BY Jessica Corbett

After Billions More for Israeli Military, Biden Joins Call for Cease-Fire
"There was a time when Global South countries had to make arguments in favor of a more just, multipolar order," said one critic. "These days, Western leaders make that case better than anyone."

Just days after releasing $3.5 billion for Israel to spend on weapons while waging war on the Gaza Strip, U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday joined leaders of France, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom in expressing support for "ongoing efforts to de-escalate tensions and reach a cease-fire and hostage release deal."

Biden put out a Thursday statement with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Qatari Emir Tamim al-Thani, acknowledging their months of meditation and declaring that "the time has come" for an agreement. On Monday, the U.S. and European leaders endorsed that call "to renew talks later this week with an aim to concluding the deal as soon as possible, and stressed there is no further time to lose."

"All parties must live up to their responsibilities," said Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. "In addition, unfettered delivery and distribution of aid is needed."

They also addressed mounting concerns of a broader Middle East war in the wake of Israel targeting Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr with an airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon and assassinating Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh at his residence in the Tehran, Iran.

"We expressed our support for the defense of Israel against Iranian aggression and against attacks by Iran-backed terrorist groups," they said. "We called on Iran to stand down its ongoing threats of a military attack against Israel and discussed the serious consequences for regional security should such an attack take place."

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in response to the new statement: "There was a time when Global South countries had to make arguments in favor of a more just, multipolar order. These days, Western leaders make that case better than anyone. Note that this statement makes ZERO mention of Israel, despite it being investigated for a genocide."

Due to Israeli forces' annihilation of Gaza—which has killed nearly 40,000 people and injured tens of thousands more, according to local officials—Israel faces a genocide case led by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor has also applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom has since been killed.

Assal Rad, an expert on Middle East history, highlighted reporting in The Times of Israel last week that unnamed Arab officials warn a cease-fire and hostage agreement "won't be possible" unless Biden "exerts more pressure" on Netanyahu

According to the Israeli newspaper:

That reporting preceded the move to free up more military aid for Israel. CNNreported that the U.S. State Department "notified lawmakers on Thursday night that the Biden administration intended to release the billions of dollars worth of foreign military financing," which comes from over $14 billion in supplemental funding passed by Congress in April.

"Israel won't receive $3.5 billion worth of U.S.-made weapons immediately," CNN detailed. "Instead, the funding is so Israel can procure systems that are being built now and likely won't be delivered for several years. The supplemental funding also allocated billions of dollars' worth of equipment that the Pentagon can draw from its own stockpiles to send directly to Israel on a much faster timeline."

Following the Biden administration's decision to free up more military aid for Israel—which has received not only weapons support but also diplomatic backing on the world stage since October 7—Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians over the weekend in a strike on a Gaza school and mosque sheltering displaced people.

A spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday that he "condemns the continued loss of life in Gaza, including women and children, as we witness yet another devastating strike by Israel on the al-Tabin school in Gaza City, sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinian families, with scores of fatalities, amidst continued horror, displacement, and suffering in Gaza."

"The secretary-general is dismayed to see that the provisions of U.N. Security Council resolution 2735 (2024) remain unimplemented," the spokesperson continued. "He welcomes the mediation efforts of the United States, Egypt, and Qatar leaders, and urges both sides to rejoin negotiations and conclude the ceasefire and hostages release deal."

The U.N. chief "reiterates his urgent appeal for an immediate cease-fire and the unconditional release of all hostages," the spokesperson added. "He also again underscores the need to ensure the protection of civilians and for unimpeded and safe humanitarian access into and across Gaza. The secretary-general underlines that international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack, must be upheld at all times."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/joe-biden-ceasefire

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 Riva Enteen

Two college professors who studied and lived the 1960s, Peter Dreier and Maurice Isserman, recently had published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Timesurging dissidents not to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The first paragraph is a stark example of uber-liberals suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome:

A collection of fringe radical groups are calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August at the Democratic National Convention—a “March on the DNC” for Palestine. We study political movements, and we’ve participated in more than a few ourselves. We share the concerns of many Americans about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the need for an immediate cease-fire and the release of hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. But we’re not going to heed the call to protest in Chicago. We hope others will stay away as well.

Cheri Honkala, a poor and homeless advocate for decades in the streets of Philadelphia, plans to lead the Poor People’s Army in a march to the steps of the United Center on the convention’s opening day.

If she is “radical fringe,” then so am I. The tireless and fearless founder of Philadelphia’s Kensington Welfare Rights Union in 1991, Honkala is now the Poor People’s Army’s national spokesperson and national coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. She has been arrested more than 200 times, but says that her worst was at the July Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee where she tried to serve an arrest warrant on Trump and the Republican Party for crimes against humanity.

Police cuffed her, then drove her alone in a van to a closed prison where 200 military police officers sat at tables, ready to be of service to convention security on demand. They locked her in a room with glass walls for hours, then drove her to an empty warehouse district where they let her out at night in a thunder and lightning storm, with no wallet and no phone.  

She is now preparing to confront the Democrats. Chicago was compelled to grant the Poor People’s Army a permit to march to the steps of the convention at Chicago’s United Center after failing to respond to her appeal of a permit denial. Authorities are now attempting to reroute the march, but the Poor People’s Army does not plan to back down.  

The protests will address domestic crises as well as the genocide against Palestinians. Honkala talks about the reality of the streets, telling Black Agenda Report: “More Americans have died because of the opiate crisis than died in the Vietnam War. Millions of dollars have come into Philadelphia, supposedly to help with recovery programs and housing and services here, but it never makes it to the people.”

However, these learned professors of the 1960s writing in the Los Angeles Times assert that those preparing to protest must support the Democratic Party and its candidates because Trump is a new Hitler who will end democracy. They say this is not the time for protest.

But who determines when to be patient and ask for incremental change, and when to demand radical change?  At this moment even national health care, closing Guantánamo, or increasing the national minimum wage to minimum subsistence would be radical change. Malcolm X comes to mind: “That’s not a chip on my shoulder. That’s your foot on my neck.” Sometimes, incrementalism doesn’t work.

Though the professors express “concern” about the genocide in Gaza, their piece speaks only of the Israeli hostages, not of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many of them children, held without charges, sexually assaulted, and tortured. A Knesset member recently said that rape of Palestinian prisoners is legitimate. 

October 7 happened in part because of all the Palestinians already in prison with no charges or hope of a trial. The only cease-fire after October 7 brought Palestinian prisoners home at a 3:1 ratio to Israeli hostages but the ratio of remaining Palestinian prisoners to Israeli hostages is far higher. Prisoner release will be part of any negotiation and must be one of the demands of the Palestinian solidarity movement. 

The professors say they support a two-state solution, but that dream is long dead; members of the UN Security Council and the General Assembly have repeated it like a mantra for decades as Israel colonized more land in the West Bank and rained bombs on Gaza. President Biden and the U.S. State Department continue to invoke it but say that it can only be created by negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, which is to say not at all. 

October 7 happened because 75 years of negotiations failed. The recent Israeli assassination of Ismail Haniyeh dimmed hopes of a negotiated settlement any time soon.

These men of the 1960s claim that “the convention protests of 1960 and 1964 followed a sophisticated and pragmatic strategy of working within and without the party apparatus.” But why would anyone trust their “within and without” strategy after the Democratic Party elite stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 and kept Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., from running as a Democrat this year? 

The long cover-up of Biden’s decline and his unceremonious replacement with Kamala Harris, a lock-em-up candidate who has never won a single delegate, reeks of the Deep State.

Many are asking, “Who is in charge, given the president’s obviously impaired faculties?” While praise is showered on Biden’s alleged prowess in negotiating the recent historic and complicated international prisoner exchange, his incompetence was evident in the disastrous June 27 debate.  He confuses Haifa with Rafah, and Mexico with Egypt. There is no way he negotiated the prisoner exchange.

According to the Times opinion writers, Chicago in 1960 and 1964 had good protesters who “worked within the party apparatus.”  The 1968 protesters, they say, were bad and “set back the cause.”  The DNC protests are allegedly why Humphrey lost to Nixon, who continued the Vietnam War longer—they hypothesize—than Humphrey would have.  

Of course, the anti-war candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, had just been assassinated by the Deep State after winning the California primary, all but assuring the nomination. But rather than protest, we should have quietly urged an anti-war platform?  

Humphrey promised to stop bombing North Vietnam and seek a cease-fire after the convention and before the election, because it was clear that the anti-war movement could not be ignored. Would he have made those promises without the protests in Chicago? Would he have kept them if elected?  There is no way to know for sure. 

As one who was on the streets protesting the Vietnam War, I knew that it was imperative to let the Vietnamese know we were in solidarity with them, and the Palestinians deserve no less. We must express our outrage at both parties for their support of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

“The key organizers,” the professors write, “the ones who will determine the message this protest conveys by its slogans and actions, are members of the ultra-leftist Party for Socialism and Liberation, and its front organization, the ANSWER Coalition. This is the same group behind the demonstration that burned an American flag and defaced monuments in a ‘day of rage’ as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress last week.” If burning an American flag, a form of protest protected by the Supreme Court, and defacing monuments as acts of rage against war criminal Netanyahu make protesters “ultra-leftist,” then sign me up. 

Rather than using labels like ultra-leftist, why not challenge what this group actually says, specifically and factually? The global stakes are quite high, so clarification and accuracy are essential.  The Poor People’s Army and CodePink are also among the organizers. The protests are organized by a coalition of groups determined to challenge the Democrats in the streets over their position on Palestine. Let’s not bring back red-baiting.

According to the professors, “the primary goal has to be to defeat Donald Trump, and to help Democratic candidates win in the House and Senate.” They do not want to lose voters “to a perception that Democrats are the party of chaos.” But it is past time to expose the chaos to the light of day. We would be immoral to stand by passively as the U.S. funds genocide in Palestine and plays a game of nuclear chicken with Russia in Ukraine.  

Rather than conceding all political space to the Democratic Party’s coronation of Kamala Harris, we must expose how fundamentally undemocratic it is. They stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders twice, kept RFK Jr out of this year’s Democratic primary, then shoehorned Kamala Harris into place with the barest semblance of Democratic process; a bunch of no-name delegates quickly met and agreed to throw their support to her.

According to renowned journalist Seymour Hersh, Obama threatened Biden with the 25th Amendment if he did not step down. It is all about backroom deals and Deep State manipulations, while the rest of us wonder who is really in charge. Yet the professors scoff at the notion that the Democratic Party is “a tool of billionaires and corporations.”  It’s not?

Ajamu Baraka recently wrote: “The fact that select oligarchs, in this case, the cabal that actually runs the Democrat Party, can remove a presidential nominee and expeditiously anoint Kamala Harris as his replacement cannot be characterized as anything else but a coup…The oppressed must have a clear and sober understanding of the class and power dynamics in the Democrat Party but also in the broader society. The gangster move by the oligarchs who control the Democrats stripped away any pretense that any real structures of democracy exist in that party.” 

People who went to Chicago in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War at the DNC were courageous and righteous. People planning to go to Chicago’s DNC this year to protest Democratic Party complicity in the ongoing Gaza genocide are also courageous and righteous.  Crash the party is a slogan of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.  Sign me up.  We need to get that foot off our necks.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/08/12/crash-the-dncs-party/

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By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

In Murder in Samarkand I describe how as a British ambassador, when I discovered the full extent of our complicity in torture in the War on Terror, I thought it must be a rogue operation and all I had to do was make ministers and senior officials aware and they would stop it.

When I was reprimanded and officially told that receipt of intelligence from torture in the “War on Terror” was approved from the prime minister and foreign secretary down, and it became clear to me that there was a deliberate promoting of false intelligence narratives through torture, which exaggerated the Al Qaida threat to justify military policy in Afghanistan and Central Asia, my worldview was severely shaken.

Somehow I mentally compartmentalised this as an aberration, due to overreaction to 9/11 and the unique narcissism and viciousness of then Prime Minister Tony Blair. 

I did not lose faith in Western democracy or the notion that the Western powers, on the whole, were a positive force when contrasted with other powers.

It is a hard thing to lose the entire belief system in which you were brought up — probably particularly hard if like me, you had a very happy life right from childhood and were highly successful within the terms of the governmental system.

I have however now finally shed the last of my illusions and I am obliged to acknowledge that the system of which I am a part – call it “the West,” “liberal democracy,” “capitalism,” “neo-liberalism,” “neo-conservatism,” “imperialism,” “the New World Order” — call it what you will in fact, it is a force for evil.

Gaza has been an important catalyst. I am not lacking in empathy, but my knowledge of the horrid butchery by the Western powers in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya was an intellectual knowledge, not a lived experience.

Technology has brought us the Gaza genocide – which has so far killed fewer people than any of those earlier NATO- member perpetrated massacres – in gut wrenching detail. 

I have just been looking at 75kg bags of mixed human meat handed over to relatives in lieu of an identifiable corpse, and am in shock.

That is not the worst we have seen in Gaza.

Mosul & Fallujah

If only the people of Mosul and Fallujah had had modern mobile phone technology, what horrors we would know. 

Incidentally, I tried to find you some images of the massive U.S. destruction of Mosul and Fallujah in 2002-2004 and Google won’t give me any. It will, however, offer thousands of images from fighting there with ISIL in 2017. Which rather underlines my point about the extraordinary lack of imagery of the Second Iraq War. 

Of the current genocide in Gaza, again I found myself naively thinking at some point this will stop. That Western politicians would not in fact countenance the total destruction of Gaza. 

That there would be a limit to the number of Palestinian civilian deaths they could accept, the number of U.N. facilities, schools and hospitals destroyed, the number of little children torn into shreds. 

I thought that at some stage human decency must outweigh Zionist lobby cash. 

But I was wrong. 

The Ukrainian Attack on Kursk 

The Ukrainian attack into Kursk also has a profound emotional resonance. The Battle of Kursk was arguably the most important blow struck against Nazi Germany, the largest tank battle in the history of the world by a wide margin.

The Ukrainian government has destroyed all the monuments to the Red Army which achieved this, and denigrates the Ukrainians who fought against fascism. 

By contrast, it honours the very substantial Ukrainian components of the Nazi forces, including but not limited to, the Galician Division and their leaders. 

[See: On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine]

Kursk is therefore a place of great symbolism for Ukraine to attack now into Russia, including with German artillery and armour.

German politicians seem to have an atavistic urge to attack Russia, and support the genocide of Palestinians to an astonishing degree. 

Germany has effectively ended all freedom of speech on Palestine, banning conferences of distinguished speakers and making pro-Palestinian speech illegal. Germany has intervened on Israel’s side in the genocide case before the ICJ, and intervened at the ICC to object to an arrest warrant against Netanyahu.

I do not know how many civilian dead would assuage German lust for the expiatory blood of Palestinians — 500,000? 1 Million? 2 Million?

Or perhaps 6 Million?

The West are not the good guys. Our so-called “democratic systems” give us no ability to vote for anybody who may get into power who does not support the genocide and imperialist foreign policy.

It is not an accident and it is not genius that makes a man-child like Elon Musk worth $100 billion. The power structures of society are deliberately designed by those with wealth to promote massive concentration of wealth in favour of those who already have it, exploiting and disempowering the rest of society. 

The rise of the multi-billionaires is not a fluke. It is a plan, and the misallocation of more than adequate resources is the cause of poverty. The attempt to shift blame onto the desperate constituents of waves of immigration forced into life by Western destruction of foreign countries, is also systematic. 

There is no longer any free space for dissent in the media to oppose any of this.

We are the Bad Guys. We resist our own governing systems, or we are complicit.

In the United Kingdom it falls to the Celtic nations to try to break up the state which is a subordinate but important imperialist engine. The paths of resistance are various, depending where you are.

But find one and take one.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/13/craig-murray-we-are-the-bad-guys/

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