As Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza entered its third week, leaving over 5000 dead and at least one million residents displaced, a Tel Aviv-based think tank published a blueprint for self-proclaimed Jewish state’s final solution.
In a white paper released over a week after the Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli military bases and kibbutzes, The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlined “a plan for resettlement and final rehabilitation in Egypt of the entire population of Gaza,” based on the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip” that Israel’s latest assault on the besieged costal enclave provided.
Published in Hebrew on the organization’s website, the paper was authored by Amir Weitman, “an investment manager and visiting researcher” at the Institute who also leads the libertarian caucus of Israel’s ruling Likud Party. The document began by noting that there are 10 million vacant housing units in neighboring Egypt that could be “immediately” filled with Palestinians. Weitman then assured readers that the “sustainable plan…aligns well with the economic and geopolitical interests of the State of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia.”
Weitman’s ethnic cleansing proposal echoes forced transfer plans advanced in recent days by former Israeli officials while capitalizing on evacuation orders delivered to the entire civilian population of northern Gaza by the Israeli military.
Weitman’s sinister blueprint imagined Israel purchasing these properties at a cost of $5 – 8 billion dollars, a whopping price-tag that reflects just 1 – 1.5 percent of Israel’s GDP.
“These sums of money [required to cleanse Gaza] in relation to the Israeli economy, are minimal,” Weitman posits. “Investing individual billions of dollars to solve this difficult issue is an innovative, cheap and sustainable solution.”
Weitman acknowledged that his plan virtually amounts to Israel “buying the Gaza Strip,” arguing the move would be “a very worthwhile investment” for Zionists because it would “add a lot of value over time.” He asserted local “land conditions” in the area would provide “many” Israeli settlers a high standard of living, therefore allowing for an expansion of settlements in Gush Dan near the Egyptian border, giving “a tremendous impetus to settlement in the Negev.”
In December 2021, Tel Aviv approved plans to establish four settlements in the Negev to house 3,000 settler families.
A genocidal war to end all wars
Though Egypt has so far rejected Israeli pressure for a mass exodus of Gaza residents through the southern Rafah crossing, Weitman argued Cairo will welcome the mass exodus of Palestinian refugees as “an immediate stimulus” that will “provide a tremendous and immediate benefit to al-Sisi’s regime.”
Weitman claimed that Cairo’s major creditors — including France, Germany and Saudi Arabia — are likely to welcome a revitalized Egyptian economy, courtesy of “Israeli investment” in the Palestinians’ permanent removal. He surmizes that Western Europe will welcome “the transfer of the entire Gaza population to Egypt,” because it will significantly “reduce the risk of illegal immigration…a tremendous advantage.” Meanwhile, he expects Riyadh to embrace the move because the “evacuation of the Gaza Strip means the elimination of a significant ally of Iran.”
The ethnic cleansing of Gaza would mean an end to “ceaseless, repeated rounds of fighting, which inflame the fires of hatred against Israel.” Moreover, “closing the Gaza issue will ensure a stable and increased supply of Israeli gas to Egypt and its liquefaction,” from the vast reserves seized by Israel near Gaza’s shores.
Palestinians in turn are expected to jump at the chance to be forcibly transferred from their homes rather than “living in poverty under the rule of Hamas.” It is therefore necessary for Israel to “create the right conditions” for them to “immigrate” from Gaza to Cairo. Weitman noted that Gaza’s two million inhabitants “constitute less than 2% of the total Egyptian population, which today already includes 9 million refugees. A drop in the ocean.”
The paper ominously concluded: “There is no doubt that in order for this plan to come to fruition, many conditions must exist at the same time. Currently, these conditions are met and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if ever. This is the time to act. Now.”
“If we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill”
As barbarous as these proposals might seem, they reflect what many Israeli officials appear to be murmuring in private, and what at least one former government spinmeister has openly pushed as an altruistic solution to the Palestinian “problem.”
“There is a huge expanse, almost endless space in the Sinai Desert, just on the other side of Gaza,” former Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel, Danny Ayalon, echoed the genocidal Zionist logic behind Weitman’s proposal in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Marc Lamont Hill. “The idea is—and this is not the first time it will be done—for them to leave over to the open areas where we and the international community will prepare the infrastructure — you know, 10 cities with food and water — just like for the refugees of Syria.”
In 2004, Zionist demographer Arnon Sofer of Haifa University laid out detailed plans for the isolation of Gaza directly to Ariel Sharon’s government. This entailed withdrawing Israeli forces from the area entirely and constructing a stringent system of surveillance and security to ensure nothing and no one went in or out without Zionist proviso. He predicted a perpetual bloodbath:
“When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today…The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”
The Institute has put forward a clean and easy fantasy of achieving the same goal put forward by Sofer. For it to succeed, all Palestinians have to do is put down their weapons and head toward the desert of permanent exile. #Israel #Palestine
“……………………………………..In the span of two weeks, several major policy documents—including a bipartisan Congressional report on strategic posture and a Defense Department update on China’s estimated nuclear stockpile—have put the US nuclear posture vis-à-vis China front and center. The reports, which focus heavily on hardware and capability, contribute to a years-long deliberation with policymakers and analysts attempting to counter a perceived risk of tipping military balance in the Indo-Pacific. China’s nuclear weapons buildup is driving concerns among US allies and partners in the region over the aggression Beijing could possibly engage in, once its nuclear arsenal can “shield” the country from retaliation. The perceived threat is so intense that it has become a top national security concern in Washington.
Concerningly, however, the domestic debate about countering China’s growing arsenal has thus far dwelled almost exclusively on US capability—narrowly defining the problem and asking what combination of new nuclear missiles, increased forward-deployments, or friendly technology-sharing can maintain US dominance in a crisis and therefore deter China from taking aggressive steps. Unsurprisingly, the recommendations that followed ranged from adding more warheads to US missiles and building more nuclear submarines to—considered as important—adopting a posture of force-meets-force superiority at all levels against Chinese nuclear weapons in the Pacific.
But in aggressively pursuing capability surges alone, the United States may end up on the wrong side of the stability-instability paradox, risking escalation to nuclear war—intentional or not—through an overreliance on introducing untested or provocative technologies.
Instead, a stronger US strategy for responding to the challenge posed by China’s growing arsenal should be for the United States to supplement military capability by building multiple levels of mutual understanding and routes toward risk reduction across the Pacific. These measures must be implemented urgently and certainly before a crisis forces China and the United States to seriously test their nuclear deterrence relationship.
Capability fixation drives instability. One counter-productive distraction from a multi-level, risk-reduction approach to China is found in the sustained call for the fielding of new systems like the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N) and other tactical nuclear weapons ostensibly meant for battlefield use. Promoting these systems as a purported solution to future crises places incentives in all the wrong places and dangerously complicates the possible outcomes in a conflict.
For its part, the SLCM-N (which the White House has already rejected via its most recent Nuclear Posture Review but a hawks-dominated Congress funded anyway) is a seemingly straightforward proposal to replace some of the cruise missiles on submarines with nuclear-armed ones. But just by its presence, the SLCM-N would pave the way for all US cruise missiles deployed to the Pacific to be potentially armed with nuclear warheads. If this happens, Chinese political and military leaders would have to conservatively assume that any incoming US cruise missile is nuclear-armed, prompting a presumption of escalation and adding extreme pressures for a rapid nuclear counter-attack, even as the US missile is still en route. If a regional crisis erupts for which a conventionally armed Tomahawk sea-launched strike would be an appropriate response, US leaders would suddenly have very good reason to hesitate.
By all accounts, the expanded destructive capability of the SLCM-N would create a self-imposed constraint that risks cutting out a major swath of conventional escalation options by muddling intermediate systems like cruise missiles with a nuclear option. Making an entire rapid-response weapons platform (one already with broad new investments in the region) less usable in favor of implied nuclear escalation is precisely the scenario SLCM-N advocates are trying to head off.
Tactical nuclear weapons also complicate the deterrence equation in a broader sense. In a contested and alarming information environment, even cautious beliefs about escalation control would be rendered academic while mushroom clouds rise over a battlefield. Far better would be to drive up the threshold for nuclear use at any level and communicate that intention clearly through both policy and force posture decisions.
Even during the early years of the Cold War when emerging technologies were filling out more of the “middle rungs” of the escalation ladder with tactical nuclear capabilities, it was seen as critical to maintain and keep clear the distinction between the first battle in West Germany and the ultimate destruction of Washington and Moscow. In blurring the picture of how the first hours of a nuclear conflict with China would be managed by both sides, setting clear decision-making timeframes and thresholds ahead of time would prove to be a safer and stronger strategic posture, helping to reduce uncertainty and panic in a crisis……………………………………………………………………………………………
Now is the time to forge a better mutual understanding with Beijing, not to escalate tensions. Holding multi-level dialogues about intentions; building reliable, resilient communication channels; and fostering those hard-to-quantify personal connections that can quell dangerous arms-racing instincts—or at least add critical resistance to escalation in a crisis—should be emphasized alongside any examination of force posture. Some military policy changes—including weapons modernization—may be required to meet the moment, but the approach in Washington thus far has been badly constrained to the force-meets-force thinking which, if taken alone, will only multiply risks and add untested variables for the United States and its allies.
Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations has outlined to Newsweek his country’s position on the ongoing war between Israel and Palestinian factions led by Hamas, expressing the need for a ceasefire and warning of regional instability if an already devastating conflict deepens further.
“This is an obligation that devolves on all member states to prevent an escalation of the conflict,” Ambassador Munir Akram told Newsweek. “We would have hoped that the conflict had not taken place, but it has, and now we have to stop it, to halt the fighting and to avoid the suffering that is happening and is likely to happen if this conflict goes on.”
While the Islamic Republic he represents, one of the world’s most populous countries and the only Muslim-majority nation to possess nuclear weapons, may be thousands of miles away from the frontlines of the Gaza Strip, Akram identified a direct connection between Pakistan and the Palestinian cause. This link was made all the more tangible by parallels he drew between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Indian-Pakistani dispute over the divided territory of Kashmir, to which Pakistanis commemorate a “Black Day” on Friday.
With local health officials in Hamas-run Gaza now counting deaths in excess of 7,000 as a result of Israeli airstrikes since an unprecedented Hamas-led October 7 assault on Israel in which authorities said 1,400 people were killed, Akram argued that “this is not something that should be acceptable to any civilized nation or people and we oppose it, therefore we hope it would stop.”
He added: “There is an additional layer of obligation on us as an Islamic country.”
“We feel that we have an obligation, an emotional commitment to Palestine and to the freedom of the Palestinian people,” Akram said. “It is a principle to which we are committed politically because of Kashmir. We are heavily invested in that principle, and we would like to see the triumph of that principle of self-determination.”
Common History
The Israeli-Palestinian and Kashmir conflicts are linked by history as well, both having been born out of the collapse of British colonial rule three-quarters of a century ago in the years immediately following World War II.
When the British Raj was dissolved in 1947, the previously united Indian subcontinent was divided into the new nations of India and Pakistan, with Pakistan also controlling modern-day Bangladesh until 1971. The partition resulted in massive bloodshed, especially between Hindus and Muslims on both sides of the new border. The two new states quickly went to war over the middle ground of Kashmir, which today is divided along what’s known as the Line of Control………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.newsweek.com/pakistan-warns-israel-war-gaza-must-stop-munir-akram-1838448 #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes #Israel #Palestine
Walt Zlotow , West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 25 Oct 23
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby advised Gazans Tuesday that their destruction and ethnic cleansing will continue relentlessly. “This is war. It is combat. It is bloody, ugly and it’s going to be messy and innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward.”
No spokesman Kirby, not just hurt. Innocent civilians in Gaza are dying every day, every hour, every minute under thousands of bombs but no food, no water, no medicine; not even electricity to run their overwhelmed hospitals.
It’s no longer a war. It’s the mass destruction of 2.3 million Palestinians being systematically killed and driven from their open air prison by Israel and wholly enabled by the United States.
It is the worst, most grotesque and inhumane policy of the United State I’ve witnessed in my 70 plus years of following American foreign affairs.
Perpetual war in Ukraine that could go nuclear is not enough for Biden. He’s all in now for perpetual war in the Middle East that could explode into a massive regional war at any moment, if it doesn’t kill or remove all the Palestinians from Gaza first. #Israel #USA #Palestine
Listening to the Australian government and the local media, one would be entitled to think that it’s now a simple question of when will we receive nuclear-powered submarines, not if.
However, this is not the perspective of various parties in the US, with even the basic enabling legislation stuck in the Senate since June.
Called drily the “May 2023 DOD Legislative Package Regarding Proposed Sale of Virginia-class Boats Under AUKUS Agreement”, its aim seems to have been widely misunderstood in Australia.
Assuming that it is passed at some stage, it does not guarantee that we will be sold anything – it puts in place various measures and milestones that define how the process needs to work. Ultimately, the sale will still depend on the attitude of a future secretary of the Navy, who must advise congress for final approval.
One of the first things the legislation will do is clear the way for our government to transfer $3.326bn to the Pentagon coffers, seemingly with no visibility on how the US will spend it. We know the precise amount because it appears in a small footnote in the Defence Department’s annual budget papers. A change in the law is necessary because this transfer is unprecedented in US history and there are no existing mechanisms that allow it to happen.
There is also no mechanism for the money to be returned if the sale of submarines does not happen, and everyone from Defence Minister Richard Marles downwards has been mute about why we are handing over such a huge amount of money – something apparently volunteered by Australian officials during early negotiations. The intent is supposedly to strengthen US industry so that it reaches a point where it is producing so many Virginia-class submarines that some will be available for export.
Even determining when that point will be reached is speculative – and the legislation is no help because amendments include statements such as Australia will receive two submarines within 15 years, or they will be available for export when the US is launching them at a rate of three per year. Commentators have spoken of the need to be building them at two, or 2½ a year. The current pattern is barely 1½.
Nuclear-powered submarines are one of the most complex things ever constructed by humans, with about five million discrete components in each one. An 8000-tonne Virginia-class boat – the weight of 20 A380 passenger jets – requires a massive supply chain. Trying to ramp up production is a huge undertaking, which might work – but it also might not.
According to US officials, an extra 100,000 skilled workers are going to be needed in the next decade to meet even the two-per-year target. This is because the highest priority for the US Navy is the new Columbia-class ballistic missile firing submarines under construction. In addition, the Virginia-class – the first of which was launched in 2003 – is proving to be more maintenance intensive than expected, with close to 40 per cent of the current fleet tied up because of worker and spare parts shortages.
Some of this is spelled out in a section rather ominously titled: Limitation on Transfer of Submarines to Australia pending certification on domestic production capacity.
The government has no idea what to do, only a hope that it will all work out at a point in the distant future, preferably in a galaxy far away
The legislation also requires reporting requirements that appear incompatible with how our secretive Defence Department does things, with the connivance of the government. It says that within 90 days of passage, the Secretary of Defense – currently Lloyd Austin – must report to Congress on the cost, schedule, milestones and funding requirements involved in the sale of a Virginia-class submarine. This needs to be done in a way that will not adversely affect the capabilities of the USN. Since the US has a level of transparency we can only dream of, there are numerous other reporting requirements. One of these states: “A description of progress by the Government of Australia in building a new submarine facility to support the basing and disposition of a nuclear-attack submarine on the east coast of Australia.”
As Richard Marles has ruled out making a decision on the location of the base until next decade – after all, no one wants to live adjacent to a nuclear target with a consequent fall in house prices – it seems we will be in early breach of one of the conditions.
Another is that we will need to show that plans for other Australian military acquisitions will not be distorted – in other words the US is expecting to see evidence of a major increase in Defence spending, not just a vague promise.
If not before, this is likely to come to a head when the US asks for detailed plans for how we dispose locally of the highly radioactive SG9 reactors containing bomb grade material – U235 has a half-life of 704 million years – on Australian soil. At the moment, the government has no idea what to do, only a hope that it will all work out at a point in the distant future, preferably in a galaxy far away. Why we agreed to this provision when the US already has a system in place for decommissioning their own submarines is unknown.
In related news, a team in the UK led by BAE Systems has been awarded a $7.5bn contract for early work on the future AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine, with construction starting in the late 2030s.
This does not seem to involve Australia, indicating that we will either have to take whatever the British decide to sell us, or our specific modifications – such as for US weapons – will have to be made at a later point, increasing cost and risk. #Australia #auspol #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
The United Nations has revised its grim figure of the rising death toll from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, saying that it has surpassed 5,000 as of Monday. It stands at 5,087.Separately, over 90 Palestinians have been killed in escalating West Bank violence, which over the weekend included Israel launching a rare airstrike on Jenin. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are still holding at least 222 Israeli and foreign captives – a number which has again been revised upward.
European Union foreign ministers are meanwhile gathered in Brussels for an urgent meeting to take up the contentious issue of a ceasefire. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has been calling on world bodies to back a ceasefire. In response, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said:
“Personally, I think that a humanitarian pause is needed in order to allow the humanitarian support to come in and be distributed, seeing that half of the population of Gaza has been moving from their houses.”
Bloomberg is reporting Monday morning that EU leaders are set to endorse a call for a “humanitarian pause”. “The European Council supports the call of UNSG (U.N. Secretary-General Antonio) Guterres for a humanitarian pause in order to allow for safe humanitarian access and aid to reach those in need,” a draft statement of the summit reads.
But Washington, Israel’s staunchest supporter, isnot expected to back a ceasefire – despite reports President Biden has sought for Israel’s military delay the expected imminent ground invasion, in order to buy more time to negotiate the freedom of more hostages.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Sunday news shows made this clear. Margaret Brennan, the host of CBS News’ Face the Nation, asked him:
“UNICEF says 1,524 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip during these bombings. Why isn’t the US calling for at least a temporary ceasefire?“
Blinken then claimed that children dying on either side has hit him “right in the heart” – but he stopped short of directing any criticism at Israel’s indiscriminate and unrelenting bombing campaign.Instead, he defended it.
Blinken said in reference to October 7 Hamas cross-border attack:
“Israel has to do everything it can to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Freezing things in place where they are now would allow Hamas to remain where it is and to repeat what it’s done some time in the future. No country could accept that.”
He then cited unverified reports that Hamas has actively blocked Palestinians who are also American citizens from leaving the Gaza Strip.
“We’ve had people come to Rafah, the crossing with Egypt. And to date, at least, Hamas has blocked them from leaving, showing once again, its total disregard for civilians of any kind who are — who are stuck in Gaza. So really, the ball is in Hamas’ court, in terms of letting people who want to leave, civilians from third countries, including Americans get out of Gaza.”
There are a reported up to 600 Americans stuck in Gaza, with one Palestinian-American telling NBC that “America’s not helping us, Biden’s not helping us, the embassy is not helping us.”
The United States is still bolstering its military presence in Middle East waters, readying for any contingency, even as it’s said to be pressing for furthering back-channel negotiations and delaying an all-out Israeli assault:
It was becoming increasingly clear Monday that the U.S. wants Israel to not only allow more humanitarian assistance into Gaza, but for the country to let ongoing negotiations over the release of hostages held by Hamas to continue before it launches a ground invasion of the Palestinian territory. Israel said Monday that Hamas was still holding 222 people captive.
Two sources told CBS News the U.S. has sought to slow Israel’s plans for a ground invasion in order to prioritize the release of hostages and the distribution of aid, a message Washington is said to have been conveying primarily through defense channels.
The Pentagon is calling its moving two aircraft carrier strike groups into regional waters an act of “deterrence”.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had announcedSaturday:
“Following detailed discussions with President Biden on recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces across the Middle East Region, today I directed a series of additional steps to further strengthen the Department of Defense posture in the region. These steps will bolster regional deterrence efforts, increase force protection for U.S. forces in the region, and assist in the defense of Israel.”
The White House has Iran in mind, and its proxies Hezbollah and Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen, the latter who days ago tried to fire missiles on Israel, but which were intercepted by a US warship off Yemen’s coast. US THAAD and Patriot missile batteries have been sent to Israel.
Blinken said:
“This is not what we want, not what we’re looking for. We don’t want escalation. We don’t want to see our forces or our personnel come under fire. But if that happens, we’re ready for it.”
And Austin simultaneously affirmed the statements, saying:
“What we’re seeing is a prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region.”
It’s clear Hezbollah has held off committing itself to a major war with Israel, which could very well happen the moment the IDF mounts a major ground assault into Gaza. Hezbollah’s arsenal, with the help of Iran, is far superior to that of Hamas’, and is said to include tens of thousands of rockets of varying sizes.
There’s still been regular exchange of rocket and mortar fire, with Israeli sources reporting Monday that the Iron Dome intercepted an inbound drone from Lebanon via the sea. It was intercepted over Ein Hamifratz, south of Acre. At this point, several dozens of Israeli towns and communities have been evacuated from near the northern border. #Israel #Palestine #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Israel’s war with Hamas, renewed fighting with Hezbollah and tensions with Iran have fuelled concerns that the spate of conflicts in the Middle East could turn nuclear.
Israel is thought to have a sizeable arsenal of air and submarine-launched nuclear warheads – while Iran has long denied attempts to develop nuclear weapons, but its true capabilities are largely unknown amid a failed nuclear deal with the US and longstanding tensions with the monitoring body, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Within Israel, there have already been calls by fringe figures for a scorched-earth policy, with the far-right Likud MP Tally Gotliv urging the Israeli government to use “everything in its arsenal” including “doomsday” weapons against Hamas.
Others have pleaded for level heads. “She [Tally Gotliv] is a complete idiot,” says Uri Bar-Joseph, professor emeritus in political science at Haifa University in Israel. “Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. The suggestion is idiotic.”
He notes that Gotliv is not a minister, and that far-right extremists in government, such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir have been excluded from the Israeli war cabinet and thus “will have been excluded from decision-making in the war with Gaza”.
But memories of how then Israeli defence minister Moshe Dayan asked prime minister Golda Meir to increase the readiness of Israeli nuclear weapons on the second day of the 1973 Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli War has led some to question whether Israel, under extreme duress, might resort to the use of such weapons in an expanded Middle East conflict.
“We know from internal cabinet documents that Golda Meir immediately said ‘no’ to that in 1973,” says Professor Bar-Joseph. Although some historians have claimed the mere fact that nuclear weapons were mentioned by Dayan prompted then-president Richard Nixon to order an airlift to Israel days later on 12 October.
If we had Golda Meir in power today, Biden would not have been less concerned,” says Bar-Joseph. “But Biden does not consider Netanyahu to be a responsible player.”
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has said that Israel’s presumed possession of nuclear weapons “significantly increases the risks associated with the conflict”.
……………………………………………….. The Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation thinks Israel possesses 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads and to have produced enough plutonium for 100-200 weapons, but there have been questions over how ready the Israeli military is to use them in a conflict.
Israel has conducted few, if any, tests. The mystery that surrounds its nuclear programme has sparked questions among military experts about the nation’s actual deterrence capabilities.
But many observers, including Professor Bar-Joseph think that since it first acquired nuclear weapons capability in 1967, Israel has had more than enough time to ensure its military is able to fire them from land and sea………… https://inews.co.uk/news/world/nuclear-weapons-israel-hamas-war-risk-escalation-2706029 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,” said the UNRWA. “Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance.”
The U.N. agency responsible for humanitarian aid and protections in the occupied Gaza Strip—battered relentlessly by Israeli airstrikes for the past two weeks—said Sunday that if fuel supplies are not restored within a matter of days, its operations will collapse entirely.
“In three days, UNRWA will run out of fuel, critical for our humanitarian response across the Gaza Strip,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the United Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,”
Lazzarini continued. “Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance. No fuel will further strangle the children, women, and people of Gaza.”
Noting that the UNRWA runs the largest humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip, he said that without fuel, “we will fail the people of Gaza whose needs are growing by the hour, under our watch.”
Following the first “totally insufficient” convoy of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt on Saturday, another 17 trucks were permitted Sunday. Neither of the deliveries contained fuel, which medical personnel on the ground have said is vital if the health system is to remain capable of keeping the wounded and sick alive.
With Israeli officials saying the bombardment is set to intensify, not lessen, a global demand for a cease-fire has gone unheeded by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its powerful allies, including the United States.
With large demonstrations in numerous U.S. and European cities over the weekend delivering the same message for a cease-fire also ringing out across the Middle East and beyond, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday called for a stop in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza alongside a much larger delivery of aid.
“We must act now to end the nightmare,” Guterres said at the so-called Peace Summit in Cairo, Egypt.
Despite U.S. President Joe Biden’s continued backing of Israeli policy, including it’s bombardment of Gaza which legal scholars have said may amount to genocide—a poll last week showed two-thirds of U.S. voters back the call for a cease-fire.
As the civilian death toll continues to mount—with the latest weekend figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health putting the number killed at more than 4,600, nearly half of them children, and more than three times that wounded—UNRWA confirmed earlier on Saturday that 29 of its own staffers and volunteers, half of them school teachers, have been killed since the Israel bombing campaign began on Oct. 7.
“We are in shock and mourning,” the agency said in a social media post. “As an Agency, we are devastated. We are grieving with each other and with the families.”
In his statement on Sunday, Lazzarini called on “all parties and those with influence over them to immediately allow fuel supplies into the Gaza Strip and to ensure that fuel is strictly used to prevent a collapse of the humanitarian response.” #Israel #Palestine
The Biden administration released details about its massive proposal to provide arms to Israel and Ukraine, as well as funds to build up military assets in the region surrounding China.
SCHEERPOST By Kyle Anzalone / Antiwar.com, October 21, 2023
On Friday, the White House rolled out its proposed $105 billion bill to arm Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The legislation also includes funding for the border and humanitarian assistance. US officials say over $50 billion will go to American weapons manufacturers.
The Biden administration is proposing a massive aid package as it has struggled to get Congress to appropriate more funds for the proxy war in Ukraine. The largest portion of money is for Ukraine at $61.4 billion. The White House wants enough money for Ukraine to fund Kiev through the 2024 election.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described the aid as critical to American national security and demanded Congress pass the bill. “This budget request is critical to advancing America’s national security and ensuring the safety of the American people,” Sullivan said. “The world is closely watching what Congress does next.”
Israel will receive $14.3 billion in assistance, with $10.6 billion for air and missile defense support.The aid would be in addition to the $3.8 billion Tel Aviv from Washington in security assistance annually……………………………………………
The bill includes $7.4 billion for several initiatives to increase Washington’s military posture in the Indo-Pacific. That includes $2 billion in grants for foreign governments to buy American weapons. Taiwan will receive a portion of that money, although US officials did not provide a detailed breakdown.
Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young, explained that nearly half of the money will go to American arms makers. “This supplemental request invests over $50 billion in the American defense industrial base, ensuring our military continues to be the most ready, capable, and best-equipped fighting force the world has ever seen,” she said.
Young claimed that the spending would bolster the American economy and create jobs. However, a study indicated that military spending costs more jobsthan it creates……………..
A small number of Republican represenatives have hindered Congress from passing additional funds for Ukraine. The Biden administration hopes to push several GOP members of Congress to vote for the bill by combining funding for Taiwan, Israel, and the border with Ukraine. https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/21/white-house-seeks-105-billion-to-arm-israel-ukraine-and-taiwan/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
“………………………………….. the US Navy and its supporting industrial architecture, once the unassailable leader and security guarantor for much of the world and the global economy, is now a shadow of its former might.
This has left the US Navy and its global partners, including the Royal Australian Navy, to face an increasingly uphill battle to field a range of next-generation capabilities ranging from hypersonic weapons, through to advanced surface and submarine capabilities.
A third yard is critical to meet American and AUKUS obligations
Of particular importance for Australia is what is by now the well-documented lack of capacity in the existing US submarine construction yards to meet the stated minimum requirements identified by the US Navy.
The dual demands of replacing the remaining Los Angeles Class attack submarines and the Ohio Class ballistic missile submarines has already stretched the US defence industrial base to capacity, prior to the added layer of complexity required to support the trilateral AUKUS agreement.
……..The commission report suggests that the Pentagon, “increase shipbuilding capacity, by working with industry to establish or renovate a third shipyard dedicated to production of nuclear-powered vessels, with particular emphasis on nuclear-powered submarines”.
However, given the immense cost required to bring a third yard from either a green field or brown field site, government spending would be required the Pentagon has been told, this is particularly important when you account for the maintenance and sustainment requirements of nuclear-powered submarines on top of the construction phase.
Highlighting just how monumental this task is, the report states, “In the sea leg, the Navy is scheduled to construct one Columbia Class submarine per year and sustain the Ohio Class in parallel relying on the same infrastructure for both (manufacturing facilities, dry docks, etc). Additionally, this same workforce and industrial base also support Virginia Class submarine production.”
Such a balance isn’t without trade offs, with the Pentagon warning that, “As a result, the Navy must consider schedule trade offs between the two classes of submarines. The [Office of Management and Budget] as well as the Commission are skeptical that the current infrastructure can simultaneously support conventional and nuclear sustainment, modernisation, and construction as scheduled. The AUKUS agreement may place further stress on this capacity.”
……………………………………………………… the US Navy and its allies, including Australia, are facing stagnating or declining defence budgets (in real terms) as a result of increasingly costly technology-heavy platforms, coupled with continuing societal atomisation and disconnection from the principles of liberal democracy,…………………………………………………………..
Final thoughts
Importantly, in this era of renewed competition between autarchy and democracy, this is an uncomfortable conversation that needs to be had in the open with the Australian people, as ultimately, they will be called upon to help implement it, to consent to the direction, and to defend it should diplomacy fail………. https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/industry/12977-congress-calls-for-third-us-nuclear-submarine-yard
Corporate media’s dehumanization of Palestinians, lack of historical context, and repeating hearsay as fact make the current tragedy unintelligible to Americans.
On October 6, 2023, Hamas broke out of Gaza, lobbed rockets, and sent fighters into Israeli territory. The attacks killed hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians. Images of violence and brutality were recorded and distributed widely over broadcast news over and over again, repeatedly showing abused, bloodied, and crying women and children. The violence was presented with voices of US and Israeli officials asserting that the attack was “unprecedented.” Israel retaliated immediately and bombed the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on the globe. Photographs of death and destruction ran side by side, each with only brief captions about location. Many news outlets reported that the violence came out of nowhere, offering no historical context. The attacks therefore were without motivation, attributed only to the pure evil of Hamas and Palestinian terrorists.
German media scholar Hektor Haarkötter, who partners with Project Censored for his work with the News Enlightenment Initiative, was recently in the US speaking on an international roundtable at a critical communication conference and said he was stunned by the coverage: “When I saw the images of such violence repeated many times, on rotation, I was shocked. This would not be considered news in Germany. It would have been seen as little more than sensationalism.”
On October 7, the AP reported that US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.” On October 9, The Times of Israel quoted Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian directed his threat at all Gazans on October 10, declaring, “Kidnapping, abusing and murdering children, women and elderly people is not human.” He then announced, “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.”
In a piece published on October 8 titled “Media Calls The Attack On Israel Unprovoked: Experts Say That’s Historically Inaccurate,” the Huffington Post pointed to the Israeli government’s “apartheid against Palestinians” as a provocation. It quoted IfNotNow, an American Jewish group that opposes Israeli apartheid, expressing their dread for the loss of life and loved ones, Israelis and Palestinians alike. It continued, “Every day under Israel’s system of apartheid is a provocation. The strangling siege on Gaza is a provocation. Settlers terrorizing entire Palestinian villages, soldiers raiding and demolishing Palestinian homes, murdering Palestinians in the streets, Israeli ministers calling for genocide and expulsion” are all provocations.
Indeed, multipleinternationalhuman rightsgroups have defined the long-term Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as a system of apartheid. The death toll on each side exposes the false assertion that Israeli violence is always retaliatory and that of Palestinians is “unprecedented.” The UNOCHA documents 6,407 Palestinian deaths since 2008, compared to 308 Israeli fatalities. Gregory Shupak reported that since 2001, more than ten thousand Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, with “nearly 9 out of 10 deaths this century have been on the Palestinian side.” In addition, the Israelis have made daily life in Gaza miserable. As UK journalist Jonathan Cook wrote, “[Gaza’s] inhabitants—one million of them children—are denied the most basic freedoms, such as the right to movement; access to proper health care, drinkable water, and the use of electricity because Israel keeps bombing Gaza’s power station.” But voices such as Shupak and Cook are virtually absent from US establishment news coverage of the violence.
The Hamas attacks were taken out of the context of ongoing violence, presented without cause, and in narratives that see only Hamas violence but have rarely featured or condemned equivalent Israeli violence against Palestinians. Establishment media’s one-sided pro-Israel coverage, established over many years, fed into the growing consensus that a major retaliation by Israelis would be forthcoming. Early corporate news reporting seemed to confirm its inevitability, with almost no voices of reason or caution allowed to enter the militarized revenge frame coalescing around a major attack.
The verbiage used by the New York Times on the Tribe of Nova music festival also illustrates Big Journalism’s sensationalized, inaccurate reporting. The Times wrote that the “massacre of its youth” and Israel’s “75-year-old quest for some carefree normalcy” met the “murderous fury of those long-oppressed Palestinians who deny the state’s right to exist.” The language of the Times’ report—using “murderous” and denial of Israel’s “right to exist,” with “long-oppressed Palestinians”—makes a mockery of what Gazans have experienced. Additionally, it is not true that Palestinians deny Israel’s right to exist. A quick look at the US State Department’s summation of the 1993 Oslo Accords states that the Palestinian Authority “renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace” and “Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians,” concessions that undergirded the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. But Rashid Khalidi has called out the “empty words about a two-state solution while providing money, weapons and diplomatic support for systematic, calculated Israeli actions that have made that solution inconceivable.”
Most important among the systemic violence against Palestinians is the growing weaponization of Israeli settlers. As Israel was dropping bombs on Gaza, Common Dreams reported that the California-based Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) accused Israel’s far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, of enabling settler attacks by handing out thousands of military assault rifles to settlement residents. “The extremist settlers Israel is arming have spent years attacking Palestinian cities in lynch mobs, with full backing from the Israeli government.” IMEU continued, “This year alone, they have killed Palestinian civilians and set fire to cars and homes with families inside.” Such stories are virtually absent from establishment media.
Gregory Shupak examined the editorial pages of major US newspapers from October 7 to 9, concluding that none of them provided readers with “information necessary to comprehend what is happening and why, and they consistently mislead readers about key facts.” Some papers were openly ravenous in their demonization of Palestinians. For example, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed titled “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas,” telling its readers that “Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil, depraved culture that resides next to it.” Calling for the destruction of Hamas and extending the call to exterminate the “culture” is a call for genocide. It mirrored and promoted Israeli announcements that they would turn Gaza into “hell,” “rubble,” and a “city of tents.”
Ironically, on October 8, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretzoffered more explanation and context than most US papers when it criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to “annex the West Bank” and “to carry out ethnic cleansing in…the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.” It pointed to the massive expansion of settlements and increasing Jewish presence on Temple Mount, near Al Aqsa Mosque. In April 2022, Mondoweiss reported that the Israeli military attacked Palestinians on their way to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque seven times in eight days, injuring dozens of worshipers and arresting hundreds of Palestinians. Israeli forces used remote-controlled drones to drop teargas inside the mosque. Meanwhile, Israel facilitated the entrance of thousands of Jewish settlers for the Passover holiday.
War Propaganda: Babies were Decapitated and Women were Raped
Sensationalized repetition and media saturation of decontextualized Hamas violence quickly evolved into full-blown atrocity propaganda with horror stories claiming that Hamas had slit the throats of forty Israeli babies, decapitating many of them. Visceral baby slaughter is classic war propaganda, first used in World War I with false claims that German soldiers joyfully bayonetted babies. Similar stories convincedskeptical Americans to support the First Persian Gulf War, with the fake news story about Iraqi soldiers tossing over three hundred Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators. Roundly debunked after the war, journalists published the story uncritically, just as they eagerly circulated the unverified decapitation story.
Alan MacLeod investigated the story that Hamas had slaughtered Israeli babies, finding that it came from an anonymous Israeli military source and was originally reported by Israeli i24 News.
Without verification, Fox News, CNN, MSN, Insider, and the New York Post picked up and repeated the incendiary propaganda in the US. The UK’s largest newspapers screamed outrage as the salacious story was flung across the front pages of the Times of London, the Independent, the Financial Times, and the Scotsman (as documented by Mint Press News).
The key source for the false claim was an Israeli soldier, David Ben Zion, a fanatical settler who has incited riots against Palestinians, describing them as “animals” who need to be “wiped out.”
Another propaganda trope circulated to justify war is the rape of women, made more devious by its actual use as a military strategy. The Intercept noted that unverified claims that Hamas was raping women had gone viral online, and President Biden claimed that women were “raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.” Caitlin Johnstone noted, “We’re seeing claims about mass rapes being uncritically pushed by the mass media, only to see them retracted as unverified after the narrative has taken hold.”Any legitimate journalist should recognize such war tropes, and if not, should at least track the stories’ origins and refrain from publication until those sources are verified. President Biden was forced to walk back his lie about seeing “confirmed pictures of terrorist beheading children,” while talking to leaders of US Jewish organizations at the White House.
What was the purpose of perpetrating such lurid fake news, the stuff of visceral propaganda? The Hamas attacks that killed civilians were met with outrage and widely condemned, even by those who advocate for Palestinian rights, express criticism of the “unprovoked” news frame, or have criticized Israel’s growing violence and worked to create humanitarian spaces amidst the cruelty. Certainly, the attacks alone could be considered justifications for Israeli retaliation. But as Caitlin Johnstone argued, that was not enough. Israel’s response was about to dwarf the initial Hamas offensive. Israel and its allies needed to frame the attack in “the most shocking and rage-inducing discourse in order to make Israel’s ongoing murder of civilians in Gaza look appropriate.”
War Crimes and Wiping Out Gaza
Writing for Declassified UK, Jonathan Cook detailed how Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza violated numerous international laws and the Geneva Convention, pointing out that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were committing war crimes. “One of the fundamentals of international law—at the heart of the Geneva Conventions—is a prohibition on collective punishment: that is, retaliating against the enemy’s civilian population, making them pay the price for the acts of their leaders and armies.” He continued, “What Israel is doing to Gaza is the very definition of collective punishment.”
Two days earlier on October 11, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spread what can only be called “fake news” on Sky News when he claimed, “What separates Israel, the US and other democracies…is our respect for international law and the laws of war.” By October 14, Al Jazeera reported that in the first seven days of the conflict, an estimated one million Gazans had been displaced, according to the UN, and aid groups said the situation in the besieged enclave was “catastrophic,” as fourteen Palestinians were being killed every hour. Israel had dropped the equivalent of “a quarter of a nuclear bomb on Gaza,” accordingto the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. And by October 16, Euro-Med posted, “The Stench of Death Looms Everywhere in #Gaza, Immediate Halt to the Killing of Civilians Required.”
The saturation bombing of Gaza, where entire apartment buildings filled with residents are destroyed, taking out entire families, amounts to horrific collective killings. Israelis are committing numerous violations of international law, as hospitals are on the verge of collapse, and food, water, and electricity are blocked along with humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli air strike targeted a convoy, killing seventy-three Palestinians and injuring 130 others as they attempted to move south. Euro-Med Monitor condemned the deliberate targeting of civilians being forcibly displaced after Israel’s orders to leave. It was an open practice of forced transfer (transference) outside international law and a “blatant violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” NBC News reported the airstrike on the convoy but failed to report it as a war crime. A PBS news brief softened the blow with a baseless speculation that it was not clear “whether militants were among the passengers.”
Just as President Biden left for Israel, a bomb hit the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, killing five hundred people, including patients and doctors: a war crime. Israel claimed that Hamas or Islamic Jihad was responsible for the precision strike and huge explosion. From the AP to the New York Times, establishment media framed the story as a dispute between Hamas and the IDF or as an exchange of air strikesbetween them. Jonathan Cook called it Western propaganda, saying, “If Hamas or Islamic Jihad could cause the kind of damage that happened last night, you would hear about it happening in Tel Aviv or Ashkelon too. You don’t, because they can’t.” Caitlin Johnstone included the text of a phone conversation presented by Israel and also argued the unlikely veracity of the evidence. Using altered or invented audio and video, Israel has succeeded in the past in delaying and planting doubt about their role in such violence, at least long enough to allow the story to do its damage. For example, an altered video was used to “prove” that an Israeli sniper did not assassinate Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh or the unprovoked Israeli violence perpetrated at her funeral.
It took time for the dozens of investigations to counter the gaslighting, and the delay facilitated President Biden’s failure to hold the Israeli military accountable. For the time being, once again, the denial allowed Biden to re-confirm US support for Israel, this time allowing Israel to carry on with the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Choosing Humanity Over Killing and Destruction
While condemning the Hamas attacks as a crime against humanity, the Center for Constitutional Rights also stated, “It is our commitment to human dignity and the preciousness of life that has long led our organization to stand with Palestinians as they resist Israeli colonization, occupation, and apartheid.” The Center’s statement expressed grief for “the many Israeli civilians killed in the assault on their communities on October 7,” while also decrying “Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, which is in danger of becoming a genocide.”
Common Dreams reported on protests calling for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza, organized by IfNotNow and Jewish Voices for Peace. IfNotNow has stated, “We absolutely condemn the killing of innocent civilians and mourn the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life, with numbers rising by the minute. Their blood is on the hands of the Israeli government, the US government which funds and excuses their recklessness, and every international leader who continues to turn a blind eye to decades of Palestinian oppression, endangering both Palestinians and Israelis.”
US establishment media should consider these humanitarian narratives, in contrast to their standard militarized revenge frames, which only fan the flames of genocide that imperil the Palestinian people. #Israel #Palestine
It’s true that Israel didn’t “bomb the al-Ahli hospital” in Gaza on the night of Oct. 17th 2023. The evidence suggests it did something much worse.
As is the case with all other hospitals in Gaza, al-Ahli hospital had become a refuge for the thousands of people internally displaced in Gaza due to Israel’s massive bombing campaign that began on Oct. 7th. On the night of Oct. 17th, hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children had congregated in the courtyard of the hospital (the hospital itself being already full) because they believed it to be a relatively safe haven from Israeli bombs.
Canon Richard Sewell, the dean of St George’s College in Jerusalem, told the BBCthat about 1,000 displaced people were sheltering in the courtyard when it was hit, and about 600 patients and staff were inside the building.
Note also that, in the past week, Israeli political and military elite have publicly stated that they view all Palestinian resistance groups as “literal Nazis” and by implication the Palestinian people as “Nazi sympathizers”, and therefore “subhuman” and not entitled to the same rights as “normal” human beings.
Initially, and based on claims by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and hospital staff, the media reported that Israel had bombed the hospital, “killing hundreds of people.” Within a day however, the IDF claimed that the explosion was in fact a result of a PIJ rocket that “misfired” and hit the area, and provided evidence to “prove” it.
China has rejected a US Pentagon report claiming that the Asian country has more than 500 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal and will probably have over 1,000 by 2030.
China said the report was “filled with prejudice and distorts face”, as it clarified that it has no intention of indulging in a nuclear arms race.
In a previous report, the Pentagon estimated that Beijing had more than 400 operational nuclear warheads in 2021.
“We see the PRC (People’s Republic of China) continuing to quite rapidly modernize and diversify and expand its nuclear forces,” a senior US official told reporters during a briefing on the report.
However, on Friday, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson issued a statement rejecting the US claims.
“First of all, the United States report, like similar reports before it, ignores the facts, is full of prejudice and spreads the theory of the threat posed by China,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a press briefing in response to a question about the US report.
“China firmly adheres to a nuclear strategy of self-defence and defence, we have always maintained our nuclear forces at the lowest level required for national security, and we have no intention of engaging in a nuclear arms race with any country,” Mr Mao said.
The report reiterated concern about pressure by Beijing on self-ruled Taiwan, an island China sees as a breakaway province.
“As long as any country does not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against China, it will not be threatened by China’s nuclear weapons,” Mr Mao said.
Relations between China and the United States have been tense, with friction between the world’s two largest economies over everything from Taiwan and China’s human rights record to its military activity in the South China Sea.
But Washington has been eager to revive military-to-military communications with China.
Last week the Pentagon said it had accepted an invitation to attend China’s top annual security forum in late October, the latest sign of potentially warming ties between the two countries’ militaries. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Historian Peter Kuznick fears for the fate of humanity … warning of a third world war and a nuclear winter if conflicts across the globe continue to escalate.
The author and American University professor joined us on “TMZ Live” Thursday, and we asked him just how close we are to World War III, given the war in the Middle East.
Peter says things were already trending towards a doomsday scenario as a result of the war between Ukraine and Russia and the situation in Taiwan … and he fears recent developments in Gaza may push things over the edge.
The way Peter sees a nightmare situation unfolding — Israel invades Palestine, forcing Hezbollah to join the war — and then other countries are drawn into battle.
From there, Peter says it’s an all-out world war … and it’s pretty much guaranteed nuclear warheads will be used.
Peter explains how even a small number of nukes would create a nuclear winter capable of killing 2 billion people across the globe … telling us it would be worse than ever imagined.
With the United States mobilizing warships, aircraft and troops to help Israel, Peter says humanity is sitting on the proverbial powder keg … but he’s got some solutions to avoid cataclysm. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Australia and New Zealand have historically promoted strong anti-nuclear policies at both a global, regional, and sub-regional level. They joined with the United States and the other original parties to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty to make Antarctica nuclear free.
Both countries also took France to the International Court of Justice in 1973 in order to bring about a halt to France’s nuclear testing program in the South Pacific, and actively promoted the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone in the 1985 Treaty of Rarotonga.
However, in 2021 Australia along with the UK and US announced the AUKUS initiative, which in March 2023 was finalized in San Diego. Australia will eventually acquire AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines during the 2030s.
This has placed a spotlight on Australia’s anti-nuclear credentials and its international law commitments and has attracted criticism from within the Asia Pacific, including from New Zealand, Pacific island states, and China. This seminar considers these issues through the lens of international law.
VIDEO – on original
Chapters: 00:00:00 Moderator: Avner Cohen, Professor, Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies 00:01:44 Speaker: Donald R. Rothwell, Professor of International Law, ANU College of Law, Australian National University 00:57:07 Q&A #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
nuclear-news 