How can we see the Palestine- Israel conflict from a Qur'an alone perspective

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Chris Hedges: The Case for Genocide
January 16, 2024
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The International Court of Justice may be all that stands between the Palestinians in Gaza and genocide.


I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream- by Mr. Fish.

By Chris Hedges
ScheerPost

The exhaustive 84-page brief submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with genocide is hard to refute. Israel's campaign of indiscriminate killing, wholesale destruction of infrastructure, including housing, hospitals and water treatment plants, along with its use of starvation as a weapon, accompanied by genocidal rhetoric from its political and military leaders who speak of destroying Gaza and ethnically cleansing the 2.3 million Palestinians, makes a strong case against Israel for genocide.

Israel's smearing of South Africa as "the legal arm" of Hamas exemplifies the bankruptcy of its defense, a smear replicated by those who claim that demonstrations held to call for a ceasefire and protect Palestinian human rights are "anti-Semitic." Israel, its genocide live streamed to the world, has no substantial counter argument.

But that does not mean the judges on the court will rule in South Africa's favor. The pressure the U.S. will bring — Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called the South African charges "meritless" — on the judges, drawn from the member states of the U.N., will be intense.

A ruling of genocide is a stain that Israel — which weaponizes the Holocaust to justify its brutalization of the Palestinians — would find hard to remove.

It would undercut Israel's insistence that Jews are eternal victims. It would shatter the justification for Israel's indiscriminate killing of unarmed Palestinians and construction of the world's largest open air prison in Gaza, along with the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

It would sweep away the immunity to criticism enjoyed by the Israel lobby and its Zionist supporters in the U.S., who have successfully equated criticisms of the "Jewish State" and support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism. 

Over 23,700 Palestinians, including over 10,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas and other resistance fighters breached the security barriers around Gaza. Some 1,200 people were killed — there is strong evidence that some of the victims were killed by Israeli tank crews and helicopter pilots that intentionally targeted the some 200 hostages along with their captors.

Thousands more Palestinians are missing, presumed buried under the rubble. Israeli attacks have left over 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of them women and children. Thousands more Palestinian civilians, including children, have been arrested, blindfolded, numbered, beaten, forced to strip to their underwear, loaded onto trucks and transported to unknown locations.

Seeking Provisional Measures


The Hague during public hearings of South Africa's charge of genocide against Israel on Jan. 11 and 12. (International Court of Justice)

A ruling by the court could be years away. But South Africa is asking for provisional measures that would demand Israel cease its military assault — in essence a permanent ceasefire. This decision could come within two or three weeks.

It is a decision that is not based on the final ruling by the court, but on the merits of the case brought by South Africa. The court would not, by demanding Israel end its hostilities in Gaza, define the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocide. It would confirm that there is the possibility of genocide, what the South African lawyers call acts that are "genocidal in character." 

The case will not be determined by the documentation of specific crimes, even those defined as war crimes. It will be determined by genocidal intent — the intent to eradicate in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group — as defined in the Genocide Convention.

These acts collectively include the targeting of refugee camps and other densely packed civilian areas with 2,000-pound bombs, the blocking of humanitarian aid, the destruction of the health care system and its effects on children and pregnant women — the U.N. estimates there are around 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, and that more than 160 babies are delivered every day — as well as repeated genocidal statements by leading Israeli politicians and generals.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu equated Gaza with Amalek, a nation hostile to the Israelites in the Bible, and cited the Biblical injunction to kill every Amalek man, woman, child or animal.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called Palestinians "human animals."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated, as the South African lawyers told the court, that everybody in Gaza is responsible for what happened on Oct. 7 because they voted for Hamas, although half the population in Gaza are children who are too young to vote. [Or were too young to vote in 2006 when the election took place.]

But even if the entire population of Gaza did vote for Hamas this does not make them a legitimate military target. They are still, under the rules of war, civilians, and entitled to protection. They are also entitled under international law to resist their occupation via armed struggle. 

The South African lawyers, who compared Israel's crimes with those carried out by the apartheid regime in South Africa, showed the court a video of Israeli soldiers celebrating and calling for the death of Palestinians — they sang as they danced "There are no uninvolved civilians" — as evidence that genocidal intent descends from the top to the bottom of the Israeli war machine and political system.

They provided the court with photos of mass graves where bodies were buried "often unidentified." No one – including newborns – was spared, the South African lawyer Adila Hassim, senior counsel, explained to the court.


Lawyers for South Africa at The Hague.  (International Court of Justice)

The South African lawyers told the court the "first genocidal act is mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza." The second genocidal act, they stated, is the serious bodily or mental harm inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza in violation of Article 2B of the Genocide Convention.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another lawyer and legal scholar representing South Africa, argued that "Israel's political leaders, military commanders and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent."

Lior Haiat, spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called Thursday's three hour hearing one of the "greatest shows of hypocrisy in history, compounded by a series of false and baseless claims." He accused South Africa of seeking to allow Hamas to return to Israel to "commit war crimes."

Israeli jurists, in their response on Friday, called the South African charges "unfounded, "absurd" and amounting to "libel." Israel's legal team said it had — despite U.N. reports of widespread starvation and infectious diseases from a breakdown in sanitation and shortage of clean water — not impeded humanitarian assistance.

Israel defended attacks on hospitals, calling them "Hamas command centers." It told the court it was acting in self-defense. "The inevitable fatalities and human suffering of any conflict is not of itself a pattern of conduct that plausibly shows genocidal intent," said Christopher Staker, a barrister for Israel.

Israeli leaders accuse Hamas with carrying out genocide, although legally if you are the victims of genocide you are not permitted to commit genocide. Hamas is also not a state. It is not, therefore, a party to the Genocide Convention.

The Hague, for this reason, has no jurisdiction over the organization. Israel also claims the Palestinians are warned to evacuate areas that will come under attack and provided with "safe areas," although as the South African lawyers documented, "safe areas" are routinely bombed by Israel with numerous civilian casualties.


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israel's Herzog in Tel Aviv on Jan. 9. (Amos Ben Gershom, Government Press Office of Israel, Wikimedia Commons,
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Israel and the Biden administration intend to prevent any temporary injunction by the court, not because the court can force Israel to halt its military assaults, but because of the optics, which are already disastrous.

The ICJ's ruling depends on the Security Council for enforcement — which given the veto power by the U.S., renders any ruling against Israel moot. The second objective of the Biden administration is to make sure Israel is not found guilty of committing genocide.

It will be unrelenting in this campaign, heavily pressuring the governments that have jurists on the court not to find Israel guilty. Russia and China, who have jurists in The Hague, are battling their own charges of genocide and may decide it is not in their interests to find Israel guilty.

The Biden administration is playing a very cynical game. It insists it is trying to halt what, by its own admission, is Israel's indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians, while bypassing Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including "dumb" bombs.

It insists it wants the fighting in Gaza to end while it vetoes ceasefire resolutions at the U.N. It insists it upholds the rule of law while it subverts the legal mechanism that can halt the genocide. 

Cynicism pervades every word Biden and Blinken utter. This cynicism extends to American citizens. Revulsion for former President Donald Trump, the Biden White House believes, will impel American voters to keep Biden in office. On any other issue this might be the case. But it cannot be the case with genocide.

Genocide is not a political problem. It is a moral one. We cannot, no matter what the cost, support those who commit or are accomplices to genocide.

Genocide is the crime of all crimes. It is the purest expression of evil. We must stand unequivocally with Palestinians and the jurists from South Africa. We must demand justice. We must hold Biden accountable for the genocide in Gaza.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR.  He is the host of show "The Chris Hedges Report."

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Technicality Could Sink Genocide Case v Israel
January 17, 2024
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South Africa may have given the World Court a way out of ruling that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and must halt its attacks, writes Joe Lauria.


Shaw argues his case. (ICJ)

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News



In its defense last Friday before the World Court against allegations by South Africa that it is committing genocide in Gaza and must be stopped, Israel made a legal argument that could torpedo the case if the court buys it. 

In order for a claim to reach the International Court of Justice, there must be an established dispute between two states. Israel's argument is that such a dispute was never established and thus the ICJ lacks jurisdiction to hear South Africa's claim.

There would be a political outcry from those who seek to stop Israel's ongoing slaughter in Gaza if the Court decides to dismiss the case on this technicality.

But given the pressure the Court is no doubt feeling from the United States, Germany and other allies of Israel it might be the best, if not the only way for the Court to escape without having to decide that it's merely plausible that Israel is committing genocide.

That is the bar that needs to be met at this preliminary stage of the case for the Court to issue provisional measures to order Israel to cease its military operation.

The Dispute Over a Dispute

On Thursday, South Africa tried to build a case, probably in anticipation of Israel's bid, that this was indeed a dispute between Israel and South Africa and it indeed belonged before the World Court. 

John Dugard, a South African professor of international law,  told the Court:

"The South African Government repeatedly voiced its concerns, in the Security Council and in public statements, that Israel's actions had become genocidal. On 10 November, in a formal diplomatic démarche, it informed Israel that while it condemned the actions of Hamas, it wanted the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the leadership of Israel for international crimes.

On 17 November South Africa referred Israel's commission of the crime of genocide to the International Criminal Court for 'vigorous investigation'. In announcing this decision President Ramaphosa publicly expressed his abhorrence 'for what is happening right now in Gaza, which is now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place'.

To accuse a State of committing acts of genocide and to condemn it in such strong language is a major act on the part of a State. At this stage it became clear that there was a serious dispute between South Africa and Israel which would end only with the end of Israel's genocidal acts.

South Africa repeated this accusation at a meeting of BRICS on 21 November 2023 and at an Emergency Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on 12 December 2023. No response from Israel was forthcoming. None was necessary. By this time, the dispute had crystallized as a matter of law. This was confirmed by Israel's official and unequivocal denial on 6 December 2023 that it was committing genocide in Gaza."


Dugard argues that there is a dispute between Israel and South Africa. (UN TV Screenshot)

Dugard added that "as a matter of courtesy" before filing the case with the ICJ on Dec. 29, South Africa sent a "Note Verbale to the Embassy of Israel to reiterate its view that Israel's acts of genocide in Gaza amounted to genocide — that it, as a State party to the Genocide Convention, was under an obligation to prevent genocide from being committed."

"Israel responded," Dugard said, "by way of a Note Verbale that failed to address the issues raised by South Africa in its Note and neither affirmed nor denied the existence of a dispute."

On Jan. 4, South Africa sent another Note Verbal highlighting Israel's failure to respond adequately to South Africa's concerns, and concluded that the dispute between the nations was "plainly not capable of resolution by way of a bilateral meeting."

Israel Says There is No Dispute

For its part, Israel on Friday argued that no such dispute exists and therefore the Court lacks jurisdiction over the case. Quoting from Article IX of the Genocide Convention, British attorney Malcolm Shaw KC, representing Israel, told the Court:

"Whether or not a dispute in these terms exists at the time of the filing of the Application is a matter for objective determination by the Court, 'it is a matter of substance, and not a question of form or procedure'. The Court will 'take into account in particular any statements or documents exchanged between the Parties as well as any exchanges made in multilateral settings', the Court has said.

The key point here is the use of the term 'exchange' between the parties. Unilateral assertion does not suffice. There needs to be some element of engagement between the parties. The element of interchange and bilateral interaction is required. A dispute is a reciprocal phenomenon."

Shaw made clear Israel does not believe such an exchange took place:

"South Africa cites only a couple of general public statements by Israel referencing merely a press report by Reuters and a publicity release from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These responses were not addressed directly or even indirectly to South Africa. There is no evidence of 'positive opposition' as required by the Court.

Further, South Africa cites no relevant exchange between the Parties, which would be the normal fashion for the expression and determination of a dispute between States. This actually typifies how South Africa has approached this matter. It seems to believe that it does not take two to tango. It is sufficient if one State determines there is a dispute, leaving the other party flummoxed.

It is thus disingenuous for Professor Dugard to conclude that 'Israel must have been aware from South Africa's public statements, démarche and referral to the International Criminal Court of Israel's genocidal acts that a dispute existed between the two States'. This is not a dispute, it is a 'unispute,' a one-sided clapping of hands."


The World Court in The Hague hearing South Africa v. Israel. (ICJ)

Shaw said Israel did respond to the Notes Verbale on Dec. 26 by offering to arrange a meeting between the two foreign ministries at South Africa's "earliest convenience." The Israeli embassy tried to deliver this note on Dec. 27 to the South African foreign ministry but the ministry was closed because of a holiday, Shaw said.

He claims Israel was informed by the South Africans on Dec. 28 that the note should be hand-delivered on Jan. 2, but on Dec. 29 filed the case with the ICJ, allowing no time for the states to have a dialogue.

Legal Experts Weigh In

"There does have to be a position stated by one side and rejected by the other before there is a dispute," John Quigley, professor emeritus at the Moritz College of Law of Ohio State University, told Consortium News. "But there was probably sufficient statement by [South Africa] that it thought Israel was committing genocide, and sufficient statement by Israel that it was not committing genocide for there to be a 'dispute" between the two.'"

Quigley added, "If the court wants to avoid giving provisional measures, it could use this." He made clear, however, that he thought this was unlikely to happen.

Analyst Alexander Mercouris concurred. He told CN:

"In a sane world it should not defeat the claim.  After all, in what sense has Israel been prejudiced? And given that the case is about genocide there is a strong case for acting with urgency.  However if the Court wants to find some way out of hearing the case, this lapse has provided it.   

If the Court were to take this view, South Africa would have the option of requesting the Israeli response, and then re-filing, either when Israel provided its reply or, in the event that Israel inordinately delayed its reply, when that became clear."

American academic Norman Finkelstein, told an interviewer: "It will completely discredit the Court if they issue a decision — we have decided not to pursue this case of genocide because we don't think there is a dispute. That just can't work."



Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois Champlain, represented Bosnia-Herzogovina at the ICJ where he brought a case of genocide against Yugoslavia in 1993.

"To the best of my knowledge the [Yugoslavs] did not know of my genocide lawsuit until the Registrar informed them of it," Boyle said in an email. "Again, this created no problems for me with the Court on winning my first Order of Provisional Measures of Protection on April 8 [1993]."

Boyle added that Bosnia's then president, Alija Izetbegovic was at the time "pretty busy negotiating" the Vance-Owen peace deal at U.N. headquarters in New York. "I don't think he said anything about my genocide lawsuit to the [Yugoslavs] there before I sued them."

Thus the fact that Sarajevo and Belgrade never directly disagreed about a genocide claim did not affect the Court's decision to issue provisional measures against Yugoslavia.

In an article published on Consortium News on Sunday, former British diplomat Craig Murray, who was in the public gallery for both days of the hearing, wrote that simply refusing to respond to an allegation of genocide cannot become a way for a nation to continue committing it with impunity. He wrote:

"The case could be technically invalid, and then [the judges] would neither have to upset the major Western powers nor make fools of themselves by pretending that a genocide the whole world had seen was not happening. For a while, they looked visibly relieved.  Israel is hoping to win on their procedural points about existence of dispute ...

The obvious nonsense [Israel] spoke about the damage to homes and infrastructure being caused by Hamas, trucks entering Gaza and casualty figures, was not serious. They did not expect the judges to believe any of this. The procedural points were for the court. The rest was mass propaganda for the media."

Murray added:

"I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel's 'no dispute' argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means 'no dispute'. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it..."

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

[Sarah]

Peace

They always say Hamas is using civilians as human shields but never present evidence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2YX2S-RJM0

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Global South Takes Israel to Court
January 19, 2024
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The Ukraine War and Israel's genocide in Palestine have both accelerated the decline in the authority of NATO countries, writes Vijay Prashad.



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

By Vijay Prashad
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

On Jan. 11, Adila Hassim, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, stood before the judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and said:

"Genocides are never declared in advance. But this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts."

This statement anchored Hassim's presentation of South Africa's 84-page complaint against Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and South Africa are parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The filing by the South African government documents many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel as well as, crucially, the declarations of intent to conduct genocide made by senior Israeli officials.

Nine pages of this text (pp. 59 to 67) list "expressions of genocidal intent" made primarily by Israeli state officials, such as calls for a "Second Nakba" and a "Gaza Nakba." (Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, refers to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their homes that led to the creation of the state of Israel).

These chilling declarations of intent have appeared repeatedly in the Israeli government's speeches and statements since Oct. 7 alongside racist language about "monsters," "animals" and the "jungle" to refer to Palestinians.

In one of many such instances, Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Oct. 9 that his forces are "imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another advocate from South Africa, described these words as a "language of systematic dehumanisation."

This language, alongside the character of Israel's assault — which has thus far claimed over 24,000 Palestinian lives, displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza, and plunged 90 percent of the population into acute food insecurity — should provide a sufficient basis for the accusation of genocide.

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


John Halaka, Palestine, "Memories of Memories," 2023.

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

After Israel made its case, the 15 ICJ judges began their deliberations. The presentations on Jan. 11–12 were merely the prima facie hearing to ascertain whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to a trial, which — if it happens — would likely take years.

However, South Africa asked the court to apply "provisional measures," namely an emergency order from the ICJ judges calling on Israel to stop its genocidal attack on Palestinians. This would be a significant blow to Israel's already diminished legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of its major backer, the United States of America.

There is considerable precedence for this measure. In 2019, Gambia was able to get the court to order provisional measures against the government of Myanmar for its attacks on the Rohingya people. The world awaits the court's verdict.

SA Also Prepares Case vs US & UK


Ibrahim Khatab, Egypt, "Do What You Want Under the Trees," 2021

The day before the hearings began, the U.S. released a statement saying "allegations that Israel is committing genocide are unfounded."

Once more, the U.S. government fully backed Israel, intervening on its behalf not only in words but by providing arms and logistical support for the genocide. That is why South Africa is now preparing a filing against the United States and the United Kingdom to be submitted to the ICJ.

While the ICJ held its hearing, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told the press that the U.S. will "continue to supply [Israel] with the tools and capabilities they need," which it did — again — as recently as Dec. 9 and 29, when it transferred additional arms to Israel.

When asked about loss of life concerns within Congress, Kirby said that "we still see no indication that [Israel is] violating the laws of armed conflict."

Kirby, a former admiral, acknowledged that "there are too many civilian casualties." However, rather than calling to end attacks on civilians, he said that Israel must "take steps to reduce that." In other words, the U.S. has given Israel the green light and carte blanche support, and arms, to do whatever it would like to Palestinians.

When the people of Yemen, led by Ansar Allah, decided to block the movement of ships to Israel through the Red Sea, the U.S. formed a "coalition" to attack Yemen. On the day of South Africa's presentation at the ICJ, the U.S. bombed Yemen.

The message was clear: not only will the U.S. provide unconditional support for the genocide; it will also attack countries that try to put a stop to it.

Worldwide Protests


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

The atrocities perpetrated by Israel, as well as the resistance of the Palestinian people, have moved millions across the world to take to the streets, many of them for the first time in their lives.

Social media, in almost all the world's languages, is saturated with content decrying Israel's terrible actions. The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing, with 400,000 people marching on the U.S. capital last weekend in larger numbers than ever in the country's history.

The increasing fervour and scale of these demonstrations have provoked concerns in the Democratic Party that U.S. President Joe Biden will lose not only the Arab American vote in such key states as Michigan, but that liberal-left activists will not support his re-election campaign.


Chie Fueki, Japan, "Nikko", 2018.

The Geopolitical Shift

Over the course of the past two years, from the start of the Ukraine War until now, there has been a rapid decline in the West's credibility. This drop in legitimacy did not begin with the Ukraine War or genocide in Palestine, though both events have certainly accelerated the decline in the authority of the NATO countries.

Ansar Allah spokesperson Mohammed al-Bukhaiti posted a video of a pro-Palestine march in New York that is perhaps indicative of the mood in most of the world and wrote:

"We are not hostile to the American people, but rather to the American foreign policy that has caused the death of tens of millions of people, threatens the security and safety of the world, and also exposes the lives of Americans to danger.  Let us struggle together to establish justice among people."

Since the start of the Third Great Depression in 2007, the Global North has slowly lost its control over the world economy, technology, science, and raw materials. Billionaires in the Global North deepened their "tax strike," siphoning a large share of social wealth into tax havens and unproductive financial investments.

This left the Global North with few instruments to maintain economic power, including the ability it once held to make investments in the Global South.

Later this month, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research will release a new dossier, "The Churning of the Global Order," and a study, "Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage," which detail the maladies of the present and the new mood created by the rise of the Global South.

The ICJ complaint filed by South Africa and backed by several Global South states is an indication of this mood.


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

It is clear to most people in the world that the Global North has failed to address planetary crises, whether the climate crisis or the consequences of the Third Great Depression.

It has tried to substitute reality with euphemisms such as "democracy promotion," "sustainable development," "humanitarian pause," and, from U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the ridiculous formulation of a "sustainable ceasefire."

Empty words are no substitute for real actions. To speak of a "sustainable ceasefire" while arming Israel or to speak of "democracy promotion" while backing anti-democratic governments now defines the hypocrisy of the Global North's political class.

German Genocides

On Jan. 12, the German government released a statement saying that it "firmly and explicitly rejects the accusation of genocide that has now been made against Israel."

In line with the new mood in the Global South, the government of Namibia reminded the Germans that they had "committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904–1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions." This is known as the Herero and Namaqua genocide.

Germany, said the government of Namibia, "is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil." Therefore, Namibia "expresses deep concern with the shocking decision" of the German government to reject the indictment of Israel.

Israel, meanwhile, says that it will continue this genocide for "as long as it takes," though its already tenuous justifications continue to deteriorate with increasing rapidity.

Behind this violence is the waning legitimacy of the NATO project, whose sanctimonies sound like nails being dragged across a bloodied chalkboard.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations.  His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and, with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

This article is from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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Caitlin Johnstone: Welcome to the Empire
January 20, 2024
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Ever the victim of unprovoked attacks from the people it has been strangling. Ever the shining city on a hill of human corpses. Ever the defender of the poor, helpless plutocrats of Wall Street.


(Treehill/Wikimedia Commons)

By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin's Newsletter

Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.



Welcome to the Empire

Where genocide is self-defense and peace rallies are genocide

Where war criminals are the victims and the hospitals are Hamas

Where calls for freedom are hateful and ceasefires are anti-semitic

Where civilians get called terrorists and real terrorists get Nobel Peace Prizes

Where the propaganda is journalism and the journalism is propaganda

Where the democracy is real and the apartheid is imaginary

Where the corporations are people and the people are corporate resources

Welcome to the empire

Whose bombs are humanitarian and whose provocations are invisible

Whose veterans are heroes and whose victims are forgotten

Whose wars are always just and whose enemies are always Hitler

Whose cause is always righteous and whose critics are always Russian

Whose sufferings are unforgivable and whose crimes are erased from history

Whose atrocities are always an unfortunate accident and whose enemies kill civilians for fun

Whose disastrous interventions are always innocent mistakes no matter how often they happen

Welcome to the empire

Ever the victim of unprovoked attacks from the people it has been strangling

Ever the shining city on a hill of human corpses

Ever the defender of the poor helpless plutocrats of Wall Street

Ever the savior of the families incinerated by missiles made by Raytheon

Ever the protector of natural resources in the soil of foreign nations

Ever the upholder of the rules-based order of a world with a boot on its throat

The empire loves you with a heart made of dollars and oil

The empire watches over you through your smartphone and your computer

The empire is your only friend

The empire is the only one who will ever love you

You can't leave

You can't get rid of the empire

If you get rid of the empire, this world could be taken over by tyrants

Caitlin Johnstone's work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes.  For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she's trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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Chris Hedges: Four Horsemen of Gaza's Apocalypse
January 22, 2024
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Joe Biden relies on advisors who believe in the West's civilizing mission to the "lesser breeds" of the earth to formulate his policies towards Israel and the Middle East.



Blood Brothers — Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges
ScheerPost



Joe Biden's inner circle of strategists for the Middle East — Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk — have little understanding of the Muslim world and a deep animus towards Islamic resistance movements.

They see Europe, the United States and Israel as involved in a clash of civilizations between the enlightened West and a barbaric Middle East. They believe that violence can bend Palestinians and other Arabs to their will.

They champion the overwhelming firepower of the U.S. and Israeli military as the key to regional stability — an illusion that fuels the flames of regional war and perpetuates the genocide in Gaza.

In short, these four men are grossly incompetent. They join the club of other clueless leaders, such as those who waltzed into the suicidal slaughter of World War One, waded into the quagmire of Vietnam or who orchestrated the series of recent military debacles in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

They are endowed with the presumptive power vested in the Executive Branch to bypass Congress, to provide weapons to Israel and carry out military strikes in Yemen and Iraq. This inner circle of true believers dismiss the more nuanced and informed counsels in the State Department and the intelligence communities, who view the refusal of the Biden administration to pressure Israel to halt the ongoing genocide as ill-advised and dangerous.

Biden has always been an ardent militarist — he was calling for war with Iraq five years before the U.S. invaded. He built his political career by catering to the distaste of the white middle class for the popular movements, including the anti-war and civil rights movements, that convulsed the country in the 1960s and 1970s.

He is a Republican masquerading as a Democrat. He joined Southern segregationists to oppose bringing Black students into Whites-only schools. He opposed federal funding for abortions and supported a constitutional amendment allowing states to restrict abortions.

He attacked President George H. W. Bush in 1989 for being too soft in the "war on drugs." He was one of the architects of the 1994 crime bill and a raft of other draconian laws that more than doubled the U.S. prison population, militarized the police and pushed through drug laws that saw people incarcerated for life without parole.

He supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, the greatest betrayal of the working class since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. He has always been a strident defender of Israel, bragging that he did more fundraisers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than any other Senator.



"As many of you heard me say before, were there no Israel, America would have to invent one.  We'd have to invent one because... you protect our interests like we protect yours," Biden said in 2015, to an audience that included the Israeli ambassador, at the 67th Annual Israeli Independence Day Celebration in Washington D.C.

During the same speech he said, "The truth of the matter is we need you.  The world needs you. Imagine what it would say about humanity and the future of the 21st century if Israel were not sustained, vibrant and free."

The year before Biden gave a gushing eulogy for Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister and general who was implicated in massacres of Palestinians, Lebanese and others in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon — as well as Egyptian prisoners of war — going back to the 1950s.

He described Sharon as "part of one of the most remarkable founding generations in the history not of this nation, but of any nation."

While repudiating Donald Trump and his administration, Biden has not reversed Trump's abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama, or Trump's sanctions against Iran.

He has embraced Trump's close ties with Saudi Arabia, including the rehabilitation of Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, following the assassination of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2017 in the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul.

He has not intervened to curb Israeli attacks on Palestinians and settlement expansion in the West Bank. He did not reverse Trump's moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, although the embassy includes land Israel illegally colonized after invading the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

As a seven-term senator of Delaware, Biden received more financial support from pro-Israel donors than any other senator, since 1990. Biden retains this record despite the fact that his senatorial career ended in 2009, when he became Obama's vice president. Biden explains his commitment to Israel as "personal" and "political."

He has parroted back Israeli propaganda — including fabrications about beheaded babies and widespread rape of Israeli women by Hamas fighters — and asked Congress to provide $14 billion in additional aid to Israel since the Oct. 7 attack.

He has twice bypassed Congress to supply Israel with thousands of bombs and munitions, including at least 100 2,000-pound bombs, used in the scorched earth campaign in Gaza.

Israel has killed or seriously wounded close to 90,000 Palestinians in Gaza, almost one in every 20 inhabitants. It has destroyed or damaged over 60 percent of the housing.

The "safe areas," to which some 2 million Gazans were instructed to flee in southern Gaza, have been bombed, with thousands of casualties. Palestinians in Gaza now make up 80 percent of all the people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, according to the U.N.


A man carrying the body of a Palestinian child killed during the Israeli shelling of Gaza on Oct. 17, 2023. (Fars Media Corporation, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Every person in Gaza is hungry. A quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water. Famine is imminent. The 335,000 children under the age of five are at high risk of malnutrition. Some 50,000 pregnant women lack healthcare and adequate nutrition.

And it could all end if the U.S. chose to intervene.

"All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it's all from the U.S.," retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick told the Jewish News Syndicate.

"The minute they turn off the tap, you can't keep fighting. You have no capability... Everyone understands that we can't fight this war without the United States. Period."

Blinken was Biden's principal foreign policy adviser when Biden was the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. He, along with Biden, lobbied for the invasion of Iraq.

When he was Obama's deputy national security advisor, he advocated the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. He opposed withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria. He worked on the disastrous Biden Plan to partition Iraq along ethnic lines.

"Within the Obama White House, Blinken played an influential role in the imposition of sanctions against Russia over the 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and subsequently led ultimately unsuccessful calls for the U.S. to arm Ukraine," according to the Atlantic Council, NATO's unofficial think tank.

When Blinken landed in Israel following the attacks by Hamas and other resistance groups on Oct. 7, he announced at a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state, but also as a Jew."

He attempted, on Israel's behalf, to lobby Arab leaders to accept the 2.3 million Palestinian refugees Israel intends to ethnically cleanse from Gaza, a request that evoked outrage among Arab leaders.

Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, and McGurk, are consummate opportunists, Machiavellian bureaucrats who cater to the reigning centers of power, including the Israel lobby. 

Sullivan was the chief architect of Hillary Clinton's Asia pivot. He backed the corporate and investor rights Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which was sold as helping the U.S. contain China. Trump ultimately killed the trade agreement in the face of mass opposition from the U.S. public. His focus is thwarting a rising China, including through the expansion of the U.S. military.

While not focused on the Middle East, Sullivan is a foreign policy hawk who has a knee jerk embrace of force to shape the world to U.S. demands. He embraces military Keynesianism, arguing that massive government spending on the weapons industry benefits the domestic economy.

In a 7,000-word essay for Foreign Affairs magazine published five days before the Oct. 7 attacks, which left some 1,200 Israelis dead, Sullivan exposed his lack of understanding of the dynamics of the Middle East.

"Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges," he writes in the original version of the essay, "the region is quieter than it has been for decades," adding that in the face of "serious" frictions, "we have de-escalated crises in Gaza."

Sullivan ignores Palestinian aspirations and Washington's rhetorical backing for a two-state solution in the article, hastily rewritten in the online version after the Oct. 7 attacks. He writes in his original piece:

"At a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, last year, the president set forth his policy for the Middle East in an address to the leaders of members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. His approach returns discipline to US policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects and new partnerships, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors."


Brett McGurk in 2017. (Munich Security Conference/Wikipedia)

McGurk, the deputy assistant to President Biden and the coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa at the White House National Security Council, was a chief architect of Bush's "surge" in Iraq, which accelerated the bloodletting. He worked as a legal advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority and the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad. He then became Trump's anti-ISIS czar.

He does not speak Arabic — none of the four men does — and came to Iraq with no knowledge of its history, peoples or culture. Nevertheless, he helped draft Iraq's interim constitution and oversaw the legal transition from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an Interim Iraqi Government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

McGurk was an early backer of Nouri al-Maliki, who was Iraq's prime minister between 2006 and 2014. Al-Maliki built a Shi'ite-controlled sectarian state that deeply alienated Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

In 2005, McGurk transferred to the National Security Council (NSC), where he served as director for Iraq, and later as special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq and Afghanistan. He served on the NSC staff from 2005 to 2009.

In 2015, he was appointed as Obama's Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. He was retained by Trump until his resignation in Dec. 2018.

An article in April 2021 titled "Brett McGurk: A Hero of Our Times," in New Lines Magazine by former BBC foreign correspondent Paul Wood, paints a scathing portrait of McGurk. Wood writes:

"A senior Western diplomat who served in Baghdad told me that McGurk had been an absolute disaster for Iraq. 'He is a consummate operator in Washington, but I saw no sign that he was interested in Iraqis or Iraq as a place full of real people. It was simply a bureaucratic and political challenge for him.' One critic who was in Baghdad with McGurk called him Machiavelli reincarnated. 'It's intellect plus ambition plus the utter ruthlessness to rise no matter the cost.'

[....]

A U.S. diplomat who was in the embassy when McGurk arrived found his steady advance astonishing. 'Brett only meets people who speak English. ... There are like four people in the government who speak English. And somehow he's now the person who should decide the fate of Iraq? How did this happen?'

Even those who didn't like McGurk had to admit that he had a formidable intellect — and was a hard worker. He was also a gifted writer, no surprise as he had clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. His rise mirrored that of an Iraqi politician named Nouri al-Maliki, one careerist helping the other. That is McGurk's tragedy — and Iraq's.

[....]

McGurk's critics say his lack of Arabic meant he missed the vicious, sectarian undertones of what al-Maliki was saying in meetings right from the start. Translators censored or failed to keep up. Like many Americans in Iraq, McGurk was deaf to what was happening around him.

Al-Maliki was the consequence of two mistakes by the U.S. How much McGurk had to do with them remains in dispute. The first mistake was the '80 Percent Solution' for ruling Iraq. The Sunni Arabs were mounting a bloody insurgency, but they were just 20% of the population.

The theory was that you could run Iraq with the Kurds and the Shiites. The second error was to identify the Shiites with hardline, religious parties backed by Iran. Al-Maliki, a member of the religious Da'wa Party, was the beneficiary of this."

In a piece in HuffPost in May 2022 by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, titled "Biden's Top Middle East Advisor 'Torched the House and Showed Up With a Firehose,'" McGurk is described by a colleague, who asked not to be named, as "the most talented bureaucrat they've ever seen, with the worst foreign policy judgment they've ever seen."

McGurk, like others in the Biden administration, is bizarrely focused on what comes after Israel's genocidal campaign, rather than trying to halt it.

McGurk proposed denying humanitarian aid and refusing to implement a pause in the fighting in Gaza until all the Israeli hostages were freed.

Biden and his three closest policy advisors have called for the Palestinian Authority —  an Israeli puppet regime that is reviled by most Palestinians — to take control of Gaza once Israel finishes leveling it.


National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan aboard Air Force One with President Joe Biden on March 13, 2023, en route to North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego, California. (White House/ Adam Schultz)

They have called on Israel — since Oct. 7 — to take steps towards a two-state solution, a plan rejected in an humiliating public rebuke to the Biden White House by Netanyahu.

The Biden White House spends more time talking to the Israelis and Saudis, who are being lobbied to normalize relations with Israel and help rebuild Gaza, than the Palestinians, who are at best, an afterthought.

It believes the key to ending Palestinian resistance is found in Riyadh, summed up in a top-secret document peddled by McGurk called the "Jerusalem-Jeddah Pact," the HuffPost reported.

It is unable or unwilling to curb Israel's bloodlust, which included missile strikes in a residential neighborhood in Damascus, Syria, on Saturday that killed five military advisors from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and a drone attack in South Lebanon on Sunday, which killed two senior members of Hezbollah.

These Israeli provocations will not go unanswered, evidenced by the ballistic missiles and rockets launched on Sunday by militants in western Iraq that targeted U.S. personnel stationed at the al-Assad Airbase.

The Alice-in-Wonderland idea that once the slaughter in Gaza ends, a diplomatic pact between Israel and Saudi Arabia will be the key to regional stability, is stupefying.

Israel's genocide, and Washington's complicity, is shredding U.S. credibility and influence, especially in the Global South and the Muslim world. It ensures another generation of enraged Palestinians — whose families have been obliterated and whose homes have been destroyed — seeking vengeance. 

The policies embraced by the Biden administration not only blithely ignore the realities in the Arab world, but the realities of an extremist Israeli state that, with Congress bought and paid for by the Israel lobby, couldn't care less what the Biden White House dreams up.

Israel has no intention of creating a viable Palestinian state.

Its goal is the ethnic cleansing of the 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and the annexation of Gaza by Israel. And when Israel is done with Gaza, it will turn on the West Bank, where Israeli raids now occur on an almost nightly basis and where thousands have been arrested and detained without charge since Oct. 7.

Those running the show in the Biden White House are chasing after rainbows. The march of folly led by these four blind mice perpetuates the cataclysmic suffering of the Palestinians, stokes a regional war and presages another tragic and self-defeating chapter in the two decades of U.S. military fiascos in the Middle East.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR.  He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

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Ahead of ICJ Verdict, Israeli Onslaught Continues
January 25, 2024
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A global human rights coalition expressed hope Thursday that the imminent verdict by the International Court of Justice will be a step toward stopping the genocide.


On Oct. 8, 2023, Ruins left by Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis in the southern of Gaza strip. (Mahmoud Fareed, Wafa for APAimages)

By Julia Conley
Common Dreams

A global human rights coalition expressed hope Thursday that the imminent verdict by the International Court of Justice will be a step toward "stopping the genocide in Palestine" as authorities in Gaza reported new attacks on civilians and alleged violations of international law.

The ICJ said this week that it will announce its verdict on Friday at 7:00 am ET in the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel.

The verdict comes two weeks after South African officials presented evidence not only that Israel is carrying out the "mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza," but also that top Israeli officials have made clear that their goal in the military operation that's now stretched on for nearly four months is to clear Gaza of the 2.3 million people who live there — either by killing them with air and ground attacks or by forcing them to leave.


Along with United Nations officials, international human rights experts, and a growing number of policymakers from across the globe, South Africa has argued that Israel is engaged in a genocidal assault in Gaza and has committed numerous violations of international law. The country called on the ICJ to adopt "provisional measures" to force Israel — which does not recognize the court's jurisdiction but is a party to the Genocide Convention — to stop its mass killing and displacement of Gazans.

Rights groups including the PAL Commission on War Crimes, the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine (ICSGP), the Global Legal Alliance for Palestine and the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation (PAL) said Thursday that they plan to hold a press conference outside the U.N. headquarters following the announcement of the verdict.

Regardless of the ICJ's decision, noted PAL Commission on War Crimes founder Lamis Deek, South Africa and its supporters will have to determine "how to deal with the anticipated U.S.-Israeli obstruction of that decision."

"On Friday we will respond to the court's decision and issue calls on state parties to the ICJ and the Genocide Convention as regards their compliance obligations, and address our legal colleagues and our communities regarding the next steps we think will be most critical on the heels of this decision," said Deek.

"The brutal Israeli genocide and torture in Gaza, alongside the targeted assassinations, destruction of civilian infrastructure including all of Gaza's hospitals and universities, blocking of aid, and use of starvation and spread of disease as a war tactic, constitute a grotesque series of the highest war crimes."

Should the court rule in South Africa's favor, added Adrienne Pine, co-coordinator of the ICSGP, "it is the international community's responsibility to ensure that Israel obeys this verdict without delay."

Ahead of the ICJ's verdict, the death toll in Gaza reached at least 25,700, including at least 10,000 children. Israel has claimed that it is targeting Hamas in retaliation for its Oct. 7 attack, and numerous top officials have said they view all Gaza residents as legitimate military targets — a potential violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit collective punishment of a population for the actions of a government or armed group.

On Thursday, human rights experts made clear that Israel's assault is showing no signs of slowing as the world awaits the verdict, with U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) affairs director Thomas White reiterating that attacks on civilians are "utterly unacceptable."

White said fighting intensified in Khan Younis near hospitals, shelters, and a UNRWA training center, all of which are hosting displaced people.

"Twelve people have now been confirmed dead with over 75 injuries, 15 of whom are in a critical condition. Yesterday, the center was hit by two shells and caught fire," said White.

"Heavy fighting near the remaining hospitals in Khan Younis, including Nasser and Al Amal, has effectively encircled these facilities, leaving terrified staff, patients, and displaced people trapped inside. Al Khair hospital has shut down after patients, including women who had just undergone C-section surgeries, were evacuated in the middle of the night."

"The situation in Khan Younis underscores a consistent failure to uphold the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law: distinction, proportionality, and precautions in carrying out attacks," said White. "This is unacceptable and abhorrent and must stop."


Al Jazeera reported that at least 20 Palestinians were killed and 150 more were injured when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched an attack on people waiting for humanitarian relief in Gaza City.

"The Israeli occupation committed a new massacre against thousands of hungry mouths who were waiting for aid," said Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health—whose reporting on casualties has long been backed by the U.N.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority warned that two-thirds of Palestinians in Gaza are now suffering from water-borne illnesses because Israel's blockade on fuel and aid has left the enclave without sufficient potable water and the ability to run desalination plants.

Deek said the ICJ's verdict "could profoundly reshape the geopolitical and legal topography" of how the world responds to Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

"Billions of people have been waiting with bated breath for this historic moment," said Deek, "that is poised to change international and domestic approaches — military, legal and political — to stopping the genocide in Palestine."

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

This article is from  Common Dreams.

Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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Chris Hedges: Even Genocide Won't Be Stopped
January 26, 2024
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The ruling by the International Court of Justice was a legal victory for South Africa and the Palestinians, but it will not halt the slaughter.



Red Ink — By Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges
ScheerPost



The International Court of Justice (ICJ) refused to implement the most crucial demand made by South African jurists: "the State of Israel shall immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza."

But at the same time, it delivered a devastating blow to the foundational myth of Israel. Israel, which paints itself as eternally persecuted, has been credibly accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Palestinians are the victims, not the perpetrators, of the "crime of crimes." A people, once in need of protection from genocide, are now potentially committing it.

The court's ruling questions the very raison d'être of the "Jewish State" and challenges the impunity Israel has enjoyed since its founding 75 years ago. 

The ICJ ordered Israel to take six provisional measures to prevent acts of genocide, measures that will be very difficult if not impossible to fulfill if Israel continues its saturation bombing of Gaza and wholesale targeting of vital infrastructure.

The court called on Israel "to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide." It demanded Israel "take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance."

It ordered Israel to protect Palestinian civilians. It called on Israel to protect the some 50,000 women giving birth in Gaza.

It ordered Israel to take "effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip."

The court ordered Israel to "take all measures within its power" to prevent the crimes which amount to genocide such as "killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group."

Israel was ordered to report back in one month to explain what it had done to implement the provisional measures.

Gaza was pounded with bombs, missiles and artillery shells as the ruling was read in The Hague — at least 183 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours.

Since Oct. 7, more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed. Almost 65,000 have been wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Thousands more are missing. The carnage continues. This is the cold reality.

Translated into the vernacular, the court is saying Israel must feed and provide medical care for the victims, cease public statements advocating genocide, preserve evidence of genocide and stop killing Palestinian civilians. Come back and report in a month.

It is hard to see how these provisional measures can be achieved if the carnage in Gaza continues.

"Without a ceasefire, the order doesn't actually work," Naledi Pandor, South Africa's minister of international relations, stated bluntly after the ruling.

Time is not on the side of the Palestinians.

Thousands of Palestinians will die within a month. Palestinians in Gaza make up 80 percent of all the people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, according to the United Nations.

The entire population of Gaza by early February is projected to lack sufficient food, with half a million people suffering from starvation, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, drawing on data from U.N. agencies and NGOs. The famine is engineered by Israel.

At best, the court — while it will not rule for a few years on whether Israel is committing genocide — has given legal license to use the word "genocide" to describe what Israel is doing in Gaza. This is very significant, but it is not enough, given the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

Israel has dropped almost 30,000 bombs and shells on Gaza — eight times more bombs than the U.S. dropped on Iraq during six years of war. It has used hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs to obliterate densely populated areas, including refugee camps.

These "bunker buster" bombs have a kill radius of a thousand feet. The Israeli aerial assault is unlike anything seen since Vietnam. Gaza, only 20 miles long and five miles wide, is rapidly becoming, by design, uninhabitable.

Israel will no doubt continue its assault arguing that it is not in violation of the court's directives. In addition, the Biden administration will undoubtedly veto the resolution at the Security Council demanding Israel implement the provisional measures.

The General Assembly, if the Security Council does not endorse the measures, can vote again calling for a ceasefire, but has no power to enforce it.

Defense for Children International – Palestine v. Biden was filed in November by the Center for Constitutional Rights against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The case challenges the U.S. government's failure to prevent complicity in Israel's unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people.

It asks the court to order the Biden administration to cease diplomatic and military support and comply with its legal obligations under international and federal law.

The only active resistance to halt the Gaza genocide is provided by Yemen's Red Sea blockade. Yemen, which was under siege for eight years by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Britain and the U.S., experienced over 400,000 deaths from starvation, lack of health care, infectious diseases and the deliberate bombing of schools, hospitals, infrastructure, residential areas, markets, funerals and weddings.

Yemenis know too well — since at least 2017 multiple U.N. agencies have described Yemen as experiencing "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world" — what the Palestinians are enduring.

Yemen's resistance — when the history of this genocide is written — will set it apart from nearly every other nation. The rest of the world, including the Arab world, retreats into toothless rhetorical condemnations or actively supports Israel's obliteration of Gaza and its 2.3 million inhabitants.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the U.S. has sent 230 cargo planes and 20 ships filled with artillery shells, armored vehicles and combat equipment to Israel since the attacks of Oct. 7, in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed.

U.S. weapons and military equipment are being shipped to Israel — which is running out of munitions — from the British base RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, according to the U.K. investigative website Declassified UK. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that more than 40 U.S. and 20 British transport aircraft, along with seven heavy-lift helicopters, have flown into RAF Akrotiri, a 40-minute flight from Tel Aviv.

Germany reportedly plans to provide 10,000 rounds of 120mm precision ammunition to Israel. If the court rules against Israel, these countries will be recognized by the world's most important international court as accomplices to genocide.

The ruling was dismissed by Israeli leaders.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking to paint the decision not to demand a ceasefire as a victory for Israel, said:

"Like every country, Israel has an inherent right to defend itself. The vile attempt to deny Israel this fundamental right is blatant discrimination against the Jewish state, and it was justly rejected. The charge of genocide leveled against Israel is not only false, it's outrageous, and decent people everywhere should reject it."

"The decision of the antisemitic court in The Hague proves what was already known: This court does not seek justice, but rather the persecution of Jewish people," National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said. "They were silent during the Holocaust and today they continue the hypocrisy and take it another step further."

The ICJ was founded in 1945 following the Nazi Holocaust. The first case it heard was submitted to the court in 1947.

"Decisions that endanger the continued existence of the State of Israel must not be listened to," Ben-Gvir added. "We must continue defeating the enemy until complete victory."

The court, which rejected Israel's arguments to dismiss the case, acknowledged "that the military operation being conducted by Israel following the attack of 7 October 2023 has resulted, inter alia, in tens of thousands of deaths and injuries and the destruction of homes, schools, medical facilities and other vital infrastructure, as well as displacement on a massive scale."

The ruling included a statement made by the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, who on Jan. 5, called Gaza "a place of death and despair." The court document went on:

". . . Families are sleeping in the open as temperatures plummet. Areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety have come under bombardment. Medical facilities are under relentless attack. The few hospitals that are partially functional are overwhelmed with trauma cases, critically short of all supplies, and inundated by desperate people seeking safety.

A public health disaster is unfolding. Infectious diseases are spreading in overcrowded shelters as sewers spill over. Some 180 Palestinian women are giving birth daily amidst this chaos. People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.

For children in particular, the past 12 weeks have been traumatic: No food. No water. No school. Nothing but the terrifying sounds of war, day in and day out.

Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence — while the world watches on."

The court acknowledged that:

"... an unprecedented 93% of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger, with insufficient food and high levels of malnutrition. At least 1 in 4 households are facing 'catastrophic conditions': experiencing an extreme lack of food and starvation and having resorted to selling off their possessions and other extreme measures to afford a simple meal. Starvation, destitution and death are evident."

The ruling, quoting Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), continued:

"Overcrowded and unsanitary UNRWA shelters have now become 'home' to more than 1.4 million people. They lack everything, from food to hygiene to privacy. People live in inhumane conditions, where diseases are spreading, including among children. They live through the unlivable, with the clock ticking fast towards famine.

The plight of children in Gaza is especially heartbreaking. An entire generation of children is traumatized and will take years to heal. Thousands have been killed, maimed, and orphaned. Hundreds of thousands are deprived of education. Their future is in jeopardy, with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences."

The court also referred pointedly to comments made by multiple senior Israeli government officials advocating genocide, including the president and minister of defense. Statements made by government and other officials form a crucial element of the "intent" component when seeking to establish the crime of genocide.

It quoted Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who declared — two days after the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7 — that he ordered a "complete siege" of Gaza City with "no electricity, no food, no fuel" being permitted.  He said:

"I have released all restraints . . . You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza," Gallant told Israeli troops massing around Gaza the following day. "This is what we are fighting against...Gaza won't return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn't take one day, it will take a week, it will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places."

The ICJ quoted Israel's President Isaac Herzog as saying, "It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It is absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d'état. But we are at war. We are at war. We are defending our homes."

Herzog continued "We are protecting our homes. That's the truth. And when a nation protects its home, it fights. And we will fight until we'll break their backbone."

Today's decision was read out by the ICJ's current president, Judge Joan Donoghue, an American lawyer who used to work at the U.S. State Department and the Department of the Treasury before she joined the World Court in 2010.

"In the Court's view, the facts and circumstances mentioned above are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible," it read. "This is the case with respect to the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article III, and the right of South Africa to seek Israel's compliance with the latter's obligations under the Convention."

It is clear from the ruling that the court is fully aware of the magnitude of Israel's crimes. This makes the decision not to call for the immediate suspension of Israeli military activity in and against Gaza all the more distressing. 

But the court did deliver a devastating blow to the mystique Israel has used since its founding to carry out its settler colonial project against the indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine. It made the word genocide, when applied to Israel, credible.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR.  He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

[almarh0m]

The veil is being torn: the hidden truths of Jabotinsky and Netanyahu
by Thierry Meyssan
The group that murdered 25,000 Palestinians in Gaza is not representative of Jews in general. It is the heir to an ideology that has been committing such crimes for a century. Thierry Meyssan traces the history of the "revisionist Zionists" from Vladimyr Ze'ev Jabotinsky to Benjamin Netanyahu.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | PARIS (FRANCE) | 25 JANUARY 2024
DEUTSCH ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ ESPAÑOL FRANÇAIS ITALIANO NEDERLANDS PORTUGUÊS РУССКИЙ


Josep Borrell denounces the links between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas.
Josep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, receiving an honorary doctorate in Valadolid, declared: "We believe that a two-state solution [Israeli and Palestinian] must be imposed from outside to bring about peace. Even if, and I insist, Israel reaffirms its refusal [of this solution] and, to prevent it, has gone so far as to create Hamas itself (...) Hamas has been financed by the Israeli government in an attempt to weaken the Fatah Palestinian Authority. But if we don't intervene firmly, the spiral of hatred and violence will continue from generation to generation, from funeral to funeral".

In so doing, Josep Borrell broke with the official Western line that Hamas is the enemy of Israel, which it attacked by surprise on October 7, justifying the current Israeli response and the massacre of 25,000 Palestinian civilians. He asserted that enemies of Jews can be supported by other Jews, Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. He rejected the communitarian reading of history and examined personal responsibilities.

This narrative shift was made possible by the UK's exit from the European Union four years ago. Josep Borrell knows that the European Union has financed Hamas since its 2006 coup, yet today he is free to say what's on his mind. He didn't mention Hamas's links with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose "Palestinian branch" the organization claims to be, or with MI6, the British secret service. He simply suggested withdrawing from the mess.

Gradually, the veil is being torn away. A historical reminder is in order here. The facts are known, but never linked, nor listed in sequence. They have an illuminating cumulative effect. They take place mainly during the Cold War, when the West turned a blind eye to the crimes it needed, but they actually began twenty years earlier.

In 1915, the British Jewish Home Secretary, Herbert Samuel, wrote a memorandum on the Future of Palestine. He wanted to create a Jewish state, but a small one so that it "could not be large enough to defend itself". In this way, the Jewish diaspora would serve the long-term interests of the British Empire.

He tried unsuccessfully to convince the Prime Minister, the then Liberal H. H. Asquith, to create a Jewish state in Palestine at the end of the World War. However, following Herbert Samuel's meeting with Mark Sykes, just after the conclusion of the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov Agreements on the colonial division of the Middle East, the two men pursued the project, gaining the support of "Protestant Nonconformists" (today we would say "Christian Zionists"), including the new Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. He and his cabinet issued the famous Balfour Declaration, clarifying one of the points of the Sykes-Picot Sazonov Accords by announcing a "Jewish national home".

At the same time, Protestant Nonconformists, through U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to support their project.

Also during the First World War, during the Russian Revolution, Herbert Samuel proposed integrating Jews from the former Russian Empire fleeing the new regime into a special unit, the Jewish Legion. This proposal was taken up by a Ukrainian Jew, Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who imagined that a Jewish state in Palestine could be his post-war reward. Herbert Samuel entrusted him with recruiting soldiers from among Russian émigrés. Among them was the Pole David ben Gourion (then a Marxist), who was joined by the Briton Edwin Samuel, Herbert Samuel's own son. They distinguished themselves in the lost battle against the Ottomans at Gallipoli.

At the end of the war, the fascist Jabotinsky demanded a state as his due, but the British had no desire to part with their Palestinian colony. So they stuck to their commitment to a "national home", and nothing more. In 1920, a section of Palestinians led by Izz al-Din al-Qassam (the tutelary figure of the armed wing of today's Hamas, the al-Qassam brigades) rose up and savagely massacred Jewish immigrants, while a Jewish militia responded. This was the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. London restored order by arresting fanatics, jihadists and Jews alike. Jabotinsky, at whose home an arsenal was discovered, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

However, David Lloyd George's "Protestant Nonconformist" government appointed Herbert Samuel governor of Palestine. Upon his arrival in Jerusalem, he pardoned and released his friend Jabotinsky. He then appointed the anti-Semite and future Reich collaborator Mohammad Amin al-Husayni as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.


Fresco in homage to Vladimir Jabotinsky in Odessa (Ukraine).
Jabotinsky was elected director of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). But he returned to the former Russian Empire, where Symon Petliura had just created a Ukrainian People's Republic. Jabotinsky and Petlioura signed a secret agreement to carve out a place for themselves in the lands of the Bolsheviks in the East and Nestor Makhno's anarchists in the South (present-day Novorossia). Petliura was a fierce anti-Semite, and his men were used to massacring Jewish families and villages in their own country. Petlioura was the protector of the Ukrainian "integral nationalists" and their mentor, Dmytro Dontsov, who later became administrator of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute responsible for carrying out the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" [1].

When word spread that Jabotinsky had formed an alliance with "Jew-killers", the World Zionist Organization summoned him for an explanation. But he preferred to resign his community office rather than answer questions. He then founded the Alliance of "Revisionist Zionists" (mainly present in the Polish and Latvian diaspora) and its militia, Betar. He turned away from the British Empire and became enthusiastic about Fascist Italy. He set up a military academy for the Betar near Rome, with the support of duce Benito Mussolini.


Betar honor guard in front of Jabotinsky's portrait at the Ze'ev citadel.
In 1936, Jabotinsky devised an "evacuation plan" for Jews from Central and Eastern Europe to Palestine. He won the support of the Polish head of state, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, and his foreign minister, Józef Beck. But also that of the Hungarian regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, not forgetting that of the Romanian prime minister, Gheorghe Tătărescu. The plan never came to fruition, however, because the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe were frightened by Jabotinsky's allies, and because the British Empire opposed mass emigration to Palestine. In the end, Chaim Weizmann, then president of the World Zionist Organization, assured that Jabotinsky was involved in the Franco-Polonian-Nazi plan to deport the Jews to Madagascar.

It was during this period that Vladimir Jabotinsky prophesied the Holocaust to astonished Jewish audiences. According to him, by refusing his evacuation plan, the Diaspora would provoke a surge of violence against it. To everyone's surprise, this is what his friends actually carried out: the extermination of millions of Jews.


Vladimir Jabotinsky (right) and Menachem Begin (left), at a Betar meeting in Warsaw.
In 1939, Jabotinsky drew up a plan for an uprising of the Jews of Palestine against the British Empire, which he sent to the local section of the "Revisionist Zionists", the Irgun. World War II postponed this project. Jabotinsky did not settle in Fascist Italy, but in the then-neutral United States, where one of his disciples joined him to become his private secretary. He was Benzion Netanyahu, father of Benjamin Netanyahu.

During the war, Vladimir Jabotinsky and Benzion Netanyahu were visited by a Chicago philosophy professor, Leo Strauss. He was also a Jewish fascist. He had been forced to leave Germany because of Nazi anti-Semitism, but remained a staunch fascist. Leo Strauss went on to become the standard-bearer for "neo-conservatives" in the USA. He created his own school of thought, assuring his few disciples after the Second World War that the only way for Jews to prevent another Shoah was to create their own dictatorship. His pupils included Paul Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams, the man who today stands behind Benjamin Netanyahu and financed his "reform of institutions" this summer.
Vladimir Jabotinsky died in New York in 1940. David ben Gourion opposed the transfer of his ashes to Israel, but in 1964, Israel's Prime Minister, the Ukrainian Levi Eshkol, authorized it.


Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pays tribute to his hero, Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
After World War II, the "revisionist Zionists" of the Irgun declared war on the British Empire for restricting Jewish emigration to Palestine. Under the command of the future Prime Minister, the Byelorussian Menachem Beguin, they organized a series of attacks, including one on the King David Hotel, which killed 91 people, and the Deir Yassin massacre, which claimed at least a hundred victims.

In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a plan to divide Palestine into two zones, Jewish and Arab, in order to form a bi-national state. Taking advantage of the slowness of the intergovernmental organization, David ben Gourion unilaterally proclaimed the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. The Arab states reacted by taking up arms, while Jewish militias began the Nakba, the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians. Concerned by these rapid developments, the General Assembly sent a Swedish emissary, Count Folke Bernadotte, to demarcate the two federated states. But on September 17, 1948, other "revisionist Zionists" belonging to the Lehi (known as the "Stern Group"), under the command of another future prime minister, the Byelorussian Yitzhak Shamir, assassinated him. They were all convicted by an Israeli court. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Moshe Shertok (or Sharett), wrote to the General Assembly requesting Israel's membership of the United Nations. He "declared that the State of Israel hereby accepts, without any reservation whatsoever, the obligations arising from the Charter of the United Nations, and undertakes to observe them from the day it becomes a Member of the United Nations". Under these express conditions, Israel became a member of the UN on May 11, 1949. In the days that followed, Yehoshua Cohen, Count Bernadotte's assassin, was discreetly released. He became the bodyguard of Prime Minister David ben Gourion.


Benjamin Netanyahu as a young man and Yitzhak Shamir.
From 1955 to 1965, Yitzhak Shamir headed a department of Mossad, the foreign secret service of the new state. Without informing his superiors, he organized the secret police of the Shah of Iran, the Savak. Some two hundred of his men came to teach torture alongside former Nazis [2].
Then, in 1979, while negotiating the Camp David Accords with Egypt, he moved the men he had sent to Iran to the Congo. Probably with the support of the US CIA, they now supervised Mobotu Sese Seko's secret police. He went there to check them out.

As part of the Cold War, Yitzhak Shamir also helped the Taiwanese dictatorship [3].

This time, unbeknownst to the United States, he set up a terrorist group in New York, Rabbi Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League [4]. He supervised a campaign for the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, attacks on the Soviet delegation to the UN and, finally, on the legation of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

He forged alliances with South Africa [5]. He took part in the creation of "Bantustans", false African states that enabled South Africa to treat its black population not as nationals, but as emigrants; a model that "revisionist Zionists" would later apply to the Palestinians.

In this vein, he had Israel finance the research of President Pieter Botha's personal physician, Dr. Wouter Basson. Basson, at the head of 200 scientists, intended to create diseases that would affect only blacks and Arabs (Project Coast [6]) [7].

One crime leading to another, he also supported Rhodesia [8] and the fight against the independence of the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola.

In Guatemala, Yitzhak Shamir became close to the dictatorship of General Rios Montt. He not only supplied him with weapons, but also supervised his secret police. He set up a computer institute to monitor water and electricity consumption, enabling him to detect and locate clandestine activities. He organized the Mayan population into kibbutzim so as to make them work and keep an eye on them without having to carry out agrarian reform. Thus protected, Rios Montt murdered 250,000 people. [9]; a model that revisionist Zionists wish to apply to the Palestinians. Relations between Israel and the United States regarding the Guatemalan experiment were channeled through the Straussian Elliott Abrams.

Throughout the Cold War, the "revisionist Zionists" did not act in the interests of the Western camp; they used the opportunities presented to them to do what Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky had always done: exercise power by force with no regard for anyone else.


Towards the end of the Madrid Conference, the Israeli delegation brought out this old poster from the British police in Mandatory Palestine: it asks for information on the Lehi terrorist group. Top left: Menachem Beguin.
At the end of the Cold War, President Bush Sr. convened the Madrid Conference to finally resolve the Israeli-Palestinian question. During the conference, the Israeli delegation, chaired by Yitzhak Shamir, now Prime Minister, demanded the repeal of UN General Assembly resolution 3379 [10] before any further discussions could take place. This states that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". "With an open heart, we call on Arab leaders to take the courageous step and respond to our outstretched hand in peace", declaims Shamir, grandiloquently. Anxious to reach an agreement, the General Assembly complied. But, deceiving its interlocutors, Israel made no commitments and even did everything in its power to defeat George H. Bush's bid for a second term.

Before concluding, I'd like to say a few words about today's personalities.


Ukrainian Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenski and "white führer" Andriy Biletsky
The alliance of Ukrainian "revisionist Zionists" and "integral nationalists" was reformed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A mafia oligarch, the Jew Ihor Kolomoïsky, propelled a young Jewish humorist, Volodymyr Zelensky, into politics, while financing the integral nationalist militias that besieged and bombarded the Russian-speaking Ukrainian populations of the Donbass. Refuznik Natan Sharansky, a former minister under Ariel Sharon, organized meetings between Jewish world figures and the Ukrainian president's cabinet. While Voldymyr Zelensky entrusted the command of the two major battles of Marioupol and Bakhmout to Andriy Biletsky, the "white führer".

On July 19, 2018, on the initiative of "revisionist Zionists", the Knesset passed a law proclaiming Israel as a "Jewish state", with Hebrew as its sole official language and unified Jerusalem as its capital. Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory were deemed to be in the "national interest".
Four years later, Benjamin Netanyahu formed a government with a coalition of followers of Rabbi Kahane. In 2022, Itamar Ben-Gvir, chairman of Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power Party), declared that he would expel the Arabs from Palestine. Members of his party launched an attack on the West Bank village of Huwara in February 2023, seven months before the Palestinian attack of October 7. In the space of a few hours, they set fire to hundreds of cars and 36 houses. They attacked the inhabitants, injuring 400 people and killing one man before the eyes of the Israeli army, which surrounded the village without intervening in the face of their exactions.

This brief historical summary shows us that there is no Arab-Israeli problem any more than there is a Ukrainian-Russian problem, but a huge problem of all of us with an ideology which, in different places and times, has done nothing but sow suffering and death. We must open our eyes and no longer accept to mobilize with false-flag actions and other lies.

Thierry Meyssan
Translation
Roger Lagassé

[almarh0m]

AS`AD AbuKHALIL: Hamas' Official Account
January 30, 2024
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There is enough in the document to declare the birth of a new Hamas movement, which breaks with its early founding years.


Hamas rocket attack from Gaza into Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

By As`ad AbuKhalil
Special to Consortium News

Last week, the Information Office of Hamas issued a special document titled "This is our account: Why the Aqsa Deluge." In it, the movement explains in detail its motives and goals for the operation.

The document is not likely to get Western media and government attention because Hamas' narrative of the events of Oct. 7 clashes with the propaganda put out by Israel and spread by Western governments and media. Nevertheless, there is enough in the document to declare the birth of a new Hamas movement, which breaks with its early founding years.

In the history of Palestinian struggle, political organizations fade away while new ones always emerge to replace them. Leaders are discredited after major historical events, and new leaders emerge and capture the imagination of a new Palestinian generation.

Some political organizations (resistance groups) survive and stay, but undergo major political transformations. The Fatah movement was, in the 1960s and 1970s, the backbone of Palestinian military and political struggle.

While it did not achieve military success, and most of its operations against Israel failed, the Palestinian people rallied behind Fatah because Yasser Arafat was perceived to be the new (and later sole and undisputed) leader of the Palestinian revolution.


Feb. 19, 1988: Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, addressing U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. (UN Photo)

Today, the Fatah movement is perceived, rightly, by most Palestinians as the surrogate army of the Israeli occupation and of the U.S. The Biden administration insists that Fatah (after some "revamping" and rebranding) will be the only acceptable party (acceptable to the U.S. and to some in Israel) to manage security and government in Gaza after the war.

The Palestinian people think otherwise and regard the army of the Palestinian Authority as the arm of repression on behalf of Israel and U.S. The notion that the U.S. and Israel can pick Palestinian leaders is as old as occupation and colonization.

Hamas has also changed over the years. When it was founded in 1987, it was a militant organization that focused heavily on religious rhetoric, and did not count on successful military operations as a source of legitimacy and credibility. It was associated closely with random bombings in the second intifada, when Arafat and the PLO were pushing a peaceful settlement with Israel.

But what accounts for change in the structure, role, and policies of a movement or resistance groups in the Arab East? In examining the changes in Hamas, it is instructive to look at the history of Hizbullah, the Shi'ite resistance group to Israel in Lebanon.

Change Factors


Hassan Nasrallah while meeting with Iranian officials in 2019. (Khamenei.ir, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

In Hizbullah's case, one can discern several factors which play a role in shaping and shifting the focus and rhetoric of a movement.

A change of leadership can cause a major change in the policies and practices of an organization.

The Fatah Movement, before the imposition of the autocratic leadership of Arafat after 1970, was quite different from what it became later, also under Arafat, but more so under Mahmoud Abbas.

There was more of a collective leadership in the beginning. Similarly, Hasan Nasrallah inherited a Hizbollah party that was not quite popular or understood outside of Lebanon (and even inside of Lebanon).

Israel thought that by killing Abbas Musawi (plus his wife and child) in 1992, it was finishing off the phenomenon of Hizbullah forever. Instead, Nasrallah is largely responsible for turning the party into the largest Arab political party, probably ever, even if we take into account the Sudanese Communist Party in its heyday in the 1960s.


Sayed Abbas Al Mosawi, the co-founder and secretary general of Hezbollah. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Nasrallah also Lebanonized the party and married it to the Lebanese political scene where it had been somewhat alien before. He was behind abandoning the goal of an Islamic Republic in Lebanon, which had been Hizbullah's centerpiece when the party was first established.

Nasrallah did not end the collective leadership which characterized Hizbullah since its founding, but his charisma propelled him into regional leadership, far beyond the narrow confines of Lebanese politics. Nasrallah consults with Iran and others within his party, but he is expected to make the party's final strategic decisions, especially when it comes to Palestine and Lebanon.

Hizbullah was feared before Nasrallah, never loved or understood. In the Nasrallah era, the party became loved by some (most before the 2011 Syrian war), hated by others and misunderstood by many. (Of course, Saudi regime media specialize in distorting the meaning of Nasrallah's words as part of its regional propaganda campaign to demonize enemies of Israel.)

The new leader of Hamas, Yahda Sinwar, is causing a drastic change in the role, practice, and effectiveness of Hamas. Just like Nasrallah, Sinwar began to leave his mark soon after assuming leadership in 2017.

Like Nasrallah (who served a security role with Hizbollah years before assuming the leadership), Sinwar had a security role with Hamas. He allegedly hunted down Israeli collaborators within Hamas and inside Gaza.

Israel's failure to reach Hamas' leadership and command structure has been because of the security regime installed in Gaza by Sinwar.


Khaled Meshaal in 2009. (Trango, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)

He is not a wheeler-dealer like Khalid Mishal, the former Hamas leader, and avoids inter-Arab regime politics and conflicts. He also is a firm believer in the efficacy of the regional axis of resistance and puts that to great effect in how he husbands the movement's military resources.

Hamas broke with its previous era when Mishal turned Hamas into an arm of Qatari foreign policy. Mishal was closer to Qatar and Turkey while Sinwar is closer to Iran, which supplies the movement with crucial military aid (Qatar supplies Hamas with financial aid, but reportedly in close coordination with Israel).

A party may change by learning from its past mistakes. When Hamas emerged, it had no qualms expressing anti-Jewish sentiments, even citing the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hamas wasn't even sensitive to Christian sensibilities at first. But that changed over time.

In this document (and in a political document of 2018) the movement made it clear that it harbors no ideology of hostility against Jews, qua Jews. This is a major shift, which was also articulated by Hizbullah in its political document of 2009.

To be sure, Israel and Western Zionists don't want to concede that movements change. They want to pigeonhole all Palestinian and Arab resistance groups as Nazi-like, no matter what they do and say. To this day, Western media refers to the political rhetoric of Hamas from its first year and not from its more recent years.

They do the same with Hizbullah: Saudi regime media relish finding very old speeches of Nasrallah in which references to an Islamic state are made to alienate non-Shiite supporters in Lebanon and the Arab world.

Hamas also broke with its history of not trying to distinguish between Israeli military and civilian targets (despite its earliest statements that it does). It's not easy for Arab resistance groups to make that distinction because: a) Israel and the Zionist movement since the 1930s never bothered to make distinctions between Arab civilians and combatants; b) because many Israelis (males and females) are armed and serve in the reserves.


Hamas' Yadar Sinwar , left, during police force exercise in Gaza in 2012. (Fars Media Corporation, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

The wave of suicide attacks by Hamas during the second intifada turned off Arab and non-Arab supporters of the Palestinians. In the new document Hamas enunciates a declared policy of avoiding targeting civilians as part of its religious and ethical doctrine. (I will delve deeper into this question in Part Two of this article.)

There was a similar path in Hizbullah's history. Hizbullah is now very keen to avoid targeting civilians. Even in the recent months of war between Hizbullah and Israel, Hizbullah strictly targeted military sites in Israel when it would have been much easier to fire randomly.

In contrast, Israel in all its wars, manages to kill many (or mostly) civilians. In fact, Israel — in this recent war of genocide – does not deny that most of its victims in Gaza have been civilians but maintains many of those slaughtered were Hamas combatants.

(U.S. intelligence estimates that Israel has exaggerated the percentage of combatants killed). In the July war of 2006, the overwhelming majority of those killed by Hizbullah were soldiers and officers, while most of those who were killed on the Lebanese side were civilians.

As`ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Lebanon (1998), Bin Laden, Islam and America's New War on Terrorism (2002), The Battle for Saudi Arabia (2004) and ran the popular The Angry Arab blog. He tweets as @asadabukhalil

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.