Biden Administration Faces Rebellion Within its Own Ranks over Gaza War

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Schools-turned-shelters run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, have suffered serious damage in strikes in the last week. July 2024. Credit: United Nations

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 19 2024 (IPS) – The Biden administration, which has come under heavy fire for its unyielding pro-Israeli stand on the nine-month-old war in Gaza, is facing a rebellion within its own bureaucratic ranks—12 and counting.

The 12 government officials, who recently resigned, have accused the US of providing diplomatic cover for the continuous flow of arms to Israel ensuring “our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza.”

This is not only morally reprehensible and in clear violation of international humanitarian law and US laws, but it has also put a target on America’s back,” they continue, arguing that it has put the lives of service members and diplomats at risk.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU), and who taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies, told IPS: “I share the overall view of the 12 US government officials who have resigned in protest against the Biden administration’s policy in connection with the Israel-Hamas war”.

They wrote in their joint statement, titled Service in Dissent, that “America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza. This is not only morally reprehensible and in clear violation of international humanitarian law and US laws, but it has also put a target on America’s back.”

https://jointstatement.tiiny.site/

“I have supported Israel’s right to defend itself as well as the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s war efforts, standing by the US’s iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security by providing it with all necessary military aid and political cover.

“I have stated time and again that Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack and Israel’s unparalleled retaliation have reinforced my own view, which I share with many others, that there will be no resolution to the 76-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict short of a two-state solution.

I still hold to the position that it will be impossible to return to the status quo that prevailed before October 7, as a new paradigm was created that offered the inimitable opportunity to recommence the peace negotiations that could lead to a two-state solution,” said Dr Ben-Meir.

Meanwhile there have also been negative reactions in European capitals. Last February, the New York Times ran a story headlined “US and European officials release a Letter Protesting Israeli Policies.”

According to the Times report, more than 500 officials in the US, Britain and the European Union (EU) released a “public letter of dissent” against their (respective) government’s support of Israel in its war in Gaza.”

In an oped piece published on the IPS wire July 18, Mouin Rabbani, Co-Editor of Jadaliyya and Non-Resident Fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS), says the Letter of Dissent makes indisputably clear that US policy towards the present crisis has been an absolute failure at virtually every level.

https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/07/us-policy-towards-gaza-crisis-absolute-failure-virtually-every-level/

Not only has it failed to achieve any of its objectives and further consolidate Western hegemony in the Middle East, but it has made the US government directly and actively complicit in the genocide currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, he said.

As the signatories note, the US is “wilfully” violating not only international laws that are binding upon Washington, but is similarly and knowingly violating US domestic law in its fanatic determination to see Israel’s mass atrocities through to the bitter end, said Rabbani, who is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).

“Tellingly, and quite accurately, they also point out that the Biden administration’s determination to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ultra-rightist, annexationist government has led to the suppression of basic constitutional freedoms within the United States,” he declared.

Meanwhile, in an address to the UN Security Council on July 17, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that recent developments are driving a stake through the heart of any prospect for a two-State solution.

“The geography of the occupied West Bank is steadily being altered through Israeli administrative and legal steps. The seizure of large land parcels in strategic areas and changes to planning, land management and governance are expected to significantly accelerate settlement expansion”.

These changes, he pointed out, include the issuance of two military orders at the end of May. These orders transferred powers to, and appointed, a civilian deputy in Israel’s Civil Administration, which is alarming.

This move is another significant advance in the ongoing transfer of authority over many aspects of daily life in the occupied West Bank, and a further step towards extending Israeli sovereignty over this occupied territory.

If left unaddressed, these measures risk causing irreparable damage, he said.

“We must change course. All settlement activity must cease immediately. Israeli settlements are a flagrant violation of international law and a key obstacle to peace. The violence must end, and the perpetrators of the violence must be swiftly brought to justice.

Israel must ensure the safety and security of the Palestinian population, Guterres declared.

Elaborating further Dr Ben-Meir said: “Personally, I was in favor of crippling Hamas militarily. Still, I have also repeatedly stated that while Israel may be able to crush Hamas militarily, it will be unable to destroy it as a political movement that holds a specific ideology that calls for Israel’s destruction.

“However, I have never subscribed to the notion that Hamas will ever be in a position to extinguish Israel for many reasons, including the fact that Hamas leaders know only too well that Israel is a formidable military power whose existence is irrevocable. The war has made it clear that challenging Israel’s right to exist is tantamount to suicide”.

President Biden was the first global leader to affirm that, given the new developing circumstances, a two-state solution is a prerequisite to end this endemic conflict.

As the war continued to grind on and as the Palestinians’ death toll and destruction were mounting, and Prime Minister Netanyahu categorically refused to even mention any solution along the lines of an independent state, the whole idea of a two-state solution was dropped from Biden’s lexicon. But the flow of weapons to Israel, if anything, was increasing without any preconditions.

Moreover, the US vetoed two UNSC resolutions that called for a ceasefire while food, water, fuel, and medical supplies were dwindling, and the displacement of Palestinians by the hundreds of thousands continued unabated.

Meanwhile, Israel’s relentless bombing using American-made bombs, which were killing thousands in densely populated areas, made the US complicit in the horrific carnage. By now, more than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed, and more than half of Gaza lies in ruin, Dr Ben-Meir said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Kanak Ambition for Independence Is Defiant Following Political Turmoil in New Caledonia

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Kanak Pro-Independence supporters display the Kanak flag during a rally in the streets of Noumea prior to New Caledonia's first referendum on Independence in 2018. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Kanak Pro-Independence supporters display the Kanak flag during a rally in the streets of Noumea prior to New Caledonia’s first referendum on Independence in 2018. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

NOUMEA, New Caledonia , Jul 17 2024 (IPS) – It’s been 26 years since a peace agreement, the Noumea Accord, was signed following an outbreak of conflict in the 1980s between Kanak islanders and French armed forces in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.

But the eruption of turbulent protests and unrest again two months ago has shown that the cleavage of indigenous political grievances with the French state remains deep in this group of islands located east of Australia in the southwest Pacific.

The centre of New Caledonia’s capital, Noumea, a popular holiday destination in the Pacific Islands, is usually abuzz with tourists patronizing sidewalk cafes. But many of the streets, now patrolled by French police, are deserted and eerily quiet.

The protests, which began in mid-May, escalated to armed clashes between activists and French security forces, resulting in ten deaths. And the destruction of homes, public buildings and looting of shops and businesses has had a devastating impact on the small island society. The cost of the damage is estimated to be more than USD 1 billion; at least 7,000 people have lost jobs and incomes, and the territory’s economy has suffered a major downturn.

Barricades were erected in the streets of Noumea when confrontations escalated between Pro-Independence activists and French police in May following the French Parliament's adoption of electoral reforms in New Caledonia. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

Barricades were erected in the streets of Noumea when confrontations escalated between Pro-Independence activists and French police in May following the French Parliament’s adoption of electoral reforms in New Caledonia. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

The unrest has revealed the gaping fracture between France’s determination to retain control of the territory and the indigenous Kanak islanders, who are riled at lack of progress toward their call for self-determination.

“We protested in the streets. We wanted to say to the French state, you must respect the Kanaks because France voted for the reforms without consent from us,” Jacques (his name has been changed), a Kanak activist in Noumea, told IPS.

He was speaking of the adoption of electoral changes in New Caledonia by the French Parliament, which would have opened the electoral roll to tens of thousands of recent migrant settlers, the majority from Europe.

About 41 percent of New Caledonia’s population is indigenous and many believe it would have led to the declining influence of their vote against rising numbers of Loyalists in future elections and referendums. The changing demographic balance between Kanaks and non-Kanaks is a longstanding grievance.

The uprising in the 1980s was driven by grievances about land dispossession, poverty, inequality, the absence of civil and political rights, and France’s policy of promoting migration from France to New Caledonia.

While French President Emmanuel Macron suspended the electoral reforms in mid-June, many Pro-Independence supporters are unappeased.

Jacques is among a group of Kanak activists who have set up a campaign site next to a main road on the outskirts of the capital. They are sitting around a table under a marquee, surrounded by flags and banners.

“We want our country to be decolonized, as it is written in the Noumea agreement. The French state is only interested in dominating the population here. If the French state stays here, we will have more violence,” Jacques claims.

The French government agreed in the 1998 Noumea Accord to grant New Caledonia more governing powers, recognition of Kanak culture and right to consultation, restrictions on the local electoral roll allowing only Kanaks and long-term residents to vote and the holding of referendums on its future political status.

But by 2021, three referendums had been held, all with majority outcomes, to remain part of France. There was a 43.33 percent vote for Independence in the first referendum in 2018, which increased to 46.74 percent in the second in 2020. But Kanaks, severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, boycotted the third referendum in 2021. The overwhelming Loyalist vote of 96.5 percent has never been accepted by Pro-Independence political parties, such as the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).

“We firmly support the call by FLNKS for the UN to declare the result of the third referendum null and void due to the non-participation of the people of Kanaky. Voter turnout was below 50 percent of registered voters; hence, it cannot be taken as the legitimate wish of the silent majority,” the sub-regional inter-governmental organization, the Melanesian Spearhead Group, stated in 2021.

Kanak separatists’ determination to keep their aspirations alive, even though options for changing the political status quo through referendums have been exhausted, has led to an increasingly polarized political landscape. Some entrenched Loyalists believe that the French state should “take over the New Caledonian government because of all the political problems that we have,” Catherine Ris, President of the University of New Caledonia in Noumea, told IPS. And, “on the Pro-Independence side, we do not hear the moderate people anymore.”

The recent mobilization of the Field Action Coordinating Cell (CCAT) by the Pro-Independence Caledonian Union party was a sign of some Kanaks’ belief that their demands are not being met through the political process. The core group of activists were a major force behind the recent protests and the Cell’s leader, Christian Tein, is currently being held in a jail in France on charges related to the unrest. Similarly, the major presence of youths on the streets in May is evidence that a new generation has lost faith in the pace of social and political change.

“The younger people want the change now because in their lives they have experienced and seen a lot of hardship—the persecution of the Kanak people, the difficulties of getting a job,” Jacques emphasized. An estimated 45 percent of people in New Caledonia who don’t have a high school certificate are indigenous, and the Kanak unemployment rate is reported to be as high as 38 percent.

Yet the representation of Kanaks in the territory’s government and politics has steadily increased over the past two decades. The number of seats held by Pro-Independence politicians in New Caledonia’s 54 seat Congress rose from 18 to 25 between 2004 and 2014, while Loyalists witnessed a decrease from 36 to 29 seats, reports Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy.

In 2021, Louis Mapou, the first Kanak Pro-Independence President of the government, was elected. And, following the French national election this month, Emmanuel Tjibaou, a Kanak leader from the rural North Province, was voted in as one of New Caledonia’s two members of the National Assembly in Paris.

In the wider region, New Caledonia’s self-determination movement has the international support of other Pacific Island countries, especially those that have indigenous Melanesian populations, such as Papua New Guinea and Fiji, as well as Azerbaijan and Russia. And the French overseas territory has been on the United Nations’ Decolonization List since 1986.

Yet there are New Caledonians who are concerned about the viability of a New Caledonian state. The territory relies heavily on France’s fiscal support, which amounts to 20 percent of the local gross domestic product (GDP) and pays for public services, local economic development programs and civil service salaries.

“We have a good economy here,” Marcieux, a Frenchman who has lived in New Caledonia for 30 years, told IPS in Noumea. “It is easy to speak of independence, but, in reality, it is very difficult. You need a way to make independence.”

But, until the yawning political divisions laid bare by the events of May are addressed, it will be difficult for New Caledonia’s leaders to present a united will to President Macron and the French Parliament located more than 16,000 kilometres away.

However, Tjibaou, the new member of the French National Assembly, is the focus of hope that meaningful dialogue can emerge from the recent conflict. He told local media soon after his election this month that “we all have to offer a framework for discussions to resume between the three partners, which are France, the FLNKS and the Loyalists… we have to capitalize on this.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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The Winds of War

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The aftermath of a missile strike on the center of Kyiv. July 2024. Credit: UNICEF Ukraine

ATLANTA, Georgia, Jul 10 2024 (IPS) – Herman Wouk’s 1971 novel The Winds of War traced the romance, bravery, fear, and faith required for American youths to join the military, deploy to the war zones, and confront the mighty Axis threat in the lead-up to WW II. It later became a dramatic TV series.

Today multitudes around the world are increasingly affected by ongoing conflicts, or are living in societies so disordered that they might even welcome war as a solution to their problems.

The news on just one day in June 2024 was not reassuring: The US and NATO agreed to unleash Ukraine to attack Russia; Israel thumbed its nose at American demands to end its genocidal war in Gaza; Hezbollah bombarded northern Israel for the umpteenth time and Israel reciprocated.

Yemen exchanged missile attacks with US warships in the Red Sea; while Israel and Iran engaged in slinging hundreds of Intercontinental ballistic missiles at each other.

Meanwhile, China announced that any attempt to award sovereignty to Taiwan would receive a strong military response. Only a few days later on July 4 at Astana in Kazakhstan, Russia and China convened a bloc of their Eurasian allies for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to stake out a policy of resistance to Euro-American control of the world economy.

Equally sobering, Japan and the Philippines have just initiated a defense alliance that echoes Japan’s security zone posture in WW II. All these moves signify that the great powers are indeed readying for war.

Elsewhere major regional wars in Sudan and Congo are ongoing; Haiti is in bloody chaos, and the same is true of several countries in West Africa, namely Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, which recently formed the Alliance of Sahel States to oppose the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Political destabilization within nations is in the balance everywhere, from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Europe and Latin America, with an astounding political division in the United States as well. What could possibly go wrong?

The real problem in America and the West is one of cultural fatigue, with a lack of clear focus on what course to follow, as we had in both World Wars and the Cold War. A “War to End Wars,” like the WW I rallying cry, would not fly today.

Neither would “Make the World Safe for Democracy” as both world wars aimed to do; or “Better Dead than Red,” the slogan of the Cold War. Instead, it’s “Ho-hum, another war.” Not very inspiring.

The Ostrich is famous for sticking its head in the sand when danger approaches. With wars simmering all around, Americans may be practicing that same tactic. There was a disquieting moment at the June 6 D-Day ceremony in Normandy commemorating the 80th anniversary of the allied assault on the Nazi defenses during WW II.

In her prayer, US Army Chaplain Karen Meeker gave thanks for those who sacrificed their lives and blessed the surviving heroes at the ceremony, but also used an ominous phrase: “As war clouds gather….”

Does she know something the rest of us don’t? Probably so, and it is disquieting. War clouds are indeed gathering. All we need to do is pay attention to the news, listen to the statements of key leaders of many of the great powers, and read the headlines. It is hard to miss the central theme: that the world is becoming more and more ungovernable.

At a conference in Tallinn, Estonia during May, Yale Historian Timothy Snyder suggested that the present time reminds him of Europe in 1938, just before the start of WW II. That should frighten everybody. His warning means that unless something extraordinary prevents it, an expanding, generalized conflict may lie ahead.

Among today’s most urgent problems are the ongoing genocidal war in Gaza, the bloody and seemingly endless Russia-Ukraine War, and regional wars in Sudan, Congo, and Myanmar.

The growing East-West economic divide and the North-South poverty gap appear intractable. If these conflicts expand, global civilization is facing a world of hurt.

Maybe that’s why a tough guy image like that cultivated by our more pugnacious presidents like Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt remains so appealing today, along with a larger than life “John Wayne” type of fictional character. However, it’s never that simple, and there is always a price to be paid.

Roosevelt’s son Quentin died in the very war his father advocated so fiercely. The Greek historian Herodotus recorded the sage but painful observation that, “In times of peace, sons bury their fathers; in times of war, fathers bury their sons.”

What then is to be done? Perhaps the US could start by ending support for the blood-lust killing of so many defenseless civilians in Gaza. All it would take is for President Biden to have the guts to say no to an ally and mean it. On Taiwan vs. China and Iran vs. Israel and the US, why not sit and talk with our adversaries?

That simple tactic has worked before. Why not at least start a meaningful peace process in Sudan and Congo? It may take a long time, but peace is always better than war.

At the US Academics for Peace conferences we convened in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Sudan over the decades before and after the US invasion of Iraq, we advocated the principle that dialogue is essential or conflict is inevitable.

Why not try? It might work.

James E. Jennings, PhD is President of Conscience International and Executive Director of US Academics for Peace.

IPS UN Bureau

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Zionism is Broken

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A child waits to fill water containers in Gaza. Credit: UNRWA

 
In its latest update last week. the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, reported “especially intense” airstrikes in central Gaza in recent days, particularly in Bureij, Maghazi and Nuseirat refugee camps and eastern Deir Al-Balah.

 
Meanwhile, the Israeli military’s ground offensive “continues to expand”, UNRWA noted, particularly in the southern regions of Gaza City and eastern Rafah, causing further suffering and further “destabilising” humanitarian aid flows.

ATLANTA, Georgia, Jul 3 2024 (IPS) – Zionism is broken. It is finished as a political philosophy and cannot long survive. Having earned the visceral opposition of multitudes of people and countries around the world for engaging in vast overkill in Gaza, that historical reality will likely become clear to the Israeli people over time.

Still, how could the most powerful state in the Middle East, the most flourishing economically, with the strongest superpower backing, become defunct? It cannot—unless somehow its chief raison d’etrê, its founding philosophy, collapses. That has already happened.

In the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas, the visceral racist core of Zionism has become evident in the indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, including many thousands of children.

No reason of state can ever excuse that. Israel’s righteous anger against HAMAS for its obscene October 7 attack transitioned quickly into racial hatred, ending in, if not genocide, then certainly war crimes and crimes against humanity. Netanyahu and his Likud allies have not hidden their racism for decades. Now it is explicit in full view of the world.

The Zionism of Netanyahu and his supporters must be repudiated by the Israelis themselves. Israel’s leaders from Menachem Begin to today have long endorsed statements lauding Israel uber alles.

Zionism can only be rehabilitated if it separates its reason for existing from the current triumphalist military identity that is determined to kill, kill, and kill again until the utter destruction and suppression of all every tangible and ideological enemy.

In a recent CNN interview, former Shin Beth Director Ami Ayalon, was very explicit: he said “The toxic leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu” [in pursuing an endless war] will “lead to the end of Zionism.” In that case, he said, “We cannot be secure and we shall lose our identity.”

Ayalon was preceded by a number of courageous Israeli thinkers and writers who warned of the same outcome—Israel was founded in 1948 but in their opinion, Zionism had already failed ideologically by the mid-1960s. They included Hebrew University professor Israel Shahak (1933-2001), who wrote, “It is my considered opinion that the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of the term.”

He insisted that, “You cannot have humane Zionism. It (too) is a contradiction in terms.” Uri Avnery (1923-2018), a decorated Israeli soldier and later a publisher and politician, published a book in 1968 titled Israel without Zionists.

Many of the original Jewish colonists had utopian dreams, but their leaders would probably not recognize the grim, revengeful militarism of today’s Israel. A few tiny orthodox religious parties in Israel have never bought into the military machine that is the Likud Party’s pride and joy.

Some have steadfastly refused even to serve in the Israeli army because they don’t believe in the Israeli state. Now even they are being conscripted.

The original dream of Zionism from Theodore Herzl to Chaim Weizmann to David Ben Gurion, although containing seeds of a today’s hob-booted military identity, nevertheless also expressed a grandiosely humane, even a universal, goal—to become a “light to the nations.” In that, Israel has signally failed.

Like HAMAS and most Palestinians, Israel’s people—and Israel as a country—has become increasingly and deeply racist. Now racism—hatred of others for their differences—has become racial-ism, which is even worse, a doctrine of race superiority, which was the Nazi credo.

The Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu and his thuggish coalition has succumbed to such race hatred that Zionists from pre-1948 Palestine would not recognize it. A Jan. 6, 2024 opinion article in the Jerusalem Post urges Israel to reform its politics along better Zionist lines and take power away from the extremists now in charge. Commendable, but not nearly enough.

What if Abraham Lincoln had countenanced America’s original sin of slavery by merely taking half steps? We might still have “slavery lite.” No, Israel’s race-based philosophy must change to the democratic ideal: a single state in Israel and the occupied territories for Muslims, Christians, and Jews. One person, one vote.

When Palestinians are treated as human beings—as real people instead of enemies to be eradicated en masse—people everywhere would soon see how quickly peace would come to the Middle East.

James E. Jennings, PhD, is President, Conscience International
www.conscienceinternational.org
conscience@earthlink.net

IPS UN Bureau

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US Arms Suppliers in Gaza Killings Should be “Named, Shamed & Boycotted”

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A child watches as bodies are recovered from under the rubble of a house in the Al-Nasr neighborhood, east of the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Credit: UN News/Ziad Taleb

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 2024 (IPS) – The US gun lobby justifies the unfettered American gun ownership in the US on a misguided premise: Guns don’t kill people, it’s bullets that kill people.

The accusations of genocide and war crimes in Gaza have been directed firstly, at Israel, for the killings of more than 37,700, mostly civilians, and over 86,000 injured, in retaliation for the 1,200 killed by Hamas last October, according to estimates from Gaza health officials, as cited by Cable News Network (CNN) last week.

And secondly, the blame is also squarely on the United States, the unrestrained supplier of arms, including the devastating 2,000-pound unguided bombs, to the Netanyahu government.

But a group of UN human rights experts is now blaming a third force: US arms manufacturers who are accused of implicitly killing people, along with financial institutions that fund most of these weapons suppliers.

“The transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel may constitute serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws and risk State complicity in international crimes, possibly including genocide, the UN experts said last week, reiterating their demand to stop transfers immediately.”

In line with recent calls from the Human Rights Council, the UN experts are calling for halt to the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel by US arms manufacturers – including BAE Systems, Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Oshkosh, Rheinmetall AG, Rolls-Royce Power Systems, RTX, and ThyssenKrupp.

The experts say these defense contractors should also end transfers, even if they are executed under existing export licenses.

“These companies, by sending weapons, parts, components, and ammunition to Israeli forces, risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws,” the experts said.

This risk is heightened by the recent decision from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah, having recognised genocide as a plausible risk, as well as the request filed by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) seeking arrest warrants for Israeli leaders on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“In this context, continuing arms transfers to Israel may be seen as knowingly providing assistance for operations that contravene international human rights and international humanitarian laws and may result in profit from such assistance.”

Dr Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, told IPS the UN experts’ statement is important, as it highlights the complex role of the US in supporting, sustaining, and benefiting from the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

“Quite often we call on, demand and implore the US to end its support of Israel, so that the genocide may come to an end. The experts, however, are reminding us that the US involvement is not confined to that of the White House, and direct or indirect US military and logistical support to Israel”, he pointed out.

Indeed, he said, US support is channeled through multiple players, those who manufacture, transport, assemble and maintain the weapons and munition — a multi-billion-dollar military machine that has harvested the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

These companies must be named, shamed, boycotted and held accountable in every possible way. They must understand that there are legal repercussions to their action, as they are complicit in the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, said Dr Baroud, a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA).

These companies are, as the experts said, ‘knowingly’ providing direct assistance to Israel in its genocidal war. They are fully aware of the extent of these crimes as articulated in the South African case against Israel at the ICJ, and the call for arrest warrants by the chief prosecutor of the ICC.

The next rational step is for these companies to be taken to task. They seem to have no moral threshold. Their quest for profits by far exceeds their concern that their weapons are killing thousands of children, women and civilians in Gaza, and throughout occupied Palestine. They must face justice as participants in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, declared Dr Baroud.

Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS it’s difficult to draw any clear distinction between the U.S. government and the arms makers that sell to it.

“The two are so intertwined that differentiating between them is often a distinction without a difference. The revolving door for individuals, in both directions, places weapons executives in pivotal government positions and vice versa”.

The magnitude of the military profits, he pointed out, is overwhelming in the nation’s political economy and culture. The multibillion-dollar corporations that depend on selling weaponry to the government are directly participating in a routine process of literally making a killing on behalf of massive profit-taking.

To call these firms “defense contractors” is a misnomer, since what they sell has little to do with defense in any meaningful sense, he argued.

“The stepped-up weapons sales and gifts to Israel are continuations of a partnership between the U.S. government and arms suppliers with the purpose of aiding an ally and reaping still more massive profits. In tandem, the U.S. government and the companies are providing Israel with the means to continue mass murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The core of the problem is lack of democracy and vastly excessive corporate power”.

In moral terms, the culpability is far-reaching. Yet, in a sinister way, he said, the military contractors are doing what capitalism provides for them to do — seek to maximize profits regardless of the consequences for human beings and the natural environment.

In contrast, within a democratic system, government is supposed to be responsive to the informed consent of the governed — conditions that certainly do not exist in the United States.

Meanwhile, in terms of international law and human decency, the U.S. government and its arms suppliers are guilty of horrendous crimes, which assist and compound those of Israel, declared Solomon, who is also national director, RootsAction.org and author of, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine”

A report from the Human Rights Council in mid-June details six emblematic attacks involving the suspected use of GBU-31 (2,0000 lbs), GBU-32 (1,000 lbs) and GBU-39 (250 lbs) bombs from 9 October to 2 December 2023 on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market.

The UN Human Rights Office verified 218 deaths from these six attacks, and said information received indicated the number of fatalities could be much higher.

“The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.

The report says the series of Israeli strikes, exemplified by the six incidents, indicates that the IDF may have repeatedly violated fundamental principles of the laws of war. In this connection, it notes that unlawful targeting when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, in line with a State or organisational policy, may also implicate the commission of crimes against humanity.

Financial institutions investing in these arms companies are also called to account. Investors such as Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung, Amundi Asset Management, Bank of America, BlackRock, Capital Group, Causeway Capital Management, Citigroup, Fidelity Management & Research, INVESCO Ltd, JP Morgan Chase, Harris Associates, Morgan Stanley, Norges Bank Investment Management, Newport Group, Raven’swing Asset Management, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance, State Street Corporation, Union Investment Privatfonds, The Vanguard Group, Wellington and Wells Fargo & Company, are urged to take action.

Failure to prevent or mitigate their business relationships with these arms manufacturers transferring arms to Israel could move from being directly linked to human rights abuses to contributing to them, with repercussions for complicity in potential atrocity crimes, the experts said.

“Arms initiate, sustain, exacerbate, and prolong armed conflicts, as well as other forms of oppression, hence the availability of arms is an essential precondition for the commission of war crimes and violations of human rights, including by private armament companies,” said the experts.

The experts paid tribute to the sustained work of journalists who have been documenting and reporting on the devastating impact of these weapons systems on civilians in Gaza, and human rights defenders and lawyers, among other stakeholders, who are dedicated to holding States and companies accountable for the transfer of weapons to Israel.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Worse Than Genocide: Killing Truth

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Armed Conflicts, Civil Society, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Middle East & North Africa, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Destruction in northern Gaza. Credit: UNRWA

ATLANTA, Georgia, Jun 26 2024 (IPS) – There have been many genocides throughout history, but the first to be displayed on TV in all its sickening horror before the entire world is the Israeli genocide against the civilians of Gaza.

Truth is the first casualty of war, so it’s no surprise that the slick Israeli propaganda machine has managed to make Israel’s slaughter of 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 15,000 children, acceptable to multitudes of Americans.

With the exception of the widespread campus protestors, most Americans are by now convinced that Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants are all fanatical Islamists who deserve to be killed like vermin. That’s not only a lie—it is a damnable lie.

There is an even bigger atrocity in this war, and a more unbearable one than killing children, if that is possible—and that’s when the truth is killed. When your good is labeled evil, it’s maddening.

Today the decency and moral outrage of millions of US youth is being slandered by ranting propagandists like MS-NBC’s Joe Scarborough, and of course the entire FOX News crew, labeling the campus protest movement anti-Semitic. The claim is false and must be exposed as another damnable lie.

It’s more than illogical, it’s silly, to say that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. The vast majority of campus protesters are not anti-Semites and have no trouble separating the actions of extreme Zionist ideology as played out in Gaza from their classmates and friends who happen to be Jews.

“The naming of things is the rectification of things,” Confucius taught. Antisemitism is Antisemitism. Zionism is Zionism. The two are not the same. Otherwise, how could Senator Bernie Sanders, a Jew, attack the Netanyahu’s extreme Zionist government so strenuously, and how could so many of the student demonstrators who are against Zionist Israel’s Gaza campaign themselves be Jewish?

When Republican Congresswoman Elise Stephanic, a Jew, attacked George Soros, a celebrated progressive Jewish philanthropist on CNN recently for supporting the protesters, wasn’t she herself being an Anti-Semite?

Neither George W. Bush nor Joe Biden are Jews. They are Christians—but are certainly bigtime Zionists. Bush by leading America into the morass of the Iraq War primarily designed to protect Israel, and Biden in Gaza, by giving Israel all the money and bombs it needs to kill so many thousands of civilians.

“Don’t kill children, but here’s money and ammunition to do it with.” Nobody is fooled by that, still less university students who have had to display their critical thinking skills before they could even get into college.

Increasing numbers of Jewish organizations are rejecting Israel’s descent into doctrinaire Anti-Arab racial policies that echo Nazism’s extreme philosophy. They know that race-hatred is racism, but that doctrinaire racial superiority vs. inferiority is racial-ism, which is far worse.

The situation in Gaza is unbearable for a civilized world to witness. Painting an entire generation of idealistic American college youth with the slander that they are racists is unbearable. If anything is worse than Genocide, it is claiming that those who oppose it are the greater cause of evil.

James E. Jennings, PhD, is President of Conscience International and Executive Director of US Academics for Peace. He has delivered aid to Gaza hospitals over more than three decades, including during Israel’s bombing campaigns in 2009 and 2014.

IPS UN Bureau

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