I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
The news of John Pilger’s death is a sad event in the history of
progressive and critical journalism. His work throughout his career was a
glorious example of a dynamic trailblazer who stood for truth, justice,
human rights and for oppressed and marginalised people. The world has
lost a courageous son who fought against imperialism, neo-fascism, and
the oppression of Palestinians by a brutal colonial-settler state and its
imperial patrons.
May you rest in peace, dear friend of the oppressed and victims of imperialism and colonialism.
In addition to killing thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has
been routinely attacking at least four other nations in the region:
Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. Why does the U.S. media keeps the
American public in the dark?
For years, this site has warned that Israel, especially Benjamin
Netanyahu, have tried to instigate the U.S. into a wider war in the
Mideast, particularly with Iran. We’ve also regularly indicted the U.S.
mainstream media for ignoring this danger.
Today, the threat is greater than ever. And, true to form, the New York Times,
National Public Radio, and the others continue to cover it up, instead
treating Netanyahu as the embattled but honest leader of an Israel that
is only trying to defend itself.
For more than a decade, Netanyahu’s main aim was to destroy
Iran’s alleged (and unproven) program to build nuclear weapons. He
openly tried to sabotage the Obama administration’s successful nuclear
deal in 2015, and then vigorously encouraged Donald Trump’s abrupt
decision to end the agreement 3 years later. Secretly, Israel conducted a
long campaign of sabotage against Iran, which included cyber warfare,
and actual assassinations inside the country, including the November
2020 killing of an Iranian scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Netanyahu
wanted to provoke Iranian retaliation, which would draw in the U.S., and
— he hoped — trigger an American attack that that would set back or
even destroy Tehran’s nuclear program.
Since October 7, the stakes for Netanyahu are much higher. Israelis
blame him for the Hamas attack, and the opinion polls show his
popularity has never been lower. A number of Israeli commentators have
called him the worst leader in the country’s history. If just a handful
of members from his own coalition in the Knesset abandon him, his
government will fall, and he will be trounced in new elections. Even
worse, the pending court cases against him for corruption will then
revive, and he could well end up in prison.
Luring the U.S. into a conflict with Iran will distract from his own troubles, and give him time to maneuver. So:
On December 24, an Israeli air strike assassinated Iran’s top commander in Syria, Razi Mousavi. The always valuable Iranian/American expert Trita Parsi, asked: “Did Israel kill Iranian commander to provoke a wider war?”
Also last week, a cyber attack
“caused two-thirds of Iran’s gas stations to suddenly stop working,”
yet another sabotage effort with Israel’s fingerprints all over it. No
country will be able to endlessly ignore such provocations.
(Netanyahu is not the only Israeli leader who wants the U.S. to
attack Iran. Former prime minister Naftali Bennett just published an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal
headlined: “The U.S. and Israel Need to Take Iran On Directly.” He
disclosed 2 secret Israeli attacks inside Iran during his 2021-2022
tenure as prime minister: the destruction of a drone base and the
killing of an Iranian military commander. After the article appeared,
some Israeli officials criticized Bennett “for revealing classified information. . . saying that he was potentially putting the country in danger.”)
The New York Times did run a brief report
on the December 24 air strike that killed Ravi Mousavi in Syria. But
the article was a model of dishonesty. The paper feigned ignorance in
the report’s opening sentence: “Iran accused Israel on Monday of killing
a high-level military figure in a missile strike in Syria at a time
when concerns are growing that the war in Gaza could escalate into a
regional conflict.” Nowhere do we learn that many observers, including
some Israelis, believe that Netanyahu may actually want a wider
conflict, as long as he can embroil the U.S. in it.
National Public Radio was even worse. In recent days, the network ran
three on-air reports, including one from a correspondent in the region.
The broadcasts were uniformly inept. They barely mentioned Israel’s
provocative killing of Mousavi. In one, host Leila Fadel
asked: “Does the U.S. or Iran really want this to become a regional
war?” Somehow, she forgot to add Israel or Netanyahu to her question,
although anyone who follows the story using a range of non-U.S.
mainstream sources, even including some in Israel itself, would have
known to broaden the inquiry.
The Washington Postreport
has a single throwaway sentence about how an “airstrike” by an unnamed
air force killed a “senior [Iranian] officer” in Syria. That was it.
Of course, the situation in the region is complicated. Ansar Allah,
Iran’s allies (commonly referred to as the Houthis) who control much of
Yemen, have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea, and Hezbollah, the
political/military movement in southern Lebanon that is also allied with
Iran, has been clashing with Israel across their mutual border. (This
site’s estimable Mitchell Plitnick has explained at length
how the Biden administration’s flawed response to the Red Sea shipping
crisis could also trigger a broader conflict.) It is doubtful that even
Benjamin Netanyahu would want to widen the conflict to bring in either
of these other two actors.
But what makes Israel’s provocative killing of General Mousavi and
its latest cyberattack even more dangerous that it also raises the risk
of a lethal accident. Let’s go back to July 1988, when tensions in the
region were similarly high. A U.S. Navy warship in the Strait of Hormuz accidentally shot down
a civilian Iranian jetliner, killing all 290 people on board. Iran did
show restraint, and so the conflict thankfully did not escalate
further.
Today, the danger is arguably even higher. Israel continues to murder
thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and attack at least four
other nations in the region: Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. Israel’s
desperate leader is rolling the dice for his last time, and the Biden
administration is letting him get away with it — while the U.S. media
keeps the American public in the dark. The chances for a greater tragedy
are high.
Editor’s remarks: Dr. Philip Giraldi in his latest article
articulates with such precision and eloquence what is on the minds of
many anti-war and antifascist people in America, Europe and the rest of
the world. He identifies the reasons why US President Joe Biden
obediently follows what the ultra-right Israeli manipulator Netanyahu
decides.
Vital US interests are sacrificed to avoid offending Israel and its Lobby
by Philip Giraldi
I don’t have anyone whom I would consider a friend who supports the
genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza. But my occasional
interaction with the psychopaths who infest the US government and media
and who are intimately connected by virtue of their political instincts
as well as their personal interests in campaign donations and/or
elevated salaries derived from Israel and its powerful lobby have plenty
of sound bites to throw out to demonstrate their love of the Jewish
state in all its manifestations. They mouth the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden
assertion that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and that Israel is
“America’s closest ally” and “best friend,” all of which can readily be
exposed as a series of self-serving lies and deliberate
misinterpretations of international law. Beyond that, they inevitably
cite their view that critics of Israel are fully responsible for what
they choose to refer to as the ultimate evil of “surging anti-semitism.”
In so doing they conveniently ignore the obvious fact that anger
towards Jews collectively speaking is nearly always derived from the
crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist political entity that
now legally defines itself as Jewish.
I sometimes ask the friends
of Israel what interest the United States has that would warrant our
country becoming complicit in committing war crimes that, collectively
speaking, amount to precursors for the complete expulsion or killing of
millions of Palestinians from what remains of their homes. They try to
weasel word their way avoiding the implications of that question by
observing that the United States is not directly engaged in the
conflict, an evasion that I belittle by pointing out that Washington is
providing funding, arming and political cover for the more powerful and
lethal party engaged in the conflict while also blocking attempts to
bring about a ceasefire to comply with orders from that same party,
which sure looks like direct involvement to me. I also point out that
Israel is working hard to get the US military engaged against Hezbollah
in Lebanon and also against Iran and is likely to be able to maneuver
the stoneheads in and around the White House to do its bidding vis-à-vis
both objectives.
So the big question has to be “Why does the
United States engage in a conflict that inter alia has utterly ruined
our country’s reputation worldwide and for which there is no real
compelling national interest?” The answer is, of course unpalatable to
many, but has to be that the US government is in many respects and
vis-à-vis some of its designated national policies completely under the
control of Israel and its powerful domestic as well as international
lobby. This habitual bowing to force majeure has warped the thinking of
the ambitious scallywags who seem to be present wherever one turns in
places like Washington. How else does one explain the infamous and quite
frankly ridiculous comment delivered at the 2018 Israeli American
Council meeting by leading politician Nancy Pelosi, who said that “I
have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the
ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and
I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s
fundamental to who we are.”
The delusional Pelosi, who appears to
have no “fundamental” attachment to the interests of the American
people whom she represents, is unfortunately not unique in the halls of
Congress, even less so in the Joe Biden White House, which might be
regarded as the illustration of what happens when you appoint Zionists
to nearly all key positions running your foreign, economic and national
security policies. The degree of direct Zionist/Israeli control over the
hapless Biden can best be illustrated by reviewing the course of the
recent redrafting of a UN Security Council resolution authored by the
United Arab Emirates that sought to bring about a suspension of the
fighting and the urgent resumption of humanitarian supplies for Gaza.
The US forced the revisions after coordination with Israel to permit the
Israelis to continue to attack civilian targets and avoid entering into
anything like a ceasefire, changing the word “suspension” in the
original draft to the less demanding creation of “conditions for a
sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Language authorizing the lead UN
role in monitoring and delivering the assistance to the Gazans was also
expunged leaving to belligerent Israel the task of completely
controlling the distribution of any supplies allowed entry into the
areas inside Gaza, which it is also simultaneously continuing to bomb,
thereby slowing the stream of urgently needed supplies to a trickle
while also killing hundreds more civilians.
To be sure, it was
the United States blindly supporting Israel that rendered what was a
promising proposal to put an end to the multiplying civilian deaths
toothless. Israel demonstrated just how high it regarded Joe Biden when
it contradicted what the president said about the US being able to
moderate some Israeli offensive action in Gaza. Netanyahu denied that,
saying that he and his war cabinet were continuing to make all relevant
decisions based on Israel’s own interests. Israel Defense Force (IDF)
Chief of the General Staff General Herzi Halevi followed on with his own
assessment that finishing the job in Gaza, i.e. totally destroying
Hamas by whatever means it requires, will take “many more months.” The
Israeli military has indeed visibly increased its efforts by opening up
new “battle zones” inside Gaza, to include directly targeting the
crowded and starving refugee camps outside the cities. The civilians are
paying the price while a grinning Joe Biden is spending his New Year’s
holiday in the American Virgin Islands.
Allowing Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a known liar and habitual war criminal to
tell the US government what to do is about as low as it gets, Mr. Biden!
You should not only be ashamed, but more than that, humiliated,
compelled to do ghastly things in support of your own fear of possible
Jewish/Israeli reaction if you do not bow down before King Netanyahu. He
and the band of inhuman monsters he has assembled in his cabinet have
made no secret of their intention to remove the Palestinians from
Palestine, either by forced emigration or by killing them if necessary.
On Christmas Day, Prime Minister Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud
bloc “that he was still working on the ‘voluntary’ immigration of Gaza’s
inhabitants to other countries.” His associates Itamar Ben-Gvir and
Bezalel Smotrich have made it clear that the ethnic cleansing process
will proceed even if it is not in any way voluntary. As Israel is the
occupying power in the former Palestine, what is taking place is, as
defined by the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention and the UN
Charter, a crime against humanity and the United States is completely
complicit in it not to mention actually enabling the slaughter through
its supplying of arms and money to the Israelis. It has recently been
reported in the Israeli media that the United States has delivered an
astonishing “10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment on 244
cargo planes and 20 ships” to sustain the Israeli homicidal assault
against the people of Gaza. And to demonstrate its gratitude for the
flood of weapons, America’s “best friend” and “closest ally” Israel has
nevertheless complained “about a delay in the delivery of munitions.”
The
total support of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by Washington
and the media is not only shameful, it is lacking any context for a
crime against humanity that has been going on with US connivance for the
past 76 years. Under international law, an occupied people has a right
to use force to resist occupation, but even given that, the majority of
Israeli deaths on October 7th should probably be attributed to so-called
“friendly fire” from the Israeli army not from Hamas. The occupied and
woefully abused Palestinians rising-up and seeking both freedom and
sovereignty in the land that was once completely theirs is fully
justified and should be respected. Israel’s killing women and children
through deliberate starvation or even by execution style is indisputably
a war crime. Bombing hospitals or leaving newborn incubator babies
abandoned to die is a crime against humanity. Arresting innocent
Palestinians before parading them naked and even desecrating their dead
bodies by harvesting organs that you then sell is unspeakable and almost
unimaginable evil as is deliberately targeting and bombing schools and
churches where people are trying to find shelter.
The genocide
and destruction in Gaza is the worst crime committed in modern history
and the man who could have stopped it, Joe Biden, sits on his hands and
grins. No one should remain silent when confronted by this horror but
the silence and the deliberate distortion of what is taking place is a
tribute to Jewish power in America and elsewhere. I am including some
recent commentary from the illustrious Australian Journalist Caitlin
Johnstone which demonstrates perfectly the hypocrisy and inhumanity of
both Biden and the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, and Germany:
“Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even
understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make
sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly
saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something… It’s so incredibly
obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on
people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the
media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics
look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch
out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians
in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told
that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be
killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were
witnessing.”
And a leading American journalist Daniel Larison
must have the last word of advice from his site on Eunomia: “We are
witnessing one of the gravest crimes of our time. Our government is
aiding and abetting the perpetrators. It is up to people in this country
to make our government cut off all support for this war and to press
for an end to the war itself.” Amen, Daniel!
Over 240 US cargo planes and 20 ships have made deliveries to Israel
by Dave DeCamp Posted on December 26, 2023
Two hundred and forty-four American cargo planes and 20 ships have
delivered over 10,000 tons of military equipment to Israel since October
7 to support the massacre in Gaza, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on
Monday.
The US support has been crucial in Israel’s ability to keep up its
relentless bombardment of Gaza. The Washington Post reported on December
9 that, up to that date, Israel dropped over 22,000 US-provided bombs
on the Gaza Strip.
The Pentagon has refused to disclose what types of weapons it’s been
sending to Israel, but media reports have revealed some details. The
Wall Street Journal reported on December 1 that the US had shipped
15,000 bombs and 57,000 155mm artillery shells to Israel since October
7.
The bomb shipments have included over 5,000 Mk84 2,000-pound warhead
bombs, which Israel has been dropping on densely populated areas of
Gaza. According to an analysis from The New York Times, during the first
six weeks of the war, Israel routinely dropped 2,000-pound bombs on
areas in south Gaza designated safe for civilians.
The Israeli Defense Ministry has said the US arms deliveries have
also included “armored vehicles, armaments, personal protective
equipment, medical supplies, ammunition, and more.”
The US-backed onslaught has killed nearly 21,000 Palestinians so far,
including over 8,000 children. The number is considered a low estimate
as thousands of bodies are believed to be buried deep under the rubble.
US officials claim they are “concerned” about the massive civilian
casualty rate in Gaza, but the Biden administration continues to provide
unconditional military aid for the slaughter. A report from +972
Magazine revealed that Israel is intentionally targeting civilian areas
as part of its war strategy.
One in four Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip — over 570,000
people — are starving due to the Israeli siege, according to a report
using data from the UN and other aid agencies that was released
Thursday.
The report, published by the Integrated Food Security Phase
Classification (IPC), said the Israeli onslaught in Gaza has “caused
catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity across the Gaza Strip.”
The IPC has a five-phase scale for malnutrition, and the report
estimates the entire population of Gaza is facing Phase 3 or higher.
Phase 3 is defined as: “Households either have food consumption gaps
that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition; or are
marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting
essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies.”
One in four households in Gaza is in Phase 5, which means
catastrophic famine-like conditions. Phase 5 is defined as: “Households
have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs even after full
employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution, and
extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident. For famine
classification, the area needs to have extreme critical levels of acute
malnutrition and mortality.”
The IPC report came after Human Rights Watch said Israel was
committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon of war against
Gaza’s civilian population. HRW said Israeli forces were “deliberately
blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding
humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and
depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their
survival.”
When Israel’s onslaught first began after the October 7 Hamas attack
on southern Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a
“complete siege” on the already blockaded enclave and said Israel was
fighting “human animals” in Gaza, which is home to over 1 million
children.
Over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the US-backed Israeli
slaughter so far, including over 8,000 children. As the war continues,
many more could die from starvation and disease caused by the siege.
What are the motivations behind Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza, and what is the way forward?
Yoav Litvin is an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer.
Aljazeera, 21 Dec 2023
An
Israeli flag can be seen inside Gaza Strip, looking in from the Israeli
side of the border, on November 11, 2023 [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]
On October 7, Hamas fighters breached the Gaza prison fence, launching a coordinated attack
on at least seven Israeli military installations and more than 20
surrounding residential communities. Over 1000 Israeli citizens, both
civilian and military, as well as dozens of foreign nationals, were
killed in the attack. Some 240 others were taken captive. Caught off
guard and in disarray, the Israeli military responded to the attack in a
frenzy, firing indiscriminately on breached localities, slaying
Israeli captives alongside Hamas fighters in the process. It took the
Israeli forces nearly a day to recapture all lost territory and secure
the Gaza perimeter.
Following Hamas’s unprecedented incursion, Israel’s public relations
apparatus launched a misinformation campaign aimed at inciting fear and
fury and began to spread unverified atrocity propaganda. The campaign,
involving tales of babies being “beheaded en masse”, “burned” and “hung
on a clothesline”, helped transform the Israeli public’s shock into
genocidal tribalism and diverted attention from Israel’s political,
intelligence and military blunders that paved the way for the attack in
the first place. The campaign also helped the government garner crucial
public support for mass mobilisation of reserve units which made the
consequent full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip possible.
After securing unconditional military, political and diplomatic
backing of its imperial sponsors in the West, most notably in
Washington, and under the pretext of countering Hamas and rescuing
captives, Israel then initiated what has since been accurately described
as an AI-guided “mass assassination campaign” in Gaza.
Ten weeks on, most of Gaza is now destroyed, nearly 20,000
Palestinians are dead with many more still under the rubble, and the
world continues to watch a genocide unfold in real time. Examining these
events through a behavioural-neuroscientific lens could offer insights
into the Zionist settler colonialist dynamic in general and the
particular motivations behind Israel’s current genocidal acts in Gaza,
as well as potential paths forward.
The pillars of Zionist propaganda
In response to historical trauma, Jewish people have a deep fear of
anti-Semitism. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this fear,
along with disdain for oppressors, led to the formation of autonomous
Jewish self-defence groups in various geographies.
Zionism, a European colonial movement, recognised the potential of
this dynamic. It syncretised Jewish longing for safety and self-defence
with white supremacist,
messianic and fascistic ideologies. This synthesis birthed a new,
nationalist Jewish identity that equates Jewish safety with the
construction of an exclusivist homeland in Palestine through the
displacement of the region’s Indigenous populations.
Settler colonial endeavours typically depend on depicting the
targeted territory as “uninhabited”, and its existing inhabitants as
inhuman barbarians unworthy of any land.
This portrayal allowed Zionists to displace the Indigenous population
of Palestine without moral qualms, portraying the establishment of
Israel not as the destruction of a people but as the construction of
a “villa in the jungle”.
Within the Israeli society grounded in land and resource theft, offensive aggression under the guise of “self-defence”
(as in “Israel Defence Force”) has been rewarded and reinforced from
the very beginning and consequently became a routine part of life. By
reinstating fear and hijacking trauma associated with past and present
negative experiences of Jewish people, Zionist leaders ensured the
settler population’s continued support for aggressive, expansionist,
hegemonic, genocidal policies and shielded their corruption and other criminal endeavours from public scrutiny.
To maintain Israel’s violently oppressive status quo and expand the
territory of the settler colony, Zionists opportunistically conflated
their colonial ideology with Judaism.
Sign up for Al Jazeera
Week in the Middle East
Catch up on our coverage of the region, all in one place.
Amid mounting war crime claims against Israeli troops, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights revealed
Wednesday that it “has received disturbing information alleging that
Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) summarily killed at least 11 unarmed
Palestinian men in front of their family members” in the Gaza Strip.
Citing witness accounts shared by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights
Monitor and journalists, OHCHR said that while raiding a Gaza City
building where multiple related families were sheltering on Tuesday
night, “the IDF allegedly separated the men from the women and children,
and then shot and killed at least 11 of the men, mostly aged in their
late 20s and early 30s, in front of their family members.”
“The IDF then allegedly ordered the women and children into a room,
and either shot at them or threw a grenade into the room, reportedly
seriously injuring some of them, including an infant and a child,” added
the office, which has confirmed the killings at Al Awda building—also
known as the Annan building—but not the other details.
OHCHR noted that reporting on the killings in Gaza City’s Al Remal
neighborhood “raises alarm about the possible commission of a war crime”
and “comes in the wake of earlier allegations concerning the deliberate
targeting and killing of civilians at the hands of Israeli forces.”
“The Israeli authorities must immediately institute an independent,
thorough, and effective investigation into these allegations, and if
found to be substantiated, those responsible must be brought to justice
and measures implemented to prevent any such serious violations from
recurring,” the U.N. office declared.
“My sister informed me that an Israeli force raided the house and
executed the young men… The Israeli soldiers later threw shells at the
women, who were being held in one of the rooms.”
Euro-Med Monitor said
in a statement Wednesday that Israeli soldiers killed 13 people in the
building and “kidnapped an elderly man, whose fate is still unknown,”
according to “horrific testimonies” obtained by the Geneva-based group.
“My sister informed me that an Israeli force raided the house and
executed the young men,” a relative of the victims told the monitor.
“Thirteen persons were shot dead and several more were critically
injured. The Israeli soldiers later threw shells at the women, who were
being held in one of the rooms.”
“My mother, my sister, and my brother’s wife were injured along with
several others,” the relative added. “If they are not saved right away,
they might die at any time.”
The monitor noted that 27 women and children “trapped inside the
house—many of whom with severe injuries or amputations—appealed to the
International Committee of the Red Cross to coordinate their evacuation
and save their lives.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim
civil rights and advocacy group in the United States, responded to the
allegations by demanding a United Nations investigation.
“While the Biden administration blocks all attempts to end the
genocide in Gaza, real people are being slaughtered daily in ways that
echo the darkest periods of human history,” said CAIR national
communications director Ibrahim Hooper. “Our nation must call for an
immediate and permanent ceasefire to end the killing, ethnic cleansing,
and starvation of an entire people—the very definition of genocide.”
Israel’s “genocidal” war on Gaza—launched in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7 that killed over 1,100 people—has left more than 20,000 Palestinians dead, including 8,000 children, displaced the vast majority of the besieged strip’s 2.3 million residents, and devastated civilian infrastructure.
Separately on Wednesday, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) sent
the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor a list of 40 IDF
officers who had command responsibility over units involved in the
assault and blockade of Gaza through mid-November.
While not comprehensive, DAWN said, “the list of identified Israeli
officials serves as a repository of the prime Israeli suspects the ICC
prosecutor (or any war crimes prosecutor) should consider in its ongoing
investigation into violations of the Rome Statute in this war.”
Meanwhile, despite growing global calls for a cease-fire, the United
States—which gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid and is now
considering a $14.3 billion package for the war—delayed a U.N. Security Council vote on a Gaza resolution for the third time this week.
This post has been updated with comment from CAIR.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Israel carries out unprecedented attacks
against health workers and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, bulldozing
hospital grounds and detaining doctors
Al-Awda
Hospital Manager Dr. Ahmed Muhanna was arrested by Israeli Forces and
his whereabouts are currently unknown. Photo: People's Health Movement
“Moral decay,” as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) put it,
is possibly the best way to summarize the past weekend of Israeli
Occupying Forces (IOF) attacks on health in the Gaza Strip. Days of
unimaginable horrors haunt health workers, patients, and displaced
people in Gaza’s hospitals as violent raids and sieges of health centers
continue over 70 days into Israel’s war on Gaza.
On Saturday, December 16, reports came in about Israeli bulldozers
crushing those staying in tents on the grounds of Kamal Adwan Hospital
in northern Gaza. The raid turned the area into a mass grave, leaving
many more injured behind. Soon after the event, Mai al-Kaila,
Palestinian Health Minister, called for an urgent probe into the event.
Not only did the Israeli occupation bulldoze living people, but they
also “released dogs on us in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital, and
they mauled a wounded person before his martyrdom,” said the Ministry of
Health’s statement.
Around the time the ministry’s statement was published, there were still 12 babies in the incubators of Kamal Adwan who health staff could not reach, leaving the infants without food.
The Israeli occupation announced it had detained dozens of people during the raid. According to reports, these also include health workers.
Health workers were detained and taken to unknown locations from
Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya, another health center that had been
besieged for days. Among the 21 health workers who had been detained was
Dr. Ahmed Muhanna,
the director of the hospital, who had been one of the health staff to
provide regular reports about the health situation in the Gaza Strip.
All the health workers except for Dr. Muhanna were released after a
three-hour interrogation, but the hospital director’s current location
remains unknown.
A week ago, Dr. Muhanna reported that the situation in the hospital
was “critical,” with the hospital under complete siege and snipers
having shot two staff members. Shortly before he was taken away by the
IOF, Dr. Muhanna had reassured media that the hospital staff remained steadfast and in high spirits despite the siege.
Among other hospitals attacked were the Nasser Medical Complex
in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, and Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa.
Bombs damaged the maternity ward at Nasser Medical Complex, killing one
and injuring at least ten. A new mission led by the WHO visited Al-Shifa
on December 16, delivering much-needed supplies. The team found a
“hospital in need of resuscitation.”
According to their report,
there are no blood supplies at Al-Shifa, meaning that no surgical
interventions can take place, and supplies needed for pain management
are also virtually non-existent. The WHO described the “emergency
department as a ‘bloodbath’, with hundreds of injured patients inside,
and new patients arriving every minute.”
“Patients with trauma injuries were being sutured on the floor,” the
WHO reported, and “care must be exercised not to step on patients on the
floor.”
On December 17, news came in that Hani Al-Haitham,
the head of Al-Shifa’s emergency department, was killed in an Israeli
attack, along with his wife, Dr. Sameera Ghifari, and their children.
Together with the increasing risk of the spread of infectious
diseases and food deprivation, the escalating attacks against health
services and health workers in Palestine are making Gaza completely
unlivable, providing further evidence of the genocidal intention behind Israeli attacks.
People’s Health Dispatchis a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movementand Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
The defense secretary says the US commitment to Israel is ‘unshakable’
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwzr. com, December 18, 2023
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Israeli officials in Tel
Aviv on Monday and vowed continued US military support for the Israeli
onslaught on Gaza despite the massive civilian casualty rate.
In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Austin
said the US “commitment to Israel is unshakable,” according to The Times
of Israel. “America’s commitment to Israel is unwavering, and no
individual group or state should test our resolve,” he said.
Austin vowed the US would continue to provide Israel with “the
equipment that you need to defend your country,” referring to bombs and
other military aid the US has been shipping to Israel since October 7 on
a near-daily basis.
US officials have said they want Israel to wrap up the current phase
of its war, which involves constant airstrikes and a ground campaign, in
the next few weeks and take a more targeted approach against Hamas.
Austin said the US had thoughts about more “surgical” operations but
made clear the timeline of the onslaught is up to Israel.
“Regarding the timeline, this is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here
to dictate timelines or terms. Our support to Israel’s right to defend
itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s
not going to change,” he said.
At a press conference with Austin, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant said the Israeli military will “continue to operate in different
levels of intensity” as it sees fit and will eventually be able to
“transition gradually to the next phase.”
When discussing civilian casualties, Austin said that “protecting
Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty and a strategic
imperative” but also gave cover for the Israeli slaughter of civilians.
He said the density of Gaza’s population makes it “very, very difficult
to conduct any military operation.”
While US officials claim they are concerned about civilian casualties
in Gaza, they are not considering placing any conditions on military
aid or limits on the use of US-provided bombs. Since October 7, Israel’s
onslaught has killed over 19,000 Palestinians, including over 7,500
children.
–
Author: Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com
In the midst of Netanyahu’s annihilation of innocent Palestinian
civilians in Gaza, many of them children, women and the elderly, there
is a rising urgency from many Israeli and domestic Jewish groups for an
immediate ceasefire and greatly increasing the flow of humanitarian aid.
In the U.S. Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now have vigorously
engaged in public non-violent civil disobedience – an American tradition
– to challenge the inhumane unconditional co-belligerency by Congress
and Joe Biden of the present extremist regime’s genocidal destruction of
Palestinians. Many U.S. Jewish Americans are standing tall either
individually or in groups to exclaim “not in our name” to the
U.S.-funded civilian slaughter in Gaza.
A most remarkable, little-noticed open letter to President Joe Biden
appeared in December 13, 2023, New York Times,paid for by the legendary
Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and signed by 16 other
Israeli peace, human rights, veterans and religious associations. (See
the letter here).
Titled “The Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,” the letter
condemns the Hamas “horrific and criminal attack on Israeli civilians”
and demands the release of the Israelis in Gaza. What follows are
excerpts from their message to the White House:
“Since the war began, Israel’s policy has driven the humanitarian
crisis in Gaza to the point of catastrophe – not only as an inevitable
outcome of war. As part of this policy, soon after the fighting began,
Israel stopped selling Gaza electricity and water, closed its crossings
and blocked all entry of food, water, fuel and medicine.”
Citing international law and committed war crimes, the signers continue:
“UN agencies and humanitarian organizations report that the situation
in Gaza is catastrophic and they have almost no way left to help the
population. The few truckloads that are allowed in – a drop in the
ocean, according to the reports – cannot be distributed due to the
ongoing bombardments, the destruction of infrastructure and restrictions
imposed by Israel. This leaves more than two million people hungry and
thirsty, without access to proper medical care, and with infectious
diseases spreading due to unhygienic overcrowding and lack of water.
This inconceivable reality grows worse by the day.”
“You [Biden] have the power to influence our government to change its
policy and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, in accordance with
Israel’s legal obligations ….”
“We are in the final throes of an emergency. Many deaths can still be prevented. Israel must change its policy now.”
The estimated death toll in Gaza at “more than 18,000” is a gross
undercount. Well over ten times more children in Gaza have been killed
in nine weeks than the number of children lost in the Russian war on
Ukraine over nearly 22 months. In addition to the unprecedented intense
bombing, large numbers of Palestinian infants, children, women, the
infirmed, and disabled are homeless, facing the elements, dying by the
minute from the homicidal conditions described by these Israeli human
rights groups, journalists, and recorded by U.S. drones above Gaza.
Being reduced to rubble, Gaza has no fire trucks or water to put out
spreading fires. The Israeli military has destroyed or rendered the vast
majority of hospitals and health clinics inoperative. UN relief
agencies are shelled and have seen over 130 of their staff slain.
The Israeli war machine has also taken the lives of over 60
Palestinian journalists (many with their families), including three
Israeli reporters. Consistent with its long-time exclusion of outside
journalists, the Israeli government doesn’t want the world to see and
hear from unembedded, mainstream Israeli or foreign journalists.
Day after deadly day, President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and
Secretary of Defense Austin used words to urge minimizing Palestinian
casualties while they deploy deeds of massive shipments of bombs,
missiles and UN vetoes. Small wonder our government officials are having
little restraining influence. The Israeli Air Force even bombs and
contaminates the small agricultural areas destroying olive groves and
fields growing grain, vegetable and fruit crops. It is even against
Israeli law for Palestinians to collect rainwater which is decreed to be
the property of the state.
Pope Francis, long a protector of Jewish rights when he was a cleric
in Argentina, called Israeli President Isaac Herzog to express his deep
concern about the plight of the Palestinians, saying that “it is
forbidden to respond to terror with terror.” The Vatican reported that
the Holy Father is in constant touch with the “Christian Church” in Gaza
and the West Bank. For decades, Christians in the West Bank have been
harassed, discriminated against and encroached upon (e.g., Bethlehem)
with little media coverage, except for the courageous Israeli newspaper
Haaretz.
Oblivious to world opinion, including that of our allies, Biden and
the Democrats are pushing for another $14.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer
monies to further annihilate the defenseless, now homeless, human beings
in Gaza, screaming in pain and fear, sick, starving and dying, unable
to bury their kin. Rotting corpses are piling up, and being eaten by
stray dogs.
Meanwhile, people in the U.S. who speak out for stopping this
brutality are charged with being “antisemitic” – a grotesque cheapening
and misuse of a word that was used to describe the savage Russian
pogroms and Nazi horrors of extermination. Silencing peaceful criticism
with this slander is a conscious tactic. Note the statement by Shulamit
Aloni, a former Minister of Education and winner of the Israel Prize:
“It’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe, somebody
criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When, in the United
States, people are critical of Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.”
It works all too often. Americans are smeared, being suspended or
losing their jobs, their careers, and their customers because they
oppose the carnage in Gaza. It is a sign of the partisan censorship that
incurring such penalties is not experienced by Americans exclaiming
their full support for this genocidal obliteration of Gaza – a multiple
war crime pointed out by both Jewish and non-Jewish international law
scholars here and abroad.
The least that humane citizens can do is to tell their members of
Congress to demand a permanent ceasefire, the release of the Israeli
hostages and the large number of Palestinian prisoners (children, women
and men) in Israeli jails without charges or due process, and serious
movement toward a two-state solution.
By John J. Mearsheimer, Information Clearing House, Dec 13, 2023
I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza
will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to
be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity,
they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.
What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population –
with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against
humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an
important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the
unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly
unfathomable.”[1]
Let me elaborate.
First, Israel is purposely massacring huge number of
civilians, roughly 70 percent of whom are children and women. The claim
that Israel is going to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties
is belied by statements from high level Israeli officials. For example,
the IDF spokesman said on 10 October 2023 that “the emphasis is on
damage and not on accuracy.” That same day, Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant announced: “I have lowered all the restraints – we will kill
everyone we fight against; we will use every means.”[2]
Moreover, it is clear from the results of the bombing campaign that
Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians. Two detailed studies of
the IDF’s bombing campaign – both published in Israeli outlets – explain
in detail how Israel is murdering huge numbers of civilians. It is
worth quoting the titles of the two pieces, which succinctly capture
what each has to say:
“‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza”[3]
“The Israeli Army Has Dropped the Restraint in Gaza, and the Data Shows Unprecedented Killing.”[4]
Similarly, the New York Times published an article in late
November 2023 titled: “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being
Killed at Historic Pace.”[5] Thus, it is hardly surprising that the UN
Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said that “We are witnessing a
killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any
conflict since” his appointment in January 2017.[6]
Second, Israel is purposely starving the desperate
Palestinian population by greatly limiting the amount of food, fuel,
cooking gas, medicine, and water that can be brought into Gaza.
Moreover, medical care is extremely hard to come by for a population
that now includes approximately 50,000 wounded civilians. Not only has
Israel greatly limited the supply of fuel into Gaza, which hospitals
need to function, but it has targeted hospitals, ambulances, and first
aid stations.
Defense Minister Gallant’s comment on 9 October captures Israeli
policy: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will
be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are
fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”[7] Israel has
been forced to allow minimal supplies into Gaza, but the amounts are so
small that a senior UN official reports that “half of Gaza’s population
is starving.” He goes on to report that, “Nine out of 10 families in
some areas are spending ‘a full day and night without any food at
all’.”[8]
Third, Israeli leaders talk about Palestinians and
what they would like to do in Gaza in shocking terms, especially when
you consider that some of these leaders also talk incessantly about the
horrors of the Holocaust. Indeed, their rhetoric has led Omar Bartov, a
prominent Israeli-born scholar of the Holocaust, to conclude that Israel
has “genocidal intent.”[9] Other scholars in Holocaust and genocide
studies have offered a similar warning.[10]
To be more specific, it is commonplace for Israeli leaders to refer
to Palestinians as “human animals, ”human beasts,” and “horrible inhuman
animals.”[11] And as Israeli President Isaac Herzog makes clear, those
leaders are referring to all Palestinians, not just Hamas: In his words,
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”[12]
Unsurprisingly, as the New York Times reports, it is part of
normal Israeli discourse to call for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased,”
or “destroyed.”[13] One retired IDF general, who proclaimed that “Gaza
will become a place where no human being can exist,” also makes the case
that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring
victory closer.”[14] Going even further, a minister in the Israeli
government suggested dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza.[15] These
statements are not being made by isolated extremists, but by senior
members of Israel’s government.
Of course, there is also much talk of ethnically cleansing Gaza (and the West Bank), in effect, producing another Nakba.[16] To quote Israel’s Agriculture Minister, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”[17]Perhaps
the most shocking evidence of the depths to which Israeli society has
sunk is a video of very young children singing a blood-curdling song
celebrating Israel’s destruction of Gaza: “Within a year we will
annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”[18]
Fourth, Israel is not just killing, wounding, and
starving huge numbers of Palestinians, it is also systematically
destroying their homes as well as critical infrastructure – to include
mosques, schools, heritage sites, libraries, key government buildings,
and hospitals.[19]
As of 1 December 2023, the IDF had damaged or destroyed almost 100,000
buildings, including entire neighborhoods that have been reduced to
rubble.[20] Consequently, a stunning 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes.[21]
Moreover, Israel is making a concerted effort to destroy Gaza’s
cultural heritage; as NPR reports, “more than 100 Gaza heritage sites
have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks.”[22]
Fifth, Israel is not just terrorizing and killing
Palestinians, it is also publicly humiliating many of their men who have
been rounded up by the IDF in routine searches. Israeli soldiers strip
them down to their underwear, blindfold them, and display them in a
public way in their neighborhoods – sitting them down in large groups in
the middle of the street, for example, or parading them through the
streets – before taking them away in trucks to detention camps. In most
cases, the detainees are then released as they are not Hamas fighters.[23]
Sixth, although the Israelis are doing the
slaughtering, they could not do it without the Biden administration’s
support. Not only was the United States the only country to vote against
a recent UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate
ceasefire in Gaza, but it has also been providing Israel with the
weaponry necessary to wage this massacre.[24]
As one Israeli general (Yitzhak Brick) recently made clear: “All of our
missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes
and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. 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.”[25]
Remarkably, the Biden administration has sought to expedite sending
Israel additional ammunition, by-passing the normal procedures of the
Arms Export Control Act.[26]
Seventh, while most of the focus is now on Gaza, it
is important not to lose sight of what is simultaneously going on in the
West Bank. Israeli settlers, working closely with the IDF, continue to
kill innocent Palestinians and steal their land. In an excellent article
in the New York Review of Books describing these horrors,
David Shulman relates a conversation he had with a settler, which
clearly reflects the moral dimension of Israeli behavior toward the
Palestinians. “What we are doing to these people is actually inhuman,”
the settler freely admits, “But if you think about it clearly, it all
follows inevitably from the fact that God promised this land to the
Jews, and only to them.”[27]
Along with its assault on Gaza, the Israel government has markedly
increased the number of arbitrary arrests in the West Bank. According to
Amnesty International, there is considerable evidence that these
prisoners have been tortured and subjected to degrading treatment.[28]
As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left
with one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders,
and the Biden administration: have you no decency?
John Mearsheimer
is an American political scientist and international relations scholar
who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell
Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.
He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.
Injured
Palestinians are brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for medical
treatment as Israeli attacks continue in Deir al Balah, Gaza on December
11, 2023.
(Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The U.S. is more than a protector of Israel. It is now an accomplice in its genocidal attack on the Palestinian people of Gaza.
The nearly unanimous vote
in the UN Security Council on Friday calling for an immediate ceasefire
in Gaza is a moment of honor for the United Nations and shame for the
United States. By voting to stop Israel’s war on Gaza by a vote of 13
yes, 1 no (US), and 1 abstention (UK), the vast majority put itself on
the side of international law. The US stood alone against international
law, with its sidekick and tutor in imperial brutality, the United
Kingdom, dutifully abstaining.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres honored the UN and human decency by invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter,
calling for the UN Security Council to stop the killing in Gaza as a
basic responsibility under the UN Charter. Each day, UN officials on the
ground in Gaza heroically struggle to feed, shelter, and protect the
population from Israeli bombs. More than 100 UN staff have been killed in the Israeli assault.
The
situation in Gaza is as clear as it is brutal. The State of Palestine,
recognized by 139 nations, has long suffered from the brutalities of
Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza has been called the
world’s largest open-air prison by Human Rights Watch.
After the Hamas-led horrific terrorist attack on October 7, in which
1,200 Israelis died, Israel began to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Legal
specialists at the Center for Constitutional Rights regard Israel’s actions as a genocide.
To date, more than 17,400 Gazans have been killed, and an unfathomable 1.8 million Gazans have been displaced. Tens of thousands are at risk of imminent death. Last month, Guterres warned
that “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children.” Israel pushed the
population from northern Gaza to the south, and then invaded the south.
Israeli authorities told Gazans to flee for their life to zones within the south, and then bombed the places to which the Gazans had been directed.
The
killing frenzy is being led by the very same politicians who were
responsible for the October 7 security failure and who now manipulate
the deepest anxieties of the Israeli population.
The US is more
than a protector of Israel. It is an accomplice. The US supplies, in
real-time, the munitions Israel uses for mass murder, even as US
authorities pay lip-service to Gazan civilian lives.
The President of Israel Isaac Herzog justifies the slaughter by declaring that there are no innocent civilian Gazans: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”
The Israeli government’s biggest lie is that Israel has no options
other than the mass killing of Gazans, supposedly to defeat Hamas.
The
fact that Israel was lulled by its arrogance into letting its guard
down on October 7 does not make Hamas an existential threat. Hamas has
only a tiny fraction of Israel’s military might. October 7, like 9/11 in
the US, was a colossal security blunder that should be immediately
corrected by stepped-up border security, not an existential threat that
in any remote manner justifies the killing of thousands or tens of
thousands of innocent civilians, with women and children constituting
70% of the victims. The killing frenzy is being led by the very same
politicians who were responsible for the October 7 security failure and
who now manipulate the deepest anxieties of the Israeli population.
There
is a larger and far more important point. Hamas can be demobilized
through diplomacy, and only through diplomacy. Israel and the United
States need finally to abide by international law, accept a sovereign
state of Palestine alongside Israel, and welcome Palestine as the 194th
member state of the UN. The US needs to stop arming the Israeli
operation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and stop protecting Israel’s
rampant violations of basic human rights in the West Bank. Fifty-six
years after its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and after
decades of illegal settlements in the occupied territories, Israel needs
finally to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands.
With
such steps, peace between Israel and the neighboring countries could and
would be secured. On that basis, UN peacekeepers, including both Arab
and Western troops, would in turn secure the Israel-Palestine border for
a needed transition period. At the same time, all international flows
of financing to anti-Israel militants would be choked off by joint and
coordinated actions of the US, Europe, and Israel’s Arab and Islamic
neighbors.
The diplomatic route is open because the Arab and Islamic countries (including Iran) have once again reiterated their long-standing
desire for peace with Israel as part of a peace agreement that
establishes Palestine along the 1967 borders and its capital in East
Jerusalem.
The real reason for Israel’s war in Gaza is that the
Government of Israel rejects the two-state solution, and points to
extremists on the other side rather than to the Arab and Islamic states,
which want peace based on the two-state solution.
For rights to be secured and internationally respected in our day, governments need to abide by the international rule of law.
Israeli
zealots, including several in the cabinet, believe that God promised
them all of the lands from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. This
belief is fatuous. As Jewish history should make clear to religious
Jews, and as all human history should make clear generally, no group,
whether Jewish or otherwise, has an unconditional “right” to any land.
For rights to be secured and internationally respected in our day,
governments need to abide by the international rule of law. In the case
of Israel and Palestine, international law, as expressed repeatedly by
the UN Security Council, holds that two sovereign states, Israel and
Palestine, have both the right and responsibility to live side by side
in peace according to the 1967 borders.
Not only Israel, but even
perhaps more so the United States, has lost its way. The deep reason
was clear to Senator J. William Fulbright sixty years ago, when
Fulbright was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and
wrote the magnificent book, The Arrogance of Power.
Fulbright pointed to arrogance as the deep cause of America’s reckless
war in Vietnam in the 1960s. In its ongoing arrogance, the US
military-security state repeatedly ignores the will of the international
community and international law because it believes that weapons and
power enable it to do so. US foreign policy is based heavily on covert,
illegal regime-change operations and on perpetual warfare that caters to
the US military-industrial complex.
In its
ongoing arrogance, the US military-security state repeatedly ignores the
will of the international community and international law because it
believes that weapons and power enable it to do so.
We must not
become cynical about the UN. It is currently blocked by the US, the
country that led its creation under America’s greatest president,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The UN is doing its job, building
international law, sustainable development, and universal human rights,
step by step, with advances and reverses, over the opposition of
powerful forces, but with the arc of history on its side. International
law is a relatively new human creation, still in the works. It is
difficult to achieve in the face of obstreperous imperial power, but we
must pursue it.
It is important to note that opposing Israel’s war
crimes has absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism. This point has
been made eloquently in an open letter
by dozens of Jewish writers. Netanyahu doesn’t speak for Judaism. The
Israeli Government violates the most sacred of all Jewish injunctions,
to protect life (Pikuach Nefesh) and to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). The message of Jewish ethics is found in the words of the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4)
inscribed on a wall directly facing the United Nations: “They shall
beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning
hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they
learn war anymore."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Jeffrey
D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for
Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The
Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN
Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN
Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three
United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG
Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a Cabinet meeting at
the Israeli Ministry of Defense, in Tel Aviv, Israel, 17 December 2023.
(Photo: © Menahem Kahana/EFE via ZUMA Press APAimages)
