Uganda to start building oil pipeline with pipes from China, as opposition mounts

First 100km of line pipes for the massive cross-border EACOP project have arrived in the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania

Environmental and rights groups say pristine ecosystems, biodiversity hotspots, water resources and community land are under threat


Jevans Nyabiage
31 Dec, 2023
SCMP



Uganda is expected to start building the US$5 billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in January after the first shipment of pipes arrived from China, as opposition to the massive project intensifies.

Chinese steel pipe manufacturer Panyu Chu Kong (PCK) Steel Pipe Co – which is contracted to supply the line pipes – delivered the first 100km of pipes on Tuesday.

Ugandan and Tanzanian officials marked their arrival at a storage yard operated by EACOP’s Tanzania logistics partner, Superdoll, at the port of Dar es Salaam.





The shipment means construction of the cross-border 1,443km (896-mile) pipeline can begin. It will carry crude oil from the Lake Albert oilfields in the northwest of Uganda to the Chongoleani peninsula at the port of Tanga on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. Landlocked Uganda aims to deliver its first oil to the international markets by 2025.

Work is already under way on the pumping stations, work camps and storage facilities along the EACOP route as well as the coating plant, which is being built in Tanzania. After coating and welding, the first sections of pipe are due to be laid midway through next year, according to the Petroleum Authority of Uganda.

“The project represents a major inward investment in Uganda and Tanzania,” EACOP, the company overseeing the pipeline’s construction, said in a statement. “EACOP remains committed to delivering this project with the utmost responsibility, contributing to the sustainable growth and prosperity of East Africa.”

The project is facing growing opposition from environmental and rights groups that say the Ugandan oilfields and the pipeline threaten pristine ecosystems, biodiversity hotspots, water resources and community land. Pressure from campaigners under the StopEACOP slogan has seen many North American, European and Japanese banks and insurers withdraw from the project.

Uganda is now increasingly relying on China, which has an outsize role in the country’s oil industry – from bankrolling projects to operating an oilfield, drilling oil wells and building key infrastructure such as the pipeline.

Financing of the pipeline is set at a 60:40 debt-to-equity ratio, meaning US$3 billion will be secured as debt with the remaining US$2 billion to be financed by shareholders through equity contributions. Uganda’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development permanent secretary Irene Batebe in September said Chinese lenders including the Export-Import Bank of China (Eximbank) and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure) had agreed to contribute about half of the debts needed to build the pipeline.

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12 Nov 2023


French oil multinational TotalEnergies controls a 62 per cent interest in the pipeline; the Uganda National Oil Company holds 15 per cent; Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation has 15 per cent; with Chinese oil giant China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) taking an 8 per cent stake. Last year, the issue found its way to the floor of the European Parliament, where legislators passed a resolution calling for a halt to the project over environmental and human rights concerns and warned TotalEnergies against backing the project.

Uganda has an estimated 6.5 billion barrels of crude oil – the equivalent of 1.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

CNOOC operates the Kingfisher oilfield, located on the eastern shores of Lake Albert in Uganda. It will invest an estimated US$2-3 billion to develop the oilfield, which would produce 40,000 barrels per day at peak production.

The other, larger oilfield is the Tilenga, operated by TotalEnergies, which is estimated to cost between US$4 billion and US$6 billion. It will produce 190,000 barrels per day.

The arrival of the first 100km of pipe (5,600 18-metre sections) comes shortly after a delegation from the Petroleum Authority of Uganda, led by executive director Ernest Rubondo, visited PCK Steel Pipe in Lianyungang in October. “We are committed to ensuring timely delivery and high-quality pipes,” Xie Leshan, the PCK president, said during the visit, which coincided with China’s Belt and Road Initiative forum.



The Ugandan team also met Liu Yongjie, chairman of CNOOC International, in Beijing, discussing progress on the Kingfisher oil project. “This meeting signifies an important development in the ongoing collaboration between Uganda and China in the oil and gas sector,” Rubondo said.

During the trip, the Ugandan delegation also met other Chinese companies contracted to undertake works and services on oil and gas projects in Uganda – Offshore Oil Engineering Co, China Oilfield Services, CenerTech and China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Co.

The EACOP will have the capacity to pump up to 230,000 barrels of crude oil a day, from western Uganda to the Indian Ocean coastline of Tanzania.

Chinese embassies take security seriously as threats in Africa heat up
4 Nov 2023


Tim Zajontz, a research fellow at the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, said earlier that the Ugandan government was under pressure to finance certain budgetary items and development projects after the World Bank decided to freeze new loans in a reaction to Kampala’s anti-gay law enacted in May.

“But at least in the case of the oil pipeline, I would not overemphasise the causal link, since it had become clear long before the row with the World Bank that Western financiers would back away from the pipeline following protests from environmental and human rights organisations,” Zajontz said. “Chinese funding seems to be Kampala’s Plan B.”


Jevans Nyabiage
Kenyan journalist Jevans Nyabiage is the South China Morning Post's first Africa correspondent. Based in Nairobi, Jevans keeps an eye on China-Africa relations and also Chinese investments, ranging from infrastructure to energy and metal, on the continent.

North Korea says unification with South is ‘not possible’

Online News EditorDecember 31, 2023

Seoul, Dec 31 (EFE).- North Korea said it rules out any type of reconciliation or unification with its southern neighbor, according to Sunday state media reports, after the conclusion of an important five-day plenary meeting.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he does not consider Seoul a counterpart for reconciliation and unification, saying the neighboring country “has declared (North Korea) as its main enemy, so the party has come to the conclusion that unification is not possible,” he said, news agency KCNA said.

Kim said there must be a “fundamental change” in dealing with South Korea, adding that inter-Korean relations have become those of “two hostile countries” or “countries in a state of combat.”

At last year’s plenary party meeting, Kim called South Korea an “undoubted enemy” and called for an “exponential” increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal and the development of tactical nuclear weapons.

The secretive country also announced that it intends to launch three more spy satellites in 2024, according to state media, after the first successful launch in November by Pyongyang.

North Korea closes 2023 after having displayed its military muscle with several weapons innovations (a nuclear torpedo, a submarine with the capacity to launch several ballistic missiles, its first spy satellite and its first solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile).

Pyongyang has chosen to strengthen its ties with Beijing and Moscow, which have vetoed new sanctions against the regime and seem to provide it with certain security guarantees in a global framework marked by the wars in Israel and Ukraine. 

EFE

Korean Unification “Impossible” – Kim

Seoul’s policy of “unification by absorption” does not correspond to Pyongyang's principles, Kim Jong-un has said

by RT / December 31st, 2023

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Lang Son, Vietnam on February 26, 2019 ©  Getty Images / Linh Pham

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said it is impossible to achieve reunification between Pyongyang and Seoul because South Korea’s principles are directly opposed to those of his country.

Addressing a meeting of the ruling Workers Party, Kim said the two states’ relations had become “hostile to each other” and no longer “consanguineous or homogeneous,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Sunday.

Kim declared Pyongyang’s approach to national reunification based on “one nation and one state with two systems” to be in sharp contradiction with Seoul’s “unification by absorption” and “unification under liberal democracy.”

South Korea is currently a “colonial subordinate state” whose politics are “completely out of order” and whose defense and security are totally dependent on the US, the agency said, citing Kim.

Kim said Washington had turned Seoul into its military base and nuclear arsenal, and that the number of joint military exercises between the US, South Korea and Japan in 2023 had doubled from last year. He said this fact “clearly shows” that the US is aiming for military confrontation.

Kim argued that “war may break out” on the Korean Peninsula at any time due to the “enemies’ reckless moves.” If Washington and Seoul attempt a military confrontation with Pyongyang, its “nuclear war deterrence will go over to a grave action without hesitation,” Kim stressed.

The remarks followed North Korea’s statement on Wednesday that the military situation on the Korean peninsula had become “extreme” because of “unprecedented” confrontational moves by the US and its regional allies.

In 2018, North and South Korea signed the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), agreeing to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other.” However, last month, Seoul suspended part of it and resumed aerial surveillance. In response, Pyongyang vowed to restore all measures suspended since 2018.

The Korean Peninsula was divided in 1953 after an armistice was signed, halting the hostilities between North and South that had begun three years before. Technically, Pyongyang and Seoul still remain at war.

The RT network now consists of three global news channels broadcasting in English, Spanish, and Arabic. Read other articles by RT, or visit RT's website.

UK

Vigil in London commemorates fallen Healthcare workers and Journalists in Gaza

London’s healthcare workers and journalists held a solemn vigil joined by thousands of supporters demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The crowd held photos and names of their deceased colleagues in Gaza with a toll of over 300 healthcare workers and almost 100 journalists. The crowd mourned the lack of action taken by the government and emphasised the need for the joining of all voices as one in calling for a ceasefire.

December 31, 2023

NAKBA 2.0
Israeli bombing of Gaza killing and maiming children at a record pace, warn human rights groups

Bel Trew
Sat, December 30, 2023

A wounded child is among those to receive treatment in hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza (AP)

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has caused a record-breaking number of child casualties and a pace of killing “unseen in a generation”, human rights groups have warned, as Israeli tanks push deeper into the besieged strip.

Israel unleashed a total siege and its heaviest targeting yet of Gaza in retaliation for the 7 October attack by Hamas who killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages.

Since then, Israeli strikes have killed at least 21,000 people, three-quarters of them women and children, while thousands more are feared trapped under rubble, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run strip.

Israel has questioned the death toll but provided no alternative. Its army has expressed regret for civilian deaths, accusing Hamas of operating in densely populated areas and using civilians as human shields – a charge the group denies.

The speed and intensity of the killings is “record-breaking”, said James Denslow from Save the Children, adding that the charity had estimated more than 30,000 children have been killed or maimed over the past 12 weeks.

They based their calculations on a combination of Gaza ministry of health numbers and UN figures, plus other reports of casualties and those missing on the ground.

“This is the highest number of children killed and maimed in one conflict since 2006 when United Nations records began,” Mr Denslow told The Independent.

“This is also 21 times higher than the number of children killed and maimed in Ukraine last year,” he added.

The UN has verified that 131,311 children have been killed or maimed across conflict situations since 2006. These numbers – which go up to 2022 – are woefully low estimates, particularly in countries such as Syria, where rights groups say accessing the death toll is near impossible.

“But even if we go by the caveated numbers in Gaza, in just over two months they are already a quarter of a way through that total number of children killed and maimed in 17 years,” said Mr Denslow. “For the intensity, it is something I have never seen before.”

Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Rafah (Reuters)

Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said that aside from the besieged areas of Syria during the worst days of 2015, the “scale of the killing of civilians has not been seen in a generation”.

He said such a child death toll had not likely been recorded since the genocide in Rwanda 30 years ago.

“In an ocean of human misery and in a world that seems to be falling apart, Gaza stands out,” he added.

An Israeli military spokesperson said: “The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is committed to mitigating civilian harm during operational activity. In that spirit, the IDF makes great efforts to estimate and consider potential civilian collateral damage in its strikes... IDF military lawyers are on hand at all levels of command to ensure that strikes comply with international legal obligations, including proportionality.”

More than 2.3 million people – half of them children – live in Gaza, a tiny 42km strip that even before the war was subject to a crippling 15-year siege by both Israel and Egypt.

The UN has repeatedly begged for a ceasefire saying there are no safe areas within the strip and no way to get out for civilians who have been displaced multiple times since October and are running out of food, water and medical supplies.

Despite international pleas to wind down the attack, including from its ally the US, Israel has only escalated its ground offensive in Gaza in the closing days of the year.

Young children arrive at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis after being injured in Israeli airstrikes (Getty Images)

This week, Israeli tanks thrust deep into central Gaza after days of relentless bombardment that forced tens of thousands of already displaced Palestinian families to flee to the overwhelmed city of Deir al-Balah along the Mediterranean coast.

“Over 150,000 people – young children, women carrying babies, people with disabilities and the elderly – have nowhere to go,” the main UN organisation operating in Gaza, UNRWA, said in a social media post.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Thursday the humanitarian and health conditions of the now 1.9 million displaced people have reached “catastrophic levels beyond description”.

Half of the displaced are children who are now struggling with dehydration, malnutrition, respiratory and skin diseases and extreme cold, the statement added. Some 50,000 pregnant women, meanwhile, are suffering from thirst and malnutrition.

Amid growing alarm, the UN Security Council last week adopted a resolution to boost humanitarian aid but stopped short of calling for a ceasefire after a week of vote delays and intense negotiations to avoid a United States veto.

The US and Israel oppose a ceasefire, believing it would only benefit Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and free hostages taken by Hamas.

Palestinian children sit by the fire next to the rubble of a house in Khan Younis (Reuters)

Rights groups say without a proper ceasefire it is impossible to tend to the needs of the civilians under such conditions.

“There are around 300,000 destroyed or damaged housing units. It is impossible to provide emergency shelters and do repairs for more than 1.2 million people,” Mr Egeland said.

Israel has defended its actions, saying it has identified a “humanitarian zone” for civilians in an area called Mawasi – which is smaller than London’s Heathrow airport.

“Mawasi is a ‘moonscape’,” Mr Egeland continued. “You can't put 1.5 million people on the moon without water, without shelter, without toilets.”

Mr Denslow said this deadly combination of the geography of Gaza, the density of demographics, the percentage of children, the use of explosive weapons with a wide area affected, and the ferocity of the hostilities had led to the record-breaking casualty toll.

“Children are unable to get away from the front line. There are no safe places. And the death toll is just the top of the pyramid of harm,” he said.

“Below that are serious life-changing injuries, [and] then the fact that people are homeless.

“Below is the mental health impact this will have. Four out of five children in Gaza were already showing signs of depression before the war, which is the fifth conflict any 15-year-old in Gaza would have experienced.

“Their resilience levels have been shot to pieces by recent history that has no endgame in sight.”

'She's alive, she's alive': Dramatic rescue of 10-month-old who survived Israeli airstrikes in Rafah that killed at least 20

Josh Lederman and Lawahez Jabari
Updated Sat, December 30, 2023 

'She's alive, she's alive': Dramatic rescue of 10-month-old who survived Israeli airstrikes in Rafah that killed at least 20


TEL AVIV — In the Gaza darkness, an airstrike rips through Rafah, where Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip are seeking refuge.

The chaotic aftermath plays out like so many devastating scenes from the Israel-Hamas war so far: Buildings are leveled into piles of smoldering rubble. Neighbors dig with their bare hands searching for survivors. The dead and wounded are frantically ferried away.

But this time, covered by a mattress and trapped by debris, a child is found. She’s just 10 months old, and her name is Tala Rouqah.

NBC News’ team in Gaza witnessed her dramatic rescue on Thursday night, when the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry said more than 20 were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in southern Gaza, now a major focus of Israel’s military campaign.

Israel’s military hasn’t said what it was targeting, but has said its bombing campaign is designed to dismantle Hamas’ military abilities and rescue Hamas-held hostages.

When Tala is discovered, she is unconscious, but breathing. Volunteers who show up to rescue her chant, “She’s alive, she’s alive” in Arabic.

Protruding from broken concrete just inches from Tala is her mother’s hand. The rest of her mother is submerged in the rubble.

And just a few feet away is Tala’s father, Ahmad Rouqah, also trapped in the wreckage. With the help of rescuers, he is freed, and ecstatic chants ring out from the men who freed him.

Seconds later, baby Tala is freed, too, and carried to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital by a neighbor.

The next morning, Ahmad is recovering in a different hospital, where he recalls the moments before the strike.

He says the family had fled their home in Gaza City at Israel’s direction to Khan Younis, the largest city in the south, where they stayed with relatives until civilians in that city, too, were told to evacuate. They fled to Rafah, seeking refuge in a house they said had been abandoned and left vacant for several years.

He says they had just finished worshipping during the evening call to prayer and the women of the family were preparing dinner when the building was struck.

“Why, and for what? Only God knows,” Ahmad tells NBC News in Arabic. He says that nobody in his family was part of what he calls the resistance, a reference to Hamas.

Ahmad takes stock of his loss: His mother and wife have both been killed, he says. His son and another daughter, too. And three of his brothers, and his brother-in-law. In all, he says, at least 10 relatives lost their lives.

“Oh god, help me in my misfortune and bring good from it,” he says. “May god accept them in heaven.”

Rapped by grief, Ahmad has yet to see his daughter, until a cousin collects her from the nearby tent city where she’s being cared for and cradles her in his arms. Tala’s leg is broken and in a cast, but she appears otherwise in generally good condition.

Her cousin brings her to Ahmad’s bedside, where the baby breaks into tears when she sees her father — a mix of agony and relief.

He tries to sit up, but is visibly in pain from his injuries. Young Tala is placed in his arms.

She clings to his chest and is soothed, while her father gently sobs. Father and daughter begin the long journey ahead, as the surviving members of a family united by grief.

“Where is your brother, and sister,” he says. “There’s no one left for us.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Gaza death toll climbs amid fierce fighting in south

Euronews
Sat, December 30, 2023 

Palestinian death toll climbs

At least 100 people were killed and 158 injured in central Gaza over the past 24 hours, a Palestinian health official said on Saturday.

In Gaza, at least 21,507 people have now been killed and 55,915 injured in Israeli attacks since October 7.

Some 1,200 people died in Hamas' 7 October attack on southern Israel.
Fierce fighting in Gaza

Intense fighting has been reported between Israeli forces and Hamas militants on Saturday.

Israel is concentrating its military offensive on southern Gaza, particularly around the city of Khan Younis. But it is also conducting operations elsewhere.

In Gaza City, the Israeli Defense Force wrote on X it "eliminated dozens of terrorists" and that "battles took place where further terrorists were eliminated."

On Friday, Israel's Defence Ministry claimed its troops had successfully located and demolished a hideout apartment belonging to Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.

A UN official claimed Israeli troops had opened fire on an aid convoy returning from northern Gaza, damaging a vehicle.

Violence is also spilling into the wider region.

Israeli strikes targeted the Damascus airport and Syrian military sites late Thursday and early Friday, causing material losses, according to Syrian sources.

Israel has launched numerous strikes in government-controlled Syria, often targeting Iran-backed groups supporting President Bashar Assad, although Israel rarely acknowledges these actions.
South Africa accuses Israel of genocide

South Africa has initiated a case at the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and requesting an immediate suspension of Israeli military operations.

Israel vehemently rejected these allegations, calling them 'blood libel' and asserting the case's lack of legal or factual basis.

Israel also accused South Africa of cooperating with Hamas, linking it to the cross-border attack that triggered the ongoing conflict.

Other legal cases have been launched against parties involved in the Israel Hamas war.

In December, rights groups took the UK government to court over its arms exports to Israel amid the catastrophic war in Gaza.

Supported by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq and UK-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) want London to immediately suspend lucrative weapons sales to Israel, claiming there is a "clear risk" they are being used in war crimes.

Gaza civilians devastated by humanitarian crisis

Mercy Corps has warned of famine and disease in Gaza, attributing the crisis to relentless fighting and insufficient humanitarian aid.

The organisation claims that aid deliveries to the besieged Palestinian enclave are inadequate, with half a million people facing "catastrophic hunger and starvation."

Meanwhile, UNICEF has delivered at least 600,000 vaccine doses to Gaza to address the escalating health crisis.

A lack of clean water and basic medical supplies in the territory has contributed to the spread of illnesses.

More than 16,800 infants have missed routine vaccines, and UNICEF, along with WHO and UNRWA, is working to administer the arriving vaccines.

Tens of thousands of vaccines for diseases like polio, tuberculosis, measles, and hepatitis have been confirmed by Israeli officials in coordination with UNICEF.

Hamas-run Health Ministry says 187 killed in one day in Gaza Strip

dpa international
Fri, December 29, 2023 

Palestinian mother Asmaa Naser (C) mourns the bodies of her twin children, Ahmed and Jihan Naser, who were killed after an Israeli air strike on the Nuseirat camp, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir El-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Ali Hamad/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa


A total of 187 people have been killed in one day in fresh Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip, the Health Ministry controlled by the militant Palestinian organization Hamas said on Friday.

The ministry added that 312 Palestinians were injured.

The total number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war rose to 21,507.

The number was last given on Thursday as 21,320. According to this information, 55,915 other people have been injured.

The figures cannot be confirmed, but the UN and other observers point out that the authority's figures have proven to be credible in the past.

The war was triggered by the worst massacre in Israel's history, carried out by fighters from the Islamist Hamas and other extremist groups on October 7 in Israel near the border with Gaza.

As a result, around 1,200 people were killed on the Israeli side, including at least 850 civilians.

People mourn near the bodies of Palestinians killed after an Israeli raid last night on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, at Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital. Mohammed Talatene/dpa

People inspect a damaged building after an Israeli raid on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip as battles continue between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. Mohammed Talatene/dpa

ILLEGAL ZIONIST OCCUPATION 

2023 ‘deadliest year on record’ for children in the West Bank: UNICEF

Lauren Irwin
Fri, December 29, 2023

UNICEF deemed 2023 the “deadliest year on record” for children in the West Bank, with 130 conflict-related deaths.

“This year has been the deadliest year on record for children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, with conflict-related violence reaching unprecedented levels,” UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Adele Khodr wrote in a statement released Thursday.

Khodr said children in the West Bank have experienced “grinding violence” for years, but the recent intensity has dramatically increased since the onset of war between Israel and Hamas.

UNICEF reported that conflict-related violence has killed 124 Palestinian children and six Israeli children in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the start of 2023.

UNICEF said a majority of the deaths this year — 83 — happened in the weeks since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched a surprise attack in Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis and prompted a deadly counteroffensive from the Israeli military.

More than 576 children have been injured, and others have reportedly been detained, Khodr said in the statement.

“As the world watches on in horror at the situation in the Gaza Strip, children in the West Bank are experiencing a nightmare of their own. Living with a near-constant feeling of fear and grief is, sadly, all-too-common for children affected,” she said, adding that UNICEF is extremely concerned about the children’s right to life and safety.

In the statement, UNICEF urged parties involved to abide by international human rights laws and protect children from conflict-related violence.

“The suffering of children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, must not fade into the background of the current conflict — it is part of it,” Khodr concluded.

The UNICEF report came on the same day the United Nations released a report that details the “rapidly deteriorating human rights situation” in the West Bank.

The U.N. found that there were 279 Palestinian deaths in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by the Israel Security Forces since Oct. 7.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

US Congress: ‘We Stand With Genocide’

December 31, 2023

U.S. lawmakers, in the last quarter of 2023, approved a series of resolutions smearing pro-Palestine activism as anti-Semitic and giving Israel PR cover for its open-ended killing spree, writes Corinna Barnard.

Chanukah for Ceasefire celebration/vigil in front of the White House on Dec. 11. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

By Corinna Barnard
Special to Consortium News

The Biden administration in the last three months of 2023 asked Congress to give Israel an additional $14 billion in military assistance on top of the $3.8 billion the U.S. allots every year; vetoed a ceasefire in Gaza at the U.N.; circumvented Congress to sell weapons to Israel and deployed warships to the waters off Gaza to prevent anyone from interfering with the Israeli regime’s campaign of atrocities there.

Congress did not quite match the White House effort to comfort a genocidal Israel. The House approved a $14.3 billion package for the Netanyahu regime, but hinged it on off-setting cuts to the Internal Revenue Service and the bill was blocked in the Senate.

But lawmakers did give Israel heavy-duty backup by stonewalling calls for a ceasefire. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the sole Palestinian-American in Congress, and a few other lawmakers — all people of color— introduced a “Ceasefire Now” resolution on Oct. 16 that is only slowly gaining co-sponsors. A Data for Progress poll shows that while the majority of Americans support a ceasefire, that position has only marginal support in Congress.

And lawmakers used a series of resolutions — expressions of sentiment — to make grand political gestures on behalf of Israel; providing heavy PR cover to the open-ended killing spree.

While blotting out any reference to the Palestinian cause, or the immense suffering of the Palestinian people, these resolutions lathered the marauding government with approval. Looking back on them, in the pause before Congress resumes in January, they read like so many decrees of an imperial court intent on generating its own version of events, at complete odds with external reality beyond their chambers.

‘Standing With Israel’

Senate Resolution No. 417, sponsored by Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, affirmed Israel’s “right to defend itself” and condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on civilians.

This was on Oct. 19, 10 days after Israel had imposed a complete siege of the Gaza Strip and made it clear that it was committed to a campaign of slaughter. The Gaza Health Ministry was reporting that at least 3,785 Palestinians had been killed and 12,493 wounded by Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7.

Massive street demonstrations in cities around the world were raising a hue and cry for a ceasefire and charging the U.S. president with genocide as senators approved the resolution 97-0.

A considerable portion of the opening of the resolution is spent on a reminder of Hamas’ designation as a terrorist organization and harping on the “heinous” crimes the indigenous resistance group committed on Oct. 7.

[Related: Evidence Missing in ‘Mass Rape’ Charge Against Hamas]

This set the keynote for all the resolutions that followed. From No. 417 on, condemnation of Hamas was obligatory, repeated over and over; crowding out any possible criticism of Israeli atrocities before or after Oct. 7.


Schumer visiting Israel on Oct. 15. (US Embassy Jerusalem, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

The House, which had been mired in GOP in-fighting over who would replace their fallen leader, Kevin McCarthy, rushed to issue a matching “standing with Israel as it commits genocide” resolution.

On Oct. 25, the same day Republicans catapulted Mike Johnson — a MAGA legal activist and friend of Christian nationalists — into the speaker post, reps approved, with overwhelming bipartisan support, House Resolution 771, “Standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists.”

The lone Republican in the House to vote against No. 771 was Thomas Massie of Kentucky, also the only white person to vote no. All of the nine Democrats in the House who voted “no” were people of color.

[Related: The ‘Genocide Moment’]


Johnson delivering remarks after his election as speaker of the House on Oct. 25. (Office of Speaker Mike Johnson, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

Another resolution followed in the Senate on Oct. 26, when lawmakers issued another obligatory condemnation of Hamas along with “antisemitic student activities on college campuses in the United States.” This resolution, sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley,


“… denounces the rhetoric of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas student groups as antisemitic, repugnant, and morally contemptible for sympathizing with genocidal violence against the State of Israel and risking the physical safety of Jewish Americans in the United States.”

The House followed suit with a similar resolution on Nov. 2.

With these two strokes, Congress declared open season on student protests against Israel’s campaign of carnage.

Censuring Tlaib

On Nov. 7, congressional representatives moved to censure Rep. Tlaib for “promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and for calling for the destruction of the State of Israel.” (The charges against Tlaib were far from credible as Robin Abcarian lays out in her Los Angeles Times column “Censuring the House’s only Palestinian American is a cynical ploy to silence opposition to Israel.”)

By the time congressional representatives had ganged up on the Michigan Democrat — for what amounted to Tlaib’s refusal to disavow the movement to liberate her ancestral land and people — Israeli forces had killed at least 10,328 Palestinians in Gaza since Oct. 7.

Since resolutions are expressions of sentiment, with no funding attached, they can be used to just vent political hot air. But these resolutions, during rising political opposition to Israel, signaled a congressional counter-attack.

Lawmakers were going after the protest movement that had been energized in opposition to what the Palestinians were going through; a second full-scale Catastrophe, 75 years after the original Nakba.

On Nov. 28 — as Israel was doing all it could to pound Gaza out of existence — House legislators, with near unanimity, once again showed their solidarity with war crimes, affirming Israel’s right to exist. In a separate, fully unanimous resolution that same day, Hamas was called upon to free the hostages, with no mention of the political prisoners held by Israel.

Condemning Hamas, standing with Israel, censuring Tlaib, completely ignoring the Palestinian viewpoint — by this point, Congress had perfected its three-ingredient recipe for a giant batch of Islamophobia:

1) ignore Israeli culpability 2) scapegoat Palestinians and their allies for Israel’s crimes and 3) give the silent treatment to the pain and agonies of people in Gaza as they are being killed, wounded, driven from their homes and deprived in almost every conceivable way.

Representatives, by the end of November — almost two months into the barbaric slaughter — had gone far beyond treating Palestinians as “lesser victims.” They had suppressed any recognition of Palestinians whatsoever; lowering the blinds, institutionally speaking, on the war criminality of both Israel and the U.S.

The rhetorical, psychic effort to disappear Palestinians in the halls of Congress was sickeningly like what Israel was intent on doing to real people, in real life and death.

Intensifying Attack on Demonstrators

On Dec. 5, the House approved Resolution 894, “strongly condemning and denouncing the drastic rise of antisemitism in the United States and around the world.”

While opening with a broad statement against ethnic bias, the resolution focused exclusively on a grab-bag of incidents of anti-Semitism since Oct. 7. Some look like serious matters, some marginal and some possibly not anti-Semitic incidents at all. It’s hard to say from the way they are written up.

But lawmakers undermined any serious consideration of these incidents by associating them with an ostensible statement about bias-crime that omitted any mention of victimized Palestinian people in the U.S.

In late October the Department of Justice opened a hate-crimes investigation of the murder of Wadea Al Fayoume, a 6-year-old American boy in Illinois whose parents are from a village in the West Bank. The killer stabbed Wadea multiple times. He also stabbed Wadea’s mother, Hanaan Shahin, who was hospitalized with wounds after the attack.

As CNN reported, the family’s landlord was arrested and charged with committing the crimes “allegedly because the tenants are Muslim.”

Joe Biden condemned the murder during a nationwide TV address, but an uncle of Wadea criticized the U.S. president for inciting hatred by repeating false Israeli claims — most notoriously allegations of Hamas beheading babies — and not publicly correcting them.

About a week before the House approved the anti-Semitism resolution, a man in Burlington, Vermont, shot three college students of Palestinian descent. Hisham Awartani of Brown University, the most seriously wounded of the three victims was left paralyzed with a bullet lodged in his spine that surgeons could not remove.

The Real Purpose of No. 894


Signs at a Gaza ceasefire rally and march in Washington, D.C., on Oct 28. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

From the get-go, No. 894 was an obvious political decoy. Any sincere effort at reducing ethnic tension would not only take a broad view of bias crimes, it would begin by calling for a ceasefire to end the cause of those tensions: Israel’s violence in Gaza. The tribal approach of this resolution was clearly up to no good. Something else was at work here.

The real intent of Resolution No. 894 becomes clear in its closing declaration that “the House of Representatives clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.”

That phrasing caused Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York City, to lead over 100 Democrats to withhold “yeah” votes and vote simply “present.”

Nadler said the resolution “ignores nuanced examples such as the Satmar sect, a Hasidic Jewish movement, which remains staunchly anti-Zionist and quite obviously is not antisemitic.” Nadler represents a New York City district that includes Borough Park, Brooklyn, home to many Hasidic Jews.

The conflation of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel brings up the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a group of countries led by Sweden that has been working to preserve and bolster public awareness of the atrocities Jews suffered under in Nazi Germany.

The IHRA set itself the task of defining anti-Semitism and as part of that produced a list of illustrative examples. Among them: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

“The rhetorical, psychic effort to disappear Palestinians in the halls of Congress was sickeningly like what Israel was intent on doing to real people, in real life and death.”

The IHRA’s decision to make criticism of Israel an example of anti-Semitism has drawn valid controversy for inoculating Israel from legitimate criticism. This objection is extremely consequential now.

At any time in the past several years, Israel’s apologists reflexively denounced criticism of the country as anti-Semitic, giving the Netanyahu regime space, in that time, to become increasingly hateful and extreme.

Had criticism of Israel been more permissible, it might have helped steer the nation off its current, genocidal course.


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv on Nov. 30. (State Department, Chuck Kennedy)

Last May, the State Department put the IHRA’s controversial definition at the center of its hefty plan for combating anti-Semitism; a decision that historian Lawrence Davidson criticized in his article “Misdirecting the Fight Against Anti-Semitism.”

By embracing the IHRA’s definition, Davidson wrote, the Biden State Department had complicated “the fight against anti-Semitism by publicly announcing that the administration was willing to ignore the prima facie fact that Israel has been documented to in fact be ‘a racist endeavor.’ ”

U.S. lawmakers turned Congress into their own “racist endeavor” by issuing an outcry against ethnic-bias crimes that overlooked the murder in Illinois of Wadea Al-Fayoume; the serious injuring of Hanaan Shahin, Wadea’s mother; and the shooting of Hisham Awartani and his two friends in Vermont.

In late December a few legislators introduced a resolution to “memorialize” 6-year-old Wadea. The wording includes opposition to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia — both, together.

The bill is co-sponsored by Democrats Delia Ramirez of Illinois, Lauren Underwood of Illinois Sara Jacobs of California and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, all of whom joined Nadler in voting against No. 894. We will see how it fares in the new year.

Virginia Foxx’s Hearing


Rep. Virginia Foxx opening a hearing on anti-Semitism on college campuses on Dec. 5. (C-Span still)

On Dec. 5, as lawmakers were condemning the rise of anti-Semitism, the congressional attack on student demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine was heating up. That same day, Rep. Virginia Foxx, Republican from North Carolina, opened a congressional hearing on “anti-Semitism on college campuses.”

Three university presidents had been called for questioning about pro-Palestinian demonstrations on their campuses that members of Congress had decided to construe as involving anti-Semitic speech.

The three witnesses were Harvard’s Claudine Gay, M.I.T.’s Sally Kornbluth and the University of Pennsylvania’s Elizabeth Magill. They gave a lukewarm defense of students’ constitutional right to protest which, despite its timidity, outraged one of their inquisitors, in particular.

As widely reported, Rep. Elise Stefanik made headlines when a clip from the hearing of her aggressive attack on Penn President Magill went viral.

“They failed on a global stage,” Stefanik gloated afterwards, in reference to the trio of presidents. “What will go down in congressional history as the most-viewed congressional testimony in the history of the United States Congress.”

A couple of days after her infamous run-in with Stefanik, Magill resigned. That left blood in the water for the sharks to circle, as they are doing now at Harvard. It will be a purge if the Republican representative from New York has her way.


Harvard’s Claudine Gay during the Dec. 5 congressional hearing. (C-Span)

[Related: US Students for Palestine Under Attack]

On Dec. 13, a triumphant Stefanik sponsored House resolution No. 927. This one condemned “anti-Semitism on university campuses and the previous week’s testimony by university presidents to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.” It passed a roll call vote with 303 “yeas.”

Stefanik may have stolen the show in the committee hearing, but Foxx also deserves a star turn for the way she opened her political-persecution hearing on Dec. 5.

“Today,” Fox told Gay, Kornbluth and Magill, “each of you will have a chance to answer to and atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate filled, anti-Semitism on your respective campuses.”

That was how she greeted three university presidents — by giving them a chance to atone.

[See: Zionist Suppression in Congress]

After laying out the atonement welcome mat, Foxx went on to quote some pearl-clutching comments by Sen. Schumer concerning demonstrators who chant slogans such as “intifada,” an Arabic word for uprising.

“Many of the people who express these sentiments in America aren’t neo-Nazis or card carrying Klan members or Islamist extremists,” Schumer said, according to Foxx’s quoting. “They are in many cases, people that most liberal Jewish Americans felt previously were their ideological fellow travelers. Not long ago, many of us marched together for Black and Brown lives.”

By the time Schumer was trying to make a Fifth Column out of people saying words and slogans in protests, the U.S.-backed Israeli military had since Oct. 7 killed more than 15,900 Palestinians in Gaza.

After instructing the three university presidents to prepare for atonement, after amplifying Schumer’s alarmist rhetoric, Foxx introduced video clips of student demonstrations at the three campuses of the three presidents. It was clear from her manner that the room was about to witness something of grave concern.

All the videos revealed were students engaging in peaceful protest; calling for the liberation of Palestine, the survival of Gaza. “Intifada Revolution; Intifada Revolution,” they chanted. That was it.

The video clips were shown in a surreal, sanitized void; with no reference to the massive crime wave Israel was committing against humanity in Gaza. There were no dead bodies to see; no bombed hospitals; no streams of refugees, no lists of dead journalists; no piles of white shrouds, no names of dead poets.

There was nothing to explain why students might be calling for an uprising.

The production crew for Foxx’s videos had arranged ominous closing music. As that soundtrack faded, the chair of the Committee on Education and the Workforce looked meaningfully around the room, as though some point had been made about the scenes shown in those videos.

It was a Rorschach test, in which, for some apparently, the very sight of students demonstrating on behalf of Palestinians had become evidence of heresy.

Trail of Tears

Map of the expulsion process of Indigenous people, 1830–1838. Oklahoma is depicted in light yellow-green. (Nikater, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

Members of the U.S. Congress have been supporting Israel unconditionally for so long that it is almost automatic, no matter what Israel does. The core of this support is the demonstrated power of the Israel Lobby to fund a politician’s opponents, jeopardizing their careers.

On a more philosophical level, the kinship between the stories of two settler colonial nations may make it too difficult for members of Congress to face this history.

Think of the way the U.S. government encouraged white colonialist settlers in the 19th century to dehumanize the way they thought of the Indigenous people in order to force them off their homelands. Virulent racism is required to commit an ethnic cleansing.

“What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms … “ President Andrew Jackson said in an 1830 address on behalf of his Indian Removal Act.

In that address, Jackson rested his argument for occupying and annexing land in part on the great sacrifices of the white settlers’ forebears; an argument that resonates today in Israeli justifications for its takeover of Palestine.

“Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers,” Jackson said, “but what do they [sic] more than our ancestors did or than our children are now doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects.”

Catharine Beecher, an early American women’s rights activist and sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was an ardent opponent of Jackson’s plan to force indigenous people off their land. In 1829 and 1830, the women’s movement Beecher sparked to protest Jackson’s Indian Removal Bill is known as the first national campaign on the part of women in the United States.

In a petition, Beecher wrote:

“it has become almost a certainty, that these people are to have their lands torn from them, and to be driven into western wilds and to final annihilation, unless the feelings of a humane and Christian nation shall be aroused to prevent the unhallowed sacrifice….”

The feelings of a humane and Christian nation were not sufficiently aroused. The U.S. Army force-marched members of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Muscogee/Creek and Cherokee nations off rich, arable land east of the Mississippi River over a vast distance to the dry soil of Oklahoma in what the Cherokee called their Trail of Tears.

For the kinds of agony they suffered, the world has only to look at Gaza now.



Corinna Barnard, deputy editor of Consortium News, formerly worked in editing capacities for Women’s eNews, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. At the start of her career she was managing editor for the magazine Nuclear Times, which covered the antinuclear war movement.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.