Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

Chris Bing and Joel Shectman
Fri, June 14, 2024 

LONG READ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.


“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: “From China – PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real.”

After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The U.S. military’s anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID misinformation. The Biden White House issued an edict in spring 2021 banning the anti-vax effort, which also disparaged vaccines produced by other rivals, and the Pentagon initiated an internal review, Reuters found.

The U.S. military is prohibited from targeting Americans with propaganda, and Reuters found no evidence the Pentagon’s influence operation did so.

Spokespeople for Trump and Biden did not respond to requests for comment about the clandestine program.

A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China’s vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the U.S. military “uses a variety of platforms, including social media, to counter those malign influence attacks aimed at the U.S., allies, and partners.” She also noted that China had started a “disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19.”

In an email, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it has long maintained the U.S. government manipulates social media and spreads misinformation.

Manila’s embassy in Washington did not respond to Reuters inquiries, including whether it had been aware of the Pentagon operation. A spokesperson for the Philippines Department of Health, however, said the “findings by Reuters deserve to be investigated and heard by the appropriate authorities of the involved countries.” Some aide workers in the Philippines, when told of the U.S. military propaganda effort by Reuters, expressed outrage.

Briefed on the Pentagon’s secret anti-vax campaign by Reuters, some American public health experts also condemned the program, saying it put civilians in jeopardy for potential geopolitical gain. An operation meant to win hearts and minds endangered lives, they said.

“I don’t think it’s defensible,” said Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. “I’m extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the U.S. government would do that,” said Lucey, a former military physician who assisted in the response to the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The effort to stoke fear about Chinese inoculations risked undermining overall public trust in government health initiatives, including U.S.-made vaccines that became available later, Lucey and others said. Although the Chinese vaccines were found to be less effective than the American-led shots by Pfizer and Moderna, all were approved by the World Health Organization. Sinovac did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Academic research published recently has shown that, when individuals develop skepticism toward a single vaccine, those doubts often lead to uncertainty about other inoculations. Lucey and other health experts say they saw such a scenario play out in Pakistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency used a fake hepatitis vaccination program in Abbottabad as cover to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Discovery of the ruse led to a backlash against an unrelated polio vaccination campaign, including attacks on healthcare workers, contributing to the reemergence of the deadly disease in the country.

“It should have been in our interest to get as much vaccine in people’s arms as possible,” said Greg Treverton, former chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the analysis and strategy of Washington’s many spy agencies. What the Pentagon did, Treverton said, “crosses a line.”
'We were desperate'

Together, the phony accounts used by the military had tens of thousands of followers during the program. Reuters could not determine how widely the anti-vax material and other Pentagon-planted disinformation was viewed, or to what extent the posts may have caused COVID deaths by dissuading people from getting vaccinated.

In the wake of the U.S. propaganda efforts, however, then-Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had grown so dismayed by how few Filipinos were willing to be inoculated that he threatened to arrest people who refused vaccinations.

“You choose, vaccine or I will have you jailed,” a masked Duterte said in a televised address in June 2021. “There is a crisis in this country … I’m just exasperated by Filipinos not heeding the government.”

When he addressed the vaccination issue, the Philippines had among the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia. Only 2.1 million of its 114 million citizens were fully vaccinated – far short of the government’s target of 70 million. By the time Duterte spoke, COVID cases exceeded 1.3 million, and almost 24,000 Filipinos had died from the virus. The difficulty in vaccinating the population contributed to the worst death rate in the region.

A spokesperson for Duterte did not make the former president available for an interview.

Some Filipino healthcare professionals and former officials contacted by Reuters were shocked by the U.S. anti-vax effort, which they say exploited an already vulnerable citizenry. Public concerns about a Dengue fever vaccine, rolled out in the Philippines in 2016, had led to broad skepticism toward inoculations overall, said Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination. The Pentagon campaign preyed on those fears.

Signage that reads "No Vaccine No Ride" (L) is seen on the windshield of a passenger jeepney in Quezon City, suburban Manila on January 17, 2022, as the Philippine government banned unvaccinated people from using public transport amid a record surge in coronavirus cases.

“Why did you do it when people were dying? We were desperate,” said Dr. Nina Castillo-Carandang, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and Philippines government during the pandemic. “We don’t have our own vaccine capacity,” she noted, and the U.S. propaganda effort “contributed even more salt into the wound.”

The campaign also reinforced what one former health secretary called a longstanding suspicion of China, most recently because of aggressive behavior by Beijing in disputed areas of the South China Sea. Filipinos were unwilling to trust China’s Sinovac, which first became available in the country in March 2021, said Esperanza Cabral, who served as health secretary under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Cabral said she had been unaware of the U.S. military’s secret operation.

“I’m sure that there are lots of people who died from COVID who did not need to die from COVID,” she said.

To implement the anti-vax campaign, the Defense Department overrode strong objections from top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia at the time, Reuters found. Sources involved in its planning and execution say the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military’s psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

“We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective,” said a senior military officer involved in the program. “We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.”
A new disinformation war

In uncovering the secret U.S. military operation, Reuters interviewed more than two dozen current and former U.S officials, military contractors, social media analysts and academic researchers. Reporters also reviewed Facebook, X and Instagram posts, technical data and documents about a set of fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military. Some were active for more than five years.

Clandestine psychological operations are among the government’s most highly sensitive programs. Knowledge of their existence is limited to a small group of people within U.S. intelligence and military agencies. Such programs are treated with special caution because their exposure could damage foreign alliances or escalate conflict with rivals.

Over the last decade, some U.S. national security officials have pushed for a return to the kind of aggressive clandestine propaganda operations against rivals that the United States’ wielded during the Cold War. Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in which Russia used a combination of hacks and leaks to influence voters, the calls to fight back grew louder inside Washington.

In 2019, Trump authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its government, Reuters reported in March. As part of that effort, a small group of operatives used bogus online identities to spread disparaging narratives about Xi Jinping’s government.

COVID-19 galvanized the drive to wage psychological operations against China. One former senior Pentagon leader described the pandemic as a “bolt of energy” that finally ignited the long delayed counteroffensive against China’s influence war.

The Pentagon’s anti-vax propaganda came in response to China’s own efforts to spread false information about the origins of COVID. The virus first emerged in China in late 2019. But in March 2020, Chinese government officials claimed without evidence that the virus may have been first brought to China by an American service member who participated in an international military sports competition in Wuhan the previous year. Chinese officials also suggested that the virus may have originated in a U.S. Army research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. There’s no evidence for that assertion.

Mirroring Beijing’s public statements, Chinese intelligence operatives set up networks of fake social media accounts to promote the Fort Detrick conspiracy, according to a U.S. Justice Department complaint.

China’s messaging got Washington’s attention. Trump subsequently coined the term “China virus” as a response to Beijing’s accusation that the U.S. military exported COVID to Wuhan.

US President Donald Trump holds a news conference with members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the COVID-19 outbreak at the White House on February 26, 2020.

“That was false. And rather than having an argument, I said, ‘I have to call it where it came from,’” Trump said in a March 2020 news conference. “It did come from China.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said in an email that it opposed “actions to politicize the origins question and stigmatize China.” The ministry had no comment about the Justice Department’s complaint.

Beijing didn’t limit its global influence efforts to propaganda. It announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.

Washington’s plan, called Operation Warp Speed, was different. It favored inoculating Americans first, and it placed no restrictions on what pharmaceutical companies could charge developing countries for the remaining vaccines not used by the United States. The deal allowed the companies to “play hardball” with developing countries, forcing them to accept high prices, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University who has worked with the World Health Organization.

The deal “sucked most of the supply out of the global market,” Gostin said. “The United States took a very determined America First approach.”

To Washington’s alarm, China’s offers of assistance were tilting the geopolitical playing field across the developing world, including in the Philippines, where the government faced upwards of 100,000 infections in the early months of the pandemic.

The U.S. relationship with Manila had grown tense after the 2016 election of the bombastic Duterte. A staunch critic of the United States, he had threatened to cancel a key pact that allows the U.S. military to maintain legal jurisdiction over American troops stationed in the country.

Duterte said in a July 2020 speech he had made “a plea” to Xi that the Philippines be at the front of the line as China rolled out vaccines. He vowed in the same speech that the Philippines would no longer challenge Beijing’s aggressive expansion in the South China Sea, upending a key security understanding Manila had long held with Washington.

“China is claiming it. We are claiming it. China has the arms, we do not have it.” Duterte said. “So, it is simple as that.”

Days later, China’s foreign minister announced Beijing would grant Duterte’s plea for priority access to the vaccine, as part of a “new highlight in bilateral relations.”

China’s growing influence fueled efforts by U.S. military leaders to launch the secret propaganda operation Reuters uncovered.

“We didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” a senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign in Southeast Asia told Reuters. “So what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.”
Military trumped diplomats

U.S. military leaders feared that China’s COVID diplomacy and propaganda could draw other Southeast Asian countries, such as Cambodia and Malaysia, closer to Beijing, furthering its regional ambitions.

A senior U.S. military commander responsible for Southeast Asia, Special Operations Command Pacific General Jonathan Braga, pressed his bosses in Washington to fight back in the so-called information space, according to three former Pentagon officials.

The commander initially wanted to punch back at Beijing in Southeast Asia. The goal: to ensure the region understood the origin of COVID while promoting skepticism toward what were then still-untested vaccines offered by a country that they said had lied continually since the start of the pandemic.

A spokesperson for Special Operations Command declined to comment.

At least six senior State Department officials responsible for the region objected to this approach. A health crisis was the wrong time to instill fear or anger through a psychological operation, or psyop, they argued during Zoom calls with the Pentagon.

“We’re stooping lower than the Chinese and we should not be doing that,” said a former senior State Department official for the region who fought against the military operation.

While the Pentagon saw Washington’s rapidly diminishing influence in the Philippines as a call to action, the withering partnership led American diplomats to plead for caution.

“The relationship is hanging from a thread,” another former senior U.S. diplomat recounted. “Is this the moment you want to do a psyop in the Philippines? Is it worth the risk?”

In the past, such opposition from the State Department might have proved fatal to the program. Previously in peacetime, the Pentagon needed approval of embassy officials before conducting psychological operations in a country, often hamstringing commanders seeking to quickly respond to Beijing’s messaging, three former Pentagon officials told Reuters.

But in 2019, before COVID surfaced in full force, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed a secret order that later paved the way for the launch of the U.S. military propaganda campaign. The order elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the State Department when conducting psyops against those adversaries. The Pentagon spending bill passed by Congress that year also explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even “outside of areas of active hostilities.”

Esper, through a spokesperson, declined to comment. A State Department spokesperson referred questions to the Pentagon.
U.S. propaganda machine

In spring 2020, special-ops commander Braga turned to a cadre of psychological-warfare soldiers and contractors in Tampa to counter Beijing’s COVID efforts. Colleagues say Braga was a longtime advocate of increasing the use of propaganda operations in global competition. In trailers and squat buildings at a facility on Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base, U.S. military personnel and contractors would use anonymous accounts on X, Facebook and other social media to spread what became an anti-vax message. The facility remains the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda factory.

Psychological warfare has played a role in U.S. military operations for more than a hundred years, although it has changed in style and substance over time. So-called psyopers were best known following World War II for their supporting role in combat missions across Vietnam, Korea and Kuwait, often dropping leaflets to confuse the enemy or encourage their surrender.

After the al Qaeda attacks of 2001, the United States was fighting a borderless, shadowy enemy, and the Pentagon began to wage a more ambitious kind of psychological combat previously associated only with the CIA. The Pentagon set up front news outlets, paid off prominent local figures, and sometimes funded television soap operas in order to turn local populations against militant groups or Iranian-backed militias, former national security officials told Reuters.

Unlike earlier psyop missions, which sought specific tactical advantage on the battlefield, the post-9/11 operations hoped to create broader change in public opinion across entire regions.

By 2010, the military began using social media tools, leveraging phony accounts to spread messages of sympathetic local voices – themselves often secretly paid by the United States government. As time passed, a growing web of military and intelligence contractors built online news websites to pump U.S.-approved narratives into foreign countries. Today, the military employs a sprawling ecosystem of social media influencers, front groups and covertly placed digital advertisements to influence overseas audiences, according to current and former military officials.

China’s efforts to gain geopolitical clout from the pandemic gave Braga justification to launch the propaganda campaign that Reuters uncovered, sources said.
Pork in the vaccine?

By summer 2020, the military’s propaganda campaign moved into new territory and darker messaging, ultimately drawing the attention of social media executives.

In regions beyond Southeast Asia, senior officers in the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, launched their own version of the COVID psyop, three former military officials told Reuters.

Although the Chinese vaccines were still months from release, controversy roiled the Muslim world over whether the vaccines contained pork gelatin and could be considered “haram,” or forbidden under Islamic law. Sinovac has said that the vaccine was “manufactured free of porcine materials.” Many Islamic religious authorities maintained that even if the vaccines did contain pork gelatin, they were still permissible since the treatments were being used to save human life.

The Pentagon campaign sought to intensify fears about injecting a pig derivative. As part of an internal investigation at X, the social media company used IP addresses and browser data to identify more than 150 phony accounts that were operated from Tampa by U.S. Central Command and its contractors, according to an internal X document reviewed by Reuters.

“Can you trust China, which tries to hide that its vaccine contains pork gelatin and distributes it in Central Asia and other Muslim countries where many people consider such a drug haram?” read an April 2021 tweet sent from a military-controlled account identified by X.

The Pentagon also covertly spread its messages on Facebook and Instagram, alarming executives at parent company Meta who had long been tracking the military accounts, according to former military officials.

One military-created meme targeting Central Asia showed a pig made out of syringes, according to two people who viewed the image. Reuters found similar posts that traced back to U.S. Central Command. One shows a Chinese flag as a curtain separating Muslim women in hijabs and pigs stuck with vaccine syringes. In the center is a man with syringes; on his back is the word “China.” It targeted Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a country that distributed tens of millions of doses of China’s vaccines and participated in human trials. Translated into English, the X post reads: “China distributes a vaccine made of pork gelatin.”

Facebook executives had first approached the Pentagon in the summer of 2020, warning the military that Facebook workers had easily identified the military’s phony accounts, according to three former U.S. officials and another person familiar with the matter. The government, Facebook argued, was violating Facebook’s policies by operating the bogus accounts and by spreading COVID misinformation.

The military argued that many of its fake accounts were being used for counterterrorism and asked Facebook not to take down the content, according to two people familiar with the exchange. The Pentagon pledged to stop spreading COVID-related propaganda, and some of the accounts continued to remain active on Facebook.

Nonetheless, the anti-vax campaign continued into 2021 as Biden took office.

Angered that military officials had ignored their warning, Facebook officials arranged a Zoom meeting with Biden’s new National Security Council shortly after the inauguration, Reuters learned. The discussion quickly became tense.

“It was terrible,” said a senior administration official describing the reaction after learning of the campaign’s pig-related posts. “I was shocked. The administration was pro-vaccine and our concern was this could affect vaccine hesitancy, especially in developing countries.”

By spring 2021, the National Security Council ordered the military to stop all anti-vaccine messaging. “We were told we needed to be pro-vaccine, pro all vaccines,” said a former senior military officer who helped oversee the program. Even so, Reuters found some anti-vax posts that continued through April and other deceptive COVID-related messaging that extended into that summer. Reuters could not determine why the campaign didn’t end immediately with the NSC’s order. In response to questions from Reuters, the NSC declined to comment.

The senior Defense Department official said that those complaints led to an internal review in late 2021, which uncovered the anti-vaccine operation. The probe also turned up other social and political messaging that was “many, many leagues away” from any acceptable military objective. The official would not elaborate.

The review intensified the following year, the official said, after a group of academic researchers at Stanford University flagged some of the same accounts as pro-Western bots in a public report. The high-level Pentagon review was first reported by the Washington Post, which also reported that the military used fake social media accounts to counter China’s message that COVID came from the United States. But the Post report did not reveal that the program evolved into the anti-vax propaganda campaign uncovered by Reuters.

The senior defense official said the Pentagon has rescinded parts of Esper’s 2019 order that allowed military commanders to bypass the approval of U.S. ambassadors when waging psychological operations. The rules now mandate that military commanders work closely with U.S. diplomats in the country where they seek to have an impact. The policy also restricts psychological operations aimed at “broad population messaging,” such as those used to promote vaccine hesitancy during COVID.

The Pentagon’s audit concluded that the military’s primary contractor handling the campaign, General Dynamics IT, had employed sloppy tradecraft, taking inadequate steps to hide the origin of the fake accounts, said a person with direct knowledge of the review. The review also found that military leaders didn’t maintain enough control over its psyop contractors, the person said.

A spokesperson for General Dynamics IT declined to comment.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”

And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign – General Dynamics IT – won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military.

A Reuters investigation: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China

SPACE

Scientists Found Carbon in an Ancient Place Where It Was Never Supposed to Be

Darren Orf
Thu, June 13, 2024

Life May Have Kicked Off Earlier Than We Thought

Aitor Diago - Getty Images


Scientists estimate that the universe garnered enough carbon to form planets some one billion years after the Big Bang.

But that timeline might be a bit more complicated—a new study analyzing a primordial galaxy named GS-z12, which formed 350 million years after the Big Bang, contained clouds of carbon.

This could indicate that early stars released less energy than expected when going supernova, and instead released their outer carbon shells rather than consuming the element in a black hole.

The nonmetallic chemical element carbon is the essential building block of all life (at least on Earth). Because the element can combine with so many other elements—including itself, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and more—carbon is seen as required for complex life to take shape.

During the early (millions of) years after the Big Bang, no carbon existed, because the early universe contained only light elements like hydrogen and helium (as well as trace amounts of lithium). Scientists estimate that the heavy element-engines, which were the very first stars, likely churned out enough carbon to form planets around one billion years after the Big Bang.

However, scientists from the University of Cambridge are altering that timeline significantly after analyzing data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In that data lurked an ancient galaxy named GS-z12—one of the most distant ever observed at some 13 billion light-years away—in which the experts discovered traces of clouds of carbon. Accepted for publication by the Astronomy & Astrophysics and posted to the preprint server arXiv, the study could prove that carbon was present in the universe as early as 350 million years after the Big Bang.

“Earlier research suggested that carbon started to form in large quantities relatively late – about one billion years after the Big Bang,” Roberto Maiolino, a co-author of the study, said in a press statement. “But we’ve found that carbon formed much earlier – it might even be the oldest metal of all.”

JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, allows the groundbreaking space telescope to analyze light from this galaxy in a spectrum of colors. This is particularly important because GS-z12 is both incredibly faint and 100,000 times less massive than our own Milky Way. Luckily, while JWST spends hundreds of hours gathering light from this distant corner of the universe, it also uses its microshutter array to glimpse other objects at the same time.

Because elements leave behind different chemical fingerprints in this infrared spectrum, scientists can analyze the data and determine what exactly makes up this early galaxy. The scientists clearly found traces of carbon, as well as oxygen and neon. This discovery could make scientists rethink the role of early stars in the universe.

“We were surprised to see carbon so early in the universe, since it was thought that the earliest stars produced much more oxygen than carbon,” Maiolino said in a press statement. “We had thought that carbon was enriched much later, through entirely different processes, but the fact that it appears so early tells us that the very first stars may have operated very differently.”

One explanation, according to the researchers, is that early stars released less energy when going supernova than initially believed. This might’ve allowed carbon—likely contained in the stars’ outer shells—to quickly seed the universe, rather than being consumed by a collapsing black hole.

This means life might’ve gotten quite the headstart on the timeline we have long believed to be true. And while that life might look much different than our own, we can likely bet on one thing—it was probably made of carbon.

Boeing Starliner not ready to come back to Earth – leaving astronauts on International Space Station

Andrew Griffin
Fri, June 14, 2024

Boeing Starliner not ready to come back to Earth – leaving astronauts on International Space Station


Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft will stay at the International Space Station for longer than expected, just the latest in a series of problems for the capsule.

It means that the astronauts who were carried to the space station in a mission earlier this month will have to stay for longer than expected, coming back on 22 June. They may end up staying for longer.

Nasa said that the delayed return will allow Nasa and Boeing to spend more time planning for the astronauts’ return and their journey back down to Earth.

Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were launched aboard Starliner June 5 and arrived at the ISS the next day, following a 24-hour flight in which the spacecraft encountered four helium leaks and five failures of its 28 manoeuvring thrusters.

“The extra time allows the team to finalise departure planning and operations while the spacecraft remains cleared for crew emergency return scenarios within the flight rules,” Nasa and Boeing said in a statement.

They are targeting a departure no earlier than June 22, leaving open an opportunity for further extensions of time at the ISS. Starliner, while designed for future six-month missions, can stay docked to the ISS for a maximum of 45 days during its current mission.

The return to Earth is expected to last about six hours and target a location in the desert of Utah, New Mexico or other backup locations, depending on local weather conditions.

Starliner‘s first flight with astronauts is a crucial last test in a much-delayed and over-budget program before Nasa can certify the spacecraft for routine astronaut missions and add a second US crew vehicle to its fleet, alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

The spacecraft during its time docked to the ISS has encountered more problems. A fifth leak of helium - used to pressurize Starliner‘s propulsion system thrusters - popped up, and separately an oxidizer valve has been stuck, Nasa has said.

Those in-flight problems follow years of other challenges Boeing has faced with Starliner, including a 2019 uncrewed test failure where dozens of software glitches, design problems and management issues nixed its ability to dock to the ISS. A 2022 repeat uncrewed test succeeded to dock.

If all goes as planned with Starliner‘s return of two astronauts back to Earth, Boeing still faces other challenges before making the spacecraft operational and bringing it to market for other non-Nasa customers.

Boeing's Starliner astronaut taxi spotted at ISS (satellite photo)

Mike Wall
Fri, June 14, 2024

Boeing's Starliner capsule is seen docked to the International Space Station in this zoomed-in view of an image captured by Maxar Technologies' WorldView-3 satellite on June 7, 2024. | Credit: Maxar Technologies


An Earth-observing satellite has given us a unique view of Boeing's new Starliner astronaut taxi in space.

Starliner arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6, delivering NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the orbiting lab on a shakeout cruise known as Crew Flight Test (CFT).

A day later, Maxar Technologies' WorldView-3 satellite snapped a striking photo of the ISS and its new arrival, which is prominently featured near the center of the frame.

a white space capsule is seen docked to the international space station in this satellite photo

WorldView-3, which launched in August 2014, usually observes Earth from its vantage point 385 miles (620 kilometers) above our planet. But the new photo shows that the spacecraft can study objects in orbit as well.

"This type of imagery collection, known as non-Earth imaging (NEI), is a breakthrough capability that enables Maxar to support critical space domain awareness missions for government and commercial customers," Maxar wrote in an X post on Wednesday (June 12) that featured the ISS-Starliner photo.

Non-Earth imaging could become a higher and higher priority for the U.S. government and other entities with a large stake in the final frontier over the coming years.

The number of satellites going to orbit has jumped dramatically recently and will likely continue to grow, largely due to the rise of megaconstellations such as SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, which currently consists of more than 6,000 active spacecraft. Keeping tabs on this ever-growing orbital population will likely become increasingly important, and increasingly challenging, for satellite operators.

RELATED STORIES:

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CFT is the first-ever crewed mission for Starliner, which is scheduled to come back to Earth no earlier than June 18. If all goes well on the mission, the capsule will be certified to fly long-duration astronaut missions to and from the ISS for NASA.

SpaceX already does this with its Crew Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. Elon Musk's company is in the middle of its eighth operational astronaut flight to the ISS, known as Crew-8.

NON SCIENTIST CHEERLEADER

NASA administrator says 'at least a trillion' other planets like Earth could exist in universe

Bret Baier

FOX NEWS
Thu, June 13, 2024

NASA has plans to return astronauts to the lunar surface in the near future. Next year, four astronauts will orbit the moon.

"We don't need to go back to the moon just for the moon. We're going back to learn new things. In order for us to go to Mars and beyond," said Administrator Bill Nelson.

The Perseverance Rover is exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars, which was once a lake on the red planet. Scientists believe life may have existed there in the distant past.

LUNAR MINING RAISES KEY LEGAL QUESTIONS AS NEW SPACE RACE HEATS UP

"It's getting samples and it's drilling with this drill, creating these core samples about the size of a cigar and sealing them up in these titanium tubes," Nelson explained. "We're trying to figure out right now how we're going to go back and get them and bring them back to Earth, so that we got an idea of whether or not there was life there."

NASA is now working with several companies to develop a plan for the return mission, which could happen in the 2030s. The agency is also working with Firebird Diagnostics in the search for life on Mars.

"NASA's mission is to go out, among other things, and discover whether or not we are alone," said Firebird Diagnostics Founder Steven Benner.

His company sells so-called alien DNA. It uses synthetic properties and has helped NASA understand what possible forms of alternative DNA might exist.

US-CHINA SPACE RACE FOR MOON MINING HEATS UP

"It's a big question as to how molecular biology could be done if it was, done by an organism that does not share a common ancestor, a common origin, with you and me," Benner said.

The DNA has also helped detect diseases like Covid-19, cancer and HIV here on Earth. Human DNA has four nucleotides or building blocks. Benner’s synthetic material has up to eight. They allow for more sensitive testing and eliminate false positives.

"It allows you to get that needle in the haystack without having to worry about all the background information," Benner said.

Nelson says searching for life on other planets helps us understand better who we are in the universe.

DIA OFFICIALS WARN CHINA, RUSSIA DEVELOPING 'COUNTER-SPACE CAPABILITIES'

"If you ask me directly, do I think that there are aliens here on Earth? I don't think so. I don't absolutely know. And I don't think the U.S. government is hiding anything from anybody. But if you ask me, ‘do I think there's life out there in the cosmos?,’" Nelson said. "I ask our NASA scientists that question, ‘how many possibilities in the vastness of this universe are there, that there's another planet like Earth that would be habitable for life as something like we know it?’ They said at least a trillion."

Nelson says while the odds that life may exist in space, whatever it may be, likely exists so far away that it won’t be discovered for a long time. However, NASA is still preparing for the possibility.

"Even if you could travel at the speed of light to a far off distant world, the close ones are a thousand light years away," Nelson said. "That doesn't mean that we cannot have some kind of understanding of what's out there."

Nelson has asked NASA scientists to use artificial intelligence in the software of spacecrafts.

"In a spacecraft like Voyager, that is out in interstellar space, that is beyond our solar system, if it came upon another spacecraft, it could real time learn to communicate with that other spacecraft," Nelson said. "That’s what we do at NASA. They make the impossible possible. It's a bunch of wizards around here."


NASA administrator describes future projects, partnerships in space

Bret Baier, Amy Munneke

FOX NEWS
Thu, June 13, 2024 

Bill Nelson says he never imagined he would become administrator of the nation’s space agency, NASA.

"I had no idea," Nelson said. "As a matter of fact, I grew up in the shadow of the cape, never thinking I would ever have a chance to fly in space."

Nelson served in both the House and Senate as a Democrat representing Florida. In 1986, Nelson trained and flew with the crew of the space shuttle Columbia and became the second sitting member of Congress to travel to space, after Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah.

CRAZY-STRONG ROBOTIC DOGS GEAR UP FOR MOON MISSION

"I flew in the space shuttle. We had 135 flights, two that were catastrophic. The first one, Challenger, was 10 days after our flight landed back on Earth," Nelson said. "It's an unforgiving environment. And there you are, white-knuckle time when that baby's going up and when it's coming back."

The space shuttle completed its final mission in 2011. Since then, NASA has begun working with an increasing number of private companies to travel and conduct research in space. He says the partnerships have helped unite Americans.

"Just think how the space history here brought us together. Think when the Soviets beat us, and we were scared because they had the high ground. They had Sputnik, and then they got Yuri Gagarin up first for one orbit," Nelson said. "But [a few] months later, John Glenn climbed into that Mercury capsule. He shimmied into it, and it's sitting on top of an Atlas rocket. There was a 20% chance that that thing was going to blow up. And when Glenn was successful for three orbits, that changed everything."

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson speaks during a media briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 14, 2023.

Nelson said space is part of the American spirit and making the impossible possible.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," President John F. Kennedy said during a speech at Rice University in 1962.

Kennedy’s speech has helped inspire decades of research at NASA. When the agency was created in 1958, Congress put into law that any technology created for space must also be practical for earth.

"Since 1958, we've been spinning off these technologies to the public in the forms of new products and services that make our lives better," said NASA Technology Transfer Program Executive Daniel Lockney. "[The technologies] enhance the U.S. economy, save lives and in other instances are just really cool things that we get as a result of the nation's investment in this aerospace research."

Lockney has worked to transfer NASA inventions or intellectual property to the public sector.

"We get credit for things that we didn't do, which is a wonderful problem to have," Lockney said. "Something we did do that we don't get credit for is, we invented the camera that's in your cellphone."

In the 1980s, spacecraft imaging helped launch the digital camera industry using charged devices to create pictures in space. By the next decade, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California worked to create image sensors that used less power and were easier to mass-produce. The result was a small digital computer chip.

"We didn't know what to do with it," Lockney said. "Then, Nokia approached us, and they had this wacky idea of putting a camera in a telephone."

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft launches from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5, 2024, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA administrator Bill Nelson says public-private partnerships in space are helping unite Americans.

The lightweight, high-resolution camera microchip didn’t require a lot of power and was perfect for spaceflight and handheld personal devices.

"Now, we all have the blessing of taking with our camera a photograph, and it's an absolutely beautiful photograph," Nelson said.

Bobby Braun, director for planetary science at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), discusses Mars sample return flight systems on Oct. 14, 2021, at the JPL in Pasadena, California.

New technology is being developed on Earth to advance space flight, but an increasing amount of research and innovation is being done in space. Nelson says astronauts are experimenting at the International Space Station 24/7. Private companies also have been sending astronauts into space for experimenting.

"The additional astronauts coming up are bringing their own [research], many of them sponsored by pharmaceutical companies to do their own. Whenever they want to send it up for much longer, we have our astronauts up there full time," he said.

How China's Chang'e 6 minirover snapped its epic photo on the moon's far side
Andrew Jones
Fri, June 14, 2024 


An image of China's Chang'e 6 lander on the moon's far side, snapped by the mission's minirover. | Credit: CNSA


China has revealed details about a miniature rover tucked away on the country's pioneering Chang'e 6 lunar far side sample-return mission.

Chang'e 6 launched on May 3 on a Long March 5 rocket. While being a repurposed backup to the successful 2020 Chang'e 5 mission, it was revealed after launch that the new spacecraft also packed a surprise rover.

The Chang'e 6 lander touched down in Apollo crater with the South Pole-Aitken basin on June 1. The rover was deployed around two days later, after sampling operations on the moon had been completed.

The small, autonomous vehicle drove away from its parent craft and snapped an iconic image of the lander, topped with an ascent vehicle which would later blast the collected samples into lunar orbit. The image shows solar arrays, landing legs, a deployed sampling arm and a basalt Chinese flag.

The rover is highly capable and has significantly enhanced autonomous intelligence, stated its developer, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), according to the state-run media outlet Xinhua.

The rover autonomously detached from the lander, drove to a suitable position and selected an ideal angle for the photograph before capturing the image, according to the report.

The small vehicle represents "a significant stride forward in the development of autonomous intelligence in China's deep space exploration endeavors, promising a positive influence on future lunar exploration," according to CASC.

At approximately 11 pounds (5 kilograms), the rover is much smaller and lighter than China's first two moon rovers: Yutu and Yutu 2, part of the 2013 near side Chang'e 3 and 2019 far side Chang'e 4 missions, respectively. Each Yutu weighed around 310 pounds (140 kg). Yutu 2 is still active inside the moon's Von Kármán crater.

RELATED STORIES:

— China launches Chang'e 6 sample-return mission to moon's far side (video)

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While China has not provided details, the Chang'e 6 lander and rover likely ceased operations when the ascent vehicle lifted off from atop the lander, blasting it with high-velocity exhaust. In any case, the lander and rover were not designed to survive the deep cold of lunar night that has since fallen over Apollo crater.

Chang'e 6 has been supported by Queqiao 2. The relay satellite bounced signals between ground teams and the spacecraft on the far side of the moon, which never faces Earth.

Chang'e 6 is expected to deliver around 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of precious lunar far side samples to Earth around June 25.

NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is doing science again after problem

ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN
Fri, June 14, 2024 

FILE - This illustration provided by NASA depicts Voyager 1. The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data in November 2023. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California announced this week that Voyager 1's four scientific instruments are back in business after a technical snafu in November. (NASA via AP, File)


DALLAS (AP) — NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is sending science data again.

Voyager 1's four instruments are back in business after a computer problem in November, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this week. The team first received meaningful information again from Voyager 1 in April, and recently commanded it to start studying its environment again.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is drifting through interstellar space, or the space between star systems. Before reaching this region, the spacecraft discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and several of Saturn’s moons. Its instruments are designed to collect information about plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles.

Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 kilometers) from Earth. Its twin Voyager 2 — also in interstellar space — is more than 12 billion miles (19.31 kilometers) miles away.

—-

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Judge rejects bankruptcy plan for Alex Jones’ Infowars but allows him to liquidate his personal assets

Jon Passantino, Nicki Brown, Oliver Darcy and Hadas Gold, CNN
Fri, Jun 14, 2024

A Texas bankruptcy judge has rejected a proposed liquidation of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ company Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, saying that a denial of the bankruptcy plan was, in his opinion, in the best interest of the creditors. But the judge approved a separate liquidation of Jones’ personal assets.

Judge Chris Lopez said the Infowars bankruptcy process had dragged on and that it needed to stop “incurring costs” and let the families of Sandy Hook victims try to claim what they are owed through state courts. The families have not received payment of the approximately $1.5 billion in damages against Jones that they have won after he lied about the 2012 school massacre.

“The right call is to dismiss this case,” Lopez said Friday.

Lopez made his ruling in a lengthy decision where he seemed emotional at times, once even noting the timing of this decision being made shortly before Father’s Day.

“I think it needed to happen,” he said towards the end of the hearing. “I wish I would’ve picked a better day.”

Unanswered questions

The rejection of the bankruptcy plan leaves many questions to sort out in the decision’s wake. Among them: What happens next for Infowars? And what legal avenues remain for the victims’ families to collect the massive sum Jones still owes them?

This judgment could be viewed as a partial victory for Jones, who fought the liquidation proposal – but so too did some families, whose attorneys said they’ll benefit more from the bankruptcy plan’s dismissal by going after Jones’ assets immediately – rather than waiting for a prolonged bankruptcy procedure to play out.

That ruling leaves Free Speech Systems to face its creditors outside of bankruptcy in state courts, noted Marie Reilly, professor of bankruptcy law at Penn State University.

In a statement, an attorney for the families said they would press on.

“Today is a good day. Alex Jones has lost ownership of Infowars, the corrupt business he has used for years to attack the Connecticut families and so many others,” said Chris Mattei, an attorney for the families. “The Court authorized us to move immediately to collect against all Infowars assets, and we intend to do exactly that.”

Lopez noted that the case is far from over. The interim trustee, and later the permanent trustee , in Jones’ personal case will ultimately decided Infowars’ fate.

“Those trustees will make decisions about where things go,” he said. “We’re not leaving thing s into the wind here.”

Jay Westbrook, a University of Texas bankruptcy law professor, said that Infowars could still be sold by the court-appointed trustee to pay some of the damages owed to the families, but it would likely not fetch a high price.

“Jones owns [Free Speech Systems] and thus his bankruptcy trustee could sell it, but without his active promotion it may be of little value, except for its inventory of products he has been selling,” Westbrook said.

Jones had been opposed to liquidating Infowars and in recent days ranted on his show about what could be its impending shutdown, urging his audience to buy his products to support him.

“I’m going to try to move forward and maximize the amount of money we can make at Info wars to then have a wind-down,” Jones said outside the court house after the hearing Friday.

Jones’ attorney, Vickie Driver, applauded the decision, saying the judge was fair in his review of the unique aspects of the case.

“Mr. Jones did everything he could to preserve as much value as he could in Free Speech Systems to pay the plaintiffs,” Driver said.

Westbrook said if Jones continues at Infowars, it could maximize the amount of money the victims families could draw from it.

“The problem is that Jones’ appeal to his audience, awful as it is to say it, is probably the only thing of value he has that is not exempt in Texas and it is very difficult to make him use it to benefit anyone else,” Westbrook said.
Jones’ personal bankruptcy approved

Earlier on Friday, Lopez approved the liquidation of Jones’ personal assets after the conspiracy theorist agreed to convert his personal bankruptcy into a Chapter 7 liquidation last week. The liquidation means that Jones will immediately lose control of his property except for certain exempt property, such as a $2 million house in Austin.

Jones’ decision to seek bankruptcy protection comes after he agreed to demands from the families of Sandy Hook victims.

The judge said an interim trustee will be appointed to oversee Jones’ estate, as is standard in these cases. Jones’ attorney Vickie Driver told the court $2.8 million from the sale of Jones’ ranch could be sent to the trustee.

Jones founded Infowars, an influential conspiracy empire, in the late 1990s. Over the years, Jones has used the media company to poison the public discourse with lies and conspiracy theories, and he also enriched himself, making millions of dollars in the process.

Whatever proceeds are gained from Jones’ personal bankruptcy will amount to just a fraction of what he owes families of Sandy Hook victims.

The families argued to the court that there is “no prospect” the Jones’ company could produce a proper reorganization plan under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would allow the company to remain operational through its restructuring.

The judge’s rulings on Friday would not prevent Jones from spreading conspiracy theories and lies online. X CEO Elon Musk restored Jones’ social media account in December 2023 after a five-year ban from the platform. And Jones could go on any number of far-right outlets to share his outlandish views.

But the Sandy Hook families are hoping to seize Jones’ social media accounts, arguing they are a key part of his Infowars business that allow Jones to promote his brand. And Jones may not be welcome at some venues: He had been listed as a guest on the Milwaukee stop on Tucker Carlson’s live tour but was recently dropped from the lineup without explanation.
Lies and conspiracy theories

Since founding Infowars in the late 1990s, Jones has pushed several conspiracy theories, including the lie that the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, mass school shooting was a so-called “false flag” operation staged by the government and that the grieving family members of 20 child victims were “actors.” Jones makes money on those conspiracy theories by hawking high-priced dietary supplements to his audience.

The mood Friday on Jones’ Infowars was somber, with the far-right outlet’s hosts speculating on its future. Chase Geiser, an Infowars host who had driven with Jones to the courthouse where the bankruptcy hearing was underway, made a brief appearance on the outlet, attempting to twist the judge’s decision as one that would net Jones an even larger audience.

Jones’ regularly scheduled program was replaced with previously recorded interviews, airing conversations with Tucker Carlson and Russell Brand.

This story has been updated with additional developments and context.

CNN’s Liam Reilly contributed to this report

India’s opposition leveraged caste and constitution to shock Modi in election

Shivangi Acharya and Krishn Kaushik
Thu, June 13, 2024 




 Awadhesh Prasad greets his supporters inside his house in Ayodhya


By Shivangi Acharya and Krishn Kaushik

AYODHYA/VARANASI, India (Reuters) - A seminal moment in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's unsuccessful campaign to retain his parliamentary majority occurred days before India's marathon election began in April.

Speaking in the constituency that includes the Hindu temple town of Ayodhya, lawmaker Lallu Singh said that his and Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was seeking a supermajority in parliament's lower chamber to make material changes to the constitution.

Opposition parties latched onto Singh's remark to assert, without evidence, that the BJP would amend modern India's founding document to strip Hindus at the bottom of the caste hierarchy of access to affirmative action policies.

The attack line hit a nerve - splitting the Hindu vote and ending the BJP's decade-long dominance in the country's most populous state.

Opinion polls had pointed to a landslide in Ayodhya's home state of Uttar Pradesh and nationally but when results came through on June 4, the BJP had lost 29 seats in the state - nearly half of all the party's losses nationwide.

"It hit the people like fire," said Awadhesh Prasad of the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP), whose base comprises Muslim and lower-caste voters in Uttar Pradesh. He successfully wrested the constituency anchored by Ayodhya from Singh, who had held it since 2014.

Despite the BJP's best efforts to debunk the emerging narrative, the damage was done.

"The prime minister and other leaders tried to explain to the people, but by then their mood was set," said Dileep Patel, a state BJP official in Varanasi. Singh declined to comment.

Reuters interviewed 29 party leaders and workers from the BJP and rival parties, four analysts and 50 voters for this story. They described how lower caste concerns about affirmative action, along with a shortage of jobs, and complacent BJP activists combined to tip the scales in Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most lawmakers to parliament.

After a decade of electoral near-invincibility that combined economic success with a narrative of Hindu supremacy, Modi's party was reduced to 240 seats nationwide. He was able to form a third government only with the help of allies, some of whom have a reputation for political fickleness.

It was a reminder that BJP cannot take Hindu votes for granted.

THE SUPERMAJORITY CALL

Ayodhya was supposed to be the safest of seats.

In January, Modi inaugurated a grand temple there to the deity Lord Ram in a ceremony that sparked national euphoria. It also fulfilled a decades' long pledge used by the BJP to rise from India's political margins into a major force.

Singh's speech made no mention of taking benefits from lower castes and Modi's aides have frequently downplayed concerns about changes to the constitution, which guarantees school and government job quotas to historically disadvantaged castes and tribal groups, both still among India's poorest.

But it quickly spread on social media, fuelling an opposition campaign.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav wrote on social media that the BJP wanted to end the quota system and keep underprivileged segments of society "as their slaves."

At election rallies, Yadav's ally and the opposition's main figurehead, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, began whipping out a pocket-sized copy of the constitution, warning it was under threat.

The message was echoed in media advertisements and by the regional party's workers in Uttar Pradesh, which a SP spokesperson described as 600,000 strong.

India's castes have co-existed uneasily with each other for millennia.

The BJP was long considered a bastion of upper-caste Hindus, but Modi, who belongs to a lower caste, had previously made inroads with marginalised groups, according to analysis by the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).

He has sought to unite Hindus by shifting focus from traditional notions of caste, instead putting the spotlight on the poor, youths, farmers and women - which he calls the four biggest castes in modern India. In power, Modi successively backed a man from a lower caste and a woman from a tribal group for India's largely symbolic presidency.

A relatively united Hindu vote in the last two national elections allowed the BJP to sideline India's nearly 200 million Muslims and overcome longstanding concerns around unemployment, inflation and rural distress.

Sandeep Shastri, coordinator of a program on Indian elections at CSDS said the number of people voting primarily on Hindu ideology appeared to have plateaued in 2019.

This year, BJP won just 54 of the 131 seats reserved for candidates from underprivileged groups, down from 77 in 2019. It won eight of the 17 reserved seats in Uttar Pradesh, compared to 14 the last time.

Dharmendra Yadav, a 30-year-old in Varanasi constituency who comes from a lower caste, said he believed the BJP "would have ended the reservations."

"When the opposition raised the issue of the constitution, it just verified it for us," said Dharmendra, whose surname indicates a caste affiliation with the SP's Akhilesh, who he is not related to.

Dharmendra previously backed the BJP but went for the opposition this year.

"Caste politics still has a major influence in the Hindi belt," state BJP official Patel said, referring to states across central India that have been BJP's stronghold since 2014.

WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

Surveys suggest Modi remains the world's most popular elected leader.

But this year, Modi's personal majority in his seat, centred around the holy city of Varanasi, shrank by more than 300,000. He retained his constituency with the lowest margin of any sitting premier in over three decades.

"The BJP heavily relied on the prime minister's leadership to ... win votes and also maybe to camouflage problems that people are facing," said researcher Shastri.

Among those problems is a lack of jobs created over the past decade.

Young voters like Dharmendra had backed BJP in a landslide in 2014, when Modi promised to create 20 million jobs a year nationwide. The pledge has not been fulfilled.

Dharmendra said he had taken numerous exams for white-collar government jobs, highly prized for their security and benefits. In February, nearly 4.6 million people applied for 60,000 constable vacancies in Uttar Pradesh, only to have the BJP-run state government cancel the exam after the test was leaked online.

Banaras Hindu University political science professor Ashok Upadhyay said the exam leak, which was not the first and was repeated in March, gave young Indians, who have grown up in an increasingly unequal country, a sense that the job selection process was unfair.

Adding to the BJP's electoral missteps, some voters and BJP leaders said the party faltered because they had assumed another landslide victory and were dismissive of issues that were important to voters.

DON'T WANT VOTES?

The redevelopment of Ayodhya into a temple town was preceded by the demolition of thousands of homes and stores. Nearly two dozen locals, including BJP supporters, told Reuters they were dissatisfied with the compensation offered.

A SP voter who identified himself by his first name of Shakti said he was part of a group that had lobbied BJP leaders for support.

"They said they didn't want these 10,000 to 20,000 votes from local businessmen, they would win anyway," he said.

Another Ayodhya trader confirmed Shakti's account and local BJP leader Veerchand Manjhi said he had also found it difficult to get locals' issues addressed by authorities.

District magistrate Nitish Kumar said in response to Reuters questions that the compensation process was fair.

Ratan Sharda, a senior leader of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's ideological parent, wrote in the June 16 issue of its "Organiser" magazine that the result was a "reality check."

BJP activists and leaders were "happy in their bubble, enjoying the glow reflected from Modiji’s aura, they were not listening to the voices on the streets," he wrote.

BJP RESILIENCE?

The BJP retains many strengths, including a leader with popular backing across the party, control of Uttar Pradesh's state government and the backing of the influential RSS, said Delhi University professor Chandrachur Singh.

Analysts such as CSDS's Sanjay Kumar noted that the BJP did well in states where there wasn't a strong local party like the SP in Uttar Pradesh, which was able to capitalise on regional discontent.

And while Congress tried to nationalise its message that the BJP posed a threat to affirmative action, caste-based messaging held less appeal in urbanising India's many cities. "In urban areas, caste is overridden by class identities," Singh said.

The BJP's Patel said that the party had launched a detailed review of the loss and was confident of winning state elections in Uttar Pradesh that are due by 2027.

"The BJP either wins, or it learns," a BJP worker in Ayodhya told Reuters.

(Reporting by Shivangi Acharya in Ayodhya and Krishn Kaushik in Varanasi; Additional reporting by Rupam Jain, Krishna N. Das and Saurabh Sharma; Editing by Katerina Ang)


Clip shared with false claim 'Pakistan flag hoisted' after opposition won in Indian mega-state

AFP India
Thu, June 13, 2024

A video of a religious flag atop a truck has been shared in posts that falsely claimed residents of Bareilly city in India's Uttar Pradesh state waved the flag of Muslim-majority Pakistan to celebrate the failure of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to secure a majority in the state after the country's general election. The flag in the video differs from Pakistan's national flag, and the video circulated online weeks before the results of India's marathon national polls were announced.

"Bareilly became Pakistan!!" read part of a Hindi-language post shared on social media platform X on June 5, 2024.

"As soon as Samajwadi Party won 37 seats in Uttar Pradesh, people from the peace loving community in Bareilly waved the flag of Pakistan," the post continued, using a phrase that Hindu hardliners sarcastically employ to refer to Muslims.

A video attached to the post shows people sitting atop a truck waving a green flag that bears the star and crescent moon symbol of Islam.

Superimposed on the video is an image of Pakistan's national flag, and a person speaking over the footage says: "The Pakistan flag is waving in Bareilly, policemen are also standing there."

Screenshot of the false X post, captured on June 6, 2024

The post surfaced after the results of India's marathon general election were announced, showing that the opposition Samajwadi Party had won more seats than Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP in Uttar Pradesh -- India's most populous state and a bellwether for national elections

It was the first time in 15 years that the BJP had failed to win the most seats in the state, the heartland of India's majority faith that had formed the bedrock of the BJP's parliamentary strength.

Modi will remain in office but with a substantially reduced mandate and needing to rely on coalition allies to govern.

The video was also shared with similar claims elsewhere on X and on Facebook.

But it does not show people in Bareilly waving Pakistan's national flag.
Not Pakistan's flag

The flag shown in the video is different to Pakistan's national flag; it does not have a vertical white stripe close to the hoist and the star and crescent symbol faces in the opposite direction.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the flag in the video (left) and a picture of Pakistan's national flag from AFP's archives (right):

Screenshot comparison of the flag in the video (left) and a picture of Pakistan's national flag from AFP's archives (right)

Moreover, a reverse image search of keyframes followed by keyword searches led to the same footage posted by an Instagram user on May 19 (archived link).

The Instagram post was shared more than two weeks before the results of India's weeks-long general election were announced on June 4.

A representative for Bareilly's police force told AFP the video "has no connection with the results" of the poll.

The officer said the video is from a religious procession that took place in 2023.

"The flag seen in the video is not the flag of Pakistan but is related to the religion of Islam."

AFP has debunked more misinformation around India's elections here.

Alex Jones, Infowars to part ways to partly pay $1.5B legal settlement

He agrees to liquidate assets

THE SANDY HOOK PARENTS MADE HIM CRY ON AIR


Alex Jones speaks to the crowd gathered in front of the Supreme Court to the Million MAGA March goers in Washington, DC on November 14, 2020. File hoto by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo

June 8 (UPI) -- Infowars owner Alex Jones will have to liquidate his ownership of the controversial website and other assets to help settle his $1.5 billion debt to the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims.

Jones on Thursday agreed to liquidate his assets to help pay the $1.5 billion judgment in favor of Sandy Hook families.

Jones initially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection but asked a Texas bankruptcy court to convert it to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which requires him to liquidate his assets.

Those assets include Free Speech Systems, which is a media company that owns Infowars.

He can keep his home and other belongings exempt from bankruptcy liquidation.

The move means Jones and Infowars will part ways. Jones founded Infowars in the late 1990s.

Legal representatives for Free Speech Systems also filed for bankruptcy protection, but the Sandy Hook families this week filed an emergency motion to order the liquidation of the media company.

A hearing on that motion is scheduled next week.

A Texas bankruptcy judge last year ruled Jones can't eliminate the legal judgments against him by filing for bankruptcy.

So far, he hasn't paid any money to the Sandy Hook families.

Jones told his Infowars listeners on Friday that he has no assets and only can pay the $1.5 billion judgment against him with money earned by continuing to broadcast and promote nutritional supplements.

The supplements "are worthless if I don't promote them," Jones said Friday. "The rest of the story is I will not sell out or be compromised to stay on the air here and be a puppet."

The families of elementary school children massacred on Dec. 14, 2012, by Adam Lanza successfully sued Jones for defamation after he called the elementary school attack a "hoax" and a "false-flag operation."

Lanza, 20, murdered his mother to steal her AR-15 rifle and used it to murder 20 students and six adults at the elementary school in Newton, Conn., before shooting himself.

Jones in 2022 admitted the Sandy Hook attack really occurred.

PALESTINE

 

Remembering the Holocaust as Gaza Starves

BY ARIEL DORFMAN

JUNE 7, 2024
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

On May 4, as war and famine raged in Gaza, Amsterdam marked Remembrance Day, an annual commemoration of those who resisted the Nazi occupation, with special emphasis from the city’s organizing committee on the Jews who perished in the onslaught. Among the dozens of ceremonies that crisscrossed the city, I joined one at the Centrale Markthal, a building that had, throughout that period of dread, housed a vast open-air market that sold food to Amsterdammers, though it is currently dedicated to spectacles, parties and gatherings enjoyed by those who, mostly, know little about that remote tragedy.

I was there at the invitation of Max Arian, an 84-year-old Dutch friend, one of the speakers that day. I had met him 50 years ago, on my first visit to the Netherlands to drum up solidarity for the Chilean resistance to the dictatorship of General Pinochet, which drove me into exile. Max, as a secular Jewish survivor of the Nazi occupation, was particularly attuned to freedom and national liberation struggles elsewhere around the world, including the struggle of the Palestinian people for a homeland and an end to the occupation. What bonded us most back then, of course, was how he identified with the promise of Salvador Allende’s peaceful revolution, which was abruptly ended by Pinochet’s 1973 coup d’etat.

During that initial, hospitable encounter, he hinted at his childhood story, but I only learned the details when, with my wife and son, I moved to Amsterdam in 1976 for a four-year stay – welcomed warmly by Max and his family, like an echo of the refuge he had been given as a young boy back in 1943.

His father, Arnold, a member of the resistance to the Nazis, had been shipped to Auschwitz, where, unbeknownst to his relatives, he had died in October 1942. Max’s mother, Rebecca, was subsequently arrested and beaten and, while in captivity, managed to smuggle a message to a relative asking that her 3-year-old son be “hidden” from the Nazis. The child spent the rest of the war with a loving Christian foster family, the Micheels, under a false identity. Rebecca herself was eventually packed into a train with thousands of other Jews and was only rescued at the last minute by men she presumed to be comrades of her husband.

She lived the next two years in safety in Limburg, not far from where her son was being cared for, though she could not know where he was for security reasons. The only sign that he was well was an unsigned letter from Max’s foster mother allaying Rebecca’s fears and mentioning how much, perhaps too much, the little boy enjoyed vlaii, a cake with green berries that was only baked in that southernmost region of the country. So Max was nearby and there was hope that they might still have a future together. And on May 5, 1945, which is still celebrated as Liberation Day in the Netherlands, Rebecca sought news of her son’s whereabouts and immediately retrieved him.

If that clue of shared food had been her sole connection to her lost child, food must have also been on her mind as a way of connecting with her parents, Philip and Mietje Witteboom. They had been spared when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands in early 1940 because Philip, with his wife’s help, ran a stall in the Centrale Markthal providing fruit and vegetables for the populace. Classified as “essential workers,” they managed to avoid deportation until finally, in 1944, they were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. When Max’s grandfather fell ill, he was transported to Auschwitz, where he died. Mietje outlasted her jailers, though she almost succumbed to starvation before the camp was liberated. Indeed, when Rebecca heard her mother had returned to the Netherlands and rushed to see her, she did not recognize the gaunt, skeletal woman advancing down the street, and was only able to identify her by the dress Mietje was wearing.

I imagine their elation, and also the abiding pain left behind by so many missing, murdered relatives, the extended family whose names and dates of birth and death are inscribed now on the Holocaust Memorial Wall, where, on a visit last year, I examined them, one by one, with Max by my side recounting their stories. And we talked, once more, about his own life as a “hidden” child, which had continued to fascinate me over so many decades, to the point that I had borrowed many aspects of his experience for one of the protagonists of my novel The Suicide Museum (2023).

It was not, however, until the ceremony on May 4 of this year that I learned what had happened in the aftermath of the occupation and, once again, the importance of food. Because Mietje, in addition to that solitary dress, had brought something else back from Theresienstadt: a piece of chocolate given to her by the Russian liberators of the camp. This famished woman, instead of devouring it, had kept it for her grandson, wagering that he was still alive. It offered him not only sustenance but the memory as well, because that sweet would remain for Max as the unforgettable moment when he first tasted chocolate. It had melted and then hardened over time, mixing with the tin foil, and yet it was so savory.

And more memories of food: how his grandmother and mother had, for the following decades, sold fruit and vegetables in a stall at that marketplace, despite the efforts by some other vendors to deny them that right on the grounds that the original license was in the deceased Philip’s name. This was the place where the miraculously saved Max, beloved of those two formidable female figures, had spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence, had helped to carry boxes and scrape the muck from them and even, on Mondays, work the cash register. So it was food, again, that came to the rescue of the family, providing a livelihood during difficult years of scarcity, continuing a tradition that had been in the family for generations, even if Max himself would become a famous journalist and cultural critic.

The commemoration at the former marketplace was, therefore, a way of celebrating the triumph of life over death, embodied in the fact that both octogenarian speakers, Max and another hidden child survivor, Simon Italiaander, were very much present to evoke a time when that space had resounded with the back-and-forth of merchants and wholesalers and clients and filled with the smell of cabbages and tomatoes and oranges, so Amsterdammers could eat and love, multiply and laugh, betting that life could, that it must, go on. Because Max was not alone that day of the ceremony. His (non-Jewish) wife Maartje was there, as were other members of his family – one of his three children and two of his eight grandchildren – who existed solely because he had been saved. The ghosts of the past, the dead who await some sort of resurrection in our memory, seemed to be blessing those who had managed to defy the extinction the Nazis had wanted to visit upon those innocent people.

And yet, as more and more recollections of the food that had been sold in that marketplace filled the air, as photos of that space vibrant with sustenance and nourishment circulated among the spectators, as I stared at a marvelous image of a robust, older Mietje, no longer famished, standing defiantly in the midst of endless crates of vegetables, what kept intruding on me, perversely and inevitably, was Gaza: the horror of what was going on in Gaza, what students around the world have been protesting against, including in the streets of Amsterdam. How could a state that had been founded by the survivors of the Holocaust be inflicting starvation on its Palestinian neighbors? How could its armed forces massacre children who, unlike Max, had nowhere to hide, no one to take them in? How could so many Israelis feel indifferent to such grief and afflictions – an indifference that, alas, recalled how so many Germans (and Dutch people, and millions around the world) had turned a blind eye to the sins of the Nazis?

These searing questions, which invaded me, which I could not help asking, do not undermine or disrespect the ceremony at the Centrale Markthal. They make the need to remember more relevant than ever, the certainty that never again should humanity witness terrible war crimes without demanding accountability, as the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague has done. More relevant, also, because those who acclaim Hamas – a murderous, theocratic, misogynistic, oppressive organization that also massacres children and holds innocent hostages – those who share its dreams of ridding the region of its Israeli enemies, would do well to attend memorials like the one I was at on May 4 in Amsterdam.

This is the complicated challenge of our times: to rejoice at the wondrous survival of Max Arian, a fervent supporter of amity between Palestinians and Israelis, and at the same time condemn those persecutors who, by their current acts of terror and forced famine, are betraying the ardent memory of so many of their ancestors who died and are still crying out for peace and justice.

This first appeared on New Lines.

 Teaching Palestine: The Causes and

Consequences of Organized Forgetting

BY DANIEL FALCONE

JUNE 7, 2024

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Introduction

This writing discusses the importance of teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and attempts to explain the barriers and obstacles associated with teaching it. After providing 9/11 as a case study, I emphasize why school leaders and teachers hesitate to address, or outright ignore the conflict. Additionally, it is important to understand what can be avoided and emphasized in thinking about how to treat this subject matter. Ultimately, teaching Palestine is difficult because it is the one issue where the political essence and controversy of the topic is blatantly obvious and in plain view for all to see. We must not, however, avoid teaching Palestine as well as deny students the ability to voice their concerns. I argue that the politics of organized and collective forgetting is counterintuitive to the intellectual and educational process. Teachers and educators, especially at the primary and secondary levels, must find ways to navigate this sensitive topic and overcome the perceptions and taboo nature of covering it.

Teaching 9/11

Teaching 9/11 in secondary schools from the perspective of administrators, educators, support staff and parents wasn’t the easiest thing to do in the United States on September 12, 2001. Obviously, the devastating nature of the 9/11 attacks fostered deep levels of fear, confusion, anger, and resentment. It immediately posed, not only a broad range of psychologically sensitive issues, but it was also, and remains, a contested event in terms of its meaning socially, politically, and educationally. Since schools were not in a rush to talk about 9/11 in terms of its socio-political realities and impacts on the ground, it largely treated it as an opportunity to introduce important counseling and safety and security measures. Although important, many of these responses allowed institutions convenience in collectively forgetting the event and treated it as a way of facilitating, prioritizing, and focusing on its own organizational behavior. In many respects, it was understandable. 9/11 was an extraordinary event from the standpoint of America and the West. It marked the first time the U.S. was attacked on its mainland soil since the War of 1812. It was a time of fast-moving commentary, where the moving parts offered too many opportunities for the wrong thing to be said, with no time to reflect. It was an educational mess.

Even in cases where teachers knew what to say and how to teach their students at the varying grade levels, they feared the Telephone game effect or even zero tolerance for any mistake made. In retrospect, depending on the teacher and school, a lot of important work was done in addressing 9/11 successfully. But what constituted “success?” It seemed that lessons worked best when they were organic and integrated into a specific unit as a case study in following the themes of the grade level course. This could range from Fourth Grade geography that focused on identifying a political map of the Middle East with references to natural resources and U.S. military bases, to an English class analyzing and critiquing U.S. political and presidential rhetoric, to a Global Politics class that defined terminology and official policy in a post-Cold War world. In essence, the answer educationally was to carry on teaching in bite-sized chunks. It was not “anti-American,” to provide students with explanations for why 9/11 happened, as much as some in the National Endowment for the Humanities claimed. Citing imperialism to explain world events does not weaken American resolve. As historian Eric Foner pointed out in The Nation in 2005, “explanation is not a justification for murder, criticism is not equivalent to treason, and offering a historical analysis of evil is not the same as consorting with evil.”

Why are Certain Schools Hesitant to Discuss Palestine?

Schools demonstrate hesitancy or outright ignorance for the discussion of Palestine for reasons closely associated with the problems and politics of teaching 9/11. There’s a general fear of authorizing or sponsoring a problematic statement, a concern for causing a backlash, hurt feelings, or the creation of division. Further, school leaders do not want to appear biased, upset parents or create further alienation. Why would school administrators open themselves up to starting fires where none exist? In some cases, understandably, simply lacking expertise is enough for many professionals with authority to choose silence. Also, to allow for a potential criticism of Israel might be construed as enabling antisemitism and terrorism or denying the goals of self-determination, all the while serving as a way of attracting bad press. Even more pressing – donors, lawmakers, political forces and powerful elements and features of the United States government and the interests of the state could conflict with the position the school takes.

Lastly, school leadership might often side with the dominant narrative, and feel emboldened by ruling class mechanisms that reinforce their own legitimacy. It might be important for many schools and school leaders and teachers to talk about the conflict on the most basic level while situating it as something that developed solely because of Hamas and only after October 7^th .

Controlling the language is also vital and contributes to the hesitancy. By simply referring to it as Israel’s “war with Hamas,” the school absolves itself from discussing Palestinian existence on October 6^th and the role of American militarism in terms of longstanding support for a “maintaining deterrence” policy on behalf of the Holy State. Whatever the reasons however, all these factors combine for an illiberal and immoral approach unfortunately when navigating educational matters regarding the conflict.

Why are Teachers Reluctant?

Teachers may show reluctance for the discussion of Palestine related to the same challenges that administrators face. Again, there’s a general fear of saying the wrong thing, a concern for causing backlash, hurt feelings, or creating division without any time for reflection. Further, teachers do not want to appear to have a bias, upset parents or create further alienation in their classes. Like the management, why would teachers engage in controversy when they do not have to? And again, in some cases, simply lacking knowledge, understanding, and materials is enough for many teachers to choose silence.

Some more conservative teachers might also prefer the dominant narrative internally, but shy away from exposing it in the face of a more liberal faculty who regret the absent narrative. Further, the more liberal teachers may choose silence after being directed to teach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at their own risk. Or just teachers in general, may want to help any way they can but are waiting for support and resources from on high.

Things to Avoid When Teaching Palestine

There are some pitfalls, in my view, to avoid while teaching Palestine. The first is to assume there’s a magical way to teach it without bias. Teachers do not have to go as far as the late great social historian Howard Zinn in stating both the impossibility and undesirable nature of teaching with objectivity. Zinn certainly knew that objective sets of facts and truth existed, but he made a basic point about how every assertion made historically is driven by perspective. Ultimately, history is made more interesting, inspiring, and liberating when forgotten perspectives are embraced. Zinn made it clear that everyone serves a master when describing the past and present, emphasizing “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Another great scholar, Carlo Ginzburg, talked about the impossibility of objectivity, even with an exercise as simple as taking inventory. Of course, teachers should aim in providing balanced perspectives, dispassionate scholarship and clearly written objectives and goals but it’s best to avoid “both-siderism.” As international scholar Richard Falk has indicated, “To blame ‘both sides’ in contexts of asymmetrical responsibility such as [it] exists between Jews and Palestinians is to consciously and unconsciously divert attention away from the essential hierarchical structure of oppression and subjugation, which is the core reality confronting Palestinians. This is especially true for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since 1967 or in refugee camps, and to a somewhat lesser extent, characterizes the lives of Palestinians living as Israeli citizens within ‘the green line’ since 1948.”

A second thing to avoid is announcing or telegraphing a talk or lesson as blatantly activist or biased and getting caught up in conflating the importance of the topic with the potential power of the language in offsetting a pursuit of social justice. It’s not that classrooms cannot promote social justice. They should and they do. It’s rather that when attempts to address topics like Palestine get perceived as inflammatory and knee jerk, even when they are on point and delivered effectively, get scrutinized and evaluated within a small window in proportion to the general population’s time and ability to understand them. Teach about Palestine, and do it well, but teach systematically and emphatically while protecting the students and maintaining a semblance of order for the sake of self-preservation.

A third area for schools to avoid is the urge to frame Palestine around identity and identity politics. While affinity groups are at times quite helpful and worthwhile, focusing on identity becomes problematic when students are taught intellectually or counseled emotionally based on their background and origin. Identity based reactions and responses to students leads the school community to presuppose that there is an “us” and “them,” on the issue, and that both sides have nearly an identical claim in coping with the dispute. Further, it also presupposes that Jewish students are automatically pro-Israel and Muslim and Arab students are inherently pro-Palestine especially when we know the former is especially untrue.

A fourth thing to avoid is the failure to separate and define terms. “Israel,” “Zionism,”, “Apartheid,” “Jewish,” “Palestinian,” “Gaza,” “West Bank,” “Intifada,” and “Hamas,” are all individual terms, each with separate meanings and definitions. These terms, although obviously related to one another, cannot be combined, or used interchangeably within the context of the conflict without creating massive amounts of distortions while fostering an oversimplified paradigm of “good” and “evil.” Further, it’s damaging to treat the topic as if “everybody does it.” When this line of thinking is carried out, it helps in “creating a blank slate on which subsequently to etch a new nation’s imprint,” says Roger Heacock of Birzeit University.

Lastly, teachers should not assume that students don’t know anything on the topic and are unable and automatically confused when talking about it. Undoubtedly, young people will need great amounts of time preparing, studying, analyzing, and articulating a perspective on most complex topics, but it is the reason why they are in school in the first place, and we have all seen students exceed our initial expectations.

What Should Be Emphasized?

In my estimation, an essential and incredible component of any Middle East lecture and lesson is teaching the role of the United States and its special relationship with Israel. Since Israel is a key ally from a strategic and geopolitical standpoint, it’s helpful to discuss that Israel acts in accordance with U.S. funding, planning, direction, and permission in most cases. Reminding students this fact alone disarms the sensitive nature of singling out Israel, a suspicion that pro-Israeli people will almost rightly have, if the teacher does not specify the pivotal American role and culpability. The U.S. provides to Israel an annual military budget of roughly 3 billion dollars and sides with them unambiguously in world affairs. It is not fair to say that Columbia University students, for example, ignore human rights tragedies elsewhere at the expense of charting U.S./Israel crimes while ignoring, take say, the Chinese assimilation of Tibet. The reason that resistance and social movements are so prevalent around Israel, perhaps more so than other conflicts around the world is because of 1) young peoples’ knowledge of the cultural genocide of the American Indian gained in their formative years of schooling, 2) U.S. student understanding of the central event of the 20^th century, The Holocaust and progressive Jews articulation of Never Again For Anyone, and 3) acknowledgment of United States foreign policy and its inextricable links to Israel and vital Middle East interests.

The best ways to teach about the conflict, in my estimation, mirror the effective ways of the teaching of American slavery. American slavery is best taught when teachers: 1) calibrate the lesson to fit their audience (you must know your audience), 2) privilege the voices of people directly involved in the tragedy with the utilization of primary source material, and 3) making sure the teaching is organic and fits into the rhythm and momentum of the normal flow of the school day and curriculum. For years now, teachers have successfully constructed and delivered controversial lessons on slavery, war, genocide, imperialism, and human rights abuses by following precise terminology and the definitions of terms found in references to the scholarly literature. They are not easily taught, but they have been successfully taught and there’s no reason to think that sensitive topics such as 9/11 or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be as well. Teachers could ask students to make a household budget for working class Israelis and Palestinians compared to more privileged sectors. Teachers could compare the construction and effectiveness of Israel’s superhighways that connect settlers to major cities within minutes while it takes Palestinians hours to move from place to place on unfinished roads while negotiating checkpoints. Teachers could have students compare educational facilities in the region or simply analyze charts that show Israel’s financial backing from its superpower patron, the U.S. As teachers, we must normalize the teaching of controversial subjects and embrace complexity as an investment in student learning. If we don’t provide students a steady diet of information as well as consistency and strategies to think critically, we cannot expect the “big lesson” mentality to deliver any reasonable or favorable outcome or impact learning positively.

The Consequences of the Violence of Organized Forgetting

Academic Henry Giroux has pointed out that, “education can be both the basis for critical thought and a site for repression.” He states that, “unfortunately, we live at a moment in which ignorance appears to be one of the defining features of American political and cultural life.” “Ignorance,” he states, “has become a form of weaponized refusal to acknowledge the violence of the past [and present], and revels in a culture of media spectacles in which public concerns are translated into private obsessions, consumerism and fatuous entertainment.”

Here, the schools are failing students miserably if they fail to listen to them or acknowledge the mainstream critiques of the U.S. and Israel related to proportionality as a guideline in war. Yes, young learners will want to discuss the important issues of the day and will make attempts to attend rallies, post signs, issue statements and have thoughts, opinions, and attitudes on monumental events. As educators, it is our role to support them in these events, not in terms of condoning, authorizing, and sponsoring them, but in terms of providing realistic spaces of expression and facilitation and providing them validation and respect for taking stands on issues that require higher ordered thinking and strong senses of citing injustice.

What are “Good” Sources for Studying Israel-Palestine and Which Ones are “Bad?”

First, all teachers interested in learning which information is most helpful for gathering content for students in middle school and high school should read Michael Scott-Baumann’s The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine: From Zionism to Intifadas and the Struggle for Peace. It is incredibly well written and concise and offers a clear chronology and glossary of key terms and key people with an extraordinary bibliography. Solid lesson plans could develop rather easily by using this outstanding source. Overall, I would hesitate to form judgments and opinions of sources and places for information regarding Palestine and its relationship with Israel in terms of good and bad. I’d rather look at information on a continuum that ranges in terms of format. In my view, it’s a good practice to use different types of source material ranging from primary, secondary, and tertiary data. From there, one should generally evaluate information in terms of its authorship, publication, profession, or political philosophy. Usually, not always, publications and pronouncements coming from academic press books and scholarly journals have fairly high levels of reliability. It does not mean they shouldn’t be scrutinized or deconstructed. Information from think tanks, policy analysts, and trade press books are also helpful but the need to pull them apart from their institutional or corporate obligations may be even greater. Lastly, the elite agenda setting media – print (i.e. Washington Post’s KidsPost, New York Times), digital and televised, perhaps needs the greatest amount of time to disentangle. None of these are wholly good or bad in any one instance, but most sources of information are ripe for deconstruction, which is a very valuable exercise.

A Very Short List of Some Suggested Authors and Sources of Information

Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees

Barghouti, Mariam

Barsamian, David

Bennis, Phyllis

Carey, Roane

Chomsky, Noam

Davidson, Lawrence

Falk, Richard

Kelley, Robin

Khalidi, Rashid

Kletter, Raz

Pappe, Ilan

Said, Edward

Scott-Baumann, Michael

Zunes, Stephen

+972 Magazine

Behind the News

Christian Science Monitor

CounterPunch

Current Affairs

Democracy Now!

FAIR

Foreign Policy in Focus

Haaretz

Informed Comment

Jacobin

Truthout

Daniel Falcone is a teacher, journalist, and PhD student in the World History program at St. John’s University in Jamaica, NY as well as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He resides in New York City.

End of an Era: Pro-Palestine Language Exposes Israel, Zionism

by Ramzy Baroud Posted onJune 07, 2024

If one were to argue that a top Spanish government official would someday declare that “from the river to the sea, Palestine would be free”, the suggestion itself would have seemed ludicrous.

But this is precisely how Yolanda Diaz, Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister, concluded a statement on May 23, a few days before Spain officially recognized Palestine as a state.

The Spanish recognition of Palestine, along with the Norwegian and Irish recognition, is most important.

Western Europe is finally catching up with the rest of the world regarding the significance of a strong international position in support of the Palestinian people and in rejection of Israel’s genocidal practices in occupied Palestine.

But equally important is the changing political discourse regarding both Palestine and Israel in Europe and all over the world.

Almost immediately after the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, some European countries imposed restrictions on pro-Palestinian protests, some even banning the Palestinian flag, which was perceived, through some twisted logic, as an antisemitic symbol.

With time, the unprecedented solidarity with Israel at the start of the war, however, turned into an outright political, legal and moral liability to the pro-Israel western governments.

Thus, a slow shift began, leading to a near-complete transformation in the position of some governments, and a partial though clear shift of the political discourse among others.

The early ban on pro-Palestinian protests was impossible to maintain in the face of millions of angry European citizens who called on their governments to end their blind support for Tel Aviv.

On May 30, the mere fact that French private broadcaster TF1 hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led to large, though spontaneous, protests by French citizens, who called on their media to deny accused war criminals the chance to address the public.

Failing to push back against the pro-Palestine narrative, the French government has, on May 31, decided to disinvite Israeli military firms from participating in one of the world’s largest military expos, Eurosatory, scheduled for June 17-21.

Even countries like Canada and Germany, which supported the Israeli genocide against Palestinians until later stages of the mass killings, began changing their language as well.

The change of language is also happening in Israel itself and among pro-Israeli intellectuals and journalists in mainstream media. In a widely read column, New York Times writer Thomas Friedman attacked Netanyahu late last March, accusing him of being the “worst leader in Jewish history, not just in Israeli history”.

Unpacking Friedman’s statement requires another column, for such language continues to feed on the persisting illusion, at least in the mind of Friedman, that Israel serves as a representation, not of its own citizens, but of Jewish people, past and present.

As for the language in Israel, it is coalescing into two major and competing discourses: one irrationally ruthless, represented by far-right Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, in fact, by Netanyahu himself; and another, though equally militant and anti-Palestinian, which is more pragmatic.

While the first group would like to see Palestinians slaughtered in large numbers or wiped out through a nuclear bomb, the other realizes that a military option, at least for now, is no longer viable.

“The Israeli army does not have the ability to win this war against Hamas, and certainly not against Hezbollah,” Israeli Army Reserve Major General Yitzhak Brik said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Maariv on May 30.

Brik, one of Israel’s most respected military men, is but one of many such individuals who are now essentially repeating the same wisdom.

Strangely, when Israel’s Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu suggested the “option” of dropping a nuclear bomb on the Strip, his words reeked of desperation, not confidence.

Prior to the war, the Israeli political discourse regarding Gaza revolved around a specific set of terminology: ‘deterrence’, represented in the occasional one-sided war, often referred to as ‘mowing the lawn’ and ‘security’, among others.

Billions of dollars have been generated throughout the years by war profiteers in Israel, the US and other European countries, all in the name of keeping Gaza besieged and subdued.

Now, this language has been relegated in favor of a grand discourse concerned with existential wars, the future of the Jewish people, and the possible end of Israel if not Zionism itself.

While it is true that Netanyahu fears an end to the war will be a terrible conclusion to his supposedly triumphant legacy as the ‘protector’ of Israel, there is more to the story.

If the war ends without Israel restoring its so-called deterrence and security, it will be forced to contend with the fact that the Palestinian people cannot be relegated and that their rights cannot be overlooked. For Israel, such a realization would be an end to its settler-colonial project, which began nearly a hundred years ago.

Additionally, the perception and language pertaining to Palestine and Israel are changing among ordinary people across the world. The misconception of the Palestinian ‘terrorist’ is being quickly replaced by the true depiction of the Israeli war criminal, a categorization that is now consistent with the views of the world’s largest international legal institutions.

Israel now stands in near-complete isolation, due, in part, to its genocide in Gaza but also to the courage and steadfastness of the Palestinian people, and to the global solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

The Future of UNRWA and Hamas in Gaza

by Rick Sterling / June 4th, 2024

Peter Ford has an extensive career in the UK Diplomatic Service, including serving as UK Ambassador to Bahrein and then Syria. He then served for many years as Special Representative to the Commissioner General of UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.  In this interview, he discusses the background, importance, and how Israel wants to “replace” UNRWA.

Rick Sterling:  How did you come to work for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency?

Peter Ford:  Well, ever since I was a young cub Arabist, I have been exposed to the work of UNRWA. My first job was in Lebanon. I saw its work firsthand in the Palestinian camps there. Every exposure I had increased my admiration for the organization. As I approached retirement, I was attracted to the idea of working for UNRWA.

By chance, I read in The Economist magazine that UNRWA was looking to create a new post, a fundraiser in the Arab world. And the requirements were diplomatic experience and knowledge of the Arabic language. Wow, I thought, this is tailor-made for me. And so it proved. I think I was chosen from a shortlist of one.

Knowledge of Arabic was a great help. I didn’t benefit from any support from the British government, I have to say. And that is an issue with UNRWA. Many of the top jobs are earmarked for particular countries. So the Commissioner General, by custom, is always either a European or American. And the deputy head of UNRWA, Deputy Commissioner General, is also an American or a European.

RS:  What does UNRWA do in Gaza and beyond?  How big an organization is it?

PF:  UNRWA  began operations in 1950 in the aftermath of the conflict in Palestine that led to the creation of Israel and the expulsion of half of Palestine’s population. And the mandate given by the UN General Assembly to UNRWA was to look after these refugees and very significantly their children.  The status of refugees was defined as people who were being helped by UNRWA and their descendants. And this became very important because most refugees around the world from other countries, the status of refugee is not handed on father to son or daughter. But in the case of Palestine refugees, because of the special circumstances where they lost their country, their homes and their livelihoods, they were accorded permanent refugee status for as long as they were unable to exercise their right of return.

As the years passed, this became very important politically. And as it became more difficult to envisage the right of return, the mere existence of UNRWA and its according refugee status to several million Palestinians perpetuated the right of return. And this became a major problem with Israel.

From 1950, UNRWA’s mandate has been to look after the relief and welfare of the refugee Palestinians in terms of education, healthcare, social services, the refugee camp infrastructure, houses, the social services for the vulnerable, and some microfinance and job creation  in recent years.

The core activities are the schools. There is a huge network of UNRWA schools and medical centers. And these are spread across the Middle East in Palestine itself, in the occupied West Bank, in Gaza, in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

Overall, there are almost 6 million Palestinians who qualify for UNRWA support. And of those, about 1.9 million are in Gaza, and about half a million are in Syria, and the rest are shared between Lebanon and Jordan. So it’s serving almost as a micro-state. Six million people is a big responsibility and one that requires a lot of coordination with the host authorities.

Of these, the most problematic by far is Israel as the occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza.  Relations with other governments have by and large been cooperative. There is occasional friction, but on the whole there are very good relations. It’s often forgotten that Jordan and Lebanon and Syria give a lot of support in addition to the support that UNRWA gives. And they host these millions of refugees without complaint.

RS:  Doesn’t UNRWA in some ways relieve Israel of responsibility for the people that it’s got under its control?

PF:  Well, yes, it does. Under international law, the power that has physical control as the occupying power has responsibility to provide the basic services which UNRWA provides:  healthcare, education, and housing. So this burden is taken off the shoulders of Israel. If UNRWA didn’t exist, the Israelis would have to carry the burden of looking after all those millions of refugees. But you’d be mistaken if you thought they were grateful at all.

RS:  A few months ago, Israel made accusations and somehow persuaded several countries to stop their donations to UNRWA. What do you make of this?

PF:  Well, this was a fabricated story the Israelis came up with about three months after the alleged events, they came up with a story that staff had been involved in the 7th October breakout and had carried out crimes.  This was announced with great fanfare.  Knee-jerk reactions followed on the part of the usual suspects. Americans, Europeans and Britain suspended their vital payments to UNRWA.

UNRWA is a beggar. It’s an international beggar. It receives almost nothing from central UN funds. The rest is voluntary, which makes life very difficult for UNRWA. It has to go cap in hand  and cannot afford to upset any of its important donors. And that means the United States, the EU, and Britain.

In fact, my job, the reason I was recruited, was to try to diversify UNRWA’s funding so that it could be a little less dependent on the Western powers. And I had some success in that, garnering about half a billion dollars of contributions from mainly Gulf and North African countries.

But to go back to your question, Israel came up with this story. Just on the basis of the Israeli accusations, the Western powers cut the aid.  Unwisely, to my mind, UNRWA immediately suspended the staff who were accused. This only tended to give credence to the Israeli claims. But this shows the weakness, the political weakness, of UNRWA. It finds it very difficult to stand up to bullying by these powerful countries, by the United States and Europe.

Eventually, about three weeks ago, an independent investigator, a former French foreign minister, carried out an investigation and concluded that there was no proof.  The Israelis were unable to provide any proof to back up their allegations. And most countries are now going back or have already gone back to lift their suspension.

RS:  I think even the original accusations were that some 12 or 13 individuals from a staff of 13,000 had participated in October 7. And now even that’s been discredited, you’re saying?

PF:  Yes, that’s exactly what has happened. It would have been surprising, actually, if there hadn’t been some younger employees, but the Israelis couldn’t provide evidence for a single one.

RS:  Yes. And I understand that UNRWA  gives the names of all their employees to Israel every year for them to almost vet the list.

PF:  That’s right. Israel has an amazing oversight of the activities of UNRWA, at least as far as the occupied territories are concerned.  Over 90% of the employees of UNRWA are Palestinians, the vast majority of Palestinian refugees themselves. But the hierarchy is Western or non-Palestinian. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, the top employees, the director general and immediate close staff are European or American, but over 90% of the staff are Palestinians. And that is something the Israelis don’t like either. The Palestinians have agency in the sense of some measure of control over their lives.

RS:  I have the impression that UNRWA has done a very good job in the education field. And that, again, is something Israel doesn’t like.

PF:  Yes, Israel doesn’t like the fact that so many Palestinians have received a good education under UNRWA’s supervision.  Many Palestinians have gone on to higher education, to distinguished professorships having emerged from UNRWA schools in the camps over the years.

It’s a badge of honor for a Palestinian to have passed through an UNRWA school. In Syria, where I was, Syrians wanted to enroll in UNRWA schools. It was one of the bribes that we could use to leverage favors from the Syrian government. So that’s testimony to how good these schools are and their reputation.

A bone of contention with the Israelis concerns what’s taught in the schools. And again, the Israelis make lurid, unsupported claims about the pupils being taught Palestinian propaganda. And this is just fake news. In the UNRWA schools, they follow the curricula of the Arab country or authority where they are.

So UNRWA schools follow the curriculum of the Palestine Authority, which is vetted by Israel, of course. In Jordan, they follow the Jordanian curriculum, etcetera. But the Israelis love to make up any propaganda they can about UNRWA, and they try to limit UNRWA funding. They use any method to try to stymie, block, or make more difficult the operations of UNRWA. They really do want to bring an end to this agency.

In a way, you can understand it because the agency is synonymous with Palestinian rights and in particular with the right of return. This implies the Palestinians have a right to return to those towns and villages from which their forebears were expelled back in 1948.

So this is why UNRWA is a thorn in the side of Israel and one they would love to destroy completely. Their ambition has no limit. And we’ve seen this during the Gaza crisis. They have used this to try to exclude UNRWA, make propaganda against UNRWA, and create substitutes for UNRWA. Creating a substitute is the latest strategy. The organization that had some of its staff killed by the Israelis is one of these. In fact, that organization was particularly friendly to the Israelis and the Israelis facilitated its entry to Gaza. And it was a tragic irony that the Israelis ended up killing employees of this agency, World Central Kitchen. The Israelis aim to replace UNRWA with organizations they can control like this. That’s part of the plan with the port to be created by the Americans and the British in northern Gaza. It would be serviced by organizations other than UNRWA.

RS:  What’s the status of UNRWA in Gaza now? Is is able to operate as in the past, or are they being restricted?

PF:  UNRWA is very much restricted as far as traditional activities are concerned. The healthcare clinics, hospitals and schools have been either destroyed or badly damaged or they don’t have equipment or they don’t have medicines. So there’s no schooling going on except in home environments. But on the other hand, UNRWA is busier than ever on relief services. It’s more like 1950 when UNRWA was providing tents and the most basic water and food supplies.  You’ll recall that UNRWA stands for UN Relief and Works. And by “works” was meant education, healthcare, and housing. Today UNRWA is doing far more relief than works.

RS:  We’ve seen pictures of  thousands of tents to temporarily house the hundreds of thousands and even more than a million refugees. Have those been set up by UNRWA?

PF:  Yes, and temporary housing also happens in the UNRWA schools. These are now occupied by many thousands of families. The schools are being converted into accommodation. And the healthcare centers, to the extent it’s physically possible. And the hospitals, they’ve also been converted into temporary housing. There are other UN agencies involved. It wouldn’t be fair not to mention the UNICEF, the Children’s Agency, the food agency, all the international agencies are there.

RS:  What do you think will be UNRWA s role in the future?

PF:  In the future? Well, in a single sentence, its role will be to run Gaza alongside Hamas. Now, that’s controversial, obviously. But I think that the day after will look very much like the day before. I don’t think the Israelis will succeed in crushing Hamas.

Eventually the Israelis will be forced to withdraw as they have been forced to withdraw in the past. There will be vastly more reconstruction to do. But UNRWA has the experience and the workforce in place.  Any outside agency would have to bring in thousands of workers.

And after the Israelis leave, of course, the authorities, which are bound to be the people with guns, the resistance, will be more than glad to go back to the old basis of effectively a condominium with the UN agencies. And this is as it should be.

RS:  Some people think that October 7 and what’s happened since then has really changed things. Is that your perspective also?

PF:  Wishful thinking is not a good basis for policy. And I’m afraid the Israelis, indulged by their Western backers, go in a lot for wishful thinking. Though in the last couple of months, one hears less about the day after. It seems the Israelis are focused on just how the hell can they get out, how can they extricate themselves without massive humiliation? There’s very little chatter now about bringing in an Arab defense force to police the Gaza Strip or any nonsense like that. So I believe there will be no alternative. The day after will look like the day before.

RS:  What do you think of the latest (May 31) Biden plan?

PF:  Better late than never. As much by what it omits as by what it says. The plan recognizes that Israel must withdraw with Hamas undefeated and set to resume control of Gaza. All fantasizing about ‘eliminating’ Hamas, about setting up a quisling regime, about an Arab peacekeeping force, about two states – all dropped. It is an unspeakable, unbearable tragedy that it took this amount of killing, maiming and mindless destruction with American bombs to come to this obvious realization 

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Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist in the SF Bay Area. He can be reached at rsterling1@protonmail.com. Read other articles by Rick.

Can Victims Transform Co-annihilation into Co-existence?

by Sean Chabot / June 7th, 2024

The history of the Holocaust was an important part of my childhood in Holland.  One of my best friends was a Jewish-Dutch boy who lived in the house behind mine.  I knew that I couldn’t play with him on Saturdays, because he had to go to Hebrew school.  I also remember that he had certificates on his bedroom wall indicating how many trees he had funded in Israel.  A few years later, when I studied the Holocaust in school and read books on the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, I knew that as a “bystander” my sympathies were with Jewish “victims” and my antipathies with Nazi “perpetrators.”

This moral clarity gave me a sense of comfort: I knew I didn’t want to be friends with the German classmate down the street and got mad at my Mom when she brought my bike to the local bike shop, because its owner was supposed to have been a Nazi sympathizer.  I also hoped that, if I had lived during the Holocaust, I would have been the kind of person to actively support persecuted Jewish families, and that I would have joined the Dutch resistance against Nazi occupation instead of being a passive bystander.

Imagine my shock when, as a teenager in high school, I realized that the tables had turned.  Watching and reading the news on the First Intifada in 1987, I couldn’t believe that the Jewish people I had admired for so long now waged war against persecuted Palestinians, who obviously lacked the military might of Israel.  I was confused and didn’t know how to respond to this reversal in roles.  My sense of moral clarity was shattered: How could victims become killers? How could the persecuted become persecutors? 

I believe that this question of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders remains crucial for thinking about today’s Israel-Palestine catastrophe.  While Jewish people claim essential victim status based on a long history antisemitism, pogroms, and most recently the Holocaust, does this mean that they can’t be perpetrators of genocide today?  How do we, as bystanders in the US empire, enable Israel to claim victimhood after October 7 and to justify its crimes against humanity in the name of self-defense since then? Aren’t Palestinian civilians in Gaza and other occupied territories the victims now?  Or are they all accomplices and potential recruits of Hamas perpetrators of terrorism, forcing Israel to protect its population from this existential threat?  And can we really be innocent bystanders to what is happening in Gaza, especially after the recent invasion in Rafah?  Or are we all, as funders and participants in the US-led imperial war machine, inevitably implicated in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and therefore collectively responsible for its perpetuation?

Instead of treating victim, perpetrator, and bystander as separate categories, I want to emphasize the complex relationships and entanglements among these categories.  One the one hand, it is important to recognize Palestinians as current victims, hold Israel accountable for perpetrating genocide, and reflect carefully on our responsibility as implicated bystanders.  On the other hand, we also need to think beyond recent events and consider wider systems of settler colonialism to better understand the catastrophic cycles of violence in Palestine and know how to make humane coexistence in social relationships, community life, and political decision-making possible.

This raises more urgent questions: What would it take to think and imagine beyond the victim-perpetrator divide?  How could we envision livable co-existence among Jews and Palestinians based on careful judgment rather than on perpetual revenge driven by mutual victimhood? 

First of all, we need to recognize that the dichotomy between “victim” and “perpetrator” can be used by political authorities to serve their own interests and continue the cycle of violence in Palestine.  We also need to consider our role as “implicated bystanders” in perpetuating the victim-perpetrator binary.  So, the fact that Israel is currently a perpetrator of genocide does not make the Jewish people any less a victim of the Holocaust or ongoing antisemitism.  And the fact that Palestinians have a right to armed resistance as victims of colonial occupation and extermination does not condone the brutality of Hamas perpetrators against Israeli civilians on October 7.  In addition, as bystanders, we in the U.S. must take responsibility for avoiding conformity with our government’s and mass media’s complicity with genocide in Gaza.  Only careful thinking and judgment by human beings around the world can produce action toward ending the cycle of violence and victimhood.

Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt’s ideas about thinking and judgment are especially relevant here. For Arendt, thinking is a dangerous activity because it allows all of us to critically examine dominant ideologies and popular opinions in society. It pushes us to engage in inner dialogue with ourselves on urgent political issues, and to question widely-accepted concepts like victim, perpetrator, bystander, security, free speech, self-defense, and terrorism.  Thinking also shapes our moral conscience concerning what is right or wrong and our political perspective on how to act.  It prepares us for moral and political judgment based on independent reflection, and for collective action that opens up new possibilities—what Arendt calls new beginnings.

Second, we should admit that legal justice and abstract fairness are not enough to resolve conflicts like that between Israel and Palestine.  The Nuremberg Trials after World War II, for example, provided concrete evidence of Nazi crimes, convicted 22 prominent Holocaust perpetrators, and legitimized the use of international criminal law against future perpetrators of crimes against humanity.  But they have done little to prevent or stop genocides and war crimes by nation-states since then.  Similarly, calls for fairness promise to repair past wrongs and reconcile present conflicts.  Truth commissions, for instance, invite both victims and perpetrators to share stories of suffering and transgression in the hope that forgiveness can restore humane relationships and discourage bloody revenge.  The case of South Africa shows, however, that truth commissions often reinforce victim and perpetrator identities, while lacking the power for enduring structural transformation.  And if international institutions and laws can’t even force Israel to accept a ceasefire, why would fairness be able to do so?

Finally, as implicated bystanders in the United States, we need to create ways to act against the US empire’s support for Israel’s genocidal colonialism and to act for new beginnings—for new initiatives toward co-existence among Jewish and Palestinian people, as well as among other nationalities, social groups, and struggles for liberation.  While it is crucial to provide humanitarian aid to all victims, we also need to highlight how Jewish rulers and settlers have pursued Israel’s settler-colonial project to displace and erase Palestinians from their land, and how Palestinian people have never given up their right of return and have always resisted colonization with unarmed as well as armed strategies—like other colonized and indigenous populations around the world.   Instead of avoiding conflict by staying silent, we need to use our moral imagination and political capacity to resist conformity with mainstream media’s manufacturing of consent and complicity with support for genocide among political, economic, and academic elites.  And as Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said insisted, we also need to create and inhabit social spaces for learning and meeting across differences, and for risky experiments with co-existence among unique human beings and communities confronting common existential conditions and political challenges.

This brings us to the question: What can we learn from promising experiments with coexistence among Jewish and Palestinian people in occupied territories known as Israel?

One promising initiative is The Parents Circle—Family Forum, a joint Israeli-Palestinians organization with over 700 families that have lost an immediate family member in the colonial conflict.  This organization originated in 1995 and hosts dialogue meetings where Israeli and Palestinian parents tell personal stories of bereavement in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, promoting interpersonal reconciliation and sustainable peace instead of hatred and revenge in relationships across families, communities, and cultures.  Instead of relying on governments or leaders for solutions, they focus on listening, mutual understanding, and joint action guided by the kind of moral-political thinking and judgment favored by Hannah Arendt.  These bereaved families show how capacities for co-existence can emerge from sharing experience and stories of common suffering as unique human beings, not as opponents identified as “victim” or “perpetrator.”  Although interpersonal empathy still needs to be translated into political decolonization, it is not surprising that Israel’s Education Ministry banned the Parents Circle from schools last year, despite protest of principals at these schools.

Another inspiring association is the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), which was founded in 1997 and involves critical Jews in Israel, US, UK, Finland, and Germany seeking to end Israel’s apartheid policies and settler-colonial project by mobilizing against Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes and engaging in anti-colonial political education.  While confronting Zionism as a settler-colonial ideology for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, the ICAHD also calls for the creation of a single, decolonized democratic state with equal rights and dignity for Jewish, Palestinian, Christian, and other inhabitants.  The ICAHD demonstrates how common struggles against colonial systems and for political co-existence can spark new beginnings toward peace and justice in Palestine.

And most importantly: What can we learn from student encampments in the US and around the world about how co-existence can start at the grassroots level and grow translocally? 

The Gaza solidarity encampments that started at Columbia University and continue spreading across the globe highlight yet again how the victim-perpetrator dichotomy has been weaponized by ruling institutions and elites.  For example, university administrations claim that Pro-Israel Jewish students who feel unsafe are “victims,” while anti-Zionist Jewish students resisting peacefully—and facing violent assaults by pro-Israel activists—are “perpetrators.” Politicians and mainstream media portray Palestinian students and faculty as “perpetrators” of speaking up about inhumane conditions in Gaza and standing up to heavily-armed police forces, while wealthy Jewish alumni withdraw donations as “victims” of antisemitism.  Initially, these attempts at distortion and intimidation kept many audiences on the sidelines, but increasingly people throughout the world are waking up to calls for ending genocide in Gaza and Palestine.

Thankfully, the lived experiences and realities of student encampments are very different from the mainstream media’s delusional images and commentaries! Student encampments have become common spaces for political education and co-existence among Jewish, Palestinian, and other students—as well as among faculty and other activists—in solidarity with families and communities in Gaza. They are places where participants push university administrators to disclose and divest from corporations associated with Israeli genocide; perform new ways of living together across violent binaries; and put bodies on the line to dismantle the US empire’s war machine in Palestine, in the US, and around the world.  Students in solidarity with Palestinian struggles for liberation are showing all of us how open-minded thinking, moral judgment, and political will can guide mass movements that eventually end military atrocities like the Vietnam War and racist governments like South Africa’s apartheid regime.

I believe that as university students and faculty members—and as human beings in our shared world—we are responsible for using our intellectual and ethical capacities to make courageous choices about how we respond to urgent situations that confront us.  In my view, the ongoing genocide in Gaza is the most urgent situation in the world since the Holocaust.  We cannot afford to blindly obey our rulers and end up on the wrong side of history.  Passivity or silence in times like these is betrayal—as both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Audre Lorde demonstrated.  Trapping ourselves in fixed identities as victims, perpetrators, and bystanders is not a viable option.  And there are no guarantees that our ideas and actions will produce the solutions we want.  Our only choice is to draw on common suffering to create common struggles and common spaces for coexistence with former enemies, other communities, and ecosystems.  As a child, I hoped that I would become the kind of person who feels and enacts solidarity with Jewish people facing death in concentration camps.  Today, I know that empathy with victims in Gaza is not enough.  Our future depends on how I, how you, how everyone responds to one question: Coannihilatio

or Coexistence?

Sean Chabot is a professor of Sociology at Eastern Washington University. He published a book on "The Transnational Roots of the Civil Rights Movement" (2012) and is working on a manuscript on repertoires of decolonizing resistance. Read other articles by Sean.

Understanding the Fate of the Palestinians

Paving a Road to Liberation

by Dan Lieberman / June 7th, 2024

Since day one of their entrance, the Zionists seized opportunities to enhance their strength and further their agenda, extending a single settlement in Ottoman Palestine to complete control of Palestine. Ten pioneers from Russia acquired 835 acres of land southeast of present day Tel Aviv and established Rishon Le-Zion (“First in Zion”). Founded in 1882, the settlement has grown to a city of approximately 260,000.

The “First in Zion” symbolizes the Zionist thrust — pretend innocence, harden hearts, brutalize innocent inhabitants, and turn oppression of others into security needs for yourself. After the Zionists gained overwhelming power, they used power for severe oppression, to steal more lands, manufacture huge bombs to overcome fists and rocks, and to terrorize a population. Those who contended the oppression were called terrorists. The smiles on Zionists’ faces come from convincing a complacent, unknowing, and confused world to accept ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide as daily happenings that only Zionists are permitted to perpetrate.

The questions often asked and never answered are, “How did the Zionist Jews get away with this open air and available for all to see genocide, and why has there been no valid response to stop it? Millions of valiant people struggle each day to change the situation and bring peace and justice to the Middle East, and these efforts have not succeeded in halting the onslaught, not even reducing it by one Band-Aid.

Shocking is the cowardice of prominent and respected persons, such as Barack Obama, who do not speak out forcibly about the genocide in Gaza. Puzzling is that the United States entered World War II to defeat a state claiming ethnic superiority, exhibiting ultra-nationalism, engaging in irredentism, practicing militarism, and perpetrating genocide. For decades the United States has supported another state that claims ethnic superiority, exhibits ultra-nationalism, engages in irredentism, practices militarism, and perpetrates genocide. The US has seen its World War II battle that defeated Nazi Germany give rise to an extremist Zionism, with innocent European Jews and now innocent Palestinians the victims of the battle. Defeat of a despised international opponent has resurrected a lookalike and despised international opponent.

Building an effective strategy against an opponent requires understanding the opponent’s strategy. The Zionist Jews have major strategies — never compromise, continually pursue the agenda, pay no attention to those who cannot or will not militarily intercede (how many armed divisions does the Vatican have?), turn arguments against them into arguments against the accuser (using debts as collateral), and use to advantage the conditioning of minds that the Holocaust and false charges of anti-Semitism have provided. These strategies are apparent in the war on the Gazans and the reactions to the genocide.

PM Netanyahu stated that Israel did not start this war and did not want this war. Although the genocide of the Palestinians started in 1948, when Zionist militias were already cleansing the land and telling the world they were being attacked, Netanyahu made it seem that a past did not exist and a new war had started. PM Netanyahu tells us that a relatively small contingent of lightly armed Hamas militias want to kill all Jews, conquer all Israel, and expel all Jewish inhabitants. This invisible army is prepared to overcome a heavily armed and formidable army that, without much resistance, does to the Palestinians what Netanyahu claims little Hamas wants to do to the Jews —  daily massacres,  seizing lands, ethnic cleansing, and constant oppression. Israel took advantage of the October 7 attack to hasten the genocide of the Palestinians and disguise the massacre as a legitimate defense.

The Zionist strategy demonstrated its effectiveness when the international Zionist organization persuaded the US Congress to inform the world that the campus protests against US assistance to the genocide of the Palestinians were anti-Semitic conspiracies. Periodic television ads that attempt to validate the anti-Semitic conspiracy and plead not to make Jews victims of the protests followed the diabolical plot. The TV ads indirectly tell us not to give overwhelming importance to the genocide of the Palestinians; more important is that the protests make Jews feel uncomfortable because a few protestors accuse Jews, who support a state that calls itself the “Jewish state,” of complicity in genocide that a “Jewish state” they support is committing. The Zionist strategy works well in a dumbed American republic ─ converts action to stop the genocide into sympathy for those approving the genocide

Focus on the genocide seems a sufficient exercise but lack of success in halting it indicates other severe problems must be addressed. Witnessing the genocide, which is as apparent as the sun rising every 24 hours, having leading and recognized authorities on human rights vigorously exclaim, “This is a genocide,” noting the number of nations voicing their horror and taking action to stop the genocide, regarding the worldwide protests against the genocide, and observing government officials leaving government in protest to the US government’s bizarre assistance in hastening the genocide, and then hearing President Joe Biden say, “What’s happening is not genocide, we reject that,” raises doubts of the sanity of US government officials and operation of a pluralistic democracy where the public’s loud voice is not heard. These genocide deniers can start learning by consulting the Law for Palestine Releases Database, especially the legislative database.

Rhetoric has not clarified that the moral corruption in allowing Zionist Jews to commit genocide has turned religion, democracy, justice, truth, and human rights into meaningless words. Life has lost reality and values have no substance. The mainstream public remains unaware of the seriousness of the damaging relationship the US has with Israel and the genocide and that these affect all aspects of their lives —political, moral, social, cultural, and economic. A strategic objective is to let them know.

Throw it at them.
Huge protests in front of the embassies and media headquarters that support Israel.
Huge protests that align the main roads and city streets and bring the protests into neighborhoods.
Full-page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post calling out the genocide.
Turning anti-Semitism into a vile expression so that its use is uncomfortable. Signs that say “The truth becomes a shit charge of anti-Semitism, and “If truth is anti-Semitism, we are we are all anti-Semites now.”

Assist Jewish organizations that have joined the battle

Jewish organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and If not Now (IFN) have courageously championed Palestinian rights. They deserve praise for their efforts and funding to expand their efforts. These efforts serve a dual purpose — liberate the Palestinians from Israeli oppression and liberate the Jewish people from Zionist oppression.

The biblical “Exodus” story did not free the Jews. Just the opposite, it has been used to keep Jews in perpetual bondage to a spurious history and to promote constant victimhood, while distracting them from roles they may play in the injustices done to others. JVP and IFN are awakening other Jews to the destructive impulses generated from Israel that prevent worldwide Jewry from recognizing the roots of modern Judaism and revert them to atavistic and reactionary relics of an ancient Hebrew and fictitious past.

Israel is not a true democracy, and evidence certifies it is a militarist, nationalist, racist, nation that practices apartheid, engages in severe human rights violations, and spies on its citizens. By blindly accepting Zionist behavior, the Jewish people lost the initiative to change Israel’s policies, misdirected the path to a peaceful solution to the Middle East crisis, exacerbated the crisis, and harmed the security of Jews throughout the world. The exemplary work by JVP and IFN members is the best rescue plan for a subdued Jewish community. The best Hanukah gift is a check to both these organizations.

Lawsuits

Pernicious lawsuits that had no legal value and demonstrated bias of US courts in favor of the Zionists have pulverized the Palestine Authority and organizations supporting Palestinian liberation. Time to have the lawsuits work the other way.

Lawsuits against false charges of anti-Semitism by the ADL and other organizations can be made. The ADL has lost several cases against its illegal expressions.

Lawsuits by Jewish groups against those who signify Israel as a Jewish state, a slander to Jewish people that unfairly binds them to the genocide of the Palestinian people..

Lawsuit to finally have AIPAC declared a lobby for a foreign state. New evidence and a new approach will be needed.

Lawsuits to close Holocaust Memorial museums as improper use of the deaths of the Holocaust victims. The US government and people are guilty of genocide of the Native Americans, enslaving Blacks from Africa, and extreme violence against peoples throughout the world — Latin America, the Caribbean, Vietnam, the Philippines, Iraq, Libya, and others. The Holocaust occurred in a foreign nation and neither the US government nor its people had responsibility for the tragedy. The Holocaust Memorial museums indicate otherwise, are unfair to the American people, have not halted other genocides, have been divisive, and have been accused of promoting hatred. These museums distract Americans from their responsibility for the violence they have committed against other cultures. The Native Americans and African Americans did not use the destruction of their peoples to create museums in which they play victim; they took a positive approach and used them to encourage respect for their cultures. Their inviting museums ridicule the lugubrious Holocaust museums and reveal the latter museums as an insult to the European Jews who died in the Holocaust. Included in the lawsuit can be those who suffered during the Holocaust or had close relatives who died during the Holocaust. Having had aunts, uncles, and cousins from Paris, France, and Warsaw, Poland, some who died in the Holocaust and others who struggled for survival during World War II, I identify with the latter. When writing my book on the struggles for survival of my European family during the 2^nd World War, Not Until They Were Gone, I made sure it was not written as a Holocaust story and appeared as a book of heroism and survival.

Illegal activities by Israelis residing in the United States

A previous article detailed how Israel sends its citizens to other nations, has them integrate, and steer the country to favor Israel. Exposing, combatting, and bringing law to halt this maneuver and manipulation of American hospitality is a high priority.

Defeating pro-Israel legislators

Highest priority is to do in reverse what AIPAC does. Defeating two or three congress politicos who have had marginal victories is possible. If pro-Israelis suffer more defeats, other politicians will rapidly question their allegiances. An organization for accomplishing this vital task requires the highest skill —  demographers who know voting patterns, public relations who understand the constituency and how to approach it, statisticians who can translate voting patterns into probability of victory, fundraisers who can target donors, psychologists who interpret behavior, sociologists who recognize social patterns, political consultants who recognize strengths and faults of candidates, and luck.

Defeat media co-opting

This includes responding to social media. Failure to change media co-opting by the Zionists makes other tasks more difficult. Establishing an alternative media has been tried and never permanently succeeded. Why? One insulting obvious reason is that the American public prefers simplicity, excitement, and trash, regardless of the truth. Insulting, but true. It is difficult for moral, dedicated, and honest people to operate at the low level of the Fox network and use the Zionist duplicity that infiltrates and inserts fallacies into conventional media networks. Even if the Fox News types are defeated, their audience will find another Fox News type. Intense brainstorming by smart people who do smart things and understand the devious mind can devise a strategy that limits Zionist influence. Subtlety, invisible conditioning, and making people feel cheated by subscribing to cheaters are my recommendations to the brainstorming operation.

Getting Things Straight

It’s troublesome to hear those who struggle to prevent the genocide exhibit lapses in knowledge that affect the solution. As an example, I have heard many people refer to UN Proclamation 188, the Partition Plan, as the UN awarding the Jews a state. Two corrections: (1) The UN General Assembly cannot award. It can only recommend; it is not an enforcing agency. The Palestinians had every right to refuse the plan. (2) I have written several times that the partition plan did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and a Palestinian state called Jewish for differentiation. In the document that recognized the ‘new state,’ President Truman crossed out the words ‘Jewish state’ and inserted the words ‘state of Israel.’ This state was composed of about 67 percent Palestinians who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a smaller contingent of 200,000 foreign Jews that had been born or came as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine, and another larger contingent of 400,000 foreign Jews who arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate. They should not have been counted in the census. From that perspective, David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill-equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleanse the area of Palestinians and establish Israel. Disconcerting that significant information is not properly distributed, which leads to the recommendation that an organization be formed to provide accurate material, answer questions, and correct inaccuracies.

Conclusion

Requests for obtaining viable recommendations that will prevent the genocide of the Palestinians have not been forthcoming. Demonstrations have highlighted the massacres and brought those who recognize the genocide to work together, but have not succeeded in changing government policy. Gathering signatures for petitions to congressional representatives has slightly moved some Democratic politicos to change their pro-Israel position but has not prevented committees from assisting Israel and has not prevented legislation that favors Israel.

Masses of dedicated and well-meaning people are involved in the push to prevent genocide; unfortunately, the present efforts do not appear they will achieve the wanted results. Much more is needed and the lack of inquiries, recommendations, discussions, and feedback to suggestions indicate that the urgent message has fallen on deaf ears.

When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge of dark evil
onto the good green land ‘they’ gloated.
The western skies
reverberated with joyous accounts:
“The Tree has fallen !
The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane leaves no life in the Tree!”
Had the Tree really fallen?
Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever, not while the wine of our thorn limbs fed the thirsty roots,
Arab roots alive, tunneling deep, deep, into the land!
When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
beneath the sun
and birds shall return
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.

Fadwa Touqan, “The Deluge and the Tree”
ail

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). 

The Shameful Journey from “Prelude to Genocide” to “Slow-motion Genocide” to “Rampant Genocide”

And the international community won’t intervene

by Stuart Littlewood / June 6th, 2024

Israel’s illegal control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza has for decades prevented the Palestinian people from exercising their right of self-determination and full and effective self-governance. UN Resolution 3246 calls for all States to recognise that that right applies to all peoples subjected to colonial and foreign domination, including the Palestinians.

The warning signs of genocide in Gaza had been there for all to see. But the lack of will on the part of UN members to implement 3246 not only let it happen but then failed to stop it even when its ferocity passed all comprehension.

When October 7 erupted the West attempted to airbrush the pre-existing conditions Israel had imposed on Gaza and pretended Hamas started the ‘war’. But 1,000 lawyers, scholars, and practitioners immediately sounded the alarm about “the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” and issued an open letter as early as 15 October.

For a start they reminded everyone that in 1982 the UN General Assembly condemned the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps as “an act of genocide”.

Pre-existing conditions in the Gaza Strip had prompted discussion on genocide before, with warnings given over the years that the siege of Gaza (from 2006 onwards) might amount to a “prelude to genocide” or a “slow-motion genocide”.

And since 2007, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, Israel had defined the Gaza Strip as an “enemy entity”.

Earlier in 2023 Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich called Palestinians “repugnant”, and “disgusting” and proposed “wiping out” the entire Palestinian village of Huwwara in the West Bank.

Here’s a timely reminder of what else the open letter said.

• In the short space of time between 7 October and 15 October (when the open letter was written), 2,329 Palestinians were killed and 9,042 Palestinians injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza, including over 724 children, huge swathes of neighborhoods, and entire families across Gaza were obliterated.

• Israel’s Defence Minister ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip prohibiting the supply of fuel, electricity, water, and other necessities. This intensifies an already illegal and potentially genocidal siege turning it into an outright destructive assault.

• The ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) stated that orders to evacuate, coupled with the complete siege, are incompatible with international humanitarian law. Almost half a million Palestinians have already been displaced and Israeli forces have bombed the only possible exit route that Israel does not control (the Rafah crossing to Egypt) multiple times.

• The World Health Organisation published a warning that “forcing more than 2000 patients to relocate to southern Gaza, where health facilities are already running at maximum capacity and unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number of patients, could be tantamount to a death sentence”.

• In the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, since 7 October, Israeli settlers backed by the IDF and police, have attacked and shot Palestinian civilians at point-blank range (as documented in the villages of a-Tuwani and Qusra), invaded their homes, and assaulted residents. Several Palestinian communities have already been forced to abandon their homes, after which settlers arrived and destroyed their property.

• Between 7 and 15 October, Al-Haq documented the killing by the Israeli military and settlers of 55 Palestinians in the West Bank with 1,200 injured there.

• Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”, and afterward announced that Israel was moving to “a full-scale response” and he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces, also stating: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.”

• On 10 October, the head of the Israeli Army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell”.

• Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”

• On 7 October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Gazans would pay an “immense price” for the actions of Hamas fighters and asserted that Israel will wage a prolonged offensive that will turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centers “into rubble”.

• Israel’s President emphasized that the Israeli authorities view the entire Palestinian population of Gaza as responsible for the actions of militant groups, and subject accordingly to collective punishment and unrestricted use of force: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”

• Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz added: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”

• On 12 October UN Special Rapporteurs condemned “Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children. They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for”.

• UN experts warned against “the withholding of essential supplies such as food, water, electricity and medicines. Such actions will precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at an inescapable risk of starvation. Intentional starvation is a crime against humanity”.

• On 14 October the UN Special Rapporteur, on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, warned against “a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale” as Israel is carrying out “mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the fog of war”.

• The Palestinian population of Gaza appears to be presently subjected by the Israeli forces and authorities to widespread killing, bodily and mental harm, and unviable conditions of life – against a backdrop of Israeli statements that evidence signs of intent to physically destroy the population.

• Article II of the Genocide Convention provides that “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as # Killing members of the group; # Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; # Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; # Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; # Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

• The Convention provides that individuals who attempt genocide or who incite genocide “shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals”.

• The International Court of Justice has clarified that “a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harboring specific intent (dolus specialist), it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit”. (The many means available to the British Government include sanctions – readily applied to other delinquent nations – and withdrawal of favored-nation privileges, trade deals, and scientific collaboration).

• Competent elements of the United Nations, particularly the UN General Assembly, are required to take urgent action under the Charter of the United Nations appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide. Emphasis is on the General Assembly given that the Security Council is compromised by the US and UK (both permanent veto-holding members) sending military forces to the eastern Mediterranean in support of Israel.

• All relevant UN bodies, including the Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, as well as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, are called on to immediately intervene, carry out necessary investigations, and invoke the necessary warning procedures to protect the Palestinian population from genocide.

Chock-full of hate

All this was quickly followed by the UK Lawyers’ Open Letter Concerning Gaza of 26 October 2023, which contained important warnings regarding international law — for example:

⦁ The UK is duty-bound to “respect and ensure respect” for international humanitarian law as set out in the Four Geneva Conventions in all circumstances (1949 Geneva Conventions, Common Art 1). That means the UK must not itself assist violations by others.

⦁ The UK Government must immediately halt the export of weapons from the UK to Israel, given the clear risk that they might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law and in breach of the UK’s domestic Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, including its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty.

So, within 3 weeks it was clear to everyone paying attention that the Israeli leadership, chock-full of hate, were set on a course of vicious and brutal genocide. Yet the following month John Kirby, the White House National Security Communications Advisor, dismissed claims that Israel was committing genocide and told everybody that “Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel is not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat. So if we’re going to start using that word, fine. Let’s use it appropriately.”

Yes, and let’s use the term “right of self-defence” appropriately. In Gaza and the West Bank it only applies to the Palestinian resistance, not the belligerent illegal occupier.

Incredibly, we’re now entering the 9th month of the genocide in Gaza and it has gone from bad to much, much worse. And there is still no let-up. People worldwide have been watching day after day mainstream and alternative media reports, seeing for themselves the horrors endured even by children, and aghast at the wholesale and wanton destruction of the Palestinians’ homeland. They cannot believe how depraved, immoral and spineless the international community has become, and how paralysed the UN in allowing the slaughter to continue. They are especially sickened by the conduct of the so-called ‘major powers’ and by the lunatic Netanyahu whom their own politicians call ‘friend and ally’ who thinks he can still dictate what happens in Gaza after he eventually condescends to end the butchery.

If he thinks Israel can now grab Gaza by conquest he may be disappointed. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter expressly prohibits aggressive war and Article 5(3) of General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 1975 (which includes the definition of Acts of Aggression) nullifies any legal title acquired in this way. And 5(3) says “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations“.

In carrying through its genocidal assault on Gaza’s civilians and their homes, infrastructure and livelihoods Israel cannot possibly claim to abide by international law or honour their obligations under the Charter. And by encouraging Israel — and supplying the weaponry — neither can the US and UK.

And now we have Biden, Israel’s loony protector, setting ‘red lines’ which Israel must not cross while merrily carrying on with their genocide. But they are so elastic that, with US permission, the hateful maniacs can almost do as they please to satisfy their genocidal lust. Biden arrogantly overrules the red lines on war crimes and crimes against humanity that are already set out by international law.

Stuart Littlewood, after working on jet fighters in the RAF, became an industrial marketeer in oil, electronics and manufacturing, and with innovation and product development consultancies. He also served as a Cambridgeshire county councillor and a member of the Police Authority. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and has produced two photo-documentary books including Radio Free Palestine (with foreword by Jeff Halper). Now retired, he campaigns on various issues, especially the Palestinians' struggle for freedom. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website. 

Sabotaging the Ceasefire in Tel Aviv

by Paul Larudee / June 6th, 2024

I know we don’t expect good faith commitments from Israel, but believe or not, we have other options. The Biden administration charged CIA Director Bill Burns with negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Wonder of wonders, he succeeded. In cooperation with the Qatari and Egyptian mediation teams, and in communication with the Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams he finally concluded a detailed settlement that was submitted to both sides.

Now before I go any further, do you think that Director Burns, representing Israel’s staunchest ally, would create a ceasefire agreement that is unacceptable to the Israeli negotiating team? But it was Hamas that responded first, with complete approval. Take a look at what Burns and the other teams – including the Israeli team – created, and which Hamas approved. Does it look unreasonable to you?

https://www.workers.org/2024/06/79033/

And what was Israel’s response? It invaded Rafah within hours of the Hamas acceptance, seized and closed the only remaining crossing for humanitarian relief supplies, and rejected the agreement that had been negotiated on their behalf. What is the definition of perfidious?

Israel has made its choice. No ceasefire. Level Gaza to the ground. Slaughter the civilian population and deny them food, water, medical care and everything needed to sustain life until they are gone, one way or another.

That’s Israel’s criminal choice, as ruled by the International Court of Justice, with whose injunction to cease and desist Israel has not made the slightest attempt to comply. As long as Israel has the US on its side, enabling, aiding and abetting its genocide with massive arms and economic aid as well as direct participation through military and intelligence advice and expertise, Israel feels no need to comply. It’s a choice that the post-WWII Nuremberg trials were supposed to prevent and deter forever.

But what about the US choice? If we want a ceasefire, do we not have the power to make it happen?  Why can’t we just shove it down Israel’s throats by cutting off every penny of every type of aid that we are giving them? It worked for Eisenhower in 1956.

You know as well as I do why not. It’s because Eisenhower was a strong, widely respected leader who made decisions that could be enforced. Biden is a ridiculous figure that is at best a thug, relying on other other thugs like the Israel Lobby, the military-industrial complex (about which Eisenhower warned) and the oil industry to prop him up. These thugs have our politicians (not to say our entire country) by the bowls. They rule for their own pleasure. Biden and the Democrats can’t budge without their permission, and neither can Trump and the Republicans.

Absolute monarch Louis XIV of France is reported to have said, “l’état, c’est moi” (the state, that’s me”). Apparently, today, the state is the Israel Lobby. No one dares to defy it. Ask those who lost their political careers trying to do so. Ask Cynthia McKinney. Ask Earl Hilliard. Ask Paul Findley. Ask Dennis Kucinich.

Is that our destiny? To be under the thumb of fanatics willing to commit genocide against millions of people who have only been trying to have their own sovereign country on their own land for the last hundred years? Are we destined to be governed by a foreign power rather than our own will? If so, perhaps it’s time for the American people to pick up their torches and pitchforks and head for their own Bastille (which may be in Tel Aviv), and get themselves free

Paying the Toll

by Paul Larudee / June 2nd, 2024

A 5/31/2024 article in CounterPunch returns to the question of the death toll of the genocide in Gaza, and the gross undercount of deaths by almost every agency imaginable, even the ones in Gaza itself. I suggest further elaboration.

200,000 was the number dead that Ralph Nader estimated at the beginning of March. It has to be double that now. How many thousands of pregnant women and their fetuses and newborn have died? How many diabetics or others needing medication or special diets or treatment? But even those without special conditions are dying because they can’t give up food and water.

We have reached the stage where the number of starving or dehydrated persons is so high that they have no defense against common diseases or mild injuries. Why are they not reported? Because there is no one to record them, of course. The hospitals and clinics are largely a memory. Potable water is a luxury. I’m banned from X and FB, but I imagine you’ve seen the living and dying skeletons that I predicted months ago. I see them mainly on Telegram. The international agencies report that nearly all the population is food insecure, and a majority are malnourished. It’s a matter of time.

Israel would like to move faster. I’m not sure why they don’t. Perhaps they’re afraid that world reaction will graduate to more forceful measures, but I see no indication that this is the case. With the exception of Yemen and some non-state actors, no one seems willing to resort to physical force. Members of the US Congress and figures in the Biden administration have even encouraged Israel to “finish the job”. Certainly, they have no moral qualms.

Are they worried that they will run out of Jews? Part of the purpose of killing off the Palestinians was to assure that Jews will be significantly more numerous in “greater Israel” (AKA Palestine). That clearly is not working. It is far more likely that more Jews have fled Israel than Palestinians have been reduced by genocide. In fact, even the effective Jewish inhabited area has been reduced in both the north and the south.

Worse still, Israel grossly underestimated the capability of the Palestinian resistance and its partners, and overestimated its own. Hamas and its allies clearly understood and planned for Israel’s reaction, while Israel had little appreciation for their adversary. So much for the strategy of disproportionate force. Israel is unaccustomed to taking so many casualties, which are in any case unknown. No one believes the official count and resorting to foreign mercenaries.

Israel is also dissolving from within. Who’s buying Israeli anymore, except the dwindling community of true believers? What economy is left consists largely of shoveling American money into Israeli furnaces. Meanwhile, Israelis are fighting among themselves for desperate solutions to their intractable problems. The powerful international network of faithful sayanim will remain in place (who likes to give up power?) and will continue to manage the controls. But other Jews will object to being associated with such persons, weakening the support for, and the effectiveness of, the Zionist dreamightmare.

Israel is clearly losing, but the rate of its demise will depend on factors that are difficult to predict, and even harder to control. Nevertheless, if Israel survives this miscalculation in the short term, it will only do so as a smaller, more fanatical remnant of its former self.
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Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. Read other articles by Paul.