesia in 1965, the U.S. Embassy compiled a list of 5,000 communists for his death squads to hunt down and kill. The CIA estimated that they eventually killed 250,000 people, while other estimates run as high as a million.

    Twenty-five years later, journalist Kathy Kadane investigated the U.S. role in the massacre in Indonesia, and spoke to Robert Martens, the political officer who led the State-CIA team that compiled the kill list. “It really was a big help to the army,” Martens told Kadane. “They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands. But that’s not all bad – there’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”

    Kathy Kadane also spoke to former CIA director William Colby, who was the head of the CIA’s Far East division in the 1960s. Colby compared the U.S. role in Indonesia to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, which was launched two years later, claiming that they were both successful programs to identify and eliminate the organizational structure of America’s communist enemies.  

    The Phoenix program was designed to uncover and dismantle the National Liberation Front’s (NLF) shadow government across South Vietnam. Phoenix’s Combined Intelligence Center in Saigon fed thousands of names into an IBM 1401 computer, along with their locations and their alleged roles in the NLF. The CIA credited the Phoenix program with killing 26,369 NLF officials, while another 55,000 were imprisoned or persuaded to defect. Seymour Hersh reviewed South Vietnamese government documents that put the death toll at 41,000

    How many of the dead were correctly identified as NLF officials may be impossible to know, but Americans who took part in Phoenix operations reported killing the wrong people in many cases. Navy SEAL Elton Manzione told author Douglas Valentine (The Phoenix Program) how he killed two young girls in a night raid on a village, and then sat down on a stack of ammunition crates with a hand grenade and an M-16, threatening to blow himself up, until he got a ticket home.  

    “The whole aura of the Vietnam War was influenced by what went on in the “hunter-killer” teams of Phoenix, Delta, etc,” Manzione told Valentine. “That was the point at which many of us realized we were no longer the good guys in the white hats defending freedom – that we were assassins, pure and simple. That disillusionment carried over to all other aspects of the war and was eventually responsible for it becoming America’s most unpopular war.”

    Even as the U.S. defeat in Vietnam and the “war fatigue” in the United States led to a more peaceful next decade, the CIA continued to engineer and support coups around the world, and to provide post-coup governments with increasingly computerized kill lists to consolidate their rule.

    After supporting General Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the CIA played a central role in Operation Condor, an alliance between right-wing military governments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, to hunt down tens of thousands of their and each other’s political opponents and dissidents, killing and disappearing at least 60,000 people. 

    The CIA’s role in Operation Condor is still shrouded in secrecy, but Patrice McSherry, a political scientist at Long Island University, has investigated the U.S. role and concluded, “Operation Condor also had the covert support of the US government. Washington provided Condor with military intelligence and training, financial assistance, advanced computers, sophisticated tracking technology, and access to the continental telecommunications system housed in the Panama Canal Zone.”

    McSherry’s research revealed how the CIA supported the intelligence services of the Condor states with computerized links, a telex system, and purpose-built encoding and decoding machines made by the CIA Logistics Department. As she wrote in her book, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America:     

    “The Condor system’s secure communications system, Condortel,… allowed Condor operations centers in member countries to communicate with one another and with the parent station in a U.S. facility in the Panama Canal Zone. This link to the U.S. military-intelligence complex in Panama is a key piece of evidence regarding secret U.S. sponsorship of Condor…”

    Operation Condor ultimately failed, but the U.S. provided similar support and training to right-wing governments in Colombia and Central America throughout the 1980s in what senior military officers have called a “quiet, disguised, media-free approach” to repression and kill lists. 

    The U.S. School of the Americas (SOA) trained thousands of Latin American officers in the use of torture and death squads, as Major Joseph Blair, the SOA’s former chief of instruction described to John Pilger for his film, The War You Don’t See:

    “The doctrine that was taught was that, if you want information, you use physical abuse, false imprisonment, threats to family members, and killing. If you can’t get the information you want, if you can’t get the person to shut up or stop what they’re doing, you assassinate them – and you assassinate them with one of your death squads.”

    When the same methods were transferred to the U.S. hostile military occupation of Iraq after 2003, Newsweek headlined it “The Salvador Option.” A U.S. officer explained to Newsweek that U.S. and Iraqi death squads were targeting Iraqi civilians as well as resistance fighters. “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists,” he said. “From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.”

    The United States sent two veterans of its dirty wars in Latin America to Iraq to play key roles in that campaign. Colonel James Steele led the U.S. Military Advisor Group in El Salvador from 1984 to 1986, training and supervising Salvadoran forces who killed tens of thousands of civilians. He was also deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, narrowly escaping a prison sentence for his role supervising shipments from Ilopango air base in El Salvador to the U.S.-backed Contras in Honduras and Nicaragua. 

    In Iraq, Steele oversaw the training of the Interior Ministry’s Special Police Commandos – rebranded as “National” and later “Federal” Police after the discovery of their al-Jadiriyah torture center and other atrocities.

    Bayan al-Jabr, a commander in the Iranian-trained Badr Brigade militia, was appointed Interior Minister in 2005, and Badr militiamen were integrated into the Wolf Brigade death squad and other Special Police units. Jabr’s chief adviser was Steven Casteel, the former intelligence chief for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in Latin America. 

    The Interior Ministry death squads waged a dirty war in Baghdad and other cities, filling the Baghdad morgue with up to 1,800 corpses per month, while Casteel fed the western media absurd cover stories, such as that the death squads were all “insurgents” in stolen police uniforms.  

    Meanwhile U.S. special operations forces conducted “kill-or-capture” night raids in search of Resistance leaders. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of Joint Special Operations Command from 2003-2008, oversaw the development of a database system, used in Iraq and Afghanistan, that compiled cellphone numbers mined from captured cellphones to generate an ever-expanding target list for night raids and air strikes. 

    The targeting of cellphones instead of actual people enabled the automation of the targeting system, and explicitly excluded using human intelligence to confirm identities. Two senior U.S. commanders told the Washington Post that only half the night raids attacked the right house or person.

    In Afghanistan, President Obama put McChrystal in charge of U.S. and NATO forces in 2009, and his cellphone-based “social network analysis” enabled an exponential increase in night raids, from 20 raids per month in May 2009 to up to 40 per night by April 2011. 

    As with the Lavender system in Gaza, this huge increase in targets was achieved by taking a system originally designed to identify and track a small number of senior enemy commanders and applying it to anyone suspected of having links with the Taliban, based on their cellphone data. 

    This led to the capture of an endless flood of innocent civilians, so that most civilian detainees had to be quickly released to make room for new ones. The increased killing of innocent civilians in night raids and airstrikes fueled already fierce resistance to the U.S. and NATO occupation and ultimately led to its defeat.

    President Obama’s drone campaign to kill suspected enemies in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia was just as indiscriminate, with reports suggesting that 90% of the people it killed in Pakistan were innocent civilians. 

    And yet Obama and his national security team kept meeting in the White House every “Terror Tuesday” to select who the drones would target that week, using an Orwellian, computerized “disposition matrix” to provide technological cover for their life and death decisions.    

    Looking at this evolution of ever-more automated systems for killing and capturing enemies, we can see how, as the information technology used has advanced from telexes to cellphones and from early IBM computers to artificial intelligence, the human intelligence and sensibility that could spot mistakes, prioritize human life and prevent the killing of innocent civilians has been progressively marginalized and excluded, making these operations more brutal and horrifying than ever.

    Nicolas has at least two good friends who survived the dirty wars in Latin America because someone who worked in the police or military got word to them that their names were on a death list, one in Argentina, the other in Guatemala. If their fates had been decided by an AI machine like Lavender, they would both be long dead. 

    As with supposed advances in other types of weapons technology, like drones and “precision” bombs and missiles, innovations that claim to make targeting more precise and eliminate human error have instead led to the automated mass murder of innocent people, especially women and children, bringing us full circle from one holocaust to the next.

    The post A Brief History of Kill Lists, From Langley to Lavender first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • After six months – and many tens of thousands of dead and maimed Palestinian women and children later – western commentators are finally wondering whether something may be amiss with Israel’s actions in Gaza.

    Israel apparently crossed a red line when it killed a handful of foreign aid workers on 1 April, including three British security contractors.

    Three missiles, fired over several minutes, struck vehicles in a World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid convoy heading up Gaza’s coast on one of the few roads still passable after Israel turned the enclave’s homes and streets into rubble. All the vehicles were clearly marked. All were on an approved, safe passage. And the Israeli military had been given the coordinates to track the convoy’s location.

    With precise missile holes through the vehicle roofs making it impossible to blame Hamas for the strike, Israel was forced to admit responsibility. Its spokespeople claimed an armed figure had been seen entering the storage area from which the aid convoy had departed.

    But even that feeble, formulaic response could not explain why the Israeli military hit cars in which it was known there were aid workers. So Israel hurriedly promised to investigate what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “tragic incident”.

    Presumably, it was a “tragic incident” just like the 15,000-plus other “tragic incidents” – the ones we know about – that Israel has committed against Palestinian children day after day for six months.

    In those cases, of course, western commentators always managed to produce some rationalisation for the slaughter.

    Not this time.

    “This has to stop”

    Half a year too late, with Gaza’s entire medical infrastructure wrecked by Israel and a population on the brink of starvation, Britain’s Independent newspaper suddenly found its voice to declare decisively on its front page: “Enough.”

    Richard Madeley, host of Good Morning Britain, finally felt compelled to opine that Israel had carried out an “execution” of the foreign aid workers. Presumably, 15,000 Palestinian children were not executed, they simply “died”.

    When it came to the killing of WCK staff, popular LBC talk-show host Nick Ferrari concluded that Israel’s actions were“indefensible”. Did he think it defensible for Israel to bomb and starve Gaza’s children month after month?

    Like the Independent, he too proclaimed: “This has to stop.”

    The attack on the WCK convoy briefly changed the equation for the western media. Seven dead aid workers were a wake-up call when many tens of thousands of dead, maimed and orphaned Palestinian children had not been.

    A salutary equation indeed.

    British politicians reassured the public that Israel would carry out an “independent investigation” into the killings. That is, the same Israel that never punishes its soldiers even when their atrocities are televised. The same Israel whose military courts find almost every Palestinian guilty of whatever crime Israel chooses to accuse them of, if it allows them a trial.

    But at least the foreign aid workers merited an investigation, however much of a foregone conclusion the verdict. That is more than the dead children of Gaza will ever get.

    Israel’s playbook

    British commentators appeared startled by the thought that Israel had chosen to kill the foreigners working for World Central Kitchen – even if those same journalists still treat tens of thousands of dead Palestinians as unfortunate “collateral damage” in a “war” to “eradicate Hamas”.

    But had they been paying closer attention, these pundits would understand that the murder of foreigners is not exceptional. It has been central to Israel’s occupation playbook for decades – and helps explain what Israel hopes to achieve with its current slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

    Back in the early 2000s, Israel was on another of its rampages, wrecking Gaza and the West Bank supposedly in “retaliation” for Palestinians having had the temerity to rise up against decades of military occupation.

    Shocked by the brutality, a group of foreign volunteers, a significant number of them Jewish, ventured into these areas to witness and document the Israeli military’s crimes and act as human shields to protect Palestinians from the violence.

    They arrived under the mantle of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led initiative. They were keen to use what were then new technologies such as digital cameras, email and blogs to focus attention on the Israeli military’s atrocities.

    Some became a new breed of activist journalist, embedded in Palestinian communities to report the story western establishment journalists, embedded in Israel, never managed to cover.

    Israel presented the ISM as a terrorist group and dismissed its filmed documentation as “Pallywood” – a supposedly fiction-producing industry equated to a Palestinian Hollywood.

    Gaza isolated

    But the ISM’s evidence increasingly exposed the “most moral army in the world” for what it really was: a criminal enterprise there to enforce land thefts and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

    Israel needed to take firmer action.

    The evidence suggests soldiers received authorisation to execute foreigners in the occupied territories. That included young activists such as Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall; James Miller, an independent filmmaker who ventured into Gaza; and even a United Nations official, Iain Hook, based in the West Bank.

    This rapid spate of killings – and the maiming of many other activists – had the intended effect. The ISM largely withdrew from the region to protect its volunteers, while Israel formally banned the group from accessing the occupied territories.

    Meanwhile, Israel denied press credentials to any journalist not sponsored by a state or a billionaire-owned outlet, kicking them out of the region.

    Al Jazeera, the one critical Arab channel whose coverage reached western audiences, found its journalists regularly banned or killed, and its offices bombed.

    The battle to isolate the Palestinians, freeing Israel to commit atrocities unmonitored, culminated in Israel’s now 17-year blockade of Gaza. It was sealed off.

    With the enclave completely besieged by land, human rights activists focused their efforts on breaking the blockade via the high seas. A series of “freedom flotillas” tried to reach Gaza’s coast from 2008 onwards. Israel soon managed to stop most of them.

    The largest was led by the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel laden with aid and medicine. Israeli naval commandos stormed the ship illegally in international waters in 2010, killing 10 foreign aid workers and human rights activists on board and injuring another 30.

    The western media soft-pedalled Israel’s preposterous characterisation of the flotillas as a terrorist enterprise. The initiative gradually petered out.

    Western complicity

    That is the proper context for understanding the latest attack on the WCK aid convoy.

    Israel has always had four prongs to its strategy towards the Palestinians. Taken together, they have allowed Israel to refine its apartheid-style rule, and are now allowing it to implement its genocidal policies undisturbed.

    The first is to incrementally isolate the Palestinians from the international community.

    The second is to make the Palestinians entirely dependent on the Israeli military’s goodwill, and create conditions that are so precarious and unpredictable that most Palestinians try to vacate their historic homeland, leaving it free to be “Judaised”.

    Third, Israel has crushed any attempt by outsiders – especially the media and human rights monitors – to scrutinise its activities in real-time or hold it to account.

    And fourth, to achieve all this, Israel has needed to erode piece by piece the humanitarian protections that were enshrined in international law to stop a repeat of the common-place atrocities against civilians during the Second World War.

    This process, which had been taking place over years and decades, was rapidly accelerated after Hamas’ attack on 7 October. Israel had the pretext to transform apartheid into genocide.

    Unrwa, the main United Nations refugee agency, which is mandated to supply aid to the Palestinians, had long been in Israel’s sights, especially in Gaza. It has allowed the international community to keep its foot in the door of the enclave, maintaining a lifeline to the population there independent of Israel, and creating an authoritative framework for judging Israel’s human rights abuses. Worse, for Israel, Unrwa has kept alive the right of return – enshrined in international law – of Palestinian refugees expelled from their original lands so a self-declared Jewish state could be built in their place.

    Israel leapt at the chance to accuse Unrwa of being implicated in the 7 October attack, even though it produced zero evidence for the claim. Almost as enthusiastically, western states turned off the funding tap to the UN agency.

    The Biden administration appears keen to end UN oversight of Gaza by hiving off its main aid role to private firms. It has been one of the key sponsors of WCK, led by a celebrity Spanish chef with ties to the US State Department.

    WCK, which has also been building a pier off Gaza’s coast, was expected to be an adjunct to Washington’s plan to eventually ship in aid from Cyprus – to help those Palestinians who, over the next few weeks, do not starve to death.

    Until, that is, Israel struck the aid convoy, killing its staff. WCK has pulled out of Gaza for the time being, and other private aid contractors are backing off, fearful for their workers’ safety.

    Goal one has been achieved. The people of Gaza are on their own. The West, rather than their saviour, is now fully complicit not only in Israel’s blockade of Gaza but in its starvation too.

    Life and death lottery

    Next, Israel has demonstrated beyond doubt that it regards every Palestinian in Gaza, even its children, as an enemy.

    The fact that most of the enclave’s homes are now rubble should serve as proof enough, as should the fact that many tens of thousands there have been violently killed. Only a fraction of the death toll is likely to have been recorded, given Israel’s destruction of the enclave’s health sector.

    Israel’s levelling of hospitals, including al-Shifa – as well as the kidnapping and torture of medical staff – has left Palestinians in Gaza completely exposed. The eradication of meaningful healthcare means births, serious injuries and chronic and acute illnesses are quickly becoming a death sentence.

    Israel has intentionally been turning life in Gaza into a lottery, with nowhere safe.

    According to a new investigation, Israel’s bombing campaign has relied heavily on experimental AI systems that largely automate the killing of Palestinians. That means there is no need for human oversight – and the potential limitations imposed by a human conscience.

    Israeli website 972 found that tens of thousands of Palestinians had been put on “kill lists” generated by a program called Lavender, using loose definitions of “terrorist” and with an error rate estimated even by the Israeli military at one in 10.

    Another programme called “Where’s Daddy?” tracked many of these “targets” to their family homes, where they – and potentially dozens of other Palestinians unlucky enough to be inside – were killed by air strikes.

    An Israeli intelligence official told 972: “The IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

    As so many of these targets were considered to be “junior” operatives, of little military value, Israel preferred to use unguided, imprecise munitions – “dumb bombs” – increasing dramatically the likelihood of large numbers of other Palestinians being killed too.

    Or, as another Israeli intelligence official observed: “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people – it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of smart bombs].”

    That explains how entire extended families, comprising dozens of members, have been so regularly slaughtered.

    Separately, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on 31 March that the Israeli military has been operating unmarked “kill zones” in which anyone moving – man, woman or child – is in danger of being shot dead.

    Or, as a reserve officer who has been serving in Gaza told the paper: “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.”

    This, Haaretz reports, is the likely reason why soldiers gunned down three escaped Israeli hostages who were trying to surrender to them.

    Palestinians, of course, rarely know where these kill zones are as they desperately scour ever larger areas in the hope of finding food.

    If they are fortunate enough to avoid death from the skies or expiring from starvation, they risk being seized by Israeli soldiers and taken off to one of Israel’s black sites. There, as a whistleblowing Israeli doctor admitted last week, unspeakable, Abu Ghraib-style horrors are being inflicted on the inmates.

    Goal two has been achieved, leaving Palestinians terrified of the Israeli military’s largely random violence and desperate to find an escape from the Russian roulette Israel is playing with their lives.

    Reporting stifled

    Long ago, Israel barred UN human rights monitors from accessing the occupied territories. That has left scrutiny of its crimes largely in the hands of the media.

    Independent foreign reporters have been barred from the region for some 15 years, leaving the field to establishment journalists serving state and corporate media, where there are strong pressures to present Israel’s actions in the best possible light.

    That is why the most important stories about 7 October and the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza and treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israel have been broken by Israeli-based media – as well as small, independent western outlets that have highlighted its coverage.

    Since 7 October, Israel has barred all foreign journalists from Gaza, and western reporters have meekly complied. None have been alerting their audience to this major assault on their supposed role as watchdogs.

    Israeli spokespeople, well-practised in the dark arts of deception and misdirection, have been allowed to fill the void in London studios.

    What on-the-ground information from Gaza has been reaching western publics – when it is not suppressed by media outlets either because it would be too distressing or because its inclusion would enrage Israel – comes via Palestinian journalists. They have been showing the genocide unfolding in real-time.

    But for that reason, Israel has been picking them off one by one – just as it did earlier with Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall – as well as murdering their extended families as a warning to others.

    The one international channel that has many journalists on the ground in Gaza and is in a position to present its reporting in high-quality English is Al Jazeera.

    The list of its journalists killed by Israel has grown steadily longer since 7 October. Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh has had most of his family executed, as well as being injured himself.

    His counterpart in the West Bank, Shireen Abu Akhleh, was shot dead by an Israeli army sniper two years ago.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, Israel rushed a law through its parliament last week to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a “terror channel”, claiming it participated in Hamas’ 7 October attack.

    Al Jazeera had just aired a documentary revisiting the events of 7 October. It showed that Hamas did not commit the most barbaric crimes Israel accuses it of, and that, in fact, in some cases Israel was responsible for the most horrifying atrocities against its own citizens that it had attributed to Hamas.

    Al Jazeera and human rights groups are understandably worried about what further actions Israel is likely to take against the channel’s journalists to snuff out its reporting.

    Palestinians in Gaza, meanwhile, fear that they are about to lose the only channel that connects them to the outside world, both telling their stories and keeping them informed about what the watching world knows of their plight.

    Goal three has been achieved. The lights are being turned off. Israel can carry out in the dark the potentially ugliest phase of its genocide, as Palestinian children emaciate and starve to death.

    Rulebook torn up

    And finally, Israel has torn up the rulebook on international humanitarian law intended to protect civilians from atrocities, as well as the infrastructure they rely on.

    Israel has destroyed universities, government buildings, mosques, churches and bakeries, as well as, most critically, medical facilities.

    Over the past six months, hospitals, once sacrosanct, have slowly become legitimate targets, as have the patients inside.

    Collective punishment, absolutely prohibited as a war crime, has become the norm in Gaza since 2007, when the West stood mutely by as Israel besieged the enclave for 17 years.

    Now, as Palestinians are starved to death, as children turn to skin and bones, and as aid convoys are bombed and aid seekers are shot dead, there is still apparently room for debate among the western media-political class about whether this all constitutes a violation of international law.

    Even after six months of Israel bombing Gaza, treating its people as “human animals” and denying them food, water and power – the very definition of collective punishment – Britain’s deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, apparently believes Israel is, unfairly, being held to “incredibly high standards”. David Lammy, shadow foreign secretary for the supposedly opposition Labour party, still has no more than “serious concerns” that international law may have been breached.

    Neither party yet proposes banning the sale of British arms to Israel, arms that are being used to commit precisely these violations of international law. Neither is referencing the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide.

    Meanwhile, the main political conversation in the West is still mired in delusional talk about how to revive the fabled “two-state solution”, rather than how to stop an accelerating genocide.

    The reality is that Israel has ripped up the most fundamental of the principles in international law: “distinction” – differentiating between combatants and civilians – and “proportionality” – using only the minimum amount of force needed to achieve legitimate military goals.

    The rules of war are in tatters. The system of international humanitarian law is not under threat, it has collapsed.

    Every Palestinian in Gaza now faces a death sentence. And with good reason, Israel assumes it is untouchable.

    Despite the background noise of endlessly expressed “concerns” from the White House, and of rumours of growing “tensions” between allies, the US and Europe have indicated that the genocide can continue – but must be carried out more discreetly, more unobtrusively.

    The killing of the World Central Kitchen staff is a setback. But the destruction of Gaza – Israel’s plan of nearly two decades’ duration – is far from over.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

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  • Years ago, I made the statement that Palestinians had not sacrificed enough. It was meant to be a shocking statement, but it wasn’t a judgmental one. What I meant was that all of the terrible sacrifices that Palestinians had made up until that time had failed to liberate Palestine, and that we would know when adequate sacrifice had been made by the standard of whether liberation had been achieved.

    I believe that we are reaching a vantage point where this accomplishment is now within view, or at least just over the horizon. If so, it is utterly astonishing, but the greatest part of the sacrifice is yet to come. We call it genocide, and although we are in the midst of it, we have not yet seen the worst.

    Israel, which has spent its entire history building its image and cementing its relationships – security, technological, academic, economic and cultural – with the rest of the world, now perceives that it must allow itself to become a reviled international pariah in order to commit horrors that will preserve itself as a Zionist exclusivist enclave on stolen territory. Israel, in its desperation, has given up on all civilized pretenses and most links to the outside world, except its lifeline with the only superpower that can single-handedly transfuse enough arms and wealth to maintain its ability to wreak havoc upon its unwanted subjugated population and instill fear in its neighbors.

    It has come down to this: From Israel’s perspective, it must commit genocide in order keep the Zionist dream of a Jewish state alive. There will be no de Klerk-Mandela moment, no integration, no truth commission, no mutual acceptance. The Israelis who believed in good will and mutual respect do not exist anymore, and their dream was a fantasy in any case, depending as it did upon tolerance in a society that required racist credentials for admission. Roughly a million of them emigrated in the decade prior to October 7th, 2023, and another million in the six months after. In the remaining Israeli population, fanaticism rules. It is the future of Israel, to the extent that it has any. Like the crusader castle at Acre, it will be a fortress that remains until it is no longer viable, losing its body of the faithful, unwilling to keep it going.

    That is the future. At present, it is a fearful, enraged beast, ready to commit all manner of atrocities in order to resist the inevitable. As it makes no visible progress against its armed foes in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon, it is now seeking to widen the war, with direct superpower military engagement. Although the US remains unlikely to take the bait, it is also ruled by a similar siege mentality, especially at the highest levels of government, which are impervious to popular will, and are wedded to interests that largely determine its composition, regardless of the party “in power”. One of those interests is the Israel lobby, which not surprisingly maintains especially strong control over US policy towards Israel. The practical implications are that, regardless how unpopular a government or its policy may be, it will not waver in its support for Israel – in effect a sock puppet with a teleprompter.

    These factors will raise the cost of the Palestinian victory. Yet even those who are the victims of the greatest crime of this century refuse to accept a return to life in the concentration camp that was Gaza. Indeed, the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are swelling with more recruits than they can accept at present.

    Will the crescendo of the world’s voices and actions prevent the worst from happening? Will the ships of aid and volunteers change the outcome? The demonstrations? The suspension of trade and exchange agreements? The isolation of Israel as a pariah? The alienation of Jewish youth from Zionism? I would like to think so, but as far as I can tell, none of this has any impact upon the thinking – much less the decisions – in Israel or the US. Our predictions for the future are projections of the past and present, and I see nothing in those projections that will avert the course of genocide. I would love to be wrong.

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  • In June 1967 Israel launched surprise attacks on its Arab neighbors and captured Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Golan. With military and intelligence support from Lyndon Johnson’s administration, Israel shocked and overwhelmed its neighbors, largely destroying Egypt’s air force on the ground. Israel not only seized possession of these territories, they humiliated their adversaries. It only took six days.

    This assault was pivotal in three respects. First, it cemented hard core Zionism  including unrepentant violence at the core of the country. This is shown not only by the atrocities committed against their Arab neighbors.  It is shown in the attempt to sink the USS Liberty and kill all its US navy personnel. Second, it created the myth of Israeli military and intelligence superiority.  Third, it generated huge support for the Zionist state internationally. As they say, “Everybody loves a winner”,  and Israel was the undisputed winner in 1967.  Anti-Zionist sentiment in the US and international Jewish community, previously quite strong,  declined significantly. Western support for Israel increased dramatically. Due to effective propaganda, public support also increased.

    The decades since then have seen a consistent Israeli refusal to compromise with the people whose land they took and whose livelihoods they control. Gaza has been under siege for decades and a concentration camp since 2007. The West Bank and Jerusalem are not much better with ever tightening restrictions, checkpoints and arrests.

    The Al Aqsa Flood Operation

    On 7 October 2023 it was the Israeli military that was shocked.  Hamas and other Palestinian resistance forces broke out of the concentration camp, seized Israeli military posts, entered Israeli towns and kibbutzes. They killed about 400 Israeli military and police and took about 250 military and civilians hostage. About 800 civilians died either from Hamas gunfire or Israeli tanks or Apache gunship helicopters. Hundreds of cars  containing both Palestinians and Israelis were demolished by the latter.

    The Israeli assumptions of  military, intelligence and ethnic superiority were exploded that day. In  rage, Israeli military  and political officials vowed to avenge  the embarrassment and military setback. Ministry of Defense Yoav Galant said Palestinians were “human animals” and vowed to kill through military means and starvation. They vowed to “destroy Hamas” and immediately launched wave after wave of bombing attacks.  After about  a month of bombing, the Israeli military entered Gaza . They are still there.

    Steeped in belief in Jewish supremacy, much of the Israeli public supports the ongoing massacre. Now, after six months of relentless attacks,  the belief in Israeli superiority has fallen apart. The Israeli military has not been able to “destroy” Hamas or weaken Palestinian resolve. On the contrary, support for Hamas and the other resistance forces has increased both in Gaza and the West Bank.  Israeli leaders thought they could easily conquer and “destroy” Hamas but they have not been able to do that despite billions in US and western supplied armaments.

    Hamas and the other Palestinian militants have survived and still inflict significant losses on the Israeli military. Yesterday, four more Israeli soldiers were killed in Khan Younis.

    Israel has destroyed United Nations schools and shelters, churches and mosques, universities and even hospitals. They have killed over 100 reporters and thousands of  health workers, ambulance drivers, doctors and university professors. The recent killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers was only exceptional because the victims were from the West. Israel has been committing atrocities like this against Palestinians for six months. .

    1967 vs Today

    As Israel’s international stature grew after the Six Day War, it is collapsing after the Six Month Siege and Massacre in Gaza.  In 1967 many American Jews embraced Israel. Now, rapidly growing numbers condemn Israel’s atrocities and want nothing to do with the country. They correctly perceive the difference between a state (Israel) and ideology (Zionism)  on the one hand, and a faith and ethnicity on the other. They are proud to wear T-shirts saying “Jewish Voice for Peace” and  “If Not Now”.

    The Global Majority of nations are fervently opposed to Israel and what it is doing. The UN General Assembly has condemned the Zionist state and numerous countries have withdrawn their ambassadors.

    Even western states closely allied with Israel, such as Canada, are changing their tune. Canada has suspended arms shipments to Israel and restored funding to UNRWA.

    The International Court of Justice has recently ordered Israel to allow food and aid into Gaza. The Australian ICJ judge confirmed they have ordered Israel to suspend military operations in Gaza. If Israel refuses to comply, it will only increase the global condemnation.

    As another sign of how much geopolitics are changing, Nicaragua has filed a case at the International Court of Justice charging Germany with complicity in Israel’s genocide.

    The US Congress and Administration continues to support Israel’s genocide but is now shifting due to popular pressure, protests and demands. Even Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi is now urging Biden to cease arms shipments to Israel.

    The Six Month Failure

    Israel’s Six Month Failure has fueled the contradictions inherent in the state.  Political and religious contradictions are escalating with bigger and bigger demonstrations against Netanyahu and his refusal to end the war and bring home the hostages.  Demonstrations inside Israel are getting bigger and more volatile. Last Saturday, five protesters were purposely hit by a car.

    We have passed the tipping point.  The unrelenting slaughter of Palestinian civilians over the past six months has forever changed the perception of  Israel in the West.

    Israel is now widely seen internationally as a “bad guy” similar to how the US was seen in the late 60’s in Vietnam. Just as the Tet Offensive cost the lives of tens of thousands of Vietnamese but was a crucial turning point, the October 7 Al Aqsa Flood operation marks a crucial turning point for Palestine.

    The post Israeli Milestones: From Six Day Victory to Six Month Failure first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Can it get any busier?  The World Court, otherwise known as the International Court of Justice, has been swamped by applications on the subject of alleged genocide. The site of interest remains the Gaza Strip, the subject of unremitting slaughter since the October 7, 2023 cross-border attacks by Hamas against Israel.  The retaliation by Israel has been of such brute savagery as to draw the attention of numerous states, including those not directly connected to the conflict.

    Given that genocide is a crime of universal jurisdiction abominated by international law, and given the broad application of the UN Genocide Convention intended to suppress and punish it, countries not normally associated with the tormented and blood-drenched relationship between Israel and the Palestinians have taken a keen interest.  South Africa got matters moving with its December application last year seeking a judicial determination that Israel was committing genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip.

    Since then, Pretoria has convinced the court to issue two interim orders, one on January 26, and another on March 28.  While the court has yet to decide the issue of whether Israel is culpable for genocide in waging in Gaza, the interim binding orders demand a lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid, the prevention of starvation and famine, and observing the UN Genocide Convention.  These all hint strongly at the unconscionable conduct on the part of the IDF against the civilian populace.

    The implications of such findings also go to Israel’s allies and partners still keen to supply it with weapons, weapons parts, and support of a military industrial nature.  Germany has been most prominent in this regard.  In 2023 30% of Israel’s military equipment purchases totalling US$326 million came from Berlin.  The Scholz government has also been a firm public supporter of Israel’s offensive.  “There is only one place for Germany at this time, and that is by Israel’s side,” proclaimed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to German lawmakers on October 12 last year.  Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock curtly stated that “It was not the job of politicians to tell the guns to shut up.”

    Baerbock’s remarks were all the more jarring given the 2006 views of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was then serving as Germany’s foreign minister.  With puffed up confidence, he claimed then that Europeans and Germans had played a seminal role in ending the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in “silencing of the guns.”

    Cognisant of such a stance, Nicaragua is now taking the South African precedent further by alleging that Germany is complicit in a genocidal enterprise.  While its own human rights record is coarse – the government of Daniel Ortega boasts a spotty record which involves, among other things, the killing of protesters – Nicaragua has form at the ICJ.  Four decades ago, it took the United States to the world court for assisting the counterrevolutionary Contras in their attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government.

    Its 43-page submission to the court insists that Germany is responsible for “serious violations of peremptory norms of international law taking place” in Gaza in its failure to prevent genocide “against the Palestinian people” and “contributed” to its commission by violating the Genocide Convention.  It further alleges that Germany failed to comply with humanitarian law principles derived from the Geneva Conventions of 1949, its protocols of 1977 and “intransgressible principles of international law” in failing to “ensure respect for these fundamental norms in all circumstances”.

    The application also compacts Israel’s attack on Gaza with “continued military occupation of Palestine”, taking issue with Germany’s alleged “rendering aid or assistance” in maintaining that status quo in the Occupied Territories while “rendering aid or assistance and not preventing the illegal regime of apartheid and the negation of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people.”

    Stretches of the Nicaraguan case would make troubling reading.  It notes that “by sending military equipment and now defunding UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] which provides essential support for the civilian population, Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide” and had failed, in any case, “in its obligation to do everything possible to prevent the commission of genocide”.

    Such conduct was all the more egregious “with respect to Israel given that Germany has a self-proclaimed privileged relationship with it, which would enable it to usefully influence its conduct.”

    With these considerations in mind, the application by Nicaragua argues that Germany is obligated to “immediately” halt its military support for Israel “that may be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes”.  Germany is further asked, not merely to “end its assistance to Israel” but “cooperate to uphold international law and to bring the perpetrators of these atrocities to justice.”

    On April 8, the ICJ opened preliminary hearings.  Alain Pellet, representing Nicaragua, argued that “Germany was and is fully conscious of the risk that the arms it has furnished and continues to furnish Israel” could be used in the commission of genocidal acts.  Another legal representative, Daniel Mueller, called the provision of humanitarian airdrops to “Palestinian children, women and men” a “pathetic excuse” given the furnishing of “military equipment that is used to kill and annihilate them”.  Nicaragua’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Carlos José Argüello Gómez, derided Berlin’s seeming inability “to be able to differentiate between self-defence and genocide.”

    Berlin’s defence follows on April 9.  A sense of its bitter flavour can be gathered from one of its top legal briefs, Tania von Uslar-Gleichen.  “Germany completely rejects the accusations.  We never did violate the Genocide Convention nor humanitarian law either directly or indirectly.”  Berlin was “committed to the upholding of international law”.

    If the defence fails to sway the judges, the case may well chart a line about third party responsibilities on preventing genocide in international humanitarian law.  At this point, the momentum towards some clarity on the point seems inexorable.

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  • A key function of the state-corporate media is to deny reality. They do supply news. But it is no accident that they supply news of a type that covers up the crimes of elite power.

    However, the appalling violence and destruction being inflicted in Gaza by Israel are simply too great to conceal. We may well be living through an unprecedented era where the vast crimes of the West, and the complicity of major news organisations, have never been more exposed to the public.

    Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the US economist and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, said in a recent interview:

    ‘We are seeing a massacre in front of our eyes—it is absolutely inhumane; it is absolutely war crimes; it is arguably, I personally think, likely genocidal according to the legal standards of the 1948 Genocide Convention.’

    He continued:

    ‘We haven’t had genocides captured by video feed day by day.

    ‘We have IDF forces standing with their thumbs up as they blow up universities, mosques, hospitals, and apartment buildings—it’s unbelievable. We have members of the Israeli cabinet preaching hate.

    ‘We’ve seen these religious nationalist extremist rabbis talk about killing all the people in Gaza. “And do you mean the children?” the Rabbi is asked. “Yes, the children. They can grow up to be terrorists.”’

    The indescribable horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza has elicited little more than anguished hand-wringing from Western leaders who have continued to send weapons to the apartheid state.

    Sachs made the point that matters which is so often ignored or glossed over by ‘responsible’ media, notably BBC News:

    ‘It could end by the United States government saying, “We are not providing the munitions for slaughter, period.”’ That would end it. Israel cannot do this one day without the United States.’

    Likewise, the daily Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, the country’s most widely distributed newspaper, recently carried a key quote from its lead correspondent [cited in an interview with former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy at around 6 mins : 25 secs] that:

    ‘Israel could not continue this war were it not for US military support.’

    Indeed, a clear-cut historical example of US leverage over Israel was provided by Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, an American think tank specialising in US foreign policy:

    ‘In 1982, President Ronald Regan was “disgusted” by Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. He stopped the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel and told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a phone call that “this is a holocaust.” Reagan demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Begin caved. Twenty minutes after their phone call, Begin ordered a halt on attacks.’

    Five British prime ministers have stopped arms to Israel in the past, including Margaret Thatcher when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, and Tony Blair who stopped the export of UK weapons that could be used to suppress Palestinians during the Second Intifada in 2002. But not Rishi Sunak, so far, in 2024.
    ‘Nothing Left To Assault’

    Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone wrote this week:

    ‘Israel has ended its assault on the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, because there is nothing left to assault. The facility — the largest medical complex in Gaza where hundreds of civilians had been sheltering — is now an empty, unusable, burnt-out husk. Witnesses report hundreds of corpses in and around the complex, with video footage showing human body parts protruding from the earth and bodies with zip ties on their wrists.’

    British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who spent over a month treating patients at Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals in Gaza, told Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now! interview:

    ‘I blame the Western journalists, who perpetuated the narrative that militarized the [Al-Shifa] hospital as a justifiable and an acceptable target to the Israelis. These genocide enablers, these Western journalists, from the very beginning, peddled these stories that the Israelis were feeding them about Shifa being on top of this massive complex of a command-and-control center. And their job was to enable the genocide to take place. And the genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed.’

    Dr Abu-Sittah paid tribute to Dr. Ahmad Maqadmeh, a fellow surgeon who was killed by Israeli forces at Al-Shifa alongside his mother:

    ‘And so, they have the blood of my friend — the blood of Ahmad Maqadmeh is on the hands of the CNN journalists and the BBC journalists and the ITV journalists, who, from the very beginning, were peddling this narrative.’

    These news organisations, and others, have routinely downplayed Israeli atrocities by serially publishing deceptive headlines that mask Israel’s responsibility. For example, when seven aid workers, three of them British, were killed in an Israeli drone attack this week, targeted in three separate strikes along a supposed ‘approved’ Israeli route, the New York Times (NYT) headline was:

    ‘Founder of World Central Kitchen says several workers killed in Gaza airstrike’

    The word ‘Israel’ was glaringly absent from the NYT headline. Middle East historian Assal Rad said:

    ‘Covering up Israel’s crimes enables them to commit more, name the attacker.’

    If something similar had happened in Ukraine, the headline would have prominently featured the words ‘Russia’ and ‘Putin’.

    Similarly, the NYT last month shielded Israel with the headline:

    ‘Deaths of Gazans desperate for food prompt fresh call for ceasefire’.

    The phrase ‘Israeli massacre of Gazans’ was missing from the headline.

    Rad pointed out yet another egregious example: an Economist article titled, ‘Gaza could face a famine by May’:

    ‘An entire Economist article on famine in Gaza doesn’t say the word “Israel” once. Not even when describing damage to farmland and water facilities or severely restricted aid deliveries.

    ‘Saying *who* is destroying the farmland and restricting aid seems like basic info to include.’

    Presumably stung by public exposure and criticism, the Economist later updated its piece to include mention of Israel…by including the propaganda claim: ‘Israel insists it is not obstructing aid lorries.’ Days later, this lie – because that is simply what it is – was highlighted by the Israeli murder of the seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen.

    Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN official in New York who resigned last year over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, tweeted:

    ‘The murder of @WCKitchen staff is only the latest. The genocidal Israeli regime has sealed the border & destroyed crops, wells, bakeries & food stores, murdered 200 aid workers, targeted security for aid, blocked aid trucks & massacred starving people lined up for aid. #genocide’

    A Guardian website headline declared:

    ‘Israeli military investigating after foreign aid workers killed in Gaza airstrike’.

    As former UK diplomat Craig Murray noted:

    ‘Beyond satire from @Guardian. Who killed them?

    ‘The Israeli military are the good guys apparently, investigating it.’

    Chris Doyle, Director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, observed:

    ‘Israel makes allegations against UNRWA but provides zero evidence. What happens? UK suspends funding pending investigation Israel carries out three strikes against known aid worker vehicles. What happens? UK says – Israel please investigate yourself, and we’ll still sell you arms’

    It is clear that Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, and Israel’s starvation of Gazans, are deliberate. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories said via X (formerly Twitter):

    ‘Knowing how Israel operates, my assessment is that Israeli forces intentionally killed #WCK workers so that donors would pull out & civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly. Israel knows Western countries & most Arab countries won’t move a finger for the Palestinians.’

    Israel’s intention, made clear in multiple public statements, is to get rid of Palestinians from Gaza and to impose Israeli sovereignty ‘from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea’.

    It is significant that even establishment-friendly figures on prominent platforms are finally speaking out. Richard Madeley of ITV’s Good Morning Britain, clearly appalled by Israel’s killing of seven aid workers, described it as an ‘execution’ while Nick Ferrari of LBC called for the suspension of UK arms sales to Israel, adding:

    ‘It could’ve been our missiles that killed them.’

    One could rightly argue that such outrage is long overdue. At the time of writing, the death toll in Gaza is 33,000, including more than 13,000 children. There is even overwhelming evidence that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza. In a dramatic front-page spread under the stark headline, ‘Enough’, the Independent loudly declared:

    ‘It may seem wrong that, after more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have perished, it took the deaths of just seven international aid workers to stir Western governments into a sense of outrage, but that is the reality.’

    ‘It may seem wrong’? It is wrong. It is damning evidence that Palestinian lives are deemed by those in power to be less valuable than the lives of Westerners. But it is right that so many are now saying, ‘Enough’, regardless of the motivation.
    ‘Not A Normal War’

    Dr Fozia Alvi, a Canadian physician who founded the US-based charity Humanity Auxilium, left Gaza in the third week of February as Israeli forces were threatening a ground assault against Rafah. She said:

    ‘This is not a normal war. The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.’

    Claudia Webbe, the independent MP for Leicester East, summarised where we are:

    ‘Israel is out of control.

    ‘Israel is deliberately killing International aid workers. It has now passed a law to ban journalists.

    ‘Israel is killing Palestinians in Gaza. Murder and genocide in plain sight. They don’t want you to know the truth. Our political leaders are complicit’

    But the complicit role of the media also needs to be highlighted. Des Freedman, a professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, believes that:

    ‘We need journalism that is committed to accurate and uncompromising investigation and not a spurious “impartiality” that hides brutal facts of occupation and genocide.’

    Freedman noted that the BBC, along with other major news outlets, largely ignored growing claims of Israeli genocide until the South African government brought evidence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024. The ICJ then found that there was a ‘plausible’ case that genocide was taking place.

    Freedman continued:

    ‘Since then, references to genocide on broadcasters’ ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) feeds – a sign of their editorial priorities – have virtually disappeared. While there are 54 mentions of genocide in Al Jazeera’s feed since 1 February, there is not a single one in the feeds of @BBCNews, @BBCWorld or @Channel4News.’

    The BBC actually made the rare concession of a ‘mistake’ in their live coverage of the ICJ genocide case against Israel. BBC editorial policy director David Jordan made the admission to MPs after BBC editors had chosen to show Israel’s defence against genocide charges in full, while only showing clips of South Africa’s case arguing Israel is committing genocide.

    Despite Jordan’s denial, the unequal coverage was indicative of serious BBC bias on Israel and Palestine, as has been demonstrated over many years by the Glasgow University Media Group, for example, and by a recent report from the Centre for Media Monitoring.

    One glaring aspect of the crisis in what passes for ‘democracy’ in this country is that there is no real party of opposition in Westminster. Labour under Sir Keir Starmer has done its best to divest itself of anything that smacks of socialism, cleaving as closely as possible to the establishment, and not daring to ruffle the feathers of the billionaire-owned press.

    Peter Oborne, former Telegraph chief political writer, observed recently that:

    ‘From the suffragettes to Gandhi, those who challenged the British state and were labelled extremists ended up being vindicated. The pro-Palestine protesters will be too.’

    He warned that the real extremists are those running the country or who wish to do so:

    ‘I am coming to believe that the real extremists can be found in Downing Street, the Conservative Party, and in Starmer’s Labour Party.’

    In a scathing column explaining why he was rescinding his Labour party membership, Owen Jones wrote:

    ‘The assault on Gaza, the great crime of our age, adds moral indecency to the pile of dishonesty and vacuity. When Starmer declared Israel had the right to cut off energy and water to Palestinian civilians, he did so as a human rights lawyer who understands the Geneva conventions. After letting shadow cabinet ministers defend him, he claimed it “has never been my view that Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel or medicines”. We all have political red lines: mine is supporting what would amount to war crimes against innocent civilians, toddlers and newborn babies among them, then gaslighting the public over doing so.’

    There are now belated and sporadic calls from Westminster demanding British arms be ‘suspended’. Insufficient media attention has focused on the damaging revelation that the Tory government has been told by its lawyers that Israel is in breach of international law and that the UK ‘has to cease all arms sales to Israel without delay’ or it could be found to be complicit in genocide. The government wishes to bury these truths.

    But pressure continues to mount on Downing Street: more than 600 lawyers, academics and retired senior judges, including three former supreme court justices, have signed a letter to the prime minister warning that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel. Neither the Tory government nor the Labour ‘opposition’ have yet agreed to stop selling arms to Israel. ‘Shameful’ hardly sums it up.

    Meanwhile, Department for Business and Trade civil servants who administer licenses for arms exports to Israel have raised concerns with their trade union that they could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza. They wish to cease such work ‘immediately’. As reported by Sky News, the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents civil servants, has requested an urgent meeting with the department to discuss ‘the legal jeopardy faced by civil servants who are continuing to work on this policy.’

    What does it say about the state of British society, and indeed democracy itself, that the public is being denied a realistic political choice to dissociate itself from mass slaughter and to stop the genocide in Gaza?

    Noam Chomsky has often pointed out that ‘the ideological system is bounded by the consensus of the privileged’ and that ‘elections are largely a ritual form.’ In other words, the public is technically allowed to participate in ‘democracy’ by pushing buttons every few years. But we have ‘essentially no role in formulating policy’. Our function is largely reduced to ratifying decisions made by the people in power. (Quoted in ‘Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter’, Noam Chomsky and James Kelman, PM Press, 2021, pages 103 and 159).

    If public awareness of this reality becomes widespread, then, and only then, is there hope of real progress in society.

    The post “Genocide Enablers” Gaza And The Corporate Media first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The future always surprises us to some degree. But we make plans, anyway, based on our projections, and we adjust them when our predictions are at least partially wrong, which they always are, because they make assumptions based upon things that we take for granted, such as our health and that meteors and tsunamis will not disrupt those plans. Bearing that in mind, I will make some predictions for the immediate future of Gaza and Israel, and their relationships with the rest of the world. I’m sorry if it is not a happy picture.

    First, I predict with sadness and disgust that the remaining Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza will be killed or expelled, mostly the former, despite all our efforts. The main reason is that, Joe Biden, as recently described by Aaron David Miller (Washington Post, March 14, 2024), sees no compelling alternative for Israel that doesn’t include doing grievous harm to Palestinian civilians. Properly translated, this means the greatest genocide since WWII. If this is an accurate picture of the thinking of the Biden administration, there can be little doubt that the US will continue to supply Israel with the means to make the population of Gaza disappear. The option of denying those means to Israel is simply unthinkable to Joe and his government. It might mean giving up their comfortable and prestigious retirement, future presidential libraries and all.

    Joe Biden is not Dwight D. Eisenhower, nor John Kennedy, nor even Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter. We no longer have a president with the guts or the acumen to defy anyone, least of all the Zionist Lobby, and we have no prospect of ever having such a person in the White House in the foreseeable future. Donald Trump? He needs the Israel Lobby even more than Biden, and if they weren’t comfortable with him, they would have sabotaged his candidacy a long time ago. Both of them have the same morals as Netanyahu. I rest my case.

    A ceasefire? I cannot imagine it. The week-long November pause worked because neither side gave up too much strategically and both benefited politically. There is no similar bargain on the horizon. If Hamas gives up all its captives, it has nothing left to trade. That’s why the Hamas proposal is in three stages, with the final stage being an independent Palestinian state with the right to defend itself, and with multilateral guarantees for its security and independence.

    That is, of course, totally unacceptable to Israel, and they said so. For them, the “occupied territories” are more accurately called “greater Israel”, which has not yet been sufficiently settled by Zionist Jews to justify extending the official borders to encompass it. Too many non-Jews. They will address that problem in its turn, but for now the priority is to empty Gaza. So much for the two-state solution, which Israel embraced as long as all they had to do was sit at a negotiations table, keep the deal just out of reach and blame the Palestinians for its failure. Now they’re having none of it.

    When will Israel’s genocide end, and what will the result look like? First, the Palestinian population in Gaza will have fallen by at least 2 million – as close as possible to zero, the result of both murder and expulsion, as noted earlier. The orphaned children will be far fewer than the dead ones, but those who survive will be shipped to western countries for adoption, so that they will lose their names and their cultural heritage. But I’m sure they will have loving parents and become well-adjusted western citizens.

    As for Israel, its world has been changing since October 7th. First, it is losing – and will continue to lose – its liberal population. It began years ago, but Israel’s population has declined by roughly 10 percent since October 7th, 2023, in parallel with the decline in the population of Gaza, but by choice instead of genocide. The fanatics with genocidal intentions are not the ones leaving, mostly the ones who are more in keeping with traditional Jewish values of being a light unto the nations – or at least not a source of darkness. The emigrants are mainly those who are giving up on the Zionist project. They are not the only ones. American and other western Jews are losing their appetite for the Zionist menu, which allows us to maintain our respect for integrity.

    This, of course, means that Israel will be far more isolated than previously, both from the Jewish diaspora and from the non-Jewish communities that previously supported Israel. It’s amazing how a little thing like genocide can cause your friends to turn on you. I suspect that Israeli products, institutions, and culture will be shunned by much of the world. No more trips to Israel as prizes on television game shows.

    I have no doubt that Gaza will be annexed to Israel, and I imagine that developers will create Zionist dream communities along the coast, on top of the graves and rubble of their victims. But there might be fewer new immigrants than they might have hoped for. Israel’s future, if it has one, will be as a violent fortress for Zionist exclusivism, supported by a slowly shrinking world Zionist network and their allies, using the resources of other countries in much the same way that Israel is using  the United States today, and enriching those individuals and interests that cooperate with them.

    I leave it to you to decide if this sounds like a strategy for success.

    The post Genocide as a Strategy for Success first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • I sat down with Phil Miller of Declassified UK to talk about the ways the western media disguise genocide in Gaza:

    The post How they get away with it in Gaza… first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • …What we see at work is not an expression of the sentiments of the American people; rather it reflects the will of a powerful minority which uses its economic power to control the organs of political life.

    — Albert Einstein, Einstein on Peace, p. 343.

    We entered the massive marketplace labeled “our democracy” as always long before any election and at this date hundreds of millions have already been spent both officially and off the books to insure that ruling power maintains control over American capitalism no matter who or what may be elected sheriff, mayor, animal control officer or president of the United States. Given that, the spending and consciousness brutality have already exceeded past experience and, as befitting a system verging on complete collapse and involving much more of humanity than American voters, the time for global as well as national focus on the status of an American empire making more people rich than ever before while making multitudes far more poor and continuing mass murders in other subject nations is not only at hand but at all parts of the international political economic organism.

    As the fading rulers of western capitalism act more like a crazed rat on a sinking ship but instead of leaping into the deeps it promotes the entire world into more warfare, mass murder, incredible profits for those who feed on bloodshed and a mental condition that might make homicidal maniacs seem critically thinking human beings, the natural and especially political environmental reality approaches the worst fantasy of religious fanatics: eternal damnation in the fires of hell. This joyful futuristic vision was born of a brilliant past that might make the present seem docile since none of the modern weapons existed in biblical times when spears, lances and demented religious leaders operated as ruling wealth as opposed to the lethally armed with weapons of mass murder political and media servants of rulers do today.

    The continuing since 1917 American imperial attacks on Russia have reached a point in the current war using Ukrainians to kill Russians while they die by the thousands with no hope of winning and American and foreign munitions makers make billions. Various of the NATO lapdog leaders sound even more crazed than Americans and urge broadening of the war to stop the eternal threat of Russia which exists in their fevered minds, said fever having been planted by America since the end of the second world war.

    Meanwhile, the center of global anti-Semitism, Israel, has exploded as never before with such bloody horror that many of the innocent and previously comatose have awakened and expressed anger and hostility about a situation that has prevailed since 1948 when Palestine was engulfed and devoured by the new nation said to have been a haven for those suffering horror during the second world war. This would be like Japan getting even for the American atrocities at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by invading Mexico, throwing the natives out when possible and making all others second class citizens once they took over, changed the language and culture to Japanese and proceeded to treat Mexicans worse than Americans ever had.

    In only one of thousands of contradictions of logic, language and morality, the European Jews who stole the land continue calling themselves Semites and screaming anti-Semitism whenever real Semites commit an act of aggression in retaliation and millions in the western world have their brains sunk deeper into an ocean of mental sewage. Like everything else in a radically changing world in which previous western dominance is nearing an end and hopefully global freedom is nearer than ever, the radical changes underway that can spell revolution for the human future can be made to seem more dismal than ever under the consciousness control of purveyors of the imperial lies now fantastically more powerful than any past relatively tin-pot dictatorial regime of later made to seem glorious royals and other past murderers.

    While it seems that the horrible choice offered voters by capital’s two parties back in 2020 will be the same in 2024 the only difference is that the divisions among Americans have grown even worse than before. But as the frustration and anger at both parties increase alternate choices, usually written off as foreign plots or national disorders, may finally have space to speak to radical change favoring democracy in substance rather than the bogus brain disease foisted on innocent people who are told it is freedom and democracy. Of course, and rape is simply an economic form of dating and hundreds of thousands of Americans living in the street are merely getting close to nature.

    While political madness depicts Putin as a menace to humanity for reacting to an American owned and operated insurrection in Ukraine and fill voters heads with alleged crimes committed by Trump which are the everyday reality of political pimps and hustlers who own and operate “our” democracy, especially Congress and the white house, Palestinians will continue to be murdered by Israelis financed by American taxpayers proving that our peace loving democracy is just what the world needs to bring on a nuclear destruction of humanity which is in the planning stages of our Mass Murder Inc. at the pentagon. This will come to pass if Americans do not rise up and create real democracy before it is too late. Among other things that will mean voting against the supposed lesser evil of the two party combo of economic cancer and political polio to bring about the end of capitalism and the beginning of a future for the human race that does not involve growing poverty for hundreds of millions while a relative handful become billionaires.

    The opening quote is from someone long admired for something called the theory of relativity, a term not even vaguely understood by billions of humans, but far more relevant, easily understandable and important is the fact that he was an anti-capitalist, a socialist and an anti-war pacifist, easily understandable by those same billions and hardly known by most. That and many other hidden facts about people, nations and political economics should become clearer while we adjust and work to transform a dreadful social reality into a hopeful future by ending warfare capitalism and bringing about a democratic world such as our pre-historic beginnings in social and communistic cooperation. And after we clear up some reality about Einstein, we’d all do well by checking out Marx in his own words and not those of his simplistic and far too often murderous detractors. He can help us learn more about what we need to understand about why our reality is crumbling and what we need to do to rebuild it.

    The post Private Profits vs. Social Prophets first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The past five months have been clarifying. What was supposed to be hidden has been thrust into the light. What was supposed to be obscured has come sharply into focus.

    Liberal democracy is not what it seems.

    It has always defined itself in contrast to what it says it is not. Where other regimes are savage, it is humanitarian. Where others are authoritarian, it is open and tolerant. Where others are criminal, it is law-abiding. When others are belligerent, it seeks peace. Or so the manuals of liberal democracy argue.

    But how to keep the faith when the world’s leading liberal democracies – invariably referred to as “the West” – are complicit in the crime of crimes: genocide?

    Not just law-breaking or a misdemeanour, but the extermination of a people. And not just quickly, before the mind has time to absorb and weigh the gravity and extent of the crime, but in slow motion, day after day, week after week, month after month.

    What kind of system of values can allow for five months the crushing of children under rubble, the detonation of fragile bodies, the wasting away of babies, while still claiming to be humanitarian, tolerant, peace-seeking?

    And not just allow all this, but actively assist in it. Supply the bombs that blow those children to pieces or bring houses down on them, and sever ties to the only aid agency that can hope to keep them alive.

    The answer, it seems, is the West’s system of values.

    The mask has not just slipped, it has been ripped off. What lies beneath is ugly indeed.

    Depravity on show

    The West is desperately trying to cope. When Western depravity is fully on show, the public’s gaze has to be firmly directed elsewhere: to the truly evil ones.

    They are given a name. It is Russia. It is Al Qaeda, and Islamic State. It is China. And right now, it is Hamas.

    There must be an enemy. But this time, the West’s own evil is so hard to disguise, and the enemy so paltry – a few thousand fighters underground inside a prison besieged for 17 years – that the asymmetry is difficult to ignore. The excuses are hard to swallow.

    Is Hamas really so evil, so cunning, so much of a threat that it requires mass slaughter? Does the West really believe that the attack of 7 October warrants the killing, maiming and orphaning of many, many tens of thousands of children as a response?

    To stamp out such thoughts, Western elites have had to do two things. First, they have tried to persuade their publics that the acts they collude in are not as bad as they look. And then that the evil perpetrated by the enemy is so exceptional, so unconscionable it justifies a response in kind.

    Which is exactly the role Western media has played over the past five months.

    Starved by Israel

    To understand how Western publics are being manipulated, just look to the coverage – especially from those outlets most closely aligned not with the right but with supposedly liberal values.

    How have the media dealt with the 2.3 million Palestinians of Gaza being gradually starved to death by an Israeli aid blockade, an action that lacks any obvious military purpose beyond inflicting a savage vengeance on Palestinian civilians? After all, Hamas fighters will outlast the young, the sick and the elderly in any mediaeval-style, attritional war denying Gaza food, water and medicines.

    A headline in the New York Times, for example, told readers last month, “Starvation is stalking Gaza’s children”, as if this were a famine in Africa – a natural disaster, or an unexpected humanitarian catastrophe – rather than a policy declared in advance and carefully orchestrated by Israel’s top echelons.

    The Financial Times offered the same perverse framing: “Starvation stalks children of northern Gaza”.

    But starvation is not an actor in Gaza. Israel is. Israel is choosing to starve Gaza’s children. It renews that policy each day afresh, fully aware of the terrible price being inflicted on the population.

    As the head of Medical Aid for Palestinians warned of developments in Gaza: “Children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen.”

    Last week Unicef, the United Nations children’s emergency fund, declared that a third of children aged under two in northern Gaza were acutely malnourished. Its executive director, Catherine Russell, was clear: “An immediate humanitarian cease-fire continues to provide the only chance to save children’s lives and end their suffering.”

    Were it really starvation doing the stalking, rather than Israel imposing starvation, the West’s powerlessness would be more understandable. Which is what the media presumably want their readers to infer.

    But the West isn’t powerless. It is enabling this crime against humanity – day after day, week after week – by refusing to exert its power to punish Israel, or even to threaten to punish it, for blocking aid.

    Not only that, but the US and Europe have helped Israel starve Gaza’s children by denying funding to the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, the main humanitarian lifeline in the enclave.

    All of this is obscured – meant to be obscured – by headlines that transfer the agency for starving children to an abstract noun rather than a country with a large, vengeful army.

    Attack on aid convoy

    Such misdirection is everywhere – and it is entirely intentional. It is a playbook being used by every single Western media outlet. It was all too visible when an aid convoy last month reached Gaza City, where levels of Israeli-induced famine are most extreme.

    In what has come to be known by Palestinians as the “Flour Massacre”, Israel shot into large crowds desperately trying to get food parcels from a rare aid convoy to feed their starving families. More than 100 Palestinians were killed by the gunfire, or crushed by Israeli tanks or hit by trucks fleeing the scene. Many hundreds more were seriously wounded.

    It was an Israeli war crime – shooting on civilians – that came on top of an Israeli crime against humanity – starving two million civilians to death.

    The Israeli attack on those waiting for aid was not a one-off. It has been repeated several times, though you would barely know it, given the paucity of coverage.

    The depravity of using aid convoys as traps to lure Palestinians to their deaths is almost too much to grasp.

    But that is not the reason the headlines that greeted this horrifying incident so uniformly obscured or soft-soaped Israel’s crime.

    For any journalist, the headline should have written itself: “Israel accused of killing over 100 as crowd waits for Gaza aid.” Or: “Israel fires into food aid crowd. Hundreds killed and injured”

    But that would have accurately transferred agency to Israel – Gaza’s occupier for more than half a century, and its besieger for the last 17 years – in the deaths of those it has been occupying and besieging. Something inconceivable for the Western media.

    So the focus had to be shifted elsewhere.

    BBC contortions

    The Guardian’s contortions were particularly spectacular: “Biden says Gaza food aid-related deaths complicate ceasefire talks”.

    The massacre by Israel was disappeared as mysterious “food aid-related deaths”, which in turn became secondary to the Guardian’s focus on the diplomatic fallout.

    Readers were steered by the headline into assuming that the true victims were not the hundreds of Palestinians killed and maimed by Israel but the Israeli hostages whose chances of being freed had been “complicated” by “food aid-related deaths”.

    The headline on a BBC analysis of the same war crime – now reframed as an author-less “tragedy” – repeated the New York Times’ trick: “Aid convoy tragedy shows fear of starvation haunts Gaza”.

    Another favourite manoeuvre, again pioneered by the Guardian, was to cloud responsibility for a clear-cut war crime. Its front-page headline read: “More than 100 Palestinians die in chaos surrounding Gaza aid convoy”.

    Once again, Israel was removed from the crime scene. In fact, worse, the crime scene was removed too. Palestinians “died” apparently because of poor aid management. Maybe UNRWA was to blame.

    Chaos and confusion became useful refrains for media outlets keener to shroud culpability. The Washington Post declared: “Chaotic aid delivery turns deadly as Israeli, Gazan officials trade blame”. CNN took the same line, downgrading a war crime to a “chaotic incident”.

    But even these failings were better than the media’s rapidly waning interest as Israel’s massacres of Palestinians seeking aid became routine – and therefore harder to mystify.

    A few days after the Flour Massacre, an Israeli air strike on an aid truck in Deir al-Balah killed at least nine Palestinians, while last week more than 20 hungry Palestinians were killed by Israeli helicopter gunfire as they waited for aid.

    “Food aid-related” massacres – which had quickly become as normalised as Israel’s invasions of hospitals – no longer merited serious attention. A search suggests the BBC managed to avoid giving significant coverage to either incident online.

    Food-drop theatrics

    Meanwhile, the media has ably assisted Washington in its various deflections from the collaborative crime against humanity of Israel imposing a famine on Gaza compounded by the US and Europe de-funding UNRWA, the only agency that could mitigate that famine.

    British and US broadcasters excitedly joined air crews as their militaries flew big-bellied planes over Gaza’s beaches, at great expense, to drop one-off ready-made meals to a few of the starving Palestinians below.

    Given that many hundreds of truckloads of aid a day are needed just to stop Gaza sliding deeper into famine, the drops were no more than theatrics. Each delivered at best a solitary truckload of aid – and then only if the palettes didn’t end up falling into the sea, or killing the Palestinians they were meant to benefit.

    The operation deserved little more than ridicule.

    Instead, dramatic visuals of heroic airmen, interspersed with expressions of concern about the difficulties of addressing the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, usefully distracted viewers’ attention not only from the operations’ futility but from the fact that, were the West really determined to help, it could strong-arm Israel into letting in far more plentiful aid by land at a moment’s notice.

    The media were equally swept up by the Biden administration’s second, even more outlandish scheme to help starving Palestinians. The US is to build a temporary floating pier off Gaza’s coast so that aid shipments can be delivered from Cyprus.

    The plot holes were gaping. The pier will take two months or more to construct, when the aid is needed now. In Cyprus, as at the land crossings into Gaza, Israel will be in charge of inspections – the main cause of hold-ups.

    And if the US now thinks Gaza needs a port, why not also get to work on a more permanent one?

    The answer, of course, might remind audiences of the situation before 7 October, when Gaza was under a stifling 17-year siege by Israel – the context for Hamas’ attack that the Western media never quite finds the space to mention.

    For decades, Israel has denied Gaza any connections to the outside world it cannot control, including preventing a sea port from being built and bombing the enclave’s only airport way back in 2001, shortly after it was opened.

    And yet, at the same time, Israel’s insistence that it no longer occupies Gaza – just because it has done so at arm’s length since 2005 – is accepted unquestioningly in media coverage.

    Again, the US has decisive leverage over Israel, its client state, should it decide to exercise it – not least billions in aid and the diplomatic veto it wields so regularly on Israel’s behalf.

    The question that needs asking by the media on every piece about “starvation stalking Gaza” is why is the US not using that leverage.

    In a typical breathless piece titled “How the US military plans to construct a pier and get food into Gaza”, the BBC ignored the big picture to drill down enthusiastically on the details of “huge logistical” and “security challenges” facing Biden’s project.

    The article revisited precedents from disaster relief operations in Somalia and Haiti to the D-Day Normandy landings in the Second World War.

    Credulous journalists

    In support of these diversionary tactics, the media have also had to accentuate the atrocities of Hamas’ 7 October attack – and the need to condemn the group at every turn – to contrast those crimes from what might otherwise appear even worse atrocities committed by Israel on the Palestinians.

    That has required an unusually large dose of credulousness from journalists who more usually present as hard-bitten sceptics.

    Babies being beheaded, or put in ovens, or hung out on clothes lines. No invented outrage by Hamas has been too improbable to have been denied front-page treatment, only to be quietly dropped later when each has turned out to be just as fabricated as it should have sounded to any reporter familiar with the way propagandists exploit the fog of war.

    Similarly, the entire Western press corps has studiously ignored months of Israeli media revelations that have gradually shifted responsibility for some of the the most gruesome incidents of 7 October – such as the burning of hundreds of bodies – off Hamas’ shoulders and on to Israel’s.

    Though Western media outlets failed to note the significance of his remarks, Israeli spokesman Mark Regev admitted that Israel’s numbering of its dead from 7 October had to be reduced by 200 because many of the badly charred remains turned out to be Hamas fighters.

    Testimonies from Israeli commanders and officials show that, blindsided by the Hamas attack, Israeli forces struck out wildly with tank shells and Hellfire missiles, incinerating Hamas fighters and their Israeli captives indiscriminately. The burnt cars piled up as a visual signifier of Hamas’ sadism are, in fact, evidence of, at best, Israel’s incompetence and, at worst, its savagery.

    The secret military protocol that directed Israel’s scorched-earth policy on 7 October – the notorious Hannibal procedure to stop any Israeli being taken captive – appears not to have merited mention by either the Guardian or the BBC in their acres of 7 October coverage.

    Despite their endless revisiting of the 7 October events, neither has seen fit to report on the growing demands from Israeli families for an investigation into whether their loved ones were killed under Israel’s Hannibal procedure.

    Nor have either the BBC or the Guardian reported on the comments of the Israeli military’s ethics chief, Prof Asa Kasher, bewailing the army’s resort to the Hannibal procedure on 7 October as “horrifying” and “unlawful”.

    Claims of bestiality

    Instead, liberal Western media outlets have repeatedly revisited claims that they have seen evidence – evidence they seem unwilling to share – that Hamas ordered rape to be used systematically by its fighters as a weapon of war. The barely veiled implication is that such depths of depravity explain, and possibly justify, the scale and savagery of Israel’s response.

    Note that this claim is quite different from the argument that there may have been instances of rape on 7 October.

    That is for good reason: There are plenty of indications that Israeli soldiers regularly use rape and sexual violence against Palestinians. A UN report in February addressing allegations that Israeli solders and officials had weaponised sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls since 7 October elicited none of the headlines and outrage from the Western media directed at Hamas.

    To make a plausible case that Hamas changed the rules of war that day, much greater deviance and sinfulness has been required. And the liberal Western media have willingly played their part by recycling claims of mass, systematic rape by Hamas, combined with lurid claims of necrophilic perversions – while suggesting anyone who asks for evidence is condoning such bestiality.

    But the liberal media’s claims of Hamas “mass rapes” – initiated by an agenda-setting piece by the New York Times and closely echoed by the Guardian weeks later – have crumbled on closer inspection.

    Independent outlets such as Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, the Grayzone and others have gradually pulled apart the Hamas mass rape narrative.

    But perhaps most damaging of all has been an investigation by the Intercept that revealed it was senior Times editors who recruited a novice Israeli journalist – a former Israeli intelligence official with a history of supporting genocidal statements against the people of Gaza – to do the field work.

    More shocking still, it was the paper’s editors who then pressured her to find the story. In violation of investigative norms, the narrative was reverse engineered: imposed from the top, not found through on-the-ground reporting.

    ‘Conspiracy of silence’

    The New York Times’ story appeared in late December under the headline “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7”. The Guardian’s follow-up in mid-January draws so closely on the Times’ reporting that the paper has been accused of plagiarism. Its headline was: “Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attacks”.

    That is for good reason: There are plenty of indications that Israeli soldiers regularly use rape and sexual violence against Palestinians. A UN report in February addressing allegations that Israeli solders and officials had weaponised sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls since 7 October elicited none of the headlines and outrage from the Western media directed at Hamas.

    To make a plausible case that Hamas changed the rules of war that day, much greater deviance and sinfulness has been required. And the liberal Western media have willingly played their part by recycling claims of mass, systematic rape by Hamas, combined with lurid claims of necrophilic perversions – while suggesting anyone who asks for evidence is condoning such bestiality.

    But the liberal media’s claims of Hamas “mass rapes” – initiated by an agenda-setting piece by the New York Times and closely echoed by the Guardian weeks later – have crumbled on closer inspection.

    Independent outlets such as Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, the Grayzone and others have gradually pulled apart the Hamas mass rape narrative.

    But perhaps most damaging of all has been an investigation by the Intercept that revealed it was senior Times editors who recruited a novice Israeli journalist – a former Israeli intelligence official with a history of supporting genocidal statements against the people of Gaza – to do the field work.

    More shocking still, it was the paper’s editors who then pressured her to find the story. In violation of investigative norms, the narrative was reverse engineered: imposed from the top, not found through on-the-ground reporting.

    ‘Conspiracy of silence’

    The New York Times’ story appeared in late December under the headline “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7”. The Guardian’s follow-up in mid-January draws so closely on the Times’ reporting that the paper has been accused of plagiarism. Its headline was: “Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attacks”.

    However, under questioning from the Intercept, a spokesperson for the New York Times readily walked back the paper’s original certainty, conceding instead that “there may have been systematic use of sexual assault.” [emphasis added] Even that appears too strong a conclusion.

    Holes in the Times’ reporting quickly proved so glaring that its popular daily podcast pulled the plug on an episode dedicated to the story after its own fact check.

    The rookie reporter assigned to the task, Anat Schwartz, has admitted that despite scouring the relevant institutions in Israel – from medical institutions to rape crisis centres – she found no one who could confirm a single example of sexual assault that day. She was also unable to find any forensic corroboration.

    She later told a podcast with Israel’s Channel 12 that she viewed the lack of evidence to be proof of “a conspiracy of silence”.

    Instead, Schwartz’s reporting relied on a handful of testimonies from witnesses whose other easily disprovable assertions should have called into question their credibility. Worse, their accounts of instances of sexual assault failed to tally with the known facts.

    One paramedic, for example, claimed two teenage girls had been raped and killed at Kibbutz Nahal Oz. When it became clear nobody fitted the description there, he changed the crime scene to Kibbutz Beeri. None of the dead there fitted the description either.

    Nonetheless, Schwartz believed she finally had her story. She told Channel 12: “One person saw it happen in Be’eri, so it can’t be just one person, because it’s two girls. It’s sisters. It’s in the room. Something about it is systematic, something about it feels to me that it’s not random.”

    Schwartz got further confirmation from Zaka, a private ultra-Orthodox rescue organisation, whose officials were already known to have fabricated Hamas atrocities on 7 October, including the various claims of depraved acts against babies.

    No forensic evidence

    Interestingly, though the main claims of Hamas rape have focused on the Nova music festival attacked by Hamas, Schwartz was initially sceptical – and for good reason – that it was the site of any sexual violence.

    As Israeli reporting has revealed, the festival quickly turned into a battlefield, with Israeli security guards and Hamas exchanging gunfire and Israeli attack helicopters circling overhead firing at anything that moved.

    Schwartz concluded: “Everyone I spoke to among the survivors told me about a chase, a race, like, about moving from place to place. How would they [have had the time] to mess with a woman, like – it is impossible. Either you hide, or you – or you die. Also it’s public, the Nova … such an open space.”

    But Schwartz dropped her scepticism as soon as Raz Cohen, a veteran of Israel’s special forces, agreed to speak to her. He had already claimed in earlier interviews a few days after 7 October that he had witnessed multiple rapes at Nova, including corpses being raped.

    But when he spoke to Schwartz he could only recall one incident – a horrific attack that involved raping a woman and then knifing her to death. Undermining the New York Times’ central claim, he attributed the rape not to Hamas but to five civilians, Palestinians who poured into Israel after Hamas fighters broke through the fence around Gaza.

    Notably, Schwartz admitted to Channel 12 that none of the other four people hiding in the bush with Cohen saw the attack. “Everyone else is looking in a different direction,” she said.

    And yet in the Times’ story, Cohen’s account is corroborated by Shoam Gueta, a friend who has since deployed to Gaza where, as the Intercept notes, he has been posting videos of himself rummaging through destroyed Palestinian homes.

    Another witness, identified only as Sapir, is quoted by Schwartz as witnessing a woman being raped at Nova at the same time as her breast is amputated with a box cutter. That account became central to the Guardian’s follow-up report in January.

    Yet, no forensic evidence has been produced to support this account.

    But the most damning criticism of the Times’ reporting came from the family of Gal Abdush, the headline victim in the “Screams without Words” story. Her parents and brother accused the New York Times of inventing the story that she had been raped at the Nova festival.

    Moments before she was killed by a grenade, Abdush had messaged her family and made no mention of a rape or even a direct attack on her group. The family had heard no suggestion that rape was a factor in Abdush’s death.

    A woman who had given the paper access to photos and video of Abdush taken that day said Schwartz had pressured her to do so on the grounds it would help “Israeli hasbara” – a term meaning propaganda designed to sway foreign audiences.

    Schwartz cited the Israeli welfare ministry as claiming there were four survivors of sexual assault from 7 October, though no more details have been forthcoming from the ministry.

    Back in early December, before the Times story, Israeli officials promised they had “gathered ‘tens of thousands’ of testimonies of sexual violence committed by Hamas”. None of those testimonies has materialised.

    None ever will, according to Schwartz’s conversation with Channel 12. “There is nothing. There was no collection of evidence from the scene,” she said.

    Nonetheless, Israeli officials continue to use the reports by the New York Times, the Guardian and others to try to bully major human rights bodies into agreeing that Hamas used sexual violence systematically.

    Which may explain why the media eagerly seized on the chance to resurrect its threadbare narrative when UN official Pramila Patten, its special representative on sexual violence in conflict, echoed some of their discredited claims in a report published this month.

    The media happily ignored the fact that Patten had no investigative mandate and that she heads what is in effect an advocacy group inside the UN. While Israel has obstructed UN bodies that do have such investigative powers, it welcomed Patten, presumably on the assumption that she would be more pliable.

    In fact, she did little more than repeat the same unevidenced claims from Israel that formed the basis of the Times and Guardian’s discredited reporting.

    Statements retracted

    Even so, Patten included important caveats in the small print of her report that the media were keen to overlook.

    At a press conference, she reiterated that she had seen no evidence of a pattern of behaviour by Hamas, or of the use of rape as a weapon of war – the very claims the Western media had been stressing for weeks.

    She concluded in the report that she was unable to “establish the prevalence of sexual violence”. And further, she conceded it was not clear if any sexual violence occurring on 7 October was the responsibility of Hamas, or other groups or individuals.

    All of that was ignored by the media. In typical fashion, a Guardian article on her report asserted wrongly in its headline: “UN finds ‘convincing information’ that Hamas raped and tortured Israeli hostages”.

    Patten’s primary source of information, she conceded, were Israeli “national institutions” – state officials who had every incentive to mislead her in the furtherance of the country’s war aims, as they had earlier done with a compliant media.

    As the US Jewish scholar Normal Finkelstein has pointed out, Patten also relied on open-source material: 5,000 photos and 50 hours of video footage from bodycams, dashcams, cellphones, CCTV and traffic surveillance cameras. And yet that visual evidence yielded not a single image of sexual violence. Or as Patten phrased it: “No tangible indications of rape could be identified.”

    She admitted she had seen no forensic evidence of sexual violence, and had not met a single survivor of rape or sexual assault.

    And she noted that the witnesses and sources her team spoke to – the same individuals the media had relied on – proved unreliable. They “adopted over time an increasingly cautious and circumspect approach regarding past accounts, including in some cases retracting statements made previously”.

    Collusion in genocide

    If anything has been found to be systematic, it is the failings in the Western media’s coverage of a plausible genocide unfolding in Gaza.

    Last week a computational analysis of the New York Times’ reporting revealed it continued to focus heavily on Israeli perspectives, even as the death-toll ratio showed that 30 times as many Palestinians had been killed by Israel in Gaza than Hamas had killed Israelis on 7 October.

    The paper quoted Israelis and Americans many times more regularly than they did Palestinians, and when Palestinians were referred to it was invariably in the passive voice.

    In Britain, the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring has analysed nearly 177,000 clips from TV broadcasts covering the first month after the 7 October attack. It found Israeli perspectives were three times more common than Palestinian ones.

    A similar study by the Glasgow Media Group found that journalists regularly used condemnatory language for the killing of Israelis – “murderous”, “mass murder”, “brutal murder” and “merciless murder” – but never when Palestinians were being killed by Israel. “Massacres”, “atrocities” and “slaughter” were only ever carried out against Israelis, not against Palestinians.

    Faced with a plausible case of genocide – one being televised for months on end – even the liberal elements of the Western media have shown they have no serious commitment to the liberal democratic values they are supposedly there to uphold.

    They are not a watchdog on power, either the power of the Israeli military or Western states colluding in Israel’s slaughter. Rather the media are central to making the collusion possible. They are there to disguise and whitewash it, to make it look acceptable.

    Indeed, the truth is that, without that help, Israel’s allies would long ago have been shamed into action, into stopping the slaughter and starvation. The Western media’s hands are stained in Gaza’s blood.

    • First published in Declassified UK

    The post How the Western media helped build the case for genocide in Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On March 15, the next stage of an intriguing legal process seeking to hold the Biden administration accountable for its failure to prevent, as well as being complicit in, alleged acts of genocide taking place in Gaza, was taken.  It all stems from a lawsuit filed last November in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing a number of Palestinian human rights organisations including Palestinians in Gaza and the United States.

    The lawsuit sought an order from the court “requiring that the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense adhere to their duty to prevent, and not further, the unfolding genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.”  The relevant duty arose by virtue of the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, which made obligations under it “judicially enforceable as a peremptory norm of customary international law.”

    The complaint further alleged that the genocidal conditions in Gaza had “so far been made possible because of unconditional support given [to Israel] by the named official-capacity defendants in this case,” namely, President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

    Such legal challenges can face challenges.  Can the foreign policy of a state, which is the purview of the executive, fall within the scope of judicial review?  In some countries, this has been shown to be the case – consider the Dutch appeals court decision compelling the government of the Netherlands to halt the transfer of F-35 parts to Israel for fear it would fall foul of the Genocide Convention.  “The Netherlands,” the court found, “is obligated to prohibit the export of military goods if there is a clear risk of serious violations of international humanitarian law.”

    In the US, the separation of powers walls off judicial interference in matters of foreign policy.  Jeffrey S. White, in dismissing the case at first instance, admitted it was the “most difficult” of his career, conceding that the factual grounds asserted by the plaintiffs seemed largely “uncontroverted”.  He also acknowledged the legal noise and interest caused by South Africa’s action in the International Court of Justice against Israel, one contending that Israel’s conduct against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip satisfied the elements of genocide.

    While the ICJ is unlikely to reach a conclusion on the matter any time soon, it issued an interim order of provisional measures explicitly putting Israel on notice to comply with the Genocide Convention, punish those responsible for directly and publicly inciting genocide, permit basic humanitarian assistance and essential services to the Gaza Strip, preserve relevant evidence pertaining to potential genocidal acts and report to the ICJ on its compliance within a month.

    In White’s words, “the undisputed evidence before this Court comports with the finding of the ICJ and indicates that the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law.”  But to compel the US government to cease aid to Israel of a financial and military matter were matters “intimately related to foreign policy and national security”. The judiciary was, reasoned White, “not equipped with the intelligence or the acumen necessary to make foreign policy decisions on behalf of the government.”

    On March 8, an appeal was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-counsel Van Der Hout LLP in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit arguing that aiding and abetting genocide can never be seen as a legitimate, unquestioned policy decision. The federal judiciary was duty bound to uphold the Genocide Convention, one that had taken on “an urgent, even existential dimension when the legal violation at issue is facilitating and even accelerating the destruction of an entirpeople.”

    Within a matter of days, eight amicus briefs were submitted supporting the Palestinian plaintiffs.   In one brief, eleven constitutional, federal courts and international law scholars submit in severe fashion that “affirming the district court’s decision would create serious mischief and uncertainty by contradicting this Court’s and the US Supreme Court’s political question jurisprudence and degrading the essential judicial role in interpreting and applying the law, including norms of international law, treaties, and their implementing statutes.”

    While Justice White had noted the obvious proposition that foreign policy remained a matter for the political branches of government, with disputes on the subject being nonjusticiable, “that principle was not actually at issue in this case.”  The Supreme Court had recognised that “legal disputes that touch on foreign affairs are not automatically policy disputes or political questions.” In this instance, the district court had “eschewed its responsibility to closely analyze the actual issues presented in favor of abstraction, generality, and already rejected misconceptions about what is and is not a political question.”

    Another brief from seventeen former diplomats, service members and intelligence officers argues that “courts may decide whether an act violates a law, and that a finding that they cannot would harm US foreign policy.”  The authors accepted “for present purposes that the district court’s factual finding, that the Israeli military’s conduct may plausibly constitute genocide, accurately reflects the record and controls at this juncture.” Again, White was taken to task for not appreciating the distinction between the “wisdom” of foreign policy – a nonjusticiable issue – and “cases that question the legality of foreign policy, because applying the law to determine the legality of government action is the judiciary’s responsibility.”

    Most impressive for the plaintiffs was the filing by 139 human rights organisations, bar associations and social justice movement lawyers reiterating the point that “allegations of the United States’ violations of the duties to prevent genocide and avoid complicity in its commission are clearly justiciable.”  International law, by virtue of its “decentralized” nature, placed reliance upon States “to enforce the obligations to which they have consented, imposing a primary duty to the domestic courts of each State to ensure the compliance of their executive and legislative bodies with international law.”

    Oral arguments will be heard in San Francisco in June 2024.  By that time, the killing, starving and displacement of the Palestinian populace in Gaza will have further crystallised in its horror, leaving the legal fraternity dragging their feet.  But over the cadaverous nature of this conflict, litigants in the US may be clearer about whether courts can hold the government to account for aiding and abetting the commission of alleged acts of genocide.

    The post Complicity in Gaza: Holding US Foreign Policy Legally Accountable first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages

    It’s 8 pm in Gaza, Palestine right now, the end of my fourth day in Rafah and the first moment I’ve had to sit in a quiet place to reflect.

    I’ve tried to take notes, photos, mental images, but this moment is too big for a notepad or my struggling memory. Nothing prepared me for what I would witness.

    Before I made it across the Rafah-Egypt border, I read every bit of news coming out of Gaza or about Gaza. I did not look away from any video or image posted from the ground, no matter how gruesome, shocking or traumatising.

    I kept in touch with friends who reported on their situations in the north, middle and south of Gaza – each area suffering in different ways. I stayed current on the latest statistics, the latest political, military and economic maneuverings of Israel, the US and the rest of the world.

    I thought I understood the situation on the ground. But I didn’t.

    Nothing can truly prepare you for this dystopia. What reaches the rest of the world is a fraction of what I’ve seen so far, which is only a fraction of this horror’s totality.

    Gaza is hell. It is an inferno teeming with innocents gasping for air.

    But even the air here is scorched. Every breath scratches and sticks to the throat and lungs.

    What was once vibrant, colourful, full of beauty, potential and hope against all odds, is draped in gray-coloured misery and grime.

    Barely any trees

    Journalists and politicians call it war. The informed and honest call it genocide.

    What I see is a holocaust – the incomprehensible culmination of 75 years of Israeli impunity for persistent war crimes.

    Rafah is the southernmost part of Gaza, where Israel crammed 1.4 million people into a space the size of London’s Heathrow Airport.

    Water, food, electricity, fuel and supplies are scarce. Children are without school – their classrooms having been turned into makeshift shelters for tens of thousands of families.

    Nearly every inch of previously empty space is now occupied by a flimsy tent sheltering a family.

    There are barely any trees left, as people have been forced to cut them down for firewood.

    I didn’t register the absence of greenery until I happened upon a red bougainvillea. Its flowers were dusty and alone in a deflowered world, but still alive.

    The incongruity struck me and I stopped the car to photograph it.

    Now I look for greenery and flowers wherever I go – so far in the southern and middle areas (though the middle increasingly became more difficult to enter). But there are only small patches of grass here and there and an occasional tree waiting to be burned to bake bread for a family subsisting on UN rations of canned beans, canned meat and canned cheese.

    A proud people with rich culinary traditions and habits of fresh foods have been reduced and accustomed to a handful of pastes and mush that have been sitting on shelves for so long that all you can taste is the metallic rancidity of the cans.

    It’s worse in the north.

    My friend Ahmad (not his real name) is one of a handful of people who have internet. It’s sporadic and weak, but we can still message each other.

    He sent me a photo of himself that looked to me like a shadow of the young man I knew. He has lost over 25 kg.

    People first resorted to eating horse and donkey feed, but that’s gone. Now they’re eating the donkeys and horses.

    Some are eating stray cats and dogs, which are themselves starving and sometimes feeding on human remains that litter streets where Israeli snipers picked off people who dared to venture within the sight of their scopes. The old and weak have already died of hunger and thirst.

    Flour is scarce and more valuable than gold.

    I heard a story about a man in the north who managed to get his hands on a bag of flour recently (normally costing $8) and was offered jewellry, electronics and cash worth $2,500 for it. He refused.

    Feeling small

    People in Rafah feel privileged to have flour and rice reaching them. They will tell you this and you will feel humbled because they offer to share what little they have.

    And you will feel ashamed because you know you can leave Gaza and eat whatever you want. You will feel small here because you are unable to make a real dent to assuage the catastrophic need and loss and because you will understand that they are better than you are, as they have somehow remained generous and hospitable in a world that has been most ungenerous and inhospitable to them for so very long.

    I brought as much as I could, paying for extra luggage and weight for six pieces of luggage and filling 12 more in Egypt. What I brought for myself fit into the backpack I carried.

    I had the foresight to bring five big bags of coffee, which turned out to be the most popular gift for my friends here. Making and serving coffee to the staff where I’m staying is my favourite thing to do, for the sheer joy each sip seems to bring.

    But that will soon run out too.

    Hard to breathe

    I hired a driver to deliver seven heavy suitcases of supplies to Nuseirat, which he ferried down a few flights of stairs. He told me that carrying those bags made him feel human again because it was the first time in four months that he had been up and down stairs.

    It reminded him of living in a home instead of the tent where he now resides.

    It is hard to breathe here, literally and metaphorically. An immovable haze of dust, decay and desperation coat the air.

    The destruction is so massive and persistent that the fine particles of pulverised life don’t have time to settle. The lack of petrol made people resort to filling their cars with stearate – used cooking oil that burns dirty.

    It emits a peculiar foul smell and film that stick to the air, the hair, clothes, throat and lungs. It took me a while to figure out the source of that pervasive odour, but it’s easy to discern others.

    The scarcity of running or clean water degrades the best of us. Everyone does their best with themselves and their children, but at some point, you stop caring.

    At some point, the indignity of filth is inescapable. At some point, you just wait for death, even as you also wait for a ceasefire.

    But people don’t know what they will do after a ceasefire.

    They’ve seen pictures of their neighbourhoods. When new images are posted from the northern region, people will gather to try to figure out which neighbourhood it is, or whose house that mound of rubble used to be. Often those videos come from Israeli soldiers occupying or blowing up their homes.

    Erasure

    I’ve spoken to many survivors pulled from the rubble of their homes. They recount what happened to them with a deadpan countenance, as if it didn’t happen to them; as if it was someone else’s family buried alive; as if their own torn bodies belong to others.

    Psychologists say it’s a defence mechanism, a kind of numbing of the mind for the sake of survival. The reckoning will come later – if they survive.

    But how does one reckon with losing your entire family, watching and smelling their bodies disintegrate around you in the rubble, as you wait for rescue or death? How does one reckon with total erasure of your existence in the world – your home, family, friends, health, whole neighbourhood and country?

    No photos of your family, wedding, children, parents left; even the graves of your loved ones and ancestors bulldozed. All this while the most powerful forces and voices vilify and blame you for your wretched fate.

    Genocide isn’t just mass murder. It is intentional erasure.

    Of histories. Of memories, books and culture.

    Erasure of potential in a land. Erasure of hope in and for a place.

    Erasure is the impetus for destroying homes, schools, places of worship, hospitals, libraries, cultural centers, recreational centers and universities.

    Genocide is intentional dismantling of another’s humanity. It is the reduction of a proud, educated, high-functioning ancient society into penniless objects of charity, forced to eat the unspeakable to survive; to live in filth and disease with nothing to hope for except an end to bombs and bullets raining on and through their bodies, their lives, their histories and futures.

    No one can think or hope for what might come after a ceasefire. The ceiling of their hope at this hour is for the bombing to stop.

    It is a minimal ask. A minimal recognition of Palestinian humanity.

    Despite Israel cutting power and internet, Palestinians have managed to livestream a picture of their own genocide to a world that allows it to continue.

    But history will not lie. It will record that Israel perpetrated a holocaust in the 21st century.

    • Republished from the Electronic Intifada, March 6, 2024

    The post History Will Record that Israel Committed a Holocaust first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In the early hours of the morning, a group of antiwar activists took on Travis Air Force Base, embarking on their fourth attempt to disrupt operations at the military installation that has directly attributed to the genocide in Gaza.

    The group’s initial plan to block the main gate was quickly abandoned due to safety concerns as vehicles rushed past, many exceeding way beyond the speed limit. Instead, they positioned themselves at the side of the road, waving posters, flags, and a prominent banner bearing the message:

    “STOP TRAVIS: NO US WEAPONS FOR GENOCIDE: STOP ILLEGAL WAR CRIMES AGAINST CIVILIANS.”

    Another striking image was that of Aaron Bushnell, alongside his poignant final words: “I will no longer be complicit in genocide… Free Palestine.”

    As daylight broke, law enforcement arrived, warning the activists of potential arrest if they violated any laws. Undeterred, the activists continued their protest, marching in the crosswalk during green lights and engaging with motorists stopped at red lights with their chants and placards.

    By 8:00 am PDT, the activists had shifted their demonstration to the North Gate of Travis Air Force Base, disrupting traffic flow into the facility. The peace activists distributed leaflets explaining the purpose behind the action to the drivers stalled in the blockade. However, the Fairfield police arrived soon after and arrested five individuals around 9:30 am PDT.

    Among those detained were Toby Blomé, Fred Bialy, Wynd Kaufmyn, Jacq Le, and Arthur Koch. Shockingly, Arthur Koch, initially a bystander documenting the protest, was also arrested despite not actively participating. Jacq Le’s attempt to intervene and clarify Arthur’s status led to her being forcefully subdued by an officer, aggravating a healing broken arm injury in the process.

    Subsequently, all five activists were taken into custody, transported to Solano County jail, and held until their release at 2:00 pm. Upon their release, Solano Unity Network and Codepink members met them with food and support. However, one of the detainees noted that the police did not return her cash that was with her personal belongings, a common occurrence, according to local activists.

    Fairfield Police provided the five with a May 13, 2024, court date. As their cause continues to draw attention, their actions underscore the immediate need for a permanent ceasefire, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and an end to the occupation of Palestine.

    The post Five Activists Arrested after Attempting to Shutdown Travis Air Force Base for Fourth Time first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • In a work entitled “Irish Famine 4,” Palestinian-American journalist and artist Sam Husseini combined grass and paint to commemorate a bitter time in Irish history when starving people died with their mouths stained green because, according to historian Christine Kinealy, their last meal was grass. Shamefully, British occupiers profited from exporting out of Ireland the food crops so desperately needed. During a seven-year period beginning in 1845, one million Irish people died from starvation and related diseases. It was a deliberate mass killing, employing one of the most horrific means of execution imaginable—an excruciating descent of weeks’ duration into despair, delirium, and bodily immobility while one’s attention, one’s character, is gradually reduced to little more than appetite and pain.

    Now, in the occupied Gaza Strip, as weapons dealers benefit from increasing military shipments to Israel, Palestinians have resorted to eating mixtures of grass and animal feed. The past five months of Israeli siege, bombing, and displacement have killed more than 31,000—mostly women and children—but a process of famine long underway is clearly about to expand that number exponentially, particularly among children.

    Human Rights Watch says the Israeli government is starving civilians as a method of warfare in Gaza. Aiding and abetting this war crime, the United States has approved 100 military sales to Israel over the past five months. U.S. bullets, bombs, and guns have helped keep crucially needed aid from reaching millions of Palestinians. The bombs have buried or destroyed much of the food supplies which could have mitigated this horror, and they have forced vast populations to flee attacks and huddle in the city that is Israel’s latest target: Rafah. The United States continues providing the muscle behind a starvation genocide.

    On March 11, eight U.S. Senators signed a letter to President Joe Biden insisting that ongoing weapons shipments violate U.S. laws forbidding military aid to regimes that are obstructing U.S. humanitarian aid.

    Twenty-five prominent humanitarian and human rights organizations delivered a letter to the President echoing the Senators’ message.

    Even as Israel faces mounting pressure from world leaders to stop impeding humanitarian relief shipments, Israel turned back another aid truck, this time because it contained children’s medical kits. These kits included scissors useful for applying bandages or cutting away clothing to reach shrapnel.

    The Israelis forbade the scissors as a potential dual-use weapon. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to send guns and bombs to Israel.

    Each day brings new reports of Palestinians, 40 percent of them children, succumbing to disease and death because they are deprived of food, fuel, clean water, medicines, and shelter. Hellish conditions worsen as infectious contamination spreads from decomposing bodies and the chemical contaminants from thousands upon thousands of Israeli and Western-supplied bombs that have been dropped on Gaza.

    Occupiers in Representative Jim McGovern’s office in Massachusetts, March 14, 2024.

    In Northampton, Massachusetts, six activists are on the third day of an occupation of the office of Representative Jim McGovern, demanding that he call on the President to immediately halt all weapons shipments to Israel and stop the United States from vetoing United Nations cease-fire resolutions.

    “These are desperate times,” says Peter Kakos, one of the occupiers. “We must call for immediate action, and nothing less.” He’s particularly mindful of 17,000 Gazan children who are estimated by UNICEF to be currently unaccompanied or separated from their parents.

    We talk about the mental harm on children caused by COVID-19 lockdowns. A March 12, 2024, report by Save the Children draws our attention to what five months of carnage, flight, starvation, and disease, on top of nearly seventeen years of apartheid conditions, will have permanently done to the children of Gaza who survive the brutality now afflicting them.

    The post When Starvation Is a Weapon, the Harvest Is Shame first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • WATCH Russia deploy ‘game changer’ weapon against Ukraine©  Telegram / mod_russia

    Russia’s Defense Ministry has released footage of an Su-34 bomber dropping FAB-500 glide munitions, which have been hailed as a game-changer in the Ukraine conflict for their destructive potential and deployment range of up to 80km.

    In a video that appears to be shot from a camera attached to the side of an aircraft, several bombs can be seen dropping and then deploying their wings shortly thereafter.

    The bombs are equipped with a unified planning and correction module (UMPC), which turns regular free-falling bombs into guided glide munitions. The high-explosive aerial FAB-500 bombs seen in the video each carry a 300-kilogram payload.

    The UMPC system has also been used on other older Soviet aerial gravity bombs such as the FAB-1500 – a 1.5-tonne weapon, nearly half of which consists of high explosives – to turn them into highly destructive and effective glide munitions.

    These modernized bombs have proven to be “dramatically” effective against Ukrainian forces, as noted by Western experts and media outlets such as the Washington Post and CNN, because Kiev’s troops cannot effectively defend against such munitions.

    With their ability to traverse long distances with accuracy, the UMPC-fitted bombs can be fired from Russian jets well outside the effective range of Kiev’s existing aerial defense systems, leaving Ukrainian forces unable to defend against them.

    Ukrainian commanders have also noted the “very high destructive power” of these munitions. Dmitry Lykhoviy, a Ukrainian military spokesman, told the Post that the Russian bombs are capable of completely demolishing houses and foundations that are used for defense fortifications.

    “These bombs completely destroy any position. All buildings and structures simply turn into a pit after the arrival of just one,” recalled one fighter of a Ukrainian assault brigade operating near the stronghold town of Avdeevka, which was captured by Russian forces last month.

    Russia has reportedly “significantly” increased the rate at which these  bombs have been used on Ukrainian positions, particularly around Avdeevka, leading to heavy casualties.

    According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s latest estimates, Ukraine’s losses of military personnel since the start of the conflict in 2022 have surpassed 444,000 people.

    The post Russia Deploys “Game Changer” Weapon against Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Corporate journalists are indeed ‘masters of self-adulation’, as Noam Chomsky has observed. In fact, they have to be; or at least they have to appear to be.

    Consider BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson CBE, a long-term sparring partner and rare example of a BBC journalist who has bothered to reply to our challenges, often graciously. There have been times over the last two decades when Simpson genuinely seemed to get some of what we were saying. It’s no surprise, though, to read Simpson’s recent comment on X:

    My colleagues at @itvnews, @SkyNews and @BBCNews jump through hoops to be balanced and impartial, and @Ofcom rightly holds us to the highest standard. Switch on @GBNews, and you watch unashamedly opinionated allegations being passed off as fact. What’s going on, Ofcom? (John Simpson, X, 25 February 2024)

    Journalist Glenn Greenwald put this heroic claim in perspective:

    The public despises the corporate media. There is almost nobody held in lower esteem or who is more distrusted and abhorred than the liberal employees of large media corporations. Nobody wants to hear from them, so in-group arrogance is all they have left.

    But British media are the best of a bad bunch, right? Greenwald again, accurately:

    The worst media in the democratic world is the British media, and it’s not even close.

    I know it’s hard for people in other countries who hate their own media to believe, but whatever you hate about your country’s media, the UK media has in abundance and worse.

    Indicatively, in November 2002, as Bush and Blair were trying to scare their way to war on Iraq, Simpson produced a BBC documentary called: ‘Saddam – A Warning From History’ (BBC1, 3 November 2002). The title was an unsubtle and ‘unashamedly opinionated’ reference to an earlier BBC series, ‘The Nazis – A Warning From History’. This, of course, was a comparison that dovetailed with the sleaziest themes of US-UK state propaganda.

    In 2013, Simpson opined:

    The US is still the world’s biggest economic and military power, but it seems to have lost the sense of moral mission that caused it to intervene everywhere from Vietnam to Iraq…

    Alas, the US continues to struggle to regain its ‘sense of moral mission,’ as it supplies the missiles, bombs and diplomatic immunity fuelling the genocide in Gaza.

    Far from jumping through hoops ‘to be balanced and impartial,’ the BBC seems embarrassed even to associate Israel with its own crimes. A typical BBC headline read:

    World Food Programme says northern Gaza aid convoy blocked

    Was there a landslide? Was Hamas playing politics with food aid? The headline should have read:

    Israel blocks northern Gaza aid convoy

    Or consider the damning words of the Director-General of The World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who reported this month:

    Grim findings during @WHO visits to Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals in northern #Gaza: severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed…

    The situation at Al-Awda Hospital is particularly appalling, as one of the buildings is destroyed.

    Kamal Adwan Hospital is the only paediatrics hospital in the north of Gaza, and is overwhelmed with patients. The lack of food resulted in the deaths of 10 children.

    The BBC headline reporting this story read:

    Children starving to death in northern Gaza – WHO

    Did the crops fail? If Russia had caused child starvation in Ukraine, we can be confident the words ‘Putin’ and ‘Russia’ would have appeared front and centre in BBC reporting.

    Over a picture of an emaciated, skeletal child victim of Israeli starvation in Gaza, Peter Oborne made a related point:

    If Gaza was Ukraine this terrible picture would be on every front page tomorrow morning.

    Needless to say, that was not to be.

    On 29 February, a New York Times comment piece was titled:

    Starvation Is Stalking Gaza’s Children

    Former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook commented:

    Israel is choosing to starve Gaza’s children by blocking aid.

    On 5 March, a Reuters headline read:

    As Gaza’s hunger crisis worsens, emaciated children seen at hospitals

    Author Assal Rad responded:

    Gaza’s “hunger crisis” is not a natural phenomenon. Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza as a weapon of war, which is an act of collective punishment and a war crime.

    The Al-Rashid Humanitarian Aid ‘Tragedy’

    What has been termed the ‘Al-Rashid humanitarian aid incident’ – also described as ‘the Flour Massacre’ because the food convoy involved was carrying sacks of flour – occurred in Gaza on 29 February. At least 118 Palestinian civilians were killed and at least 760 were injured after Israeli tanks opened fire on civilians seeking food from aid trucks on al-Rashid street to the west of Gaza City. The BBC’s immediate headline reactions were full of mystery:

    Israel-Gaza war latest: More than 100 reported killed as crowd waits for Gaza aid

    And:

    Biden says Gaza food aid-related deaths complicate ceasefire talks

    USA Today’s headline was surreal:

    112 killed in Gaza food line carnage: Israel blames Palestinian aid drivers

    On 1 March, a Guardian front-page headline read:

    More than 100 Palestinians die in chaos surrounding Gaza aid convoy

    The standfirst (sub-heading):

    Israeli military rejects claims it fired on crowd and blames deadly crush

    Imagine that second, high-profile comment in response to claims of a Russian atrocity in Ukraine, especially if Russia had inflicted comparable levels of near-total destruction on Ukraine.

    It wasn’t that the truth was unavailable. One day before the Guardian headline appeared, the UK’s sole left-wing national newspaper, the Morning Star, published this online headline, which appeared in the print edition the following day:

    ISRAELI ARMY FIRES INTO CROWD WAITING FOR FOOD, KILLING 104

    Compare also its standfirst:

    ATROCITY: Gaza death toll tops 30,000 after soldiers gunned down starving civilians as they unloaded aid lorries

    On 1 March, Associated Press reported:

    The head of a Gaza City hospital that treated some of the Palestinians wounded in the bloodshed surrounding an aid convoy said Friday that more than 80% had been struck by gunfire, suggesting there was heavy shooting by Israeli troops. (Our emphasis)

    The following day, a BBC headline read:

    Fergal Keane: Aid convoy tragedy shows fear of starvation haunts Gaza

    A massacre is first and foremost a crime, not a tragedy. The BBC continued to muddle the picture:

    After the events at al-Rashid Street in Gaza, in which more than 100 people were reported killed after a rush on an aid convoy, the international community is under pressure to tackle the growing crisis of hunger in the territory, as Fergal Keane reports from Jerusalem. (Our emphasis)

    The focus on people reported killed in a ‘tragedy’ ‘after a rush on an aid convoy’ suggested death by trampling, or perhaps troops shooting in panic at a rampaging mob. It led away from the truth that Israeli main battle tanks fired on starving civilians with heavy machine guns. While the word ‘tragedy’ was used four times in the report, the words ‘massacre’, ‘crime’ and ‘atrocity’ were not mentioned. These were Keane’s opening sentences after the introduction specifically mentioning the mass death in al-Rashid Street:

    They die in all kinds of places and ways. Broken under the rubble of their homes, blasted by explosives, punctured by high velocity bullets, cut open by flying shards of metal.

    And now – as the war enters its fifth month – death from hunger has come to haunt Gaza.

    It is essential to know the when, what and how of the tragedy at al-Rashid Street.

    Again, this obscured the fact that ‘now’ – in the incident actually under discussion – death also came from high velocity bullets, not hunger.

    On 1 March, the much-vaunted BBC Verify – ostensibly tasked to sift truth from allegation – described the massacre as ‘a tragic incident’. The words ‘massacre’, ‘atrocity’ and ‘crime’ were not used. 9/11 was also ‘a tragic incident’, but that’s not how it would ever be described. Paul Brown of BBC Verify reported:

    The tragic incident has given rise to differing claims about what happened and who was responsible for the carnage.

    Brown commented on video footage:

    Volleys of gunfire can be heard and people are seen scrambling over lorries and ducking behind the vehicles. Red tracer rounds can be seen in the sky.

    Mahmoud Awadeyah [a journalist at the scene] said the Israeli vehicles had started firing at people when the aid arrived.

    “Israelis purposefully fired at the men… they were trying to get near the trucks that had the flour,” he said. “They were fired at directly and prevented people to come near those killed.”

    Brown added:

    Dr Mohamed Salha, interim hospital manager at al-Awda hospital, where many of the dead and injured were taken, told the BBC: “Al-Awda hospital received around 176 injured people… 142 of these cases are bullet injuries and the rest are from the stampede and broken limbs in the upper and lower body parts.”

    Clearly, then, it was a massacre; so why the lack of clarity? Why was the word ‘massacre’ not used to describe a textbook example of a massacre in a report supposed to verify and clarify the truth?

    As we noted recently, the Glasgow Media Group examined four weeks (7 October – 4 November, 2023) of BBC One daytime coverage of Gaza to identify which terms were used by journalists themselves – i.e. not in direct or reported statements – to describe Israeli and Palestinian deaths. They found that ‘murder’, ‘murderous’, ‘mass murder’, ‘brutal murder’ and ‘merciless murder’ were used a total of 52 times by journalists to refer to Israelis’ deaths but never in relation to Palestinian deaths. The group noted that:

    The same pattern could be seen in relation to “massacre”, “brutal massacre” and “horrific massacre” (35 times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths); “atrocity”, “horrific atrocity” and “appalling atrocity” (22 times for Israeli deaths, once for Palestinian deaths); and “slaughter” (five times for Israeli deaths, not once for Palestinian deaths).

    The Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring analysed 176,627 television clips from over 13 broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, Sky and Channel 4 from 7 October – 7 November 2023. The report found that Israeli perspectives were referenced almost three times more (4,311) than Palestinian ones (1,598).

    This is an exact reversal of performance on the Russia-Ukraine war by our supposedly independent and impartial ‘free press’.

    A BBC report on 5 March stated:

    Last Thursday, more than 100 Palestinians were killed as crowds rushed to reach an aid convoy operated by private contractors that was being escorted by Israeli forces west of Gaza City.

    Palestinian health officials said dozens were killed when Israeli forces opened fire. Israel’s military said most died from either being trampled on or run over by the aid lorries. It said soldiers near the aid convoy had fired towards people who approached them and who they considered a threat.

    Those are indeed the two competing versions of events. Was the BBC unable to find meaningful testimony from the hundreds of eyewitnesses to what happened, as they invariably manage to do in reporting alleged Russian crimes in Ukraine?

    According to Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul, an eyewitness at the scene, Israeli firing occurred in two bursts: the first as people seized food from the convoy, the second when the crowd returned to the trucks:

    After opening fire, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies,’ he said.

    Accounts from the thousands of Palestinians who were there are clearer: Israeli forces fired indiscriminately into the crowd which killed dozens of people and led to a stampede in which more people died.

    Hossam Abu Shaar, a 29-year-old resident of Gaza City, who was injured in the attack, said of the gunfire:

    “It was so huge that nearly everyone was either killed, shot, injured. I was among the very few lucky ones,” he said, recalling how he had felt the wind of the bullets pass him by.

    ”I was hit in the leg by shrapnel from an artillery shell that landed nearby.

    ”I saw bodies being scattered all across the road. It was horrific. We’ve faced similar situations before, when Israeli tanks fired at us, killing and injuring many. But this time the world paid attention, maybe because we were killed on camera.”

    CBS reported eyewitness Anwar Helewa:

    We ran towards the food aid. The soldiers then started firing at us, and so we left the food and ran.

    On 5 March, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights commented:

    UN experts condemned the violence unleashed by Israeli forces, which killed at least 112 people gathered to collect flour in Gaza last week, as a “massacre” amid conditions of inevitable starvation and destruction of the local food production system in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

    “Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys,” the UN experts said. “Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians.”

    The UN added of its experts:

    They noted that the 29 February massacre followed a pattern of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians seeking aid, with over 14 recorded incidents of shooting, shelling and targeting groups gathered to receive urgently needed supplies from trucks or airdrops between mid-January and the end of February 2024.

    “Israel has also opened fire on humanitarian aid convoys on several occasions, despite the fact that the convoys shared their coordinates with Israel,” the experts said.

    None of this has been of much interest to the Western press. Media Matters reported that from February 29 to March 3, Fox News dedicated just 12 minutes of coverage to the massacre, noting:

    During that period, Fox News aired only 1 interview about the carnage: a conversation with spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which she blamed Hamas for Israeli military violence without evidence.

    Conclusion

    It is instructive to compare this latest apologetic performance with media responses to the Houla massacre in Syria in 2012 where words like ‘murder’, ‘massacre’ and ‘atrocity’ – all instantly pinned on Syrian government forces – were the norm. This BBC headline was standard:

    Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows

    Note the very different, damning tone of the opening lines below:

    Western nations are pressing for a response to the massacre in the Syrian town of Houla, with the US calling for an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s “rule by murder”.

    UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council this week.

    The UN has confirmed the deaths of at least 90 people in Houla, including 32 children under the age of 10.

    On the BBC’s News at Ten, the BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent James Robbins claimed:

    The UN now says most victims, including many children, were murdered inside their homes by President Assad’s militias. (Robbins, BBC News at Ten, 29 May 2012)

    See our 2-part media alert, ‘Massacres That Matter’, for detail and discussion on this long-term trend in reporting. See, also, our alert, ‘A Tale of Two “Massacres” – Jenin and Racak.’

    Even more striking, of course, is the fact that in 2011 all major Western media propagandised heavily for the US-UK overthrow of the Gaddafi government in Libya, not for committing a massacre, but on the basis of fake claims that Gaddafi was planning a massacre in Benghazi.

    We began with John Simpson’s lauding of the BBC, so let’s end with a couple of comments from the great and the good of BBC journalism. The BBC’s then Chief Political Correspondent, Norman Smith, declared that Cameron ‘must surely feel vindicated’ by the fall of Gaddafi. (Smith, BBC News online, 21 October 2011)

    With Libya in ruins, the BBC’s John Humphrys asked sagely:

    What, apart from a sort of moral glow… have we got out of it? (Humphrys, BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 21 October 2011)

    The answer, of course, was oil.

    The post Israel’s “Flour Massacre”: When A Crime Becomes A “Tragedy” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Mass marches, chanting and banner waving are essential to the campaign but it’s also important to challenge UK Government policy and actions through ALL democratic channels, especially now that Lord Walney recommends that political leaders ban their MPs from engaging with PSC and suchlike. Lord Walney, aka John Woodcock, is a former chairman of Labour Friends of Israel but PSC and mainstream media, strangely, don’t mention this important fact.

    Meanwhile, UKGov (Department for Business and Trade) have dismissed a petition calling for all licences for arms to Israel to be revoked. Their excuse is that “we rigorously assess every application on a case-by-case basis against strict assessment criteria, the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria (the SELC)…. The SELC provide a thorough risk assessment framework for export licence applications and require us to think hard about the impact of providing equipment and its capabilities. We will not license the export of equipment where to do so would be inconsistent with the SELC.”

    They don’t bother to explain how Israel manages to satisfy those “strict” criteria and survive such a “rigorous” process. We’re supposed to take it on trust. A serious campaign group would check out the SELC and provide their activists with an expert briefing.

    What, very briefly, does the SELC say?

    There are 8 criteria and, on reading them, you might well conclude that Israel fails to satisfy at least 5. MPs and ministers pretending otherwise mislead Parliament and insult the public. And I’ve always understood that’s a serious matter and punishable.

    CRITERION 6 talks of the need for “commitment to non-proliferation and other areas of arms control and disarmament”, but how safe is anyone under the threat of Israel’s 200 (or is it 400?) nukes? Israel is the only state in the region not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It hasn’t signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention either. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, similarly the Chemical Weapons Convention.

    CRITERION 4 worries about whether “the [exported] items would be used in the territory of another country other than for legitimate purposes”. Five months of genocide surely answers that one.

    Under CRITERION 3 the Government takes into account (a) whether granting a licence would provoke or prolong armed conflicts; (b) whether the items are likely to be used other than for the legitimate national security or defence of the recipient and (c) whether the items would be likely to cause, avert, increase or decrease conflict or instability in the country of final destination, taking into account the balance of forces between states or actors concerned; humanitarian purposes or impacts; the nature of the conflict including the conduct of all states or actors involved; and whether the items might be used for gender-based violence or serious acts of violence against women or children.

    CRITERION 2 is about respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in the country of final destination as well as respect by that country for international humanitarian law. The recipient country is assessed for its attitude towards relevant principles established by international human rights law. The Government will not grant a licence if “there is a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate internal repression”. That includes torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary detentions; and other serious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. As the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza are deemed to be occupied by Israel using military force, Israel’s responsibilities towards, and treatment of, the Palestinians is presumably included in this.

    CRITERION 1 stresses UKGov’s commitment to UN and numerous other international obligations and how it would not grant an export licence if inconsistent with these.

    It seems to me that Israel falls flat on its face when confronted with these safeguards and, given our “rigorous” Government’s unwavering support for Israel, it is all too embarrassing to admit it. So it’s business as usual with the genocidal regime. Secretary of State Kemi Badenoch has ministerial responsibility for this fiasco.

    The PSC is critical of the way UKGov ignores its own SELC rules and fails to comply with the UK’s international obligations regarding arms exports to Israel. But are PSC and its campaign partners taking real action? There’s mention of a ‘Stop Arming Israel’ campaign in PSC’s literature from 2017 but no detail. PSC and partners, with their access to law and media specialists, could take apart the Government’s dishonest performance, which makes our nation complicit in Israel’s genocide and war crimes, and hold it accountable through available channels. That might achieve more than the usual mass protests. But is any of it happening?

    The post Questions for the PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • We will destroy everything not Jewish. 
    — Theodore Herzl [1]

    We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads . . . . You Palestinians, as a nation, don’t want us today, but we’ll change your attitude by forcing our presence on you.
    — Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan [2]

    The common denominator amongst all the American peace efforts is their abysmal failure.
    — Cheryl A. Rubenberg [3]

    USrael’s disgraceful conduct in Gaza goes on, and on and on. Leveling hospitals, shooting children in the head; gunning down a surgeon at the operating table, using an emergency call from a little girl trapped in a car with the corpses of family members to lure two rescue workers to her, then killing all three; systematically killing Palestinian journalists reporting on the slaughter; promising to save three premature babies at a hospital under forced evacuation, then leaving them to slowly die and be devoured by dogs; singing in chorus of the joy of exterminating Arabs; cheering the blocking of food aid to starving Gazans; killing entire families, inducing a Palestinian boy to lay down in the road hoping someone would run over him and end his misery; this is but a small sampling of the consequences of trapping over a million Gazans in the southern half of a 125-square-mile concentration camp without food, shelter, or sanitation, then methodically shooting and bombing them while thousands of their relatives decompose under expanding mountains of rubble.

    Depravity on this scale will not magically disappear by establishing a cease fire and holding peace talks, as urgently necessary as both those preliminaries are. Only relentless popular pressure on the U.S. government to force it to deny Israel the means to subjugate and murder Palestinians can even hope to lead to de-nazification of the Jewish state, without which real peace can never be achieved. Keep in mind that in the midst of the current wholesale slaughter a large majority of Israelis think Netanyahu isn’t using enough violence.

    Cease fires we have had before, and peace agreements, too, but they didn’t solve the underlying conflict because addressing the absence of Palestinian national rights – the heart of the Palestine conflict – is taboo.

    Because of this taboo, massacres of Palestinians are a feature, not a bug, of Zionist ideology, and have stained Israel’s history from before the state was even formed.

    Only the scale of the current Gaza slaughter sets it apart.

    In June of 1982, for example, Israel invaded Lebanon on a surge of Pentagon arms shipments, seeking to disperse the Palestine Liberation Organization (the Hamas of its day) and poison its relations with the local population while destroying its political and military structures. Tens of thousands of civilians died as the IDF carved up the country in alliance with Christian fascist militias.

    While claiming to stand tall for human rights, Washington kept arms and money flowing in support of Israel’s occupation of not just Palestine, but Syria and Lebanon as well.

    Lebanon was savagely pounded, leaving people roaming the wreckage of Beirut in clouds of flies, terror in their eyes, their clothes reduced to rags. Mothers howled, orphans sobbed, and the stench of rotting corpses filled the air.

    Cluster bombs leveled whole blocks. White phosphorous burned people alive. Palestinian refugee camps were blasted to rubble, left pockmarked with blackened craters that filled with dead bodies and other debris. An officer in the U.N. peace-keeping force swept aside by the Israeli attack on Rashidiyeh said, “It was like shooting sparrows with a cannon.” Asked why houses containing women and children were being bombarded and bulldozed, an Israeli army officer explained that, “they are all terrorists.”

    Surrounded by tanks, gunshots, and hysteria, one hundred thousand people were left without shelter or food, roaming through piles of wreckage. Blindfolded men, handcuffed with plastic bonds, were marched away to concentration camps where they were tortured, humiliated, and murdered. Their families were turned over to Phalangist patrols and Haddad forces (Israeli allies), who torched homes and beat people indiscriminately.

    At the United Nations, the United States gave its customary blessing to Israeli savagery, vetoing a Security Council resolution condemning Israel.

    Much impressed by Israel’s “purity of arms, The New York Times saluted the “liberation” of Lebanon.

    But it was a macabre “liberation.” After three months of relentless attack, the southern half of the country lay in ruins. Even President Reagan, as ardent a fan of Israel as any of his predecessors in the Oval Office, couldn’t stomach more killing, and called Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to stop the “holocaust.” Offended at the president’s use of this word, Begin nevertheless halted the bombardment immediately.

    An agreement between Israel, the U.S. and the PLO was signed with security guarantees for the Palestinians. Yasser Arafat and his PLO fighters left for Tunis. On September 16, in defiance of the cease fire, Ariel Sharon’s army circled the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints and allowed truckloads of their Phalange and Haddad allies into the Palestinian camps. The Phalangists came with old scores to settle and a long list of atrocities against Palestinians already to their credit. The Haddad forces acted as part of the Israeli Army and operated under its command.

    Perched on rooftops, Israeli soldiers watched through binoculars during the day and lit up the sky with flares at night, guiding the soldiers as they moved from shelter to shelter in the camps slaughtering the defenseless refugees. In mid-massacre, Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan congratulated the Phalangist command for having “carried out good work,” offered a bulldozer for scooping up corpses, and authorized the killers to remain in the camp twelve more hours. [4]

    On September 18 war correspondent Robert Fisk entered the camps and described what he found there:

    Down every alleyway there were corpses – women, young men, babies and grandparents – lying together in lazy and terrible profusion where they had been killed or machine-gunned to death. . .  In the panic and hatred of battle, tens of thousands had been killed in this country. But these people, hundreds of them, had been shot down unarmed . . . these were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies – blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition – tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded U.S. Army ration tins, Israeli army medical equipment, and empty bottles of whiskey.

    . . . Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot at point-blank range  . . . One had been castrated . . .  The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old.”  [5]

    Such were the results of Israel exercising its “right to self-defense,” just as the wholesale slaughter and starvation of Gazans forty-two years later is rationalized on the same grounds.

    The moral of the story is that no matter how blindingly obvious its crimes are Israel is never guilty of anything because . . . the Holocaust.

    Forty-seven years ago the London Sunday Times reported that Israel routinely tortures Palestinians, a devastating revelation at the time. The scope of the torture, said the Times, was so broad that it implicated “all of Israel’s security forces,” and was so “systematic that it [could not] be dismissed as a handful of ‘rogue cops’ exceeding orders.”

    Among the prisoner experiences detailed by the Times’ Insight team were being beaten and kicked, being set upon by dogs, having one’s testicles squeezed, having a ball-point pen refill shoved into one’s penis, or being raped with a stick and left bleeding from the mouth and face and anus.

    Israel categorically denied the charges, but refused to rebut, diverting to side issues and attacking Israeli lawyers who stooped so low as to defend Arabs. Seth Kaplan in the staunchly liberal The New Republic rose in defense of Israeli torture, arguing that how a government treats its people “is not susceptible to simple absolutism, such as the outright condemnation of torture. One may have to use extreme measures – call them ‘torture’ – to deal with a terrorist movement whose steady tactic is the taking of human life.”  [6] Of course, every state in the world practicing administrative torture routinely claimed it was fighting “terrorists,” an infinitely elastic designation in the hands of national security officials.

    So what supposedly made Palestinians “terrorists”? Mainly, that they resisted Israel’s steady tactic of robbing, swindling, torturing, and murdering all those who had been living in Palestine long before Zionism even appeared on the scene. But Israel simply couldn’t publicly admit that Palestine was not what it told the world it was – a land without a people for a people without a land. It had to keep torturing and killing Palestinians to induce them to vacate the land, but it could never admit this. At the end of 1996, when the Israeli Supreme Court authorized the torture of Palestinian prisoners, the justices called it “moderate physical pressure,” which sounds more like massage than torture. [7]

    Two major Middle East peace agreements have been negotiated entirely under the prejudiced assumption that Palestinians are terrorists to be neutralized, not an oppressed people entitled to its rights. In neither Camp David nor Oslo was there any indication that Palestinian grievances were to be seriously considered, much less honestly dealt with. Had the obvious issues been faced with courage then, Gazans wouldn’t be getting slaughtered now. But they weren’t, an outcome that could have been foreseen just by looking at the people who produced the agreements.

    The Camp David Treaty was negotiated by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

    Sadat was a former Nazi collaborator whose idol was the Shah of Iran, a U.S. client then moving at break-neck speed to Westernize the country, in the process laying down a human rights record so appalling that Amnesty International characterized it as “beyond belief.” He was shortly overthrown by the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

    The year before Camp David Sadat had made his “sacred mission” to Jerusalem to speak to the Knesset, opening the way for peace. But he complied with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan’s instructions to delete references to the PLO, and he never got off his knees after that. At Camp David he threw himself on the goodwill of the United States, striving for an agreement so good for Israel that Begin would invite condemnation should he dare to reject it.  Dismissed as a traitor and a fool throughout the Arab world, he was assassinated three years later.

    Former head of the underground terrorist group Irgun, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was proud of his role in blowing up 95 British and Arabs in the King David Hotel in 1946, as well as the slaughter of over two-hundred Arab women, children and old men at Deir Yassin in 1948. In WWII, the Irgun had offered to support the Nazis against the British. One of Begin’s first acts when he became Israeli Prime Minister was to issue a postage stamp honoring Abraham Stern, whose group made the proposal. [8]

    The last thing one could reasonably expect out of Prime Minister Begin’s cabinet was peace. His military junta included five generals who maintained cozy relations with apartheid South Africa and the blood-soaked dictators Augusto Pinochet and Anastasio Somoza.

    As for Begin’s territorial ambitions, they were expansive, to say the least. The former Irgun commander had been elected on a platform calling for the annexation of the West Bank and the East Bank of the Jordan River, a goal that the Likud Party has never renounced. He regarded the West Bank and Gaza not as occupied but as liberated – from the indigenous Arabs to whom he felt they didn’t rightfully belong, and he called the land “Judea and Samaria,” Biblical names for God’s gift to the Jews. He openly regarded the Palestinians as Israel’s coolies, corralling them into Bantustans even as he promised them full autonomy, which he defined mystically as self-rule for people, but not for the land on which they lived. [9]

    The key figure at Camp David, of course, was U.S. President Jimmy Carter, a fundamentalist Baptist and supposedly a neutral mediator between Begin and Sadat. He confessed to having an “affinity for Israel” based on its custodianship of the Holy Land, and regarded it as “compatible with the teachings of the Bible, hence ordained by God.” Ordained by God!  He had “no strong feelings about the Arab countries,” but condemned the “terrorist PLO.” Begin he described implausibly as a man of integrity and honor.

    Carter instructed Sadat that unless his proposals were patently fair to Israel, which regarded Arabs as subhuman, Begin would justifiably reject them. When Egypt’s opening proposals requested compensation for Israeli use of land and oil wells in the occupied Sinai, free immigration to the West Bank, Israeli withdrawal from the illegally occupied territories (including East Jerusalem), and a Palestinian state, Carter was despondent at the “extremely harsh” recommendations. [10] Any treatment of Palestinians other than as anonymous refugees to be absorbed and pacified in colonial structures was apparently unimaginable extremism.

    At the time, the PLO was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and its inclusion in negotiations was the only possible basis for establishing Palestinian national rights and reaching real peace. Nevertheless, Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski summed up the U.S. stance at Camp David as “bye-bye PLO.” The Palestinians’ nationalist aspirations were summarily dismissed, and a solution for the Occupied Territories was postponed until future “autonomy talks,” to which the PLO would not be invited. This doomed any prospect of peace.

    Unsurprisingly, Camp David’s imagined Palestinian “autonomy” was a substitute for national liberation in the Accords, and was fundamentally colonial. Israel was allowed to retain economic and political power over the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israeli Defense Forces were permitted to indefinitely remain. The Palestinians were essentially granted municipal authority (to pick up the garbage?) provided it didn’t threaten Israeli “security.” Prime Minister Begin openly declared that he would never allow a Palestinian state on the West Bank.

    It’s hard to improve upon the summation of Camp David provided by Fayez Sayegh, founder of the Palestine Research Center:

    A fraction of the Palestinian people (under one-third of the whole) is promised a fraction of its rights (not including the national right to self-determination and statehood) in a fraction of its homeland (less than one-fifth of the area of the whole); and this promise is to be fulfilled several years from now, through a step-by-step process in which Israel is to exercise a decisive veto power over any agreement. Beyond that, the vast majority of Palestinians is condemned to permanent loss of its Palestinian national identity, to permanent exile and statelessness, to permanent separation from one another and from Palestine – to a life without national hope or meaning.  [11]

    Nevertheless, the United States applauded what it somehow construed as the birth of peace in the Middle East, while Israel proceeded to “annex” Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, tattoo the Occupied Territories with Jewish settlements, carve up southern Lebanon, attack Iraq, and bomb Palestinian refugee camps. [12]

    None of this was a surprise. According to Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv, the effect of Camp David’s removing of Egypt from the Arab military alliance was that “Israel would be free to sustain military operations against the PLO in Lebanon as well as settlement activity on the West Bank.”  [13]

    Five years after Israel had reduced southern Lebanon to rubble Gaza rose in rebellion (the first intifada), and six years after that came the Oslo Accords, with the White House announcing triumphantly for the second time that lasting Middle East peace was at hand. But once again there was no peace. In accordance with long-standing U.S.-Israeli rejectionism the Oslo Accords called for the incorporation of Palestinian lands in a permanent colonial structure administered by Israel.

    In other words, after more than seventy years of sacrifice and popular struggle for their national rights, the Palestinians were triumphantly handed a micro-state with no power. A toothless “Palestinian Authority” was set up in the West Bank.

    Once again, Israel remained in possession of everything that counted: East Jerusalem, the settlements, the economy, the land, water, sovereignty, and “security.” The Oslo settlement was based on UN Resolution 242, which only recognized Palestinians as stateless refugees, not as a people possessed of national rights.

    Israel made no commitment to giving up its violence or compensating the Palestinians for 45 years of conquest and dispossession. Yasir Arafat renounced all nationalist aspirations and discarded Palestinian rights, including the right to resist oppression. He accepted responsibility for guaranteeing Israeli security, turning his people into police for their occupiers.

    The Palestinians were granted nothing more than “limited autonomy,” with no guarantee of Palestinian security, no Palestinian sovereignty, and no autonomous economy. Israeli companies were to set up sweatshops in the Occupied Territories and Palestinians were to continue supplying the $6-a-day labor. After years of granting concessions to Israel, they were asked to wait three to five more years until “final status” talks could determine what Israel’s vague references to “improvements” actually meant.

    For the majority of Palestinians living in the Diaspora, this represented the final act of robbery, nullifying years of promises from the UN, Arab governments, and the PLO itself.

    At the celebration of the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, Arafat, the conquered, thanked everyone for the agreement suspending most of his people’s rights, and delivered an emotionally sterile speech as though he were reading out of a phone book. He barely mentioned the Palestinians.

    Yitzak Rabin, the conqueror, gave a long speech detailing Israeli anguish, loss, and suffering involved in the conquest. He promised that Israel would concede nothing on sovereignty and would keep the River Jordan, the boundaries with Egypt and Jordan, the sea, the land between Gaza and Jericho, Jerusalem, the roads, and the settlements.  He did not concede that Israel was, or ever had been, an occupying power. He made no commitment to dismantling the maze of racist laws and repressive fixtures of the Occupation. He said nothing about the thousands of Palestinians rotting in Israeli jails. He expressed not a twinge of remorse for four-and-a-half decades of ethnic cleansing and lies.  [14]

    So the occupation of Palestine continued for years more, severely restricting Palestinian movement, increasing Jewish colonization of Arab land, and intensifying bureaucratic harassment. On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon and a thousand Israeli soldiers touched off the second intifada by invading the Al Aqsa mosque site in Arab Jerusalem. The next day Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered riot police to storm the compound where 20,000 Palestinians were praying. Rocks were thrown and the police opened fire, killing seven and wounding 220. Within days President Clinton dispatched the largest shipment of attack helicopters to Israel in a decade.

    Though portrayed by Israel apologists as extraordinarily generous towards the Palestinians, Prime Minister Ehud Barak never dismantled a settlement or freed a Palestinian prisoner during his entire 18 months in office. Like his predecessors, he refused to compromise on settlements, borders, refugee rights, and Jerusalem. According to Robert Malley, special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs in the Clinton administration, it is a myth that Israel had offered to meet “most if not all of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations,” and equally a myth that the “Palestinians made no concession of their own.” In fact, Palestinians expressed willingness to accommodate Jewish settlements on the West Bank, Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and a limit on repatriation of Palestinian exiles, though all of them were entitled to return. Malley stated that “no other Arab party that has negotiated with Israel . . . ever came close to even considering such compromises.”

    Meanwhile, Israel offered nothing and demanded surrender, just as it always had.

    According to Israeli military analyst Ze’ev Schiff, the Palestinians were left with three options:  (1) agree to the expanding Occupation, (2) set up Bantustans, or (3) launch an uprising.

    Palestinians chose to fight, and Israel pounded the nearly defenseless civilian population with helicopter gunships, F-16s, tanks, missiles, and machine guns. While systematically assassinating Palestinian leaders, Israel cried “immoral” when its victims turned their bodies into weapons in horrific suicide bombings at supermarkets, restaurants, pool halls, and discotheques. Israeli propaganda blamed “hate teaching” by the PLO, but the real hate teacher was the racist ideology that defined Palestinians as “beasts walking on two legs” and “cockroaches in a bottle,” among other terms of endearment popular with Israeli leaders. [15] This swelled the ranks of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade with volunteers who had lost close relatives to the Israeli military.

    Amidst the firestorm of moral indignation occasioned by the suicide attacks, Israel never considered negotiating in good faith to resolve the longstanding conflict, and the United States applied no pressure to make them do so. Following in the footsteps of a long line of predecessors, President George W. Bush heaped arms and aid on Israel, vetoed UN resolutions calling for observers in the Occupied Territories, and continued funding the ever-expanding Jewish settlements. With the entire world recoiling in shocked outrage at Israel’s pulverizing of the West Bank, he declared Ariel Sharon “a man of peace.” [16]

    Post-Oslo the stealing of land and dynamiting of Palestinian homes continued with the same justification as before: Jewish land was redeemed, Arab land was unredeemed. By the end of the twentieth-century, over 80% of Palestine no longer belonged to Palestinian Arabs. Under Clinton-Barak settlement construction had accelerated dramatically and Jews received nearly seven times as much water as Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. Meanwhile, three hundred miles of Jews-only highways and bypass roads integrated the settlements into Israel proper while dividing Palestinian areas into enclaves of misery completely cut-off from the wider world.

    Increasing numbers of Israeli Arabs joined with the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to protest Jewish supremacy rooted in nationality rights granting Jews exclusive use of land, better access to jobs, special treatment in getting loans, and preferences for college admission, among other unearned advantages. Military service brought even more benefits, from which Palestinians were excluded.  [17]

    Founded as a haven for Jews, Israel had become the most dangerous place in the world for them to live. The constant war on Palestinians that made this so was still described as self-defense, and the crushing of their national culture was still the goal of “peace.” Orwell would have felt like an amateur.

    Whatever differences President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu may be having regarding tactics and media sound bites, the commitment they share is to preserving the festering boil of apartheid Israel, rooted in the conviction that Jews are a master race of chosen people destined to scrub the Holy Land of unsightly Arabs and rule over Greater Israel forever.

    The stench of death is its constant gift to the world.

    FOOTNOTES:

    [1] Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism, (Pluto, 2007) p. 224

    [2] Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects, (Haymarket, 2010), p. 160

    [3] “American Efforts For Peace In The Middle East, 1919-1986“, quoted in Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections, Tekiner, Abed-Rabbo, Mezvinsky, eds. (Amana Books, 1988) p. 19509

    [4] Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle, (South End, 1983) pps. 155, 359-71, Rosemary Sayigh, Too Many Enemies, (Zed, 1994) pps. 117-121

    [5] Robert Fisk is quoted from his book Pity The Nation in Susan Abulhawa, Mornings In Jenin, (Bloomsbury, 2010) pps. 224-6. Abulhawa is a novelist, but quotes verbatim passages from Pity The Nation.

    [6] Noam Chomsky, Towards A New Cold War, (Pantheon, 1973-1982) p. 454n., Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, (Dodd Mead, 1978) pps. 178-84.

    [7] Eduardo Galeano, Upside Down – A Primer For The Looking Glass World, (Henry Holt, 1998), p. 88.

    [8] Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, (Dodd Mead, 1978) p. 153.

    [9] Edward Said, The Question of Palestine, (Vintage, 1979) pps. 14-15, 44, 57, 138, 195, 204, 206-7; Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, (Dodd Mead, 1978) pps. 144, 191, 279, 351, 398, 683. Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle, (South End, 1983), p. 95n.; Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President, (Bantam, 1982) pps. 334, 347)

    [10]  Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President, (Bantam, 1982) pps. 274-5, 338-40; Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, (Dodd Mead, 1978) p. 651.

    [11] Edward Said, The Question of Palestine, (Vintage, 1979), p. 212

    [12] Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession, (Chatto and Windus, 1994), p. 244; Larry Shoup, The Carter Presidency and Beyond, (Ramparts, 1980) pps. 120-3)

    [13] Noam Chomsky, World Orders Old and New, (Columbia, 1994) p. 213.

    [14] Edward Said, The Pen and the Sword, (Common Courage, 1994) p. 110; Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession, (Chatto and Windus, 1994) p. xxxiv, xxxv-xxxvii; Christopher Hitchens in Edward Said, Peace and Its Discontents, (Random House, 1993) p. 3.

    [15] John Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, (Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2007, p. 89)

    [16] Stephen Shalom, “The Israel-Palestine Crisis,” Z Magazine, May 2002; Edward Said, “The Desertion of Arafat,” New Left Review, September-October 2001; Rezeq Faraj, “Israel and Hamas,” Covert Action Information Bulletin, Winter 2001; Rania Masri, “The Al Aqsa Intifada – The consequence of Israel’s 34-year occupation”; Noam Chomsky, International Socialist Review, November-December 2001.

    [17] Max Elbaum, interview with Phyllis Bennis, “For Jews Only: Racism Inside Israel,” ColorLines, December 15, 2000; Edward Herman, “Israel’s Approved Ethnic Cleansing,” Z Magazine, April 2001; Rene Backmann, A Wall In Palestine, (Picador, 2010), p. 170.

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  • The spectacle, if it did not say it all, said much of it.  Planes dropping humanitarian aid to a starving, famine-threatened populace of Gaza (the United Nations warns that 576,000 are “one step from famine”), with parachuted packages veering off course, some falling into the sea.  Cargo also coming into Israel, with bullets, weaponry and other ordnance to kill those in Gaza on the inflated premise of self-defence.  Be it aid or bullets, Washington is the smorgasbord supplier, ensuring that both victims and oppressors are furnished from its vast commissary.

    This jarring picture, discordant and hopelessly at odds, is increasingly running down the low stocks of credibility US diplomats have in either the Israel-Hamas conflict, or much else in Middle Eastern politics.  Comments such as these from US Vice President Kamala Harris from March 3, made at Selma in Alabama, illustrate the problem: “As I have said many times, too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.  And just a few days ago, we saw hungry, desperate people approach aid trucks, simply trying to secure food for their families after weeks of nearly no aid reaching Northern Gaza. And they were met with gunfire and chaos.”

    Harris goes on to speak of broken hearts for the victims, for the innocents, for those “suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe”.  A forced, hammed up moral register is struck.  “People in Gaza are starving.  The conditions are inhumane.  And our common humanity compels us to act.”

    It was an occasion for the Vice President to mention that the US Department of Defense had “carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian assistance, and the United States will continue with these airdrops.”  Further work would also be expended on getting “a new route by sea to deliver aid.”

    It is only at this point that Harris introduces the lumbering elephant in the room: “And the Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid.  No excuses.”  They had to “open new border crossings”, “not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid” and “ensure humanitarian personnel, sites, and convoys are not targeted.”  Basic services had to be restored, and order promoted in the strip “so more food, water, and fuel can reach those in need.”

    In remarks made at Hagerstown Regional Airport in Maryland, President Joe Biden told reporters that he was “working with them [the Israelis] very hard.  We’re going to get more – we must get more aid into Gaza.  There’s no excuses.  None.”

    In a New Yorker interview, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby keeps to the same script, claiming that discussions with the Israelis “in private are frank and very forthright.  I think they understand our concerns.”  Kirby proceeds to fantasise, fudging the almost sneering attitude adopted by Israel towards US demands.  “Even though there needs to be more aid, and even though there needs to be fewer civilian casualties, the Israelis have, in many ways, been receptive to our messages.”

    The other side of this rusted coin of US policy advocates something less than human.  The common humanity there is tethered to aiding the very power that is proving instrumental in creating conditions of catastrophe.  The right to self-defence is reiterated as a chant, including the war goals of Israel which have artificially drawn a distinction between Hamas military and political operatives from that of the Palestinian population being eradicated.

    Harris is always careful to couple any reproachful remarks about Israel with an acceptance of their stated policy: that Hamas must be eliminated.  Hamas, rather than being a protean force running on the fumes of history, resentment and belief, was merely “a brutal terrorist organization that has vowed to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel is annihilated.”  It had inflicted suffering on the people of Gaza and continued to hold Israeli hostages.

    Whatever note of rebuke directed against the Netanyahu government, it is clear that Israel knows how far it can go.  It can continue to rely on the US veto in the UN Security Council.  It can dictate the extent of aid and the conditions of its delivery into Gaza, which is merely seen as succour for an enemy it is trying to crush.  While alarm about shooting desperate individuals crowding aid convoys will be noted, little will come of the consternation.  The very fact that the US Airforce has been brought into the program of aid delivery suggests an ignominious capitulation, a very public impotence.

    Jeremy Konyndyk, former chief of the USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Obama administration gives his unflattering judgment on this point.  “When the US government has to use tactics that it otherwise used to circumvent the Soviets and Berlin and circumvent ISIS in Syria and Iraq, that should prompt some really hard questions about the state of US policy.”

    In his remarks to The Independent, Konyndyk finds the airdrop method “the most expensive and least effective way to get aid to a population.  We almost never did it because it is such an in-extremis tool.”  Even more disturbing for him was the fact that this woefully imperfect approach was being taken to alleviate the suffering caused by an ally of the United States, one that had made “a policy choice” in not permitting “consistent humanitarian access” and the opening of border crossings.

    Even as this in extremis tool is being used, US made military hardware continues to be used at will by the Israel Defence Forces.  The point was not missed on Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch: “We have a situation where the US is airdropping aid on day one, and Israel is dropping bombs on day two.  And the American taxpayer is paying for the aid and the bombs.”

    The chroniclers of history can surely only jot down with grim irony instances where desperate, hunger-crazed Palestinians scrounging for US aid are shot by made-in-USA ammunition.

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  • Deeds of substance, rather than words of forced concern, will always take precedence in the chronicles of history.  Superficially, the Australian government has been edging more closely towards expressing concern with aspects of Israel’s relentless war in the Gaza Strip.  While claiming to be targeted, specific and directed against Hamas and other Islamic militants, the war by Israel’s defence forces has left a staggering train of death.  Since Hamas attacked Israel last October, the death toll of Palestinians has now passed 30,000.  Famine, malnutrition, and appalling sanitary conditions are rife.

    Initially staying close to Washington’s line that an immediate humanitarian ceasefire would only embolden Hamas to regroup (Australia abstained in its October 2023 vote on the subject), wobbles began being felt in Canberra.  The slaughter had been so immense, the suffering unsettling to those thousands of miles away.  In December 2023, Australia changed its tune – in a fashion – eventually voting in the UN for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire proposed by the “Arab Group”, a decision greeted with rage and opprobrium by the opposition.

    In February, Guardian Australia obtained documents revealing advice given to Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong by officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  The advice is hardly filled with the stuff of courage and grit: “Given the improvements in the text and shifting positions of some like-mindeds [sic], we think it would be open to us to vote Yes this time” came one meek observation.  Australia would be in “good company” in doing so.  “Overall, we assess the number of Yes votes will go up (from 120 on the last resolution)”.

    A vote for the resolution was not to be given without the thick varnish of qualification.  An explanation of vote (EOV) would have to accompany Australia’s position, being “very firm in articulating the deficiencies in the text”.  As another email states, “What remains problematic is that the resolution does not reference the 7 October attacks nor condemn (or even mention) Hamas, which perpetuates a trend of erasing Hamas from the record in UN decisions on the crisis.”  The EOV would have to be “firm about our concern that Hamas’s actions weren’t recognised and condemned in the resolution.”

    This approach of nodding in one direction while waving a hand in the other has come to typify the slim, unimaginative armoury of Australian diplomacy.  When it comes to the substance of policy towards Israel, the military industrial complex, not dead Palestinians, tends to have the final say.

    That final say in Australia has been formidable, in contrast to the decisions made by other countries to alter or adjust their arrangements with Israel.  In some cases, ties and relations have been severed, with embassy staff being recalled.  Having been put on notice by the International Court of Justice that its military actions in Gaza were not exempt from the operation of the UN Genocide Convention, Israel’s clients are also becoming more cautious in their dealings, knowing that complicity, aiding and abetting also fall foul of the Convention.

    Last month, the aviation unit of Japan’s Itochu Corp announced that it was ending its strategic cooperation with Israel’s defence company, Elbit Systems Ltd which had begun with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in March 2023.  The company’s Chief Financial Officer, Tsuyoshi Hachimura, was clear about the role played by the World Court in reaching the decision.  “Taking into consideration the International Court of Justice’s order on January 26, and that the Japanese government supports the role of the Court, we have already suspended new activities related to the MOU, and plan to end the MOU by the end of February.”

    Elbit Systems had little reason to be too disappointed.  Despite having its technology (the BMS Command and Control system) removed from Australian Army equipment three years ago for reasons of data security, the company now boasts a spanking new defence contract with the Australian government.  The contract is the largest made by the company since the Gaza conflict commenced with the October 7 attacks by Hamas.  On February 26, the company announced the award of a five-year “contract worth approximately (US)$600 million to supply systems to Hanwha Defense Australia for the Australian Land 400 Phase 3 Project.”  In less jargon-heavy terms, the project will “deliver advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors suite to the Redback Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV) for the Australian Army.”

    Hanwha Defense Australia’s parent company is located in South Korea, but the manufacture of the IVFs, which will number in the order of 129 vehicles, will take place in Australia.  “The acquisition of these infantry fighting vehicles is part of the Government’s drive to modernise the Australian Army to ensure it can respond to the most demanding land challenges in our region,” said the Australian Ministry of Defence in December.  Elbit Systems promises that most of the work regarding its advanced turret systems will be done in Australia.

    The Australian footprint of Elbit Systems, along with that of other Israeli defence companies, is only growing.  Despite having a gruesome, pioneering record of using lethal drone technology against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip well before the current Israel-Hamas war, Elbit Systems has been courted by Australian defence officials and contractors keen to see the brighter side of such applications.

    The state of Victoria figures prominently in such arrangements, and maintains its memorandum of understanding with the Israeli Defence Ministry, one intended to be a “a formal framework that paves the way for continuing cooperation between the parties.”  Attitudes regarding the MoU post-October 7 have not waned in the state’s Labor government, despite pressure from various opposition parties to abandon it.

    Victoria also hosts Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA)’s Centre for Excellence in Human-Machine Teaming and Artificial Intelligence in Port Melbourne, an initiative “developed in partnership with the Victorian Government.”  As ELSA puts it, “we develop new technologies, solutions and innovative products adapted for Australian conditions, and apply them across defence, homeland security and emergency services.”

    Forget Wong’s wobbliness, the persuasive pull of the Genocide Convention, and Canberra’s concerns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.  Cash, contracts and jobs drawn from the military industrial complex continue to sneak through the guards.

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