Aid Wars over Gaza: Resuming Funding to UNRWA

by Binoy Kampmark / March 11th, 2024

The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling.  The lynchpin in the effort was a thin, poison pen dossier making claims that 12 individuals were Hamas operatives who had been involved in the October 7 attacks.  Within a matter of days, two internal investigations were commenced, various individuals sacked, and US$450 million worth of funding from donor states suspended.

As the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, explained at a press conference on March 4, he has “never been informed” or received evidence of Israel’s claims substantiating their assertions, though he did receive the prompt about the profane twelve directly from Israeli officials.  Every year, both Israel and the Palestinian authorities were furnished with staff lists, “and I never received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”

Had Israeli authorities signed off on these alleged participants in bungling or conspiratorial understanding?  Certainly, there was more than a pongy whiff of distraction about it all, given that Israel had come off poorly in The Hague proceedings launched by South Africa, during which the judges issued an interim order demanding an observance of the UN Genocide Convention, an increase of humanitarian aid, and the retention of evidence that might be used for future criminal prosecutions for genocide.

An abrupt wave of initial success in starving the agency followed, with a number of countries announcing plans to freeze funding.  In the United States, irate members of Congress accused the agency of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism”.  A hearing was duly held titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures” with Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies frothing at an agency that supposedly incited “violence against Israel, subsidizes US-designated terrorist organizations, denies Palestinians their basic human rights, and blocks the pathways to a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

The attempt to cast UNRWA into gleefully welcomed oblivion has not worked.  Questions were asked about the initial figure of twelve alleged militants.  News outlets began questioning the numbers.

The funding channels are resuming.  Canada, for instance, approving “the robust investigative process underway”, also acknowledged that “more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians”.  The initial cancellation of funding to the agency, charged Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, had been “a reckless political decision that never should have been made.”

The Swedish government was also encouraged by undertakings made by UNRWA “to allow independent auditing, strengthen internal supervision and enable additional staff controls”, promising an initial outlay of 200 million kroner (US$19 million)

The Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Johan Forssell, promised that it would “monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.”  Aid policy spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, Gudrun Brunegård, also conceded that, given the “huge” needs on the part of the civilian population, that UNRWA was “the organisation that is best positioned to help vulnerable Palestinians.”

Much the same sentiment was expressed by the European Union, with the Commission agreeing to pay 50 million euros to UNRWA from a promised total of 82 million euros on the proviso that EU-appointed experts audit the screening of staff.  “This audit,” a European Commission statement explains, “will review the control systems to prevent the possible involvement of its staff and assets in terrorist activities.”  Having been found wanting in her screeching about-turn, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU stood “by the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere in the region.  Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay the price for the crimes of [the] terrorist group Hamas.”

Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was stiffly bureaucratic in expressing satisfaction at “the commitment of UNRWA to introduce robust measures to prevent possible misconduct and minimise the risk of allegations”.  At no point was Israel’s own contribution to the calamity, and its insatiable vendetta against the agency, mentioned.

The bombast and blunder of the whole effort by Israel was further discoloured by claims that UNRWA staff had been victims of torture at the hands of the IDF in drafting the dossier.  In a statement released by the agency, a grave accusation was levelled: “These forced confessions as a result of torture are being used by the Israeli Authorities to further spread misinformation about the agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.”  In doing so, Israel was “putting our staff at risk and has serious implications on our operations in Gaza and around the region.”

For its part, the IDF, through a statement, claimed that this was all exaggerated piffle: “The mistreatment of detainees during their time in detention or whilst under interrogation violates IDF values and contravenes IDF [sic] and is therefore absolutely prohibited.”

Increasingly on the losing side of that battle, Israeli authorities decided to cook the figures further, declaring with crass confidence that 450 URWA employees in Gaza were members of militant groups including Hamas.  Sticking to routine, those making that allegation decided that evidence of such claims was not needed.  Those employees, claimed Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, “are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza”.  “This was no coincidence.  This is systematic.  There is no claiming, ‘we did not know’.”

In the fog of war, mendacity thrives with virile vigour; but the current suggestion on the part of various donor states is that the humanitarian incentive to ameliorate the suffering of the Gaza populace has taken precedence over Israel’s persistently lethal efforts.  That, at least, is the case with certain countries, leaving the doubters starkly exposed.

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.

Sweden and Canada resume funding UN agency for Palestinian refugees

 

New Report on Sexual Violence During October 7 Attack Raises Serious Questions About the UN’s Supposed Anti-Israel Bias

by Peter Bolton / March 11th, 2024

A United Nations (UN) report recently emerged making damning claims of sexual violence allegedly committed by Hamas. But not all is as it seems. The report has some glaring epistemological problems, all of which seem to serve the Israeli narrative that its genocide in Gaza is somehow justified. Moreover, the report fits within a wider modus operandi on the part of the world’s preeminent international institution. A more comprehensive examination of the history of the UN’s role in the conflict in Palestine reveals its supposed pro-Palestinian bias is not as clearcut as it’s commonly presented. Indeed, there is evidence that the UN has, if anything, been more a tool of Israel than the other way round.

Shocking accusations swiftly weaponized by Israel

The UN released the report on March 4, almost six months after the surprise October 7 attack when members of Hamas’ paramilitary wing breached the Gaza border. Co-authored by its special envoy on sexual violence, Pramila Patten, the document claims there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that Hamas engaged in rape and other forms of sexual violence during the attack. Patten gave a statement in which she said that this took place in “at least three locations” including “the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im.”

The following day, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, publicly condemned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for supposedly failing to respond in an adequate manner. Specifically, he criticized Guterres for failing to immediately call for a UN Security Council meeting about the report’s findings. However, as multiple media outlets have pointed out, Guterres does not have the authority to convene a General Assembly meeting. A UN spokesperson responded that “in no way, shape, or form did the secretary-general do anything to keep the report ‘quiet.’” She added that Katz’s announcement was made a matter of hours before a press conference about the report’s contents was scheduled to be held.

Recalling UN ambassador and launching ‘hasbara’ propaganda campaign

Israel has also withdrawn its ambassador to the UN, claiming that the organization’s leadership is attempting to “silence” the allegations. Katz said in a statement: “”I [have] ordered our ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, to return to Israel for immediate consultations regarding the attempt to keep quiet the serious UN report on the mass rapes committed by Hamas and its helpers on Oct. 7.”

Nonetheless, there are already signs that the Israeli government is seizing on the report as part of its ongoing propaganda campaign to deflect criticism from its committal of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. On March 7, the Jerusalem Post reported that Katz, “has directed all embassies within the State of Israel to begin a large-scale hasbara (public diplomacy) campaign immediately… in light of the findings of the UN report on sexual violence in the Hamas massacre on October 7.”

An inversion of the Israeli narrative about the UN

The development represents an inversion of what Israel and Western media commonly characterize as the usual dynamic between the UN and the various parties to the conflict in Palestine. According to this narrative, the UN has a viciously anti-Israel agenda and consistently singles out Israel for criticism. Indeed, hardline Zionists have long complained that the UN is “biased” or even prejudiced against Israel, which often goes alongside the usual conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

One US-based Israel supporter even set up an NGO called “UN Watch,” which according to its executive director “holds the UN to account” for its supposed anti-Israel bias. Indeed, we will presumably soon hear an Israeli narrative that presents the fact that the UN has produced such a report in spite of such a bias as the most definitive proof possible that its findings are correct. But a deeper investigation shows that the report is, in fact, deeply flawed in both its methods and conclusions.

A compendium of unverified anecdotes and repetition of Israeli lies

It has already emerged, for instance, that the team of UN personnel who produced the report did not conduct their own research. Tellingly, press reports have also revealed that they did not even meet with any survivors of sexual violence that allegedly took place on October 7. Rather, they relied to a large extent on anecdotal and unverified reports from institutions in Israel. According to CNN, the UN team met with a total of 33 Israeli institutions. One of these was a “search and rescue” organization that has previously been accused of spreading misinformation about the October 7 Hamas attack. This same organization, for example, had earlier claimed that it found a pregnant woman who had been stabbed in the stomach in an apparent attack on her fetus, which turned out to be unverified.

Foreign Policy magazine pointed out that the report furthermore “did not attribute the sexual violence to any specific armed group.” In other words, even if the allegations are true, they could have been committed by Palestinians (or, indeed, non-Palestinians) who were not affiliated with Hamas or any other Palestinian paramilitary organization. Foreign Policy added that “the U.N. team behind the report had not been tasked with an investigative mission” and that “[s]uch attribution would require a fully-fledged investigative process.”

A similar story plays out at the New York Times

The report was released in the same week that it emerged that significant sections of a New York Times article published in December of last year, which contained similar claims, were in fact false. The story, titled “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.,” claimed that members of the Be’eri kibbutz in southern Israel near the Gaza border had been raped by Hamas assailants during the course of the October 7 attack.

But The Intercept reported on March 7 that at least two of the three women “were not in fact victims of sexual assault,” according to a spokesperson of the kibbutz. The Intercept article adds that some of the initial reports about sexual violence came from an anonymous paramedic who had been connected to the international media by a representative of the Israeli government (which, of course, makes this person’s testimony highly suspect). It also states that the kibbutz spokesperson herself “disputed the graphic and highly detailed claims of the Israeli special forces paramedic who served as the source for the allegation, which was published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and other media outlets.”

Not an isolated incident, but the latest chapter in a long history

Neither the UN report nor the erroneous New York Times article would be the first cases of Western institutions or its corporate-owned media spreading misinformation on Israel’s behalf. Indeed, there is a long history of The New York Times specifically taking orders from the Israeli government and its NGO proxies in the Israel lobby. In 2014, for example, the Times deliberately failed to report on the arrest of a Palestinian journalist by Israeli authorities because Israel had ordered it to do so. In 2022, the Times fired a Palestinian photographer on its staff at the behest of the pro-Israel NGO Honest Reporting.

Even when there is no direct evidence of Israeli intervention, leadership of mainstream corporate media across the West seem to have an almost automatic tendency to sideline, silence and/or fire any of its staff who fail to toe the pro-Israel line. In 2018, CNN fired Marc Lamont Hill for making a pro-Palestinian remark at a UN meeting held on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The Washington-based publication The Hill sacked Katie Halper in 2022 after she described Israel as an apartheid state (a charge that has become mainstream even within Israel). And the UK’s Guardian newspaper fired Nathan J. Robinson in 2021 after he posted a satirical comment about the US’s military funding to Israel on social media.

Countless resolutions but never any concrete sanction

As for the UN, though there have been many resolutions condemning Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians, the organization has seldom imposed any concrete punitive measures against the country in response. Indeed, as political scientist Norman Finkelstein has pointed out, the reason why the UN keeps issuing so many resolutions condemning Israel is because Israel (with the encouragement of its backers in Washington) simply ignores them and continues to violate Palestinian human rights and international law.

In any case, it is the UN General Assembly, rather than the UN’s leadership or staff, that usually issues these condemnations. The UN General Assembly is made up of representatives of governments around the world and so is more representative of global public opinion than the UN’s internal bureaucracy. In any case, General Assembly resolutions can be vetoed by permanent members of the UN Security Council. Since one of those permanent members is the United States (whose number one ally is Israel), it always vetoes any resolution that condemns Israel anyway.

UN staff slammed by leadership when critical of Israel

Even when UN officials themselves criticize Israel, they sometimes do so only to get silenced or sidelined by the UN’s hierarchy. For instance, international relations scholar at Princeton University Richard Falk served for decades as a UN expert on the conflict in Palestine. Yet his work has often been thwarted by figures within the UN leadership and administration.

In 2017, for example, Falk published a report on Israel’s human rights violations through the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA). The head of UNESCWA, Rima Khalaf, said that the report represented the first time that any UN report has “clearly and frankly conclude[d] that Israel is a racist state that has established an apartheid system that persecutes the Palestinian people.”

The fact that Israel is practicing apartheid in the occupied territories is so obvious that former US president Jimmy Carter, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and even Israel’s own human rights organization, B’Tselem, have said so. Even some figures from Israel’s own political, military, intelligence, and legal elite have said so too.  Yet in spite of this, Secretary General António Guterres demanded that Khalaf withdraw Falk’s report.

Legitimizing the two-state charade while deplatforming the one-state alternative

Another way that the UN subtly serves the Israeli narrative is its elevation of a two-state solution as the best, and indeed only, means of resolving the conflict. Every resolution passed by the UN General Assembly calling for a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is predicated on one Israeli state and one Palestinian state divided by the borders that existed prior to the June 1967 war. This would deliver to Israel 78% of the land that made up historic Palestine while leaving the Palestinians with the remaining 22%. In addition to giving the two sides a completely unfair share of the land (especially considering the rough parity in population numbers), this division would also reward the Zionist landgrab and subsequent ethnic cleansing that took place in the latter half of the 1940s.

The traditional solution that was proffered by all Palestinian nationalist parties before the 1993 Oslo accord, meanwhile, (that is, a single, secular, non-sectarian democratic state with equal rights for all encompassing the whole of historic Palestine) has been systematically suppressed and deplatformed by the UN’s leadership. Former official Craig Mokhiber was essentially forced to resign for reasons of conscience before publicly voicing his support for the rival one-state solution – again highlighting how the UN hierarchy sidelines those who it considers too pro-Palestinian.

In a public letter published just as he resigned, Mokhiber stated that the two-state solution has become an “open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people.” During a media interview shortly after he added: “When people [who work at the UN] are not talking from official talking points, you hear increasingly about a one-state solution.”

The two-state smokescreen

This deliberate deplatforming of the one-state solution and narrow focus on its two-state rival serves an important purpose for Israel. Though Israel opposes even the resolutions in favor of two states (presumably because they insist that such a settlement should be based on internationally recognized borders), it nonetheless benefits from the elevation of the two-state solution. This is because it creates a convenient smokescreen for Israel to deliberately stall on making peace while continuing to displace Palestinians in the West Bank, establish settlements in their place, and build infrastructure for the exclusive use of Israeli settlers – all of which is illegal under international law.

Israel does this as part of a duplicitous sleight of hand in which it publicly proclaims support for a two-state solution while simultaneously itself creating a situation on the ground that makes that solution impossible. It does this for the simple reason that the goal of Zionism from the outset has been the establishment of a Jewish-majority state encompassing all of historic Palestine with the Palestinians ethnically cleansed out of it. As political scientist Rosalind Petchesky puts it in A Land With A People, “the settler colonial project to ‘de-Arabise Palestine’ and bring all of historic Palestine under Zionist sovereignty long pre-dated both the Nakba and worldwide knowledge of the Nazi holocaust.”

Time to rethink the role of the UN

Given the UN’s role in providing cover for the continuation of this process all while posturing as the primary locomotive toward peace, it is high time that Palestinians and their supporters stop looking up to it as a source of truth and meaningful condemnation of Israel’s human rights violations. Clearly, there is growing evidence that the supposed anti-Israel bias of the UN is a myth concocted to benefit Israel. Evidently, if there’s any bias at the world’s preeminent international institution, it is against the Palestinians rather than the other way round.

Peter Bolton is a New York City-based journalist, activist and scholar. He has a master’s degree from American University in Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs and is currently pursuing graduate studies in bioethics at NYU. He is the author of That Night and Other Stories and Empire’s End. Read other articles by Peter.

The Hunger Killing Gaza’s Children Has a Clear Cause that Few are Willing to Name out Loud

Recent massacre of civilians lined up for food aid highlights deliberate nature of humanitarian catastrophe inflicted on Palestine

by Eva Bartlett / March 12th, 2024

Following the February 29 Israeli slaughter of at least 115 starving Palestinians lined up for food aid, there was little or no outrage by the same Western media which would have howled if the perpetrator were Russia or Syria.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, early morning on Thursday, February 29, Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed Palestinians waiting just southwest of Gaza City for desperately needed food aid. As a result, 115 civilians were killed and over 750 wounded.

Popular US commenter Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a recent interview with award-winning analyst Professor Jeffery Sachs, “Innocent Gaza civilians were lined up to receive flour and water from an aid truck, and more than 100 were slaughtered, mowed down, by Israeli troops. This has got to be one of the most reprehensible and public slaughterings that they’ve engaged in.”

The official Israeli version of events, unsurprisingly, puts the blame on the Palestinians themselves. The deaths and injuries were supposedly caused by a stampede, and the Israeli soldiers only fired when they felt they were endangered by the crowd. The BBC even cited one army lieutenant as saying that troops had “cautiously [tried] to disperse the mob with a few warning shots.” Mark Regev, a special adviser to the Israeli prime minister, went as far as to tell CNN that Israeli troops had not been involved directly in any way and that the gunfire had come from “Palestinian armed groups.”

Testimonies from survivors and doctors tell a different story, though, saying the majority of those treated after the incident had been shot by Israeli forces. Legacy media reports, however, use characteristically neutral wording when evidence starts to stack up against Israel. “112 dead in chaotic scenes as Israeli troops open fire near aid trucks, say Gaza officials,” a Guardian headline reads. Palestinians always seem to just “die,” not get killed, and Israeli troops seem to have just “opened fire” nearby. The skewed wording conventions persist even despite the attribution to Palestinian officials present in that same headline – officials like the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, which was quite clear in accusing Israel of perpetrating a ”massacre” as part of a “genocidal war.”

The article does eventually cite the acting Director of al-Awda hospital as saying most of the 161 casualties treated appeared to have been shot. The confusing headline was likely intentional, counting on most people not bothering to read the article in full.

In a report published on March 3, Euro-Med stated members of its field team were present at the time of the incident and “documented Israeli tanks firing heavily towards Palestinian civilians while trying to receive humanitarian aid.” The report goes on to cite Dr Jadallah Al-Shafi’i, head of nursing at Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital, saying, “paramedics and rescue workers were among the victims,” and that at Shifa “they observed dozens of dead and injured, hit by Israeli gunfire.”

The report also cites Dr Amjad Aliwa, an emergency specialist at Shifa who was also on site when Israel opened fire. According to Aliwa, the Israeli fire began, “as soon as the trucks arrived on Thursday at 4 am.”

But the February 29 massacre, tragic as it is, is only a part of the current stage of Israel’s war on Gaza: the deliberate starvation of Palestinians. And like the massacre itself, the whole issue is being subjected to the hands-off wording treatment by establishment media.

On February 29, the New York Times published an article whose headline, “Starvation Is Stalking Gaza’s Children,” suggests starvation is a mysterious malicious force with a will of its own, skirting the mention of the Israeli siege as its obvious cause.

Again, as with the Guardian article, a few paragraphs in, the NYT piece does state that the “hunger is a man-made catastrophe,” describing how Israeli forces prevent food delivery and how Israeli bombardments make aid distribution dangerous.

As Professor Sachs stated, “…Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved! I’m not using an exaggeration, I’m talking literally starving a population. Israel is a criminal, is in non-stop, war crime, status now. I believe in genocidal status.”

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the February 29 massacre was not the first such incident, and likely not the last. A thread on Twitter/X outlines this, noting, “Before yesterday’s ‘Flour Massacre’, the IDF has been shooting indiscriminately for WEEKS at starved Gazans awaiting aid trucks at the exact same spot, virtually every single day!”

The thread (warning: graphic images!), compiled by Gazan analyst and Euro-Med chief of communications Muhammad Shehada, gives examples of Israeli soldiers firing on Palestinians every single day in the week prior to February 29.

You can bet that, were these Syrian or Russian soldiers firing on starving civilians, the outrage would be front page, 24/7, for weeks. Scratch that, they wouldn’t even have to do it – just a hint of an accusation would have been enough to get the presses going.

Starvation in Syria was another matter

The NYT article mentioned above notes that “Reports of death by starvation are difficult to verify from a distance.” But ‘verifying from a distance’ is precisely what the NYT and other Western media did repeatedly in Syria over the years.

In areas occupied by (then) al-Nusra, Jaysh al-Islam, and the other extremist terrorist gangs which the West and corporate media dubbed “rebels,” food aid was always taken by the respective terrorists and withheld from the civilian population, causing starvation in some districts. Madaya, to the west of Damascus, eastern Aleppo, and later eastern Ghouta were districts most loudly campaigned over in legacy media, providing covering fire for the broader US-led campaign to overthrow the Syrian government.

Backing the claims that the government was starving civilians were mostly “unnamed activists” or activists whose allegiance to Nusra, or even ISIS, was very overt.

As I would see and hear whenever one of these regions was liberated, ample food and medicine had been sent in, but civilians never saw it. Time and again, in eastern Aleppo, Madaya, al-Waer, eastern Ghouta, to name key areas, civilians complained that terrorist factions hoarded food and medicine, and if they sold it to the population, it was at extortionist prices people couldn’t afford.

In the old city of Homs in 2014, back then dubbed by legacy media as the “capital of the revolution,” starved residents I met told me the West’s precious “rebels” had stolen every morsel of food from them, stealing anything of value as well.

Yet, media headlines about these regions screamed about starvation, outright blaming the Syrian government, and were accompanied by disturbing images of emaciated civilians (some of which were not even from Syria) meant to evoke strong emotions among readers and viewers. The same media largely opts not to show you gaunt, starving, Palestinians in Gaza.

Tellingly, Syrian towns surrounded by terrorist forces, besieged, bombed, sniped and starved, got virtually no media coverage. It didn’t fit NATO’s narrative of “rebels”=good, Assad=bad.

But in Gaza the world watches in real time as Palestinians die from the ongoing, preventable, starvation.

Open the borders

Some days ago, the CEO of Medical aid for Palestinians, Melanie Ward, in an interview with CNN, named Israel as the cause of starvation in Gaza.

“It’s very simple: it’s because the Israeli military won’t let it in. We could end this starvation tomorrow very simply if they would just let us have access to people there. But it’s not being allowed. This is what they said [on October 9], ‘Nothing will go in’,” Ward said.

She described the starvation as “the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded. What that means is that children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen. And we could finish it tomorrow, we could save them all. But we’re not being able to.”

This is echoed by UNICEF. The press-release for its February 2024 report notes that 15.6 % (one in six children) under two years of age are “acutely malnourished” in Gaza’s north. “Of these, almost 3% suffer from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, which puts young children at highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent treatment,” UNICEF notes.

Even worse, “since the data were collected in January, the situation is likely to be even graver today,” UNICEF warns, likewise noting the rapid increase of malnutrition is “dangerous and entirely preventable.”

Professor Sachs made an important point: “This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not stop by any self control in Israel, there is none…They believe in ethnic cleansing or worse. And it is the United States which is the sole support…that is not stopping this slaughter.”

Air-dropping paltry amounts of food aid into Gaza is not the answer. It both legitimizes Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza and also makes those Palestinians who run toward the aid sitting ducks for the Israeli army to maim or kill. The only solution is to immediately open the borders and allow in the hundreds of aid trucks parked in Egypt. And end the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

First published at RT.com.

Eva Karene Bartlett is a Canadian journalist who has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). She was a recipient of the 2017 International Journalism Award for International Reporting, granted by the Mexican Journalists’ Press Club (founded in 1951), and was the first recipient of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism. See her extended bio on her blog In Gaza. She tweets from @EvaKBartlett and has the Telegram Channel, Reality Theories. Eva can also be reached at evakbartlett2017@gmail.com. Read other articles by Eva, or visit Eva's website.

Poll in Israel: 74% of Jews, 17% of Arabs, Endorse Completing the Genocide

by Eric Zuesse / March 12th, 2024

Rafah is the southwesternmost city in Gaza, and until now it had a population of around 28,000, but 1.4 million Gazans are now sheltering there after having evacuated from Israel’s bombing of them in the rest of Gaza; and, so, if Israel now extends its air force’s fully U.S.-armed bombing campaign into that city, then this might finish-off (complete the extermination of) the Gazan people (the residents in Gaza).

A poll of Israelis was published by the Israel Democracy Institute on 10 March 2024, titled “War in Gaza Survey 12”, and here are its main findings:

“How should Israel proceed with its military operations in Rafah? [to put it bluntly — which they don’t — whether to invade it, or not?]” (%[Yes]):

74% of Israel’s Jews, 17% of Israel’s Arabs, 64.5% of all Israelis.

In other words: 64.5% of all Israelis, 74% of Israel’s Jews, and 17% of Israel’s Arabs, want those Gazans — just like the other 900,000 Gazans — to be eliminated.

“Israel’s Standing in the International Arena”

47% of Israelis say yes, Israel is supported by the world; 52.5% say no, it’s not.

On 3 March 2024, the Wall Street Journal headlined “U.S. Voter Sympathy for Palestinians Grows as Israel War Drags On, WSJ Poll Finds: Many Americans think Israel has gone too far; majority disapproves of Biden’s handling of the conflict”, and reported the following answers to their question “Do you think Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip in response to the October 7th attack by Hamas have gone too far [42%], not gone far enough [19%], or been about right [24%]/?”

America is the only nation that has unconditionally backed Israel’s Government at the U.N. and has consistently done so even after Israel started on 17 October 2023 its bombing — and the great intensification of its longstanding siege against — the residents in Gaza, to drive them to starvation, if not immediately to death. U.S. President Joe Biden has announced that under no conditions would the U.S. Government ever place any conditions whatsoever on its supplying of weapons and of ammunition and of intelligence-assistance, to Israel’s Government — that what Israel’s Government does with this American assistance is Israel’s business, not America’s, and won’t be America’s concern, though he personally objects to unintentional bombing of civilians.

According to the U.S. Government and its allies, the war in Gaza started with the attack in Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023 (an attack which has been overwhelmingly misrepresented in the U.S.-and-allied press) and is aimed only at eliminating Hamas, but according to all other countries it started actually in 1948 with Zionist Jews’ operation of ethnic cleansing, starting then, to expel or exterminate Arabs from Palestine, what Arabs call the “Nakba” or “catastrophe,” which long preceded Hamas and has continued with varying levels of intensity ever since that time. So, now, Israel wants to finish-off at least the Gazan part of the job.

The Awesome Reality-Denial by Israel and Its Supporters

by Eric Zuesse / March 11th, 2024

Holocaust-deniers say that the Holocaust didn’t exist even though, according to historian Hans Müller, Hitler proudly told the Pope’s representative, Archbishop Berning, on 26 April 1933, “I am doing what the Church has done for 1,500 years. I am simply finishing the job.” Furthermore, Hitler, in the privacy of his bunker (as transcribed there by the lawyer Heinrich Heim during Hitler’s Table-Talk), concluded, on 21 October 1941, a lengthy tirade against Jews, with: “By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea.”

So, too, and just as clearly, today’s Israelis and their supporters are in reality-denial by denying that Israel today perpetrates at least ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, to clear the Gazans from Gaza. South Africa’s legal case against Israel actually quotes many of Israel’s top leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that the Gazans don’t belong in Gaza and won’t be allowed to stay there — that their being there is itself a crime against Israel. Netanyahu actually said, citing the Torah, that God Himself authorized this to be done; and, so, it must be done.

The talk-show host and Washington Post columnist Hugh Hewitt headlined in that newspaper on 31 October 2023, “Does Israel have a right to exist?” and started by saying that he automatically excludes as guests on his show anyone who rejects the official account of 9/11 or else rejects the Republican position on the Cold War, and that he now will add to that list anyone who denies that Israel has a right to exist. He said:

I’ve never even considered that I would ask someone, “Did the Holocaust happen?” I’ve never knowingly had a Holocaust denier on the air, just as I’ve never had on a proponent of white supremacy. It’s pretty easy to build walls against such pollutants entering the airwaves under my jurisdiction. But now I will have to add the basic question about Israel’s nationhood.

He added that only anti-Semites — Jew-haters — deny Israel’s “right to exist”:

In the past three weeks, it has become painfully clear that hundreds of thousands of Americans and Europeans marching in demonstrations across campuses and in the streets of major cities do not accept the state of Israel’s legitimacy. That view is radical and dangerous. And it can no longer be considered so marginal that it need not be discussed in polite society. Instead, the view is one that must be exposed and its believers obliged to explain themselves.

And at that point he changed his tune to becoming: Now I want to expose those people, instead of to exclude them from speaking on my show: He went on to emphasize that to question Israel’s “right to exist” is unacceptable because Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist, and Hewitt assumed that whatever Hamas believes, has to be labelled as false, and that Israel is targeting for killing ONLY Hamas, and NOT the Gazans, but that any Gazans who die in this war are okay to be killed, because of Israel’s necessity to exterminate Hamas, which necessity justifies anything that Israel does in order to eliminate Hamas. In other words: the end justifies the means — ANY means.

He closed by saying:

We in the media should not silence the Israel deniers, but we would perform a public service if we invited them to reveal themselves. As with those who presume to address 9/11 without a basic grounding in the facts, or who deny the reach of Soviet espionage, when Israel deniers begin to spew, the audience deserves fair warning.

So: he closed his defense of Israel’s right to exist, by saying that “the audience deserves fair warning” that a kook is a kook. And throughout his article he was aiming to make his appeal to Republicans, against Democrats.

Throughout, Hewitt’s focus isn’t on verifying what is true and what is false, but instead on who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’. And he was equating Holocaust deniers with everyone who supports Palestinians against Israelis; and equating anti-Israel with anti-Jew — he was implying that only anti-Semites are against Israel: that to be against Israel is to be against Jews (as-if ALL Jews support or endorse Israel against the Palestinians).

The way to reality-denial is to personalize — argue ad-hominem — INSTEAD of to present evidence — argue ad-rem. And that was Hewitt’s entire case for answering Yes to his titled question, “Does Israel have a right to exist?”

I wrote on March 9 “Should Israel Exist?” as a logical analysis of this question, given the clear fact that Israel is either ethnically cleansing or else genociding the Gazans. As regards the broader HISTORICAL argument concerning that question, the case is open-and-shut that Israel should never have been created in 1948. So: to Hewitt’s question, of whether Israel has a right to exist, I would answer “No.” The historical record is clear and unequivocal that Israel had no such right, any more than that any thief has a right to the property that he or she has stolen.

Historically speaking, the war between the Israelis and the Palestinians was started by that enormous theft of not only land but a hidden number of lives from the Palestinians. This war did not begin on 7 October of 2023 when Israelis say that their war against ‘Hamas’ (but really all Gazans) started, but instead back in 1948. However, like all thieves do, Israelis lie in order to ‘justify’ themselves. As regards the October 7 attack by Hamas, I have headlined on 11 March 2024 “What You Didn’t Know About Hamas’s October 7th Attack”, which introduces and links to a highly informed discussion about that attack. Apparently, Israel lies massively about that event, too, so as to ‘justify’ whatever they do to the Gazans. However, in any case, this war certainly didn’t start on 7 October 2023 like Israel alleges it did.

Eric Zuesse is an investigative historian. His new book, America's Empire of Evil: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. Read other articles by Eric.

Net Zero, the Digital Panopticon and the Future of Food

by Colin Todhunter / March 10th, 2024

The food transition, the energy transition, net-zero ideology, programmable central bank digital currencies, the censorship of free speech and clampdowns on protest. What’s it all about? To understand these processes, we need to first locate what is essentially a social and economic reset within the context of a collapsing financial system.

Writer Ted Reece notes that the general rate of profit has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s. By late 2019, many companies could not generate enough profit. Falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cash flows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent.

Professor Fabio Vighi of Cardiff University has described how closing down the global economy in early 2020 under the guise of fighting a supposedly new and novel pathogen allowed the US Federal Reserve to flood collapsing financial markets (COVID relief) with freshly printed money without causing hyperinflation. Lockdowns curtailed economic activity, thereby removing demand for the newly printed money (credit) in the physical economy and preventing ‘contagion’.

According to investigative journalist Michael Byrant, €1.5 trillion was needed to deal with the crisis in Europe alone. The financial collapse staring European central bankers in the face came to a head in 2019. The appearance of a ‘novel virus’ provided a convenient cover story.

The European Central Bank agreed to a €1.31 trillion bailout of banks followed by the EU agreeing to a €750 billion recovery fund for European states and corporations. This package of long-term, ultra-cheap credit to hundreds of banks was sold to the public as a necessary programme to cushion the impact of the pandemic on businesses and workers.

In response to a collapsing neoliberalism, we are now seeing the rollout of an authoritarian great reset — an agenda that intends to reshape the economy and change how we live.

Shift to authoritarianism

The new economy is to be dominated by a handful of tech giants, global conglomerates and e-commerce platforms, and new markets will also be created through the financialisation of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the notion of protecting the environment.

In recent years, we have witnessed an overaccumulation of capital, and the creation of such markets will provide fresh investment opportunities (including dodgy carbon offsetting Ponzi schemes)  for the super-rich to park their wealth and prosper.

This great reset envisages a transformation of Western societies, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance. Being rolled out under the benign term of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the World Economic Forum (WEF) says the public will eventually ‘rent’ everything they require (remember the WEF video ‘you will own nothing and be happy’?): stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ and underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.

Climate alarmism and the mantra of sustainability are about promoting money-making schemes. But they also serve another purpose: social control.

Neoliberalism has run its course, resulting in the impoverishment of large sections of the population. But to dampen dissent and lower expectations, the levels of personal freedom we have been used to will not be tolerated. This means that the wider population will be subjected to the discipline of an emerging surveillance state.

To push back against any dissent, ordinary people are being told that they must sacrifice personal liberty in order to protect public health, societal security (those terrible Russians, Islamic extremists or that Sunak-designated bogeyman George Galloway) or the climate. Unlike in the old normal of neoliberalism, an ideological shift is occurring whereby personal freedoms are increasingly depicted as being dangerous because they run counter to the collective good.

The real reason for this ideological shift is to ensure that the masses get used to lower living standards and accept them. Consider, for instance, the Bank of England’s chief economist Huw Pill saying that people should ‘accept’ being poorer. And then there is Rob Kapito of the world’s biggest asset management firm BlackRock, who says that a “very entitled” generation must deal with scarcity for the first time in their lives.

At the same time, to muddy the waters, the message is that lower living standards are the result of the conflict in Ukraine and supply shocks that both the war and ‘the virus’ have caused.

The net-zero carbon emissions agenda will help legitimise lower living standards (reducing your carbon footprint) while reinforcing the notion that our rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. You will own nothing, not because the rich and their neoliberal agenda made you poor but because you will be instructed to stop being irresponsible and must act to protect the planet.

Net-zero agenda

But what of this shift towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and the plan to slash our carbon footprints? Is it even feasible or necessary?

Gordon Hughes, a former World Bank economist and current professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, says in a new report that current UK and European net-zero policies will likely lead to further economic ruin.

Apparently, the only viable way to raise the cash for sufficient new capital expenditure (on wind and solar infrastructure) would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10 per cent. Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war; even then, never for more than a decade.

But this agenda will also cause serious environmental degradation. So says Andrew Nikiforuk in the article The Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics, which outlines how the green techno-dream is vastly destructive.

He lists the devastating environmental impacts of an even more mineral-intensive system based on renewables and warns:

The whole process of replacing a declining system with a more complex mining-based enterprise is now supposed to take place with a fragile banking system, dysfunctional democracies, broken supply chains, critical mineral shortages and hostile geopolitics.

All of this assumes that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Not everyone agrees. In the article Global warming and the confrontation between the West and the rest of the world, journalist Thierry Meyssan argues that net zero is based on political ideology rather than science. But to state such things has become heresy in the Western countries and shouted down with accusations of ‘climate science denial’.

Regardless of such concerns, the march towards net zero continues, and key to this is the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals.

Today, almost every business or corporate report, website or brochure includes a multitude of references to ‘carbon footprints’, ‘sustainability’, ‘net zero’ or ‘climate neutrality’ and how a company or organisation intends to achieve its sustainability targets. Green profiling, green bonds and green investments go hand in hand with displaying ‘green’ credentials and ambitions wherever and whenever possible.

It seems anyone and everyone in business is planting their corporate flag on the summit of sustainability. Take Sainsbury’s, for instance. It is one of the ‘big six’ food retail supermarkets in the UK and has a vision for the future of food that it published in 2019.

Here’s a quote from it:

Personalised Optimisation is a trend that could see people chipped and connected like never before. A significant step on from wearable tech used today, the advent of personal microchips and neural laces has the potential to see all of our genetic, health and situational data recorded, stored and analysed by algorithms which could work out exactly what we need to support us at a particular time in our life. Retailers, such as Sainsbury’s could play a critical role to support this, arranging delivery of the needed food within thirty minutes — perhaps by drone.

Tracked, traced and chipped — for your own benefit. Corporations accessing all of our personal data, right down to our DNA. The report is littered with references to sustainability and the climate or environment, and it is difficult not to get the impression that it is written so as to leave the reader awestruck by the technological possibilities.

However, the promotion of a brave new world of technological innovation that has nothing to say about power — who determines policies that have led to massive inequalities, poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity and hunger and who is responsible for the degradation of the environment in the first place — is nothing new.

The essence of power is conveniently glossed over, not least because those behind the prevailing food regime are also shaping the techno-utopian fairytale where everyone lives happily ever after eating bugs and synthetic food while living in a digital panopticon.

Fake green

The type of ‘green’ agenda being pushed is a multi-trillion market opportunity for lining the pockets of rich investors and subsidy-sucking green infrastructure firms and also part of a strategy required to secure compliance required for the ‘new normal’.

It is, furthermore, a type of green that plans to cover much of the countryside with wind farms and solar panels with most farmers no longer farming. A recipe for food insecurity.

Those investing in the ‘green’ agenda care first and foremost about profit. The supremely influential BlackRock invests in the current food system that is responsible for polluted waterways, degraded soils, the displacement of smallholder farmers, a spiralling public health crisis, malnutrition and much more.

It also invests in healthcare — an industry that thrives on the illnesses and conditions created by eating the substandard food that the current system produces. Did Larry Fink, the top man at BlackRock, suddenly develop a conscience and become an environmentalist who cares about the planet and ordinary people? Of course not.

Any serious deliberations on the future of food would surely consider issues like food sovereignty, the role of agroecology and the strengthening of family farms — the backbone of current global food production.

The aforementioned article by Andrew Nikiforuk concludes that, if we are really serious about our impacts on the environment, we must scale back our needs and simplify society.

In terms of food, the solution rests on a low-input approach that strengthens rural communities and local markets and prioritises smallholder farms and small independent enterprises and retailers, localised democratic food systems and a concept of food sovereignty based on self-sufficiency, agroecological principles and regenerative agriculture.

It would involve facilitating the right to culturally appropriate food that is nutritionally dense due to diverse cropping patterns and free from toxic chemicals while ensuring local ownership and stewardship of common resources like land, water, soil and seeds.

That’s where genuine environmentalism and the future of food begins.

• The author writes on food, agriculture and development. For further insight into the issues discussed above, you can access his two free books on the food system at Academia.edu or the e-book section on the Centre for Research on Globalization homepage.

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer specialising in development, food and agriculture. You can read his new e-book Food, Dependency and Dispossession: Resisting the New World Order for free here. Read other articles by Colin.

Microdosing LSD: Are there benefits? What about risks?
2024/03/11

Better moods, higher concentration levels, more creativity - and all without the usual risks associated with hard drugs: Proponents of microdosing LSD - taking tiny fractions of the amount needed for the usual 'trip' - say it works wonders. And what does the science say? Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa

It doesn't take much LSD, short for lysergic acid diethylamide, to substantially alter a person's state of consciousness.

Compared with many other substances, the amounts are very small, says Dr Volker Auwärter, director of the forensic toxicology laboratory at the University of Freiburg Medical Centre in Germany: "Upwards of 50, 100 micrograms are said to be a psychedelic dose."

The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) calls the hallucinogen "one of the most potent drugs known."

But what happens if you greatly reduce the dose - to about 10 micrograms? Let's check the facts on LSD microdosing:

Claim: Taking minute amounts of LSD is safe.

Assessment: Possible side effects are still unclear.

Facts: A person who microdoses LSD typically takes about 10 micrograms, just a tenth or twentieth of the amount normally taken for a "trip," or psychedelic experience, says Dr Felix Müller, deputy senior physician at Basel University Psychiatric Clinics in Switzerland, where he's in charge of psychedelic-assisted therapy.

In contrast to people who take psychedelic drugs in higher doses, however, microdosers usually take another dose after a few days, says Müller, who's been doing research on LSD for about 10 years.

Randomized controlled trials on microdosing examine the regular intake of tiny amounts of psychedelic substances - about every three days over a prolonged period.

What does this means in terms of possible risks?

As with other hallucinogens, dependence on LSD doesn't occur, the EMCDDA says. Nor is there a risk of poisoning in the sense of toxic injuries to internal organs, even at high doses, according to Auwärter.

The risks that do exist, Müller says, are more to mental than physical health, adding that whether this also applies to LSD microdosing hasn't been conclusively determined. "[LSD microdosing] is a relatively recent phenomenon," he remarks. "And it's certainly conceivable that repeated use is another matter altogether."

Müller points out that pharmacologists once suspected that LSD could cause changes in heart valves, as had occurred a number of years ago with then-available medications that bound to and activated the same receptor in the body.

Accordingly, Dr Matthias Liechti, director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at Basel University Hospital and head of the Department of Biomedicine's psychopharmacology research group, says studies should investigate possible side effects on heart valve function from regular, months-long LSD use.

In a randomized controlled trial of microdosed LSD's effects on healthy adult men, published recently in the journal Biological Psychiatry, researchers from the University of Auckland's School of Pharmacy conclude that microdosing "appears to be relatively safe ... notwithstanding a risk of anxiety."

Müller cautions, however, that such studies are few and short-term, expressing surprise that people - "relatively naively" - would get involved with LSD microdosing. After all, he says, it's a bit like taking a medicine that hasn't yet been approved for use as it's still being tested for side effects.

What other risks are there?

LSD microdosers can't be sure of the amount they're actually taking. "Whether microdosed or taken in the 'classic' manner, the content of active pharmaceutical ingredient is never really known," says Müller, explaining that the only way to find out is to have it tested at an addiction prevention centre.

"LSD is usually sold dripped onto plotter paper - similar to blotting paper - that's cut into squares," Müller says. A square typically contains doses of 100 or 200 micrograms. Microdosers cut the paper squares into smaller pieces.

Dosing this way is "inexact though, of course" Müller says, just as it is when LSD is sold dissolved in water or alcohol - 100 micrograms per drop, for example - and further diluted into microdoses.

While Müller doesn't regard this as being physically dangerous - "extremely high doses" are necessary before LSD becomes problematic - he says the mental health effects of higher doses are stronger and longer lasting.

"When you microdose it's naturally possible to be way off the mark," he warns.

Claim: Microdosed LSD enhances concentration and creativity.

Assessment: Studies haven't proven this.

Facts: Clinical evidence on whether tiny doses of LSD can boost concentration and creativity, and help combat depression and anxiety disorders is in short supply.

"Because of the small number of controlled trials that have been done, there's hardly any data on the effects of LSD microdosing," notes Liechti, who says the immediate effects are similar to, but weaker than, those from high doses.

Although there are indications of improved well-being in trial participants who are given a small dose of LSD compared with those receiving a placebo, "it's only on the day of treatment, not afterwards," Liechti says.

Moreover, due to the dearth of trial results, nothing can yet be said on to what extent - if any - LSD microdosing eases depression and anxiety, he adds. And the University of Auckland study showed no significant effect on creativity.

Reports of improved mood and cognitive functioning by LSD microdosers have been supported only to a limited extent in randomized controlled trials to date, according to the New Zealand researchers, and none have found lasting effects in these areas from repeated use of minute amounts of LSD.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PSYCHEDELIC 

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Winnie the Pooh slasher film 'wins' Razzies

Agence France-Presse
March 9, 2024 

The characters of Winnie the Pooh were originally created by A.A. Milne and illustrated by E.H. Shepard

An ultra-low-budget horror film in which Winnie the Pooh and Piglet go on a brutal killing spree has been named the year's worst movie by the Razzie Awards.

Slasher movie "Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey," made for less than $250,000, garnered global headlines and even provoked death threats from enraged fans in February 2023.

The live-action British film took advantage of the expiration of copyrights on A.A. Milne's beloved books, meaning neither the author's estate nor movie rights owner Disney could sue.

Though it appears to have safely evaded legal action, "Blood and Honey" now suffers the ignominy of topping the Razzies.

At the parody prizes, which recognize the year's most dire films and performances, it "won" worst picture, director and screenplay.

Pooh and Piglet were named worst screen couple, and the movie also earned a Razzie for worst remake, rip-off or sequel.

Though embarrassing, the Razzie Awards are unlikely to bother director Rhys Frake-Waterfield.

His movie grossed nearly $5 million after being given a global theatrical release thanks to the controversy it generated.

A sequel is scheduled for release later this month.

He told AFP last year he was also developing horror movies based on "Bambi" and "Peter Pan" books.

The Razzies are announced the day before the Oscars, serving to mock the following night's self-congratulatory Tinseltown back-slapping.

Former Oscar winner Jon Voight was named worst actor for critically panned thriller "Mercy," and Megan Fox took worst actress for horror-heist movie "Johnny & Clyde."

Fox, a frequent Razzies punching bag, also took worst supporting actress for action sequel "Expend4bles," which earned worst supporting actor for Sylvester Stallone.

The Razzies were first awarded in 1981 in a Los Angeles living room, the brainchild of UCLA film graduates and industry veterans, who chose the raspberry as a symbol of derision.

© 2024 AFP