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Israel Continues Gaza Attacks Despite UN Court Order To ‘Immediately Halt’ Rafah Offensive

 https://www.rferl.org/a/gaza-israel-attacks-rafah-un-court/32963140.html
May 25, 2024 By RFE/RL (with reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters)

Israel continued bombing in the Gaza Strip, including the city of Rafah, on May 25, one day after a top UN court ordered it to halt military operations against the southern city.

Israel gave no indication that the ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had affected its planning.

“Israel has not and will not carry out military operations in the Rafah area that ‘create living conditions that could cause the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part,’” Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a statement, echoing wording found in the ICJ ruling.

Separately, following a meeting between U.S. and Israeli officials in Paris on May 25, an Israeli official said Tel Aviv was seeking to restart talks in the coming days in an effort to reach a hostage-release deal in Gaza.

“There is an intention to renew the talks this week and there is an agreement,” the official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Early on May 25, hours after the court ruling, Israel carried out strikes on the Gaza Strip as fighting between Israeli troops and fighters for Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, continued.

Air strikes were reported in Rafah and the central city of Deir al-Balah.

European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “ICJ orders are binding on the Parties and they have to be fully and effectively implanted.

In its May 24 ruling, the ICJ said Israel must “immediately halt” its offensive against Rafah and take urgent measures to address the humanitarian crisis in the entire region. Measures should include reopening the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to allow aid to flow into Gaza.

The order is part of a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide and asking the court to rule that Israel must stop its offensive in the southern Gaza city.

In a ruling on January 26, the 15-judge panel ruled that Israel must do everything to prevent genocide during its offensive in response to an attack in October by Hamas — which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the EU — but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire.
On March 28, it ordered Israel to take all necessary and effective action to ensure basic food supplies to Gaza’s Palestinian population.

Though the court’s rulings are legally binding, it has no way to enforce them.
Still, the 13-2 vote ordering Israel to halt its Rafah offensive, and to report on its progress in easing the humanitarian crisis within one month, increases pressure on Israel and further isolates it.

The ruling stepped up pressure against Israel just days after Norway, Ireland, and Spain announced they would recognize a Palestinian state and after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced he would seek arrest warrants on war crimes charges for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and several top Hamas leaders.

Israel and Hamas have been fighting since October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters launched a massive cross-border attack on Israel. Some 1,200 Israeli citizens were killed in the attack, while another 240 were taken hostage, some of whom are still being held by Hamas in Gaza.

May 30, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

450,000 Palestinians flee Rafah as Israeli tanks move in

“Nowhere is safe” in Gaza, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees has warned

 https://www.rt.com/news/597596-palestinians-flee-rafah-tanks/ 19 May 24

Some 450,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah since Israel ordered more of the city evacuated on Saturday, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday. Reports from the city suggest that Israeli forces are closing in on its densely-populated urban core.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered people in the southeastern neighborhoods of Rafah to leave “immediately” on Saturday, with IDF spokesman Avichai Adraee warning that Israeli forces were preparing to strike Hamas targets there “with great force.” The IDF has now evacuated the entire eastern third of the city following a similar order given earlier this month.

In a statement on Tuesday, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that 450,000 people had heeded the orders. “People face constant exhaustion, hunger and fear. Nowhere is safe,” the statement read. “An immediate cease-fire is the only hope.” 

Prior to the evacuation, Rafah hosted around 1.4 million Palestinians fleeing Israeli operations in northern and central Gaza. Despite condemnation from the US, UN, and other countries and international organizations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered airstrikes on Rafah at the beginning of May, followed by a limited ground offensive near the city’s southern border checkpoint with Egypt.

IDF tanks entered the Brazil and al-Jnaina neighborhoods of eastern Rafah on Tuesday, Palestinian sources told Reuters, with one source describing “clashes” in built-up areas. The IDF said that its troops had “eliminated several armed terrorist cells in close-quarters encounters on the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing” and “eliminated a number of terrorists and located weapons” in eastern areas of the city.

Hamas said on Tuesday that its fighters had killed and wounded several Israeli troops with missiles and mines in Brazil and al-Jnaina.

It is unclear whether Netanyahu intends to press ahead with a full-scale invasion of Rafah. The US State Department has expressed doubt that the IDF is capable of completely eradicating Hamas in Gaza, and US President Joe Biden has warned that he will halt some military aid to Israel if Netanyahu carries out such an operation.

Some 35,901 Palestinians have been killed in the seven months since Israel began striking Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. Of that number, 24,686 have been identified, 60% of whom were women, children, and the elderly, according to the UN.

Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 Israelis during their October 7 assault on the Jewish state. Meanwhile, 272 Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting in Gaza, while another 1,674 have been injured, according to Israeli officials and media outlets.

May 20, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Senators Threaten Criminal Court & Advise Israel to Nuke Gaza

By Thalif Deen,  https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/05/us-senators-threaten-criminal-court-advice-israel-nuke-gaza/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=us-senators-threaten-criminal-court-advice-israel-nuke-gaza

UNITED NATIONS, May 16 2024 (IPS) – As the ancient Greek saying goes: those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive them mad. Perhaps destruction is too far-fetched here, but madness is closer home—in Washington DC

With the 7-month-old Israeli-Gaza conflict showing no positive signs of a permanent solution, there is a lingering sense of growing political craziness in Capitol Hill, the seat of the US government, once described as Israeli-occupied territory.

Last week Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator from South Carolina, who once chaired the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, implicitly advised Israel it should drop nuclear bombs over Gaza—perhaps ignorant of the fact that a nuclear fallout will also destroy parts of Israel.

In a TV interview, Graham advised Israel: “Do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state”—as he compared Israel’s war on Gaza to the US war with Japan during World War II.

“When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons,” Graham said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press.

Meanwhile, Tim Walberg, a Republican House member said wiping out Gaza “should be like Hiroshima and Nagasaki” “Get it over quick”, he advised Israel.

Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle told IPS: “Sure, Israel is yet to drop a nuclear bomb, but it has dropped enough US bombs over the besieged Strip to create the impact of nuclear weapons.”

He pointed out that 75 percent of Gaza has been destroyed, and about 5 percent of the population have been killed or wounded. This was done by Biden and his supposedly softer approach, if compared to Graham, to the war.

“This is indeed madness, but, in a sense, it also reflects a degree of desperation,” said Baroud.

Meanwhile, 12 US Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have openly threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) with sanctions if they target Israeli officials.

The threat is directed at both ICC officials and their family members — if and when, the Court moves forward with international arrest warrants against Israeli leaders over the war in Gaza.

“Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States,” read the April 24 letter.

“You have been warned,” the letter added.

Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS the goal posts on the USA’s political field have been dragged rightward since last autumn by the combined forces of standard militarism, craven political jockeying, biased mass-media coverage and ferocious pro-Israel messaging.

The countervailing force in the United States is coming from grassroots opposition to Israel’s mass murder and rejection of its support provided by the U.S. political establishment.

Often led by activists in such organizations as Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, the highly visible protests last fall and winter seeded the ground for the upsurge in student-led protests in recent weeks on U.S. college campuses, he said.

This nonviolent grassroots resistance to Israeli genocide and oppression of Palestinian people has shocked the traditional American Zionist establishment and its allies in the leadership of the Democratic Party.

“The growing resistance has also provoked an extreme reactionary response from right-wing media outlets such as Fox News and many dozens of Republicans in Congress who have vocally and mendaciously denounced efforts to end the slaughter, which is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers to the benefit of both the fascistic Israeli government and military contractors based in the United States”, he argued.

“The flagrantly racist and ethnocentric reactions of Republican leaders, combined with the rhetorical Democratic vacillation that continues to support the Israeli-inflicted carnage in Gaza, comprise the two wings of U.S. governance. Most young Americans, in particular, are now emphatically opposed to both wings enabling the genocide,” he noted.

This is an ongoing political struggle over whether the U.S. government will continue to support Israel as it pursues its systematic slaughter of civilians in Gaza, declared Solomon, national director, RootsAction.org and author of, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/campus-protests-gaza

In their letter to Karim A. Khan, ICC Prosecutor, the 12 Senators say: “We write regarding reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) may be considering issuing international arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and if carried out will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.

By issuing warrants, you would be calling into question the legitimacy of Israel’s laws, legal system, and democratic form of government. Issuing arrest warrants for the leaders of Israel would not only be unjustified, it would expose your organization’s hypocrisy and double standards.

“Neither Israel nor the United States are members of the ICC and are therefore outside of your organization’s supposed jurisdiction. If you issue a warrant for the arrest of the Israeli leadership, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

May 19, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Arsenal of Genocide: the U.S. Weapons That Are Destroying Gaza

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.

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.

By Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies May 14, 2024, https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-arsenal-of-genocide-the-u-s-weapons-that-are-destroying-gaza/—

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.         

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.

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.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

May 18, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Gaza, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

United Nations General Assembly backs Palestinian bid for membership

Aljazeera, 10 May 24

Resolution does not give Palestine full UN membership, but recognises them as qualified to join and extends rights.

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.

The vote by the 193-member UNGA on Friday was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member – a move that would effectively recognise a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.

The assembly adopted a resolution on Friday with 143 votes in favour and nine against – including the US and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognises them as qualified to join.

The UNGA resolution “determines that the State of Palestine … should therefore be admitted to membership” and it “recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favourably”.

While the UNGA alone cannot grant full UN membership, the draft resolution on Friday will give the Palestinians some additional rights and privileges from September 2024 – like a seat among the UN members in the assembly hall – but it will not be granted a vote in the body.

Reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said it was significant that such a high number of countries voted in favour of the resolution.

“What we were hearing before the vote was anywhere perhaps between 120, 130 – at top end, 140. The fact that they got 143 meets and exceeds all expectations. It’s been overwhelmingly passed,” he said.

“But they still only have observer status.”…………………………… more https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/10/un-general-assembly-backs-palestinian-bid-for-membership

May 12, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, politics | Leave a comment

Protest And Dissent Can Absolutely Push The Empire To Retreat On Gaza

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 10, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/protest-and-dissent-can-absolutely?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144490253&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

It is entirely possible for the surging anti-genocide protest movement and its accompanying zeitgeist in the general public to push the empire to retreat on Gaza. The imperial murder machine has many strengths, but it also has weaknesses.

The globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around Washington has invested in perception management more heavily than any other empire in history — that’s what you’re seeing with all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, oligarch-funded think tanks, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood. By using mass-scale psychological manipulation via the most sophisticated perception management system that has ever existed, the US-centralized empire is able to manufacture support for its agendas at home and abroad while dissuading the public from protest and revolution.

If too many people realize that their government is psychopathic and their news media and other indoctrination systems have been lying to them about it all their lives, the empire will lose the ability to propagandize them, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. If too many people wake up from the propaganda matrix it won’t have any effect any longer, and without their propaganda our rulers cannot rule, because that’s the entire control system upon which their rule is premised

The empire therefore needs to tread very carefully when public opinion starts to turn against it, and retreat whenever public trust in imperial institutions would be compromised too severely for the empire to continue on a given path. It simply cannot afford to wake the public up from the propaganda-induced coma it has spent generations lulling them into.

What this means is that the empire can be pressured into retreat simply by spreading enough awareness and sowing enough opposition to its depraved actions. If enough eyes open to the truth of what’s happening in Gaza, there’s no amount of geostrategic middle east agendas or Israel lobby funding that can outweigh the empire’s existential need to prevent a mass-scale awakening from the mainstream imperial worldview and a transition into widespread revolutionary consciousness. The empire would necessarily need to step back before things reached that point, because its very existence depends on it.

The empire has been walking that line this entire time. Whenever you see it doing things like stepping back from regime change invasions of Cuba or Syria or refraining from going as authoritarian as it could go on a given issue, it isn’t because the empire suddenly evolved a conscience. It’s because it hasn’t yet succeeded in manufacturing public consent for such agendas, and imposing them before the public has been manipulated into accepting them would snap them out of the matrix of psychological control. They work so hard to manufacture public consent because they absolutely need it.

So the empire can be pressured on Gaza and on every other issue if enough people put enough energy into spreading awareness of the truth. That’s why the empire managers are freaking out about this new protest movement right now; they understand the absolutely fundamental role that narrative control plays in the existence of imperial power structures, and how much they stand to lose if it is taken away.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel carpet bombs Rafah after Hamas accepts ceasefire proposal, key border crossing with Egypt seized

The Cradle, Tue, 07 May 2024  https://www.sott.net/article/491214-Israel-carpet-bombs-Rafah-after-Hamas-accepts-ceasefire-proposal-key-border-crossing-with-Egypt-seized

An Israeli official said on 7 May that Tel Aviv is carrying out a “limited” operation in Rafah after Israel announced taking control of the southernmost city’s border crossing with Egypt.

This is a “limited operation,” the official told the Times of Israel. “It is being implemented to pressure Hamas” into accepting a ceasefire proposal.

CNN also cited a source saying that the “limited Israeli operation into Rafah is intended to keep pressure on Hamas to agree to a deal.”

Comment: Is this ‘limited operation’, apparently consisting of cowardly airstrikes, because even Israeli officials have admitted that, after their failed ground invasion in Gaza, to attempt the same in Rafah would likely be a ‘disaster‘ for the IDF?

srael announced Tuesday morning that it seized Gaza’s side of the Rafah border crossing.

“IDF forces led by Division 162 began a targeted activity to thwart terrorist targets of the terrorist organization Hamas in East Rafah; As part of the operation, the forces gained operational control over the Rafah crossing on the Gaza side, following intelligence information about terrorists using the crossing for terrorist purposes,” an army spokesman said.

Video footage on social media showed Israeli tanks at the Rafah crossing. The army had begun moving towards the crossing on Monday evening.

The launch of the operation at the crossing was accompanied by heavily intensified Israeli bombardment of Rafah, which has been under continuous Israeli airstrikes for weeks.

The UN warned on 7 May that the Israeli operation at the Rafah crossing poses a threat to aid deliveries into Gaza.

Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, is desperately overcrowded with over one million besieged Palestinians, most of whom were displaced from other places of the strip throughout the war. Israel claims the city is Hamas’ final stronghold and its key to victory in the war, and has for months been promising to invade the city.

Hundreds of Palestinians began fleeing the besieged city on 6 May.

The storming of Rafah came a day after Hamas informed Qatari and Egyptian mediators that it had accepted an updated proposal for a truce and prisoner exchange agreement. The resistance group had major issues with a previous Egyptian-drafted initiative that failed to guarantee a permanent ceasefire, an end to the war, and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The proposal approved by Hamas includes three 42-day phases, the Deputy Head of Hamas in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, told Al Jazeera, adding that the proposal would see “the complete withdrawal of Israel from Gaza, the return of the displaced, and a [prisoner-exchange deal].”

“The proposal includes in its second phase the direct announcement of a permanent cessation of military and hostile operations,” the Hamas official said, adding that “the ball is now in the court of the Israeli occupation.”

Sources in Israel told Hebrew Channel 13 on 6 May that Hamas has agreed to a “modified” Egyptian proposal that is “unacceptable” to Israel.

An Israeli official told AP on 4 May that Israel remains committed to attacking Rafah and will not accept a deal that includes an end to the war.

May 10, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Report: Private US Security Firm To Take Control of Rafah Border Crossing!

This is an outrage!! The US is in this war!!

According to Haaretz, Israel, Egypt, and the US have agreed on the plan

by Dave DeCamp May 7, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/05/07/report-private-us-security-firm-to-take-control-of-rafah-border-crossing/ 

Haaretz reported on Tuesday that the US, Israel, and Egypt have agreed that control of the Rafah border crossing that connects Egypt and Gaza will be handed over to a private American security firm.

The report came after Israel captured the border crossing in an operation that was approved by the Biden administration. The private American firm was not named, but Haaretz said that it employs veterans of elite US Army units and has been employed in several Middle Eastern and African countries to guard sensitive sites.

State Department spokesman Matt Miller was asked about the report and said he wasn’t aware of any plan for Israel to transfer control of the border crossing.

Under the reported arrangement, American mercenaries would take responsibility for overseeing the border crossing, which would include monitoring goods coming into Gaza and preventing Hamas from taking control. Vital deliveries have been cut off since Israel took control of the crossing early Tuesday.

The Haaretz report said the arrangement was part of an effort by Israel to “win agreement” from the US and Egypt for a Rafah operation. The report said Israel had given assurances that it would limit its attack on Rafah to securing the border crossing, although Israeli bombs have been pounding the city.

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ghent students occupy university building in climate and Gaza protest

More than 200 expected to join protest calling for climate action and to cut ties with Israeli institutions

Arthur Neslen, Tue 7 May 24  https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/06/ghent-students-occupy-university-building-in-climate-and-gaza-protest

More than 100 students have occupied Ghent University in the first European protest to fuse demands about Gaza and the climate crisis.

Ghent’s centrepiece UFO building was peacefully taken over by students calling for concrete action to meet the university’s 2030 climate plans, and asking the university to cut ties with institutions connected to the Israeli military.

Tents were erected inside the building, which contains all of the university’s administrative functions. Its 1,000-seater “guillotine wall” lecture hall was given over to an impromptu workshop on “how we can find hope in a world full of genocide and global warming”.

More than 200 Ghent students were expected to join the three-day protest as anger rose ahead of an expected Israeli assault on Rafah, while students at Amsterdam University also staged an occupation.

A spokesperson for the Ghent students who gave her name as Joelle said their action had grown out of an occupation last year by End Fossil Gent, and student rage over events in Gaza. A joint mobilising leaflet with Gent Students for Palestine used the theme of “free Palestine is a climate justice issue”.

“We realised that both our struggles were against the university’s failure to commit to values they claim to hold,” Joelle said.

“We can see that the struggle for Palestine is also a struggle for climate justice. The Israeli occupation force is committing an ecocide in Gaza, destroying all elements of life and nature.

“Israel’s settler ‘green colonialism’ destroys indigenous land and plants non-indigenous trees over ethnically cleansed villages.

“There are also issues of toxic pollution by settlers and the allocation of water and land. The two struggles are interconnected so climate activists are in solidarity with us on Palestine, and we realise that this is also a climate issue. Our demands go hand in hand.”

An open letter from the students says they want the university to publish a time-linked action plan for cutting ties with what they call “Israeli institutions complicit in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”.

Ghent University has links to a number of Israeli institutions that are said to provide “material” support to the war in Gaza or Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

Tel Aviv University, with which Ghent has most partnerships, has drawn particular ire from students due to its role in Israel’s defence against genocide charges at the international court of justice in The Hague, and its academic support for soldiers in Gaza.

Equally, the students want “effective and binding action” to urgently implement the university’s 2030 climate transition plans, which they say would mean putting sustainability goals at the heart of budgetary and educational decisions.

Ghent University is committed to becoming progressively fossil fuel free, cutting its energy consumption by 2.5% each year and becoming climate neutral by 2050.

It also has a policy to achieve 80% “sustainable mobility” by 2030, in part by boosting bicycle infrastructure on campus. But students say that too little has been done.

The university did not respond to a request for comment but its director, Rick Van de Walle, posted a statement saying it had decided that its ethical policies would not change and that “no deviation from the existing human rights policy will be used with regard to one particular country, in this case Israel”

May 9, 2024 Posted by | climate change, Gaza | Leave a comment

Let Israel’s Leaders Get Arrested for War Crimes

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Sun, 05 May 2024  https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-05-05/ty-article-opinion/.premium/let-them-get-arrested/0000018f-44af-d17f-adcf-fdef576b0000

All decent Israelis must ask themselves the following questions: Is their country committing war crimes in Gaza? If so, how should they be stopped?

How should the culprits be punished? Who can punish them? Is it reasonable for crimes to go unprosecuted and criminals to be exculpated?

One may, of course, reply in the negative to the first question – Israel is not committing any war crimes in Gaza – thereby rendering the rest of the questions superfluous.

But how can one answer in the negative in the face of the facts and the situation in Gaza:

about 35,000 people killed and another 10,000 missing, about two-thirds of them innocent civilians, according to the Israel Defense Forces;

among the dead are around 13,000 children, nearly 400 medical workers and more than 200 journalists; 70 percent of homes have been destroyed or damaged;

30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition;

two people in 10,000 die each day from starvation and disease. (All figures are from the United Nations and international organizations.)

Is it possible that these horrific figures came to be without the commission of war crimes?

There are wars whose cause is just and whose means are criminal; the justice of the war does not justify its crimes. Killing and destruction, starvation and displacement on this scale could not have occurred without the commission of war crimes. Individuals are responsible for them, and they must be brought to justice.

Israeli hasbara, or public diplomacy, does not try to deny the reality in Gaza. It only makes the claim of antisemitism: Why pick on us? What about Sudan and Yemen?

The logic doesn’t hold: A driver who is stopped for speeding won’t get off by arguing that he’s not the only one. The crimes and the criminals remain. Israel will never prosecute anyone for these offenses. It never has, neither for its wars nor its occupation. On a good day, it will prosecute a soldier who stole some Palestinian’s credit card.

But the human sense of justice wants to see criminals brought to justice and prevented from committing crimes in the future. By this logic, we can only hope that the International Criminal Court in The Hague will do its job.

Every Israeli patriot and everyone who cares about the good of the state should wish for this. This is the only way that Israel’s moral standard, according to which it is permitted everything, will change. It is not easy to hope for the arrest of the heads of your state and your army, and even more difficult to admit it publicly, but is there any other way to stop them?

The killing and destruction in Gaza has gotten Israel in way over its head. It is the worst catastrophe the state has ever faced. Someone led it there – no, not antisemitism, but rather its leaders and military officers. If not for them, it wouldn’t have turned so quickly after October 7 from a cherished country that inspired compassion into a pariah state.

Someone must stand trial for this.

Just as many Israelis want Benjamin Netanyahu to be punished for the corruption of which he is accused, so should they wish for him and the perpetrators subordinate to him to be punished for much more serious crimes, the crimes of Gaza.

They cannot be allowed to go unpunished.

Nor is it possible to blame only Hamas, even if it has a part in the crimes.

We are the ones who killed, starved, displaced, and destroyed on such a massive scale. Someone must be brought to justice for this.

Netanyahu is the head, of course. The picture of him imprisoned in The Hague together with the defense minister and the IDF chief of staff is the stuff of nightmares to every Israeli.

And yet, it is probably warranted.

It is highly unlikely, however. The pressure being exerted on the court by Israel and the United States are enormous (and wrong). But scare tactics can be important.

If the officials actually refrain from traveling abroad in the next few years, if they actually live in fear of what may come, we can be sure that in the next war, they’ll think twice before sending the military on campaigns of death and destruction of such insane proportions. We can find a little comfort in that, at least.

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Legal, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Israeli Invasion of Rafah Appears Imminent After Evacuation Order

Israel dropped leaflets on eastern Rafah warning ‘extreme force’ will be used in the area

by Dave DeCamp,  May 6, 2024 , https://news.antiwar.com/2024/05/06/israeli-invasion-of-rafah-appears-imminent-after-evacuation-order/

The Israeli invasion of Rafah appears to be imminent as Israeli forces dropped leaflets on the eastern part of the city, warning that “extreme force” will be used in the area.

The Israeli military said it ordered the evacuation of about 100,000 people and suggested they go to the al-Mawasi refugee camp on the coast. Aid groups have warned that an evacuation of civilians from Rafah, which is sheltering an estimated 1.4 million Palestinian civilians, is not possible because there’s nowhere to go due to the sheer destruction in Gaza.

In response to Israel’s evacuation order, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said al-Mawasi did not have the resources to take in the evacuees. The NRC warned that the “forced, unlawful” evacuation order could lead to “the deadliest phase of this conflict.”

The international charity Oxfam also strongly condemned the Israeli evacuation order and noted that Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it claimed were safe. “Oxfam condemns this forced evacuation order, the potential Rafah offensive, and the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel that has helped bring us to this point,” said Abby Maxman, CEO of Oxfam America.

“There is nowhere safe to go: for over six months, Israel has routinely killed civilians and aid workers, including in clearly marked ‘safe zones’ and ‘evacuation routes.’  The notion that the 100,000 civilians being evacuated by Israel will be safe and protected is simply not credible,” Maxman added.

US officials have claimed they’re opposed to Israel invading Rafah without a clear plan to protect civilians. But there’s no sign the Biden administration is putting any real pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel appears to be going ahead with the attack and US weapons shipments to Israel continue to flow.

Israeli bombs pounded Rafah before the evacuation order was issued, with reports of at least 22 civilians, including eight children, being killed in the strikes. Rafah residents said fresh Israeli strikes hit the city after the evacuation order as well.

May 8, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich calls for ‘total annihilation’ of Gaza


Julia Conley. Common Dreams, Wed, 01 May 2024,  https://www.sott.net/article/491110-Israels-Finance-Minister-Smotrich-calls-for-total-annihilation-of-Gaza

In just the latest example of a top Israeli official openly calling for the elimination of Gaza and the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday demanded the destruction of cities and refugee camps in the blockaded enclave.

“There are no half measures,” said Smotrich at a government meeting. “Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat — total annihilation.”

“‘You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven,'” he added, quoting the biblical story of the nation of Amalek, whose people God commanded the Israelites to exterminate and which right-wing Israeli leaders have long invoked to justify the killing of Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also referenced Amalek in the first weeks of Israel’s current escalation against Gaza; Smotrich’s comments came as he and other government officials pushed Netanyahu to forge ahead with a planned attack on the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1.5 million people have been displaced as other cities across Gaza have been decimated by Israeli forces.

Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), called on President Joe Biden to stop condemning thousands of U.S. college students who have demanded a cease-fire and an end to military aid for Israel and direct his ire toward the Israeli government, which he has repeatedly insisted is targeting Hamas despite its genocidal statements and indiscriminate attacks.

“In case the Israeli government’s genocidal intent in Gaza was unclear to anyone despite its daily war crimes against the Palestinian people, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s words should serve as another wake-up call,” said Hooper. “The intent of the Netanyahu government has always been Palestinian land without Palestinians, and violence has always been the route to achieve that heinous goal. Instead of condemning college students, President Biden must condemn Israeli leaders for making and acting on their genocidal threats.”

In recent months, Israeli officials have stated that the “migration” of Gaza residents is their ultimate goal in relentlessly attacking the enclave, that all Palestinians in Gaza are “responsible” for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October and are legitimate targets, that the enclave should be “flattened,” and that the Israel Defense Forces is fighting “human animals.”

Comment: And total annihilation seems to be Israel’s final solution.


Journalist Mehdi Hasan sardonically suggested that Smotrich’s comments will be deemed acceptable by the Biden administration, members of Congress, and the U.S. corporate media because he didn’t “say it on a college campus.”

“Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the security cabinet, ought to be fired immediately over his latest remarks,” read an editorial in Haaretz Tuesday night that was published as police in New York were storming Columbia University to arrest students.

Comment: It’s notable that Haaretz published that editorial, however the majority of Israelis still support their government’s genocide, and a significant minority claim it is not being aggressive enough.

“That’s how any properly run country would act, and all the more so a country against which the International Court of Justice in The Hague has issued provisional measures requiring it to refrain from genocide, including one requiring it to deal properly with incitement to genocide.”

Smotrich and others have objected to what National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Tuesday called a “reckless” deal that would allow for the release of scores of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners who have long been detained in Israeli jails. The deal would include a 40-day halt in fighting.

CAIR also pointed out Tuesday that five units of Israel’s security forces have been accused of committing a “gross violation of human rights,” according to a U.S. State Department analysis.

“Our nation’s repeated claim that it supports international law and human rights,” said national executive director Nihad Awad, “is a cruel illusion.”

May 5, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Gaza Journalists Killed by Israel Honored on World Press Freedom Day

“To claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy,” said one expert.

Common dreams JESSICA CORBETT, May 03, 2024

As the international community marked World Press Freedom Day on Friday, journalists and advocates across the globe mourned and celebrated those killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has publicly identified at least 97 media workers killed since Israel launched its retaliatory war on October 7: 92 Palestinian, three Lebanese, and two Israeli reporters.

Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price—their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” said CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a Friday statement. “Journalists are civilians who are protected by international humanitarian law in times of conflict. Those responsible for their deaths face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”

Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF)—or Reporters Without Borders—puts the journalist death toll in Gaza above 100. Middle East Monitorreports at least 144 members of the press are among the 34,622 Palestinians that Israeli forces have killed in less than seven months in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign.

RSF on Friday released its annual Press Freedom Index. In its section on the Middle East, the group states:

Palestine (157th), the most dangerous country for reporters, is paying a high price. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have so far killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza, including at least 22 in the course of their work. Since the start of the war, Israel (101st) has been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem……………………………………………………..

The Paris-based group nominated Palestinian journalists covering Gaza for an annual award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—an honor they received during a ceremony on Thursday.

“Each year, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize pays tribute to the courage of journalists facing difficult and dangerous circumstances,” said Audrey Azoulay, the U.N. organization’s director-general. “Once again this year, the prize reminds us of the importance of collective action to ensure that journalists around the world can continue to carry out their essential work to inform and investigate.”…………………………………….

While Israel has repeatedly claimed—as it did to CNN on Friday—that “the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists,” members of the press and others have cast doubt on such comments.

“For far too long Israel has been able to operate with impunity in the occupied Palestinian territory, and this has included occasionally killing reporters, like the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022,” Simon Adams, president of the Center for Victims of Torture, told the Inter Press Service.

Given the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October, he said, “to claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy.”…………………………… more https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-journalists

May 4, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, Gaza, Israel, media | Leave a comment

The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face

The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance

JONATHAN COOK, APR 30, 2024, https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-israel-us-game-plan-for-gaza

One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:

1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.

2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.

3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.

4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)

Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.

5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.

6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.

7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.

8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.

9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.

10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.

11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.

12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.

13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.

That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How Israel violates International Law in Gaza: expert report

 https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/how-israel-violates-international-law-in-gaza-expert-report/

The findings are illustrated by 17 specific, horrific “incidents” and 18 pages of additional incidents. This review of incidents is said to be “supported by both credible media and civil society reporting and statements by Government of Israel officials and IDF uniformed officers.” But the incidents identified are “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance,” by Israel and the IDF, often using U.S.-provided arms.

An independent expert report lays out how Israel systematically violated U.S. and International Law in Gaza, concluding that Israel launched indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian areas due to “extremely relaxed rules of engagement.”

BY STEVE FRANCE   

 Just days after the Biden administration showered the Israeli military with billions of dollars more in lethal aid, still with no apparent effort to restrict its use on non-military populations and structures, Palestinian solidarity activists were gifted with powerful ammunition to challenge Israel’s genocidal disregard for the International and U.S. laws and norms that protect civilians in war situations.

In a sober but scathing 76-page report, publicly released on April 24, the Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 (NSM-20), details “multiple credible incidents constituting violations of international humanitarian law, military best practices, and [improper] restrictions on humanitarian assistance.” 

The volunteer and unaffiliated task force of prominent experts — including two recently departed senior State Department officials, legal scholar Noura Erekat, and a former senior “joint terminal attack controller,” Wes Bryant — was rapidly formed after President Biden signed NSM-20 on February 8, 2024. The memorandum tasked the Departments of State and Defense to report to Congress by May 8 on the compliance of Israel (and, nominally, other U.S. allies) with International Humanitarian Law and military best practices, as well as on whether it has impeded humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

Co-chair Noura Erekat said at a briefing that the task force report has two main goals: first, to “inform” State and Defense officials’ review with a selection of well-documented and assessed incidents of misuse of aid, and second, to put pressure on the agencies and the White House to act vigorously to curb the abuses. The pressure will depend on the report’s ability to focus the understanding of the media, the relevant experts, and activists on specific illustrative cases and to clearly explain the legal framework and standards that are supposed to apply.

The panel reported that its 

“aggregate analysis of credible reports involving U.S-provided weapons by Israeli forces indicates a context of systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law, including recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects, wide area attacks without prior warnings in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, direct attacks on civilians…and attacks against civilian objects, including those indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.”

The experts further reported:

“Israeli intelligence sources cited by credible media reports indicate that these patterns of unlawful attacks reflect reliance on an unyielding and unconditioned supply of U.S. weapons, relaxed rules of engagement, application of collective punishment, and the use of artificial intelligence technology to generate thousands of targets (including civilian police and civil defense personnel), at maximum speed and with minimal human oversight.” 

The findings are illustrated by 17 specific, horrific “incidents” and 18 pages of additional incidents. This review of incidents is said to be “supported by both credible media and civil society reporting and statements by Government of Israel officials and IDF uniformed officers.” But the incidents identified are “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance,” by Israel and the IDF, often using U.S.-provided arms.

Just as important for non-experts is the report’s outline of exactly how the U.S. and international legal systems are supposed to protect civilians from harm — and how they are flouted. Thus, the experts point to three “fundamental rules [that] govern targeting decisions in armed conflict”: 

1 Distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives, with a presumption that persons or objects are protected from attack unless the information available at the time indicates that they are military objectives.

2. Take all feasible “precautions” in planning and conducting attacks to avoid or at least minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects. 


3. Respect “proportionality,” i.e., conduct no attacks that are excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. The greater the foreseeable harm to civilians and civilian objects, the greater the foreseeable military advantage necessary to justify a particular attack. International humanitarian law (IHL) gives special protection to hospitals, clinics, and ambulances, as well as to humanitarian relief operations, and UN premises.

The report outlines the basics of “civilian harm mitigation practices,” including U.S. Defense Department practices. A key concept is “no-strike entities” (NSEs), which DOD says “may include, but are not limited to, medical, educational, diplomatic, cultural, religious, and historical sites, or other objects that do not, by their nature, location, purpose, or use, effectively contribute to the enemy’s war-fighting or war-sustaining capability.” The task force charges that Israel has “routinely and repeatedly” targeted six fundamental categories of NSEs, plus a broad array of slightly less protected entities.

Proportionality ‘rendered meaningless’

A common excuse the Israelis advance for the death and wounding of civilians is that they are being used by Hamas as “human shields.” The report notes that “taking advantage of the presence of civilians or other protected persons with intent to shield a military objective from attack constitutes a war crime.” However, U.S. military rules “affirm that an attacker shares responsibility for civilian harm with its enemies if it fails to take feasible precautions” to avoid killing shields.

NSM-20 itself spells out that its allies must “facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede . . . the transport or delivery of [U.S.] humanitarian assistance and U.S. Government-supported international…humanitarian assistance.”

Outlining the “context” of Israel’s “systematic disregard for IHL,” the report cites “recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects, wide-area attacks without prior warnings in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, direct attacks on civilians or otherwise protected persons…and attacks against civilians objects, including those indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.” A high-ranking former IDF officer is quoted as condemning Israel’s “reckless conduct,” which he says “reflects an absolute assumption that the U.S. will continue to arm and finance it.”  

“Extremely relaxed rules of engagement” inconsistent with IHL also explain much of the harm done to civilians. Thus, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Air Force, Omar Tishler, has stated that neighborhoods have been attacked “on a large scale and not in a surgical manner.” 

Such attacks are facilitated by an expansion of the concept of “military advantage” in its proportionality assessments to weigh civilian harms against the advantages of “an operation as a whole,” rather than against each individual attack. That move “renders the proportionality rule meaningless,” the report says, as it’s impossible to compare the harms of a single specific attack with all the military advantages allegedly achieved or sought by the whole Gaza operation, which has lasted more than six months. 

Similarly, former U.S. Air Force drone controller Bryant noted how Israel blurs the requirement of taking precautions to protect civilians “by employing precautions it knows are ineffective,” such as texting populations whose phones are not functional.

Also “relaxed” is Israel’s use of the term terrorist. Thus, a reserve officer told Ha’aretz, “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” The extensive, open-ended imposition of “kill zones” is another way to disguise genocide, an Israeli intelligence officer has explained. With a “kill zone” lasting a month or two, “you could stick with an order that anyone approaching should be shot…But we’ve been there for six months, and people have to start coming out; they are trying to survive, and that leads to very serious incidents.” 

 Lastly, Israel asserts it can block humanitarian aid, if it has “serious reasons for fearing” that relief consignments “will be diverted from their civilian destination or otherwise provide a definite advantage to the enemy’s military efforts” — a position the task force says relies on a “defective rule” from 1949 that was modified in 1977 and superseded by a rule of customary international law. Recent UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions confirm that Israel “must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief and may not deny such relief based on fears that a small portion of aid may be seized by armed groups.”

In conclusion, the report warns that “the Task Force’s findings raise grave concerns regarding the Administration’s compliance with both U.S. and international law, particularly with respect to security assistance and arms transfers.” It then identifies the laws in question, as well as citing “obligations under customary international law to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and to cooperate to bring serious violations of peremptory norms of general international law to an end through lawful means.”

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

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