Tag: perpetual war

The No-Rules International Order

The skin is the largest organ of the human body. It covers our entire surface, at some points only as thin as a piece of paper and at other points about half as thick as a credit card.

The skin, which protects us from all manner of germs and other harmful elements, is fragile and unable to defend humans from the dangerous weapons we have made over time. The ancient blunt axe will break the skin with a heavy blow, while a 2,000-pound MK-84 “dumb bomb” made by General Dynamics will not only obliterate the skin, but the entire human body.

Despite a May 24 order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Israeli military continues to bomb the southern part of Gaza, particularly the city of Rafah. In blatant disregard of the ICJ’s order, on May 27 Israel struck a tent city in Rafah and murdered 45 civilians. 

U.S. President Joe Biden said on March 9 that an Israeli attack on Rafah would be his “red line,” but – even after the tent massacre – the Biden administration has insisted that no such line has been violated.

At a press conference on May 28, communications adviser to the U.S. National Security Agency, John Kirby, was asked how the U.S. would respond if a strike by the U.S. armed forces killed 45 civilians and injured 200 others. 

Kirby responded:

“We have conducted airstrikes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where tragically we caused civilian casualties. We did the same thing.”

To defend Israel’s latest massacre, Washington has chosen to make a startling admission. Given that the ICJ has ruled that it is “plausible” that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza, could it be said that the U.S. is guilty of the same in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Keep reading

US warns Israel war with Lebanon could ‘spin out of control’

The US has warned Israel against waging war in Lebanon, US and Israeli officials told Axios on 6 June. 

The officials told the outlet that a “limited war” against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which would entail an Israeli ground invasion, “would likely push Iran to intervene,” even if the operation stays in areas close to the border. 

According to Axios, the US has warned Israel about a scenario where pro-Iran fighters from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere could flood into Lebanon to join the fighting in the event of an expanded war. 

The officials said that the Israeli army and defense establishment are increasingly concerned that the situation in Lebanon “is reaching a turning point,” Axios added. 

“The situation has been escalating since May because Hezbollah conducted more successful drone attacks against Israeli targets that weren’t intercepted,” a senior Israeli army official said. 

Washington has warned that escalation is not a “realistic option,” as it would be hard to stop it from “spinning out of control,” according to US officials. 

Axios notes that the administration of US President Joe Biden believes it is impossible to de-escalate the situation in Lebanon without first reaching a ceasefire in Gaza. This comes after months of Washington and Paris pushing infeasible de-escalation proposals for south Lebanon. 

Israeli officials have recently signaled that expanding the already indiscriminate campaign of airstrikes against south Lebanon, potentially into a ground invasion, could be imminent. 

Hebrew media outlets and Israeli journalists have highlighted that a decision of this sort would be devastating for Israel. 

“The war with Hezbollah will bring a great challenge to the home front, as the north and center will face a threat of a size and intensity they have not faced before,” said Haaretz newspaper’s Amos Harel. 

“It is difficult to report any good news on the horizon. As we enter the ninth month of the war … a series of conversations conducted over the past two weeks with officials in the security and military institutions raise more and more evidence that Israel is heading toward a multidimensional failure,” Harel added. 

Keep reading

Beyond Bombs – Infectious Diseases Plague Over 1.5 Million Displaced in Gaza

At least 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have contracted infectious diseases due to the displacement caused by the Israeli war on Gaza, the Strip’s government media office 

In a statement released on Friday, the office reported that 1,477,748 displaced Palestinians have contracted infectious diseases due to being uprooted from various areas in the Gaza Strip.

The statement did not clarify if any of those affected had recovered. However, it did note that the number of internally displaced persons in the Gaza Strip since October 7 has reached two million.

The office also warned that 3,500 children in the Gaza Strip are at risk of starving to death due to the ongoing blockade and the Israeli war.

On Thursday, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that nine out of ten children in Gaza are suffering from severe malnutrition.

The statement also highlighted that 10,000 cancer patients are facing life-threatening conditions and require treatment outside the Gaza Strip. Additionally, more than 71 cases of viral hepatitis have been recorded.

Hepatitis A is a highly infectious liver disease caused by a virus, which can spread through consuming contaminated food or water or through close contact with an infected person.

Viral hepatitis has spread in the Gaza Strip, particularly among children, due to poor personal hygiene, lack of clean water, food contamination, and overcrowding in displacement centers.

Since the closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, following Israel’s control of the Palestinian side on May 7, no patient or wounded individual has been able to leave the Gaza Strip.

Keep reading

Israel’s progression from Apartheid to Genocide

For Palestinians, Israel’s violence began long before October 7, 2023. The unfolding genocide in Gaza is the latest chapter in a series of Israel’s settler-colonial practices to remove Palestinians by force from their land. These practices began with the inception of the state of Israel.  

The most fateful year in modern Palestinian history was 1948, when David Ben-Gurion unilaterally declared the creation of the state of Israel and armed Zionist militias massacred Palestinians and evicted thousands from their homes at gunpoint. Palestinians know this as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” This is not ancient history. Israeli politicians, before and after October 7, threatened a second Nakba against Palestinians. Israeli forces in Gaza painted graffiti on destroyed homes in Gaza that read, “Nakba 2023.” 

Israel’s apartheid practices against Palestinians also started in 1948, when Israel caged Palestinian communities in Lod, Nazareth, and Haifa in wired areas and issued discriminatory laws against those Palestinians who stayed and those forcibly displaced. Soon after, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967 and the discriminatory laws and practices were expanded to the occupied Palestinian territory.  

At the time, Israel described the act of capturing what remained of historic Palestine in 1967 as “finishing the job.” The job was to ethnically cleanse the survivors of the Nakba and capture the territories left unoccupied in 1948. 

Many Palestinians were displaced by war and were now under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip where much of the Palestinian population sought refuge. The capture of Palestinians within the new Israeli State in 1948 and 1967 meant more than 811,000 Palestinians lived under occupation then, and with these two events, all Palestinians were now subject to Israel’s policies of apartheid.  

Soon after Israel captured the Gaza Strip in 1967, for example, it introduced schemes to get rid of the young population of Gaza. In 1969, Moshe Dayan, Israel’s Defense Minister, introduced a plan to transfer young refugees in Gaza to Latin America. Between 1948 and 1967, Israeli army raids into Palestinian refugee camps of Rafah and Khan Younis killed hundreds of Palestinians, some of whom were stood against the famous Barquq Castle Wall and were killed, sometimes in front of their families. 

Today the Barquq Castle itself is in ruins because of Israel’s destruction of Khan Younis.

Throughout the 1970s, Israel exploited Palestinian refugees as cheap labor to build Israeli settlements and with the outbreak of the 1987 Palestinian Intifada, and the mounting Israeli state and settler violence against Palestinians, apartheid practices and laws have only increased, suffocating Palestinians even more and making their lives almost impossible. This has been especially visible with travel restrictions, access to water, land and natural resources, and access to medical care. 

The clearest manifestation of this permit regime, and the brutal realities of Israeli apartheid, has been seen in Gaza.

Keep reading

The genocide in Israeli prisons

Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians since last October has extended beyond the daily mass death, displacement, and starvation of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. Behind the bars of Israeli prisons, Israel has been waging war against Palestinian prisoners, creating conditions that make the continuation of human life impossible. The effects of this brutal campaign have reverberated among prisoners’ families outside of jail, who are watching their loved ones being systematically starved, beaten, tortured, and degraded.

Shortly after October 7, Israel imposed a new set of rules in its cell blocks. In some detention centers like Ofer near Ramallah, the Israeli army was reportedly handed over control of the prison, while the Israel Prison Services guards were given a free hand in dealing with Palestinian inmates inside the jail sections. This shift was accompanied by a dramatic increase in the number of Palestinian detainees who were arrested after October 7, doubling the prisoner population as early on as mid-October. This included prisoners from Gaza, for whom the hardest part of the treatment was reserved.

In mid-May, CNN released an exposé based on the testimonies of Israeli whistleblowers about the horrific treatment of Palestinians from Gaza at the Israeli military base of Sde Teiman, now containing a detention center. The whistleblower testimonies detail a number of medieval practices to which Palestinian prisoners have been subjected, including being strapped down to beds while blindfolded and made to wear diapers, having unqualified medical trainees conduct procedures on them without anesthesia, having dogs set on them by prison guards, being regularly beaten or put into stress positions for offenses as minor as peeking beneath their blindfolds, having zip-tie wounds fester to the point of requiring amputation, and a host of other horrific measures.

Keep reading

Palestinians recount torture and sexual abuse in Israeli detention facility

An Israeli military base in southern Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians in detention where mistreatment and torture is rife, according to a new report.

Since 7 October, the Sde Teiman military base has been used to detain roughly 4,000 Palestinians from Gaza, with some staying at the base for three months before release or transfer into Israel’s prison system.

Around 1,200 Palestinians who were at the base have been released back into Gaza after being found to be civilians.

A report by the New York Times (NYT) revealed that although many had been released after being found to be civilians, those people still underwent interrogations that are consistent with practices of torture.

Seven former detainees at the base, and whose detention was verified by the Israeli military for the report, gave accounts describing forms of torture being widespread at the base.

These accusations include repeated beatings during interrogations or for minor infractions, such as peeking under blindfolds or sleeping when not permitted.

Such accounts of beatings were corroborated by Israeli soldiers speaking to NYT, who said that colleagues boasted about beatings, and that at least one person had died as a result of being beaten.

At least 35 Palestinians have died at the base since 7 October, although Israeli officers speaking to NYT at the facility denied the deaths were as a result of abuse.

The officers said that 12 soldiers had been dismissed from the base, some for excessive use of force.

Keep reading

Israel Butchers Another Round of Gazan Children Using U.S.-Provided Munitions

Another day, another mass murder by Israel in Gaza using U.S.-provided weapons.

At least 45 people were killed, mainly women and children, inside a UN-run school in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The IDF said it was targeting a Hamas compound that was operating inside the school, according to CNN.

The report said U.S.-made munitions were used in the strike – the same GBU-39 small-diameter bombs that Israel used in its recent bombing of a tent camp of displaced Gazans that killed 35.

Netanyahu “is killing the civilians, he is not killing militants, it’s innocent people asleep in a UNRWA facility… what did children and elderly do? What did they do to him? He is looking for Hamas people? Go look for them, why are you killing us in schools?”

The report, citing journalists in the area working with CNN, said the school, which was housing 20,000,  was hit by three missiles.

Keep reading

Retired US Army Officer: Scary How West Pushing World to Brink of Nuclear War

During a meeting with foreign press, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West against thoughtless conflict escalation, stressing that Moscow could repel NATO attempts to threaten its sovereignty both asymmetrically and directly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with foreign journalists on June 5 within the framework of the 27th annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

Addressing the Ukraine conflict the Russian president noted that Western weapon deliveries to the Kiev regime, coupled with the approval to hit targets deep inside Russia, is fraught with severe escalation risks.

“How do you respond to this use of weapons and allowing them to attack and basically violate the sovereignty of Russia itself?” Earl Rasmussen, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel and international consultant told Sputnik. “If we look at these attacks, they’re not targeting military targets, or they’re targeting strategic targets. They’re targeting civilians, many of them, or strategic targets as well. It’s essentially, basically authorizing and supporting terrorism.”

Keep reading

Shattered Theory: the War on Terror and Western Impunity

The ICC request for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and others is only the beginning. Around the world evidence is being gathered and cases are being prepared, including against British, American and EU politicians and officials for complicity in genocide and other crimes against humanity.  This week the ICC received a request from jurists and human rights groups to investigate EU chief Ursula von der Leyen for complicity in genocide.

Tayab Ali, a human rights lawyer and director of the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians told journalist Owen Jones that a tremendous amount of preparation is underway out of sight of the public.  “I’ve spent a significant amount of time this year travelling the world meeting with heads of state, meeting with foreign ministers, meeting  with justice ministers, and I’ll tell you: the appetite, particularly in the global south, to prosecute people complicit in war crimes, is high.”  South Africa has been a leader in this regard.

The reality is Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden are guilty of far worse crimes than Osama Bin Laden, Ismail Haniyeh, Marwan Barghouti or Nelson Mandela.  I don’t condone Bin Laden or minimise what he did; a good friend of mine John Lozowski was killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11.  He didn’t deserve to die.  The current US President and the PM of Israel, however, just happen to have murdered far more innocent men, women and children – and, unlike Bin Laden and the others, are clearly guilty of the crime of crimes: genocide.  The game changer, however, is the looming presence of the combined legal and moral authority of the ICC and ICJ. Bearing down like angels of justice, they will pursue Israel, and, ultimately even top US officials, to the ends of the earth.  In the case of the ICC, no signatory nation to the Rome Statute can provide a safe haven once the arrest warrants go out.

Which is why the ICC seeking Netanyahu’s arrest has triggered something approaching a nervous breakdown, a shattering of the psyche for the Western elites. Impunity is in the job description.

Keep reading

Russia’s Advanced Yasen-M Class Nuclear Submarine Is Headed For Cuba

ARussian flotilla — including a modern nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine — is bound for Cuba for a rare deployment. Cuban officials state that none of the Russian Navy vessels headed toward the Caribbean will be carrying nuclear weapons, in an apparent effort to reduce tensions between Moscow and Washington, but the development once again reinforces renewed Russian interest in the operations in the wider region.

In a statement yesterday, Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces confirmed that the advanced Yasen-M class nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine Kazan and three other Russian naval vessels, including the Project 22350 frigate Admiral Gorshkov, the oil tanker Pashin, and the salvage tug Nikolai Chiker will dock in the Cuban capital from June 12-17.

“None of the vessels is carrying nuclear weapons, so their stopover in our country does not represent a threat to the region,” the ministry said.

“Visits by naval units from other countries are a historical practice of the revolutionary government with nations that maintain relations of friendship and collaboration,” the statement added.

The day before, U.S. officials said that they expected Russian warships and aircraft to arrive in the Caribbean for a military exercise that they said would be part of a Moscow’s broader response to American support for Ukraine. In particular, President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to strike inside Russia has angered the Kremlin.

Keep reading