Thursday 28th of November 2024
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a complex problem that started a long time ago....

Last week the French government joined the German government in claiming that the Genocide Convention does not apply to Israel. Because the convention was created in response to the Shoah, Israel should have legal immunity for any war crimes it commits, including the genocide which it is currently conducting against Palestinians in Gaza.

 

The Western club- with its own morals, rules and rewards    By Scott Burchill

 

Paris has also suggested that regardless of the verdict in the genocide case brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa, it would ignore any decision that was unfavourable towards Israel.

This follows Washington’s dismissal of the South African brief as “meritless” and the Biden Administration’s successful efforts to block a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations. Ottawa has similarly rejected “the premise” of South Africa’s case against Israel, while Canberra doesn’t want to commit to anything either way.

Some of this can be explained by war guilt: Germany perpetrated the Holocaust and France has a long history of antisemitism. The United States is Israel’s closest ally in the Middle East, as well as being its largest aid donor and leading supplier of military technology. Canada, like Israel and Australia, was founded on settler-colonialism, and these states tend to form special protective bonds with each other.

However, more is needed to explain the open and enthusiastic support in Western capitals for the atrocities Israel has visited upon the Palestinians.

A cosy relationship has been established between Western governments over the last 50 years. It’s analogous to an exclusive club with binding rules and procedures. If faithfully followed, club membership provides states with a range of benefits, including an international protection racket.

Some enter the club pre-socialised to follow the rules and reap the rewards which flow from partnerships built with other members. They are often talent spotted in advance by lobby groups such as the Australia America Leadership Dialogue.

New entrants, including political parties which come to power with an agenda of reform and change, may need to be gently persuaded into the game of elite collaboration. First and foremost, they must abandon the principles and concerns they expressed in opposition. When the benefits of club membership are explained, and the costs of defiance are demonstrated, few demur for long.

Most are reluctant to foreswear the official dinners, swanky summits, new friendship groups (AUKUS), and the promise of lucrative consultancies after politics based on networking and contacts established while working for the public dollar. The cosmopolitan transit lounge lifestyle can be highly addictive for ambitious politicians.

Members of the Western club support each other diplomatically, immunise each other against international law and justice, and are guilty of and complicit in atrocious crimes justified by outright falsehoods.

They also help to conceal each others’ human rights abuses from their domestic constituencies, relying on corporate and state-owned media to frame issues “correctly”, always casting the West in a benevolent and ethical light. From time to time protection is also extended to pro-Western friends outside the club (Saudi Arabia).

The result of this is two different standards of behaviour: one for the West, another for the rest.

For example, there is no such thing as state terrorism committed by club members: it is always self-defence even if no such thing exists to maintain an illegal occupation. It is others who “sponsor” and “practice” politically-motivated violence (Iran, Cuba). The West is always the innocent victim of terrorism, never its perpetrator. Criticism of member states is not allowed, though attacks on non-members is always encouraged because they are jealous of our inherent goodness and can never rise to our exalted moral heights (Iran, Russia, China).

Club members can violate the sovereignty of outsiders at will (US and Israeli attacks on Syria) and illegally occupy other people’s land (Israel on the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza) but non-members will be demonised and sanctioned for doing anything similar (Russia in Ukraine). Military friends of the West can keep their stolen land too without facing any sanctions at all (Turkey in northern Cyprus).

Western states are not subject to international law let alone brought before the ICJ: and they will never see their leaders, past or present (Bush, Blair, Howard), dragged before the International Criminal Court (ICC) which neither Israel nor the United States has even ratified: hence its unofficial title, the International Caucasian Court.

Israel and its supporters in the West are outraged that at the ICJ, they are being condemned and judged in ways which are normally only directed by them against official enemies and despots from the Global South. Given the history of mid last century, it is especially galling for Israel to be charged with the heinous crime of genocide, an accusation made worse by the fact that it is South Africa, a state which gave definition to the term apartheid, that is mounting the case against it.

That Israel has been accused by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem of practising apartheid will not be lost on anyone observing the case currently before the ICJ in The Hague.

Like most exclusive clubs, the governments of the West operate on the principle of bonding by exclusion: we know who we are by defining who is not one of us.

This is why Israeli President Isaac Herzog sought to cast Israel’s attack on Gaza as a response to the existential threat the world faces from “Iran-backed Jihadist groups”:

“This war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas. It’s a war that is intended, really, truly, to save Western civilisation, to save the values of Western civilisation.” In other words, don’t complain about our methods or look too closely at them: we are doing this for a higher cause, for all of us in the club. We must destroy the barbarians at the gate.

It’s not certain how comfortable the West is going to feel about the implementation of its values upon the wretched and underneath the rubble of Gaza. But it is clear that the credibility of the West in the Global South is now in tatters.

Problems emerge when the gap between elite and public opinion about an issue becomes so stark it has to be filled by opinion management. In the absence of available coercive options, carefully crafted presuppositions establish both the limits of legitimate political expression about the subject and what is considered, in Antonio Gramsci’s words, “common sense”.

Israel’s latest attack on Gaza dramatically illustrates the political difficulties which elites face when this division becomes too wide to close with propaganda.

This problem goes much deeper than opinion polls about a ceasefire in Gaza which puts governments in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia increasingly at odds with public opinion in their respective countries (unlike Spain, Belgium and Ireland).

Ultimately, it’s public consultation about government policy, or more accurately the absence of it, and the closed, exclusive relationship policy elites in the West establish amongst and between themselves.

Western Governments will either remain supportive of or indifferent to the slaughter of civilians in Gaza until they start feeling pressure from outraged constituents who are bypassing the self-censorship of Israel’s crimes by gatekeepers on commercial and state media platforms. Public information in the West is being increasingly sourced from podcasts, online interviews and independent news services.

The propinquity of elections in the West will elevate the significance of public sentiment about Israel’s conduct in Gaza, forcing leaders to make invidious choices between wealthy and influential lobby groups on the one hand, and growing moral revulsion amongst the electorate.

And we should not underestimate the threat public opinion also poses in autocracies and dictatorships. Neither Cairo’s refusal to resettle Palestinians expelled from Gaza in the Sinai, nor Riyadh’s pause in normalising relations with Israel, can be separated from elite concerns in those states about how “the Arab street” would react.

The scale of Israel’s destruction of Gaza is part of an attempt to re-establish its military deterrent in the region, which was embarrassingly exposed by a few hundred lightly-armed militants on 7 October. It segues with attempts by most settler-colonial states to physically erase the indigenous population of the land whose ongoing existence challenges the legitimacy of the state.

However, actions like the destruction of Gaza always have unintended consequences. The colonial nature of Eretz Israel, evidence of genocide brought before the World Court, accusations of apartheid by human rights monitors, and demonstrations around the world opposing ethnic cleansing and and war crimes in the strip were not supposed to happen as they have, if at all.

For the West more generally, public opposition to the complicity of their governments in the slaughter of innocent civilians is only likely to intensify. That disgust might also encourage citizens in the West to look more critically at the consequences of their own colonial settlements and the need for justice and reparations for indigenous victims. Until very recently, these questions have been carefully omitted from the agendas of club members. As difficult as it is going to be, thanks to Israel these issues will now have to be confronted.

In the future, every criticism of Russia, Iran and China will be undermined by uncomfortable comparisons with the club’s support for genocide in Palestine. Washington’s confected alternative to international law, the so-called “rules-based international order”, is now exposed as nothing more than a hypocritical protection racket in free fall.

https://johnmenadue.com/the-western-club/

 

SEE ALSO:

them again….

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.............

revenge.......

70 years after a body is found floating in a Sydney river, middle aged Jewish doctor Jack learns his father, a Holocaust survivor, is responsible for the unsolved murder of an alleged Nazi and sets out on a quest to find the truth.

https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/revenge--my-dad-the-nazi-killer--2023/38875/

 

 

THERE WAS (IS) A PERVERSE GAME OF ETHNIC CONTROL WITHIN CIVILISATION. MARTIN LUTHER HATED THE JEWS AND HE HATED THE MUSLIMS. THESE SENTIMENTS PERCOLATED THROUGH HIS "RELIGIOUS REFORMS". 

IN OUR MODERN TIMES, SAY AFTER WW2, MANY NAZIS WERE "SPIRITED OUT" TO LIVE IN WESTERN COUNTRIES. WE HATED THE NAZIS, OR DID WE?

MANY NAZIS WERE WELCOME WITH OPEN ARMS IN CANADA (WE KNOW), IN THE USA (SCOTT RITTER KNOWS) AND IN AUSTRALIA (WHERE A NUMBER OF THEM WERE MURDERED BY JEWISH NAZI HUNTERS)... 

WHY WOULD THE NAZIS BE WELCOME IN THE WEST, AFTER HAVING FOUGHT AGAINST THEM IN GERMANY? THERE MANY POINTS TO EXPLORE:

THE NAZIS WERE FIGHTING COMMUNISM. WE HATE COMMUNISM.

COMMUNISM WAS A "ZIONIST" PROJECT IN RUSSIA

WE HATE RUSSIA, BUT WE LOVE ZIONISM BECAUSE IT INVOLVES THE CREATION OF ISRAEL, WHICH IS A WAY TO GET RID OF THE JEWS FROM EUROPE.

COMMUNISM BIT THE DUST, BUT WE STILL HATE RUSSIA.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HELPED MANY NAZIS OUT OF GERMANY.

GERMAN NAZIS WERE SCIENTIFICALLY ADVANCED. WE NEEDED THEM TO DEVELOP NUCLEAR BOMBS, ROCKETS AND OTHER CHEMICAL/BIOLOGICAL NASTIES. THE GERMANS SUPPLIED MANY CHEMICALS TO SADDAM HUSSEIN IN HIS WARS AGAINST THE KURDS AND THE IRANIANS — A WAR INSPIRED BY THE WEST TO WEAKEN IRAQ AND IRAN (MUSLIMS) IN THE 1980S.

THE WAR IN UKRAINE IS NAZIS VERSUS RUSSIANS. WE (THE AMERICAN EMPIRE) SUPPORT THE NAZIS. THE EMPIRE NEEDS THE UKRAINIAN NAZIS (TOTALITARIAN JEWISH BRANCH) TO DESTROY RUSSIA. 

AUSTRALIA FOLLOWS WHATEVER THE EMPIRE SAYS....

THE FAT PIGS ARE GETTING FATTER....

ISRAEL IS A TOTALITARIAN JEWISH STATE....

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW, PLEASE..............

al-aqsa-flood.....

Western readers will be familiar with the Israeli Government’s account of the attacks by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis. They will also be familiar with the Israeli government’s response that has now killed over 25,000 Palestinians in Gaza. On January 19th, 2024, Hamas released their public account of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the events that followed. It is reproduced below:

Our Narrative: Operation Al-Aqsa Flood

Hamas Media Office, January 19, 2024.

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Our steadfast Palestinian people,
The Arab & Islamic nations;
The free peoples worldwide and those who advocate for
freedom, justice and human dignity

In light of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and as our people continue their battle for independence, dignity and breaking-free from the longest-ever occupation during which they have drawn the finest displays of bravery and heroism in confronting the Israeli murder machine and aggression. We would like to clarify to our people and the free peoples of the world the reality of what happened on Oct. 7, the motives behind, its general context related to the Palestinian cause, as well as a refutation to the Israeli allegations and to put the facts into perspective.

First: Why Operation Al-Aqsa Flood?

1. The battle of the Palestinian people against occupation and colonialism did not start on Oct. 7, but started 105 years ago, including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation. In 1918, the Palestinian people owned 98.5% of the Palestine land and represented 92% of the population on the land of Palestine. While the Jews, who were brought to Palestine in mass immigration campaigns in coordination between the British colonial authorities and the Zionist Movement, managed to seize control of not more than 6% of the lands in Palestine and to be 31% of the population prior to 1948 when the Zionist Entity was announced on the historic land of Palestine. At that time, the Palestinian people were denied from the right to self-determination and the Zionist gangs engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people aimed at expelling them from their lands and areas. As a result, the Zionist gangs seized control by force of 77% of the land of Palestine where they expelled 57% of the people of Palestine and destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages and towns, and committed dozens of massacres against the Palestinians which all culminated in the establishment of the Zionist Entity in 1948. Moreover, in continuation of the aggression, the Israeli forces in 1967 occupied the rest of Palestine including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem in addition to Arab territories around Palestine.

2. Over these long decades, the Palestinian people suffered all forms of oppression, injustice, expropriation of their fundamental rights and the apartheid policies. The Gaza Strip, for example, suffered as of 2007 from a suffocating blockade over 17 years which turned it to be the largest open-air prison in the world. The Palestinian people in Gaza also suffered from five destructive wars\aggressions all of which “Israel” was the offending party. The people in Gaza in 2018 also initiated the Great March of Return demonstrations to peacefully protest the Israeli blockade, their misery humanitarian conditions and to demand their right-to-return.

However, the Israeli occupation forces responded to these protests with brutal force by which 360 Palestinians were killed and 19,000 others were injured including over 5,000 children in a matter of few months.

3. According official figures, in the period between (January 2000 and September 2023), the Israeli occupation killed 11,299 Palestinians and injured 156,768 others, the great majority of them were civilians. Unfortunately, the US administration and its allies did not pay attention to the suffering of the Palestinian people over the past years but provided cover to the Israeli aggression. They only lamented the Israeli soldiers who were killed on Oct. 7 even without seeking the truth of what happened, and wrongfully walked behind the Israeli narrative in condemning an alleged targeting of Israeli civilians. The US administration provided the financial and military support to the Israeli occupation massacres against the Palestinian civilians and the brutal aggression on the Gaza Strip, and still the US officials continue to ignore what the Israeli occupation forces commit in Gaza of mass killing.

4. The Israeli violations and brutality were documented by many UN organisations and international human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and even documented by Israeli human rights groups. However, these reports and testimonies were ignored and the Israeli occupation is yet to be held accountable. For example, on Oct. 29, 2021, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan insulted the UN system by tearing up a report for the UN Human Rights Council during an address at the General Assembly, and threw it in a dustbin before leaving the podium. Yet, he was appointed in the following year – 2022 – to the post of vice-president of the UN General Assembly.

5. The US administration and its western allies have always been treating Israel as a state above the law; they provide it with the needed cover to maintain prolonging the occupation and cracking down the Palestinian people, and also allowing “Israel” to exploit such situation to expropriate further Palestinian lands and to Judaise their sanctities and holy sites. Despite the fact that the UN had issued more than 900 resolutions over the past 75 years in favour of the Palestinian people, “Israel” rejected to abide by any of these resolutions, and the US VETO was always present at the UN Security Council to prevent any condemnation to “Israel’s” policies and violations. That’s why we see the US and other western countries complicit and partners to the Israeli occupation in its crimes and in the continued suffering of the Palestinian people.

6. As for “the peaceful settlement process”. Despite the fact that the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) stipulated the establishment of a Palestinian independent state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; “Israel” systematically destroyed every possibility to establish the Palestinian state through a wide campaign of settlements’ construction and Judaization of the Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

The backers of the peace process after 30 years realised that they have reached an impasse and that such process had catastrophic results on the Palestinian people. The Israeli officials confirmed at several occasions their absolute rejection to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Just one month before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a map of a so-called “New Middle East,” depicting “Israel” stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea including the West Bank and Gaza. The entire world at that – UN General Assembly’s – podium were silent towards his speech full of arrogance and ignorance towards the rights of the Palestinian people.

7. After 75 years of relentless occupation and suffering, and after failing all initiatives for liberation and return to our people, and also after the disastrous results of the so-called peace process, what did the world expect from the Palestinian people to do in response to the following:

  • The Israeli Judaisation plans to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, its temporal and spatial division attempts, as well as the intensification of the Israeli settlers’ incursions into the holy mosque.
    The practices of the extremist and right-wing Israeli government which is practically taking steps towards annexing the entire West Bank and Jerusalem into the so-called “Israel’s sovereignty” amid plans on the Israeli official table to expel Palestinians from their homes and areas.
  • The thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails who are experiencing deprivation of their basic rights as well as assaults and humiliations under direct supervision of the Israeli fascist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
  • The unjust air, sea, and land blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip over 17 years.
  • The expansion of the Israeli settlements across the West Bank in an unprecedented level, as well as the daily violence perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians and their properties.
  • The seven million Palestinians living in extreme conditions in refugee camps and other areas who wish to return to their lands, and who were expelled 75 years ago.
  • The failure of the international community and the complicit of superpowers to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
    What was expected from the Palestinian people after all of that? To keep waiting and to keep counting on the helpless UN! Or to take the initiative in defending the Palestinian people, lands, rights and sanctities; knowing that the defence act is a right enshrined in international laws, norms and conventions.

Proceeding from the above, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 was a necessary step and a normal response to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people and their cause. It was a defensive act in the frame of getting rid of the Israeli occupation, reclaiming the Palestinian rights and on the way for liberation and independence like all peoples around the world did.

Second: The events of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and responses to the Israeli allegations

In light of the Israeli fabricated accusations and allegations over Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 and its repercussions, we in the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas clarify the following:

1. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 targeted the Israeli military sites, and sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers to pressure on the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails through a prisoners exchange deal. Therefore, the operation focused on destroying the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, the Israeli military sites stationed near the Israeli settlements around Gaza.

2. Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters. We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people. In the meantime, the Palestinian fighters were keen to avoid harming civilians despite the fact that the resistance does not possess precise weapons. In addition, if there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidentally and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.

Since its establishment in 1987, the Hamas Movement committed itself to avoiding harm to civilians. After Zionist criminal Baruch Goldstein in 1994 committed a massacre against Palestinian worshippers in the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in occupied Hebron City, the Hamas Movement announced an initiative to avoid civilians the brunt of fighting by all parties, but the Israeli occupation rejected it and even did not give any comment on it. The Hamas Movement also repeated such calls several times, but received by a deaf ear from the Israeli occupation which continued its deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian civilians.

3. Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.

As attested by many, the Hamas Movement dealt in a positive and kind manner with all civilians who have been held in Gaza, and sought from the earliest days of the aggression to release them, and that’s what happened during the week-long humanitarian truce where those civilians were released in exchange of releasing Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails.

4. What the Israeli occupation promoted of allegations that the Al-Qassam Brigades on Oct. 7 were targeting Israeli civilians are nothing but complete lies and fabrications. The source of these allegations is the Israeli official narrative and no independent source proved any of them. It is a well-known fact that the Israeli official narrative had always sought to demonise the Palestinian resistance, while also legalising its brutal aggression on Gaza.

Here are some details that go against the Israeli allegations:

  • Video clips taken on that day – Oct. 7 – along with the testimonies by Israelis themselves that were released later showed that the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters didn’t target civilians, and many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion.
  • It has also been firmly refuted the lie of the “40 beheaded babies” by the Palestinian fighters, and even Israeli sources denied this lie. Many of the western media agencies unfortunately adopted this allegation and promoted it.
  • The suggestion that the Palestinian fighters committed rape against Israeli women was fully denied including by the Hamas Movement. A report by the Mondoweiss news website on Dec. 1, 2023, among others, said there is lack of any evidence of “mass rape” allegedly perpetrated by Hamas members on Oct. 7 and that Israel used such allegation “to fuel the genocide in Gaza.”

According to two reports by the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Oct. 10 and the Haaretz newspaper on Nov. 18, many Israeli civilians were killed by an Israeli military helicopter especially those who were in the Nova music festival near Gaza where 364 Israeli civilians were killed. The two reports said the Hamas fighters reached the area of the festival without any prior knowledge of the festival, where the Israeli helicopter opened fire on both the Hamas fighters and the participants in the festival. The Yedioth Ahronoth also said the Israeli army, to prevent further infiltrations from Gaza and to prevent any Israelis being arrested by the Palestinian fighters, struck over 300 targets in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip.

  • Other Israeli testimonies confirmed that the Israeli army raids and soldiers’ operations killed many Israeli captives and their captors. The Israeli occupation army bombed the houses in the Israeli settlements where Palestinian fighters and Israelis were inside in a clear application of the Israeli army notorious “Hannibal Directive” which clearly says that “better a dead civilian hostage or soldier than taken alive” to avoid engaging in a prisoners swap with the Palestinian resistance.
  • Furthermore, the occupation authorities revised the number of their killed soldiers and civilians from 1,400 to 1,200, after finding that 200-burnt corpses had belonged to the Palestinian fighters who were killed and mixed with Israeli corpses. This means that the one who killed the fighters is the one who killed the Israelis, knowing that only the Israeli army possesses military planes that killed, burned and destroyed Israeli areas on Oct. 7.
  • The Israeli heavy aerial raids across Gaza that led to the death of nearly 60 Israeli captives also prove that the Israeli occupation does not care about the life of their captives in Gaza.

5. It is also a matter of fact that a number of Israeli settlers in settlements around Gaza were armed, and clashed with Palestinian fighters on Oct. 7. Those settlers were registered as civilians while the fact is they were armed men fighting alongside the Israeli army.

6. When speaking about Israeli civilians, it must be known that conscription applies to all Israelis above the age of 18 – males who served 32 months of military service and females who served 24 months – where all can carry and use arms. This is based on the Israeli security theory of an “armed people” which turned the Israeli entity into “an army with a country attached.”

7. The brutal killing of civilians is a systematic approach of the Israeli entity, and one of the means to humiliate the Palestinian people. The mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza is a clear evidence of such approach.

8. The Al Jazeera news channel said in a documentary that in one month of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the daily average killing of Palestinian children in Gaza was 136, while the average of children killing in Ukraine – in the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war – was one child every day.

9. Those who defend the Israeli aggression do not look at the events in an objective manner but rather go to justify the Israeli mass killing of Palestinians by saying there would be casualties among civilians when attacking the Hamas fighters. However, they would not use such assumption when it comes to the Al-Aqsa Flood event on Oct. 7.

10. We are confident that any fair and independent inquiries will prove the truth of our narrative and will prove the scale of lies and misleading information in the Israeli side. This also includes the Israeli allegations regarding the hospitals in Gaza that the Palestinian resistance used them as command centres; an allegation that was not proven and was refuted by reports of many western press agencies.

Third: Towards a transparent international investigation

1. Palestine is a member-state of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and it acceded to its Rome Statute in 2015.

When Palestine asked for investigation into Israeli war crimes committed on its territories, it was faced by Israeli intransigence and rejection, and threats to punish the Palestinians for the request to ICC. It is also unfortunate to mention that there were great powers, which claim to be holding values of justice, completely sided with the occupation narrative and stood against the Palestinian moves in the international justice system. These powers want to keep “Israel” as a state above the law and to ensure it escapes liability and accountability.

2. We urge these countries, especially the US administration, Germany, Canada and the UK, if they are meant for justice to prevail as they claim, they are ought to announce their support to the course of the investigation in all crimes committed in occupied Palestine and to give full support for the international courts to effectively do their job.

3. Despite having doubts from these countries to stand by justice, we still urge the ICC Prosecutor and his team to immediately and urgently come to occupied Palestine to look into the crimes and violations committed there, rather than merely observing the situation remotely or being subject to the Israeli restrictions.

4. In Dec. 2022, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution seeking opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legal consequences of “Israel’s” illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, those (few) countries who back “Israel” announced their rejection to the move that was approved by nearly 100 countries. And when our people – and their legal and rights groups – sought to pursue prosecutions against the Israeli war criminals in front of the European countries courts – through the system of universal jurisdiction – the European regimes obstructed the moves in favour of the Israeli war criminals to remain running free.

5. The events of Oct. 7 must be put in its broader context, and that all cases of struggle against colonialism and occupation in our contemporary time be evoked. These experiences of struggle show that in the same level of oppression committed by the occupier; there would be an equivalent response by the people under occupation.

6. The Palestinian people and peoples across the world realise the scale of lies and deception these governments that back the Israeli narrative practice in their attempts to justify their blind bias and to cover the Israeli crimes. These countries know the root causes of the conflict which are the occupation and the denial of the right of the Palestinian people to live in dignity on their lands. These countries show no interest towards the continuation of the unjust blockade on millions of Palestinians in Gaza, and also show no interest towards the thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails held under conditions where their basic rights are mostly denied.

7. We hail the free people of the world from all religions, ethnicities and backgrounds who rally in all capitals and cities worldwide to voice their rejection to the Israeli crimes and massacres, and to show their support for the rights of the Palestinian people and their just cause.

Fourth: A reminder to the world, who is Hamas?

1. The Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project. Its frame of reference is Islam, which determines its principles, objectives and means. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds.

2. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.

Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

3. The Palestinian people have always stood against oppression, injustice, and the committing of massacres against civilians regardless of who commit them. And based on our religious and moral values, we clearly stated our rejection to what the Jews were exposed to by the Nazi Germany. Here, we remind that the Jewish problem in essence was a European problem, while the Arab and Islamic environment was – across history – a safe haven to the Jewish people and to other peoples of other beliefs and ethnicities. The Arab and Islamic environment was an example to co-existence, cultural interaction and religious freedoms. The current conflict is caused by the Zionist aggressive behaviour and its alliance with the western colonial powers; therefore, we reject the exploitation of the Jewish suffering in Europe to justify the oppression against our people in Palestine.

4. The Hamas Movement according to international laws and norms is a national liberation movement that has clear goals and mission. It gets its legitimacy to resist the occupation from the Palestinian right to self-defence, liberation and self-determination. Hamas has always been keen to restrict its fight and resistance with the Israeli occupation on the occupied Palestinian territory, yet, the Israeli occupation did not abide by that and committed massacres and killings against the Palestinians outside Palestine.

5. We stress that resisting the occupation with all means including the armed resistance is a legitimised right by all norms, divine religions, the international laws including the Geneva Conventions and its first additional protocol and the related UN resolutions e.g. The UN General Assembly Resolution 3236, adopted by the 29th session of the General Assembly on Nov. 22, 1974 which affirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine, including the right to self-determination and the right to return to “their homes and property from where they were expelled, displaced and uprooted.”

6. Our steadfast Palestinian people and their resistance are waging a heroic battle to defend their land and national rights against the longest and brutalist colonial occupation. The Palestinian people are confronting an unprecedented Israeli aggression that committed heinous massacres against Palestinian civilians, most of them were children and women. In the course of the aggression on Gaza, the Israeli occupation deprived our people in Gaza of food, water, medicines and fuel, and simply deprived them from all means of life.

In the meantime, the Israeli warplanes savagely struck all Gaza infrastructures and public buildings including schools, universities, mosques, churches and hospitals in a clear sign of ethnic cleansing aimed at expelling the Palestinian people from Gaza. Yet, the backers of the Israeli occupation did nothing but kept the genocide ongoing against our people.

7. The Israeli occupation’s use of the “self-defence” pretext to justify its oppression against the Palestinian people is a process of lie, deception and turning the facts. The Israeli entity has no right to defend its crimes and occupation but the Palestinian people who have such right to oblige the occupier to end the occupation. In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave an advisory opinion in the case concerning the “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” which stated that “Israel” – the brutal occupying force – cannot rely on a right of self-defence to build such wall on the Palestinian territory. Furthermore, Gaza under the international law is still an occupied land, thus, the justifications for waging the aggression on Gaza is baseless and lacks its legal capacity, as well as lacks the essence of the self-defence idea.

Fifth: What is needed?

Occupation is occupation no matter how it describes or names itself, and remains a tool to break the will of the peoples and to keep oppressing them. On the other side, the experiences of the peoples\nations across history on how to break away from occupation and colonialism confirm that the resistance is the strategic approach and the only way to liberation and ending the occupation.

Have any nation been liberated from occupation without struggle, resistance or sacrifice?

The humanitarian, ethical and legal imperatives necessitate all countries around the world to back the resistance of the Palestinian people not to collude against it. They are supposed to confront the occupation crimes and aggression, as well as to support the struggle of the Palestinian people to liberate their lands and to practice their right to self-determination like all peoples across the globe. Based on that we call for the following:

1. The immediate halt of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the crimes and ethnic cleansing committed against the entire Gaza population, to open the crossings and allow the entry of the humanitarian aid into Gaza including the reconstruction tools.

2. To hold the Israeli occupation legally accountable for what it caused of human suffering towards the Palestinian people, and to charge it for the crimes against civilians, infrastructure, hospitals, educational facilities, mosques and churches.

3. The support of the Palestinian resistance in the face of the Israeli occupation with all possible means as a legitimised right under the international laws and norms.

4. We call upon the free peoples across the world, especially those nations who were colonised and realise the suffering of the Palestinian people, to take serious and effective positions against the double standard policies adopted by powers\countries that back the Israeli occupation. We call on these nations to initiate a global solidarity movement with the Palestinian people and to emphasise the values of justice and equality and the right of the peoples to live in freedom and dignity.

5. The superpowers, especially the US, the UK and France among others, must stop providing the Zionist entity with cover from accountability, and to stop dealing with it as a country above the law. Such unjust behaviour by these countries allowed the Israeli occupation over 75 years to commit the worst crimes ever against the Palestinian people, land and sanctities. We urge the countries across the globe, today and more than before, to uphold their responsibilities towards the international law and the relevant UN resolutions that call for ending the occupation.

6. We categorically reject any international or Israeli projects aimed at deciding the future of Gaza that only serve to prolong the occupation. We stress that the Palestinian people have the capacity to decide their future and to arrange their internal affairs, and thus no party in the world has the right to impose any form of guardianship on the Palestinian people or decide on their behalf.

7. We urge for standing against the Israeli attempts to cause another wave of expulsion – or a new Nakba – to the Palestinians especially in the lands occupied in 1948 and the West Bank. We stress that there will be no expulsion to Sinai or Jordan or any other place, and if there is any relocation to the Palestinians, it will be towards their homes and areas they were expelled from in 1948, as affirmed by many UN resolutions.

8. We call for keeping the popular pressure around the world until ending the occupation; we call for standing against the normalisation attempts with the Israeli entity and for a comprehensive boycott to the Israeli occupation and its backers.

 

First published by the Palestine Chronicle, January 21, 2024. The original PDF statement is available here.

 

https://johnmenadue.com/hamas-account-of-operation-al-aqsa-flood-in-their-own-words/

 

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the jewish NYT....

 

Western media bias, Israeli apologetics, and ongoing genocide     By Richard Falk 

I found it shocking that the New York Times published on January 17th no less than three opinion pieces by Jewish authors, unbalanced by a single Palestinian or principled critical voice. 

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli former peace negotiator, yet for many years a critic of what I would call the maximalist Zionist approach to ending the Israel/Palestine struggle over territory and statehood. In this latest piece Levy fails to use the word ‘genocide,’ yet helpfully pronounces as dead the two-state solution long rejected by Israeli leadership but to this day embraced by US policymakers as a PR tactic to suggest that Washington is not a blind follower of Israel. I have no quibble with the Levy opinion piece. It deserved to be published, but was very much overshadowed by its two companion contribution by NY Times regulars.

Levy argues that the US should abandon this zombie peace diplomacy and adopt a more modest approach that limits its role to advocating the protection of Palestinian human rights for all those living beneath the current Israeli existential one-state version of ‘the river to the sea.’ Levy is persuasive in taking account of Israel’s “categorical rejection of Palestinian statehood” referencing Netanyahu pre-October 7th defiant assertion that ‘the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.’” This aggressive approach to the endgame of the conflict falls outside the comfort zone of many liberal Zionists and is obviously distasteful to Levy.

The Levy piece was a reasonable expression of opinion largely at odds with the Biden approach but as juxtaposed to adjoining pieces by Bret Stephens and Thomas Friedman it contributed to an impression of extreme bias. The Stephens piece was so extreme, in my view, as should have made it unpublishable in any responsible media platform, and yet the NY Times gave it prominent billing on its Opinion Page. I suspect, even though ardently pro-Israeli, it would have been summarily rejected if submitted by someone unconnected with the newspaper rather than by one of its regular opinion writers. Its title accurately foretells its tone and essential message: “The Genocide Charge Against Israel is a Moral Obscenity.” Stephen’s vitriolic prose is directed at the South African initiative at the International Court of Justice, which was based on a scrupulous legal argument setting forth in a 95 page carefully crafted document supporting its application for Provisional Measures to stop the ongoing ‘genocide’ until the tribunal decides the substantive allegation on its merits. Stephens’ piece even had the audacity to normalise the dehumanising language used by the Israeli leadership in describing the ferocity of their violence in Gaza. Stephens seems willing to endorse the position that the alleged and presumed barbarism of the Hamas attack of October 7 allowed Israel to engage in whatever violence would serve their security without being subject to legal scrutiny or UN authority. At this point Israel has killed at least 23,000 Palestinians, without counting the 7,000 missing persons thought to be buried in the rubble. This total of 30,000 fatalities of mostly innocent, long-abused civilians, is the equivalent of over 5,000,000 if a similar proportion of deaths were to occur in a country with a population of a size similar to that of the US, and the worst may yet to come for the Palestinians. Beyond the death toll are other severe crimes of humanity that are also features of the overall genocide: forced evacuation; induced starvation and disease; destruction of homes, hospitals, holy places, schools, and UN buildings.

In Stephens’ view this decimation of the people of Gaza is not indicative of genocide but should be viewed as the normal side-effects of a war that is a legal instance of self-defence. Given the weaponry used against sheltering civilians in sites protected under international law, what I find obscene is the heartlessness of Stephens’ gushing carte blanche vindication of Israel’s behaviour coupled with the contempt he bestows on those who stand up for the protection of Palestinian rights and the repudiation of what has all the appearance of genocide as specified in the Convention.

Indeed, Stephens argues that China’s abuse of the Uyghurs or the ‘killing fields’ of Cambodia or Soviet Gulag conditions is the real stuff of genocide, and yet went unpunished, while Israel is being maliciously singled out for these delegitimating charges of genocide solely because in his warped judgment the perpetrators are Jewish. It is a shameful line of argument put forward in a slick tone of tribal superiority and legal indifference. There is much room for debate surrounding these events in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7, but to characterise South African recourse to the preeminent judicial body in the world, known for its respectful attitude toward state sovereignty as a ‘a moral obscenity’ is a further illustration of Stephen’s insightful extremism that feeds the repressive impulses of such Israeli powerhouse lobbies as AIPAC. It ventures beyond the pale of responsible editorial filters, sure to be present if a Palestinian author wrote, with greater justification, that Israel’s defence of its behaviour before this very court amounted to ‘a moral obscenity.’ Not only would such a hypothetical article be rejected, but any future submission by such an intemperate author would probably be rejected without being read.

The third opinion piece was written by the newspaper’s chief pontificator, Thomas Friedman. It recounts part of an interview Friedman. conducted with Antony Blinken a day earlier at a public session of the Davos World Economic Forum. Friedman was far more civil than Stephens (not a high bar), but more subtly as provocatively aligned with the Israeli narrative, and as always, self-important and pretending to write from above the fray. Friedman started his piece by contextualising Israeli behaviour sympathetically as reflective of the extreme trauma experienced by Israelis as a result of the Hamas attack, without a word of sympathetic empathy for the Palestinian outburst of resistance after 50 years of abusive occupation and 15 years of a punitive total blockade. Against this background, Blinken was portrayed as a tireless representative of the US Government doing his diplomatic best to limit the magnitude of devastation in Gaza and support the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid. In the interview Blinken declared that he was heartbroken by the tragic ordeal being experienced by the Palestinians, and yet Friedman not bring himself to question this high US official and unconditional supporter of Israel even gently as to why given these grim realities he continues to endorse the support for Israel’s military operation at the UN and through military assistance knowingly contributing to a continuation of this onslaught.

Friedman offers no reference to Blinken’s earlier extravagant official assurances of direct US combat participation if Israel so requests. Friedman failed to pose even a softball question about Blinken’s attitude toward Israel’s dehumanising statements, tactics, or evident ethnic cleansing goals. Blinken had seemed for most of the 100+ days of Israeli violence entirely comfortable to be carrying out his role as enabler-in-chief of the Israeli ongoing genocide. Such a role entails legal accountability for serious, ongoing complicity crimes, and not the celebration of a man doing a professional duty that brought him personal grief. It is illuminating to appreciate that to slow the velocity of genocide, even if such a mitigating intention is conceded, is still genocide.

What makes this show of media bias particularly disturbing is the refusal to consider that most non-Westerners have little doubt about the true nature of Israel’s guilt in relation to the commission of this ‘crime of crimes.’ This perception has nothing to do with the fact that Israel is a Jewish state, and everything to do with the stark clarity of Israel’s formal intentions and the manifest nature of its militarist extremism that is entering its fourth month. A further damning fact is that this is the most transparent genocide in all of human history as nightly TV brings its daily occurrence before the eyes of virtually the whole world. The horror of previous genocides, including the Holocaust, has been largely disclosed after the fact, and even then these human tragedies were largely interpreted by way of abstraction and statistics, as well as through the grim tales told by survivors or in the form of reconstructions done long after the bloody realities by documentary films, investigative journalism, and scholarly inquiry.

My emphasis on this single day’s selection of opinion pieces is not merely to allege NY Times bias, but to raise the tricky questions of self-censorship and media independence of deference to government policy especially in the context of war/peace issues. As shocking as I found the Stephens’ rant, more shocking was the failure of the NY Times and most national media to report on the extraordinary protest activity around the country in recent weeks, including a demonstration in Washington on Martin Luther King Day of 400,000 pro-ceasefire protesters. Surely, this such an outpouring of citizen didn’t deserve to be dismissed as not newsworthy. Especially in this era where social media reinforces the post-truth ethos of right-wing politics, the future of democracy under threat, would benefit from more responsible managerial standards on the part of the most trustworthy media, and especially with regard to controversial foreign policy, more debate, and less deference to Pentagon, State Department, and White House viewpoints.

I have no intention to make the NY Times a scapegoat. Its response to the Gaza genocide is indicative of a systemic problem with media reportage. For instance, watchers of CNN deserve more independent critical voices, and less official rationalisation from government spokespersons, or retired military officers and intelligence bureaucrats. It is dangerous enough to endure deep state manipulations from within the bureaucracies but to have such views infuse media integrity is to resign the country to an autocratic future.

 

First published in COUNTERPUNCH January 22, 2024

 

https://johnmenadue.com/western-media-bias-israeli-apologetics-and-ongoing-genocide/

 

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