PATRICK LAWRENCE: Authorized Atrocities
the true rupture lies with those in the West who are sucked into Israel’s utter immorality
Israel’s lawlessness has a history that those in the West share with the apartheid state.
By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News , 20 Mar 24
It is remarked often enough, including in this space, that Israel’s savagery in its determination to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza — and we had better brace for what is next on the West Bank of the Jordan — marks a turn for all of humanity.
In its descent into depravity the Zionist state drags the West altogether down with it.
This is true, certainly, but we must put Israel’s criminal conduct, which warrants another Nuremberg trial at this point, in its proper context.
When we do, we find that Israel’s lawlessness has a history, an etymology, and if there is a road to Western salvation it must start with a recognition of a past that those in the West share with the apartheid state.
We can say Israel’s crimes against Gaza’s 2.3 million children, women, and men are unspeakable, in other words, but this would not be right. They are altogether speakable, and it behooves us now to speak of them if we are to grasp where responsibility for this stain upon the human story truly lies.
Pankaj Mishra has just published a thorough and thoroughly remarkable piece on these matters in the London Review of Books.
The Indian author, essayist, and columnist takes up many things in “The Shoah After Gaza,” chiefly the extent to which Zionists have exhausted “the culture of conspicuous Holocaust consumption” — excellent phrase — in defense of a nation that, to quote Primo Levi, “was a mistake in historical terms.”
Here is a passage in Mishra’s piece that is to our present point:
“Israel today is dynamiting the edifice of global norms built after 1945, which has been tottering since the catastrophic and still unpunished war on terror and Vladimir Putin’s revanchist war in Ukraine. The profound rupture we feel today between the past and the present is a rupture in the moral history of the world since the ground zero of 1945 — the history in which the Shoah has been for many years the central event and universal reference.”……………………………………………………………………………….
I confine myself to the postwar decades to allow us to take a good, clear look at that “edifice of global norms” of which Mishra writes.
When we do, we find the West has licensed the Israelis. They bear a pre-authorization by way of many precedents. There is one for more or less every shameful act the Israelis perpetrate against the Palestinian population — this in the West Bank as well as Gaza.
And so we discover — or remind ourselves, depending on how attentive we have been to events — that the post–1945 edifice has looked from the start roughly as it looks now. Israel is at bottom an outcome, not the prime cause of anything.
Insidious Mythology
Certainly the grotesque spectacle of mass murder and wholesale destruction we witness daily has marked a rupture, to stay with Mishra’s term. But to assert that this rupture lies in Israel’s conduct is to sustain an insidious mythology of innocence for the West.
No, the true rupture lies with those in the West who are sucked into Israel’s utter immorality and now come face-to-face with their amoral indifference or, for the best of them, discover the extent of their powerlessness despite their authentic efforts.
As to Israel, I am with Primo Levi as Mishra quotes him. “The Jewish state” had already proven a mistake when he made his much-disputed remark in 1985.
The truth of it has since been demonstrated a hundred times over. Israel has proven a failed experiment, incapable of conducting itself as a legitimate nation-state.
But whose mistake is Israel? It was the West, Britain in the lead, that created Israel by caving to the Zionists at the expense of indigenous Palestinians. This is the reality of power that should weigh most heavily on our shoulders. Israel ‘R’ us.
Britain’s abandonment of the 1920 Mandate brings us to one of the deeper characteristics of our time, our postwar edifice. This is the ever more complete disregard of those in power for the principles, standards and broadly accepted ethics that give form and coherence to a stable civilization and keep its public space clean and well lit.
In our crumbling edifice, everything is done according to its value as an expedient to a desired outcome. This, too, is a kind of depravity. And it is this depravity that produces the depravity we watch as we watch Israel’s effort to destroy an entire people. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/20/patrick-lawrence-authorized-atrocities/
‘Everyone in the World Needs to See This’: Footage Shows IDF Drone Killing Gazans
“There is no way they could have been considered combatants,” said one writer and analyst. “This is unreal.”
JESSICA CORBETT, Mar 21, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestinians-killed-by-israel
Adding to the mountain of evidence that Israel is engaged in a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera on Thursday aired footage of what the news outlet reported was an Israeli drone targeting four Palestinians in Khan Younis last month.
Those killed by the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rubble of the southern Gaza city appear to be unarmed teenagers or young men. According to a translation of the coverage, they were not identified in the reporting.
While Al Jazeera deemed footage “too graphic” to be included on its daily live blog covering the war, a clip of it quickly spread on social media, where critics of the Israel Defense Forces operation expressed outrage.
“OUTRAGEOUS even after months of outrages,” declared Palestinian American political analyst Yousef Munayyer. “This video shows an Israeli military drone literally stalking four unarmed civilians posing no threat and eliminating them one after the other!!!”
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, Al-Shabaka’s U.S. policy fellow, said: “This is among the worst footage I’ve seen. Not only were these boys clearly unarmed and present no threat whatsoever, but they were struck multiple times even after stumbling/crawling away. There is no way they could have been considered combatants. This is unreal.”
Note: The following video contains graphic images. [on original]
Assal Rad, an author with a Ph.D. in Middle East history, said: “Have we ever seen so many war crimes take place right before our eyes? Any country still providing weapons and aid to Israel is complicit in these crimes.”
Exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden asserted that “everyone in the world needs to see this. Note that this footage permits no room for ‘it was a mistake,’ showing repeated, specifically targeted strikes on the unarmed and even wounded.”
“The sort of behavior the ICJ explicitly forbid in the genocide ruling against Israel,” added Snowden, referencing the International Court of Justice’s preliminary order in January for an ongoing case led by South Africa.
Since the ruling, rights groups around the world have accused Israel of ignoring the ICJ order by continuing to bomb and starve people across Gaza. The mounting casualties—at least 31,988 killed and 74,188 wounded—have elevated demands for the U.S. government to end arms transfers to Israel.
The United States gives its Middle East ally $3.8 billion in annual military aid and since the Israeli assault was launched in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, the Biden administration has sought $14.3 billion more while bypassing Congress to send more weapons. U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin face a genocide complicity case in federal court.
While the Biden administration has repeatedly vetoed and opposed cease-fire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly, Nate Evans, a spokesperson for Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., confirmed Thursday that the United States plans to unveil a new one on Friday.
The resolution will “unequivocally support ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at securing an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal, which would get hostages released and help enable a surge in humanitarian aid,” Evans told Al Jazeera. “This resolution is an opportunity for the council to speak with one voice to support the diplomacy happening on the ground and pressure Hamas to accept the deal on the table.”
Blinken said Thursday that “there’s a clear consensus around a number of shared priorities. First, the need for an immediate, sustained cease-fire, with the release of hostages. That would create space to surge more humanitarian assistance, to relieve the suffering of many people, and to build something more enduring.”
A Barely-Disguised Genocide
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 24, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/a-barely-disguised-genocide?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=142907577&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I just read a New York Times piece about the bodies that are trapped beneath the rubble in Gaza which said the Gaza Health Ministry estimates that there are 7,000 people listed as missing, but adds that that figure “has not been updated since November.”
November. There is no chance that any of the numbers we’re getting out of Gaza are up to date, including the death counts. Their infrastructure is shot and the scene there is just too chaotic. Nobody can keep track of anything anymore.
ISIS keeps attacking the enemies of the US and Israel for some strange and mysterious reason while funding for the main humanitarian group in Gaza gets cut due to completely unevidenced claims of Hamas affiliation. Re-fund UNRWA; de-fund ISIS.
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It’s funny to see the US proposing a fake UN “ceasefire” resolution which doesn’t actually demand a ceasefire when it’s public knowledge that the US could single-handedly create a ceasefire by telling Israel it will stop receiving US weapons if it doesn’t negotiate one right now.
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Ben Shapiro just cancel cultured Candace Owens out of a job for saying Palestinians are human beings and Alex Jones has condemned Israel’s genocidal atrocities before most Democrats on Capitol Hill have. American right wing punditry is a trip, man.
It sure is a crazy coincidence how all this stuff about difficulty with food distribution, collateral damage, human shields, the need to eliminate Hamas etc just happens to combine to create a situation that looks exactly the same as committing a genocide against an undesirable population.
They’re just doing a horrible thing they’ve wanted to do for ages and then using narrative to cover it up. Oh noes, it turns out it’s really hard to get food and medical supplies to this undesirable population! Oh noes, it turns out the bad guys are hiding in the hospitals and the civilian infrastructure! Oh noes, it turns out the bad guys are hiding behind large numbers of women and children! Oh noes, it turns out we’re going to need you all to move off of the land we’ve been coveting for generations!
It’s a sick joke that not even a child would fall for, but you see western government officials and major news outlets treating it seriously every goddamn day. It’s a barely-disguised genocide happening right out in the open, and the people responsible for telling the public what’s going on in the world are pretending it’s actually a very unfortunate series of highly convenient coincidences. There’s an elephant in the room wearing a cardboard crown as a disguise, and they’re all calling it Your Highness and telling everyone the king has come to visit.
Israel routinely massacres civilians who are waiting for food, attacks hospitals, picks off civilians with drones and snipers, and is deliberately starving the frailest and most defenseless people in Gaza to death, but the western political-media class keep calling this a “war”.
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People who wish to conflate Zionism with Jewishness often argue that most Jews are Zionists, but so what if they are? Most westerners are propaganda-addled imperialists, but if I didn’t believe westerners can and do snap out of that worldview I wouldn’t be doing what I do here.
In any system where people are being indoctrinated at mass scale by the powerful you’re going to see the majority of that population buying into the indoctrination, but conflating the people with the political ideology they’re indoctrinated with serves only to confuse and distort. If people had conflated “Nazism” with “Germany” that logic could have been used to justify exterminating every German after WWII, but because that distortion wasn’t made it opened up the possibility of de-indoctrinating the nation from that pernicious worldview.
Betting on the possibility of a better future means drawing a distinction between the people and the unhealthy worldviews they’ve been indoctrinated with, whether that’s Zionism, western imperialism, or anything else. We can only have a healthy world when the people snap out of their propaganda-induced coma and shake off the power-serving worldviews of this diseased civilization.
Israel announces latest major land grab in West Bank
24 Mar 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/490068-Israel-announces-latest-major-land-grab-in-West-Bank
A senior minister has vowed to continue backing the settlement movement, which is illegal under international law
The Israeli government has designated nearly 2,000 acres in the West Bank as state-owned land, in a move described by rights groups as the biggest land grab on occupied Palestinian territories in decades.
The expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is illegal under international law. In 2016, the UN Security Council described them as “a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security.”
Nevertheless, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued that the declaration of state-owned land in the Jordan Valley on Friday was “an important and strategic issue.”
While there are those in Israel and the world who seek to undermine our right to Judea and Samaria and the country in general, we promote the settlement movement with hard work and in a strategic manner across the country,” Smotrich said in a statement, as quoted by the Times of Israel.
According to local media, the designation of plots of land as Israeli paves a way for the construction of settler houses, as well as for commercial development.
Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now described the declaration as the largest since the 1993 Oslo Accords, adding that “the year 2024 marks a peak in the extent of declarations of state land.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government gave the green light to the construction of more than 3,400 new settler homes this month, drawing more criticism from the UN and the Palestinian Authority.
“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian State,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk said in his report to the Security Council on March 8.
Smotrich said in February that the expansion of settlements was a legitimate response to Palestinian terrorist attacks. “Our enemies know that any harm to us will lead to more construction and more development and more of our hold all over the country,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter)
Comment. It’s not like Israel hasn’t made its goal plain for years.
Gaza is also being carved up
Halting Biden’s Weapon Shipments to Israel
byEDITORMarch 22, 2024
The Chris Hedges Report with attorney Katherine Gallagher and Palestinian plaintiff Ayman Nijim on their lawsuit demanding the Biden administration halt weapons shipments to Israel.
By Chris Hedges / The Real News Network
The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed the lawsuit on behalf of the human rights organization, Defense for Children – Palestine; Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group based in the occupied West Bank; and eight Palestinians and US citizens with relatives in Gaza accusing President Joe Biden and other senior officials of being complicit in Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza. The case is being heard in a federal court in California.
Lawyers representing Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, have attended the proceedings along with the plaintiffs who accuse them of “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide.”
Since the October 7 incusrion by Hamas and other resistance groups, which left some 1,200 people dead, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, thousands are missing, some 60,000 have been injured and nearly all of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people have been displaced. Israel’s blocage of humanitarian supplies and food have cause a widespread famine and many are dying of starvation and infectious diseases.
The CCR complaint was filed in November last year. It charges that Biden, Blinken and Austin “have not only been failing to uphold the country’s obligation to prevent a genocide but have enabled the conditions for its development by providing unconditional military and diplomatic support [to Israel].”The CCR is asking the court to “declare that defendants have violated their duty under customary international law, as part of federal common law, to take all measures within their power to prevent Israel from committing genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza”. The group is also calling for the US to use its influence over Israel to end the hostilities against Palestinians in Gaza. Joining me to discuss the case is Katherine Gallagher, a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and plaintiff Ayman Nijim……………………………Transcript………………. https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/22/the-chris-hedges-report-halting-bidens-weapon-shipments-to-israel/
‘We are the masters of the house’: Israeli channels air snuff videos featuring systematic torture of Palestinians
It’s hard to imagine the depths to which Israeli society has sunk. The official tells the Channel 13 reporter that “the feeling is one of pride.”
Israeli TV channels aired a number of reports showing the torture and humiliation of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The videos are consumed by the Israeli public as entertainment, revealing the sadism of Israeli society.
BY JONATHAN OFIR , https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/we-are-the-masters-of-the-house-israeli-channels-air-snuff-videos-featuring-systematic-torture-of-palestinians/
Over the past month, mainstream Israeli television channels have aired what can only be described as snuff films. They depict the systematic torture of Palestinians from Gaza in Israeli jails. Such videos have aired on at least three occasions — twice on Channel 14, and once on the public broadcaster, Channel 13. While Channel 14 is considered right-wing, so is about two-thirds of the Israeli public, and the more “mainstream” Channel 13 has shown no qualms about airing similar footage.
The broadcasts follow prison officials into detention centers to document the mistreatment of prisoners, which seems to be something that the officials — and apparently the viewers — find satisfying rather than revolting. The airing of these snuff films is a demonstration of societal sadism.
As Yumna Patel has recently reported, several rights groups have sounded the alarm over the widespread and systemic abuse that Palestinian prisoners face at the hands of the Israeli authorities. These groups’ calls have been unintentionally buttressed by Israeli soldiers’ unapologetic videos of themselves torturing or demeaning Palestinian detainees, which they boastfully post on social media. Now, it seems that the phenomenon has expanded to mainstream Israeli television.
The two aforementioned reports on Channel 14 (threads with subtitles can be found here and here) contained footage of actual interrogation sessions during which torture was used. The Channel 13 report did not, but it exposed some of the worst prison conditions to be broadcast to the public. These conditions include forcing prisoners to live in inhumane conditions and subjecting them to torture and harassment. Here’s the 11-minute video with translated subtitles.
‘The feeling is one of pride’
“Here, we see the cells in which the Nukhba terrorists are held,” the narrator says.
The “Nukhba” refers to elite Hamas-led fighters who carried out the October 7 attack. In the cell, viewers notice metal bunkbeds without mattresses, and instead of a toilet, there is just a hole in the floor. The room is almost completely dark throughout the day, and prisoners have their hands and legs chained together.
We hear attack dogs barking constantly as prisoners are made to kneel while bound and blindfolded, their heads touching the floor.
“This is how it should be,” a guard says. “This is how a Nukhba prisoner should be…what happened on October 7 will never return.”
In another scene, a guard shouts at prisoners as dogs continue to bark incessantly. “Heads down! Heads on the floor!” he yells.
“There are many prisoners here that I personally saw at the [October 7] events,” a prison official says, taking pride in humiliating them. “The difference is that this time, he is afraid, shaking, with his head on the floor…no Allahu Akbar, nothing. You won’t hear a squeak from him.”
“They have no mattresses,” says a warden shift commander. “They have nothing…we control them 100% — their food, their shackling, their sleep…[we] show them we are the masters of the house.” Even without knowing the background to that phrase, to hear him say it is chilling.
“Masters of the house” was the election slogan of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Jewish Power leader and current Minister of National Security. Ben-Gvir declared war on Palestinian prisoners long before October 7, and this has included shutting down bakeries that supply bread to prisoners — described by Ben-Gvir as an “indulgence” — and drastically limiting prisoners’ water use. So now it’s become much worse.
While one is tempted to believe that all prisoners here are “Nukhba” members, it turns out that many of them aren’t even suspected of that. Rather, they were rounded up in Gaza after October 7, during mass arrests in which hundreds of Gazan men were stripped and paraded in a most sadistic demonstration of power. The mass arrests also included hundreds of women, including pregnant women detained with their babies. Israeli security officials told Haaretz that by their own estimate, “only 10 to 15 percent of the hundreds of the semi-naked and bound Gazan men arrested in the Strip during the recent days are Hamas members or those who identified with the organization.”
Back to the Channel 13 coverage, viewers can hear the nonstop blasting of the Zionist anthem, Am Israel Hai (“the people of Israel live”).
“The prison authorities claim that it is meant to boost the morale of the staff,” the narrator declares. “But it is clear that this is another part of the psychological warfare against the prisoners.”
Torture, in other words.
It’s hard to imagine the depths to which Israeli society has sunk. The official tells the Channel 13 reporter that “the feeling is one of pride.”
The reason such sadism has become formalized as a matter of policy is because this is what the Israeli public demands. The Israeli Democracy Institute released a survey last week showing that two-thirds of Jewish Israelis oppose “the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents at this time,” even if “via international bodies that are not linked to Hamas or to UNRWA.” For right-wing voters, the opposition to aid jumps from 68% to 80%.
This is not Israel’s Abu Ghraib moment, because when Abu Ghraib was revealed, most Americans were revolted. Israeli society, on the other hand, is thirsting for genocide. No wonder they consume such videos as entertainment on mainstream TV.
Thanks to Tali Shapiro, B.M.@ireallyhatyou, Hilel Biton-Rosen, and Dave Reed.
Establishment Papers Fell Short in Coverage of Genocide Charges
the two most widely circulating newspapers in the US ………In the lead-up to the hearing (12/29/23–1/10/24), the New York Times only published three articles focused on the case (1/8/24, 1/9/24, 1/10/24), while another Times piece (1/10/24) included a brief mention of the genocide charges.
the two most widely circulating newspapers in the US cannot say the same. In the lead-up to the hearing (12/29/23–1/10/24), the New York Times only published three articles focused on the case (1/8/24, 1/9/24, 1/10/24), while another Times piece (1/10/24) included a brief mention of the genocide charges.
South Africa on December 29 presented a historic case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—the highest court in the world. In an 84-page lawsuit, South Africa asserted that Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza—following the October 7 Hamas attacks, which killed 1,200 Israelis and foreigners—constitutes genocide. So far, more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been slaughtered, while over 71,000 have been injured in Israeli attacks.
Establishment media in the US were slow to cover South Africa’s “epochal intervention” in the ICJ—initially providing the public with thin to no reporting on the case. While the quantity of coverage did eventually increase, it skewed pro-Israel, even after the court in January found it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and ordered Tel Aviv to comply with international law.
Thin early coverage
FAIR used the Nexis news database and WSJ.com to identify every article discussing the genocide case published in the print editions of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for one month, from the announcement of the case on December 29 through January 28, two days after the ICJ’s preliminary ruling.
Under international law, genocide is one of the gravest charges that can be brought against a state. Since its 1948 ratification by the UN, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide has only been presented to the ICJ on a handful of occasions, and the historic nature of the complaint was not lost on its applicant: “South Africa is acutely aware of the particular weight of responsibility in initiating proceedings against Israel for violations of the Genocide Convention.”
Unfortunately, the two most widely circulating newspapers in the US cannot say the same. In the lead-up to the hearing (12/29/23–1/10/24), the New York Times only published three articles focused on the case (1/8/24, 1/9/24, 1/10/24), while another Times piece (1/10/24) included a brief mention of the genocide charges.
The Wall Street Journal ran no pieces focused on the charges prior to the hearing. The Journal‘s only mention of the genocide case in the pre-trial period came in a broader article about the war (12/29/23), which included six paragraphs about South Africa’s application. The paper did not reference the case again until the trial began.
‘Without any basis in fact’
During the two-day hearing, each paper ran two articles about it in their print editions. Each published an overview of the case (New York Times, 1/11/24; Wall Street Journal, 1/11/24). For their second piece, the New York Times (1/11/24) looked at both Israeli and Palestinian reactions, while the Journal (1/12/24) focused only on Israeli reactions; the one Palestinian it quoted was identified as an Israeli citizen…………………………………………………………….
Uneven sourcing………………………………………………..
Unchallenged Israeli talking points………………………………………………….
Unscrutinized statements……………………………………………….
With no scrutiny of Israeli officials’ statements, US news becomes little more than a bullhorn for government propaganda.
IAEA’s Rafael Grossi in Iraq to market nuclear reactors
IAEA to Help Iraq Develop Peaceful Nuclear Program, Agency Head Says , https://english.aawsat.com/business/4917976-iaea-help-iraq-develop-peaceful-nuclear-program-agency-head-says%C2%A0 20 Mar 24
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi met Iraq’s prime minister in Baghdad on Monday as part of a visit to help the country develop a peaceful nuclear program.
“We have discussed several projects in Iraq, including building a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes,” Iraqi Education Minister Naim al-Aboudi told reporters following a meeting between Grossi and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
Grossi said that a team of Iraqi experts would visit the agency’s headquarters in Vienna in a few days to hold meetings to “set out a road map for the Iraqi peaceful nuclear program” amid growing interest in nuclear energy in the region.
“We see that in the (United Arab) Emirates, we see that in Egypt … and of course we should see it here in Iraq,” Grossi told reporters.
Iraq in the past had three nuclear reactors in Tuwaitha, its main nuclear research site, south of Baghdad. One was destroyed by an Israeli air raid in 1981 and the two others by US warplanes in the 1991 Gulf war that followed Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
“Definitely, turning the page on this complex past is of the essence and we’re doing just that,” Grossi said.
“Anonymous” claims it has infiltrated Israel’s nuclear plant in Dimona
Hacker group discloses 7GB of documents it claims to have stolen, though Israeli sources view this primarily as psychological warfare rather than an act of substantive harm
AUDIO FILE here https://www.ynetnews.com/business/article/byblpvdaa
Israel Wullman, 20 Mar 24
Armed by Washington, Israel Trashes the Genocide Convention
Stop treating Gaza like a natural disaster.
SCHEERPOST, By Stan Cox and Priti Gulati Cox / TomDispatch 20 Mar 24
It’s been almost two months since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop killing Gazans and destroying their means of subsistence. So let’s look back and ask (1) how Israel has responded to its “orders,” and (2) how hard the Biden administration has pushed Israel to abide by those orders. Spoiler alert: the short answers are (1) not well and (2) not very.
The American government has provided most of the armaments and targeting technologies being used to kill Gazans by the thousands while turning many of the rest of them into refugees by destroying their homes, offices, schools, and hospitals. Nor did the Biden administration threaten to withdraw that support when Israel blocked shipments of crucial food and fuel to the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip. It also keeps vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions that would hold Israel accountable. And President Biden, despite an increasing amount of rhetorical shuffling, continues to back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), even though they have ignored the International Court’s orders and continue committing atrocities.
Flouting the Order to Stop the Killing
On January 26th, the International Court of Justice handed down a ruling in a case brought by the Republic of South Africa accusing Israel of genocide. It ordered that Israel must “ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described” in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The court’s first order prohibited “killing members” of the Palestinian population or “causing serious bodily or mental harm” to them. How did Israel respond? Consider that, between late December 2023 and January 21st of this year, the IDF had killed about 5,000 Palestinians, already pushing the death toll in the Gaza Strip past 25,000. The court’s order, issued days later, would have essentially zero effect. Another 5,000-plus Palestinians would be killed by late February, raising the death toll to more than 30,000.
During the month after the ruling, Israeli troops repeatedly killed or injured civilians fleeing to, or taking shelter in, areas the IDF had advertised as “safe zones.” Typically, when, on February 12th, Israeli aircraft attacked 14 homes and three mosques in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, killing 67 Palestinians, some of the survivors told reporters that they’d been inside tents in a refugee camp. Similarly, on February 22nd, Israeli warplanes struck a residential area in central Gaza, killing 40 civilians, mostly women and children, and wounding more than 100.
Worse yet, the Biden administration has enabled that ongoing killing spree by approving 100 separate military sales to Israel since the conflict began in October. As a former administration official told the Washington Post, “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support.”
In other words, the backbone of the war on Gaza comes with a label: “Made in USA.” In the decade leading up to October 7th, as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has reported, two-thirds of Israel’s arms imports came from the United States. (From 1950 to 2020, the U.S. share was a whopping 83%!)
In just the first couple of months of the war, the Biden administration sent 230 cargo planes and 20 ships full of military goods to Israel, a trove that included 100 BLU-109 bombs (2,000-pounders designed to penetrate hardened structures before exploding), 5,400 MK84 and 5,000 MK82 bunker-busters, 1,000 GBU-39 bombs, 3,000 JDAM bomb-guidance kits, and 200 “kamikaze drones.”
Such powerful bombs, reported Al Jazeera, “have been used in some of the deadliest Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, including a strike that leveled an apartment block in the Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 100 people.” And yes, such bunker-busters were widely used in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not in places as densely populated as Gaza’s cities. Israeli sources tried to justify that particular death toll by insisting it was necessary to kill one of Hamas’s leaders. If so, we’re talking about a 100-to-1 ratio, or a kind of collective punishment being supported by our tax dollars………………………………………………………………………………………………………more https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/20/armed-by-washington-israel-trashes-the-genocide-convention/
Israel Will Steal 16% of Gaza’s Land By Establishing ‘Buffer Zone’
Israel is destroying homes and agricultural land to create the zone
by Dave DeCamp March 18, 2024 https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/18/israel-will-steal-16-of-gazas-land-by-establishing-buffer-zone/
Israel’s plan to create a “buffer zone” inside Gaza along its border with Israel will take 16% of the Strip’s territory, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an analysis of the operation by Adi Ben Nun, a Hebrew University geography professor.
Israel has begun the process of constructing the zone, which involves demolishing Palestinian homes and agricultural land that are in the way. The buffer will be about 1 kilometer (.6 miles) in width.
Israeli media reported in January that Israel had destroyed 1,100 of the 2,800 buildings in the border areas. In that same month, 21 Israeli soldiers were killed while working to demolish a building after a Hamas rocket detonated explosives IDF soldiers had planted.
The Israeli military insists it needs to create the buffer zone to prevent future October 7-style attacks. But the plan also advances Israel’s seizure of Gaza’s territory, and many ministers in the Israeli government favor re-establishing Jewish settlements in the Strip.
On top of the buffer zone on the border, Israel is also constructing a road that will cut the Gaza Strip in two. Israel claims that it doesn’t seek to occupy Gaza but wants to maintain open-ended security control of the Strip, which is not possible without some form of occupation.
The Biden administration claims it’s opposed to any Israeli plans that will shrink Gaza’s territory. But the US continues to provide Israel with unconditional military aid as it’s enacting a plan to steal 16% of Gaza.
The last stammering of Jewish fascism
In Israel, the Jewish democratic opposition organized anti-Zionist demonstrations, which were not very well attended. Speakers emphasized the betrayal of the Prime Minister, who used the shock of October 7 not to save the hostages, but to realize his colonial dream.
Washington then decided to radically change its policy. Until then, it had considered that it could not afford to let Israel lose. It had therefore supported its crime. Now, it could no longer afford to let the Jewish fascists win. It’s important to understand that Washington didn’t change its mind when it saw the suffering of the Gazans, nor because of a sudden outburst of anti-fascism, but because of the threats of the “revisionist Zionists”. Its positions are dictated exclusively by its desire to maintain its domination of the world. It could not contemplate another defeat for its Israeli allies, this time after those in Syria and Ukraine. But it could even less envisage losing to the “revisionist Zionists”.
Victoria Nuland’s dismissal demonstrates the Biden Administration’s desire to clean up its own house, while doing the same for Israel.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article220564.html VOLTAIRE NETWORK | PARIS (FRANCE) | 12 MARCH 2024, by Thierry Meyssan
Anyone acting in good faith understands that murdering 30,000 innocent people has nothing to do with eliminating Hamas. Operation Iron Glaive appears for what it is: a cover to realize the old dream pursued by Jewish fascists from Jabotinsky to Netanyahu: to expel the Arab population from Palestine. From then on, this mass crime, committed for the first time live on television, turned the world’s political chessboard upside down. Feeling threatened, the Jewish supremacists themselves threatened the United States. Anxious to remain masters of the “free world”, the United States is preparing to topple the Jewish supremacists.
The Biden administration watched with bated breath as Israel reacted to the attack by the Palestinian Resistance, including Hamas, known as the “Flood of Al-Aqsa” (October 7). Operation Iron Glaive began with a massive pounding of Gaza City on a scale unprecedented anywhere in the world, including the World Wars. From October 27 onwards, this was followed by ground intervention, looting and the torture of thousands of Gazan civilians. In five months, 37,534 civilians were killed or disappeared, including 13,430 children and 8,900 women, 364 medical personnel and 132 journalists. [1].
At first, Washington reacted by unwaveringly supporting “Israel’s right to defend itself”, threatening to veto any ceasefire request and supplying as many bombs as necessary for the widespread destruction of the Palestinian enclave. It was unthinkable, in its eyes, to suffer yet another defeat, after those in Syria and Ukraine. However, Americans were watching the horrors live on their cell phones. Many high-ranking State Department officials wrote and spoke of their shame at supporting this butchery. Petitions were circulated. Prominent figures, both Jewish and Muslim, resigned.
In the midst of a presidential election campaign, Joe Biden’s team could no longer stain its hands with blood. It therefore began to put pressure on the Israeli war cabinet to negotiate the release of the hostages and conclude a ceasefire. However, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition refused, playing on the trauma of its citizens to ensure that peace would only return once Hamas had been eradicated. Washington eventually realized that the events of October 7 were merely a pretext for Jabotinsky’s followers to do what they had always wanted to do: expel the Arabs from Palestine. He became more insistent, stressing that the Palestinians had a right to live, that the colonization of their land was illegal under international law, and that the Israeli-Palestinian question would be resolved by a “two-state solution” (and not by the binational state envisaged by Resolution 181 of 1947).
Revisionist Zionists” (i.e., followers of Jabotinsky [2]) responded by organizing the “Conference for the Victory of Israel” [3] on January 28, 2024. Headlining the event was Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf, sentenced in Israel to life imprisonment for his racist crimes against Arabs, but pardoned by his friends. Sharbaf did not hesitate to proclaim himself heir to the Lehi and Stern groups who fought against the Allies alongside duce Benito Mussolini.
The message was perfectly received in Washington and London: this tiny group intended to impose its will on the Anglo-Saxons and would not hesitate to attack them if they tried to prevent ethnic cleansing.
The White House immediately issued a ban on fundraising and transfers to them [4]. This ban was extended to all Western banks under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).
In addition, on February 8, President Joe Biden signed a Memorandum on the conditions of US arms transfers [5]. Israel has until March 25 to guarantee in writing that it will not violate either International Humanitarian Law (but not International Law itself) or Human Rights (in the sense of the US Constitution).
For their part, the parliaments of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have begun debating the possibility of ceasing arms trading with Israel.
In Israel, the Jewish democratic opposition organized anti-Zionist demonstrations, which were not very well attended. Speakers emphasized the betrayal of the Prime Minister, who used the shock of October 7 not to save the hostages, but to realize his colonial dream.
The “revisionist Zionists” then launched a media offensive against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Since 1949, this UN agency has been providing education, food, healthcare and social services to 5.8 million stateless Palestinians in Palestine itself, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It has an annual budget of over $1 billion and employs over 30,000 people. Already in 2018, President Donald Trump had questioned the agency’s assistance to Palestinians and suspended US funding for it. His intention was to force the Palestinian factions back to the negotiating table. Five years on, the aim of the “revisionist Zionists” is very different. By attacking UNRWA, they intend to force Jordan, Lebanon and Syria to expel Palestinian refugees too. To this end, they accused 0.04% of its staff of having taken part in Operation Flood of Al-Aqsa, and blocked their bank accounts in Israel. UNRWA Director Philippe Lazzarini of Switzerland immediately suspended the 12 accused employees and ordered an internal investigation.
Of course, he never received the proof the Israelis claimed to have, but one donor after another, led by the United States and the European Union, suspended funding. Within days in Gaza, and weeks in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, the United Nations aid system collapsed.
Continue readingWithout Extensive Narrative Manipulation, None Of This Would Be Consented To
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 20, 2024,
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that bombing Gaza into rubble is a reasonable response to a single Hamas attack.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and starving hundreds of thousands more is a reasonable response to a thousand Israelis being killed.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that criticizing the actions of the state of Israel is antisemitic.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that saying “from the river to the sea” is a call for genocide.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone to think about this onslaught and the discourse around it in terms of “Jews vs Jew haters”.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that it was fine and normal to keep an unwanted ethnic group in a walled-in area whose resources are tightly controlled by those in power.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that TikTok is a massive problem that needs to be eliminated.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that Israel should be able to inflict violence and abuse upon the Palestinian population for generations without ever receiving any violence in return.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that Israel using the Israeli army to murder civilians in an Israeli military campaign is something that can be blamed on Hamas.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that it is fine and acceptable for the IDF to be targeting healthcare workers, journalists and scholars and destroying hospitals, universities and mosques.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that dozens of Israeli hostages are more important than the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are being starved and murdered.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that the US war machine should be bombing people in Yemen, Iraq and Syria to stop their retaliations for the destruction of Gaza.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that the governments who are backing a genocide are not personally responsible for it.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that the unfathomable suffering that is taking place in Gaza right now should not be at the forefront of our attention.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that the genocide in Gaza should be allowed to continue instead of being brought to an immediate end.
And that’s why we’ve been seeing such extensive narrative manipulation — from our news media, from our government officials, and from Israel apologists on social media.
It’s because without extensive narrative manipulation, none of this would be consented to.
Israel government continues to block aid response despite ICJ genocide court ruling, says Oxfam
March 18, 2024, by: The AIM Network
Oxfam Australia Media Release
International community resorts to sea routes and air drops rather than challenge Israel for systemically undermining unfettered access of relief
Israeli authorities have rejected a warehouse full of international aid including oxygen, incubators and Oxfam water and sanitation gear all of which is now stockpiled at Al Arish just 40 km away from the border of 2.3 million desperate Palestinians in Gaza.
The aid originates from many humanitarian organisations around the world and has been rejected over weeks and months as result of an unpredictable and chaotic regime of approval, scanning and inspection, ultimately controlled by Israeli authorities. The reasons for rejection are not clear, says Oxfam.
In a new report today, Oxfam said this rejected aid was just one example of an overall humanitarian response that Israel has made so dangerous and dysfunctional as to be impossible for aid agencies to work at the speed and scale necessary to save lives, despite best efforts.
Oxfam says that Israel’s government ultimately bears accountability for the breakdown of the international response to the crisis in Gaza. It is failing in its legal responsibilities to the people whose land it occupies and breaking one of the key provisions demanded by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – to boost humanitarian aid in light of the risk of genocide in Gaza.
Oxfam believes that people living in Gaza will suffer mass death from disease and starvation far beyond the current 31,000 Palestinian war casualties unless Israel takes immediate steps to end its violations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://theaimn.com/israel-government-continues-to-block-aid-response-despite-icj-genocide-court-ruling-says-oxfam/
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