The Washington Post Bashes Xi Jinping

WaPo has egg on its face

by Dan Lieberman / February 29th, 2024

In the age of disinformation and artificial information, Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post (WaPo) manages to have some credibility. After its February 22 editorial, “Mr. Xi is tanking China’s economy,” Jeff Bezos would be wise to sell the newspaper. If those who lead the Editorial Board make childish mistakes and recite obvious falsehoods, can anyone believe in what they read?

Before scolding WAPO’s spurious description of Xi’s world, in which none of the charges are backed with proof, permit the presentation of one of the most serious errors in journalism history. Doubtful the WaPo staff will ever recover from this faux pas.  The editorial states:

China recorded a respectable 5.2 percent economic growth rate last year, but the real rate is lower when adjusted for falling prices. Rather than being an economic juggernaut, China seems likely to be entering a period of deflation, the sorts of conditions that led to Japan’s “lost decade.”

Having the real rate of growth to go down with deflation is equivalent to having an auto slow down when the gas pedal is more heavily pressed. How many hands, eyeballs, and minds at WAPO did not know that “inflation occurs when nominal GDP is higher than real GDP and deflation happens when real GDP is higher than nominal GDP.”

Real GDP= Nominal GDP/R
where: GDP=Gross domestic product
R=GDP deflator (R<1 during deflation and >1 during inflation)

​Examine the opening paragraph:

For the past decade, Americans have worried increasingly about China, not least because Chinese President Xi Jinping has centralized power, silenced critics, stalled private-sector reforms and taken an increasingly combative posture toward the rest of the world

Saying that Xi Jinping silenced critics, without specifying who and how is meaningless. To gain office, all politicians try to overcome critics. A good politician silences critics. China is different; the government runs on consensus, and when a decision is made, including who will be president, there are no remaining critics.

Again, without specifying the nature of Xi’s “increasingly combative posture toward the rest of the world?” how can his nature be evaluated? Have the Africans, Latinos, Europeans, Eskimos, and most of Asia found Xi combative or does the WaPo editorial board think Washington is the world?

Instead, Mr. Xi’s China is less free, less prosperous and less competently governed than it would have been had he taken a different course — one not inspired by rivalry with the West or fear of his own people.

“Mr. Xi’s China is less free.”

The intentional insult of replacing President Xi with Mr. XI demeans WaPo.
Western media always considered China devoid of freedom. How can a country be less free when it has always been considered not free? Consider who is setting the criteria and doing the evaluation. If Chinese authorities set the criteria and evaluated freedom in the United States how would they consider freedom of thought in the U.S. after the rise of Trumpism and his cohorts?

“Less prosperous.”

GDP is up 60 percent since Xi’s time in office; how could Xi have made China “less prosperous?”

China GDP (Trillions of US Dollars)

From Trading Economics

“and less competently governed than it would have been had he taken a different course.”

How does anyone know what will happen and what is the different course?” This is speculative speculation, a ridiculous assumption that does not pass the smell test.

Despite Mr. Xi lifting the world’s most draconian COVID-19 restrictions at the end of 2022, construction in China has slowed, manufacturing prices have declined and consumer spending has flattened. China’s stock market has lost $6 trillion in value in three years.

Reciting a decline in manufacturing prices and a flattening of consumer spending, as if they are always negatives, is not clever thinking. If a recession occurred, then they might be a result of an economic decline. No recession has occurred and their relation is due to consumer prices having dropped, maybe due to increased efficiency and productivity. Consumer transactions have increased and the total sales remained static, or did they? Beijing reports contradictory information and data does not indicate a flattening of consumer spending.

BEIJING, Jan. 21:

Robust consumption has been thriving and helping to underpin China’s economic recovery, while the country is energetically spurring consumer spending to strengthen one of the pillars needed to support high-quality growth. China’s total retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of the country’s consumption strength, climbed 7.2 percent year on year to reach 47.15 trillion yuan (about 6.63 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2023, an obvious sign of the Chinese people’s growing readiness to purchase.

China Consumer-spending in CNY hundred million

As for the stock market, it lost popularity in 2009, long before Xi Jinping gained the presidential office, exhibited a 100 percent increase in a year after he took the helm, and has been static since then. Nothing significant there.

The last of many spurious remarks

To reduce the falling birthrate, he prefers exhorting young women to stay home and have more babies as their patriotic duty.

Another insulting remark to a nation’s president. Falling birthrate is a problem in all advanced nations, and no country seems to have a solution. A mendacious and callous WaPo distorted Xi’s words. At a recent All-China Women’s Federation meeting, President Xi Jinping told the cadres:

…to “guide women to play their roles in carrying forward the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation” and “in establishing good family traditions.” They should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and child-bearing” among women, so they can “respond to the aging of the population.”

Big difference between WaPo’s interpretation and the actual spoken words.

The experts on Xi Jinping China follow up the bashing with tools for him to use, and advice on how Xi can extricate himself and his nation from the damage he caused. Imagined failures solicit imagination of how to cure a patient who is not sick. Noting that, since 1978, except for one year during the COVID-19 epidemic, China had no recessions, while the U.S. suffered a recession every ten years, I doubt the Chinese government needs lectures on how to run their economy. China has a major housing crisis, not much different in scope than the 2008 mortgage crisis in the United States. The latter crisis provoked a huge banking crisis and sent the U.S. into a major recession. China’s housing crisis is now several years old and has not provoked a banking or economic crisis.

Describing people in a totally negative manner and not reciting known positive characteristics is biased editorializing. Xi has guided China to become the leading world power outdistancing the U.S. in the more important GDP/PPP.

Gross Domestic Product at Purchasing Power parity ($Trillions)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Xi probably was not personally involved and criticizing him for “the world’s most draconian COVID-19 restrictions at the end of 2022,” is a subjective appraisal. An objective appraisal mentions his administration’s holding the number of Covid cases to 503,302 and deaths to 5,272 compared to U.S. cases of 111,426,318 and deaths of 1,199,436. Use per capita figures of 90,273 cases/1 million population and 896 deaths/1 million population for China and 333,802 cases/1 million population and 3,582 deaths/1 million population for the United States, and a bright light shines on China’s president.

The WaPo editorial, “Mr. Xi is tanking China’s economy,” is informative. It informs us that WaPo cannot be trusted. It has an agenda and will distort, lie, do somersaults, and deceive its audience to pursue the agenda.

When will we be free from China bashing?

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). Read other articles by Dan.

Is China Doing What the World Bank, IMF and 

US are Doing?

BY ERIC TOUSSAINT

MARCH 1, 2024

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China has been demonized by several commentators: it is said to be the main creditor of many countries of the South and to get the best of them through ruthless exploitation, whereas the World Bank, the IMF, and the Paris Club, which comprise the traditional creditor powers, are supposed to do their best to help countries burdened by too much debt.

China uses propaganda of its own. It parades as an ally of countries of the South, regularly announces debt cancellation and debt relief, and claims that it does not impose neoliberal conditionalities as do the IMF and the World Bank. It also stresses its efficiency.

Can it be said that credits from China and the IMF have reduced the scope of defaults over the past three years? Have they provided solutions??

Since 2020 and the succession of external shocks (the Coronavirus pandemic and the effects of the war in Ukraine, in particular on the prices of grain, chemical fertilisers and fuel), the number of countries in financial difficulty has increased greatly. This has not resulted in a generalized crisis of debt repayment, since the International Monetary Fund and China have provided many emergency loans and/or rescheduling of payments. The IMF and China have not been alone in doing this, but they have had the most impact due to their financial weight.

This has provided short-term solutions for creditors, who until now have avoided a generalized payment crisis; but it has not provided a structural solution. What is more serious is that in the case of the IMF, the institution has taken advantage of the situation to impose extension and hardening of the neoliberal policies it has applied for close to 40 years now: reduction of social expenditures, removal of subsidies on basic products and services, increases in VAT (sales taxes), further privatizations, even less protection for local producers struggling against imported products, and so on. All this has contributed to a worsening of living conditions for hundreds of millions of people.

In the case of China, which does not impose this type of conditionalities – which in itself is positive –, postponement of repayment does not provide a fundamental solution because the debt of the “beneficiary” countries continues to increase. In certain cases, China has been given direct control over infrastructures, such as in Kenya with a railway line, or in Sri Lanka, with the port of Hambantota,  [1] for which it has obtained a 99-year operating lease.

Has China followed the example of the USA during the period 1980-1990 with Latin American countries facing a serious debt crisis?

The People’s Bank of China grants more and more emergency loans in order to avoid problems as much as possible for Chinese public creditors in case of failure to repay.

It is true that in many ways, China has made use of formulas like those used by the USA when faced with the debt crisis in Latin America beginning in the 1980s. To protect the interests of its lenders, in particular the US banks, who were Latin America’s main creditors, the USA intervened actively to restructure debts and grant emergency credits to the countries concerned so that they could continue or resume payments to the banks.

The US Treasury used taxpayer money to bail out private US creditors – that is, major private banks [2]. In the case of China, the People’s Bank of China (the Chinese central bank) itself grants more and more emergency loans in order to avoid problems for Chinese public creditors as much as possible in case of failure to repay.

Nevertheless, there is an important difference between China and the USA – namely that in China’s case, the overwhelming majority of lenders are public whereas in the case of the USA with the crisis in the 1980s, the creditors were almost exclusively private.

What is the volume of Chinese loans in Africa?

According to Eugène Berg, ex-ambassador of France to Namibia and Botswana, “Between 2000 and 2018, 50 African countries out of 54 borrowed 132 billion dollars from China, of which 80% was from Ex-Im Bank of China and China Development Bank (CDB), in various forms. In 2018, China held nearly 21% of the continent’s outstanding external public debt, with many of these loans going to finance infrastructures whose relevance is questionable.” (source: Eugène Berg, La percée chinoise en Afrique a des effets délétères (China’s Entry Into Africa has Deleterious Effects), Le Monde, 31 December 2021, translation CADTM)

The Chinese press agency Xinhua gives lower figures on the extent of Chinese loans: “A report published last July by the British NGO Debt Justice showed that 12 percent of the external debt of African countries is owed to Chinese lenders, compared to 35 percent to Western private lenders. The average interest rate of these private loans is 5 percent, compared with 2.7 percent for loans from Chinese public and private lenders.” Source: Xinhua, Key Facts U.S. Deliberately Ignores about African Debt, 7/02/2023.

China lends at variable rates. What are the consequences?

A significant share of credits granted by China confirm that the variable interest rate corresponds to the Libor, plus an additional 2% to 4%. That currently works out to an interest rate of 7% to 9%.

Over recent years, more and more loans have been granted at variable rates. Chinese variable-rate contracts adopt the index known as the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) implemented by the big private banks in the 1970s. Note that one of the causes of the Third World debt crisis in the 1980s was the decision by the Federal Reserve of the USA to radically increase its rates, which caused a similar sudden leap in the Libor, which served as the index for variable-rate credits granted by private banks in the North to so-called “Third World” countries.

In a way, the same phenomenon is happening again. The credits from China at variable rates since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) were granted at a time when the Libor was near 0, since it corresponded to the rates in force at the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England between 2012 and 2022. Following the unilateral decision by these three major central banks to raise their rate to 5.5% in the case of the Fed for the USA and the Bank of England, the Libor shot from 0 to over 5%. See the chart below.

Source: https://www.global-rates.com/fr/taux-de-interets/libor/

A significant share of credits granted by China confirms that the variable interest rate corresponds to the Libor, plus an additional 2% to 4%. An example is a loan granted by China’s Ex-Im Bank to Cameroon in 2014. The contract calls for an interest rate of the Libor plus 3% to 4%, which, if that clause of the contract is applied, means a rate of 8% to 9%, since the Libor now stands at more than 5%.

Another loan granted to Cameroon, this time by the China Development Bank, calls for a variable rate corresponding to the Libor plus 2% to 3%. A third loan granted to Cameroon, by the Chinese public bank ICBC, calls for a rate corresponding to the Libor plus 1% to 4%.
China is not the only lender who lends at variable rates and uses the Libor as reference. So, for example does the Export Credit Bank of Turkey, which also granted a loan to Cameroon with an interest rate indexed on the Libor plus 4%. And a loan granted by the international Islamic Trade Finance Corporation calls for a rate of the Libor plus 3%. A similar loan to Cameroon from the private bank CommerzBank AG Paris, provides for a rate of the Libor plus 1.6%.

Other creditors use another index called the Euribor. In Cameroon’s case, the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) requires the Euribor rate plus a margin that has not been made public. Note that in the context of this loan, AFD imposed on Cameroon an equivalent clause to the one explained above regarding China – that is, an account is opened in which part of the income generated by the financed project is deposited and from which AFD can draw in case of a suspension of payment.

To return to the Euribor index, in the case of Cameroon, it is used by the African Development Bank (ADB), which calls for the Euribor rate plus 0.6%; by the World Bank (IBRD, with Euribor plus 1.3%; and by the private bank Deutsche Bank, at Euribor plus 3.05%. The use of the Euribor as index has the same consequences as the use of the Libor; see the chart below:

Graphique 10 : Évolution de l’Euribor entre 1999 et 2024

Source : https://www.euribor-rates.eu/fr/graphiques-euribor/

These two charts provide a clear visualization of the fact that during the period of “quantitative easing,” the Libor and Euribor rates were close to 0 and that from 2022 onward the increase was both sudden and very drastic.

China is not responsible for the drastic increases in interest rates. Responsibility lies only with the central banks of the USA, the Eurozone and the UK.

It should be underlined that China is not responsible for the drastic increases in rates. Responsibility lies only with the central banks of the USA, the Eurozone and the UK. Yet China’s decision to adopt the Libor and the principle of variable rates is still regrettable and open to criticism, given the precedent of the crisis in the 1980s and the fact that the Libor had been manipulated during the financial crisis of 2008-2010, resulting in penalties against several of the major banks who define the rate.

It is fundamental to see whether China, faced with the catastrophic effects of the increase in the Libor, will reconsider how its contracts are applied in order to radically attenuate the effects of that increase. Until now, there has been no official Chinese announcement that China will not require application of the rate increase.

The IMF and the World Bank are calling on China to participate more actively in debt restructuring. What is the reality?

China is no worse than other creditors, but is far from being fundamentally different.

China’s coming of age as a major lender radically altered the balance of power among creditors. Until the start of the decade of 2010, if there was an agreement between the IMF, the World Bank and the Paris Club, it was difficult for any poor country of which they were the main creditors to find any source of alternative financing, and no government of the Global South except for Cuba’s had the courage to suspend repayment unilaterally. It’s true that there is the case of the government of Ecuador, which suspended payment on a part of its debt and imposed a very significant debt reduction on its creditors [3], but only on debts held by private creditors, and not those held by the World Bank, the IMF and the Paris Club. Argentina also suspended payments to external private creditors from the end of 2001 until 2005. It did the same with the Paris Club from the end of 2001 until 2014.

Beginning in the decade of 2010, the dizzying increase in Chinese loans changed relations among creditors. For a significant number of countries, China played a larger and larger role, and in certain cases supplanted traditional creditors such as the former colonial powers (France, the UK, Belgium, Japan, Spain, etc.), the other major imperialist powers like the USA and Germany, and the World Bank and IMF.

The USA holds 16.5% of the voting rights in the IMF and 15.51% in the World Bank, while China has only 6.08% of voting rights in the IMF and 5.92% in the World Bank

China did not become part of the Paris Club. And, while it is a member of the IMF and the World Bank, the USA and its allies are blocking China from attaining its legitimate goal of increasing its percentage of voting rights in proportion to the size of its economy. Keep in mind that the USA holds 16.5% of the voting rights in the IMF and 15.51% in the World Bank, while China has only 6.08% of voting rights in the IMF and 5.92% in the World Bank [4]. Consequently, China, understandably, is not ready to adhere to the agreements made between the Paris Club and the two Bretton Woods institutions, all three of which are dominated by the USA and the Western European powers. China prefers to negotiate bilaterally with each debtor country separately. The World Bank’s and the IMF’s criticisms of the Chinese, whom they accuse of “egoism,” lack credibility because the two institutions systematically refuse to allow any debt cancellation agreement to apply to debt they themselves hold in the countries concerned. The World Bank and the IMF do not cancel debts. They create a specific fund financed by a certain number of member countries, generally the richest ones, from which they draw to secure repayment. [5] Criticisms of China levelled by the Paris Club are no more legitimate than those of the IMF and the World Bank, because it negotiates with each indebted country separately, just as China does.

Having pointed out the bad faith of the leaders of the IMF, the World Bank and the Paris Club regarding China, it should be added that China’s own behaviour is not fundamentally different from that of other creditors. It has established itself as a creditor who is capable of setting conditions that are in its interest. As a result China has changed the balance of power among creditors. But relations between creditors and indebted countries have not changed. China is in the same camp as other creditors, and wants to ensure that its interests are respected along with the interests of the USA and other major powers. China could take the side of the peoples of the Global South and set an example by granting cancellations of debts, observing transparency in its contracts and refusing the nefarious discipline and policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF. But quite often, China requires indebted countries to submit to the conditionalities and policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. It does not impose them itself, but it does support them.

In the final analysis, China is no worse than other creditors, but is far from being fundamentally different.

The author would like to thank Gilbert Achcar, Maxime Perriot and Claude Quémar for document research and/or proofreading.

Translated by Snake Arbusto and Christine Pagnoulle

 

The End of Gaza

by Paul Larudee / February 29th, 2024

I feel like I’m watching the film Don’t Look Up. We all know that the comet is headed straight toward us, but our society paralyzes itself with self-interest, corruption and politics until the avoidable inevitable happens.

Israel’s genocide is proceeding according to plan, and it looks like we won’t have to wait long for its accomplishment. In return for $10 billion, Egypt will accept the stampeding masses of desperate, starving and terrified Palestinians after a false flag atrocity that will be blamed on Hamas, including demolition of part of the razor-wire-festooned border wall through which the mostly women and children will be driven, by bombs raining from the skies and relentless bullets from the muzzles of Israel’s valiant young soldiers, creating a path of corpses and pieces of corpses.

Of course, Egypt was lying about creating a camp for 60,000 refugees only. That particular camp will hold 100,000 or more, and a gulag of camps is being built to hold a total of perhaps up to 2 million. The fix is in. Netanyahu and Biden will bathe in rivers of blood. Will the world stop it from happening? I see no sign that it will. All of the reaction has been in the form of words. Words from the International Court of Justice. Words from the United Nations. Words from even the rest of us, marching in the streets, confronting Tony Blinken outside his home, and similar vocal utterances. Only the Palestinian resistance, Yemen, Hezbollah and the other resistance groups are taking real action.

When will it happen? How much time do we still have to make a difference? My guess is a few weeks at most, maybe a month. The Gaza Flotilla, which was only intended to deliver its humanitarian cargo to Egypt, to be trucked into Gaza, will probably arrive too late to distribute its aid anywhere other than to the Palestinian population driven into the Egyptian Sinai, not the remnants in Gaza.

Then what? A lot of hand wringing and condemnations. More words. Netanyahu will be triumphant even if he is reviled internationally. By his own people, he will be lauded for “doing what needed to be done” and to hell with the rest of the world, who are all antisemites, anyway.

Will Biden be so reviled that he won’t run for a second term? I suspect that this has already been part of the script for weeks or months, perhaps longer. He will be tainted, so that his successor will not be. And who will that be? Hillary Clinton, of course. She and her Democrats will try to so handicap Trump, legally and otherwise, that she will win. But she underestimates the revulsion that the American public bears for her.  I think she will fail again, unless Trump meets a violent end, and perhaps not even then. From there, I hesitate to predict the consequences. Or perhaps Biden won’t be tainted enough in the minds of the American public, thanks to the official Ministry of Information, AKA the obsequious corporate media. The result will be the same, in any case.

Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. Read other articles by Paul.

Conscious and Unconscionable: The Starving of Gaza

by Binoy Kampmark / February 29th, 2024

The starvation regime continues unabated as Israel continues its campaign in the Gaza Strip.  One of the six provisional measures ordered by the International Court Justice entailed taking “immediate and effective measures” to protect the Palestinian populace in the Gaza Strip from risk of genocide by ensuring the supply of humanitarian assistance and basic services.

In its case against Israel, South Africa argued, citing various grounds, that Israel’s purposeful denial of humanitarian aid to Palestinians could fall within the UN Genocide Convention as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

A month has elapsed since the ICJ order, after which Israel was meant to report back on compliance.  But, as Amnesty International reports, Israel continues “to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met.”

The organisation’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef, gives a lashing summary of that conduct.  “Not only has Israel created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, but it is also displaying callous indifference to the fate of Gaza’s population by creating conditions which the ICJ has said placed them at imminent risk of genocide.”  Israel, Morayef continues to state, had “woefully failed to provide for Gazans’ basic needs” and had “been blocking and impeding the passage of sufficient aid into the Gaza strip, in particular to the north which is virtually inaccessible, in a clear show of contempt for the ICJ ruling and in flagrant violation of its obligation to prevent genocide.”

The humanitarian accounting on this score is grim.  Since the ICJ order, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza has precipitously declined.  Within three weeks, it had fallen by a third: an average of 146 a day were coming in three weeks prior; afterwards, the numbers had fallen to about 105.  Prior to the October 7 assault by Hamas, approximately 500 trucks were entering the strip on a daily basis.

The criminally paltry aid to the besieged Palestinians is even too much for some Israeli protest groups which have formed with one single issue in mind: preventing any aid from being sent into Gaza.  As a result, closures have taken place at Kerem Shalom due to protests and clashes with security forces.

Their support base may seem to be small and peppered by affiliates from the Israeli Religious Zionism party of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but an Israeli Democracy Institute poll conducted in February found that 68% of Jewish respondents opposed the transfer of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza.  Rachel Touitou of Tzav 9, a group formed in December with that express purpose in mind, stated her reasoning as such: “You cannot expect the country to fight its enemy and feed it at the same time.”

Hardly subtle, but usefully illustrative of the attitude best reflected by the blood curdling words of Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, who declared during the campaign that his country’s armed forces were “fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly” in depriving them of electricity, food and fuel.

In December 2023, the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding, among other things, that the warring parties “allow and facilitate the use of all available routes to and throughout the entire Gaza Strip, including border crossings”.  Direct routes were also to be prioritised.  To date, Israel has refused to permit aid through other crossings.

In February, the Global Nutrition Cluster reported that “the nutrition situation of women and children in Gaza is worsening everywhere, but especially in Northern Gaza where 1 in 6 children are acutely malnourished and an estimated 3% face the most severe form of wasting and require immediate treatment.”

The organisation’s report makes ugly reading.  Over 90% of children between 6 to 23 months along with pregnant and breastfeeding women face “severe food poverty”, with the food supplied being “of the lowest nutritional value and from two or fewer food groups.”  At least 90% of children under the age of 5 are burdened with one or more infectious diseases, while 70% have suffered from diarrhoea over the previous two weeks.  Safe and clean water, already a problem during the 16-year blockade, is now in even shorter supply, with 81% of households having access to less than one litre per person per day.

Reduced to such conditions of monumental and raw desperation, hellish scenes of Palestinians swarming around aid convoys were bound to manifest.  On February 29, Gaza City witnessed one such instance, along with a lethal response from Israeli troops.  In the ensuing violence, some 112 people were killed, adding to a Palestinian death toll that has already passed 30,000.  While admitting to opening fire on the crowd, the IDF did not miss a chance to paint their victims as disorderly savages, with “dozens” being “killed and injured from pushing, trampling and being run over by the trucks.”  The acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Salha, in noting the admission of some 161 wounded patients, suggested that gun fire had played its relevant role, given that most of those admitted suffered from gunshot wounds.

If Israel’s intention had been to demonstrate some good will in averting any insinuation that genocide was taking place, let alone a systematic policy of collective punishment against the Palestinian population, little evidence of it has been shown.  If anything, the suspicions voiced by South Africa and other critics aghast at the sheer ferocity of the campaign are starting to seem utter plausible in their horror.

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.

Gaza War: Deceptions, Distortions, Misperceptions

What are the relevant actual facts?

by Charles Pierce / February 29th, 2024

Responses to the current violence in, and from, Gaza vary as follows.

• Israeli leaders, much of the Israeli public, and Zionists in the West, thirsting for vengeance, call for genocidal mass murder and/or wholesale ethnic cleansing operations against the people of Gaza.
• Israel and its Western imperial allies (US et al) evade the actual causes (Palestinian grievances for which peaceful appeals for redress invariably go unanswered); and they condemn all resorts to violent resistance by the long-persecuted Palestinians.
• Many liberal leftists, evidently obsessive to distance themselves from all US-designated “terrorists” and other alleged enemies of “democracy”, always preface any condemnation of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians with an absolute condemnation of the October 07 attack against Israel by resistance forces in Gaza. Thusly, they purvey a false moral equivalence between the violence of the oppressed and that of their oppressor.
• A very few partisans of the Palestinian cause have asserted that all Israeli suffering from the October 07 attack by Gaza resistance fighters was deserved, thereby exhibiting a lack of recognition and empathy for the innocent victims thereof. In fact, innocent victims are generally inevitable in war, even in just and necessary wars, but nevertheless deserving of sympathetic recognition.
• Consistent activists for social justice: condemn the Zionist persecution of the Palestinian people; acknowledge the right of the oppressed to resist, including by violent means when left with no viable alternative; acknowledge obvious faults and mistakes in the resistance forces; and sympathize with all innocent victims, whether deliberately targeted or unavoidably caught in the crossfire.

Unfortunately, after decades of racist distortions by Zionists and supportive imperial Western states, and given hard-to-avoid reliance upon a dominant and biased Western mainstream media; even consistent supporters of the Palestinian cause sometimes take, as fact, notions which have become generally accepted as “true” (unaware that critical investigation may disprove it).  Consequently, mistakes can occur when there is rush to judgment and publication without questioning and scrutinizing so as to ascertain what are the relevant actual facts.

ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT.  The current Gaza War can be fully and accurately understood only when placed in the context of Jewish and Palestinian history.

Defining Palestine.  Prior to the 16th century BCE, the territory on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean was populated by small Canaanite city-states.  In the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, 3 small kingdoms (Israel, Judah, and Philistia) occupied the territory south of the Lebanon.  From the Assyrian conquest (BCE 8th century) until CE 1917 the territory was nearly always under the rule of a succession of tributary empires, the Ottoman being the last of those.  Throughout those centuries, various episodes of oppression and revolt, as well as opportunities in other places, resulted in a large Judean/Jewish diaspora.  After the Roman Empire made trinitarian Christianity the established religion (CE 4th century), the population in Palestine began increasingly to convert (from Judaism, Samaritanism, paganism, other forms of Christianity, et cetera) to the established faith.  Similarly, following conquest by the first Islamic empire, the population gradually began converting to Islam, until it was more than 80% Muslim by mid-19th century.  Imperial Britain, which conquered the country in 1917, was given a League of Nations Mandate over Palestine, specifically defined as the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.  Since then, the term “Palestine”, despite Zionist objections (that a larger expanse of land is rightfully theirs or alternatively that there is no such country as Palestine and no such people as “Palestinians”), has generally meant the Mandate territory “from the river to the sea”.

“Jewish problem”?  European Jews had experienced centuries of persecution (segregation into ghettos, abusive impositions, and pogroms) under medieval Christian European autocracies.  In the late 19th and early 20th   centuries, Jewish activists responded to the most recent pogroms and other persecutions in two opposing ways: whereas anti-racist secularists (liberal democrats and socialists) strove, along with likeminded gentiles, for equal rights for Jews in their home countries; Zionists, defining Jewish presence in gentile countries as a “Jewish problem” [1], embraced a racial conception of Jews and refused to do so [2].  They sought instead to remove Europe’s Jews to colonial settlements in Palestine where they intended to eventually displace the indigenous population in order to establish a “Jewish state” [3].

Resistance to Judeophobia?  Until the Axis War (1939—45), Zionist organizations routinely colluded with Judeophobe governments (including Nazi Germany) in facilitating Jewish removal (with preference for emigration to Palestine) [4].  Moreover, in the face of extreme persecution in Nazi Germany (1933—39), the Zionist Organization (formed in 1897) discouraged efforts, as at the Évian Conference (1938), to obtain refuges for persecuted European Jews in countries (United States, Canada, Australia, Latin America, et cetera) other than Palestine.

Jewish-Arab conflict.  Unlike in much of Europe, Palestinian Jews (about 4% of the population in 1880) lived amicably with their Muslim and Christian neighbors until the in-migration of European Zionist colonizers in the early 20th century.  Zionist settlement was sponsored by some European and American Jewish capitalists who provided money for land acquisitions (generally from absentee landlords who owned most of the arable land).  The Zionists then evicted the indigenous Arab tenant farmers thereby violating the traditional rights of the latter.  Moreover, the Zionist sponsoring organization (Jewish Agency) and its landholding body (Jewish National Fund) required that Jewish employers hire only Jews and prohibited the sale of any Jewish-owned land to Arabs.  Such racial discrimination was standard practice within the Zionist settlements; and it quite predictably provoked Palestinian Arab resentment against the Zionist settlers.  [See UNISPAL: The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917—1947 (Part I) ~ §§ V and VI].

Imperialism.  After other colonialist powers had turned down Zionist applications; imperial Britain decided, with its Balfour Declaration (in 1917), to sponsor the Zionist project of establishing a European Jewish colonial settler state in Palestine [5].  Britain visualized said state as developing into a useful protectorate [UNISPAL: The Origins … (Part I) ~ § II] thru which to project British imperial and commercial power over a part of the world in which British capital and empire were already heavily invested (notably in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company [now BP Inc.], Shell Oil, and the Suez Canal).

Democratic governance denied.  Throughout its (1917—48) rule over Palestine, Britain, deferred to the Zionists by refusing to meet its obligations (pursuant to Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant), which required the Mandatory power to respect the wishes of the country’s population and to prepare said country for independence by establishing a democratically-elected representative governing body [UNISPAL: The Origins … (Part I) ~ §§ IV—IX].  Why?  Because such body would undoubtedly have opposed continued moves to transform Palestine into a Zionist nation-state and would have demanded an end to: unconstrained Zionist immigration, Zionist land acquisitions, evictions of Arab tenant farmers, and racially discriminatory employment practices.

Revolt.  Throughout its first nearly two decades of colonial rule, Britain refused any consideration of mostly peaceful appeals and protests for redress of the foregoing Palestinian grievances.  When Palestinians finally lost patience and revolted (1936—39); Britain armed, trained, and used Zionist militias to help put down said revolt with massively murderous violent repression, killing thousands of Palestinian Arabs.  Said militias would be constituted, in 1948, as the Israeli army.

Partition [UNISPAL: The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917—1947 (Part II) ~ §§ I—IV].  The then 57-member United Nations [UN], dominated by mostly European and American states ruled by white and/or Eurocentric* elites, proposed (in 1947) a partition of Palestine (then with a population 32% Jewish and 68% Arab) such that: a “Jewish state” would have 55% of the territory, a Palestinian Arab state would have 42%, and 3% around Jerusalem would be under UN administration.  Moreover, the “Jewish state” was to rule over a huge Arab minority (more than 40% of Palestinian Arabs), while the “Arab state” would have almost no Jews.  Representative democracy was evidently deemed unacceptable where Arabs were the majority, but acceptable where Jews (mostly recent immigrant colonists from Europe) were the majority.  (* Note.  Although most Latin American countries’ populations were majority non-white [indigenous, mestizo, et cetera]; in most of those, the ruling elites belonged to racial groups (white and/or mestizo) which identified with their European ethnic heritage).

Nakba [UNISPAL: The Origins … (Part II) ~ § V].  The Zionist militias waged a terrorist war of conquest thru which they: massacred peaceful Palestinian villagers, seized and annexed (1947—49) half of the territory allocated by the UN for the Palestinian Arab state, and forcibly expelled over 80% of the Palestinians (directly and/or thru terrorist threat) from territory which came under Israeli control. four Arab states intervened militarily with mostly ill-trained and poorly-equipped military forces in ineffectual defense of the Palestinians.  The Zionist state confiscated: all of the properties of the expelled Palestinians (whom it barred from returning) and nearly 40% of the landholdings of the Palestinians who remained in its territory.  It also subjected the latter to repressive military rule for the next 18 years [6].

Later conquests.  Israel launched surprise wars of conquest (1956 and 1967).  US pressure forced it to give up its 1956 conquests (Gaza and Sinai) and to abort its planned seizure of the West Bank and parts of Syria and Lebanon.  US acquiescence, in 1967, allowed Israel to seize much the same territories which it had wanted to annex in 1956.  Subsequent Israeli rule (over Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Syria’s Golan, and Lebanon’s Sheba’a Farms) since 1967 has subjected their Arab populations to persistent violations of their human rights, continuing to the present day.

Subsequent aggressions.  Murderous Israeli aggressions against its neighbors (especially Syria and Lebanon) persist until the present day.  In addition to repeated violations of territory, said aggressions include multiple large-scale military invasions of Lebanon.  These included using a false allegation, of PLO involvement in an assassination attempt on an Israeli ambassador, as pretext for invasion and occupation (1982) of 40% of Lebanon in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to impose a subservient client regime.  Death toll: Arabs (Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians) 14,000 to 19,000 (mostly civilians); Israelis fewer than 400 (mostly soldiers).  Israel made partial withdrawals until 1985, but (despite most Palestinian resistance forces having been removed (in 1982) it occupied a swath of southern Lebanon until persistent armed Lebanese resistance (by Hezbollah, Amal, and units of the Lebanese Army) induced its withdrawal (in 2000).

Holocaust weaponized.  Ever since the Axis War (1939—45), Zionists and their supporters have manipulated popular sympathy for the Jewish victims of the European holocaust in order to obtain support for Zionism.  They speak as though Jews were nearly the only victims of the deliberate Nazi mass murder (systematic mass killing plus intentional starvation programs in occupied territory and POW camps).  In fact, the actual death toll was more than 17 million (at least 11 million Slavs, some 5.9 million Jews, and probably more than 250,000 Romani).  Zionists and supporters insist that the world must atone for the genocide of the six million Jews by granting them Palestine for a “Jewish state”; but they evade the fact that justice would require any such compensation to be borne by Christian Europe, which perpetrated and/or permitted the genocide, not by the Palestinian Arabs, who had no part in it.

Antisemitism?  Zionists and their supporters routinely attempt to silence opponents of Zionism and critics of Israeli crimes against humanity by smearing said critics as purveyors of “antisemitism”, the word which Zionists and their allies use exclusively to mean Judeophobia (hatred of Jews), even though the Arab victims of Zionism are also Semitic in language and ancestral origin.  When their critics are Jewish, as many are; Zionists routinely disparage and dismiss them as “self-hating Jews”.  As Zionists obsessively smear their anti-racist critics, they generally give much less attention to actual Judeophobes.  With growing popular opposition to Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, states abetting those crimes have increasingly enacted laws criminalizing free-speech activities in support of said Palestinians.  Those enactments include: prohibitions against boycott and divestment [BDS] participation; and laws defining opposition to Zionism as “antisemitism”, using the Zionist IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition which includes, as “antisemitism”, opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish supremacist state.

HAMAS.  Israel, its Western allies, and their mainstream media portray Hamas as a “genocidal” “terrorist” organization.  Relevant actual facts, listed below, mostly go unreported, distorted, or falsified.

Origin.  Hamas originated (1987) in Palestine as a transformation of Mujama al-Islamiya, which had been formed (1973) as a Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Hamas, unlike the Brotherhood, embraced a Palestinian national liberationist political orientation.

Governance doctrine.  Like the Brotherhood, Mujama al-Islamiya adhered to a Salafist (patriarchal and theocratic) approach to governance; whereas a majority of Palestinians preferred the progressive secularism of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO].  However, Western alliance and Israeli motivations for condemning Hamas have nothing to do with its Salafist leanings; they are solely on account of its militant resistance to Zionist oppression of the Palestinians.  In fact, Western supporters of Israel make no complaints where autocratic Arab states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar), allied to the West, impose patriarchal and theocratic policies similar to those embraced in Brotherhood doctrine.  It must be noted that Hamas’ doctrine and actual practice (since obtaining governing power) have been inconsistent.  For example, in Gaza, a local faction (along with some rival Islamist groups), has periodically attempted to impose the Brotherhood interpretation of sharia law (including hijab) thru religious coercions and persecutions, in defiance of the contrary policy prescribed by Hamas’ more permissive leadership.  In fact, said leadership (though still embracing widely-held patriarchal views on the role of women) has not decreed any such imposition.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ].  Most commentators make no effort to recognize the differences between PIJ and Hamas.  PIJ (founded 1981) is, unlike Hamas, a purely anti-colonial and anti-imperialist Palestinian national-liberation organization.  Whereas Hamas is a multifaceted (political, religious, and social-welfare) movement; PIJ is strictly an organization of revolutionary activists.  PIJ, in contradistinction to the theocratic faction in Hamas, has no interest in Islamist religious impositions; it is “Islamist” only in that it embraces the Islamic principle of struggle (jihad) against injustice.  As national liberation organizations, Hamas and PIJ, though their doctrinal and strategic visions diverge, largely cooperate in the common struggle against Israeli oppressin.

Muslim Brotherhood versus PLO.  Gaza (along with the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Syria’s Golan, and Lebanon’s Sheba’a Farms) had been, and remain, under repressive Israeli occupation since Israel’s 1967 war of conquest.  From its founding, Mujama al-Islamiya (as a Salafi Islamist organization) competed with the secular PLO for support among Palestinians, and their competition sometimes erupted into violent clashes.  Israel exploited that antagonism by enabling the activities of the Islamist organization as an alternative to the far-more-popular PLO which then represented the militant Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and persecution.

Intifada [Arabic for “uprising”].  Ongoing Israeli repression (land seizures for illegal settlements, arbitrary detentions, torture of detainees, days-long curfews, indiscriminate killings, deportations, home demolitions, et cetera) provoked a spontaneous mass resistance, the First Intifada (1987—93), which included: strikes, boycotts, mass protests, road-blocks, use of stone-throwing and petrol bombs against Israeli police using violence to suppress protests, and other acts of civil disobedience.  Israeli government ministers responded with calls for wholesale expulsion of the Palestinian population (a policy too extreme to be condoned by Israel’s Western allies in need of credibility with Arab states).  Israel’s indiscriminate intensified repression affected all Palestinians, Islamists and PLO-sympathizers alike.  Some leaders of Mujama al-Islamiya, concerned that inaction would render it irrelevant, decided to join that militant resistance; and they then created “Hamas” (Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement”).  For the first year of the Intifada, there was a near-totally-adhered-to policy (prescribed by a soon-established PLO-influenced local leadership) of refraining from lethal attacks against Israelis.  Nevertheless, Israel responded to the Intifada with its “iron fist” policy including lethal force, ultimately killing 1,087 Palestinians including 240 children. 

Oslo peace process (1991—93).  When the Fatah-dominated PLO agreed, in the Oslo negotiations, to recognize the “Jewish state” on 78% of Palestine in return for duplicitous promises of negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state in the 22% of Palestine then classified as Israeli-occupied territories; it effectively abandoned the demand for the human rights of all Palestinians throughout Palestine and in the diaspora.  In fact, no Israeli government has ever been willing: to accept a genuinely independent and sovereign Palestinian state in any part of Palestine, or to grant equal rights to Palestinian Arabs in any part of the territory, or to permit the return of Palestinian refugees.  The Oslo agreements produced the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Authority [PNA] (a quasi-government for the West Bank and Gaza) which has devolved into a corrupted client regime with no effective capacity to prevent: Israeli land grabs (which every Israeli government has actively encouraged since the 1967 conquest), and the many other persecutions of the Palestinians whom it purports to serve.  The Palestinian response to Oslo was divided with Hamas and allies (including PIJ), along with some factions of the PLO, refusing to concede legitimacy to the Zionist state.  Whether we like it or not, Hamas soon thereafter became the leading organized force of the Palestinian resistance (which is why it won all-Palestine legislative elections in 2006).

Judeophobia?  The US and its principal allies join Israel in branding Hamas as a Jew-hating “genocidal” “terrorist” organization.  It is true that Hamas first Charter (1988), advocating armed struggle to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation, embraced some discredited Judeophobe tropes (Articles 7, 22, 28, 32).  However, pursuant to said Charter, Hamas: (Article 6) “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine [so that] followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned”; and (Article 31) “is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions” (which would include Christianity and Judaism).  Assertions, that Hamas wanted to kill all Jews or kill them because they were Jews, rest upon out-of-context interpretations of references to ancient Islamic quotations pertaining to specific Jewish communities which were then at war with the Muslim community.  Moreover, its revised Charter (2017) drops the aforementioned Judeophobe tropes and clearly states (Article 16) that its fight is against Zionist oppressors and not against Jews in general.  While Hamas believes that all of Palestine ought to be governed by an officially Islamic state; it embraces the Qur’anic obligation (sura 2:62) to respect the rights of peaceful non-Muslims (including resident Jews) to live and prosper in the land as long as they are not oppressing others.

“Terrorism”.  Until Israeli forces killed more than 20 unarmed Palestinians protesting the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre of 29 Muslim worshipers (1994) by an Arab-hating Israeli extremist ; Hamas policy was to avoid targeting Israeli civilians.  Since then, Hamas, like Israel, has permitted its forces to attack any enemy target, civilian or military; whereas the Zionist state, throughout its existence, has routinely engaged in such indiscriminate killings of Palestinians.  Moreover, Hamas has repeatedly offered to end violent attacks upon Israelis conditional upon Israeli reciprocation which has never been forthcoming for very long.  In Israel and its Western enablers: Hamas attacks are always branded as “terrorism”, while far more massive Israeli violence against Palestinians (including unarmed civilians of both sexes and all ages) never is.

Equating to the Islamic State [IS] or Al Qaeda [AQ].  In 2008, a small group of AQ sympathizers organized in Gaza as Jund Ansar Allah [JAA].  They denounced Hamas: for being “too lenient” by not enforcing Sharia law, and for being “no different than a secular nationalist state”.  JAA also executed violent attacks (including bombings) against those Gazans whom they deemed to be in violation of Islamist morality, and they declared an “Islamic Emirate” in Gaza.  Hamas then took forceful action to suppress said JAA.  Hamas has likewise opposed other Salafi-jihadist Gazan groups which embrace AQ or IS.  Whereas AQ and IS oppose democratic elections and pragmatic political compromises, Hamas embraces them.  Whereas the former make war on alleged apostates and infidels and condemn Hamas for its tolerance; Hamas, in accordance with the Qur’an, embraces (though some local supporters have sometimes acted otherwise) an acceptance of respectful religious diversity.  Despite the actual facts, Israel and its apologists persist in propagating lies to equate Hamas with Al Qaeda et al.

Democracy.  Hamas surprised Israel and the US by fairly winning Palestinian legislative elections (2006 Jan) and thereby obtaining the right to lead the PNA.  Obstruction by Israel and the West has prevented any subsequent Palestinian election.  Israel and its Western allies responded to the 2006 election outcome by demanding that Hamas abandon its commitment to fundamental Palestinian human rights by legitimizing Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing.  That demand was designed to produce a Hamas refusal, so that said refusal could then be used as pretext for acts designed to cripple Hamas efforts to govern.  The US then pressured PNA President Abbas (of Fatah) to dismiss the fairly elected Hamas administration in defiance of the will of the Palestinian electorate.  The Hamas Prime Minister (Ismail Haniyeh) attempted to overcome the hostility by asking Fatah to participate in a unity government (which Fatah refused), and by inducing Hamas ministers to formally resign their memberships in Hamas, all to no avail.  Moreover, Abbas, under US pressure, provoked a power struggle (in Gaza) over control of security services in a move to undermine and marginalize the Hamas administration.  The resulting violent conflict ended: with Hamas firmly in control in Gaza; and with Fatah in partial control in the West Bank, most of which was and is under Israeli military rule.

Peace proposals.  Hamas, has repeatedly (since 2006) proposed peace thru hudna (Islamic decade-long renewable truce resolving issues upon which current agreement can be obtained while negotiating upon remaining issues in effort to reach a final peace agreement).  Hamas’ proposed truce terms would include provisional acceptance by Hamas of Israel as an existential current reality, in return for a Palestinian state in the occupied territories with East Jerusalem as its capital (same as PLO except that Hamas would not concede legitimacy to the ethnic cleansings of 1948 and 1967 nor to the racial supremacist and apartheid character of the Zionist state).  Hamas would continue to seek eventual acceptance by Israel of all Palestinian civil and human rights (the effect of which would be to end its apartheid, its ethnic cleansing, its other persecutions, and its continuation as a “Jewish state”).  Israel, making Hamas’ refusal to give de jure recognition of the racist apartheid “Jewish state” as its pretext, has consistently refused to negotiate toward any peace agreement.

GAZA.  Since the end of the Second Intifada (2005), Hamas has repeatedly sought and, when possible, entered ceasefire agreements with Israel.  In fact, since seeking a role in government, Hamas evidently took seriously its obligation to serve the people of Palestine.  Other resistance groups, often in defiance of Hamas, have sometimes committed small-scale violations of ceasefires, generally in response to Israeli violence.  Whereas Hamas has striven to preserve said ceasefires, Israel has repeatedly perpetrated major violations thereby provoking resumption of violent conflict.

 Israeli response to 2006 election outcome.  Israel and all significant Palestinian resistance factions (including Hamas) had agreed (2005 Feb and Mar) to a ceasefire under which the resistance would cease violent attacks upon Israelis on condition that Israel cease military operations against said resistance organizations.  Despite Hamas having respected said ceasefire agreement, Israel responded to Hamas electoral victory (2006 Jan) by imposing, upon Gaza, a suffocating economic blockade (an act of war as well as an act of collective punishment which is illegal under international law).  Said blockade ultimately included denial of access to 1/3 of Gaza’s already limited arable land and 85% of its fishing areas.  Moreover, Israel blatantly violated the ceasefire by assassinating (2006 June) the Hamas-appointed security chief (Jamal Abu Samhadana).  Hamas responded by resuming attacks against Israel, which then commenced its “Operation Summer Rains” bombing of Gaza.  Death toll: 416 (mostly noncombatant) Gaza Palestinians and 11 Israelis.

“Cast Lead”.  A mediated 6-month ceasefire ended (2008 Nov 04) with an Israeli raid which killed several Palestinians in Gaza.  Resistance organizations responded with rocket fire into Israel.  Israel then commenced “Operation Cast Lead”, bombing Gaza in December and invading in January.  Israeli war crimes included using Palestinian children as human shields and use of white phosphorus weapons with indifference to its horrific injuries to civilians (both being war crimes under international law).  Amnesty International and other independent investigators found no substantiation for Israeli allegations that Hamas: made a practice of using civilians as human shields, or used healthcare facilities as bases for military operations.  Death toll: 1,400 Palestinians (85% non-combatants), 13 Israelis.

“Returning Echo”.  Israel not only refused to lift its suffocating economic siege of Gaza, it assassinated (2012 Mar 09, by airstrike) the secretary-general (Zohair al-Qaisi) of the Popular Resistance Committees (then the 3^rd largest armed resistance group in Gaza) thereby provoking retaliatory rocket attacks by resistance groups in Gaza.  Israel then commenced its “Operation Returning Echo” (consisting of additional murderous airstrikes).  Death toll: 28 Palestinians, no Israelis.

“Pillar of defense”.  Repeated Israeli attacks (from 2012 July) upon Palestinian fishermen, farmers, and other civilians provoked some additional clashes.  Hamas and PIJ proposed (Nov 12) discussions to establish a ceasefire.  Two days later, Israel assassinated the Hamas military chief (Ahmed Jabari) in Gaza thereby provoking an escalation of attacks from both sides.  Israeli forces followed with “Operation Pillar of Defense”, a massive bombardment striking some 1,500 sites in Gaza (including residential apartment buildings).  Death toll: 174 Palestinians (60% noncombatants) and 6 Israelis.

“Protective Edge”.  Hamas and Israel agreed to a mediated ceasefire (2012 Nov 21).  Israel violated that ceasefire the very next day, killing a Palestinian farmer and wounding 19 other Gazans.  A week later Israeli forces opened fire on a peaceful Palestinian fishing boat.  On Nov 30, Israeli soldiers killed another man in Gaza.  On Dec 01, Palestinian Islamic Jihad warned that it would respond militarily to any further Israeli violations.  In the first 3 months of the ceasefire, Israeli firing into Gaza killed 4 and wounded another 91; and there were 13 armed Israeli incursions into Gaza and some 30 attacks on Gazan fishermen.  These attacks provoked rocket attacks from Gaza by PIJ and other resistance groups, attacks which Israel then used as pretext for further attacks and intensification of the blockade.  Despite all of that, Hamas complied with the ceasefire agreement and acted, with some success, to minimize attacks by other resistance groups.  After PNA President Abbas agreed to include Hamas in a unity government (formed 2014 June 02), Israel (opposed to any unified Palestinian leadership) acted to destroy it.  Specifically, Israel stepped up its attacks upon Palestinians, thereby provoking more rocket launches from Gaza.  Ultimately, Hamas, unable to persuade armed resistance forces to desist from retaliatory rocket attacks against Israel, abandoned (in early July) the already-ineffective ceasefire.  Israel then responded (2014 July 08) with its (“Operation Protective Edge”) ground invasion and bombing of Gaza.  Death toll: 2,300 Gazans (65% civilian) and 73 Israelis (all but 5 being soldiers).

“Guardian of the Walls”.  Multiple Israeli provocations (2021 Apr and May) in Jerusalem (including: ethnic-cleansing confiscations of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem [in violation of international law], unimpeded settler violence, police harassment of Palestinian residents, and police invasions and denials of Muslim access at the Al Aqsa Mosque) provoked Hamas and PIJ rocket fire into Israel.  Israel responded (2021 May 16—21) with a bombardment of Gaza (“Operation Guardian of the Walls”).  Death toll: 256 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.  72,000 Gazans were displaced by the Israeli bombing.

“Al-Aqsa Flood”.  Hamas and PIJ had demonstrated a willingness to establish and maintain truces (long-term and short-term) with the Zionist state.  Israel, however, evidently expected, despite ceasefires in effect, to have impunity as it perpetrated attacks, including assassinations, upon Palestinian resistance organizations.  Then, when resistance organizations responded with counter-attacks; Israel subjected Gaza to grossly disproportionate violence.  Moreover, the current extreme racist Israeli government had increased its persecutions and violations of Palestinian human rights: impunity for settler attacks upon West Bank Palestinians, stepped up grabs of land and water-rights, dispossessions and expulsions, arbitrary detentions, increased killings of unarmed Palestinians, blockings of Muslim access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, continued assassinations of resistance leaders, et cetera.  Finally, Hamas responded with its “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” (2023 Oct 07) against Israeli forces in areas around Gaza.

ATROCITIES?  The nature of warfare is such that, it would be unrealistic to presume that none of the October 07 Gaza fighters (some of whom were not affiliated with either Hamas or PIJ) committed excesses in violation of Hamas’ rules of engagement or in the heat of the moment.  That said, lurid sensationalized allegations of mass atrocities by those Gaza fighters are fundamentally false (refuted below and in the noted sources).

Numbers and identities.  “1,400” “innocent” Israelis murdered (October 07) by Hamas?  In fact, around 200 of the dead were apparently Gazan resistance fighters; and the actual number of Israeli dead as acknowledged by Israel has been revised down to “around 1,200”.  Moreover, of the 1,133 identified and listed by Israel, 369 (32%) were soldiers, police, and other armed security personnel (most of whom were enforcing the Gaza blockade and/or had offensive or supportive roles in Israeli attacks upon Palestinians in Gaza).  Further, more than 421 (another 37%) of the 764 listed as “civilians” were of the age (20 to 40) at which most Israelis are obligated to be military reservists, and some of those were killed (often while resisting capture) at kibbutz[es] (which are constituted as militarized settlements).

Killed by whom?  A great many of the Israeli civilian dead were killed: in crossfire, others (including many of the dead at the music festival) by indiscriminate Israeli air attacks failing to distinguish Israelis from Gazan resistance fighters, and some deliberately by Israeli forces to prevent their becoming captives in Gaza.

Decapitated babies?  Israeli babies and toddlers decapitated by Hamas fighters?  Absolutely false allegation, subsequently retracted.

Rape?  We are asked to believe that Hamas and PIJ fighters, in difficult combat against Israeli armed forces, diverted their attention in order to amuse themselves by raping and murdering Israeli women, despite: that their essential objective was to bring as many captives as possible back to Gaza, and that such conduct would violate the Qur’an[’s] rules mandating humane treatment of captives.  Israel refuses: to provide real evidence or to permit any independent investigation of this allegation.  Moreover, accusers misuse photos and videos of scantily dressed woman captives as “evidence”, despite that some (including many participants at the music festival) were undoubtedly thusly clothed when captured.  Israel evidently is using said allegations of mass sexual abuse as a defamatory racist portrayal of Palestinians so as to excuse the very real atrocities currently being perpetrated by Israel against the people of Gaza.  Meanwhile, captives released by Hamas generally report having been treated humanely.

Dehumanization and genocidal intent!  In their propaganda war, Israel and its Western allies evade the injustices perpetrated by the Zionist state and falsely portray Palestinian resistance fighters as genocidal Jew-hating extremists.  In actual fact, it is Israeli leaders and their Western apologists who routinely dehumanize and express genocidal intentions (including for ethnic cleansing and mass murder), not only against those who fight, but against an entire victimized population.  Some examples.

• Soon-to-be-appointed Israeli Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, endorsed (2015 summer) an Israeli writer’s statement asserting: that Israel is in a war, “not against terror”, but “a war between two peoples”, the “enemy” being “the entire Palestinian people”; that Palestinian children are “snakes”; and that “the mothers” also should die to prevent their raising more “little snakes”.
• Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his guidance for Israeli action in the current outbreak of violence, twice referenced (Oct 28 & Nov 03) a biblical passage (about the Israelite war against the people of Amalek) which states “Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings”.
• Israeli President Isaac Herzog asserted (October 12) “Its an entire nation … that is responsible [for October 07].
• Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated (Oct 09) that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. … We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”.
• Minister of Heritage, Amichai Eliyahu, posted (November 01) “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes”.
• Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Nissim Vaturi, ‘tweeted’ (October 07) “we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”
• Minister of Agriculture, Avi Dichter, stated (November 11) “[w]e are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.
• Former Head of the Israeli National Security Council, Major General Giora Eiland, said (October 07) “The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this is their choice.” He later asserted (November 06) that there should be no distinction between Hamas combatants and Palestinian civilians, saying: “‘They’ are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the ‘civilian’ officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population”.
• One former Knesset member called for all Palestinians in Gaza to be killed saying: “I tell you, in Gaza without exception, they are all terrorists, sons of dogs. They must be exterminated, all of them killed”.
• South Africa’s indictment lists several additional such comments by additional Israeli leaders.
• When a group of Israeli soldiers and settlers assaulted three Palestinians in the West Bank (October 12); the three were beaten, stripped naked, bound, tortured, and urinated upon. Such abuse was nothing new.  During the First Intifada (1987—93), this kind of humiliation by Israeli forces was routine.  Men would be threatened with the rape of their wives or sisters; women would be threatened with sexual violence.
• In response to Al-Aqsa Flood, multiple US political leaders have urged genocide against Gaza: US Senator Lindsey Graham urged (Oct 10 on Fox News) “level the place”; US Senator Marco Rubio wrote on social media (October 09) “Israel must respond disproportionately”; US Republican Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley (October 7 or 8 on Fox News) urged Israel to “finish them”, the Palestinians. Although US President Biden and his aides have not made such extreme public statements, his actual policy has been to abet those genocidal actions.

Israel’s “Arab problem”.  Despite Netanyahu’s denial, Israel’s policy vis-à-vis Palestinians (whether in Israel, in the West Bank, or in Gaza) is to make their conditions as oppressive as possible (within the limits to which its Western allies will acquiesce) so that said Palestinians will out migrate to other countries.  That is in accordance with Zionist prescriptions from the time of Herzl (1890s) [7], to solve the “Arab problem” thru “population transfer” (that is ethnic cleansing).

Media bias.  In the first days after October 07, the Western mainstream media focused almost exclusively upon grieving Israelis.  It was only after the killings, destruction, and extreme suffering in Gaza became so unavoidably blatant and massive that it began reporting on that.  The racist anti-Palestinian bias of the Western mainstream media is exemplified by its response to reports of the 3 Hamas-captured Israeli men (shirtless, hands raised, holding a white flag of truce, and speaking Hebrew) nevertheless killed (Dec 15) by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers.  That was treated as a horrific tragedy, but there was no thought to question how, with Israeli soldiers acting thusly with captured Israelis, do they act toward unarmed Palestinians.

Biden’s humanitarian concerns.  US President Biden (along with most Congressional Democrats) expresses lip-service concern regarding Israel’s mass murder of tens of thousands of Gaza Palestinians (no more than 3% of whom could be armed resistance fighters).  Biden could force a stop to it by supporting deployment of neutral UN peace-keepers into appropriate locations in Gaza, with US guarantees of their safety, to protect: hospitals, schools, desalination plants, sewage treatment facilities, humanitarian aid shipments, food and water dispensers, and UNRWA relief operations.  It is highly likely that Hamas et al would welcome the introduction of such humanitarian intervenors as long as they are truly neutral.  Meanwhile, for Israel to attack them would put it in armed conflict with the US (and its allies) upon which it is extremely dependent.  Instead of intervening in any real way to save lives in Gaza, Biden (along with most of Congress) shows his true colors by sending munitions to Israel, by demanding billions of dollars for more no-strings military aid to the Zionist state, and by vetoing near-unanimous UN demands for a ceasefire.

CONCLUSIONS. 

The conflict.  The Zionists (seeking to build and expand their racist colonial settler state) and their imperial Western allies (serving the selfish interests of their war industries and other profit-producing commercial entities with interests in the region) have subjected the Palestinian Arabs to a century of systematic subjugation and persecutions.  The Zionists’ ultimate applicable objective is to eliminate the threat to Zionist Jewish supremacy by removing most of the indigenous Palestinian population: thru expulsion and mass murder whenever they can find pretext acceptable to Western allies, and by making life so difficult for Palestinians that they will choose to out migrate.  Systematic oppression always provokes resistance by the oppressed (including violent resistance when peaceful appeals prove futile), and Palestinians are no exception.  The Zionist state has always responded to that resistance (even peaceful protests) with repressive violence, attempting to bludgeon the Palestinians into passive acceptance of their Zionist-intended fate.  That fate: to be treated as subhuman, to be massacred, to be permanently expelled from their homeland, to be robbed of their property, to be denied their right to equal civil rights and democratic self-government, and (for those allowed at least temporarily to remain in Palestine) to be exploited as cheap labor to perform work which Israelis choose to avoid.

End.  This conflict and the inevitable resulting violence will not end until: Israel has eliminated nearly the entire remaining Palestinian population; or its Western abettors have been compelled (by organized popular pressure) to cease enabling it (enabling: thru funding and arming the Zionist state, thru preventing Israel from being held accountable for its crimes, and by refusing to intervene in support of the victimized Palestinian population).

NOTED SOURCES (those which lack URL’s).

[1] Sachar⸰ Howard M [Zionist American historian]: A History of Israel (© 1979, Knopf) ~ pp 10—17 ♦ ISBN 0-394-73679-6.

[2] Brenner⸰ Lenni [American social-justice writer/activist]: Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (© 1983, Lawrence Hill Books) ~ pp 22—25, 29—32 ♦ ISBN 0-7099-0628-5.

[3] Morris⸰ Benny [Zionist Israeli historian]: 1948 – A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (© 2008, Yale University Press) ~ pp 3—4, 18—19 ♦ ISBN 978-0-300-12696-9.

[4] Brenner⸰: ~ chapters 5, 6, 7, 12.

[5] Sachar⸰: ~ pp 96—109.

[6] Sachar⸰: ~ pp 386—389.

[7] same as [3].

Charles Pierce is a social-justice activist (since his youth in the early 1960s), a former/retired labor activist (union steward & local officer), and currently a researcher and writer on history and politics. He can be reached at cpbolshi@gmail.com. Read other articles by Charles, or visit Charles's website.