Articles

Hamas is NOT Terrorist Movement
February 24, 2024
Gaza | Holocaust | Human Rights
Hamas is a Terrorist Organization. So is the Israeli Government BY NORMAN SOLOMON Photograph Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) ...Read more
An Australian Referendum: “Legalized Lawlessness”
February 24, 2024
Australia
BY JULIE WARK Photograph Source: Kgbo – CC BY-SA 4.0 Yes, it happened in this year of 2023, seventy-five years after the ...Read more
When Accusations of Anti-Semitism Become a Tool of Repression
February 24, 2024
ZIO-NAZI
BY RON JACOBS Despite the headlines designed to make people think far-right and fascist speakers are being prevented from speaking at ...Read more
Nazi’s Kristallnacht
February 24, 2024
ZIO-NAZI
Nazi’s Kristallnacht BY BRUCE NEUBURGER Interior view of the destroyed Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, Berlin, burned on Kristallnacht. Photograph Source: Center for Jewish ...Read more
Fully Complicit 85% Jewish owned Western media uses censored, edited and AI faked photos to cover up Jewish War Crimes
February 24, 2024
Media | USA | ZIO-NAZI
Patrick Witty, former picture editor at The New York Times, criticizes paper’s ‘spineless’ coverage of Israeli attack on World Central ...Read more
Genocide in Sudan: Oil, Gold, the United States, Russi
February 24, 2024
Africa | Sudan
 By: Philippa Jane Winkler $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; ...Read more
Ground operations expanding in Gaza, 'Israel' announces
February 24, 2024
Gaza | Holocaust | Human Rights
 CONTACT@IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG   Israeli forces on the ground and in the air over Gaza, unlike anything the people have seen before. (photo) An ...Read more
Letter From London: Trauma and Resilience
February 24, 2024
United Kingdom
BY PETER BACH Photograph Source: Kobi Gideon / Government Press Office – CC BY-SA 3.0 ‘We have all been traumatized, even if ...Read more
Naziyahu Holds Middle Finger In The Face Of The U.S. And the Entire World
February 24, 2024
Uncategorized
Since its inception in 1948, the Zionist State of Israel has been a country without accountability. While Israel loves to ...Read more
“Being There” – Why Palestinians and 'Israelis' should be worried about Trump’s presidency
February 23, 2024
USA | ZIO-NAZI
By Uri Avnery Perhaps he is lying all the time. Perhaps he is lying about being a liar. Perhaps he is ...Read more
Listen: Nazi officer admits air force targeted Palestinian and Zionist civilians in line with “Hannibal Directive”
February 23, 2024
Gaza | Palestine Affairs | West Bank
Israeli Air Force Colonel Nof Erez tells Israeli newspaper Haaretz Israeli forces targeted Palestinian residential block and killed Israeli citizens in line ...Read more
Justifying Collective Punishment: Nazi’s Assault on Gaza
February 23, 2024
Uncategorized
By Dr. Binoy Kampmark Global Research, “Erroneous doctrines are current in the world, which declare a man culpable and responsible merely ...Read more

Hamas is NOT Terrorist Movement

Hamas is a Terrorist Organization. So is the Israeli Government

BY NORMAN SOLOMON

Photograph Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages – CC BY-SA 3.0

Labels are central to the politics of media. And no label has been more powerful than “terrorist.”

A single standard of language should accompany a consistent standard of human rights, which the world desperately needs. “If thought corrupts language,” George Orwell wrote, “language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.”

No amount of rhetoric from its defenders and apologists can change the reality that Hamas engaged in mass murder. What Hamas horrifically did to more than 1,000 Israeli civilians of all ages two weeks ago meets the dictionary definition of terrorism.

And no amount of rhetoric can change the reality that the Israeli government has engaged in mass murder during the last two weeks. What Israel’s military is horrifically doing in Gaza, already killing several thousand Palestinian civilians of all ages, also meets the definition of terrorism.

But U.S. media outlets dodge being evenhanded with the “terrorist” label — applying it to organized Palestinian killers of Israelis and not to organized Israeli killers of Palestinians.

The routine media bias does not in any way mitigate the horrendous crimes committed by Hamas in Israel. And that media bias does not in any way mitigate the horrendous crimes that are being committed — on an even larger scale, increasing daily — by the Israeli government in Gaza.

By any consistent standard, if referring to Hamas as a terrorist organization, then the same description fits the Israeli government. But such balanced candor is absolutely intolerable in the mainstream media and politics of the United States. It would be too honest. Too real.

Terrorists and their defenders always have excuses when tactics include ruthlessly killing civilians. But we’re choking on a nonstop supply of smoke-blowing rhetoric — what Orwell called political language “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”

Some have contended that the word “terrorist” should be excluded from news accounts because it can be subjective. Although ignored or derided soon after 9/11, Reuters news service explained its policy this way: “Throughout this difficult time we have strictly adhered to our 150-year-old tradition of factual, unbiased reporting and upheld our long-standing policy against the use of emotive terms, including the words ‘terrorist’ or ‘freedom fighter.’ We do not characterize the subjects of news stories but instead report their actions, identity or background.”

But that media stance is an outlier. We seem to be stuck with the “terrorist” word. Ending the routinely slanted, selective use of the “t” word would be a real improvement; more realistically, we should recognize and reject its flagrantly skewed usage. It functions in sync with an array of tilted reporting patterns.

Since the latest Israeli assault on Gaza began, U.S. news outlets have constantly used euphemistic words like “strike,” “hammer,” “pressure” and “retaliate” to blur the real meaning of what it has meant to human beings when a very densely populated area is attacked with thousands of large bombs. Vivid reporting has occurred at times, but the overwhelming bulk of coverage of the Israeli government’s wide-ranging terrorism has been abstracted in ways that coverage of the Hamas terrorism has not been.

One factor that makes the blurring easier: The Hamas atrocities were mostly up close, with the murderers and murdered often facing each other, whereas the Israeli atrocities have been committed from high in the air, as if above it all. While international media outlets like Al Jazeera English and the U.S.-based program Democracy Now! have consistently provided extraordinary, high-quality, heart-rending reportage about the carnage and terror in Gaza as well as in Israel, such humanely equitable reporting has been extremely rare in mainline U.S. media outlets.

Americans have been acculturated to assume, consciously or not, that killing people with high-tech weaponry from the air is a civilized way to go about the business of war, if the U.S. or its allies are doing it, in sharp contrast to low-tech efforts of adversaries. This is an outlook from a privileged vantage point, far from those on the receiving end of “sophisticated” firepower coming from, or backed by, the U.S. government.

Apologists for Israel point out that Hamas targets civilians and Israel does not. That is a distinction without a difference for the people killed, maimed and terrorized by the Israeli military — commanded by leaders who know damn well that Palestinian civilians will be massacred. The cover story of not “targeting” civilians is a comfortable rationalization for the slaughter of civilians while righteously denying the reality.

Overall — given the extreme pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian spin of U.S. mass media — evenhanded use of the “terrorist” label is highly unlikely. But we should strive to challenge the biases at work and the deadly consequences.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, is published by The New Press.

An Australian Referendum: “Legalized Lawlessness”

BY JULIE WARK

Photograph Source: Kgbo – CC BY-SA 4.0

Yes, it happened in this year of 2023, seventy-five years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. A referendum, which should never have been held, was held. The basic rights of Australia’s First People, about 3.8% of the population, were put to a national vote in a referendum where the non-Aboriginal 63+% would effectively decide whether they could have a “Voice”, a “Voice to Parliament” that would be protected by the Constitution and allow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be more involved in political decision-making by advising the government on policies and projects that affect their communities. Unlike other countries with similar settler colonial histories, Australia never reached a treaty with its First People. That says a lot, to begin with. And, to end with, on 14 October, all six states said “No”, as did more than 60% of voters, thus confirming and fixing the country’s ugly self-chosen identity as a twenty-first-century settler colonial state. As Indigenous leaders pointed out, “…that people who have only been on this continent for 235 years would refuse to recognize those whose home this land has been for 60,000 and more years is beyond reason.”

The Voice is described by its Aboriginal initiators as coming from the “Uluru Statement from the Heart”, literally from the heart of the continent, and from their own hearts. In May 2017, some 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates met near Uluru for a National Convention on Constitutional Recognition, with the aim of amending the Constitution to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Again, it’s “beyond reason”, of course, that they had to hold this meeting to talk about being recognized in the Constitution. The Statement also requested a Makarrata Commission. The Yolgnu word “Makarrata” means coming together after a struggle, and the Commission is described as the “culmination” of the Statement’s agenda, capturing “our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.” What could be more reasonable? For everyone in Australia. But it would seem that Australia does not have a society that wants this.

As for the Voice itself, the referendum question proposed by the current government was, “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?” At least it admitted that there was no such Voice before the referendum and, afterwards, it was plainly shown such recognition of the First People is not wanted by mainstream Australia. The proposed amendments were: “There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

1) The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

2) The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers, and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.”

From the standpoint of the First People, these requests had to be made because they have no voice. But, before the referendum, the fact of their having no voice was already “beyond reason”. It’s beyond international law and the principles enshrined in conventions. Where it is perfectly logical is within the framework of settler colonialism which, first achieved by extremely violent means, now continues as cultural “assimilation”, and this means that the voice of the First People must be gagged in every area of life.

The indecency of the “beyond reason” stance of white Australia is underpinned by the fact that, as a settler colonial state in all but name, it rides roughshod over international agreements. Making “representations to Parliament and the Executive Government” is a basic right clearly stated in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives”. And Article 12 stipulates that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence”. If you don’t have a Voice, then arbitrary interference is a constant in your life, as Australia’s First People know all too well.

Moreover, several articles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of which Australia is now a signatory (after being, with Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, one of the four—unsurprisingly, settler colonial states—that initially voted against it) again show how the referendum was “beyond reason” because these human rights declarations establish “a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity, wellbeing and rights of the world’s indigenous peoples”. If this is not seen as reasonable, then it is suggested that, instead, all the violence of the past was right and reasonable, so there is no need for redress and, worse, it can be continued in updated forms of racism.

Here are a few points from the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:

From the Preamble: Indigenous peoples “are equal to all other peoples, while recognizing the right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves different, and to be respected as such.”

All “peoples contribute to the diversity and richness of civilizations and cultures, which constitute the common heritage of humankind”.

All “doctrines, policies and practices based on or advocating superiority of peoples or individuals on the basis of national origin or racial, religious, ethnic or cultural differences are racist, scientifically false, legally invalid, morally condemnable and socially unjust”.

Respect “for indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices contributes to sustainable and equitable development and proper management of the environment”. This point is crucial now that all humankind is facing the drastic consequences of its own ecocide.

Article 5 states, “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the State.”

Article 8 1 stipulates, “Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture”, while 8.2 says, “States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for: Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite racial or ethnic discrimination directed against them.”

Article 18 specifies that, “Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decision-making institutions.”

Article 19 requires that “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.” The Voice invoked Article 19 in particular, but all the principles of all the human rights declarations and documents are relevant to what happened with the referendum of October 14, not least because human rights are supposed to be universal.

Tragically, all the violations of human rights represented by the referendum occurred right at a time when Israel is committing atrocities, war crimes amounting to genocide against Palestinians, with economic, political and weapons support from the so-called liberal democracies. The dreadfulness of Israel’s renewed, more vicious attacks on the Palestinian people (mostly children), and a kind of impotent despair over the non-presence of international rule of law and worse, contempt for its most hallowed conventions concerning genocide and crimes against humanity, are allowing other horrors in other parts of the world to sneak in under the rising bar of atrocity tolerance, especially when dressed in the doublespeak of the powers-that-be. Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty said it all. “‘When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’”

A modern Humpty Dumpty is the Australian Labor Party foreign minister, gay, Asian-born, and allegedly a “symbol for minorities and the marginalized”, Penny Wong who, in a speech to the Senate rightly denounced the Hamas attack but, ignoring Israel’s genocidal attack on the Palestinian people trotted out the usual “Israel’s right to defend itself”, and urged all sides to show “restraint”. Restraint when your children, who have grown in fear are now being slaughtered. Another “beyond reason”. But Penny ended soothingly with a rosily fake picture of Australia: “We must … preserve our uniquely harmonious multicultural character.” And she had the nerve to conclude, “It is why people come to this country.” That speech was on 16 October, two days after Australia’s First People were denied a Voice in a national referendum. Penny has a short memory. Yes, people went to Australia, in 1788, about 1,000 of them, convicts, their guards, and officers, in nine transport ships and two warships. They never went for any “multicultural character”.

They went to a penal colony. The Frontier Wars began soon after and officially lasted until 1934, though of course, since the racist foundations were well and truly laid, the violence became acceptable and it continued. That is the real constitution of modern-day Australia. It is estimated that between 2,000 and 5,500 colonists were killed. The death toll for Aboriginal people, never properly counted, is so high it’s impossible to know, but some historians judge that 60,000 Aboriginal people died in Queensland alone. Others venture that 90% of the pre-invasion population died as a result of colonial violence and imported illnesses like flu, measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox. The University of Newcastle has created an interactive map that shows the horrendous scale and nature of the many massacres that followed the invasion. Aboriginal people have been in Australia for perhaps as many as 120,000 years. At the time of colonization, they numbered, in a new high estimate of a meticulous scientific study, as many as three million, with about 260 distinct language groups. The 1929 census reported 78,430 Aboriginal people, less than 3% of the new high estimate of the preinvasion population.

This is the Australian history that has barely been taught, and this absence, or denial made a place for the White Australia Policy, the stolen generations, the infamous Northern Territory Intervention, denial of the right to vote in elections for the federal parliament until 1949, and the fact that the First People were only included in official population counts for constitutional purposes after a referendum in 1967. In 2017, according to the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, they were the most incarcerated people in the world, are at risk of torture, 93% are also in the “at risk” category for the right to health, 87% for the right to a job, 100% for the right to housing, 87% for the right to education. The Indigenous child suicide rate is six times that for non-Indigenous children. Out of all this pain, the “No” is understood by the First People, as saying, “you are not my equal. And as for your infant mortality rate, your mortality rate, your incarceration, your education, your health? Suck it up.”

Most non-Indigenous Australians are blithely unconcerned about these grave past and present human rights abuses. One reason for this is the enormous absence of the First People, created by massacres, violence, dispossession, laws, and controlling the narrative of the country’s history. I grew up on Ngadjuri land in South Australia. They were thriving there, described as healthy, well-built people, less than a hundred years before I was going to school and learning a white Australian history in which they didn’t exist. By the 1870s they’d been wiped out by dispossession of land and water, and especially smallpox. But nobody thought to change the beautiful toponyms they left behind. That was the only voice they had left and, for a child in those years, it was a loud voice in a traumatic absence that clung there in their words, but nobody talked about that in the “Lucky Country”.

The memory of past abused rights lays the foundations for the future of human rights, thus linking past and future. But the people who remember and lay the grounds for future human rights are mostly the ones who are abused. Among the abusers and non-abused, who must erase history and memory, human rights are watered down by legal abstractions, postmodern platitudes, and political abuse, aided by the media which intersperses images (maybe hard to distinguish from those of a computer game, or action film) of real human rights dramas with celebrity antics, “reality” shows, and washing soap ads. The notion of universal human rights remains safely abstract when one only fleetingly glimpses the horrors of abuse in the comfort of one’s living room.

The people of Australia voted but didn’t think of what their “No” means. It wasn’t just a “No” on one day, but a “No” added to a whole accumulation of crimes. A white Australian, who has never met or spoken with any Aboriginal person (as in most cases), blithely drops a “No” in the box. For the Kuwarra Pini Tjalkatarra elder Geraldine Hogarth, “The grief hurts so much, it’s like a knife in your heart”. But she also knows it’s a long struggle. “But we are strong, we will have our cry and we stand up again. They tried to get rid of us but we stand up and we get up.” Luke Pearson, a Gamilaroi man, says much the same. “Lastly, no matter which way it goes some mob are going to be devastated, but just remember it’s not the end, it’s just the beginning. We have a long road ahead regardless of the outcome and we need you all here with us. There will be tears and laughs and triumphs and challenges ahead”.

There’s a sad political paradox here. In Legacy of Violence (2022), Caroline Elkins shows how nineteenth-century imperialism boasted of its civilized universalism as expressed by the spread of the rule of law but, since the colonized peoples were deemed not fit to understand what this was, they were slyly shifted into some subhuman category and could therefore be subjected to what Elkin calls “legalized lawlessness”. But it’s clear that the powerful, deciding who has rights and who doesn’t, are the ones that have embraced their own form of tribalism and abandoned universalism. It’s the oppressed who really understand what the universal principle of justice is because they feel it in its absence.

If you really want to know about Australia, forget about the mainstream media, which is plummeting on the Press Freedom Index (39th of 180 countries in 2022) and despicably mendacious in all the ways needed to support the unacceptable racist status quo. Read Aboriginal writers and the Aboriginal-owned and operated media company IndigenousX. This is where you’ll find a Voice that is firmly grounded in reason, that is insisting on a commitment to universalism and justice. You will find, here, ideas that Richard Falk was expressing in his Achieving Human Rights(2009). “Of course, our future as a species depends on our far-sightedness and sense of human solidarity when it comes to human rights … Unavoidably, the vocation of human rights cannot be separated from the pursuit of justice in all domains of human existence. Human rights is ultimately about the quality of the world order as was acknowledged, but ignored, in Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized” (p.9).

To their shame, the majority of Australians showed on 14 October that they don’t give a damn about such a national or international order.

When Accusations of Anti-Semitism Become a Tool of Repression

BY RON JACOBS

Despite the headlines designed to make people think far-right and fascist speakers are being prevented from speaking at college campuses while leftist speakers and professors run amok poisoning students’ minds with ideas about diversity and anti-capitalism, the truth is quite different. Faculty members are being censored for advocating for a just peace in Israel/Palestine, questioning the racist history of the United States and honestly discussing issues of gender and sexuality. Furthermore, when it comes to issues around Israel and Palestine, those opposed to Israel’s occupation and siege of Palestinian land are smeared with charges of anti-semitism. Certain groups then use these charges to convince university administrations to cancel events.

Recently, at the University of Vermont. Palestinian poet, Nation magazine reporter and Civic Media Fellow at the at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California Mohammed El Kurd was scheduled to speak on the representation of Palestinians in western media. The event was organized by an organization that has brought leftist speakers to the university for over fifteen years. These events are co-sponsored by at least one academic departments. After advertising of El Kurd’s talk began an individual student objected with one of the departments co-sponsoring the event. Then, all hell broke loose. Hamas fighters launched a murderous raid in southern Israel. Of course, the raid responded to the ongoing oppression of the Israeli government, settlers and the military. Of course, the raid was met with massive Israeli firepower and destruction. The Israeli military continues its war on the people of Gaza and the West Bank as I write. Over 4000 Palestinians are known to be killed, with almost 1000 of them children. Very little aid is reaching Gaza, electricity is cut off; so is water, and a massive ground invasion looms. Israel’s intention seems to be ethnically cleansing at least the northern half of Gaza and replacing the Palestinians living there with Israelis.

Not long after the Hamas attack, the individual who wrote the original letter stepped up their opposition to El Kurd’s talk. They wrote a longer and more detailed missive with the enodrsement of the campus Jewish Student Union added.. This complaint took El Kurd’s poetry and other statements out of context, placed them in the letter surrounded by what can best be termed pro-zionist arguments that essentially deny Palestinian voices and then tried to claim that since many Jewish people were also Zionist, then all anti-Zionists were also anti-Semitic. I don’t have proof the complaint wasn’t written with help from a Zionist organization, but it certainly reads like others I have seen that were. This likelihood increases when one considers Hillel’s 2014 policy that prevents chapters from partnering with organizations that support boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, or have a history of disrupting campus activity that supports Israel’s policies, especially around the occupation. Other critics, including John Judis at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, have challenged Hillel International’s Israel policy, calling it a “crackdown on open debate” and “bad news for American Jews.”

Let’s go back. Firstly, Zionism is a political philosophy. It is not a race, an ethnicity, a religion or a nationality. To pretend that being opposed to Zionism is equivalent to being opposed to Judaism is like saying being opposed to Christian nationalism is being opposed to Christianity. That’s just not the case, even though the Christian nationalists insist that it is. Likewise, being opposed to political Zionism is not anti-Semitic or anti- Jewish. Indeed, many Zionists are not Jewish and are Zionist only because their apocalyptic religious beliefs require the restoration of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem before their end of the world occurs.

It is a very tricky path to go down when calling someone anti-Semitic. The writer’s slippery exchange between the terms anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic is a manipulative use of two distinct terms designed to create a false equivalency between the two terms. Likewise, equating support for Palestinian liberation with support for murder is a similar manipulation of language and human emotion. If it is possible to support Israel and be opposed to its use of collective punishment and mass killing, then it is certainly possible to support a free Palestine and be opposed to murder like that which took place at the concert and elsewhere in Israel on October 7, 2023.

If the goal of the university is to be a place where important issues of today’s world are to be discussed and argued over, then accepting the demands of one side or the other to shut down the speech of the other side directly contradicts that goal. The University of Vermont has a mixed record in this regard. In 2011, not long after the events of 9-11, a Vermont organization involved in the struggle against global capitalism and the destruction of the environment by global capitalism hosted a conference. One of the keynote speakers was Ward Churchill. After 9-11 Churchill made a statement that angered thousands when he referred to many of those killed as “little Eichmanns.” Although the conference had been set up months before the 9-11 events, UVM alumni and others called for the university to cancel his speaking engagement after a local newspaper columnist made it a public issue. I was working at a university library at the time. Students, staff and a couple faculty organized a quick protest and march to the administrative offices asking that the speech and event go ahead. To our surprise, the provost at the time said the administration had never genuinely considered canceling the event and it would go ahead as planned, albeit with added security. However, a couple years later, the university did cancel a talk by Irish poet Tom Paulin in 2002 because of his outspoken support for Palestinain rights. I believe the difference in the two responses was the mobilization by the students in the first case that prevented Churchill’s cancellation. As it turns out, this time around the support from students, two academic departments and a dean was not enough to counter the pressure from anti-Palestinian forces. Given past history, it’s reasonable to assume some well-heeled donors were instrumental to that pressure.

However, Mohammed El Kurd will not be silenced. Thanks to some quick work and crucial support from Haymarket Books, his talk will stream live October 26, Thursday evening at 7:00 PM EST. The QR code and link can be found in the poster accompanying this article.

Ron Jacobs is the author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. He has a new book, titled Nowhere Land: Journeys Through a Broken Nation coming out in Spring 2024.   He lives in Vermont. He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com

Nazi’s Kristallnacht

Nazi’s Kristallnacht

BY BRUCE NEUBURGER

Interior view of the destroyed Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, Berlin, burned on Kristallnacht. Photograph Source: Center for Jewish History, NYC – Public Domain.

Germany, November 1938

On November 7, 1938, a 17-year-old German Jewish student walked into the German consulate in Paris and asked to speak to the German consular. When he was told he was unavailable the young man, Herschel Grynspan agreed to speak to a lower-level official, Ernst Vom Rath. When the official appeared Grynspan pulled a pistol and shot him in the abdomen. Vom Rath died of his injury two days later.

Word of Vom Rath’s death reached Germany at a moment when the Nazi Party leadership was in Munich celebrating the anniversary of the 1923 Beerhall Putsch. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, rose to make an impromptu speech to a dinner crowd of Nazi officials. He condemned the murder as an unjustified assault and laid the blame for the murder on the Jewish community as a whole. The speech was not recorded but Goebbels noted in his diary that his remarks were greeted with stormy applause.

Nazi officials at the dinner immediately got on the phones to inform their Nazi colleagues in the SS and other armed units across the country to prepare for violent action against the Jewish community. Within days hundreds of synagogues were destroyed, thousands of Jewish stores were wrecked, and Jewish homes were invaded.  Scores of Jews were murdered, and 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to Germany’s three main concentration camps. Some Jews, including members of my family, were expelled from their homes. Meanwhile, the Nazi government and press unleashed a drumbeat of condemnation of the entire German Jewish community for the murder of the German consular official. And they claimed the violent pogrom was a “spontaneous reaction” of an outraged German public and a just reward for criminal Jewish behavior. This was a lie. The burning, looting, and murdering were planned and executed by Nazi party leaders and Nazi militants out of uniform.

Neither the Nazi government nor its controlled press made an issue of the more than 400 anti-Jewish laws and decrees enacted between 1933 and 1938, which made life for German Jews almost unbearably hellish. This included the passage of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 that stripped Jews of their German citizenship and outlawed sexual contact between Jews and non-Jews. The Nuremberg “blood law” led to hundreds of Jewish men being put on trial, with many sentenced to penitentiaries,1 for allegedly having such relations. It also intensified an outpouring of unrelenting racial slanders against German Jews.

The German public was left largely uninformed of the particular horror that had provoked Grynspan’s murder of Vom Rath. In late October of 1938 12,000 Polish Jewish immigrants living in Germany were ousted from their homes and deported to Poland with little more than the clothes on their backs.  Of the 12,000 deportees, 8,000 were refused entry into Poland and left stranded at the Polish border in frigid weather without money, food, or adequate shelter. Among them were Herschel Grynspan’s parents Zindel and Rivka and his sister Berta, who wrote to her brother in Paris pleading for help; “Herschel, we haven’t got a penny.” These were the immediate circumstances that drove young Herschel to despair. He bought a gun and went to the German consulate with murder on his mind.

The German fascist media repeated the Nazi message that justified the Kristallnacht pogrom:  The Jews had it coming.

Israel/Palestine October 2023

On October 7 Hamas militants carried out a cruel spasm of killings of Israeli military personnel and civilians. The Israeli government and media, and the U.S. government and media—almost without exception— were quick to condemn these truly terrible Hamas acts without any effort to explain what might have motivated them. They consciously ignored and suppressed any mention of the seven decades of history of land dispossession, death, destruction, murder, and insult, the hellish conditions Palestinians have been forced to endure due to actions by the Israeli government and settlers against the Palestinians. The actions may not have justified the October 7 killings, but they do explain them. By covering up this history the Israeli and U.S. governments seek to portray the Palestinian people as murderers to justify further murderous acts against them. The Netanyahu government and U.S. backers have withheld the fact that 2023 has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in decades. Furthermore, the Netanyahu government and its U.S. backers condemn Hamas but have nothing to say about Israel’s and the U.S.’s role in helping Hamas come to power as a counterweight to the secular leadership of Fatah several decades ago.2   As Netanyahu told his rightwing Likud party in 2019 “Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy.”3

It is an inescapable fact that the Palestinian people have been demonized and punished every time they have acted to oppose the abuses committed against them by the Israelis over the past 75 years. Today the Palestinian people are demonized by the Netanyahu government the way Goebbels, Hitler, and other Nazi brass dehumanized Jews. They have used explicitly racially explosive language, Nazi-like language, when describing Palestinians.

Turning their backs, and allowing a free hand

These are not the only similarities between the Kristallnacht of November 1938 and the murderous attack on Gaza in 2023. In July 1938 an international conference was held in the French resort town of Evian-les-Bains to discuss the crisis faced by German Jews. Delegates from 32 countries came to the gathering including the United States, England, France, and other European nations. U.S. President Roosevelt sent a personal friend but no official U.S. representative to that conference. Despite public hand-wringing over the terrible treatment being meted out to German Jews at the time, only one country agreed to take any substantial number of Jewish refugees— the Dominican Republic. Hitler gloated after the conference in Evian declaring that “no one wants the Jews.”  Hitler could be confident that there would be no action taken against Germany should it continue and intensify its assault on Jews. The path was clear for Kristallnacht a few months later.

In Israel, the aggressive and violent attacks on Palestinians, the building of Israeli settlements, the Israeli settlers’ (assisted in some places by members of Christian fascist sects from the United States) emboldened and murderous attacks on Palestinians, even the violation of the Muslim sacred space of the al-Aqsa mosque, have elicited little beyond tepid words, if that, from the U.S. and European governments. Clearly the Netanyahu government concluded from this that Israel has a free hand to do what it wishes to Palestinians! And what other purpose than provocation could explain the Israeli government’s repeated public insults to one of Islam’s holiest shrines?

They had been waiting for this

On November 10, 1938, 30,000 Jewish men were picked up by the German police and Gestapo agents and placed in concentration camps. My grandfather was among them. One of those picked up and sent to Dachau on November 10, and who survived the Holocaust, said in an interview years later that he was told by prisoners held in Dachau before Kristallnacht that the camp had been expanded in anticipation of a large influx of detainees—evidence that a Kristallnacht-like event had been anticipated by the Nazi government.4 On the night of November 9 when word of Vom Rath’s death reached Munich, it took little time for Hitler and Goebbels to decide to call for the pogrom. The Nazis could not have anticipated the act of a German Jewish student in Paris, obviously, but they could well have anticipated a reaction to their relentless persecution that might be a useful pretext for mass, violent repression. And they were apparently ready to act to make that violence happen. 

Likewise, while the Netanyahu government might not have known of the particular plans Hamas was developing, Israeli government officials could not have missed the growing sense of outrage and desperation among the Palestinians whose villages in the West Bank are being decimated, whose people are being murdered by settlers in growing numbers, whose religious center was and is being violated. How could today’s Israeli government not have anticipated a reaction when Netanyahu and other Israeli government representatives publicly and repeatedly proclaimed their intention to continue building Israeli settlements in an increasing tempo of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their lands? And, when according to Ilan Pappe in his recent talk at Berkeley law school, Hamas publicly declared that it would not sit by while thousands upon thousands of Palestinian political prisoners languished in Israeli jails? 5

Drive them out

Reynard Heydrich, head of one of the Nazi security agencies, and who, after 1941, would become the chief architect of the Holocaust, admitted that in 1938 it was Nazi policy to force Jews to leave Germany, and to do so by making life so unbearable that they would agree to leave. Up until November 1938 despite the immense pressure put on them, many Jews opted to remain in Germany. This was, after all, their home and the home of their parents and grandparents, a country they had identified with, a land they had contributed to in many ways. They were, after all Germans, and they had a right to stay. This was the attitude of many in my own family.

For many Palestinians staying in Palestine has been an act of resistance. Therefore, while the Nazis found it necessary to dramatically increase the level of oppression on German Jews, so too have the Likud fascists who now govern Israel ratcheted up the pressure on the Palestinian community. The Hitler government believed that Kristallnacht gave them the leverage to dispossess Jews and drive them out of Germany. Jewish men held in concentration camps were pressured to sign over their properties to the Nazi Reich in order to be released from the camps. Now the Israeli government believes it has the license to unleash genocidal violence against Palestinians, destroying their homes, seizing their property, killing their children in a clear act to drive Palestinians out of Palestinian lands. This was stated by a rightwing member of the Knesset Amir Weitmann in a paper proposing a total ethnic cleansing of Gaza given that there is “currently a unique and rare opportunity” in the wake of the Hamas’ October 7 attacks.

Let’s talk about the source of criminality

After Kristallnacht of November 1938; after the mass killings and synagogue burnings, the mass arrests, beatings, and incarceration of Jewish men in concentration camps, one might expect that the big, “democracies,” the wealthy colonizing nations such as Britain, France, the United States, would now rush to open their doors to Jews. This did not happen. On the contrary. In 1938 there were 139,163 German Jews on waiting lists for U.S. visas while only 19,552 visas were granted. 7,818 U.S. visas even went unissued. And the situation continued to worsen. When World War II began in September 1939 (and while the U.S. and Germany were not yet at war) the dangers for Jews escalated. Directly in the face of this even more desperate situation, the U.S. State Department leaders threw up new barriers to Jewish immigration. In 1940 Breckinridge Long, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State issued a memo to U.S. consulate officials in Germany advising them that, “We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.” In May 1939 the ship St. Louis with 900 passengers seeking to escape fascism in Europe were prevented from landing in Cuba and the United States and were forced to return to Europe, where many of its passengers were eventually taken by the Nazis and killed. Due to the U.S. State Department’s delaying tactics, 90 percent of the quota places reserved for refugees from Europe’s fascist regimes were never filled. 190,000 Jews and others who could have been saved, were left to die. In addition, very credible reports of mass murders in Polish death camps were dismissed as unimportant by the European chief of U.S. intelligence, and later CIA director Allen Dulles. The United States and Britain steadfastly refused to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the Auschwitz even while they had solid evidence in their possession of the mass murders being carried out there. 6

After the war, after 6 million or so Jews had been butchered, U.S. and British policy towards Jews began to change. Within a few years support for a Jewish state echoed in the halls of power. Revolutions and anti-colonial uprisings were emerging all over the world. The revolution in China was well under way, liberation struggles in Asia, including Southeast Asia, and the rise of anti-colonial, nationalist governments in the Middle East, in Iran and Iraq, and in Egypt and Syria, all threatened the colonial empires of Britain and the United States. At this point the imperialists threw their backing for a Zionist state in Palestine. This had nothing to do with saving Jewish lives but rather a strategy to use the desperation of Jewish masses and the willingness of Jewish Zionist leaders to set up a state as a bastion of imperialist power in that strategically important region. 

As inter-imperialist rivalry now intensifies, especially between the U.S. and Russian and China, with each scrambling to secure allies and advantages against one another, the U.S. will cling to Israel and drag Jews, Palestinians and the other people of the region through a new hellish round of suffering for the sake of defending the American imperium. While millions are justly enraged and in anguish over the cold– blooded barbarism of the Zionists in power, no one should lose sight of who is the dog here and who is the tail. Without U.S. arms, and political and economic backing, the Israeli government could not carrying out its apartheid and genocidal policies. From the beginning of the Zionist project the imperialists have made a condition of their support of Israel the willingness of the Zionist collaborators to carry out suppression of the Arab peoples. And the Zionists have been willing to carry out other actions in support of their U.S. backers, including in Central America.7  Years before, Theodore Herzl one of the founders of Zionism was quite open to his support of colonialism in his appeal to British imperialists for their backing by writing: “And so I must believe that here in England the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea, should be easily and quickly understood in its true and most modern form.”

Kristallnachts and Genocide

In proposing this comparison between the Kristallnacht of 1938 and the Israeli assault on Palestinians today, some have said to me that in the past 75 years Palestinians have endured many Kristallnacht like actions. And this is true. But what makes this moment different is what makes the 1938 Kristallnacht so historically significant and concerning: Kristallnacht was a major step towards the eventual Holocaust. By brutalizing and dispossessing German Jews; by inuring the German people to this horrific brutality; by intensifying the racist propaganda against Jews, the Nazis paved the road to the death camps which would open several years later. Today’s Israeli assault on Palestinians has been accompanied by a vicious political attack on Palestinians which potentially opens the road to genocide. That is why the most determined action to oppose the intensified assaults on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are immediately and urgently needed.

We should never forget

We should never forget the shameful role the U.S. and other current European allies of Israel played during the 1930s and 1940s when the fate of the Jewish people hung in the balance and when all the imperialist powers pushed aside any consideration for the fate of Jews to pursue their own national and imperial interests. This history tells us a great deal about the nature of this colonial/imperialist system, and its chief godfather, the United States. It should inform us that their true motives lie neither in democracy nor in human rights. This capitalist-imperialist system is the enemy of all of humanity—the enemy of Jews and Palestinians, and the people more broadly across the world. All humanity has an interest in uniting against it and for bringing into being a different world without the murderous scourge of imperialism.

In conclusion:

1) No acceptable resolution of this crisis, no path to peace, can be achieved, nor should be accepted, unless it is based on achieving the full rightsof Jews and Palestinians.

2) What I am saying should in no way be interpreted that Jews were merely the “puppets” of imperialism. But the dominant wealth and military strength of U.S. imperialism has given it leverage and U.S. imperialism has proven itself capable of the most grotesque brutality and cynical maneuvers to achieve its political aims.  Zionist oppression of Arab peoples since World War II is not the result of the will of Jews, but of a willingness of a section of Jews who embrace a racist ideology to shape the Israeli state to the needs of imperialism. Many Jews opposed this and still do. This number of anti-Zionist Jews is growing, but the overwhelming power lies with the imperialist nations. They must be called to account for their crimes! They and their Netanyahu-ist partners in Israel must be stopped from committing further crimes against the Palestinian people.

3. The struggle for a new, just social order centered on human commonality and cooperation—the not narrow, ugly, brutal sectarian madness of Zionism or a Hamas— is the urgent task for Jews, Palestinians, and all humanity.

NEVER AGAIN TO ANYONE!

Notes.

 1In March 1938 the Nazi Minister of Justice ruled that all Jews convicted of sexual crimes would be, upon release from prison, sent to a concentration camp.  My father’s cousin, Max Holzer was convicted for such a sexual crime in 1938 and sentenced to five years in a German penitentiary. Upon release in 1943 he was sent to Auschwitz where he died of Typhoid.

2 See America’s Hidden Role in Hamas’ Rise to Power by Stephen Zunes

3 Peace, a Forgotten Word, Renews its Claim in the Holy Land, NY Times, October 22, 2023

4Interview with Harry Hankin, Holocaust Oral history project; Oct 17, 1991, San Francisco, Ca.

5 Speech by Ilan Pappe at the UC Berkeley Law school, October 19, 2023. According to Pappe since 1967 a million Palestinians have been at one time or another held in Israeli, a truly staggering number!

6 Talbott, David  The Devil’s Chessboard : Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (Kindle Locations 1056-1058). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

7 See Israel’s Role in the Guatemalan Genocide, Middle East Monitor, October 5, 2015.

Bruce Neuberger is a retired teacher and author of Postcards to Hitler: A German Jew’s Defiance in a Time of Terror.

Fully Complicit 85% Jewish owned Western media uses censored, edited and AI faked photos to cover up Jewish War Crimes

Patrick Witty, former picture editor at The New York Times, criticizes paper’s ‘spineless’ coverage of Israeli attack on World Central Kitchen convoy.

By:  Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

$ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct “aid” and $ 130B in “Offense” contracts
Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

As the deadly Israeli strike on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy dominates global headlines, it has again brought into focus Western media coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, in particular its visual aspect.

Patrick Witty, an award-winning veteran photojournalist, has raised questions over the photos US mainstream outlets used in their reporting on Monday’s attack, saying they failed to depict its terrible human cost.

Witty mentioned Anadolu photographer Ali Jadallah’s photos of the bodies of WCK workers killed in the attack, saying he was “shocked” to see they were overlooked by major US media outlets such as The New York Times and Washington Post.

The April 1 attack killed seven aid workers – three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national, a US-Canadian dual citizen, and a Palestinian.

“I was shocked none of Ali’s photos, or any others that showed the victims, were being used by The New York Times (NYT) or The Washington Post,” he told Anadolu.

“Instead, the Times used a photo of one of the destroyed vehicles in the convoy. And not even the most compelling version of that scene that shows the World Central Kitchen logo with a hole in the roof.

“Why is this? I don’t know for sure. Perhaps the photo editor pulled the first picture they found and didn’t bother to look further? Or perhaps they were reluctant to publish identifiable photos of the victims? Or perhaps Ali’s photo of the two victims was too gory?”

Witty, who was with NYT as picture editor from 2004 to 2010, criticized the paper’s coverage of the attack on the WCK convoy as “spineless.”

“There were no photos from the attack … only an enormous five-column photo of bullet-ridden rubble that was taken days earlier on an IDF-led tour for journalists,” he said.

As for the Washington Post, Witty pointed out that the publication only used a photo of the Palestinian volunteer, rather than a “white Westerner.”

When it comes to Israel’s devastating attacks on Gaza, he asserted that Western media has been using photos that “depict a sanitized version of the war.”

“The New York Times Opinion section even had the audacity to publish an entire article about a photo that they refused to show in its entirety,” said Witty.

Witty said he encountered this problem frequently with NYT, especially during Israel’s 2008 war on Gaza.

He said there was a stream of highly graphic photos daily at that time, many of which were deemed “too bloody” for publication.

“There’s a fine line between illustrating an important story and sensationalizing violence or exploiting the victims. But the human cost, particularly civilian casualties, must be seen,” he said.

“Photos of a burnt-out vehicle or smoke rising in the distance or anonymous victims of war crimes in body bags are instantly forgotten.”

Genocide in Sudan: Oil, Gold, the United States, Russi

 By: Philippa Jane Winkler

$ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct “aid” and $ 130B in “Offense” contracts
Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

Little has been reported by the Western media on the genocide in Sudan, where the US and Russia are playing out a superpower rivalry.

A year ago in April, fighting erupted between Sudan’s army chief, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo of the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF.)

The crisis continues to escalate with no end in sight.

Both sides have been accused of committing human rights violations and ethnic cleansing.

A genocide is being carried out against the Black African tribal groups including the  Dinka, Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa in Darfur, the Western region of Sudan.

Families describe hiding in the scrubland, hunted by paramilitaries and scavenging for food.

An estimated 66.3 million people have been displaced, half of them children. An estimated 554,000 have crossed the border into Chad, one of the  world’s five poorest countries, which now has more refugees per capita than anywhere else in Africa.

Food, fuel and power shortages, lack of cash, murder, torture and looting are endemic.

International aid has collapsed.  United Nations (UN) humanitarian agencies left Darfur when conflict broke out. Many of their facilities were looted and destroyed. Some have returned when the security situation has allowed.

The UN reports that babies are dying in hospitals, children and mothers are suffering from severe malnutrition and camps for displaced people have been burned to the ground.

The UN’s Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee told the Security Council, that “sexual and gender-based violence continues, with accusations of sexual violence by Rapid Support Forces personnel, and rape and sexual harassment implicating the Sudanese Armed Forces.”

The overall death toll is unknown but believed to be in the thousands.

Women fleeing war zones.Source: Sudanese Women Are Facing Difficult Conditions After Nearly a Year of Conflict (aawsat.com)

.Women in Sudan seek relief amid spiraling displacement crisis | UN Women – Headquarters

Sudan’s forgotten war: A new diplomatic push is needed | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank

Brief history

Sudan is the ancient land of the Kushite and Nubian civilizations. The Sudanese were a population of self-governing tribes up until the late 19th Century.

When Arabs arrived in the 7th century,  they saw ‘the nation of the Blacks,’ or Bilad Al-Sudan as source of slaves. Sudan has a long and unique history of racism, exacerbated by 58 years of British colonialism.

From 1898 to 1956, the United Kingdom (UK) ruled the African country, with Egypt as its proxy, and turned it into a European-style single country.  Britain gained access to the Nile and trading markets for its manufactured goods including textiles, alcohol and guns.

Britain implemented a “divide-and-rule” policy which gave preferential treatment to Arab elites in the north of Sudan.   Western regions such as Darfur and the southern provinces were cut off from economic and social development. These were the areas largely inhabited by Black African tribes such as the Dinka.

The British made slavery illegal in Sudan in 1929.  However, it didn’t stop the slave trade.

After Sudan gained independence in 1956, the northern Arab elites became the country’s rulers, and instituted discriminatory policies against the Black African south. Black tribespeople continue to be captured today  particularly in times of civil war, and sold as domestic servants, farm labourers, soldiers and prostitutes.

Sudan’s post-colonial trajectory has been a never-ending series of uprisings, civil wars, military rivalries, and ethnic cleansing campaigns.

What’s at stake today

Today, Sudan is the second largest producer of gold in Africa, largely through artisanal methods, and the ninth in the world. Its proven crude oil reserves rank fifth in Africa.  More than 120 Chinese companies operate in Sudan, most of them focused on gold and oil exports.

Sudan has a prime location on the Red Sea. Approximately 12% of world trade passes through the Suez Canal and 10% through the Bab El-Mandeb.

Source: What’s the difference between Sudan and South Sudan? | Oxfam | Oxfam (oxfamamerica.org)

Sudan has livestock and fertile soil. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar are the regional countries most dependent on Sudan for food security and have invested heavily in the country since the 1970s. Both Turkey and Qatar seek to build a military presence at the Suakin port, south of Port Sudan.

Sudan is the third-largest country in Africa with a population of 43 million people.

Its wealth goes mainly to a small Arab Sudanese elite while a third of the population relies on humanitarian aid, with many of its young men serving as cannon fodder for Western-backed wars in the Middle East.

Both Russia and the United States are major players in Sudan.

Russia-Sudan Bilateral Relations

During the Cold War, Sudan was part of the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Soviet Union established strong and consistent bilateral relations with Sudan, and after 1992, so did the Russian Federation. Sudan is one of  the few countries to recognize the referendum for Crimea to become a part of Russia and has not condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Suffering a paucity of maritime outlets, the Kremlin wants to establish a naval base on the Red Sea. In 2017, it struck several military cooperation agreements that included the construction of a Russian base in Port Sudan that could house 300 military personnel, as well as nuclear-powered warships. The  Western-based media claims that Russia is supporting the rebel Rapid Support Forces, which the RSF denies. The accusation is puzzling, given that Russia wants a United Nations arms embargo lifted from the RSF’s rival, the Sudanese Armed Forces. The West also claims that Russia is funding its war with Ukraine with Sudanese gold.

China and Russia tend to follow the same policy line towards Sudan. They don’t want the country to be placed under sanctions, and they don’t want its territory broken up further. Through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) China has invested substantially in Sudan, as well as bilateral trade, making Beijing Sudan’s primary trade partner.

Exclusive: Evidence emerges of Russia’s Wagner arming militia leader battling Sudan’s army | CNN

US-Sudan Bilateral Relations

The US is spooked by peer rival Russia’s plans for a maritime base in the Red Sea. The US ambassador to Khartoum, John Godfrey, warns this ‘would be detrimental to the country’s interests’ and lead to its international isolation.

Sudan has refused to recognize Israel and as a result US  relations have been patchy. But after 9/11 both countries began cooperating on counter-terrorism, despite mass killings in Darfur.

Washington began taking a central role in Sudanese affairs. It was instrumental in creating the Republic of South Sudan in 2011,  where the Black African tribes predominate. Russia considers the split a blow to Sudan’s territorial integrity.

In 2019, civilian protestors demanded an end to President Omar Al Bashir’s government, which has been accused of genocide in Darfur.

The United States (US) and other Western nations, while avowing support for democracy, insisted that the military be part of a transitional government, against the wishes of pro-democracy groups.

This placed the military in the mainframe of Sudan’s putative democracy, which ultimately led to a power struggle between two rival generals, and the current civil war.

The new administration applied the usual ‘market reforms’ in exchange for International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans such as removing gasoline and diesel subsidies and moving to a floating currency exchange rate, after which the inflation rate shot up 400%. Sudan’s debt to the IMF is $28 billion.

The US wants Sudan to normalise relations with Israel, which the majority of Sudanese are against. ‘Israel is deeply committed to ensuring that the military, whether its Hemedti or Burhan [the two rival generals] or some combination of the two – dominate the politics of Sudan,’ says Dr Hashemi, Dr Nader Hashemi, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

In 2021, the military launched a coup against the government.

How Failed Armed Forces-Paramilitary Reforms Sparked 2023 Sudan Clashes (foreignpolicy.com)

How can the revolution win in Sudan? – Socialist Worker

The US and Israeli role in Sudan’s path to war (newarab.com)

Diplomatic action has come to a standstill. Underneath the stalling lies clash of Big Powers Russia and the US

The US wants a peace negotiated with external powers, whereas Russia advocates an intra-Sudanese resolution to the crisis. Both powers want an immediate end to the fighting.

Opposing views of how to resolve the crisis were exposed on 8 March 2024 during pre-vote remarks before the United Nations (UN) Security Council.

A United Kingdom-drafted resolution called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Sudan during the month of Ramadan.

Resolution  2724 (2024) is mild. It ‘calls,’ but does not ‘demand’ a ceasefire, which means that measures such as sanctions or military action cannot be taken by the UN if a resolution is not complied with.

The  US and UK supported the Resolution. But the Russian delegate voted to abstain. She and the Chinese delegate both stated that the Sudanese should be allowed to resolve their own problems without outside interference.

Res 2024 called for ‘regional peace efforts.’

There have been attempts at such efforts, but facilitators such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are  suspected of backing opposite sides. Other negotiators have offered their services including the United States (US,) Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, all of whom have their own agendas.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said ‘Russia reiterated its fundamental position about the need to end hostilities as soon as possible and build a sustainable intra-Sudanese negotiation process in order to overcome the existing differences for the sake of preserving the unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Republic of Sudan.’

It should be noted that most peace talks are between military and political leaders, who are mostly male elites.

Progressive grassroots organisations, trade unions and women’s groups have played a huge role in Sudanese politics including Sudan Revolutionary Front  Sudan Liberation Movement/ArmyLiberation and Justice Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM.)  None are invited to the negotiating table.

Review of Arms Embargo

A United Nations (UN) Security Council met on the 19th March to review the arms embargo on Sudan imposed by the UN Security Council on Darfur in 2005.

The US, France and UK delegates wanted to maintain the embargo, citing the dire humanitarian situation and war crimes perpetuated by both sides of the conflict.

The Russian delegate said that  arms flow into the country regardless of punitive sanctions, and that socio-economic restrictions imposed by Western countries are counter-productive. Sudan should resolve its own problems as a matter of national sovereignty.

The Sudanese envoy said he wanted the embargo lifted to be better armed against rebel forces (the RSF.) He said the weak flow of humanitarian aid was because donors had not fulfilled their pledges.

The embargo will receive another review.

Sudan is a major consumer of weapons. It is estimated up 40 countries have supplied Khartoum with arms, despite embargos.  Shipments can come through third parties to avoid detection.

For example, during the South Sudanese Civil War, (2013-2018) which  claimed nearly 400,000 lives, the US helped the main belligerent in the war continually acquire arms through Uganda, a close US ally in the region.

The US and Israeli role in Sudan’s path to war (newarab.com)

Arms Embargo Violations, Violence against Civilians on Rise in Sudan, Committee Chair Tells Security Council, Underlining Importance of Sanctions Regime | Meetings Coverage and Press Releases

Ground operations expanding in Gaza, ‘Israel’ announces

 CONTACT@IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG  

Israeli forces on the ground and in the air over Gaza, unlike anything the people have seen before. (photo)

An Israeli spokesman claims this is not the official ground invasion, but Palestinians say it’s more intense than anything they’ve experienced so far.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

An Israeli military spokesperson announced “expanding ground operations” in the Gaza Strip, even as Israeli airstrikes have grown more “intense and sustained” in the past few hours.

Communication in and out of Gaza has been severed, adding a media blackout to the literal blackout.

Gaza residents have said Friday’s strikes were the most intense they’ve felt since Israel began operations earlier this month.

A CNN team in southern Israel described a huge wall of heavy smoke blowing from Gaza that lingered 15 to 30 minutes – possibly the type that serves as cover smoke that for military operations.

As hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers surrounding Gaza – on the ground, in the sea, and in the air – await orders to enter, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh declared, “the world is facing a historic moment ” and must act to stop the “aggression and massacres” that would certainly take place in a ground invasion.

An Israeli spokesperson claims the operations are “to protect the state.”

Middle East Monitor reports,

It is feared Israel will use the black out to commit greater war crimes against a population which will no longer be able to inform the world what is happening or get international help.

This also means Palestinians in Gaza can no longer call for an ambulance or civil defense teams to help in rescue operations after Israel targets their neighborhoods.

Reports from the area also appear to indicate tremors deep in the earth which can be felt for miles away, which analysts believe is Israel using new bombs to penetrate the Palestinian resistance’s tunnels.

A short time ago, Palestine Chronicle reported the following updates:

ISRAELI MILITARY: An Israeli military spokesman told ABC News that the expanded operations currently underway in Gaza are not the “official ground invasion” of the territory.

RESISTANCE NEWS NETWORK: “Intense armed clashes have broken out on the eastern front of the north and central Gaza Strip, as resistance fighters repel limited ground incursions by Zionist forces.”

AL-JAZEERA: Al Jazeera correspondent said that Israeli gunboats were bombing sites in Gaza, and that warplanes were launching a series of raids on the central Gaza Strip.

Letter From London: Trauma and Resilience

BY PETER BACH

Photograph Source: Kobi Gideon / Government Press Office – CC BY-SA 3.0

‘We have all been traumatized, even if not by overt violence,’ writes Godfrey Devereux, author of numerous books on philosophy, psychology and spirituality. This was in relation to a trauma and resilience course he does. ‘To be traumatized is to carry defensive tension that restricts your perception, action and behavior.’

Last week I was able to write about the Middle East, concentrating largely though not solely on the Palestinian perspective. Reading Godfrey’s words obliges me to consider at the same time the sudden ferocity meted out by Hamas on Israeli citizens — the massacre, torture and abduction of the very old and very young, who must all be experiencing hell right now if indeed they are still alive. What took place during the Hamas invasion on Black Saturday cannot be erased. Reviewing footage from the Nova festival is harrowing. (Remember, four out of five Israelis believe Netanyahu is to blame for the Hamas war.) We are talking about young people, now confirmed dead, cowering by cars. ‘Such targeting belies Hamas’ claims to an Islamic identity,’ said Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal last week.

Godfrey explains that the defensive tension restricting our perception, action and behavior is embedded in neuromuscular tissue which acts based on habit, through neuromuscular pathways. Most fighting continues based on habit — a habit always ready to be broken. ‘This can be simple or complex, local or nonlocal, strong or weak,’ he continues. ‘How strong these neuromuscular pathways are depends upon how much they, or their subsidiary pathways, have been used before.’

Soldiers neutralize minefields and create new pathways. I say this in the spirit of the juxtapositions between the instructor and images of nature in Henry Reed’s war poem ‘Naming of the Parts’. For what it is worth, I have been in a minefield. I have been on one of those pathways. (This was with the de-mining group HALO working for the Afghan people in Afghanistan.) I found the experience unnerving, simple, yet complex.

Over the years, much of the results of Godfrey’s personal inquiry have been accompanied by regular meditation and a rich interior life. His own ‘pathway’ has been different from many of ours. To me, he is like an unsentimental man of peace today, which is probably why his words work so well in the allegorical.

‘They strengthen through use, and atrophy through disuse,’ he says of pathways. Peace movements are like pathways, too. I have seen peace movements. I have seen them strengthen through use, and atrophy through disuse. In fact, I asked Godfrey last week how a pacifist creates peace where there is war today and he told me he believed there was no political path to peace. ‘Clean clothes on a dirty body are no longer clean,’ he added.

I next asked how he reckoned people of any kind of deep faith were so readily violent. ‘Because faith is based on uncertainty and provides only hope,’ he suggested, though not disrespectfully. ‘Deep down they know they are only telling themselves a story.’

The late John le Carré tells us in the new Errol Morris film ‘The Pigeon Tunnel’ that the really big dramas occurred before the Wall was built, as if distrophy was nobody’s friend. Nor, indeed, was stalemate peace. Le Carré talks about the Berlin Wall being the most obscene symbol of the insanity of the human struggle. ‘I felt that both sides, East and West, were inventing the enemy that they needed,’ he says in the film. Sound familiar to anyone?

Godfrey reiterates that in resolving trauma it is not enough to dissolve this tension, and release its neurological underpinnings. ‘Both muscular tension and neurological status,’ he says, ‘must be replaced by new neuromuscular Pathways of Wholeness.’ A new peace accord? Another one?

The late iconic Desmond Tutu would have understood this: ‘If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies,’ he said. Few people grasp such nettles today, I was thinking. Few take the initiative to search for new pathways, often because they are so bruised by the violence.

I was remembering when Ukraine kicked off again at the beginning of last year, with Russia’s blundering attempt to take Kyiv, its ground forces and military hardware choking up the highway. You just knew this image of stalled tanks and jammed firepower would be something that the Russians would one day want to correct.

I contacted another good friend about this at the time, rhetorically asking where the peace movement was. He didn’t reply but himself went on to work on the mental health of Ukrainian victims of the conflict, as well as countless other projects elsewhere. Even the best of us take sides, I was thinking. It is not easy in relation to peace movements when talking to the enemy smacks to people of appeasement, or can undermine a war effort. As a result, days, then months, then years, of more and more fighting take place, until one day, in the distant future, people eventually sit down, talk, and have that conversation, the one that could and should have taken place years earlier, before all these extra lives had been lost, and before all these innocent people were maimed, and mistrust was forever burned into the psyche for generations to come.

They say over here in London that a peace movement stopped the Vietnam War. (Harold Wilson wouldn’t let us get too involved in that one.) If you read up on this today, you encounter a lot of what is called history cleansing. Is this because the Vietnam War was ‘lost’ and some people want to blame the defeat on the peace movement? Apparently there is such a thing as negative peace and positive peace, too, though neither applies to anti-peace propaganda. Negative peace movements attempt to stop military intervention, prevent war, halt an ongoing one, and get rid of any kind of instrument of war. So-called positive peace movements hunt deep and long and hard to dig out the root causes of warfare by creating international set-ups urging human rights, banging the drum for social justice, and getting rid of any reasons for war.

I like it when people peer beyond the present into that patch of land where peace has not yet prospered. It is like acknowledging the possibility of momentum having a good face as well as bad. It reminds me of Theo Jansen’s sculptures. One gust of wind and there is no stopping their gentle, delicate progress, their essential humility. TS Eliot wrote that the only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility: ‘Humility is endless,’ he concluded. Continuing this theme, Godfrey writes that to define ourselves, and our capabilities, by our trauma, is to infantilize ourselves and remain in a state of external dependency: ‘You may be anxious, guarded, ill at ease, but you are no less the compression of intelligence that you were when born, albeit functioning less fluidly.’ This fluidity, he suggests, rather attractively, if I may say, can easily be recovered through a commitment to what he calls ‘somatic intimacy’ that deepens our willingness to feel: ‘It will not come from hope, nor from the compassion and wisdom of others. It can only come from your own ability to feel being released, little by little, sensation by sensation.’

Finally, I asked Godfrey why he believed we have wars in the first place. ‘Because,’ he reckoned, ‘alienated from the compassion and generosity of our spiritual nature, we are driven by the biological imperative and its need to acquire.’

Peter Bach lives in London.

Naziyahu Holds Middle Finger In The Face Of The U.S. And the Entire World

Since its inception in 1948, the Zionist State of Israel has been a country without accountability. While Israel loves to portray itself as the forever victim, the truth is, since May 14, 1948 (and even before), the Zionist state has been one of the most monstrous terror states in the entire world. Over 5 million Palestinians have been murdered by Israel since 1948 (why isn’t THAT a Holocaust?), and millions more have been subjected to the worst kind of inhumanity: rape, pillage, plunder, land theft, kidnapping, beating, torture, imprisonment, dismemberment, family separation, child mutilation—the list is endless.

Even when Israel attacked an American Naval vessel, the USS Liberty, in an overt attempt to sink the ship to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, killing 34 American Sailors and Marines and wounding over 70% of the ship’s crew in the attempt, Israel was held guiltless. Zero accountability!Israel wasn’t even required to remunerate the victim’s families for the loss of their loved ones who were murdered by Israel. It was America—on behalf of Israel—that “paid off” the victim’s families. Most Americans don’t even know the attack ever took place, so massively successful was the wholesale cover-up of the attack by the Washington and media establishments.

The latest in a 75-year-long trail of ethnic cleansing and genocide committed by Israeli military forces is Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. And once again, Israel has faced ZERO accountability, being shielded by the AIPAC-bribed president and members of Congress and the Scofield-deceived evangelical pastors and churches in the United States.Forget the 30,000 Palestinian dead number regurgitated by the media.

The real number of Palestinian dead in Gaza is closer to 200,000. And again: NO accountability!Now, FINALLY, there is a dim light of accountability beginning to shine on Netanyahu’s bloodstained hands.There are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip, according to a report issued by a United Nations-appointed expert.In the report, issued late on Monday, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese said there are clear indications that Israel has violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.“The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group,” she said.

More than 70 percent of the recorded deaths have been women and children and Israel has failed to prove that the remaining 30 percent – adult males – were active Hamas fighters, she said.On the third act, Albanese said Israel has destroyed or severely damaged most of Gaza’s life-sustaining infrastructure, including hospitals and agricultural land.

Additionally, calls for “violent annihilation” from Israeli high-ranking officials aimed at soldiers on duty on the ground serve as “compelling evidence of explicit and public encouragement to commit genocide,” Albanese added.(SourceFinally,people in positions of global leadership are beginning to admit it.The calamitous atrocities being committed against the Palestinian people (again, mostly women and children) are so overwhelmingly odious that even the U.S. government recently refused to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.Here is the BBC version of the report:

The UN Security Council has called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, after the US did not veto the measure in a shift from its previous position.It is the first time the council has called for a ceasefire since the war began in October after several failed attempts.In the Security Council vote on Monday, the US abstained, while the remaining 14 members voted in favour.The US had previously been accused of using its power of veto to shield Israel at the UN.Most of the world has long known the truth of Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Only the Western world—led by the United States and its Israeli-bribed government and media—refused to acknowledge Israel’s international criminality.

But now the death and carnage are SO massive, even our own Zionist White House is being forced to acknowledge Israel’s gargantuan crimes against humanity.So, now Bibi will feel the heat of world opinion and show some—maybe just a smidgen of—humanity and stop the genocide, right? WRONG!Israel will resist pressure to halt Rafah attack, says Netanyahu.Prime minister vows to continue offensive.Israel will not give in to international pressure to stall an attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah and will continue its bloody offensive against Hamas, said Benjamin Netanyahu.

“There is international pressure and it’s growing, but … we need to stand together against the attempts to stop the war,” the prime minister told a military graduation ceremony in southern Israel, saying that Israel’s forces would operate against Hamas all through the Gaza Strip “including Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold”.Israel has been under pressure to hold off from any attack against Rafah, which is packed with about 1 million displaced civilians from elsewhere in Gaza and is a key logistics hub for aid agencies.The UN and humanitarian organisations have expressed deep concern that an Israeli offensive there would aggravate an already “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis.

Even the US, Israel’s staunchest ally, has voiced reservations.The huge air, land and sea campaign launched by Israel in Gaza has driven about 80% of the population from their homes and pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine. It has reduced swathes of the territory to ruins.(Source)There is no humanity in Netanyahu. He is a heartless cold-blooded killer in the similitude of Stalin, Hitler and Mao. So, he stands in front of the White House and the capitals of the world and sticks out his middle finger.If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind about who is the dog and who is the tail, the matter is now settled once and for all.

Israel is the dog, and America is the tail.When it comes to Israel, the United States has Stockholm Syndrome. The less responsive Israel is to the principles of peace, human decency, freedom and life itself, the more Washington tries to please it with lavish amounts of taxpayer dollars, military hardware and munitions.Israel is the arrogant, spoiled, entitled, self-proclaimed victim who was never disciplined or told “No” as it was growing up and who has become a hardened professional criminal who bribes and bullies the United States (along with the rest of the Western world) into complete submission.In short, Israel is the cold-blooded kidnapper, and America is the Stockholm Syndrome kidnapped woman who takes her beatings and still tries desperately to please her kidnapper.

Israel needs a visit to an old-fashioned woodshed. And the United States needs a good psychotherapist.No! What America really needs is a generation of true men of God in our pulpits to show this country exactly who and what Israel really is—and isn’t—and to help lead America out of this dungeon of servitude to a spurious, satanically inspired Zionist state that is holding our entire country captive.© Chuck Baldwin*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may be made by credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link:Chuck Baldwin Live Donate FormI also have many books and DVDs available for purchase online. Go here:Chuck Baldwin Live Store

“Being There” – Why Palestinians and ‘Israelis’ should be worried about Trump’s presidency

By Uri Avnery

Perhaps he is lying all the time.

Perhaps he is lying about being a liar.

Perhaps he is cheating about being a cheat.

Perhaps he is just posing as an impostor.

Perhaps he has misled us all about his misleading.

Perhaps he is a very shrewd manipulator, who has led us all into believing that he is a megalomaniac simpleton.

Well, Friday 20 January was President Donald Trump’s first day in office.

President Donald Trump – we must get used to these three words.

“A man who knows nothing and believes that he can solve everything?”

The only one thing that can be said with some certainty is that nothing is certain. That this man is totally unpredictable. That we are in for four years of uncertainty, waking up every morning wondering what he is up to today.

He will be the entertainer-president. As he was the entertainer-candidate. I confess that every morning, when I took into my hand the daily newspaper, the first thing I was looking for was the latest

item about Trump. What did he do? What did he say? Whatever it was, it was always entertaining.

The question is: do we really want the most powerful man in the world to be an entertainer? Or an overblown egomaniac? Or a totally self-absorbed narcissist? A man who knows nothing and believes that he can solve everything?

This is a dangerous world. From today on, it will be a lot more dangerous.

Let’s think for a moment about the red button.

“Some of the most terrible wars in history were started by nincompoops”

There are several red buttons around the world, and several fingers of leaders (including ours) hovering over them. Thinking about Trump’s finger makes me nervous.

Some of the most terrible wars in history were started by nincompoops.

Think about Word War I, with its many millions of dead, started by a nobody, a Serbian fanatic.

World War II, with its many tens of millions of dead, was started by Adolf Hitler, a quite primitive person. When he crossed the border into Poland, he did not dream of starting a world war. Until the very last moment he did not believe that Great Britain, an “Aryan” country he admired, would declare war on him.

President Trump seems to know nothing about history. Nor about much else, except real estate and making money. He also does not seem to really listen to others when making decisions. Wow.

Some 45 years ago I read a book by a Polish-American writer, Jerzy Kosinsky, called Being There. It was about a mentally handicapped gardener whose rich boss died and left him alone. All his knowledge was confined to gardening and television.

By some accident he became involved in politics. His simple answers to all questions were conceived as profoundly wise. Things like “You have to water the roots if you want to have sweet fruit.”

He climbed the political ladder to the top, become the advisor to the president. I don’t remember if he actually became president. Trump did.

Curiously enough, I remember a German movie I saw when I was nine years old. Not a very important or sophisticated one. Yet here I remember it, 84 years later.

It’s about a young man from a well-to-do family who falls in love with the daughter of an ordinary carpenter. His family absolutely refuses to allow him to marry the daughter of such a lowly handyman.

One evening the old carpenter sits in his pub and finds a fly in his beer. He hits his huge fist on the table and cries out: “This swinishness must end!”

For a moment there is silence. Then shouts of “Bravo!” come from all directions.

The suitor seizes the opportunity. He founds a party, makes deals, runs the old man for elections and in the end – that was still the Weimar republic – gets him elected as prime minister.

Now the young suitor’s family is happy to have him marry the girl, but her father adamantly refuses. “Who are you to marry the daughter of the prime minister?” he asks.

Out for revenge, the suitor, who also writes the prime minister’s speeches, changes the pages in the middle of one of the old man’s speeches in the Reichstag. So the old man announces: “I am a total failure, I am a complete idiot…”

I don’t remember the end.

Jared Kushner, champion of “the most fanatical elements” in Israel

Who is the young man who directed Trump’s campaign? His Jewish son-in-law, of course, Jared Kushner.

Kushner, like Trump, is a real estate dealer. Like Trump, he was born rich, and devoted his life to getting richer. Now he is Trump’s main political advisor.

Kushner is also an ardent Zionist. That means that he wouldn’t dream of coming and settling in Israel, but instead supports the most fanatical elements in this country.

It seems to be a rule that the further a Jew is removed from the past and future battlefields of Israel, the more fanatically Zionist he is. This Jared is very far removed.

One of his pieces of advice, it seems, was to appoint as US ambassador to Israel another rich Jew, David Friedman. This person is such a fanatical right-wing Zionist that he is financially involved in the settlement of Beit El (“House of God”), one of the most right-wing colonies in the West Bank. Some would call it fascist.

A diplomatic curiosity: the Israeli ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, and the US ambassador to Israel are both ultra-right US-born Jewish Zionists. If they changed places, no one would notice.

Aiding and abetting land thieves

Let me remind readers what these settlements are all about.

When the Israeli army occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967, these territories were as populated as the US Midwest. Much of the land belonged to private farmers or absentee landlords, and the rest was “government land”.

During Ottoman times, the land reserves of the villages and towns were registered in the name of the sultan, whose heir was the British High Commissioner, whose heir was the Jordanian monarch, whose heir is now the commander of the Israeli occupation army.

Now the Israeli settlers come and just take this land, private or “government” owned, and turn it into their homes. No payment to anyone. Sheer robbery.

Now Americans like Friedman, Kushner and others come and encourage the settlers to steal even more, even offering money to help them along.

History tells us that such things don’t last forever. Sooner or later such things end in a bloodbath. But on that day, Friedman. Kushner and Trump will be far, far away.

So why am I now writing about Trump?

Well, first of all because it’s a historic day. I don’t like historic days. I remember such a day when young men with festive torches and arcane symbols on their arms were parading through Berlin.

But there is also another reason I don’t want to write about Israel just now.

We are in the middle of the biggest scandal in Israel’s history. The prime minister and the owner of our largest mass-circulation newspaper are being investigated for bribery, and so are foreign tycoons who have kept Binyamin Netanyahu supplied for years with the world’s most expensive cigars and his wife with the world’s most expensive pink champagne. (It’s the “pink” that provides the added gossip value).

No, I am not going to write about this now. Sorry.

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Listen: Nazi officer admits air force targeted Palestinian and Zionist civilians in line with “Hannibal Directive”

Israeli Air Force Col Nof Eretz

Israeli Air Force Colonel Nof Erez tells Israeli newspaper Haaretz Israeli forces targeted Palestinian residential block and killed Israeli citizens in line with the “Hannibal Directive“.

In Hebrew with English translation.

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“Clash of civilizations” and a possible solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict

Gilad Atzmon writes:  The Israeli army confirmed today that up to 130 Palestinian civilians were slaughtered in Rafah last Friday, 1 August, following the triggering of the “Hannibal protocol” – an Israeli army directive that is designed to thwart the capture of Israeli combatants. Israel unleashed its full firepower and…4th August 2014

In “Home”

Justifying Collective Punishment: Nazi’s Assault on Gaza

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Global Research,

“Erroneous doctrines are current in the world, which declare a man culpable and responsible merely because he is a member or part of a determined country, without taking the trouble to seek or examine whether on his part there has been any personal sin of deed or omission.” —Pope Pius XII, New York Times, Feb 21, 1946.

For anyone concerned about the moderating restraint international law is meant to offer, especially when it comes to the use of force by states, Israel’s approach against the imprisoned populace of Gaza is bound to cause profound despair and lingering disgust.

Since the brutal and for Israel’s security apparatus, unnerving attack by Hamas on October 7, the Israeli State has been busy laying the patchwork for the use of force promises to be limitless. In a part of the world where the warring parties see themselves as the privileged proprietors of history and religion, the exceptional battling the unwashed, retaliatory violence is a purifying sacrament.

In its modern, public relations iteration, Israel’s way of waging war is seen as cleaner, more observant of international rules, than the swarthy, ill-kept barbarians who hold them in such contempt. It is couched in medical, operational terms. The killing is more surgical, more civilised, if you will. This is a reductive, machine morality, dehumanising and deidentifying victims. When slaughtered by shells, missiles and advanced weapons of war, humans are merely unintended targets.

This often seems like an attempt to square a particularly difficult circle, given such absolutist, apocalyptic aims being advanced by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Defence Forces. How do you utterly and totally extinguish Hamas as an organisation without the mass killing of civilian personnel and civilians in general? The answer: you can’t.

Gaza City, according to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a reprobate agglomeration within which a wicked organisation, Hamas, operates. The conflation, which Netanyahu made in his October 7 speech, is effortless, purposeful. It follows that those living in such a morally regressive environment escape for their sake – lest they be tarnished by biblical wickedness. “I say to the residents of Gaza: Leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”

Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו

@netanyahu

This morning, on Shabbat and a holiday, Hamas invaded Israeli territory and murdered innocent citizens including children and the elderly. Hamas has started a brutal and evil war. We will be victorious in this war despite an unbearable price. This is a very difficult day for all… Show more

This gives some skimpy moral leverage to the exterminatory force to follow. “All the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble.” There are no distinctions on personnel, civilian, combatant, age or status.  The logic here is one of justified collective punishment.

There is an undertow of atavism to the whole exercise.  We are already well acquainted with the remarks of Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who declared that Israel was fighting “human animals, and we are acting accordingly”.  To this can be added the punitive, scalding views of Major General Ghassan Alian, who lectured Gazans on October 10 with withering disdain. “Kidnapping, abusing and murdering children, women and elderly people is not human.” So said the Alian to children, women, and the elderly who could hardly have been blamed.

Alian, who serves as Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, went on to state that Hamas had morphed into ISIS, and gravely noted how “the residents of Gaza” had taken delight in their exploits against Israeli citizens.  “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity, no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

Other officials have reiterated the same motif of cataclysmic, undifferentiated destruction.  An IDF spokesperson told Channel 13 News that no buildings would survive an assault on the strip.  “Gaza will eventually be turned into a city of tents.”  Netanyahu, likewise, promised that Gaza would be turned “into a deserted island”.

Things were not much better in the Knesset. Ariel Kallner of the governing Likud Party yearned for an ethnic cleansing to rival the dispossession of Palestinians in 1948, known in Arabic as the Nakba:

“Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join!”

Efforts are well underway for that objective. On October 13, the Israeli government ordered 1.1 million people living in North Gaza to evacuate their homes within 24 hours. What awaits those tormented souls on return – if they return – are charred ruins and mountains of rubble. But this was untroubling to the Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who sees all Gaza as culpable and therefore punishable. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible… It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved.”

To therefore draw distinctions in the operation against Gaza in terms of military discrimination regarding targets is a spurious exercise. Nothing of the sort is taking place, though lip service is bound to be paid at intervals. We have not, in that sense, come much further than the debates that took place during the Second World War about mass civilian bombing, one vigorously endorsed by the likes of Air Marshal Arthur Harris of the Royal Air Force in targeting Germany.

The methods of “Bomber” Harris tallied with the views of the British diplomat Lord Robert Vansittart, much echoed in the assumptions of broad Palestinian guilt being expressed by Herzog and company. On that occasion, it was the inherent culpability of the German people. “You not only can indict a nation; you cannot escape from doing so,” he blustered in his 1944 work, Roots of the Trouble and the Black Record of Germany. “The appalling cruelty of the German nation, and its calculated causes, will be remembered as long as men go upright.”

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, finds the Israeli efforts to annihilate Hamas as indifferent to civilian, combatant, law and convention, in other words, symptoms of Vansittartism. “In their stated intent to use all means to destroy Hamas, Israeli forces have shown a shocking disregard for civilian lives. They have pulverized street after street of residential buildings killing civilians on a mass scale and destroying essential infrastructure, while new restrictions mean Gaza is fast running out of water, medicine, fuel and electricity.”

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner also released a statement on October 12 condemning “the horrific crimes committed by Hamas” while also condemning, in strong terms, “Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children.” The relevant UN experts also reiterate the all-punitive nature of the “unlawful blockade [of] 16 years” and the “five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for”. And unaccounted such acts of violence will continue to remain, except in a cycle of permanent, retaliatory acts that resist a political solution.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com 

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