Genocide: The Gaze from the Abyss

by Media Lens / December 7th, 2023

Left-progressive websites don’t always get it right. Take Media Lens, for example. In October, we discussed the corporate media invention of so-called ‘disinformation experts’. We lampooned the claim that although journalists are ‘working within profit-maximising, billionaire-owned, advertiser-dependent, government-subsidised media, they are nevertheless exposing “disinformation” without the slightest trace of bias’.

Last May, the BBC unveiled just such an initiative:

BBC Verify is transparency in action – fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing data and explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.

We took it for granted that this effort to ‘Verify’ the ‘truth’ would be a clueless, clawless, Orwellian, power-friendly farce; a BBC Bellingcat. And such indeed has mostly been the case.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we saw this report from BBC Verify on the front-page of the BBC website:

Satellite images commissioned by the BBC reveal the extent of destruction across Gaza… While northern Gaza has been the focus of the Israeli offensive and has borne the brunt of the destruction, widespread damage extends across the entire strip.

We posted a response on X, formerly known as Twitter:

To be fair, we never expected anything like this from BBC Verify; these maps are staggering:

Satellite data analysis suggests that almost 98,000 buildings across the whole Gaza Strip may have suffered damage.

Near-total annihilation.

The BBC report included a shocking photo montage showing how ‘a skyline of multi-storey buildings and a mosque was gradually reduced to rubble between 14 October and 22 November’. Note, this was not in reference to a single apartment block, but ‘a skyline of multi-storey buildings’.

This analysis genuinely helped to raise awareness of the true, appalling scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza. And the article was not heavily gaslit by the usual Israeli propaganda. Instead, there was merely this:

The BBC has approached the IDF for comment.

Contrary to the belief of some of our critics, we don’t hate to see positive examples of this kind that appear to contradict the thesis that state-corporate media function as a propaganda organ for powerful interests. In fact, we are only too pleased, because we have hoped for two main outcomes from our work. While our key aim has always been to increase public awareness and participation empowering progressive alternatives to ‘mainstream’ journalism, we have also hoped to encourage ‘mainstream’ journalists to improve their performance as far as they are able within the severe limits set by state-corporate media.

Readers sometimes commiserate with us: it must be terrible to be despised by everyone in the ‘mainstream’. In truth, they would be surprised at the number of senior journalists who have told us privately that our work made them rethink US-UK war crimes and double standards. Some have actually thanked us for our ‘guidance’. As we have documented, even former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and senior BBC journalist Nick Robinson have mentioned us with approval in their books on British journalism.

More broadly, it is astonishing how good people, whistleblowers defying all expectations, emerge from the unlikeliest of places.

Consider Josh Paul, former director of congressional and public affairs, who spent 11 years in the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, the US government entity most responsible for the transfer and provision of arms to foreign countries. Who but cynics and sociopaths would work in such a place?

And yet, on 18 October, Paul sent a powerful letter of resignation to protest the massacre of civilians in Gaza. He wrote:

I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest. This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia. That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides. I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it for longer.

In an interview with Democracy Now!, Paul added:

I decided to resign for three reasons, the first and most pressing of which is the very, I believe, uncontroversial fact that U.S.-provided arms should not be used to massacre civilians, should not be used to result in massive civilian casualties. And that is what we are seeing in Gaza and what we were seeing, you know, very soon after the October 7th horrific attack by Hamas. I do not believe arms should be — U.S.-provided arms should be used to kill civilians. It is that simple.

Secondly, I also believe that… there is no military solution here. And we are providing arms to Israel on a path that has not led to peace, has not led to security, neither for Palestinians nor for Israelis. It is a moribund process and a dead-end policy.

And yet, when I tried to raise both of these concerns with State Department leadership, there was no appetite for discussion, no opportunity to look at any of the potential arms sales and raise concerns about them, simply a directive to move forward as quickly as possible. And so I felt I had to resign.

Apart from a single substantive mention and a couple of smaller mentions in the Guardian, Paul’s resignation has been buried by all other UK national newspapers, with a single mention on the BBC website.

Propaganda Weathering And Erosion

As that media response suggests, it is fine to welcome positive examples, but not to morph into political Pollyannas detecting deep change where none exists.

A case in point was provided by Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins writing of Gaza:

For the first time in my adult life I cannot watch – or read – the news. Its presentation makes me profoundly upset.

Was this a rare expression of heightened dissent bucking the trend? We posted our ‘heartful thanks’ to Jenkins on X/Twitter for ‘supplying the ultimate example’ of the tendency described by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky:

While the coverage of the worthy victim was generous with gory details and quoted expressions of outrage and demands for justice, the coverage of the unworthy victims was low-keyed, designed to keep the lid on emotions and evoking regretful and philosophical generalities on the omnipresence of violence and the inherent tragedy of human life. (Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, 1988, p. 39)

In response, Justin Schlosberg, Professor of Media and Communications at University of Westminster, wrote to us on X/Twitter:

Actually I think this [Jenkins’s comment] is testament to the fact that broadcasters are not conforming to the propaganda model on this issue. Hence the need for liberal columnists to retreat and recoil in confused anguish.

He quickly caveated: “Should have added *on the whole*”

We suspect Professor Schlosberg’s comments are symptomatic of what we call ‘propaganda weathering and erosion’. It is easy to be overimpressed by media reporting of power-unfriendly events that can’t be ignored. It’s naturally difficult to see what isn’t there: crucial political and historical context. It’s also difficult to keep reminding oneself that the extent and tone of media coverage would be very different if the victims were ‘us’ rather than ‘them’. Imagine, for example, Western media coverage if Israel was some imaginary Megapower dwarfing the US, and Gaza was New York City, with 234,000 homes damaged, 46,000 completely destroyed, amounting to 60 per cent of the housing stock, with 1.5 million people fleeing for their lives. And then being bombed again.

Schlosberg is wrong, broadcasters are once again conforming on Gaza. But don’t take our word for it; consider the courageous testimony from a rare BBC whistleblower.

On 24 October, BBC correspondent Rami Ruhayem – a former journalist for the Associated Press, who has worked as a journalist and producer for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service since 2005 – sent a letter to the BBC’s Director-General, Tim Davie:

Dear Tim,

I am writing to raise the gravest possible concerns about the coverage of the BBC, especially on English outlets, of the current fighting between Israel and Palestinian factions.

It appears to me that information that is highly significant and relevant is either entirely missing or not being given due prominence in coverage.

Ruhayem continued:

The nature of the Israeli response to the attack by Hamas on October 7 has prompted “over 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies” to warn of ‘the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

They said:

As scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies, and genocide studies, we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. We do not do so lightly, recognizing the weight of this crime, but the gravity of the current situation demands it.

I invite you to sift through our coverage, past and present, for any trace of the above; whether in explainers, or interviews, or features, or news analysis. Is it there at all, and if so, is it given the prominence it deserves?

Ruhayem didn’t stop there:

Words like “massacre”, “slaughter”, and “atrocities” are being used—prominently—in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel.

Does this not raise the question of the possible complicity of the BBC in incitement, dehumanization, and war propaganda? How would the BBC respond to this?

He continued:

Our current coverage kicked off following the Hamas attack. Doubtless, it is major news. But that doesn’t mean history started on October 7. We should incorporate into our coverage an accurate, balanced, fair, and truthful representation of the reality leading up to that moment.

I won’t go into detail, but simply remind you of three terms: apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism.

These are terms used by many experts and highly respected organizations to which the BBC usually defers. They are used to describe the nature of Israeli rule over Palestinians as well as the methods used by Israel to oppress generation after generation of Palestinians. They are based on extensive evidence.

To what extent is this reflected in our coverage? Without such context, can we claim to have adequately informed the public? Or are we withholding highly relevant and significant information without which the basics of the conflict cannot possibly be understood?

Our December 6, ProQuest media database search for “Rami Ruhayem” and “Tim Davie” found a single mention by Alessandra Scotto di Santolo on Express Online, 26 October 2023: ‘Israel Hamas: Israel preparing for ground invasion in Gaza and vows to eliminate Hamas.’ Otherwise, Ruhayem’s vital whistleblowing has been blanked by the entire UK national press and the BBC. The fact that Ruhayem has not tweeted since October 25, the day after he sent the letter, surely tells its own story.

Pro-Truth, Pro-Justice

Last month, scholar and activist Norman Finkelstein commented with his usual precision:

I don’t want to quibble over terminology, but sometimes if the terminology is wrong at the outset, then it confuses things moving forward. I’m not pro-Palestinian, I’m not pro-Israeli. I’m pro-truth and I’m pro-justice. If truth is on the Israeli side, I will support Israel. If justice is on the Israeli side, I’ll support Israel. And the same thing goes for the Palestinians.

I’ve spent the greater part of my adult life, you can say, beginning 1982 – so it’s more than four decades – researching, studying the Israel-Palestine conflict. And it’s my conclusion, at the end of that research – but already early on – that the case that Israel makes for its crimes are, in large part, fabrications, misrepresentations and distortions. And then, [on] the other hand, the Palestinian case is very strongly supported by the evidence.

We are also not pro-Palestinian – we are pro-truth and pro-justice. Because truth and justice do not exist in a soulless vacuum, we are also pro-compassion.

It is quite obvious that violence and hatred born of cruelty and injustice cannot be erased by yet greater cruelty and injustice. What results do we expect from Israel intensifying the strategy of ethnic cleansing that gave rise to Hamas in the first place?

We live in a terribly cruel and cynical time where our supposed leaders ignore clear public support for a ceasefire, just as they ignore the vital need for immediate action on climate change, just as they sacrifice Ukraine to US realpolitik, just as they mercilessly keep Julian Assange entombed for 1701 days in a high-security prison without charge. Did the Dark Ages ever really end?

Hard-boiled leftists may quiver and quail; intellectuals may shriek and cringe, but the Buddha was exactly right when he said:

Hatred can never put an end to hatred; love alone can. This is an unalterable law. (Cited, Eknath Easwaran, The Dhammapada, Arkana, 2009, p. 78)

Yes, the West can devastate its enemies, but it cannot avoid the price described by Nietzsche:

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Emmanuel, 1917, p. 87)

After a century spent ‘fighting fascism’ and ‘waging war on terror’, Nietzsche’s abyss is here, now, gazing back at us from the coldly indifferent faces of Western leaders observing the genocidal slaughter in Gaza.

And it is gazing at us from the silently, inexorably rising temperatures that will ultimately render Israel-Palestine uninhabitable to all human life.

It turns out that one consequence of fighting with monsters – of building a global military-industrial machine dedicated to killing for profit – is that we lose the capacity to fight for life.

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The most recent Media Lens book, Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2018 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens, or visit Media Lens's website.

Six Wars Old

by Visualizing Palestine / December 7th, 2023

Israel’s repeated military assaults on Gaza have devastating consequences for children. Israel is not only killing Palestinian children at astonishing rates, but also killing the childhood of those who survive.

Visualizing Palestine is the intersection of communication, social sciences, technology, design and urban studies for social justice. Visualizing Palestine uses creative visuals to describe a factual rights-based narrative of Palestine/Israel. Read other articles by Visualizing Palestine, or visit Visualizing Palestine's website.

 

Panic-stricken Israel Lobby Shifts into Overdrive

by Stuart Littlewood / December 8th, 2023

At Westminster the other day the UK Secretary of State for Defence (Grant Shapps) made a statement on military deployments to the Middle East which included questions and answers about the situation in Gaza. It was an opportunity for Shapps with help of pro-Zionist MPs to distort the facts to ‘justify’ Israel’s appalling crimes.

The following exchanges are taken from Hansard which, for those who don’t know, is the official and “substantially verbatim” report of what is said in the UK Parliament.

Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP) commented: “It is important to repeat the denunciation of the death cult known as Hamas.”

Shapps replied: “The hon. Gentleman is right to stress the abominable, disgraceful, disgusting behaviour of Hamas.” [Shapps is Jewish]

Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con): “Those on both Front Benches seem to agree that Hamas must not remain in control in Gaza. Is any thought being given to how, once they have been removed, they can be prevented from coming back?” [Lewis is also Jewish]

Shapps: The easiest way to bring this to an end, as I hinted earlier, would be for Hamas, a terrorist organisation, to release the hostages that they have, to stop firing rockets into Israel in a completely indiscriminate way, which I think the whole House should condemn.”

Sir Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con): “The Houthis, who are attacking British and American cargo ships, and Hamas are basically two sides of the same coin. They are Iranian-funded, Iranian-trained and, of course, Iranian-guided terrorist groups that are publicly committed to the destruction of Israel…. I particularly welcome the UK’s deployment of drones to help locate hostages, including British hostages. In the days after 7 October, the Defence Secretary said: ‘No nation should stand alone in the face of such evil.’ Will he repeat that crucial support today and in the difficult days ahead? I thank him for his support. [Ellis is Jewish and also a member of Conservative Friends of Israel].

Shapps: My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right that no nation should stand alone. It is easy to forget how this all began, when the Hamas terrorist group thought it was a plan to go into Israel to butcher men, women and children, cut off heads and rape people.

Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con): “I applaud the decisive actions of my right hon. Friend and the Government to defend our strategic ally, Israel, against Hamas, but the grim reality on the ground right now is that Hamas continue to fire dozens of rockets at Israeli towns and cities. The Iran-backed terror group have fired more than 10,000 rockets since 7 October and show no sign of stopping their violent attacks against Israel. Will my right hon. Friend not only commit to continuing his support for Israel in defending itself against Hamas, but reassure the House that every possible step is being taken to counter Iran’s links across the region, which are causing instability?”

Shapps: “My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that the conflict would be over immediately if hostages were released and Hamas stopped firing rockets into Israel—there would not be a cause for conflict. Indeed, that is the policy Israel followed for many years, hoping that, even though rocket attacks continued, Hamas would not take advantage of their own population by using them as human shields and building infrastructure under hospitals, schools and homes…. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to identify Iran as being behind this whole evil business.”

Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD): “It was reassuring last week, in answer to my question, to hear the Minister for Armed Forces, the right hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) telling us that UK surveillance flights would not involve the use of intelligence for target acquisition. I also welcome the Secretary of State talking today about how information that would be helpful to hostage recovery will be passed to the so-called appropriate authorities. We have now heard two questions about the International Criminal Court. Will the UK pass any evidence that it gathers of any breaches of international humanitarian law by combatants in Gaza to the ICC?“

Shapps: “As the hon. Gentleman says, that question has been asked, and I have answered it a couple of times. The intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – ISR – flights are to look for British hostages and indeed other hostages. That is the information that will be gathered from those flights. Of course, if we saw anything else, we would most certainly alert our partners“. [But do they include the ICC? I think not.]

Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP): “Yesterday I asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), whether the UK Government were in a position to contribute to the International Criminal Court’s call for evidence in its investigation of potential breaches of international humanitarian law. He said: ‘Not at this stage, but we will continue to take note.’ Surely, if the UK Government are actively collecting drone and surveillance images of the war zone, the answer to that question should have been yes?”

Shapps: “I would have thought that the No. 1 concern would be to locate the British hostages, and that is where the surveillance work will focus.”

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind): “The Secretary of State needs to be very clear with the House: 15,000 people have already died in Gaza, and 1,200 have died in Israel. Israel is clearly pushing the entire population southwards, if not out of the Gaza strip altogether. Is Britain involved in the military actions that Israel has taken, either physically or by providing information in support of those military activities? I think the House needs to be told. What is the long-term aim of British military involvement in Gaza?”

Shapps: “The simple answer is no, and I hope that clears it up. I am surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman talk just about people being killed. They were murdered. They were slaughtered. It was not just some coincidental thing. I understand and share the concerns about the requirement on Israel, on us and on everyone else to follow international humanitarian law. When Israel drops leaflets, when it drops what it calls a “knock” or a “tap” and does not bomb until afterwards, when it calls people to ask them to move, when it issues maps showing where Hamas have their tunnels and asks people to move away from them, that is a far cry from what Hamas did on 7 October, when they went after men, women and children.”

Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab): “We have seen increased bombardment in southern Gaza after the pause. We are also seeing increased violence in the West Bank, supported by extremist settler Ministers. What talks is the Secretary of State having with Israel to stop the increase in settler violence in the West Bank?“

Grant Shapps: “I certainly will not be pulling my punches when I speak to my Israeli counterparts. The violence in the West Bank is unacceptable and it must be controlled—stopped, in fact. None of that, in any way, shape or form, separates us from our utter condemnation of how this whole thing was started in the first place with Hamas, but the hon. Lady is right about that settler violence.”

Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP): “Medical Aid for Palestinians has warned that Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and siege is making it impossible to sustain human life in Gaza. With 1.8 million civilians displaced and a lack of clean water and sanitation, it is just a matter of time before a cholera outbreak kills many thousands more. The Secretary of State has been unequivocal that the main purpose of surveillance is to help find hostages, which is fine, but for the fifth time of asking: if clear evidence is found of breaches of humanitarian law, will the UK Government share that evidence with the International Criminal Court?

Shapps: “The simple answer is that we will always follow international humanitarian law and its requirements.”

Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP): “It is absolutely right that those responsible for the crimes of Hamas are held to account in international law. But why is the Secretary of State so reluctant to give a clear, simple “yes” to the question whether the Government will provide any evidence of war crimes to the International Criminal Court? Is it because he has already seen such evidence? Is it because Israel has asked him to promise not to share such evidence? What is the reason?”

Grant Shapps: “I have already said that the United Kingdom is bound by, and would always observe, international humanitarian law.

The message we are supposed to swallow from this pantomime is that it’s all the fault of Hamas and Iran who “started the whole thing” on 7 October, and that Israel’s massacres, brutal occupation using military force, cruel blockade and clear intention of establishing Jewish sovereignty “from the river to the sea” over the last 75 years have nothing to do with it. It is clear that the UK will do everything to avoid upsetting Israel’s evil plan and calling the regime’s war criminals to account despite our solemn obligations under international law to do so.

And it is pointless for the likes of Shapps to keep repeating that Israel “has to follow international humanitarian law” when Israel has been in permanent breach of nearly all aspects of law for decades and treats international norms with utter contempt. Only today the regime announced approval of 1700 more ‘settlement’ homes in East Jerusalem which is Palestinian territory. And it continues to defy international law, escalating its crimes to the most abhorrent of all – genocide – because it is given cover by the US and UK. Perhaps the rest of us should properly label Israel’s genocide in Gaza as ‘US and UK-backed’. And the UK itself ignores international law if it happens to be ‘inconvenient’.

As for the constantly repeated claim the Israel has a right to defend itself, this is blatant misinformation. Israel is an illegal military occupier and aggressor committing never-ending war crimes on someone else’s sovereign territory. Its right to self-defence is practically zero in these circumstances. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has stated that “Israel cannot claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies – from a territory that is kept under belligerent occupation”.

And notice how everything the Israelis dislike, and everything that thwarts their lust for domination, is now labeled “Iranian-backed” or “Hamas controlled”. Shapps is evidently well versed in the 116-page propaganda manual produced by The Israel Project (TIP) and written specially for those “on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel”. Its purpose is to help the worldwide Zionist movement win the propaganda war by persuading international audiences to accept the Israeli narrative and agree that the regime’s crimes are necessary for Israel’s security and in line with “shared values” between Israel and the West.

This masterwork on deception attempts to justify Israel’s slaughter, ethnic cleansing, land-grabbing, cruelty and blatant disregard for international law and United Nations resolutions, and make it all smell sweeter with a liberal squirt of persuasive language. It also incites hatred, particularly towards Hamas and Iran, and is designed to hoodwink Americans and Europeans into believing we actually share values with the racist regime, and therefore ought to support and forgive its abominable behaviour.

Readers are instructed to “clearly differentiate between the Palestinian people and Hamas” and to drive a wedge between them. The manual features “words that work” – i.e. carefully constructed language to deflect criticism and reframe all issues and arguments in Israel’s favour. We are seeing it at work here with great success.

MPs who are Jewish are identified as such when it seems appropriate. Those, like Sir Michael Lewis mentioned above, who are signed-up Friends of Israel should, in my opinion, declare that interest in any debate on the subject. But I must emphasise that not all Jewish MPs are tools of the apartheid regime. We remember with admiration Sir Gerald Kaufman who was arguing for economic sanctions against Israel back in 2004. And during a debate on the Gaza war of 2008/9, he told the Commons: “The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians… My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza”.

He described Hamas as a “deeply nasty organisation” but said the UK Government’s boycott of Hamas had “dreadful consequences”, and he reminded the Commons that Israel had been created following acts of terrorism by the Irgun. He considered Iran a loathsome regime but, unlike Israel, “at least it keeps its totalitarian theocracy to within its own borders”.

As to why there are so many Israel lackeys in Westminster Kaufman said: “It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party. There is now a big group of Conservative members of parliament who are pro-Israel…. whatever the Israeli government does.”

Of course, it’s not just the Conservative Party. The corrupting influence of dodgy funding is also affecting Labour and the LibDems.

Remembering the victims of genocide

This week marks the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Genocide Convention. As explained on the United Nations website:

Every 9 December the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide marks the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – a crucial global commitment that was made at the founding of the United Nations, immediately preceding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By General Assembly Resolution A/RES/69/323 of 29 September 2015, that day also became the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.

At its landmark 75th anniversary this year, the Genocide Convention remains highly relevant. The 1948 Genocide Convention codified for the first time the crime of genocide in international law. Its preamble recognizes that “at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity” and that international cooperation is required to “liberate humankind from such an odious scourge”. To date, 153 States have ratified the Convention. Achieving universal ratification of the Convention, as well as ensuring its full implementation, remain essential for effectively advancing genocide prevention. The Genocide Convention includes the obligation not only to punish the crime of genocide but, crucially, to prevent it. In the 75 years since its adoption, the Genocide Convention has played an important role in the development of international criminal law, in holding perpetrators of this crime accountable, galvanizing prevention efforts, and in giving a voice to the victims of genocide.

How many parliamentarians in Westminster and Washington who blindly support Israel’s attempts to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza and turn their homeland into rubble will publicly show respect for those victims of the apartheid regime’s genocide?

Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can be read on the internet by visiting radiofreepalestine.org.uk. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

Accidents of Eccentricity: Israel’s Pacific Hold

by Binoy Kampmark / December 8th, 2023

Cunning, subtle, understated.  Israeli policy in the Pacific has seen United Nations votes cast in its favour, the foreign policies of certain countries adjusted, and favours switched.  While China may be considered the big, threatening beast competing alongside that large, clumsy figure called the United States, the small state of Israel is directing its expertise, and charm, in very specific ways in the Indo-Pacific.

When it came to voting for a nonbinding resolution in the United Nations General Assembly on the subject of a “humanitarian truce” regarding the conflict in Gaza in October, 14 countries were steadfastly opposed.  Of those were six Pacific Island states: Fiji, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Tonga, Nauru, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.

The same pattern could be seen in 2012, when a mere nine nations voted against the issue of recognising Palestinian statehood, among them being Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau and Nauru.

A few theories have been offered on this seemingly anomalous occurrence. Grant Wyeth suggests that the dynamics of power in this context may be less significant than that of faith and religious force.  “Much of the Pacific is highly observant in their Christianity, and they have an eschatological understanding of humanity.”  Wyeth emphasises those Protestant denominations that took a keen interest in the creation of Israel in 1948.

Much as with the hot fire evangelicals that helped Ronald Reagan win the White House in 1980, Israel’s creation was seen prophetically, the biblical step to religious finality.  Eschatologically speaking, the Jewish people needed to return to the Holy Land for the final rites of humanity to be read.  (Previously antisemitic bible bashers now had a strategic reason to like Jewry, knowing that, in the Final Judgment, the inhabitants of Israel would be pegged to God’s finishing line.) “Support for Israel is therefore a deeply held spiritual belief, one that sits alongside Pacific Islands’ other considerations of interests and opportunities when forming foreign policies.”

Papua New Guinea offers one such example, having become one of just five countries to formally open an embassy in the contested city of Jerusalem.  On the occasion of its opening in September, PNG Prime Minister James Marape effusively declared that, “We are here to give respect to the people of Israel to the fullest.”  The embassy’s establishment had taken place “because of our shared heritage, acknowledging the creator God, the Yahweh God of Israel, the Yahweh God of Isaac and Abraham.”

The religious theme throbs throughout Marape’s justifications. “Many nations choose not to open their embassies in Jerusalem but we made a conscious choice.  This has been the universal capital of the nation and people of Israel.  For us to call ourselves Christians, paying respect to God will not be complete without recognizing that Jerusalem is the universal capital of the people and nation of Israel.”

Never one to avoid an opportunistic flourish, Marape also revealed that Israel will be funding the cost of the embassy for the first three years of its operations.  “But going forward, they’ve indicated land available for us & we look forward to proceeding, setting up our permanent mission there.”

He also made it clear that God and matters divine are not taking exclusive billing on the policy slate of Port Moresby.  The economic relationship between Israel and PNG is so small as to be barely worth a mention ($1 million per annum), but Israel’s bold prowess in various fields such as agriculture, education, finance and infrastructure is being eyed with relish.  That aspect of foreign policy has been vigorously encouraged by Mashav, Israel’s foreign aid department otherwise known as the Centre for International Development and Cooperation.

Former ministerial advisor Sean Jacobs recalls, “as a junior attaché to PNG’s 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) delegation, supporting a very brief bilateral with Israeli representatives in the margins” the offer of Israeli assistance “where it matters most – in PNG’s health sector and through in-kind, small-scale on ground medical equipment and expertise.”

PNG’s opposition leader, Joseph Lelang, was less enthusiastic about Marape’s less than balletic manoeuvring.  “We have aroused the ire of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas has warned us in the strongest terms that PNG must reconsider that decision and move out.”  Lelang’s concern was for diplomatic personnel who could find themselves at risk.  “This is a serious warning and I feel for the foreign mission staff and the ambassador who will be based there.”

The Palestinian foreign ministry’s displeasure was also expressed in a statement accusing Port Moresby of being involved in “an aggression against the Palestinian people and their rights.”  The move would, it alleged, cause “great harm to the chances of achieving peace on the basis of the two-state solution.”

Other Pacific Island countries have thrown in their lot with the Israeli State, softening the hungrily lethal retaliation in Gaza in favour of the country’s right to self-defence.  There are such statements as those from Fiji’s foreign ministry on October 31, a bold, unabashed endorsement of Israel and its policies.  “Fiji affirms its solidarity with Israel and commitment to global peace in the midst of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.”

In explaining why the Pacific country voted against the UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War, issue was taken with “ground realities and correct factual omissions” regarding the role played by “Hamas for initiating the crisis, holding hostages, and using them and civilians as human shields since [the] October 7 2023 terrorist attack.”  Banally and, in any operational sense meaningless, the statement goes on to claim “that Israel’s primary target is Hamas, not the Palestinian population.”

As Israel runs the wells of international empathy dry with its incessantly ruthless destruction of Gaza, it can continue, through a quirk of European colonial history, to rely on a measure of support among various Pacific Island states.  History, in that sense, is less cunning than teasingly eccentric.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Your Enemies Destroyed One Palestine; My Wounds Populated Many Palestines

by Vijay Prashad / December 7th, 2023

Malak Mattar (Palestine), A Life Stolen Before It Had Begun, 2023.

The indecency of the phrase ‘humanitarian pause’ is obvious. There is nothing humanitarian about a brief interlude between bouts of horrendous violence. There is no true ‘pause’, merely the calm before the storm continues. We are witnessing the bureaucratisation of immorality, the use of old words with great meaning (‘humanitarian’) and their reduction to new, empty phrases that betray their original meanings. Before the debris from the first rounds of Israeli bombs could be cleared, the bombing resumed just as viciously as before.

The word ‘humanitarian’ has been severely bruised by the West. You might remember another phrase, ‘humanitarian intervention’, that was used as cover for the destruction of Libya in 2011 after the legitimacy of Western military intervention had been eviscerated by the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003. To rehabilitate this legitimacy, the West pushed the United Nations to hold a conference that resulted in a new doctrine, Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which, while purporting to ‘ensure that the international community never again fails to halt the mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity’, instead provided the West with a UN Security Council mandate (under Chapter VII of the UN Charter) for the use of force. The attack on Libya in 2011 took place under this doctrine. The guise of humanitarianism was used to destroy the Libyan state and throw the country into what appears to be a permanent civil war. There has never been even a whiff of R2P when it comes to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza (not in 2008–09, not in 2014, and not now).

It does not seem to matter that more Palestinians have been displaced and killed by Israel since 7 October than were displaced and killed in the Nakba (‘Catastrophe’) of 1948. If the word ‘humanitarian’ meant something in 1948, it certainly does not mean much now.

Hanaa Malallah (Iraq), The Looting of the Museum of Art, 2003.

As the numbers of the dead and displaced increase, a sense of numbness grows. It began with a hundred dead, then a hundred more, and is rapidly escalating into the tens of thousands. In Iraq, approximately a million people were killed by the US onslaught, the sheer scale of death and the anonymity surrounding it forcing a sense distance from the rest of the world. It is difficult to wrap one’s head around these numbers unless there are stories attached to each of the dead and displaced.

Part of the problem here is that the international division of humanity makes for unjust accounting of human life: were the Palestinians killed in Gaza treated with as much dignity as the Israelis killed on 7 October? Are their lives, and deaths, assigned equal worth? The uneven response to these deaths, alongside the uncritical acceptance of this unevenness, suggests that this international division of humanity remains in place and is not only accepted, but also perpetuated, by Western leaders, who make allowances for the killing of more brown bodies than white ones, the latter seen as precious, the former seen as disposable.

Abdel Rahman al-Muzayen (Palestine), Untitled, 2000.

During the ‘humanitarian pause’, a hostage transfer took place through which Hamas and the Palestinian factions released 110 Israelis while Israel released 240 Palestinian women and children. The stories of the Israeli casualties, many of them residents of settlements near the Gaza perimeter fence, and other hostages such as the Thai and Nepalese fieldworkers are now well-known. Less frequently discussed and much less understood are the stories of the Palestinian casualties. Equally disregarded is the fact that after 7 October, Israel launched a mass campaign to detain over 3,000 Palestinians, including nearly 200 children. There are more Palestinians in Israeli prisons now than before 7 October. During the first four days of the truce alone, Israel arrested almost as many Palestinians as it released through the hostage transfer.

It is of note that most (more than two-thirds) of the Palestinians released from Israeli prisons are never charged with any crime and have been held in ‘administrative detention’ in the military’s legal system, meaning that they are held without a time limit, ‘without trial [and] without having committed an offence, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future’, as defined by the human rights organisation B’tselem. Some of them have been lost in the maze of the Israeli incarceration system indefinitely, unable to exercise even the most basic right of habeas corpus, with no court appearance, no access to a lawyer, and no access to the evidence against them. Israel currently holds more than 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners, many of them associated with left-wing factions (such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine). More than 2,000 of these prisoners are being held in administrative detention.

Many of these Palestinian prisoners are children. Many of them spend years in the Israeli system, often under administrative detention, unable to make a case for their release. The Defence for Children International (Palestine) reports that 500–700 children are detained each year, and a chilling report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 2015 showed that Israel is in full violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990). Article 37 of the convention says that the ‘arrest, detention, or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time’. As multiple cases show, Israel uses arrests as a measure of first resort and holds children for long periods of time.

Defence for Children International studied sworn affidavits from 766 child detainees from the occupied West Bank arrested between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2022. The following data emerged from their analysis:

75% were subjected to physical violence.
80% were strip-searched.
97% were interrogated without a family member present.
66% were not properly informed of their rights.
55% were shown or made to sign a paper in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children do not understand.
59% were arrested at night.
86% were not informed of the reason for their arrest.
58% were subjected to verbal abuse, humiliation, or intimidation during or after their arrest.
23% were detained in solitary confinement for interrogation purposes for a period of two or more days.

Sliman Mansour (Palestine), Prison, 1982.

There are thousands of untold stories of the brutality inflicted upon Palestinian children. One of them, Ahmad Manasra, was arrested on 12 October 2015 at the age of thirteen in occupied East Jerusalem on the charge that he stabbed two Israelis: Yosef Ben-Shalom, a twenty-year-old security guard, and Naor Shalev Ben-Ezra, a thirteen-year-old boy, who survived the attack. The Israeli courts initially found Ahmad guilty of the stabbing but then changed their opinion to say that his fifteen-year-old cousin Hassan Khalid Manasra, who was shot dead at the scene, had stabbed the two Israelis. There was no evidence of Ahmad’s complicity, yet he was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison.

Still in prison, Ahmad Manasra (now 21) has been held in solitary confinement for months on end. Khulood Badawi of Amnesty International said in late September that Ahmad ‘was taken to the mental health unit at Ayalon prison after spending the better part of two years in solitary confinement. The Israeli Prison Service has requested an extension of Ahmad’s isolation for another six months in brazen violation of international law. Prolonged solitary confinement lasting more than 15 days violates the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment’.

Ahmad’s case took place during a wave of what were called ‘knife attacks’, when young Palestinians were accused of rushing at Israeli military posts with knives and were then shot dead. At that time, I investigated several of these attacks and found them to be based on little more than the word of Israeli soldiers. For instance, on 17 December 2015, Israeli soldiers at the Huwwara checkpoint shot fifteen-year-old Abdullah Hussein Ahmad Nasasra to death. Eyewitnesses told me that the boy had his hands in the air when he was fatally shot. One of them, Nasser, told me that there was no knife, and that he ‘saw them kill the boy’. Kamal Badran Qabalan, an ambulance driver, was not allowed to retrieve the body. The Israelis wanted control over the body and the story they would tell about it.

Another story is that of twenty-three-year-old Anas al-Atrash in Hebron. Anas and his brother Ismail returned home from a week of work in Jericho, their car filled with fruits and vegetables. At a checkpoint, Anas got out of the car when instructed to do so and an Israeli soldier shot him dead. The next morning, Israeli media reported that Anas tried to kill the Israeli soldiers. The journalist Ben Ehrenreich, who reported the story with a fierce determination for the truth, sought out the family’s version. Anas had no interest in politics, they told him. He was studying accounting and hoped to get married soon. The Israeli soldiers and intelligence officials kept asking Ismail if his brother had a knife. There was simply no knife. Anas had been killed in cold blood. ‘This is a savage country’, an eyewitness told Ehrenreich. ‘They have no shame’. He meant the Israeli soldiers.

Hakim Alakel (Yemen), from the series The Eye of the Bird, 2013.

The grammar of the Israeli occupation is to put pressure on Palestinians until an act of violence takes place – a knife attack, say, or even a fabricated knife attack – and then use that event as an excuse to deepen the displacement of Palestinians with more illegal settlements. The events that have followed 7 October maintain this logic. Israel has used people like Anas, Abdullah, and Ahmad, and the fabricated narratives surrounding their alleged crimes, as the raison d’etre to increase the demolition of Palestinian homes and expand illegal Israeli settlements, accelerating the Permanent Nakba.

Ten years ago, I met with Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who teaches at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shaloub-Kevorkian studies how the occupation produces an everyday form of victimhood that stretches from the streets to Palestinians’ most intimate of spaces. Her book Security Theology, Surveillance, and the Politics of Fear (2015) provides a glimpse into the industry of fear that is produced and reproduced in the everyday violence inflicted upon Palestinians by settlers and the military, including the difficulties that Palestinians face in giving birth and burying their dead. The depth of the violence and uncertainty, Shalhoub-Kevorkian writes, moves Palestinian women to speak of ‘being choked, suffocated, or gagged’ and has led many of their children to lose their will to live. There is widespread social trauma in Palestine or what Shalhoub-Kevorkian calls ‘sociocide’: the death of society.

More than fifty years of an occupation and war have created a strange dynamic. Both Ehrenreich and Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s work offer windows into this madness. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who lives in Jerusalem, told me that she is part of a group of women who walk Palestinian children to school each day, since it is too dangerous for them to confront the police and the settlers on their own, or even in the company of their Palestinian family and friends. ‘Bikhawfuni!’ (‘They scare me!’), one girl, Marah (age 8), told her.

The children draw pictures at school. One of them drew a clown, a Palestinian clown. When Shalhoub-Kevorkian asked the child (age 9) what a Palestinian clown is, he explained, ‘This is a Palestinian clown. Clowns in Palestine cry’.

Abdul Rahim Nagori (Pakistan), Sabra and Shatila, 1982.

The poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who moved to Beirut to edit the magazine Lotus in the aftermath of the 1977 military coup in Pakistan, wrote with horror about the plight and struggles of the Palestinians:

Tere aaqa ne kiya ek Filistin barbaad
Mere zakhmon ne kiye kitne Filistin aabaad.

Your enemies destroyed one Palestine.
My wounds populated many Palestines.

Faiz’s poem ‘A Lullaby for a Palestinian Child’, written during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, reflects the reality facing Palestinian children today:

Don’t cry children.
Your mother has just cried herself to sleep.

Don’t cry children.
Your father has just left this world of sorrow.

Don’t cry children,
Your brother is in an alien land.
Your sister too has gone there.

Don’t cry children.
The dead sun has just been bathed and the moon is buried in the courtyard.

Don’t cry children.
For if you cry,
Your mother, father, brother, and sister
And the sun, and the moon
Will make you cry ever more.

Maybe if you smile,
They’ll one day return, disguised
to play with you.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

 

The View from Washington: Let the Killing in Gaza Continue

by Binoy Kampmark / December 9th, 2023

Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence.

Such cover also takes the form of false fairness and forced balance. “We don’t have to choose between defending Israel and aiding Palestinian civilians,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote inanely in the Washington Post on October 31.  “We can and must do both.  That is the only way to stand firmly by one of our closest allies, protecting innocent lives, uphold the international rules of the road that ultimately benefit the American people, and preserve the sole viable path to lasting peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians: two states for two peoples.”  Given that innocent lives are being taken with mechanistic ruthlessness, international laws broken with impunity, and any remnant of a Palestinian state being liquidated, Blinken seemingly inhabits a parallel universe of mind-bending cynicism.

The latest attempt to halt hostilities came in the form of an intervention by UN Secretary-General António Guterres under the auspices of Article 99 of the UN Charter.  The article grants the secretary-general the liberty to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”

In his December 6 letter to the members of the Security Council, Guterres gives a brief account of the conflict, commencing on October 7.  After noting the death of 1,200 Israelis and 250 abductions (130 are still being held in captivity in Gaza), the focus shifts to the death of over 15,000 individuals in the strip itself, “more than 40 per cent of whom were children.”  Somewhere in the order of 80 per cent of the population of 2.2 million residents in Gaza had been displaced, with 1.1 million seeking refuge in UNRWA facilities across the strip “creating overcrowded, undignified, and unhygienic conditions.”  The provision of viable health care had all but ceased, with 14 hospitals of 36 facilities “partially functional.”  Overall, Gaza was facing “a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system.”

The secretary-general concludes his note by urging the Security Council members “to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe” and seek a “humanitarian ceasefire”.  But on December 8, Washington predictably sabotaged the passage of the follow up resolution, which had been proposed by the United Arab Emirates.  (Thirteen countries voted for the measure; with the United Kingdom abstaining.)  The resolution demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and ensuring humanitarian access.

The US deputy ambassador to the UN Robert A. Wood, claimed that he and the delegation had “engaged in good faith on the text.”  But “nearly all” of Washington’s recommendations had been ignored, resulting in “an unbalanced resolution divorced from reality on the ground.”  Again, a sticking point was the omission in the draft of any reference to Hamas’s attack on October 7, Israel’s right to self-defence, and reference to any permission for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to access and provide medical treatment to the hostages still being held by Hamas.

With the gloves off, Wood made it clear that, in solidarity with Israel, the US will not countenance the continued existence of Hamas.  “The resolution retains a call for an unconditional ceasefire – this is not only unrealistic but dangerous; it will simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on 7 October.”

While Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, was not present to address the Security Council, he subsequently affirmed the blood curdling, unending mission his country has embarked upon.  “A ceasefire will only be possible only with the return of all the hostages and the destruction of Hamas.”

As this farcical theatre of constipated morality unfolded, the Biden administration was happy to beef up the Israeli war machine by asking Congress to urgently approve the sale of 45,000 shells for the IDF’s Merkava tanks to aid its offensive in Gaza.  The sale, worth around $500 million, does not form part of Biden’s $110.5 billion supplemental request that covers funding for both Ukraine and Israel.

In pursuing such a course of action, be it defending Israel’s policies in the Security Council, or via armaments, the US is effectively colluding in the perpetration of crimes against humanity.  This was certainly the view of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who said in a statement released by his office that “the American position is aggressive and immoral, a flagrant violation of all humanitarian principles and values, and holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and elderly people in the Gaza Strip”.

Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard also expressed the view that the US, in vetoing the resolution, had “displayed a callous disregard for civilian suffering in the face of a staggering death toll, extensive destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe happening in the occupied Gaza Strip.”  Washington had “brazenly wielded and weaponized its veto to strong arm the UN Security Council, further undermining its credibility and ability to live up to its mandate to maintain international peace and security.”  Not that it had much credibility to begin with.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Israeli Government’s War Crimes

Enabled and Defended by Biden and Congress

by Ralph Nader / December 9th, 2023

The humiliation of the U.S. government, which is actively complicit in providing the weaponry, funding, and UN vetoes backing the Israeli government’s attack on the civilian Palestinians/Arabs in tiny Gaza, is in plain view daily. All in the name of the unasked American people and taxpayers.

Earlier this week, at a House of Representatives’ hearing, Trump toady Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) repeatedly assailed three University presidents with the question of would they discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews, without any evidence that this hateful speech is prevalent on campus.

Pursuing her fulminations, Stefanik was cruelly oblivious to the real ongoing genocide in Gaza with her support of unconditional shipment of American F-16s, 155mm. missiles and other weapons of mass destruction used to kill children, women and the elderly who had nothing to do with the preventable October 7th Hamas violence.

Meanwhile, a State Department spokesman continues to say that the Israeli government does not intentionally target civilians. With U.S. drones over Gaza daily, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visual proof that the overwhelming bombing on civilian structures is killing innocent civilians.

The evidence is in the rubble of hospitals, health clinics, ambulances, schools, libraries, places of worship, marketplaces, water mains, homes, apartment buildings, and piles of unburied corpses being eaten by stray dogs.  All this information is in the possession of bomber Biden’s regime.

The Bidenites and their bloodthirsty cohorts in Congress were forewarned when the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant and other Israeli officials on October 8th shouted these chilling genocidal orders to their army: “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water.… We are fighting human animals and will act accordingly.” (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). Add an already illegal 16-year Israeli blockade of 2.3 Palestinians suffering from dire poverty, with 40% of their children down with anemia.

Now, about half of Gaza’s population are children, 85% of the entire population is homeless, wandering helplessly into nowhere, afflicted with pending starvation, sickened by spreading infectious diseases and dirty drinking water.  There is little or no medicines for diabetics and cancer patients. No surgery, no anesthesia, no emergency transport, no shelter from cold weather, only American-made bombs and missiles blowing up Palestinians into bits with Israeli snipers everywhere.

The Palestinians cannot flee from their open-air prison.  They cannot surrender – the Israeli government wants them gone. Bear in mind, the population that is not yet blown up is sick and dying, denied needed outside humanitarian aid. Defying feeble Biden’s wishes, Netanyahu only allows a trickle of aid trucks to enter Gaza, and those that do enter can scarcely reach their destinations.

All this raises the issue of the gross undercount of casualties. The Hamas Health Authority has restricted its count to the names of the deceased and injured supplied by hospitals and morgues. These locations are now largely rubble or inoperative. Bodies under the rubble, many of them children, can’t be counted. Thousands of missing people cannot be counted. The Ministry’s suspended count is over 17,000 fatalities, plus 45,000 injuries. With the far larger carnage unable to be tabulated, the actual fatality toll may reach 100,000 soon.

Nonetheless, about two weeks ago, the New York Times reported the death undercount of children in Gaza in two months was ten times greater than the deaths of Ukrainian children in nearly two years of Russian bombings. One of its headlines – “Smoldering Gaza Becomes a Graveyard for Children.”

There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and about 5,500 of them are due to give birth. Where are they going to do that? How can they be cared for and be nurtured? These mothers are sick and starving. Add the babies to the terrorists toll.

Gaza’s area is about the size of Philadelphia. How many dead, injured, and dying people would there be if 20,000 bombs were dropped on civilians and civilian structures in Philadelphia? Philadelphians trapped without food, water, medicine or any escape route. Imagine 85% of 1.5 million residents homeless, wandering in the streets and alleys. And with virtually no humanitarian aid coming from outside the city. There wouldn’t be any fire trucks or water to extinguish spreading fires.

Over a nine-week period there would have to be over 200,000 deaths and many more permanently disabled for life.

There are courageous Jewish groups (e.g., Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now) and rabbis calling for an end to the slaughter, demanding a ceasefire. There are protestors at all of Biden’s public events/trips reminding him of next November.

Veterans for Peace and other veteran groups are engaged in non-violent civil disobedience in front of the Scranton, Pennsylvania factory producing 155mm missiles for Israel. (Scranton is Biden’s hometown.) Public opinion is turning against the Biden/Israel war without limits on the Palestinians.

Biden wouldn’t want to poll the American people about his $14.3 billion genocide tax, charging American taxpayers to further prosperous Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza. They’ll likely tell Biden that poor children, unaffordable health facilities and other necessities in America need that money first.

There are some 30 Democratic Senators demanding that this Biden bill contain conditions and safeguards so that the money is not used to blow up more Palestinian children and women. But what else are these funds for other than to expand Israel’s military budget? The Israeli extremist ruling coalition under Netanyahu has made no secret of wanting to take over all of remaining Palestine as part of their “Greater Israel” mission to include what they call Judea and Samaria. As Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion, frankly declared referring to the Palestinians, “We have taken their country.” (As quoted in The Jewish Paradox (1978) by Nahum Goldmann.)

It is a cruel irony of history that Israeli state terrorism is producing a Palestinian Holocaust. Netanyahu’s regime has killed over 60 journalists—three of them Israelis—120 United Nations relief workers and instituted total blackouts to keep the grisly events in Gaza out of the news in real time. Netanyahu, to shield his colossal failure to defend Israel on October 7thand to keep his job, is making sure that his country joins the world community of savage, slaughtering regimes, exemplified by the Bush/Cheney unlawful criminal destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by Hillary Clinton toppling Libya into permanent violence and chaos since 2011. (Obama later called his conceding to Hillary’s demands as his worst foreign policy decision).

Capitol Hill and the White House don’t wait for any blood-guilt to be recognized. That will surely come later with the judgment of history and the nightmarish visions of innocents being vaporized because of Washington’s unconditional backing of the Israeli blitzkrieg against what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has repeatedly called the “totally defenseless people” of Gaza.

Ralph Nader is a leading consumer advocate, the author of The Rebellious CEO: 12 Leaders Who Did It Right, among many other books, and a four-time candidate for US President. Read other articles by Ralph, or visit Ralph's website.