Middle East

For Middle East posts earlier than Jan 1, 2019, click here.

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US-Iran: 1953-2018  

It all started with a coup, the first covert action of the United States to overthrow a foreign government in peacetime. (July 23, 2019)

US Credibility, the Violence of Sanctions, and the Ticking Clock on War

Economic sanctions may seem less violent than the tanker attacks, but they are not. Iran is losing more than $100 million per day as a result of the current sanctions, and the toll on Iranian lives is significant. (June 18, 2019)

Lying our way towards attacking Iran

While the media are focusing on the Mueller probe, Iranophobes Bolton and Pompeo have been making mischief and telling lies in the Middle East.  (January 16, 2019)

Another step towards war with Iran

From the firing of Tillerson and McMaster to Pompeo's "Iran Action Group" (Aug 25, 2018)

(1) The incident is a reminder that tragic mistakes can be made when tensions are high.  On July 3, 1988, the American warship USS Vincennes shot down an Iran Air flight killing all 290 people, mostly Iranian pilgrims on their way to Mecca. The US said the Airbus A300 was mistaken for a fighter jet. 

(2) "The first poll after the killing of Soleimani shows 53 percent of Americans disapproving of Trump’s handling of Iran, a number similar to what other polling registered in September and October. What has changed is that 39 percent “strongly disapprove” of Trump’s policy—a number up 10 points since before the Soleimani killing.  Americans do not want war with Iran, and they do not trust Trump to lead such a war if it erupts." (David Frum, The Atlantic)  

(3) As soon as Trump did the assassination, Bolton tweeted,  “We’ve been working on this for a long time.”

(4) Bolton was one of the Iraq war cheerleaders.  Pompeo has recently taken up the mantle "going full neocon" in a November press conference.  For more on the neocons, see the Vox link in the sidebar "conservatism's most dangerous faction."

What's Been Happening in the Middle East?

POSTED FEBRUARY 17, 2020

The Trump impeachment and the Democratic primaries have gathered the lion's share of the media's attention in the past couple of months.  Time to turn our attention back to other things - starting with the Middle East.

IRAQ

After a US contractor was killed in missile attacks at a US base in Iraq in December, US officials blamed (probably wrongly as it turns out*) Kata’ib Hezbollah, which they described as “Iran-backed militia”, for the attack. In retaliation for that killing, US forces attacked three of Kata’ib bases, killing dozens and wounding dozens more. Al-Arabia has put the number of those killed at the bases at 63. Those killings gave rise to massive protests in Baghdad, including an attack on the US Embassy, which was used as an excuse to assassinate the commander of the IRGC Quds Force, General Qasem Soleimani, and the deputy leader of the Kata’ib Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and a few other Iraqi officials who were with them. Millions of Iraqis and Iranians took part in the funerals of those two generals.   The massive anti-US demonstrations led the Iraqi parliament to request the withdrawal of the 5000 US troops stationed in their country.

Trump has threatened to destroy the Iraqi economy with severe sanctions if the Iraqi executive follows through on parliament’s decree that US troops must leave.  While the Trump Administration insists that it will continue its mini-occupation of Iraq, Iraq has moved closer to military coordination with Russia as reported in Informed Comment's February 7 article:

"Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi met Thursday with the Russian ambassador in Baghdad, Maksim Maksimov, to explore coordination between the Iraqi and Russian militaries.  Both sides affirmed the importance of continued support for the Quadripartite Center for Exchange of Security Information (consisting of Iraq, Russia, Syria and Iran), given its great importance in the exchange of information and coordination for the sake of preventing infiltration and the return of ISIL terrorism, which had threatened the security and peace of the region. (China has also expressed interest in joining this Center)."

On February 16, the Administration's continued intransigence on the subject of troop withdrawal provoked action by an Iraqi militia group:

"Agence France Presse Arabic is reporting that early Sunday morning several rockets or mortars slammed into the area around the US Embassy in Baghdad. Warning sirens sounded, and fighter jets began patrolling the skies.  Reuters reports an American military officer as saying that a base at which US troops are stationed in Baghdad also was attacked. There are no reports of any casualties from these attacks. The attacks came hours after the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (the Movement of the Nobles of the Party of God)...had announced a “countdown” to the expulsion of US troops from Iraq." (Informed Comment)

IRAN

UPDATE: FEBRUARY 25:  The first parliamentary elections since the United States imposed harsh sanctions on the country saw conservatives pick up the bulk of the seats after thousands of candidates were barred from running.  Election turnout was the lowest since the 1979 revolution.

The US violated the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Deal) by reimposing sanctions on Iran after the US unilaterally and without cause withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal.  In so doing, Trump threw a sop to his right-wing Israeli buddy Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, you may recall, had addressed the U.S. Congress to try to prevent the deal from being approved.  As for how these extreme, illegal sanctions have worked: they have added to the discontent and misery in Iran and have brought about a de facto decrease in food and medicine imports.  But they have not brought about regime change.  

Earlier this year, Iran and the US stepped back from the brink of war after the US assassinated a top Iranian military official and killed an Iraqi general in the same lawless attack.  Iranians took to the streets in massive protests against the US action. The assassination easily meets the definition of an act of war but, wisely and fortunately, Iran's leaders exercised restraint in their response.  

Iranians have shown that they are in favor of peaceful change, but the current policies of the Trump administration have made this almost impossible.  Iran elections will be held on February 21 and Iran's moderates are facing a strong challenge from hard-liners:  

"The current impasse in Iran will either result in a much more hard-line government, similar to the one led by President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, or even in a military coup led by the IRGC. Either scenario will push back the possibility of democratization in Iran by many years, and might even lead to a devastating war. The neocons who have been pushing Trump to pursue these policies have not served him, the United States or Iran well." (Informed Comment, Feb 11 - link below left)

On February 13, the US Senate attempted to limit the president’s war powers.  In a bipartisan 55-45 vote, lawmakers passed a resolution that would require President Donald Trump to obtain congressional approval if he wanted to take additional military action against Iran. It’s the latest lawmaker response to an airstrike Trump authorized in early January that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and follows the passage of a similar measure in the House. Differences in the legislation mean is must be voted on by the lower chamber before it heads to the president’s desk for, unfortunately, a certain veto.  

ISRAEL AND OCCUPIED PALESTINE

The Trump-Kushner peace plan would allow Israel to annex its illegal settlements in the West Bank, annex the Jordan Valley, and have total control over Jerusalem - basically making a viable Palestinian nation impossible.  It was soundly rejected by the Arab League in a meeting on February 1.

"Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo, Egypt to discuss US President Donald Trump's plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was formally announced last week, have rejected the proposal. In a communique, the Arab League said it would not cooperate with the US to execute the plan because it "does not meet the minimum rights and aspirations of Palestinian people." The pan-Arab bloc also said Israel should not implement the initiative by force.  "The plan leads to a status that amounts to a one-state situation that comprises two classes of citizens, that is apartheid, in which the Palestinians will be second-class citizens, deprived of the basic rights of citizenship," Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in Cairo."

The US has never been an honest broker in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.  But we have never seen such blatant prejudicial treatment of the Palestinians until Trump took office.  Almost from the start of his administration, Trump has  rejected the two-state solution and destroyed all hope for a Palestinian state.  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has had enough. saying at the Arab League meeting that the Palestinian Authority has cut all ties with the United States and Israel, including those relating to security.  For its part, the Israeli right is hoping that, with the Arab League rejection of the Trump-Kushner plan, the Administration will now green light a unilateral annexation of Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Mehdi Hasan, senior columnist at The Intercept, calls the Trump plan a policy of apartheid and settler colonialism (link below right).  In another interview, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan says that the plan would legalize the theft of Palestinian land and explains "the human impact of taking people’s land, taking people’s livelihood away from them.” 

SYRIA

The Syrian Civil War and its humanitarian crisis continued as government forces maintain a devastating onslaught against the last rebel strongholds in the northwest.  The offensive has resulted in the displacement of 900,000 people.

"Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has pledged to continue the onslaught on the country's northwest, the war-torn country's last major rebel stronghold, saying the war was not yet over but a "complete victory" was in sight.  The fierce Russian-backed government offensive has displaced 900,000 people since the start of December, according to the United Nations, which warned on Monday that the "horrifying" crisis was forcing those fleeing to sleep outside in freezing temperatures and had resulted in babies dying of cold as camps are full." (Al Jazeera, Feb 17)

YEMEN

Yemen's warring sides have agreed to implement a major prisoner swap, the United Nations has said, in a breakthrough that came after another bout of heavy fighting, including air raids by a Saudi-UAE-led military coalition that killed dozens of civilians.  The February 16  announcement over the long-delayed exchange came after seven days of meetings in Jordan's capital, Amman, between the Houthi rebels and the internationally-recognized government, which is backed by the coalition.

*In a "bombshell" revelation that calls into question one of the Trump administration's stated justifications for assassinating Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani—a move that nearly sparked a region-wide military conflict—Iraqi intelligence officials told the New York Times that they believe ISIS, not an Iran-linked militia, was likely responsible for the Dec. 27 rocket attack that killed an American contractor at an air base near Kirkuk, Iraq. (Common Dreams, Feb. 7)

After 18 years, US to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan 

POSTED MARCH 1, 2020

The invasion of Afghanistan was the first step in the misguided US "war on terror" that has done so much to destabilize the Middle East.  Now after 18 years, twice as long as the Soviet Union's stay in the "graveyard of empires", the United States has agreed to withdraw its troops.  Although obstacles remain, the agreement reached with the Taliban sets the path for a withdrawal of American troops in 14 months, beginning with a draw down to 8,600 troops "within months."  There never was a military solution to the situation in Afghanistan although both the Bush and Obama administrations were deluded into thinking there was.  

The withdrawal is welcome news and long overdue, but no one should believe that, as constructed, it will bring complete peace to Afghanistan.  Common Dreams (link below left) reports on the reaction of the peace community.  Among them:

"Spencer Ackerman, national security writer at the Daily Beast: "Had the US and its Afghan clients not been so hubristic, they might have had today’s peace deal with the Taliban in 2001, 2003 or 2011-12 — except with greater US leverage. Thousands might have been spared death, maiming, displacement & destitution." 

"Rep. Barbara Lee, one of the staunchest anti-war voices in Congress: "After nearly two decades of endless war, it's become clear that there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.  But this so-called ‪'peace deal' is anything but.  It leaves thousands of troops in Afghanistan and lacks the critical investments in peacebuilding, human-centered development, or governance reform needed to rebuild Afghan society." 

Many Americans viewed the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as a necessary response to the 9/11 attacks.  I never did and do not now.  By declaring a "war" on terror instead of a policing action to bring a criminal terrorist to justice, George W. Bush and his neocon advisers set the US on a path to endless war - how can you defeat a noun?  Especially a noun that can be manipulated for whatever purpose a speaker wants. Nelson Mandela was deemed a terrorist by white South Africa.  Even decades after the Cuban Revolution, the United States still had Cuba on its list of nations that sponsored terrorism even as it ignored an actual act of  terrorism - the downing of Cubana flight 455 in 1976 which saw the deaths of 73 people including 24 teenage members of Cuba's national fencing team.*

Though Bush may have come up with the term "war on terror" on his own, it was neocon adherents to the dangerous "Project for the New American Century"  that were the driving force, behind our post 9/11 invasions and occupations in the Middle East. Some of these people are still near centers of power.  Thankfully John Bolton - who was one of the Iraq invasion's cheerleaders back then - is gone from the Trump Administration, but others, most notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have taken up the neocon chant.    

The neocons' distorted concept of an American exceptionalism projected by military force has become engrained in many Americans. Vox, discussing the demise of the neocon journal "The Weekly Standard," reminds us that there are some conservative ideas worse than Trumpism.  (link below right)  Vox writer Matthew Yglesias summed up the disastrous consequences of the Iraq invasion that neocons lied us into:

"In its main phase from 2003 to 2011, this war led to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, plus what appears to be around 400,000 Iraqis. And that was only the beginning. The regional destabilization the invasion touched off led directly to the rise of ISIS and a whole new round of fighting in Iraq in which many thousands of people have died.  More broadly, the extremely deadly civil war in Syria likely also counts as a knock-on consequence of invading Iraq. This is to say nothing of the extent to which the war counterproductively undermined the global nonproliferation regime by convincing North Korea to go for broke in its quest for nukes."

He describes the "neo-Reaganite foreign policy" touted by the neocons as "a deeply held ideological view that argues that the United States must avoid any form of pragmatic accommodation of anyone or anything in the international order," and concludes with a statement on the neocon opposition to Trumpism: 

"...in a sane world, the alternative to perpetual war is not isolation or pathetic wheedling for Saudi defense contracts — it’s tourism, commerce, diplomacy, migration, and cooperation on areas of mutual interest that respects universal human dignity....While the country desperately needs the kind of principled resistance to Trump’s worst excesses that the Weekly Standard represented, it would be particularly useful for that resistance to take the form of ideas that are better than Trump’s — rather than simply different and in many ways worse."

And in a sane America, neocons like Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, John Bolton, Stephen Hayes, and now Mike Pompeo would be reminded of how disastrous their policies and lies have been and laughed off the stage of power, once and for all.

-----  

*"The Cubana Flight 455 mass murder is not much remembered, but the two dozen Cuban athletes who perished represent the most horrific attack against innocent sportsmen we’ve ever seen. The downing of their flight remains a rare mid-air bombing of a civilian airliner in the Western Hemisphere. And the U.S. government’s behavior in the 40-year wake of those deaths remains shameful."(Washington Post, Dec 4, 2016)

Arms Hypocrisy, Sanctions Snapback, Iran Nuclear Deal

POSTED AUGUST 14, 2020

The US plans to introduce a resolution in the United Nations Security Council that would extend the Iran Arms Embargo indefinitely.  A provision in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (aka the Iran Nuclear Deal) ends the embargo on October 18.  Iran has warned that if the embargo is not lifted, it would leave the JCPOA.  There is little likelihood that the resolution will even gather a majority of votes from UN Security Council members.  If it does, Russia and China would use their vetoes.

UPDATE: On Friday Aug 14, the US resolution garnered one vote in the Security Council - that of the Dominican Republic.  All other members either voted no or abstained.

But this is not the end game of the Trump/Pompeo ploy.  The end game is the dissolution of the JCPOA.  If the US arms embargo resolution fails, the United States has threatened to try to force a return of UN sanctions by using a controversial technique called "snapback."  US Secretary of State Pompeo has offered the contested argument that the United States remains a "participant" in the nuclear accord as it was listed in the 2015 resolution and therefore can force a return to sanctions if it sees Iran as being in violation of its terms. 

References

[1] https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/09/02/trump-must-back-iraq-withdrawal-promise-with-action/

[2]https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/08/28/what-trumps-troop-withdrawal-from-iraq-means-for-ending-americas-endless-wars/

[3] https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/15/reality-check-still-same-number-of-us-troops-in-afghanistan/

Middle East Headlines

POSTED OCTOBER 5, 2020

Some headlines from the third quarter.  Israeli annexation threat, Beirut explosion, US/Iran, Yemen, more

Jul 1 - Sanders, AOC, Tlaib Threaten to Cut Israeli Funding if Netanyahu Annexes 1/3 of Palestinian West Bank

Jul 7 - The US violated international law by assassinating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, top UN human rights investigator says

RELATED POST: No war for now...

Jul 13 - Amid Pandemic Spike, Israel cuts Electricity to Palestinian Hamlets in Apparent Pressure to accept Annexation

Jul 15 - Seven vessels catch fire in southern Iranian shipyard incident at port of Bushehr latest in series of fires and blasts that could be part of sabotage campaign

Aug 11 - The Beirut explosion: what we know so far

Aug 14 - UN Security Council rejects US proposal to extend Iran arms embargo 

Aug 14 - Israel & UAE Deal to Normalize Relations Is New Chapter in 100-Year War on Palestine

Aug  24 - Hundreds of thousands displaced by Yemen floods

Aug 25 - UNSC dismisses US demand to impose ‘snapback’ sanctions on Iran

RELATED POST: Arms hypocrisy, sanctions snapback, Iran nuclear deal

Aug 25 - Gaza fears the worst as Israel ratches up it siege

Aug 30 - Tens of thousands of anti-Netanyahu protesters hit Israel streets 

Sep 5 - Saudi Arabia tells US it wants fair solution for Palestinians

Sep 15 - UN experts decry continued abuse as Syria’s war grinds on

Sep 20 - Affirming Jim Crow, Israeli Parliament votes down Bill guaranteeing Equality for Palestinian-Israelis, 21% of Population

Sep 20 -US claims UN sanctions on Iran reinstated. The world disagrees. Washington isolated as global allies and adversaries say its unilateral move targeting Tehran has no legal standing.

Sep 24 - Arab, European states call Israel and Palestine to restart talks

Sep 27 - Yemen gov’t, Houthis agree to exchange over 1,000 prisoners

Sep 28 - Trump admin mulls new sanctions on Iran’s financial sector Trump administration is weighing new sanctions that would cut Iran’s economy off from the outside world, and thwart any US attempt to re-enter nuke deal if Biden wins – sources.

Oct 1 - Sudan to strike peace with rebels after decades of war

Oct 2 - Will there ever be accountability for murder of Jamal Khashoggi?

Israel suspected in assassination of top Iranian scientist

POSTED NOVEMBER 27, 2020

President-elect Biden's chances of repairing the rift with Iran caused by the Trump Administration and re-entering the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) suffered a serious blow today when Iran's top nuclear scientist was assassinated, apparently by Israeli agents.  

"Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif condemned the attack and said there are 'serious indications' of an Israeli role in the assassination. 'Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice—with serious indications of Israeli role—shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators,' Zarif wrote on Twitter.  For their part, Iran is urging its allies in the region to exercise caution, hoping to avoid a military confrontation with the US before Trump is out of office.  Both the Israelis and the Trump administration are hoping to sabotage a future Biden administration’s efforts to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)." [antiwar.com, Nov 27]

The killing comes two weeks after President Trump asked his advisers about options for a US strike on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities and five days after a not-so-secret meeting between Secretary of State Pompeo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. [link below left] Trump's request for military strike options came days after he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, who has pledged to act quickly to re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump violated in May of 2018.  

Julian Borger at The Guardian notes [link below center] that the "assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh may not much have impact on the Iranian nuclear program he helped build, but it will certainly make it harder to salvage the deal intended to restrict that program, and that is – so far - the most plausible motive." 

Putting the story in perspective:

- Iran has not had a nuclear weapons program since 2003.  Back then, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was the head of the program.

- After it mothballed its rudimentary military experiments in 2003, Iran kept to civilian enrichment. 

- The JCPOA of 2015 was working with Iran in full compliance until Trump violated it and imposed brutal sanctions on the country, making it impossible for them to sell their oil.

- To pressure Europe into circumventing the illegal US sanctions, Iran has enriched some uranium slightly above the 3.5% limit of the JCPOA.  

- To make a bomb, uranium must be enriched to 95%.  The contention sometimes made by US journalists that Iran has enough uranium to make two bombs is ridiculous. "You don’t make bombs by the amount of uranium you possess that is enriched to 3.5% or 4.5%. Without the necessary level of enrichment, you’d just have some rocks that could be used to heat water."

To take action, there is a link to a letter to world leaders from Code Pink [link below right] for this vile assault on diplomacy.

Prolonging war and increasing misery

POSTED DECEMBER 1, 2020

The casualty figures of the Yemen Civil War are daunting for a small nation with a population of less than 30 million.  By the end of 2019, it was estimated that over 233,000 Yemenis had been killed as a result of fighting and the humanitarian crisis.  The death toll from the fighting alone - over 112,000 - includes more than 12,000 civilians.  An estimated 85,000 children under age 5 may have died of hunger and disease since 2015.  3.1 million people have been displaced.  

With 50 days left in his presidency, as part of his administration's failed "maximum pressure campaign" on Iran and its allies, Donald Trump is re-stoking the flames that led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis by preparing to designate the rebel Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization.  The impact of an FTO designation would be twofold - it would disrupt ongoing negotiations for a nationwide ceasefire and would make delivery of critical humanitarian aid to Houthi-controlled areas nearly impossible as Yemen teeters on the brink of the worst famine in decades.

20 years in Afghanistan

POSTED FEBRUARY 17, 2021

On October 7, we will observe the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan.  It was the first step in the neocon's misguided and tragic "war on terror" that eventually destabilized the entire Middle East.  Pushed by neoconservatives, the Bush Administration had decided to prosecute as a war what should have been an international policing action to bring a criminal to justice.   All that followed - the invasion of Iraq, the rise of ISIS, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, the millions of refugees -  began here.  The Iraq War may have been the most destabilizing event [below center], but the invasion of Afghanistan started it all.  

Those disgraced neocons almost got their war with Iran during Trump's tenure, as Mike Pompeo took on their arguments and forged a Middle East policy that once again destroyed America's credibility.  President Biden would do well to take the advice of Liza Featherstone at The Jacobin regarding the neocons still lurking in the shadows: "These guys have made successful careers of being catastrophically, tragically wrong. No one should ever listen to any of them again." [below right]

Perhaps the most appalling statistic of the neocon forever wars in the Middle East is the number of civilians that have been killed directly or indirectly as a result of the ensuing turmoil.  The Costs of War Project has estimated that since 2001, there have been more than 335,000 civilian deaths in our Middle East war zones since 2001.  

At the peak of the nearly two decade war in Afghanistan, there were more than 100,000 American troops there.  The number is down to 2,500 now, and a stuttering peace process is underway between the Taliban and the Afghan government.  A framework for the peace talks was finally agreed in December.  The peace process was initiated by the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in February 2020 that diminished the Taliban threat to U.S. personnel.  "That agreement produced the launch of peace talks among Afghans in September, after months of delay. It also committed the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to a total withdrawal of forces by May 2021, and the Taliban to preventing Afghan territory from being used by transnational terrorist groups to threaten the United States and its allies. Currently, the parties’ wait-and-see posture toward the incoming Biden administration—watching particularly for signals of commitment, or not, to the February deal—is slowing the talks."  (Council of Foreign Relations, Jan 20)

An Afghan political settlement by May is essential.  If a political settlement is not reached by then and the United States and NATO troops remain in Afghanistan, the Taliban will begin to doubt the commitment to the withdrawal, and countries in the region will protest the continued presence of outside troops in the region.  

NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO will not withdraw its troops from Afghanistan “before the time is right”, adding that the Taliban must do more to meet the terms of a 2020 peace agreement with the United States first.  Stoltenberg’s remarks came on Monday, days before the defense ministers of the 30 NATO member states discuss the deployment on Wednesday and Thursday.  (Al Jazeera, Feb 15)

One of the best options for successful peace negotiations is that presented by the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process.  [below left]  A "recommitment of major regional and international players in the Afghan peace process—plus a degree of innovation and flexibility—will be sufficient to make the HoA-IP fit for purpose as the most inclusive, effective, and easily convened consultation and support platform. Given the urgency of the process and the importance of a regional guarantee and support for an eventual Afghan peace agreement, this diplomatic initiative should be prioritized by all the key regional and international stakeholders, including the Biden administration."

Bring 'em home

POSTED MAR 7, 2021

President Biden is fond of ending his words to the people of our nation with "God bless America and God protect our troops."  Yet he leaves these in harm's way in nations that are no threat to us and that do not want us there in the first place.  He needs to bring them home.

Otherwise, we may be treated to more abuses of the post 9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force such as happened in his February 25 bombing in Syria.  The Pentagon portrayed (and mainstream media reported) the bombing as a precision strike against Iranian-backed Iraqi militias in retaliation for an attack on a base in Iraqi Kurdistan, which had left one American contractor dead.   Some analysts said that the bombing may have been intended to strengthen the U.S. hand in its negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal (JCPOA). 

Let's provide some background and deconstruct these statements.

1. The bombing killed as many as 22 Iraqi militia, not the "handful" reported in some media outlets.  Since year-end 2019, Trump and now Biden have kept the number of actual airstrikes in the Middle East secret.  What we do know is that since 2001, the US and its allies have dropped at least 325,980 bombs on other nations. 

2. The "Iranian-backed" Iraqi militia are an integral part of Iraq’s armed forces and have played a critical role in the war against ISIS.  In other words, these Shia militia are our allies in the fight against the Sunni extremist group that poses the greatest threat to US interests.

3. The post-9/11 AUMF under which the bombing was "justified" was intended to fight terrorism.  Rep. Barbara Lee wants it repealed because of its continuing misuse “to justify waging war in at least seven different countries, against a continuously expanding list of targetable adversaries.” 

4. Every Shia commander spoken to by the London-based Middle East Eye denied any of their groups launched the missiles themselves. They also underlined that the truce with the US remains intact.  "The Iranian orders have not changed regarding attacking the American forces, and the Iranians are still keen to maintain calm with the Americans until they see how the new administration will act.” 

5. After the Trump-ordered killing of the head of the Brigades of the Party of God along with Iranian general Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport, the Iraqi parliament voted for the US to withdraw from Iraq in February, 2020.  After initially refusing to do so,  the US agreed to withdraw all but 2500 US troops from Iraq, and the Trump administration had wanted to be completely out by May, 2021. 

6. As for Syria, the 1,000 US troops in that country are there illegally. The Syrian government doesn’t want them, and they aren’t defending the United States, so their presence is a violation of international law. 

7. Nothing could be more absurd than analysts' claiming the move will strengthen Biden's hand in negotiations with Iran over the JCPOA.  The move will do nothing but strengthen the hand of Iran's hard liners who would rather leave the JCPOA altogether.  [below right] Remember the context:

•  Trump unilaterally and without cause withdrew the US from the JCPOA - Iran was in full compliance with the agreement.  Then, Trump, in violation of that agreement, imposed on Iran the harshest peacetime sanctions in history.

• The unilateral sanctions on Iran are illegal.  They must be removed immediately.  It was the US that first violated the JCPOA.  To insist that Iran return to compliance first is hypocrisy of the highest order. 

• The United States and Israel provoked Iran with assassinations of a high-ranking general (US) and of a civilian nuclear scientist (Israel).  Iran refused to bite, intent on salvaging the JCPOA in hopes of a change in US policy after the 2020 elections.

If Biden is to live up to his campaign promise of diplomacy, he must stop doing the bidding of the Iran hawks and the Israel lobby.   Both groups are intent on keeping the US from returning to the Iran nuclear deal, an agreement they fought desperately to prevent when Obama was originally negotiating it.   

If Biden supports the repeal of AUMF, as he has said, he must end all US bombing in the Middle East and work with Congress to repeal the AUMF.  It is his opportunity to earn a place in history by ending America's "forever wars."

If Biden wants to protect American troops, he must "bring 'em home," as a Vietnam-era song once exhorted us.  [below left]

Calls for restraint as Holy Land violence threatens to spiral out of control

POSTED MAY 13, 2021/ UPDATED MAY 15

World leaders are calling for restraint from Israeli armed forces and Hamas militants in the recent round of violence, which has so far killed at least 152 Palestinians and 8 Israelis.  Worried that the region’s worst hostilities in years could spiral out of control, the United States sent an envoy, Hady Amr to Israel.  Truce efforts by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations have so far offered no sign of progress. [5]

The tinderbox that is the Israeli-Palestinian relationship was lit after hundreds of Palestinians were injured during protests over the expulsion of Palestinian families and in Israeli raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.   After the raids, Hamas demanded Israel remove police from the holy site and the nearby predominantly Arab district of Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinian families face eviction by Jewish settlers. Hamas launched rockets when its ultimatum went unheeded. [6]

Israel responded with a bombing campaign that has left at least 139 dead in Gaza.  Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip entered its sixth consecutive day, with Israeli air raids hitting a refugee camp where at least 10 Palestinians, including eight children, were killed.  In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have killed at least 13 Palestinians protesting against continued Israeli occupation and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza. [7] 

The Israeli plan to evict 169 Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood had made this Ramadan particularly tense and fomented protests in Jerusalem, a holy city for the world's Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  When the protesters were attacked by Israeli security forces, they went to the area of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest mosque in the Islamic world, perhaps expecting that it would be treated as a sanctuary by the Israelis. [1] 

Israel and Hamas agree to ceasefire, but has Biden learned anything?

POSTED MAY 21, 2021

President Biden finally brought enough pressure on Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu to end Israel's 11-day assault on Gaza which left at least 248 Palestinians dead, including 66 children.  On the Israeli side, 12 people, including two children, have been killed.  On Thursday May 20, Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire.

It took eleven days longer than it should have for Biden to exert enough pressure on Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza.  Instead of calling for an immediate ceasefire, Biden stated his support for "Israel's right to defend itself".  But Israel's massively disproportionate response is not, by any reasonable definition of the term, "defending itself".  Disproportionate response is not self-defense.  It is a war crime.

As we have seen in past assaults on the Gaza Strip, attacks on the densely populated Gaza Strip kill civilians no matter how allegedly ‘targeted’ they are.  The effects of the bombing cannot be contained. 

Besides the dead,  who were mostly civilians, at least 58,000 Palestinians have been made homeless in Gaza.  Israel's bombing campaign devastated Gaza's civilian infrastructure with strikes hitting electricity, water, sewage and telecommunications lines.   The 11-day assault also destroyed roads near hospitals, more than 1000 residential buildings, and a high-rise building that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets.  At least 17 hospitals and clinics were damaged, including a a Doctors Without Borders trauma and burn clinic and the Al-Ramal Clinic in Central Gaza, site of Gaza's only COVID-19 testing lab. [link below left]

On Monday May 17, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) issued this statement:

“The horrendous attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure that we are witnessing in Gaza are inexcusable and intolerable.  The situation is critical. The number of wounded and displaced people is mounting while additional humanitarian personnel and supplies still cannot enter Gaza. The local health authority is reporting being 24 hours away from running out of blood bags, meaning they cannot transfuse patients with blood, a key intervention in caring for war wounded.”

On Wednesday May 19, after more than a week of resisting calls from progressives to put more pressure on Israel to obtain a ceasefire and after facing protests during a visit to a Ford auto plant in  Michigan, Biden called Netanyahu for a third time.  Biden said that he “expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a cease-fire,” according to the White House, in the most assertive language used publicly by the administration since the start of the conflict.

Perhaps in a belated understanding of Martin Luther King's insightful observation that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,"  US public opinion on Palestine is changing. [link below right] 

But it is not clear that President Biden has learned anything from this latest tragic episode: 

• Even as the magnitude of the Israeli assault became clear, the United States continued to block U.N. Security Council action on grounds it would interfere with attempts to negotiate a cease-fire.  This rather weak reasoning is not supporting Israel.  It is condoning Israel's violations of international law.

• In the midst of this latest bloodshed, the Biden administration announced a $735 million sale of precision missile equipment to Israel, offensive weapons that may be used to attack Palestinians.  On Wednesday May 19, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan and Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution opposing the sale. 

• In his first comments since a ceasefire was announced on Thursday, Biden once more emphasized that “the United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks”.

What is clear is that the right-wing pro-Israel lobby AIPAC will continue to attack anyone who criticizes Israeli actions. 

AIPAC is running three Facebook ads attacking Ilhan Omar, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Mark Pocan, and Rashida Tlaib.  The attack on Rep. Omar is especially egregious, showing the Minnesota Congresswoman's face next to Hamas rockets.   "Omar’s office has called on Facebook to immediately remove the ads, which 'blatantly peddle both anti-Muslim hate speech and disinformation,' and on AIPAC to apologize. 'Given the number of threats of death and violence the congresswoman receives on a near-daily basis, it’s not just irresponsible—it’s incitement,' Omar’s deputy communications director, Isi Baehr-Breen, told The Nation."

The ads remain up and AIPAC has not apologized. 

Iran nuclear talks resume this week

POSTED JUNE 9, 2021

What was supposed to be the fifth and final round of talks in Vienna to revive the JCPOA (aka "Iran nuclear deal") ended with negotiators returning home to their respective countries last week.  The talks to bring the US and Iran back to the original terms of the landmark 2015 agreement are to resume on June 10.  

Enrique Mora, the European Union envoy coordinating talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal, siad he believed a deal would be struck in this next round.  Other senior diplomats from Britain, France and Germany were more cautious noting that "the most difficult decisions lie ahead.” [4]

Among the most significant barriers to a resolution are Iranian demands about sanctions relief and Western concern over Iran's expanding nuclear know-how.  Analysts believe these issues will take weeks, perhaps months to resolve. [1]

Iran will hold its presidential elections on June 18.  The ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi, head of the judiciary, is the current favorite to win after moderate candidates were barred from running by Iran's Guardian Council. This 60-year-old traditionalist cleric is a close ally of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose confidence he has gained over the years by holding key positions of power. [2]  

While this would seem to portend ill for the negotiations,  cabinet spokesman Ali Rabiei told a weekly news conference that Iran’s nuclear policy, set by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is not linked to internal developments and that the new government would maintain the same policies as those followed in the Vienna talks which began in April. [3]

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, resigned to the revival of a nuclear pact with Iran they always opposed, are engaging with Tehran to contain tensions while lobbying for future talks to take their security concerns into account. [5]

Meanwhile US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says  1) that he is unsure if Iran wants to return to compliance with the terms of the 2015 agreement and 2) that hundreds of sanctions would remain even if the United States returns to the agreement that Trump unilaterally and without cause abandoned and then subjected Iran to the harshest peacetime sanctions ever imposed.  

Hmmm, perhaps your two comments are related, Anthony.

[1] Reuters, June 8 [2] AFP, June 6 [3] News 18, June 8  [4] Reuters, June 2  [5] Reuters, June 9

The sputtering Iran nuclear talks 

POSTED JULY 19, 2021

The talks to revive the JCPOA and bring Iran and the United States back into compliance with the original agreement are on hold and may be in trouble.  If they fail, President Biden will only have himself to blame.  

President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement relieved sanctions imposed on Iran in return for their voluntary limitation on uranium enrichment for civilian purposes.  In 2018, Trump unilaterally and without cause withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and then imposed the harshest peacetime sanctions in history on Iran to effect regime change. 

In December, Iran's foreign minister Javad Zarif stated that Iran would come back into full compliance with its nuclear deal immediately after the incoming Joe Biden administration in the US proved its bona fides by lifting all the illegal sanctions imposed by Donald Trump. (The Guardian, Dec 3)  

Biden could have removed those sanctions on Day One.  He did not.  Instead, the Administration left the vast majority of the Trump-Pompeo sanctions in place, choosing to use them as bargaining chips.  

Sanctions are not bargaining chips.  They are tools of war that impose collective punishment on innocent civilians.   The continuation of US sanctions on Iran and other countries during the pandemic was and is a totally reprehensible act.  

The Graveyard of Empires

POSTED AUGUST 20, 2021

Twenty years after the United States invasion, the Taliban are back in control of Afghanistan.  The irony of the whole American misadventure there goes back to the 1980's when the United States, through the CIA, supported and armed the Mujahedeen in a bastardized version of the discredited Cold War "domino theory" .  

The 1978 Afghan  revolution resulted in a one-party state, run by the head of the communist party, Nur Mohammed Taraki .  The government proved unpopular and Taraki was overthrown and killed in September 1979.  In December 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan to re-establish a friendly government in accordance with the Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty, wherein the two countries agreed to provide economic and military assistance*.   The Mujahedeen, a loose collection of guerilla groups, took up arms against Soviet troops and eventually prevailed. [1]  The United States support was one factor in the eventual departure of Soviet troops in  February 1989, seven months before the symbolic collapse of the Soviet Union with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Many of the Mujahedeen, including Osama bin Laden, went on to careers as members and leaders of either the Taliban or al Qaeda.  Upon first learning about the 9/11 attacks on the news, one of the Congressional spearheads of the CIA's involvement exclaimed, “My God, what have we done?” He did not fully comprehend the possibility that the rebels that he authorized the CIA to assist could someday turn their backs on their benefactors.  [2]

The horrific attacks of 9/11 initiated the US "war on terror."  Pushed by neoconservatives, the Bush Administration decided to prosecute as a war what should have been an international policing action to bring a war criminal to justice.   From a hunt for Osama bin Laden, the invasion of Afghanistan morphed into the invasion and occupation of Iraq and all that followed.  The invasion of Afghanistan was the first step in the neocon's misguided and tragic "war" that eventually destabilized the entire Middle East.  All that followed - the invasion of Iraq, the rise of ISIS, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, the millions of refugees -  began here.  The Iraq War and Occupation may have been the most destabilizing event of the "war on terror", but the invasion of Afghanistan started it all.  

Those disgraced neocons almost got their war with Iran during Trump's tenure, as Mike Pompeo took on their arguments and forged a Middle East policy that once again destroyed America's credibility.  Now the neocons are surfacing again, blaming Biden for the chaos in Afghanistan as the US prepares to leave.  As we listen to these "experts" appearing on news shows, we would do well to take the advice of Liza Featherstone at The Jacobin : "These guys have made successful careers of being catastrophically, tragically wrong. No one should ever listen to any of them again." [3]

Afghanistan has been called the "graveyard of empires."  The Soviet and the American experiments in nation building have proven the case.  While the United States is not in any danger of collapse as was the Soviet Union in 1989, any moral reckoning of the costs of the "war on terror" must take into account the costs not only to the United States but to the rest of the world.  The monetary cost to our country alone is over $6 trillion.  Imagine what $6 trillion could have done had it been used on domestic social programs.  Even more appalling is the death toll - Brown University's Costs of War Project estimates a total of 800,000 dead including more than 335,000 civilians.  [4, 5]

From here on, America's role must be to mitigate the damage: evacuating those who helped the US-Afghan war effort, providing them with asylum and support here in the United States, and working with the international community to ensure that the progress made in the last two decades in Afghanistan towards women's equality and schooling, reduced maternal and infant mortality, and better overall health care are preserved.  

Two of the best analyses of the situation come from Democracy Now!

• For a look at how the refusal of the Bush Administration to negotiate with the Taliban, who offered to turn over Osama bin Laden and compromise on the leadership of the country, led to the invasion of Afghanistan and all that followed, see the Democracy Now! interview below left.

• For a look at the how the war on terror fueled and excused the rise of right-wing extremism here at home and led to the weakening of our democracy and the election of Donald Trump, see the Democracy Now! interview below right.

Related: 20 years in Afghanistan (WITW, Feb 17, 2021)

Note: *Afghanistan borders Russia and was always considered important to its national security and a gateway to Asia. Russia had long tried to establish strong ties, holding interests there for centuries.

Sources: [1] inews  [2] Whose Monster? A Study of the Rise to Power of al Qaeda and the Taliban, Nicholas B. Kotarski, SUNY-Buffalo, December 2018 [3] The Jacobin, Jan 18, 2020 [4] TomDispatch, Jan 24, 2021 [5] Brown University, Nov 13, 2019

The forces opposing the United States' return to the JCPOA and sanctions relief are numerous - the powerful Israel lobby, the Iran hawks, and the far-right Israeli government.  Iran had not been goaded into military action either by the Trump-ordered drone-strike-assassination of a top general in January 2020 or by the Israeli murder of a leading civilian nuclear scientist on November 27 after Biden had been elected.  Iran was ready and willing to negotiate with the Biden Administration.  By not agreeing to end the illegal Trump sanctions while negotiating with the moderate Rouhani government, President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken may have already lost their best chance to act.  

Sources: [1] The Guardian  [2] Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation [3] Brookings Institute

What's going on in Iran?

POSTED OCTOBER 12, 2022

Protests over the death of a 22-year-old woman in the custody of Iran's so-called "morality police" continued into their 25th day. Oil workers joined women and students on the streets, and hackers interrupted Iranian state TV to call on viewers to join the mass protests. Mahsa Amini died after being detained for allegedly leaving some of her hair visible in violation of an Iranian law requiring women to cover their heads. Witnesses said Amini was severely beaten by police.

The full extent of the protests or the security crackdown remains unknown, as the Iranian government has disrupted internet access in parts of Iran and blocked some messaging apps. According to the Oslo-based group, Iran Human Rights,  Iran's violent crackdown of the protests has led to an estimated 185 deaths.  

But the chants of "Women! Life! Freedom!" show no sign of slowing down.  While oil workers and students have joined them, women are clearly in the lead.  Before the internet shutdown, the defining images of the protests included women burning their hijabs in public, women cutting their hair as a form of protest, and women-centric slogans.  The widespread protests show solidarity among different social classes,ethnic backgrounds, and regions including traditionally conservative and religious cities.

“Today’s movement is not calling for reform. Today’s movement is calling for a new vision of politics … with women at the helm of it,” says Narges Bajoghli, professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University, in an interview with Democracy Now! [link below]

The international community is condemning the crackdown with the United States issuing sanctions against seven Iranian officials over the shutdown of internet access and the crackdown on the protesters.  

The Iraq Invasion, the AUMF, and America's Forever Wars

POSTED MARCH 19, 2023

Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of America's invasion of Iraq.  It was, like Russia's more recent invasion of Ukraine, unjustifiable and in violation of international law.  

It was America's biggest foreign policy blunder since Vietnam.  With misguided support from publications that should have known better, the neocon "War on Terror" found its way to Iraq based on false allegations of the existence of weapons of mass destruction.  Other, even less-enlightened media and more-deluded politicians forwarded the equally false contention that somehow Iraq was involved in the attacks of 9/11.  

Matthew Yglesias, posting at Vox about the 2018 demise of the neocon journal "The Weekly Standard" summed up the disastrous consequences of the Iraq invasion that the neocons lied us into:

"In its main phase from 2003 to 2011, this war led to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, plus what appears to be around 400,000 Iraqis. And that was only the beginning. The regional destabilization the invasion touched off led directly to the rise of ISIS and a whole new round of fighting in Iraq in which many thousands of people have died.  More broadly, the extremely deadly civil war in Syria likely also counts as a knock-on consequence of invading Iraq. This is to say nothing of the extent to which the war counterproductively undermined the global nonproliferation regime by convincing North Korea to go for broke in its quest for nukes."  

Yglesias describes the "neo-Reaganite foreign policy" touted by the neocons as "a deeply held ideological view that argues that the United States must avoid any form of pragmatic accommodation of anyone or anything in the international order."

Worldwide protests against the imminent invasion proved fruitless.  America, in its hubris, was going to do whatever it liked, and the war  remade the Middle East for the worse.  [link below]

The costs have been staggering.  At least 929,000 people killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan.  The number of indirect deaths, people who have been wounded or have fallen ill as a result of the conflicts, is far higher.  

As congressional Republicans hold the country's domestic and social welfare programs  hostage over the debt ceiling, it would do us well to remember that the "War on Terror" has cost the United States an estimated $8 trillion - with $2.9 trillion spent on the war in Iraq and neighboring Syria alone.  

So besides ignoring anything that today's neocons like Trump's former  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have to say about anything, what else can we do to keep our country from ever again making such a enormous mistake?  

The first place to start is the imminent repeal of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed in 2001 and then passed again in 2002, in which Congress abdicated its constitutional right to declare war.  As of year end 2021, U.S. presidents had cited the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to justify an unknown number of military operations, including airstrikes, combat, detention, and supporting partner militaries, in at least 22 countries.  

On Thursday March 16, the Senate took a step towards ending the forever wars by advancing a bill that would repeal the AUMF.  The bipartisan legislation (Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana are the measure's lead co-sponsors) would repeal the 2002 authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, that Congress approved for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as the 1991 authorization for the first Gulf War.  The bill, which has 12 Republicans among its 41 co-sponsors, easily advanced by a vote of 68 to 27, setting up a vote on final passage as soon as this week. 

Rep. Barbara Lee of California was the only member of Congress to vote against the 2001 AUMF.  Two and a half years ago, in the waning months of the Trump Presidency, she released a statement on the 19th anniversary of her vote against the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Her statement concludes with these wise words: "Now is the time for Congress, and eventually the White House, to reckon with the reality that gross inequity and institutionalized violence is far too prevalent in our society. We must re-conceptualize how we build security both at home and abroad to uphold the wellbeing and dignity of all people. Our focus should be on broad reforms to end our government’s ability to do harm in the world – such as by repealing the AUMFs and publicly debating any future use of military force – and finally reimagine what tools we employ to confront the threats of the twenty-first century.”

Gaslighting: Neocon Exceptionalism vs Diplomacy and International Law (April 10, 2019)

Sources: Watson Institute (Brown University) Costs of War Project, CBS News

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

POSTED OCTOBER 9, 2023

We look on in shock and grief as Israel and Hamas are again at war and send our heartfelt sympathy and condolences to all Israelis and Palestinians who have been affected and who will be affected by it in the coming weeks. 

War broke out between Israel and Gaza after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Saturday on multiple fronts, including  military installations and on a music festival that killed 260 Israeli civilians.  The militants also captured 100 Israelis, mostly civilians. In response, Israeli air strikes hit housing blocks, tunnels, a mosque and homes of Hamas officials in Gaza on Sunday, killing more than 400 people, including 20 children.  

Early Monday, Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of residents in the Jabaliya refugee camp. The intense bombardment had displaced more than 120,000 people there, and the combined Palestinian and Israeli death toll had reached 1600.  Israel has called up 300,000 reservists and is sending heavy armor toward the Gaza border in what appears to be preparation for a massive ground assault on Gaza.  This comes as the United States is sending more ammunition to Israel and warships to the region. 

Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said it would impose a "complete siege" on the territory. "No electricity, no food, no water, no gas - it's all closed," he said.  The Israeli infrastructure minister later ordered the immediate cut-off of water supplies to Gaza, saying: "What was in the past will no longer be in the future."  Israel has stated they will continue the siege until they recover the hostages.  In a statement released even before those announcements, the Palestinian health ministry said hospitals were already facing a shortage of medicines, medical supplies and fuel due to Israel's actions.  

Some thoughts:

• Nothing justifies the killing and hostage taking of civilians by Hamas.  The hostages must be released immediately.

• The Israeli assault on Gaza has and will indiscriminately kill many Palestinian civilians.  This is a war crime. 

• The intensified air, sea, and land blockade of Gaza cuts off food, water, fuel and medicine to an enclave already one of the poorest in the world.  It will precipitate an immense humanitarian crisis and many additional civilian deaths.  Nowhere in Gaza is safe, and the International Red Cross has warned that the barely-functioning hospitals there will become graveyards.  This collective punishment is a war crime.

• The UNRWA is the major source of aid to the Gaza Strip.  You can donate here to help mitigate the impending humanitarian crisis.  Oxfam, Amnesty International, and AFSC are among the many NGOs calling for an end of the siege and a resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza.  AFSC also has a petition to Congress calling for opening humanitarian access to Gaza.

• Israel's 16-year land, sea, and air blockade on Gaza has devastated it and turned it into what many have called the world's largest open-air prison.  The Gaza Strip has virtually no industry and suffers from a chronic lack of water, fuel and electricity.  According to the World Bank, around half of the population is unemployed, and more than two-thirds are reliant on development aid.  Israel's 5 wars against Gaza have reduced it to rubble, but neither Israel's apartheid occupation nor its brutal blockade nor its massive sieges have stopped the Palestinian resistance.  

• The only way to end the cyclical violence is to end the illegal Israeli occupation [video link below left] and to ensure that all those violating international law on both sides are held accountable [link below right].

• For there to be peace in the Middle East and put an end to the violence of both sides, the United States must begin acting as a fair and honest peace broker, rather than as an enabler of Israel's violations of human rights and international law.  We have the leverage ($3.7 billion/year in military aid) to pressure Israel's compliance with international law and to stop Israeli apartheid, which, in many ways, is worse than that of 20th century South Africa.  The latter oppression ended only after the United States joined the rest of the world and stopped supporting that regime.

Sources: Al Jazeera, Democracy Now!, BBC, France 24

Biden just went from enabling Israeli war crimes to being complicit in them

POSTED OCTOBER 19, 2023

As expected, Biden used his second-ever Oval Office address to appeal to Americans for their support for tens of billions of dollars of funding for Israel and Ukraine.  Biden said he would send an urgent funding request to Congress, which is expected to be roughly $100bn over the next year. The proposal, which will be unveiled on Friday, includes money for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, humanitarian aid and border management.  In a "historically illiterate and hypocritical" speech on Ukraine and Gaza, Biden asked for funding for both the US struggle to get Russia back out of Ukraine and of support for the extremist Netanyahu government’s combination of targeting Hamas and its genocidal campaign against the civilians of Gaza.  [link below left]

Earlier in the day, the US had used its veto at the UN security council to block a resolution calling for Israel to allow humanitarian corridors into the Gaza Strip, a pause in the fighting and the lifting of an order for civilians to leave the north of the besieged territory. 

His visit to Israel was a disgrace.  Instead of pressuring for a ceasefire or at least insisting that Israel adhere to international law and take every step it can to prevent civilian deaths, avoid collective punishment and ethnic cleansing, he doubled down in his support of the Netanyahu government.  His insensitive comment that he bought Israel's fourth version* of the explosion at the Gaza hospital that left up to 500 dead (something like "I believe it was the other team") was beyond the pale.

Hamas's terrorist attack was reprehensible and a crime against humanity.  Israel's response is just as reprehensible.  The Palestinian death toll is approaching 4000, including more than 1000 children. More than 12,000 Palestinians have been wounded in the bombings while  the hospital system is collapsing.   Because of the complete blockade imposed by Israel, Palestinians lack clean water, food, and medicine.  A cholera epidemic is now feared because of the suspension of vaccinations for children and because of the destruction of the sanitary infrastructure.  By requesting more weapons for Israel, Biden has gone from "merely" enabling their war crimes to being complicit in them.

State Department official Josh Paul resigned from his position over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. He worked for the State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.  “I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.” 

HuffPost reports that other diplomats at State are preparing what’s called a “dissent cable,” a document criticizing American policy that goes to the agency’s leaders through a protected internal channel. 

Sending billions in bombs and weapons to an Israeli military that has already killed nearly 4,000 innocent Palestinians is unacceptable.  The Democratic Party needs a new generation of leaders who’ll stand up for human rights and peace.  Joe Biden is not that person. 

Sources: The Guardian -1, The Guardian-2, Democracy Now!, Informed Comment, Mondoweiss, HuffPost

*Shades of their dissembling on the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Israel has changed its story of the hospital explosion four times. The first Israeli reaction was that they did the airstrike on the hospital because Hamas militants were hiding there. Then they changed the story, and they said that Hamas was using Palestinians as human shields. Then it was a misfired Hamas rocket. Then it was a misfired jihadi rocket.  When and if the truth behind the explosion at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital are ever known, it will not change the fact that Israelis have targeted and continue to target health facilities and schools. [link below right]

"...none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity"

POSTED OCTOBER 24, 2023

In 2013, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain travelled to Occupied Palestine and did a "Parts Unknown" episode on Palestinian food. In the episode, Mr. Bourdain was a guest of a Palestinian family in Gaza, Palestine. Bourdain received an award for the episode from the Muslim Public Affairs Council in 2014.  Overwhelmed by the support of his work from Palestinians and many others, his acceptance speech [link below left] concluded with these words, "The world has visited many terrible things upon the Palestinians, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity."

Salon praises the episode in an article posted on Sunday [link below right] for its depiction of Palestinian day-to-day life, of which "we’re shown next to nothing, save for seconds-long clips of angry demonstrators, fighters wrapped in keffiyeh scarves or wailing victims of military strikes.  With this being the dominant lens, it’s no wonder that the Western audience conflates everyday Gazans and West Bank residents with Hamas militants terrorizing both their own civilians and Israelis."  

This was no ordinary culinary show, and Bourdain did not play it safe.  "By journeying into Gaza, Bourdain was visiting a place described by numerous international officials and organizations as the world’s largest open-air prison. The sister of one of his hosts was shot down by snipers while standing in her kitchen. Gaza was not officially at war with Israel when that happened. She was going about her day, something most Western viewers can't picture."

Occupied Palestine Update: November 3 - 10

LAST UPDATED NOVEMBER 10

A summary of some of this week's events in Occupied Palestine as the Israeli onslaught on Gaza continues.

*According to international law, the transfer by an occupying power of its civilian population into the territory it occupies is a war crime.  "Settlers" is Israeli/US speak for Israelis who have taken Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem  with the approval of the Israeli government.  There are over 244 illegal Israeli settlements and outposts in the West Bank. In total, over 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem, with an additional 220,000 Jewish settlers residing in East Jerusalem. Additionally, over 25,000 Israeli settlers live in the Golan Heights.

Sidebar from the top: Anti-war activists rally for a cease fire in Gaza at Freedom Plaza Washington D.C. November 4 [AP photo /Jose Luis Magana]; link to Democracy Now! coverage of the protest in Washington; Palestinians mourn relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in front of the morgue in Deir el-Balah on November 6 [Hatem Moussa/AP Photo]; Rashida Tlaib addresses the House before her censure vote/Informed Comment post; link to Democracy Now! post on the protest against media bias in Israel-Hamas war; Palestinians carry a casualty of Israeli attacks at Al-Shifa Hospital [Doaa Rouqa/Reuters]; Guardian video of Israeli bombing of hospital in Gaza; Al Jazeera article showing the scale of the destruction in Gaza 

Unconscionable

POSTED DECEMBER 19, 2023

US support of Israel's war on Gaza has long passed the point of us standing up for an ally.  Our weapons, our government's statements and our opposition to a humanitarian ceasefire have made us complicit in the genocide and war crimes being perpetrated there now.  

Let's be clear.  

No military objective can possibly justify the indiscriminate bombing, the strangling total blockade, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and homes, and the attacks on hospitals, ambulances, refugee camps, schools serving as shelters, and journalists reporting on the war.  

A few news items from the past weekend [link below left] shed light on how far down the "atrocity and lawlessness path" the Israel/US war on Gaza has gone:

• On Friday, Samer Abudaqa, a reporter from Al Jazeera, bled to death after being injured in an Israeli drone strike on a U.N. school. Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him for five hours.  It was not the first time a journalist reporting on the war has been targeted.  At least 90 journalists and staff have been killed since the conflict began on October 7.  And it is not the fist time Israeli forces prevented medical help from treating the wounded.

• Also on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza, who managed to escape captivity in northern Gaza. The three men, who were all shirtless, were shot as they cried for help in Hebrew while holding up a white flag.  Apparently anything that moves in Gaza is fair game for the IDF.  They are clearly operating without any rules of engagement that would limit civilian deaths.

• On Saturday, an Israeli attack on the Jabaliya refugee camp killed 110 people. Israel has also raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, where doctors say Israeli bulldozers crushed Palestinians to death, including wounded patients who were living in tents in the hospital’s courtyard. Israel has also attacked Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.  According to the World Health Organization, only four hospitals of 24 working in north Gaza before the war with Israel began have even partial service, and three of those are barely functioning. [link below right]

• On Monday, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime. HRW says, “Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.”

There is only one word for the United States repeatedly opposing UN resolutions for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Unconscionable.

ICYMI: What's actually happening in Gaza

POSTED JANUARY 8, 2023

Some stories you may have missed about Israel's war against Gaza.

The death toll has now surpassed 23,000, including 10,000 children, who are bearing the brunt of the genocide.  

UNICEF: “Children in Gaza are caught in a nightmare that worsens with every passing day.”  There are some 3,000 new cases of diarrhea among the Strip’s children every single day now.  

Save the Children: An average of over ten children a day over the last three months have had one or both legs amputated.  

The UN warns that 3 months of unrelenting Israeli bombing has left Gaza uninhabitable and people in Gaza face the “highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded."

In the midst of the near total crippling of Gaza's health care system, a public health disaster is unfolding as infectious diseases spread in overcrowded shelters as sewers spill over.  Around 180 Palestinian women “are giving birth daily amidst this chaos.” 

UN’s World Health Organization: the Israeli army has attacked hospitals and other medical facilities 600 times in the past three months. Some 613 persons have been killed in these attacks, including premature babies and 770 were wounded.  According to the latest WHO assessments, Gaza has 13 partially functioning hospitals, two minimally functioning ones, and 21 that are not functioning at all.

Although Gaza’s healthcare system is barely functioning, the Israeli army is continuing to attack hospitals. Most recently, the military has been targeting the only hospital in central Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which has already been over-capacity.

Zero credible evidence has been presented by the Israeli government for its claims that hospitals were Hamas command centers, and a Washington Post investigation has knocked down that claim definitively for al-Shifa hospital.  

By the end of last year, the UN Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, estimated that 1.9 million people had been internally displaced by the war in Gaza – nearly 85% of the population.

About 65,000 residential units have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Another 290,000 have been damaged. That means that about half a million people have no home to return to.

Analysis of satellite data cited by the Associated Press suggests that about 33% of buildings have been destroyed. The AP said that the rate of devastation was worse than either the razing of Aleppo in Syria or Russia’s bombing of Mariupol. [link below right]

As Israel pummeled the devastated enclave in late December, the Biden administration approved the transfer of more than $147 million in weapons to the Israelis without congressional approval. It was the second time that month that the Administration sent arms to Israel without Congressional approval.

Foreign policy experts warn that Biden's refusal to press for a ceasefire may draw the US into another Middle War.  Groups such as Iraqi militias and the Houthis have made it clear that if there is a ceasefire, they will cease their attacks.  When there was a ceasefire at the end of November of last year, there were no attacks whatsoever from the Iraqi militias and only one from the Houthis. [link below left]

Palestinian journalist Anan Quzmar says media workers are being targeted in order to “shut down the coverage” of Israeli atrocities.  The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate has filed an amicus brief in support of the Center for Constitutional Rights genocide lawsuit against Israel, citing the unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza and evidence that at least 96 of the 109 journalists were deliberately targeted by the Israeli military.

The International Court of Justice will hold hearings this week on a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza war and seeking an emergency suspension of its military campaign.   South Africa's 84-page filing cites Israel's failure to provide essential food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance to the Gaza strip during the more than three-month-old war with Hamas. It also points to the sustained bombing campaign which has laid much of the enclave to waste, forced the evacuation of some 1.9 million Palestinians and killed over 23,000 people according to Gaza health authorities.

Senator Bernie Sanders introduced  a resolution invoking Section 502B, a rarely used provision of the Foreign Assistance Act that offers Congress a potent tool to force a high-profile Senate debate about U.S. military support for possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza and pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to hasten a ceasefire. [link below center]

Ceasefire now to end "one of the worst human catastrophes of this century"

POSTED FEBRUARY 2, 2024

As Israel's genocidal siege of Gaza approaches the 120 day mark, CNN reports that more than 800 officials and diplomats from the United States and Europe have signed a scathing criticism of Western policy towards Israel and Gaza, accusing their governments of possible complicity in war crimes: “We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century.” 

In defiance of  orders by the International Court of Justice that Israel must take action to prevent genocidal violence by its armed forces; “prevent and punish” the incitement to genocide; and insure that humanitarian aid to Gaza is increased, the siege continues unabated.  It appears that nothing less than an immediate permanent ceasefire will stop the Israelis.  

• More than 27,000 are dead and 66,000 wounded.  An estimated 70% of the victims are women and children.  This week, Palestinian officials accused Israeli troops of killing at least 30 civilians “execution-style” after blindfolded bodies with hands bound are discovered in a mass grave in northern Gaza.

• 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, 50% of the buildings have been destroyed.  As homeless Palestinians flee from one "safe" zone to another, refugee camps and shelters are attacked.  This week, the Israeli defense minister pledged to attack an area in Rafah once described as a “safe zone”.

• Israel continues to attack hospitals and ambulances throughout the Gaza Strip.  Just 14 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are still functioning, and those are in a reduced capacity.  At least 300 medical workers have been killed during Israeli attacks on medical facilities and medical transport. This week, the Gaza Health Ministry says Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals have run out of food as Israeli siege of the Khan Younis medical centers continues. Also this week, the Palestine Red Crescent Society called for the international community to intervene immediately to halt attacks on medical workers and to help find a 6-year-old girl, Hind, and two members of their emergency medical team, who have been missing for nearly four days. 

“These systematic attacks against health care are unacceptable and must end now so that the wounded can get the care they need. The entire health system has been rendered inoperative.” - Guillemette Thomas, MSF/Doctors Without Borders

• The threat of famine and disease grows daily while the Israeli blockade and  interference is preventing food, water, fuel and medicine from reaching the people of Gaza.  Nine out of 10 people are living on one meal a day in Gaza, according to the World Food Programme, and Human Rights Watch have accused the Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip.  

As Gaza spirals toward full-scale famine, displaced civilians and health workers say they go hungry so their children can eat what little is available.  If Palestinians find water, it is likely undrinkable. When relief trucks trickle into the strip, people clamber over each other to grab aid. Children living on the streets, after being forced from their homes by Israel’s bombardment, cry and fight over stale bread. Others reportedly walk for hours in the cold searching for food, risking exposure to Israeli strikes.  - CNN

• While Israel's bombardment of Gaza continues, the flow of aid is being "drip-fed" into the strip. Before the war, 500 trucks a day were needed to provide basic needs.  Needs are even greater now but most days fewer than 200  and often less than 100 arrive. Time-consuming and often arbitrary Israeli inspection processes have slowed the entry of assistance, and ongoing hostilities, communication blackouts, the absence of security guarantees from Israel, and the widespread destruction of roads and other infrastructure have made it exceedingly difficult for UN agencies and NGOs to distribute it once it's inside Gaza. [link below left]

“I’ve never seen anything where there was such a lethal combination of factors going on to create the humanitarian situation, but also prevent it from being addressed” - Kate Phillips-Barrasso, Mercy Corps. 

Responding to Israeli claims that twelve of the UNRWA's 13,000 aid workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attacks, the United States and several other countries have suspended contributions to the agency that Palestinians have relied on for everything from vaccinations to education for seven decades.   Israel's claims against an agency it has long tried to eliminate [link below right] come just days after the ICJ ruled that Israeli actions in Gaza present a credible risk of genocide.  

U.N. officials urged countries to reconsider a pause in funding for the U.N. agency for Palestinians, pledging that any staff found involved in Hamas' attack on Israel would be punished and warning that aid for some two million people in Gaza was at stake.  Progressive US lawmakers assailed the Biden Administration's decision. The latest to join the chorus of those calling on President Joe Biden to reconsider is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who blasted the administration for pausing funding. “Obviously, it’s not acceptable for any of the 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza to be involved with Hamas, and allegations against the 12 people charged must be investigated,” Senator Sanders said in a statement. “However, we cannot allow millions to suffer because of the actions of 12 people. The U.S. and other countries must restore funding to stave off this humanitarian catastrophe.”

Pushing Israel for an immediate sustainable ceasefire is step one in ending this genocide.  Anything less is to continue our complicity in Israel's war crimes.  It is not too late to regain some shred of our moral standing in the world.  We have the leverage - in the tens of billions of dollars of military aid we have sent Israel.  Instead of cutting off aid to a devastated enclave at risk of famine and widespread disease, we should stop military aid to Israel until they agree to a sustainable ceasefire.  

Once that is achieved, the Administration should take the lead in rebuilding Gaza, crushed by decades of blockade, invaded time and time again, and now destroyed by Israel's genocidal rampage with US bombs and weaponry.  Announcing a "Marshall Plan for Palestine" would be a step in  restoring America's reputation as a nation concerned with human dignity and human rights.

Longer-term, all future US military aid to Israel must be conditioned on its ending the abuse of Palestinian human rights and its compliance with international law.  Peace will not be achieved in the region without holding Israel accountable for its treatment of Palestinians.  Apartheid, appropriation of Palestinian land, and the brutal blockade must stop.

All eyes on Rafah

POSTED FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Rafah

Israel continues to defy the orders of the International Court of Justice*.  Its bombardment of Rafah in preparation for an announced ground assault crystallizes the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the meaninglessness of the "too little, too late" admonitions from the Biden Administration, and on a larger scale, and what American and Western complicity in the war crimes means for the future of human rights and international law.

On Monday, the South African government lodged an urgent complaint at the International Court of Justice against the plan announced by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to attack Rafah in southern Gaza, where 1.4 million people, most of them refugees from elsewhere, have been pushed by the Israeli military.  The complaint described Rafah as "the last refuge for the surviving people in Gaza." [Informed Comment and link below left]

Over the weekend, just days after rejecting a Hamas proposal for a ceasefire that US deemed as having merit, Israel hit Rafah with a wave of bombing raids, intended in part to provide cover for an operation to free two hostages.  In a display of the totally unrestrained nature of Israel's response to the October 7 attacks, Israel killed 67 Gazans to free 2 hostages - hostages who would have been freed by the Hamas ceasefire proposal rejected by Israel.  

Meanwhile the US continues to send weapons to Israel aiding and abetting its war crimes while we withhold funds from the UNRWA**, the primary aid agency for Gaza in the midst of famine and genocide and a destroyed medical care system.  In recent days, as Israel has prepared for a ground invasion of Rafah—drawing heavy international criticism—the administration said it is asking for much clearer plans from Israel and has expressed the sentiment that Israel should not attack Rafah without providing for thee safe evacuation of civilians.  What this means in practice is hard to fathom. As Matt Duss - the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders - points out, such warnings are “meaningless” when the United States shows no signs of “consequences for anything Israel does." When asked if the “over the top” statement by Biden should be seen as a legitimate pushback to Netanyahu he said: “I can’t take that seriously. I’m sorry. You’re still delivering the weapons. You’re still enabling this massacre. That is what matters.” [Mother Jones]

Contrast the US position with the recent ruling in the Netherlands, where an appeals court in The Hague ruled that the Dutch government must cease sending spare parts for the F-35 fighter-jet to Israel: “It is undeniable that there is a clear risk that the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law.”  The court noted that the Netherlands is signatory to treaties and instruments that make it unlawful under Dutch law to pursue such exports “if a clear risk of serious violations of international humanitarian law exists.”  While the Netherlands government appealed the ruling, an Oxfam spokesman expressed his hope that the ruling would have an impact on other European exporters of military weaponry to Israel. [Informed Comment]

Feb 16 Update: The International Court of Justice declined South Africa’s request for urgent additional measures to safeguard Palestinians in Rafah.  The ICJ reiterated its original orders, stating that the situation in Rafah “demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the Court in its Order of 26 January 2024.” [Al Jazeera]

The Future of Human Rights and International Law

Writing in the journal Foreign Affairs [link below right], Agnès Callamard discusses what the West's (and particularly the US's) continuing support of the Israeli assault on Gaza means for the future of international law and human rights.  Long after it became clear that thousands of civilians were being indiscriminately killed, they stayed with their initial messages of support.  As the war crimes mounted and the total blockade on Gaza denied Palestinians fuel, food, water and medicine, "all governments, especially those with influence over Israel, should have unequivocally and publicly denounced Israel’s unlawful actions and called for a cease-fire, for the return of all hostages, and for accountability for war crimes and other violations on both sides."

Although there were rehearsals for events in Gaza that showed extreme disregard of international law, she warns that "the war there may well signal a curtain call. The risk of genocide, the gravity of the violations being committed, and the flimsy justifications by elected officials in Western democracies warn of a change of eras. The rules-based order that has governed international affairs since the end of World War II is on its way out, and there may be no turning back."

Callamard notes the consequences of this abandonment of principles: more instability, aggression, conflict, and suffering. "The only check on violence will be more violence. The end of the rules-based order will also bring spreading and palpable anger across all layers of society, in all corners of the earth, except among those positioned to reap whatever sullied rewards can be extracted from the breaking international system."

What steps need be taken to avoid this worst-case scenario? 

• the immediate cessation of all military operations by both Israel and Hamas

• the immediate release of all remaining civilian hostages detained by Hamas and of all Palestinians unlawfully detained by Israel

• lifting  the siege of Gaza and fully implementing the ICJ’s provisional measures to prevent genocide in Gaza.

• acceptance and acknowledgement by Israel and the United States that "the stated military objective of destroying Hamas has wrought an overwhelming cost to civilian lives and infrastructure, which likely cannot be justified under international law."

• the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court "must act decisively to deliver indictments for crimes committed by all parties to the conflict."

Callemard then concludes her analysis with this: "Neither historical grievances nor long-term prospects for peace in the Middle East, and arguably beyond, can be addressed without an international and inclusive process that specifies a dismantling of Israel’s system of apartheid and allows for the security and rights of all populations to be protected."

Notes

*On Friday January 26, the world's highest court, the International Court of Justice, found that there was a "plausible risk" of genocide in Gaza, and ruled that Israel must take action to prevent genocidal violence by its armed forces; “prevent and punish” the incitement to genocide; and insure that humanitarian aid to Gaza is increased.  Three weeks later Israel has yet to comply with any of the Court's orders.

**Days after the ICJ found a "plausible risk" that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, Israel alleged that 12 of UNRWA's 13,000 workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attacks.  The United States and several other western nations suspended their support of the UNRWA until an investigation was completed.  The UNRWA is the agency that Palestinians have relied on for everything from vaccinations to education for seven decades.  Israel has long tried to eliminate the UN agency, which enshrines the right of Palestinian refugees to return home, as provided by international law.  Meanwhile, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed at least 28,500 Palestinians and wounded more than 68,000, and we continue to ship them arms and bombs to continue the genocide.  

"How many deaths will it take?"

POSTED FEBRUARY 29, 2024

How many deaths will it take 'til he knows

That too many people have died?

-Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"

The War on Gaza has reached a tragic milestone.   The death toll in Gaza is now 30,000, twice the number of Palestinians killed during the ethnic cleansing, the nakba, that resulted in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.   

As Israel continues its defiance of the orders of International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it prevent genocide and allow adequate aid into the devastated enclave, the United States continues to provide Netanyahu's far-right government with the weapons and bombs to continue the slaughter.  

Almost as distressing as that fact are the shameful actions of the United States at the United Nations.  On three occasions, we have vetoed Security Council resolutions for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, most recently on February 20.  The draft resolution, presented by Algeria on behalf of Arab states, gathered overwhelming support from 13 of 15 Security Council members, with only the US voting against it and the UK abstaining. The United States has lost the respect of nearly the entire world by its continued support of the slaughter and its obvious double standard when it comes to human rights.  [link below left]

The ICJ ruling in late January has had no effect on Israeli interference in aid shipments.  According to UNRWA, the aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza in February represent a nearly 50 per cent reduction compared to January.

Earlier this month, with Palestinians denied water, food, fuel and medicine, their homes destroyed, their health care system on the verge of total collapse, the United States suspended funds for the main aid agency for Palestine, the UNRWA.  The reason: Israeli allegations that 12 of the 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza may have been involved in some way in the October 7 attacks. [link below right] 

The main entry point for humanitarian aid into the devastated enclave, Rafah, has been under heavy Israeli bombardment, and Netanyahu has announced plans for a ground assault there.  This would further exacerbate the already catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.  Approximately 1.4 million Palestinians have sought shelter in Rafah after escaping deadly attacks across the Gaza Strip.  A ground invasion raises the risk of tens of thousands of Palestinians being pushed across the border into Egypt, creating yet another humanitarian disaster. Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has emphasized the disastrous implications of this displacement for Palestinians and the stability of the Middle East.

Over two million people now face famine.  Gaza’s Health Ministry says children are dying due to dehydration, and “escalating famine” could “kill thousands” in days if more aid does not enter the Gaza Strip.  A few headlines about the War on Gaza from the past few days...

U.N. Special Rapporteur Accuses Israel of War Crimes By Depriving Food to Gaza 

‘Massacre’: Dozens killed by Israeli fire in Gaza while collecting food aid.  More than 100 Palestinians waiting for food aid were killed and 760 wounded after being shot at by Israeli forces in Gaza

As 2-Month-Old Starves to Death in Gaza, Mosab Abu Toha Says His Own Family Is Eating Animal Feed

Gaza Ceasefire Could Save 75,000 from Death: Report from London School of Hygiene & Johns Hopkins

Israel’s war on Gaza live: Six children die of malnutrition in north Gaza

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration stands idly by, allowing the butchery and war crimes to continue and blocking UN resolutions for a humanitarian ceasefire.  One must wonder: how many deaths will it take to have President Biden admit that "too many people have died" and do something about it?  40,000? 60,000? 100,000? 

One must also wonder: what war crime or atrocity will push Biden to understand the horrific nature of the Israeli assault?  That some of the most vital humanitarian aid is being turned away by Israel? The massacre of dozens of men women and children in line to get food? The obliteration of Gaza's health care system?  The killing of more than 12,000 children...the equivalent of five Parkland Florida high school shootings every day for four months?  The destruction of  water wells,  fuel shortages, power cuts, and the absence of working desalination plants that have left Gaza's clean water at only 7% of its prewar supply? That famine and cholera are almost certain to happen and may cause more deaths than Israel's US-supplied missiles and bombs?  

The justifications given by the Administration for its support of Israeli war crimes and its opposition to a humanitarian ceasefire are as ludicrous  as they are sickening.  The alternate reality constructed by Netanyahu/Biden of "human shields" and "Israel's right to self-defense" is an inhuman obscenity.  No military objective can possibly justify the tens of thousands of civilian deaths, the gross interference in humanitarian aid deliveries, and the destruction of Gaza's health care system.  

Israel is not defending itself.  It is wantonly slaughtering Palestinians, a people they drove from their homes 75 years ago and have oppressed for decades.   We are aiding and abetting a text-book case of genocide.