How Many Israelis Killed by ‘Friendly Fire’?

The IDF appears to have fired on hostages on several occasions throughout the Gaza war

by Will Porter Posted onApril 26, 2024

An elderly Israeli woman abducted by Hamas during the group’s October 7 attack was likely gunned down by an IDF aircraft, an internal military probe has found. To date, Tel Aviv has offered few details about other captives who may have been killed by friendly fire.

The 67-year-old grandmother, Efrat Katz, was taken hostage from the Nir Oz Kibbutz during Hamas’ surprise assault on Israel last year. Footage of her kidnapping showed the woman squeezed into the bed of a truck alongside her daughter and two grandchildren, a harrowing clip that would mark some of Katz’s final moments.The results of an internal Israeli military probe were published on April 5, acknowledging the IDF not only “failed to protect civilians” at the kibbutz, but had inadvertently contributed to the carnage.

“It appears that during the battles and the airstrikes, one of the combat helicopters that took part in the fighting fired at a vehicle that had terrorists in it, and, in retrospect, according to the evidence, it turned out that there were also hostages in it,” the investigation found. “As a result of the shooting, most of the terrorists manning the vehicles were killed, and apparently the late Efrat Katz.”

However, the probe concluded that because the hostages “could not be distinguished” from Palestinian fighters during the IDF counterattack, the helicopter crew was not at fault for Katz’s death. For the airmen, “the shooting was defined as shooting at a vehicle with terrorists,” the report continued.

According to Al Jazeera, Katz’s daughter and two grandchildren survived the attack, and were later freed following a prisoner exchange agreed with Hamas in November. The Palestinian armed group kidnapped more than 200 people on October 7 – among them Israeli soldiers and civilians in addition to foreign nationals – with around half of them released as part of last year’s deal.

Collateral Damage

Katz’s untimely death is merely one among many reported ‘friendly fire’ casualties inflicted by Israeli forces on and since October 7.

While the IDF has acknowledged 41 deaths among its own troops resulting from “operational accidents” throughout the war, it offers no official figures for hostages killed under similar circumstances.

In one rare exception, the military publicized the shooting of three Israeli hostages during an IDF ground raid in Gaza City last December – with one of the men killed as he waved a white flag and pleaded for help in Hebrew. None of the troops involved faced repercussions after the incident, which was deemed a simple mistake amid the fog of war.

To date, Tel Aviv has confirmed that 33 of the remaining 136 captives in Gaza have been killed, though officials have declined to specify their cause of death. The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed al-Qassam wing, Abu Obeida, placed that figure much higher, claiming at least 70 hostages had been killed as a result of Israeli operations as of March 1.

Survivors of Hamas’ October onslaught have also described brazen friendly-fire attacks by Israeli tank crews, with Kibbutz Be’eri resident Yasmin Porat telling local media that some hostages were “undoubtedly” shot by their own people.

“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” Porat said in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Kan, adding that “After insane crossfire, two tank shells were shot into the house… at that moment everyone was killed.”

An October 20 report in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz also detailed the lethal response at Be’eri, citing a member of the community’s security team, Tovel Escapa, who recounted indiscriminate firing on homes.

“Only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages – did the IDF complete the takeover of the kibbutz,” the paper reported. “The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed.” The outlet did not clarify whether those deaths were inflicted by Israeli forces alone.

Underscoring the confusion during Israel’s response on October 7, other local media reports noted that IDF helicopters likely fired on civilians at the infamous Nova music festival – where more than 350 people lost their lives, most at the hands of Hamas. Israeli pilots later described “tremendous difficulty” in distinguishing fighters from noncombatants amid the chaos, while some gunship operators reportedly launched barrages against unidentified targets “without authorization from superiors.”

“[One] soldier told me, ‘Fire over there. The terrorists are there.’ I asked him, ‘Are there any civilians there?’ His response was, ‘I don’t know, just fire,’” one serviceman told Israel’s Channel 12, referring to an operation near the Holit kibbutz.

Hannibal Returns?

Officially, as of 2016 Israel’s military says it no longer employs the controversial ‘Hannibal Directive’ – a policy instructing soldiers to sacrifice their own comrades to prevent capture by enemy forces. However, some IDF troops have indicated the measure may still be in place to this day.

Asked about the policy by name during a recent media interview, IDF field commander Bar Zonshein said he ordered a strike on his own men after they had been captured by Hamas fighters on October 7 – even describing a formal procedure to invoke the supposedly-defunct directive.

Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper similarly reported that troops had been ordered to strike invading Hamas militants “at all costs” – even if that meant endangering hostages – while Israeli Col. Nof Erez described the October 7 response as a “mass Hannibal” operation.

Inspired by the capture of IDF troops during Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, the policy was seemingly designed to avoid complex and embarrassing prisoner swap deals with the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas, which frequently entail Israeli concessions. The protocol has been deployed repeatedly in subsequent conflicts, with the IDF adopting a highly permissive stance toward civilian casualties while carrying out the directive.

Though Palestinian noncombatants have borne the brunt of that policy since its inception decades ago, a number of Israeli observers have questioned whether Hannibal was invoked against their fellow citizens on October 7.

“We must determine exactly what happened that day. Was there a decision to eliminate the terrorists even if there was a significant risk that the hostages would also be killed? Was the Hannibal Directive applied to civilians?” asked Haaretz reporter Noa Limone.

Omri Shafroni, a resident of Be’eri and a relative of one of the victims killed in Hamas’ attack, has demanded an official investigation into Israel’s response, noting the circumstances of many civilian deaths remain unexplained.

“I do not rule out the possibility that [my relative] and others were killed by IDF fire. It could be that they died from the terrorists’ fire, or it could be that they died from the IDF’s fire, because there was a very heavy firefight,” he said last November, voicing frustration over the lack of any probe.

“It is very strange to me that until now we have not conducted an operational investigation into an event in which 13 hostages were apparently murdered and no negotiations were carried out,” Shafroni added.

Will Porter is assistant news editor at the Libertarian Institute and a regular contributor at Antiwar.com. Find more of his work at Consortium News and ZeroHedge.

 

Torture, Abu Ghraib, and the Legacy of the US War on Iraq

by Maha Hilal Posted onApril 26, 2024

“To this day I feel humiliation for what was done to me… The time I spent in Abu Ghraib – it ended my life. I’m only half a human now.” That’s what Abu Ghraib survivor Talib al-Majli had to say about the 16 months he spent at that notorious prison in Iraq after being captured and detained by American troops on October 31, 2003. In the wake of his release, al-Majli has continued to suffer a myriad of difficulties, including an inability to hold a job thanks to physical and mental-health deficits and a family life that remains in shambles.

He was never even charged with a crime – not exactly surprising, given the Red Cross’s estimate that 70% to 90% of those arrested and detained in Iraq after the 2003 American invasion of that country were guilty of nothing. But like other survivors, his time at Abu Ghraib continues to haunt him, even though, nearly 20 years later in America, the lack of justice and accountability for war crimes at that prison has been relegated to the distant past and is considered a long-closed chapter in this country’s War on Terror.

The Abu Ghraib “Scandal”

On April 28th, 2004, CBS News’s 60 Minutes aired a segment about Abu Ghraib prison, revealing for the first time photos of the kinds of torture that had happened there. Some of those now-infamous pictures included a black-hooded prisoner being made to stand on a box, his arms outstretched and electrical wires attached to his hands; naked prisoners piled on top of each other in a pyramid-like structure; and a prisoner in a jumpsuit on his knees being threatened with a dog. In addition to those disturbing images, several photos included American military personnel grinning or posing with thumbs-up signs, indications that they seemed to be taking pleasure in the humiliation and torture of those Iraqi prisoners and that the photos were meant to be seen.

Once those pictures were exposed, there was widespread outrage across the globe in what became known as the Abu Ghraib scandal. However, that word “scandal” still puts the focus on those photos rather than on the violence the victims suffered or the fact that, two decades later, there has been zero accountability when it comes to the government officials who sanctioned an atmosphere ripe for torture.

Thanks to the existence of the Federal Tort Claims Act, all claims against the federal government, when it came to Abu Ghraib, were dismissed. Nor did the government provide any compensation or redress to the Abu Ghraib survivors, even after, in 2022, the Pentagon released a plan to minimize harm to civilians in U.S. military operations. However, there is a civil suit filed in 2008 – Al Shimari v. CACI – brought on behalf of three plaintiffs against military contractor CACI’s role in torture at Abu Ghraib. Though CACI tried 20 times to have the case dismissed, the trial – the first to address the abuse of Abu Ghraib detainees – finally began in mid-April in the Eastern District Court of Virginia. If the plaintiffs succeed with a ruling in their favor, it will be a welcome step toward some semblance of justice. However, for other survivors of Abu Ghraib, any prospect of justice remains unlikely at best.

The Road to Abu Ghraib

”My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture… And therefore, I’m not going to address the ‘torture’ word.” So said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a press conference in 2004. He failed, of course, to even mention that he and other members of President George W. Bush’s administration had gone to great lengths not only to sanction brutal torture techniques in their “Global War on Terror,” but to dramatically raise the threshold for what might even be considered torture.

As Vian Bakir argued in her book Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles, his comments were part of a three-pronged Bush administration strategy to reframe the abuses depicted in those photos, including providing “evidence” of the supposed legality of the basic interrogation techniques, framing such abuses as isolated rather than systemic events, and doing their best to destroy visual evidence of torture altogether.

Although top Bush officials claimed to know nothing about what happened at Abu Ghraib, the war on terror they launched was built to thoroughly dehumanize and deny any rights to those detained. As a 2004 Human Rights Watch report, “The Road to Abu Ghraib,” noted, a pattern of abuse globally resulted not from the actions of individual soldiers, but from administration policies that circumvented the law, deployed distinctly torture-like methods of interrogation to “soften up” detainees, and took a “see no evil, hear no evil,” approach to any allegations of prisoner abuse.

In fact, the Bush administration actively sought out legal opinions about how to exclude war-on-terror prisoners from any legal framework whatsoever. A memorandum from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to President Bush argued that the Geneva Conventions simply didn’t apply to members of the terror group al-Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban. Regarding what would constitute torture, an infamous memo, drafted by Office of Legal Counsel attorney John Yoo, argued that “physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” Even after the Abu Ghraib photos became public, Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials never relented when it came to their supposed inapplicability. As Rumsfeld put it in a television interview, they “did not apply precisely” in Iraq.

In January 2004, Major General Anthony Taguba was appointed to conduct an Army investigation into the military unit, the 800th Military Police Brigade, which ran Abu Ghraib, where abuses had been reported from October through December 2003. His report was unequivocal about the systematic nature of torture there: “Between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systemic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force (372nd Military Police Company, 320th Military Police Battalion, 800th MP Brigade), in Tier (section) 1-A of the Abu Ghraib Prison.”

Sadly, the Taguba report was neither the first nor the last to document abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib. Moreover, prior to its release, the International Committee of the Red Cross had issued multiple warnings that such abuse was occurring at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Simulating Atonement

Once the pictures were revealed, President Bush and other members of his administration were quick to condemn the violence at the prison. Within a week, Bush had assured King Abdullah of Jordan, who was visiting the White House, that he was sorry about what those Iraqi prisoners had endured and “equally sorry that people who’ve been seeing those pictures didn’t understand the true nature and heart of America.”

As scholar Ryan Shepard pointed out, Bush’s behavior was a classic case of “simulated atonement,” aimed at offering an “appearance of genuine confession” while avoiding any real responsibility for what happened. He analyzed four instances in which the president offered an “apologia” for what happened – two interviews with Alhurra and Al Arabiya television on May 5, 2004, and two appearances with the King of Jordan the next day.

In each case, the president also responsible for the setting up of an offshore prison of injustice on occupied Cuban land in Guantánamo Bay in 2002 managed to shift the blame in classic fashion, suggesting that the torture had not been systematic and that the fault for it lay with a few low-level people. He also denied that he knew anything about torture at Abu Ghraib prior to the release of the photos and tried to restore the image of America by drawing a comparison to what the regime of Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein had done prior to the American invasion.

In his interview with Alhurra, for example, he claimed that the U.S. response to Abu Ghraib – investigations and justice – would be unlike anything Saddam Hussein had done. Sadly enough, however, the American takeover of that prison and the torture that occurred there was anything but a break from Hussein’s reign. In the context of such a faux apology, however, Bush apparently assumed that Iraqis could be easily swayed on that point, regardless of the violence they had endured at American hands; that they would, in fact, as Ryan Shepard put it, “accept the truth-seeking, freedom-loving American occupation as vastly superior to the previous regime.”

True accountability for Abu Ghraib? Not a chance. But revisiting Bush’s apologia so many years later is a vivid reminder that he and his top officials never had the slightest intention of truly addressing those acts of torture as systemic to America’s war on terror, especially because he was directly implicated in them.

Weapons of American Imperialism

On March 19th, 2003, President Bush gave an address from the Oval Office to his “fellow citizens.” He opened by saying that “American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” The liberated people of Iraq, he said, would “witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military.”

There was, of course, nothing about his invasion of Iraq that was honorable or decent. It was an illegally waged war for which Bush and his administration had spent months building support. In his State of the Union address in 2002, in fact, the president had referred to Iraq as part of an “axis of evil” and a country that “continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror.” Later that year, he began to claim that Saddam’s regime also had weapons of mass destruction. (It didn’t and he knew it.) If that wasn’t enough to establish the threat Iraq supposedly posed, in January 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney claimed that it “aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.”

Days after Cheney made those claims, Secretary of State Colin Powell falsely asserted to members of the U.N. Security Council that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, had used them before, and would not hesitate to use them again. He mentioned the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” 17 times in his speech, leaving no room to mistake the urgency of his message. Similarly, President Bush insisted the U.S. had “no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.”

The false pretenses under which the U.S. waged war on Iraq are a reminder that the war on terror was never truly about curbing a threat, but about expanding American imperial power globally.

When the United States took over that prison, they replaced Saddam Hussein’s portrait with a sign that said, “America is the friend of all Iraqis.” To befriend the U.S. in the context of Abu Ghraib, would, of course, have involved a sort of coerced amnesia.

In his essay “Abu Ghraib and its Shadow Archives,” Macquarie University professor Joseph Pugliese makes this connection, writing that “the Abu Ghraib photographs compel the viewer to bear testimony to the deployment and enactment of absolute U.S. imperial power on the bodies of the Arab prisoners through the organizing principles of white supremacist aesthetics that intertwine violence and sexuality with Orientalist spectacle.”

As a project of American post-9/11 empire building, Abu Ghraib and the torture of prisoners there should be viewed through the lens of what I call carceral imperialism – an extension of the American carceral state beyond its borders in the service of domination and hegemony. (The Alliance for Global Justice refers to a phenomenon related to the one I’m discussing as “prison imperialism.”) The distinction I draw is based on my focus on the war on terror and how the prison became a tool through which that war was being fought. In the case of Abu Ghraib, the capture, detention, and torture through which Iraqis were contained and subdued was a primary strategy of the U.S. colonization of Iraq and was used as a way to transform detained Iraqis into a visible threat that would legitimize the U.S. presence there. (Bagram prison in Afghanistan was another example of carceral imperialism.)

Beyond Spectacle and Towards Justice

What made the torture at Abu Ghraib possible to begin with? While there were, of course, several factors, it’s important to consider one above all: the way the American war not on, but of terror rendered Iraqi bodies so utterly disposable.

One way of viewing this dehumanization is through philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer, which defines a relationship between power and two forms of life: zoe and bios. Zoe refers to an individual who is recognized as fully human with a political and social life, while bios refers to physical life alone. Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were reduced to bios, or bare life, while being stripped of all rights and protections, which left them vulnerable to uninhibited and unaccountable violence and horrifying torture.

Twenty years later, those unforgettable images of torture at Abu Ghraib serve as a continuous reminder of the nature of American brutality in that Global War on Terror that has not ended. They continue to haunt me – and other Muslims and Arabs – 20 years later. They will undoubtedly be seared in my memory for life.

Whether or not justice prevails in some way for Abu Ghraib’s survivors, as witnesses – even distant ones – to what transpired at that prison, our job should still be to search for the stories behind the hoods, the bars, and the indescribable acts of torture that took place there. It’s crucial, even so many years later, to ensure that those who endured such horrific violence at American hands are not forgotten. Otherwise, our gaze will become one more weapon of torture – extending the life of the horrific acts in those images and ensuring that the humiliation of those War on Terror prisoners will continue to be a passing spectacle for our consumption.

Two decades after those photos were released, what’s crucial about the unbearable violence and horror they capture is the choice they still force viewers to make – whether to become just another bystander to the violence and horror this country delivered under the label of the War on Terror or to take in the torture and demand justice for the survivors.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

Dr. Maha Hilal is the founding Executive Director of the Muslim Counterpublics Lab and author of Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11.  Her writings have appeared in Vox, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, the Daily Beast, Newsweek, Business Insider, and Truthout, among other places.

Copyright Maha Hilal 2024

Orban: Hungary is island in the European progressive liberal ocean

FASCIST WAR ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses CPAC in Budapest. 

/ bne IntelliNews


By Tamas Csonka in Budapest April 26, 2024


Hungary is an independent conservative island in the European progressive liberal ocean, it is a constitutional state where everyone can freely express their opinion, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which is taking place in Hungary on April 25-26.

For the third consecutive year, Budapest is hosting a gathering of radical right-wing politicians and pundits.

The participants include Dutch politician Geert Wilders (PVV), Santiago Abascal, Chairman of the Spanish party VOX, former Slovenian prime minister Janez Jansa and a number of Trumpist Republicans.

The accreditation of many foreign and local media outlets was rejected, and they were encouraged instead to follow the event via a live stream. Organisers informed journalists that the conference is a "no woke zone," and that coverage would be possible at "future events when and if your organisation becomes significantly less woke".

The conference was organised by the state-funded organization Center for Fundamental Rights. Its head Miklos Szantho, in his opening address, said the aim of CPAC Hungary is no less than to organise a global coalition of anti-globalist forces.

He said the conference in 2023 had been about deepening cooperation on the right, and this year was about “springing into action”. “We must drain the swamp in Brussels in June and in Washington in November,” he added.

An inglorious period of Western civilisation could be brought to an end this year, by replacing the world built on progressive-liberal hegemony with a sovereignist one, Orban said after taking the stage.

According to Hungary’s strongman, the progressive-liberal world order had failed as it had only brought about wars and discord, economic collapse and chaos. The leaders emerging from that world order were "unfit for the task, heap error upon error, and end up walking into their doom", he said.

The liberals are already sensing the danger and a change could mean their downfall, which is why they are doing everything to maintain power. As in 2019, Hungary’s nationalist leader is hoping for a breakthrough of radical right-wing parties at the EP elections and the victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump in November's US presidential election.

Orban accused liberal progressive" governments of employing tactics many of his critics say he had used himself to silence critics,

They use government agencies against us, or as my American friends would say, "weaponize state institutions".

"This happens to us Hungarians constantly in Brussels. This is what is happening to President Trump in America, and we encourage him to fight for his own truth not only in the elections but also in the courts."

In contrast to the liberal progressive world, supported by US financier George Soros’s open society, the sovereigntist world order will construct a "protected society", protecting the borders, and families.

The prime minister struck an optimistic tone, telling CPAC attendees: "Make America great again, make Europe great again! Go Donald Trump, go European sovereigntists!"

"Let's saddle up, put on our armour, head to the battlefield and begin the election battle!" he said.

On the first day of the conference, Orban held talks on the event's sidelines with Janza and former Australian premier Tony Abbott. The prime minister hosted a gala reception for 80 special foreign guests later in the evening.

In his speech, Jansa said there is no sovereignty without border control. The open border policy of the liberal-left aims to dismantle Western civilisations.

Numerous speakers at CPAC voiced their support for combating woke ideology, antisemitism, and "illegal" immigration. Tom van Grieken, leader of the Belgian Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), commended Hungary's commitment to freedom of speech and strongly condemned the recent shutdown of the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in Brussels.

The Belgian politician said Hungary is the centre of conservative resistance. Amihai Sikli, Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs, praised the flourishing relations between the two countries, emphasising that the Hungarian government is one of Israel's biggest supporters. He praised Budapest as "one of the safest capitals in Europe for Jews" and praised Hungary's "zero tolerance" on antisemitism.

SEE

"Liberalists vigorously oppose Christianity" - Georgian PM at conservative forum in Hungary

Farm suicides, anger haunt Indian villages that Modi promised hope

Villages where Modi launched his farm outreach a decade ago have seen deaths and debt mount since then. And the goodwill for the Indian PM is evaporating — turning into staunch criticism.
Family members of Vithal Rathod, the farmer in Dabhadi village who took his own life, stand outside their home in Yavatmal. It was in Dabhadi that Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his farm outreach in 2014. A decade later, crosses losses, debts and deaths are mounting [Kunal Purohit/Al Jazeera]

By Kunal Purohit
26 Apr 2024

Yavatmal, India – Like everyone else around him, Vithal Rathod was excited for what the future held for him and their village when Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister on May 26, 2014.

Just two months earlier, on March 20 that year, Modi had picked the 45-year-old farmer’s village of Dabhadi from the more than 15,500 villages in the Vidarbha region of the western Indian state of Maharashtra to launch his outreach to the country’s farmers. The visit was important for Modi, eyeing the PM’s chair at the time, to be able to reach out to the 65 percent of India’s population that is engaged in agriculture.

During his visit to Dabhadi, Modi had sipped tea with farmers like Rathod, visited farms in the village and promised an end to the death and despair that had long haunted the predominantly rural, impoverished part of Maharashtra state. A lack of adequate irrigation, erratic weather patterns and fluctuating global prices for cotton – the principal crop grown there – meant that farmers suffered repeated losses and found themselves in debt. The resulting frustration drove more than 9,000 farmers to take their own lives between 2001 and 2014.

Modi came and said what the farmers wanted to hear. “Your pain, your struggle and your troubles will force me to do something good,” he told Rathod and the thousands who had gathered to hear him. “I want to tie myself to this promise, I want to talk to experts and find such solutions that no poor farmer has to kill himself,” he said.

Rathod went back home, reassured, to his family of five and tried to put his recurring farm losses behind him. He had a one-hectare (2.5-acre) farm, not far from where Modi spoke.

But by the following year, Rathod’s losses grew and his optimism shrank. In 2015, Rathod became a statistic: he hanged himself to death from the ceiling of his home, just off the main road that leads to Dabhadi village, following another year of crop losses, making his 120,000 rupee debt ($1,440) insurmountable.

Rathod was not alone in feeling let down. Ten years after Modi’s visit, his promise seems to have crumbled – even as India’s prime minister once again campaigns for reelection, this time for a third stint in office.

Data obtained by this correspondent shows the number of farmer suicides in the region has grown in the decade that Modi has been in power, compared with the preceding 10 years when the now-in-opposition Congress party ruled the country.

Between January 2004 and December 2014, 9,671 farmers died by suicide. That number rose to 10,122 for the period from January 2015 to December 2023, according to information collected from the Amravati Divisional Commissionerate in Vidarbha, which oversees the administration of five of the country’s districts worst affected by suicides: Amravati, Yavatmal, Buldhana, Akola and Washim. The actual number of farm suicides in the region under Modi is even higher – since the PM came to power in May 2014.

On average, between 2004 and 2014, each year would see this region record an average of 879 suicide deaths by farmers. Since 2015, that number has risen to 1,125 suicides each year, on average – or three farmers taking their lives every day.

The paradox of Maharashtra, the country’s richest state where Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power locally for most of the past decade, also serving as the nerve centre of the country’s agrarian crisis, has only deepened over the past decade.

Now, as India’s national election rolls on, the anger over failed promises is visible in farm pockets across the region – parts of which vote on Friday, April 26.

Nowhere more than in Dabhadi itself.

Farmers Ganesh Rathod and Prithviraj Pawar point to the location in Dabhadi where Narendra Modi held a political rally in 2014 in his bid to become the country’s PM [Kunal Purohit/Al Jazeera]

Schemes that go nowhere

In the Rathod household, nine years after their principal breadwinner’s suicide, the family’s struggles have remained static – despite Modi government schemes that are meant to benefit farmer families like theirs.

Rameshwar, 25, Rathod’s son, had to quit his studies after his father’s death. Rameshwar has instead been doing what his father did – making the most of their one-hectare farm while falling deeper into debt.

Last year, he sowed cotton on his farm, but unexpectedly heavy rainfall washed his crops away. “I expected 40 quintals [4 tonnes] of cotton produce, but ended up getting only 5 quintals [500kg or 1,100 pounds],” Rameshwar says, standing outside the room where his father hung himself.

He turned to the Modi government’s flagship scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), a crop insurance scheme meant to compensate farmers for such losses. The scheme is meant to “provide a comprehensive insurance cover against failure of the crop thus helping in stabilising the income of the farmers”, according to the initiative’s website.

A back-of-the-envelope showed him his losses were close to 235,000 rupees ($2,815). He applied for the insurance money but got only 10,000 rupees ($120), an amount determined based on local officials’ estimate of the damage his farm suffered.

Putting on a brave face, he hoped the next crop he sowed, wheat, could help him recoup his losses. But in March this year, a hailstorm in the region destroyed nearly half his standing crop. He has, yet again, applied for compensation under the PMFBY. A month later, Rameshwar is still waiting.

Like his father, Rameshwar is now running high debts. His father was impressed by Modi, but he is not. Rameshwar is going to back the opposition parties in these polls.

Many others in his village have had a similar reversal of feelings.

Farmer Prithviraj Pawar holds up the wheat crop that was damaged in a March hailstorm, and for which he is yet to be compensated [Kunal Purohit/Al Jazeera]

A change of heart

Narendra Dabhane, the former village chief of Dabhadi, used to be “so spellbound by Modi that I would scold those who would criticise him”, he says, sitting in the courtyard of his home in the village.

“I used to tell people, he is a man sent by God to help us,” Dabhane says, with an embarrassed smile. “I kept thinking that our village was going to become a paradise, now that the PM had made such emphatic promises.”

Within months of Modi coming to power, though, Dabhane started feeling betrayed.

Modi, in his speech, had proposed what seemed to be a revolutionary idea, what he called the “5F formula from farm to fibre to fabric to fashion to foreign” – the idea that their cotton produce could be converted to readymade garments right here, in Vidarbha. The result would be that factories would be set up, so the children of farmers could be employed. The garments would then be exported around the world. That was the dream that Dabhadi was sold.

None of that happened. Dabhane does not know of any such supply chains being developed – both of his sons had to migrate to neighbouring districts to get jobs.

Last year, Dabhane sowed cotton on his 1.2-hectare (three-acre) farm just outside the village. Much of his crop was damaged in the rains, and the remaining fetched a price of 6,800 rupees per quintal ($81 per 100 kilos) of cotton. His earnings are “less than what I used to get for my cotton 10 years ago”, he said.

Government data shows that there had been a 74 percent increase in state-mandated support price for medium-staple cotton, from 3,800 rupees ($46) in 2015-16 to 6,620 rupees ($79) in 2024-25.

But many farmers insist that traders seldom heed these prices. And Dabhane points to what this data does not reveal.

“All the inputs that go into the farm have become exorbitantly expensive,” he said. “A bag of fertiliser that cost us 500 rupees [$6] 10 years ago, is now nearly 1,700 rupees [$20],” he said. “We are also paying the [Modi government-introduced] Goods and Services Tax on everything from pesticides to tractors,” he said.

Like Rathod, Dabhane, too, suffered heavy losses twice in the last few months with his cotton and wheat crops failing due to poor weather. But unlike Rathod, who at least got a measly 10,000 rupees, Dabhane got nothing, he said.

All this has meant that while Modi, in February 2016, had said he “dreamed” that farmers’ incomes would “double” by 2022, farmers like Dabhane have seen their real incomes shrinking.

From a Modi supporter, Dabhane has now turned into a fierce critic. In February this year, when Modi visited Yavatmal district, under which Dabhadi falls, Dabhane and a few others put up banners listing out 16 promises they said Modi made to them in his 2014 speech in the village.

“We even made black chai on that day,” he says, laughing, as a riposte to Modi’s famed Chai Pe Charcha (Chats over Chai) campaign. During his 2014 election outreach, Modi – who says he used to sell tea or chai at a railway station as a young man – helped campaign events over cups of tea to underscore those humble beginnings. The local police, he said, arrested him for the protest and released him after Modi left.

The crisis has affected not just smaller farmers like Dabhane, but also many others who are ambitious and are trying to make farming a more sustainable source of livelihood.

Prithviraj Pawar, 43, owns two hectares (five acres) and has leased another six hectares (15 acres), to be able to cultivate crops like soybean and wheat. Last year, Pawar’s two-hectare cultivate of soybeans suffered severe losses, his yield falling from the expected 25 quintals to merely 12 quintals, his losses over 60,000 rupees ($720). “The insurance scheme only gave me 11,000 rupees [$132], which did not even remotely cover my expenses, leave alone my losses.”

Pawar has a unique connection to Modi – he is now cultivating, on a lease, the farm on which Modi held his 2014 event. This year, though, the farm is mostly dry and the wheat crop stunted due to the hailstorm in March that also destroyed Rameshwar’s crop.

Such lived experiences, along with the Modi government’s chequered record in dealing with farmers – from bringing in three controversial new laws to regulate Indian agriculture in 2020, to repeated instances of police violence against protesting farmers – have made many in Vidarbha wary of the government’s intent.

On his part, Modi has repeatedly tried to reach out to the farming community in the region. He has already held three public meetings in the region, including one in the neighbouring Wardha district on April 19 where he reportedly blamed the opposition Congress responsible for the “longstanding challenges farmers faced in the country”.

But many like Dabhane and Rathod, and others across the region, remain unconvinced and bitter. To them, new speeches are not going to wash away old betrayals.

Global: FIFA sponsorship deal with Saudi Aramco covering World Cups raises human rights concerns


© Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

NEWS
April 25, 2024

Reacting to FIFA’s four-year global partnership deal with Saudi Aramco, making the state-owned fossil fuel company a sponsor of the 2026 men’s World Cup as well as the Women’s World Cup in 2027, Amnesty International’s Head of Economic and Social Justice Steve Cockburn said:

“There is a cruel irony that a Saudi Arabian state-owned company should be considered fit to sponsor the Women’s World Cup when women like Salma al-Shehab and Manahel al-Otaibi remain imprisoned in the Kingdom for peacefully speaking out for gender equality.

“With Saudi Arabia also currently being the sole bidder to host the 2034 men’s World Cup, world football could be dogged by human rights violations for years to come unless urgent action is taken to address the country’s atrocious human rights record.

“Amnesty International is calling on FIFA to make binding agreements with Saudi Arabia to protect people from exploitation, discrimination, and repression before it finalizes any agreement on hosting the tournament. Last month 12 football fans from the country’s Shia minority, who routinely face discrimination, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to one year for singing folkloric chants and posting videos of themselves online.

“Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers, last year posted the largest annual profit ever made by a company of more than US$161 billion. Amnesty International has urged that income from Aramco should not be deployed to finance human rights abuses, cover them up, or try and gloss over them through sports washing.”

“It is past time that Saudi Arabia acted in humanity’s interest, supported the phasing out of the fossil fuel industry, and helped fund a human rights-based transition to renewable energy, which is essential for preventing further climate harms.”
Background

Saudi Arabia has spent billions on sports worldwide such as golf, football, motorsports and martial arts. The Saudi Arabian government and the Public Investment Fund, its sovereign wealth fund, own more than 98% of Saudi Aramco, making the company, through the dividends and taxes it pays, a major source of the Kingdom’s income, wealth, and influence. The 2026 men’s World Cup will be held in the USA, Canada and Mexico. The location of the 2027 women’s tournament has yet to be decided.

Kidnapping relatives and spying? Judges accuse Pakistan army of coercing the courts.

Akhtar Soomro/Reuter
Police officers pass the Supreme Court of Pakistan building in Islamabad, 

 The top court has initiated a case on spy agencies’ judicial interference.


By Hasan Ali Contributor
@hali1189
April 25, 2024

|ISLAMABAD


Pakistan’s political crisis is deepening as the country’s powerful military establishment becomes embroiled in a tense standoff with the superior judiciary.

Last month, six of the Islamabad High Court’s eight justices wrote an explosive letter alleging that the country’s top spy agencies had used coercive tactics to pressure justices into giving favorable decisions. Highlighting incidents of torture and abduction at the hands of these agencies, the justices say they were forced to hear a case against former Prime Minister Imran Khan even after they had decided it did not meet the legal provisions necessary to merit adjudication.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has since initiated a case concerning the matter, asking bar associations and high courts across the country to submit proposals to counter interference in judicial affairs. Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, who made his reputation as an opponent of the military’s extraconstitutional meddling, has promised to join the front line in defending the judiciary’s independence.

WHY WE WROTE THIS

At a pivotal moment for Pakistan, top justices are speaking out against military interference. Their courage – combined with a public still seething over what appeared to be brazenly rigged elections – could be a sign that the military’s grip is weakening.

The Pakistan army has historically relied on the courts to legitimize its intervention in the political sphere. In the past, the courts have justified direct military takeovers and helped topple the governments of political leaders who had fallen foul of the military high command. Experts note that intelligence agencies also meddled in the judicial process when Mr. Khan was prime minister, before he fell out of favor with the military.

The current standoff comes amid mounting evidence that Pakistan’s elections were rigged at the behest of the military establishment, and presents yet another challenge to the institution’s hegemonic influence at a time when it needs a pliant judiciary to keep Mr. Khan behind bars.

“The Islamabad High Court judges’ letter is significant in how it clearly lays out what we can call the ‘root of the root of the root’ of our issues,” says journalist Zebunnisa Burki, referring to the military establishment’s political puppet mastering. “Is it unprecedented or surprising? Not as far as the content goes. ... But what the letter has done is that it has turned whispers and closed-door discussions into an open complaint.”

Press Information Department/Reuters
Pakistan's President Arif Alvi (left) administers the oath to Justice Qazi Faez Isa (center right) as Chief Justice of Pakistan, in Islamabad, Sept. 17, 2023.

The signatories say that they and their families were targeted by operatives from the country’s premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, after the court questioned the admissibility of the Tyrian White case. This case sought to disqualify Mr. Khan from holding public office on the grounds that he had concealed the existence of his daughter, whose mother he was not married to, from his election documents. “One of the judges had to be admitted in a hospital due to high blood pressure caused by stress,” said the letter.

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They also alleged that surveillance equipment was found in the private lodgings of one serving justice, and that the relative of another was picked up and tortured. The justices wrote that it was imperative to “determine whether there exists a continuing policy on part of the executive branch of the state, implemented by intelligence operatives ... to intimidate judges, under threat of coercion or blackmail, to engineer judicial outcomes in politically consequential matters.”

No government or military leader has publicly addressed the claims made in the letter, though one intelligence official reportedly described them as “frivolous” and “out of context.”

According to Abdul Moiz Jaferii, a lawyer and political commentator, this document does not necessarily amount to an open rebellion. He points out that without a compliant judiciary, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz would not be leading the government today, since it came in second in the general election even with the support of the military via alleged vote-rigging. “The letter is more about the [military] establishment breaking the camel’s back by exerting more pressure than could be borne,” he says.

The judges’ defiance has nevertheless added to the pressure on the Pakistan army, whose reputation has suffered a great deal after the Feb. 8 election, when it was accused of manipulating the results to prevent candidates affiliated with Mr. Khan’s political party from forming the government.

A report released Tuesday by the Free and Fair Election Network further alleged that during by-elections held on April 21, poll-watchers were barred from observing the count in 19 polling stations. “The establishment has sought to get itself back on the front foot after many months of turbulence,” says Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute. “These allegations will galvanize those critics that have been accusing it of overreach.”

All eyes are now on the Supreme Court, which is expected to resume hearing the case on judicial interference at the end of this month. “Any wishy-washy middle ground position by the court, and we will be in more trouble than we started with,” says Mr. Jaferii.

But some argue that the judges’ defiance will have far-reaching consequences for the military, regardless of the case’s outcome. That is the view of Ms. Burki, the journalist, who says that the letter represents an indictment of the entire system.

“The genie cannot possibly be sealed back into the bottle once it has been typed out, printed, and now adjudicated, too,” she says. “The more things become public, the less fear there remains.”

Plastics treaty could have major benefit for Pacific


Eleisha Foon, 

RNZ Pacific Senior Journalist

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch sits in the north Pacific. Photo: The Ocean Cleanup

A United Nations global plastics treaty being negotiated this week has the potential to have a major positive impact on the Pacific region.

One scientist and his team say new data they've produced shows it is possible to achieve a goal of zero plastic pollution by 2040.

175 nations agreed in March 2022 to develop a legally binding agreement on plastic pollution by the end of this year, prompting a major step towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production, use and disposal.

It could potentially impact future production, consumption and recycling of plastics worldwide.

The Treaty is expected to be finalised in late 2024 in Busan, Korea.

Project Scientist at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory Neil Nathan, on the sidelines of the negotiations, hoped to show delegates what was possible through the findings.

He helped develop an interactive policy modeling tool alongside data scientsts and engineers from UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley, for delegates to use in negotiating the plastics treaty.

He told RNZ Pacific if a "strong treaty is negotiated" it was "actually possible to achieve the goal of zero plastic pollution by 2040".

"That lit a fire for us to make sure delgates and countries are aware of what the best science is saying on the matter."
Pacific plastic problem

The "great Pacific garbage patch" is on the doorstep of many Pacific Island nations.

It covers an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometres, which is three times the size of France.

A total of 1.8 trillion plastic pieces were estimated to be floating in the Pacific patch - that's 250 pieces of debris for every human in the world.

100,000 tonnes of plastic floats in the GPGP - that's over 740 Boeing 777s.
Health risk

Toxic additives, microplastics, and toxic emissions from production centres (often within marginalized communities) are impacting human health across the world, with research showing impacts on fertility, cancer risk, cardiovascular disease, lung health, and birth defects.

"This is another critical reason why we need to address production," Nathan said.

"We have to reduce our planet's dependence on plastic; otherwise our health will suffer for generations."


The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometres. Photo: The Ocean Cleanup

Plastics solution suggestions

"This is a global and generational problem that can be solved, according to our data projections on plastic elimination," Nathan said.

An international fee or premium on plastic polymers could alone close the finance gap needed to fund recycling and waste management infrastructure in developing countries, and especially in the Pacific region, he said.

Other key policy suggestions included a consumer tax on packaging for unrecycled plastics. Minimum recycled content mandates were also shown to be one of the most effective tools in the box, he said.

It found without any intervention, 'global mismanaged waste' produced between 2011 and 2050 would tower roughly 3.8 kilometres into the sky if placed over Manhattan in New York City - using plastic bottles to represent that waste.

With a 'low ambition treaty', this plastic-bottle tower would reach 3.2km into the sky.

However with a high ambition treaty, using all of the suggested policies, it would decrease to 1.8km, he said.

"No one policy is a silver bullet, but implementing the policies together would make a difference."

"We also cannot forget about production of plastic. We will never truly eliminate the problem without addressing, limiting and reducing virgin plastic production."

Nathan also urged the US to take a leading role in the treaty negotiations and be "more ambitious" in tackling plastics pollution.

 

"Liberalists vigorously oppose Christianity" - Georgian PM at conservative forum in Hungary

FASCIST WAR ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT

• JAMnews

• Tbilisi

Georgian and Hungarian authorities against the West

Georgian prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze participated in a conservative political conference in Hungary organized by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban on April 25.

In his speech, Kobakhidze echoed several anti-Western propaganda statements, similar to those often used by Russian representatives. Specifically, Irakli Kobakhidze stated that “so-called liberals” are fervently fighting against Christianity.

Viktor Orban, in turn, expressed his support for Irakli Kobakhidze.

“Irakli Kobakhidze, the prime minister of Georgia, is considered a great chess player in Georgian politics. In Georgia’s centuries-old history, chess is a geopolitical game. The ability to preserve national identity and culture in one’s country despite all difficulties is the skill of a true chess player, a grandmaster. Mr. prime minister, we thank you for being with us and wish you success,” said Viktor Orban.

Prime ministers of Georgia (left) and Hungary, Irakli Kobakhidze and Viktor Orban

What did the prime minister of Georgia say?

During his address, Kobakhidze primarily focused on making anti-Western, homophobic, and populist statements.

“Tо-so-called liberals vigorously oppose Christianity. The only difference between these so-called liberals and Bolsheviks is that the Bolsheviks used the hammer as their main weapon against religion [an allusion to the Soviet emblem of the hammer and sickle — JAMnews]. Meanwhile, these so-called liberals attack Christianity through propaganda, which is much more powerful than the hammer,” said Irakli Kobakhidze.

The prime minister also attempted to discredit ongoing protests in Tbilisi against the adoption of the “foreign agent” law.

“The Georgian Orthodox Church has become a special target of their attacks. A few days ago, Georgian so-called liberals even tried to change the concept of Georgia’s national identity. It consists of three words: homeland, language, faith. But they removed the notion of ‘faith’ and only spoke about homeland and language,” Kobakhidze stated.

Irakli Kobakhidze also emphasized the importance of “clear gender identity.”

“Just a couple of decades ago, no one could have imagined discussing this issue seriously. Liberals argue that a person should not have a stable gender identity and that everyone can change their gender at any stage of life. Even a child should have the right to choose their gender. Liberals find it unacceptable to use traditional gender terms such as woman and man, or mother and father.

“In essence, liberals are completely alien to values such as freedom and tolerance. Their continuation of this approach is their active campaign to liberalize drug policy. But it should be remembered that drugs kill a person’s thinking personality and make them useless beings,” Irakli Kobakhidze concluded.

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• “Georgia is irrevocably following the European path” – Meeting between Garibashvili and Orban
• Josep Borrell: “I urge political leaders in Georgia not to derail the country from its European path”

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During his speech at the same conservative conference in 2023, then-prime minister Irakli Garibashvili stated that “the Hungarian people are very lucky to have such a wise and far-sighted leader.”

Garibashvili spoke then about “forces opposing the truth, which are trying to achieve their goals through LGBT propaganda.”

According to Associated Press, Hungary is largely isolated in Europe due to its right-wing populist government. And now the authorities of this country are looking for countries or groups in other countries that would become their like-minded allies.

The “Conservative Political Action Conference” (CPAC), organized by the “American Conservative Union,” first took place in 1974. This annual event is held in different countries. Hungary has been hosting the conference for the third year.

The Hungarian government is considered the most pro-Russian and populist in the European Union.

The leaders of Hungary and Georgia do not hide their sympathies for each other’s policies. In October 2022, Viktor Orban called his Georgian colleague Irakli Garibashvili “a great politician among the few who have returned to true values.” And Garibashvili responded that “the government of Georgia has taken many examples from Hungary and is proud of its successful reforms.”