NAKBA II

Why are North American Synagogues selling Palestinians’ Real Estate in the West Bank?

By Yoav Litvin

July 20, 2024

Source: The New Arab





The marketing of ‘Anglo neighbourhoods’ in the occupied West Bank at real estate events in synagogues in Toronto, Los Angeles, New Jersey, and other locations wouldn’t be out of place 30 years ago in apartheid South Africa or Rhodesia. But perhaps that’s the point.

Branded ‘Anglo Neighbourhoods’, the marketing of illegal settlement real estate in the Israeli-occupied West Bank primarily target Zionist Jews from the US, Canada and the rest of the English-speaking West.

Corporate real estate investment by companies both within and outside Israel have long been integral to settlement policies, with new developments reinforcing this trend.

A Human Rights Watch report reveals how Israeli and international companies build, finance, service and market settlement communities. Settlement businesses thrive on Israel’s unlawful confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, supporting the growth and functioning of settlements.

These businesses, from real estate to construction, benefit from Israel’s discriminatory policies in planning, zoning, land allocation and access to natural resources, financial incentives, utilities and infrastructure.

These policies displace Palestinians and disadvantage them compared to settlers. Consequently, the Palestinian economy suffers, forcing many Palestinians to work in settlements; a dependency used to justify settlement businesses.

But the sale of real estate in stolen land, while outrageous, is not surprising. It is just a recent tactic in a longstanding systematic problem that is now escalating beyond the point of no-return.

The establishment and expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem are widely recognised as violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

These initiatives accurately encapsulate the function of Zionism in Palestine as a settler colonialist, capitalist and white supremacist movement which opportunistically and antisemitically coopts Judaism to justify its criminal practices of apartheid and genocide against Indigenous Palestinians.

Its strategy, tactics, and goals focus on land grabs and demographic dominance, utilising both official state-sponsored and unofficial methods, such as corporate real estate.
Official colonisation of Palestine

Contrary to the Zionist movement’s duplicitous claims that Palestine was largely uninhabited, Zionist leaders have recognised the necessity of assuming control over Indigenous Palestinian land to realise their exclusivist goals.

For this purpose, they’ve applied a variety of tactics orchestrated by official and unofficial state actors, ranging from peaceful appropriation within questionable legal confines to genocidal aggression.

Numerous official acts of genocide have been executed through deliberate warfare. A defining genocidal episode in Israel’s establishment, during the Palestinian Nakba, was Plan Dalet, a military initiative orchestrated by the Haganah under David Ben-Gurion’s leadership.

Further genocidal bouts of “mowing the lawn,” have demonstrated the Zionist settler colonial dynamic since Israel’s establishment to this day.

The current Israeli government has enhanced its military aggression and prioritised illegal settlement construction, bolstered by the presence of several far-right ministers residing in illegal West Bank settlements.

Indeed, since the departure of former Defense Minister Benny Gantz from Israel’s emergency war cabinet amid disagreements over the Gaza war strategy and the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, Netanyahu has increasingly leaned on far-right factions within his coalition government.

In April 2024, the government expanded its control over West Bank land, setting the stage for unprecedented levels of settlement construction. At present, Israel’s Supreme Planning Council is poised to discuss proposals for 6,016 new housing units in West Bank settlements, underscoring the ongoing expansionist policies of the Netanyahu administration.

Notably, annexation and the acquisition of territory through military conquest are prohibited under international law, including the founding principles of the UN Charter.

Bezalel Smotrich, who resides in the illegal settlement of Kedumim, personifies Israel’s genocide-for-land-grab policies. Holding dual roles as Finance Minister and minister within the Defense Ministry overseeing Civil Administration, Smotrich has called for genocide and expulsion of Palestinian people both in Gaza and the West Bank.

In response to international pressures and increased European recognition of a Palestinian state, Smotrich has pursued legal recognition for settler outposts, announcing plans to advance thousands of housing units. Further, Smotrich has spoken in favour of illegally annexing the entirety of the West Bank under the Hebraized name “Judea and Samaria.”

In June, the Israeli military quietly transferred significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants under Smotrich. He and his allies have long viewed control of the Civil Administration, or substantial portions of it, as a means to extend Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.

Their ultimate goal is direct control by the central government and its ministries. This transfer methodology diminishes the likelihood of legal checks on settlement expansion and development. By consolidating power, they aim to facilitate and accelerate settlement growth, thereby entrenching Israeli presence and diminishing Palestinian claims.

Unofficial colonisation in the West Bank

Genocidal actions not directly affiliated with the state of Israel have assisted in the circumvention of state accountability before international bodies.

These include settler vigilante rampages often emboldened by military protection and legal cover. Claiming a fictional divine sanction, radical far-right settlers seize hilltops on Palestinian land, forcibly evicting residents to establish illegal outposts. These outposts are subsequently fortified by the Israeli military and eventually legitimised by Israel.

This dynamic has played out in the occupied West Bank since 1967, spanning administrations led by both Labor “liberal” Zionists and right-wing “revisionist” governments alike.

In quasi-legalistic efforts to appropriate Palestinian land, unofficial state organisations antisemitically conflate Zionism and Judaism, appealing to sympathetic Jewish and Christian Zionists globally.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has played a pivotal role since its establishment in 1901 as a key land appropriation agency of the Zionist movement. The JNF’s efforts have included land acquisition, settlement development and influencing land policy.

Since its foundation, it has employed various methods to prevent the return of land to its original owners, including land title acquisition, development of Jewish-only colonies, discriminatory practices, forestation, legal frameworks, political influence, land confiscation, settlement construction and legal actions.

These strategies, often cloaked under the guise of ‘environmental sustainability,’ perpetuate the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians, preventing their return to their land.

The JNF has also served a propaganda function by Hebraizing and renaming Palestinian lands, effectively erasing Palestinian heritage. For instance, the JNF named a forest after Coretta Scott King.

This act sought to appropriate American and Christian Zionist culture and belief, fostering a notion of a shared struggle between African Americans and Jewish people, promoting the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, while undermining the natural alliance between Black people and Palestinians against white supremacy and rebranding white settler colonialism as a popular, victorious struggle of victims against their oppressors.

Nowadays, and in line with the government’s shamelessness and unlimited impunity, a large section of the JNF’s function has been superseded by brazen private capitalist companies.

Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and destruction of infrastructure serves to bolster Zionist capitalist fantasies of a real estate bonanza. In March, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who may return to the White House in January, praised the “very valuable potential of Gaza’s waterfront property.”

Whether Kushner’s statement was a slip or wishful thinking, an Israeli real estate firm based in the occupied West Bank had already developed building plans dating back to December 2023, only three months into the Gaza genocide, with several of its employees directly participating in the aggression. It is unclear whether Israel’s alleged use of depleted uranium bombs, or threats of nuclear war will affect sales at future real estate marketing events.

With impunity from the white supremacist West and especially the US, Zionist praxis of genocide-for-land-grab can replicate without restraint in Gaza, the West Bank, in historic Palestine, South Lebanon and even the Sinai peninsula.

Unless the Zionist regime, including its corporate proxies, is held accountable with its crimes ended and impunity challenged and abolished, Israel’s malign process will continue indefinitely, destroying the lives and futures of countless Indigenous Palestinian people and endangering the wider Middle East and global communities, including the growing number of conscientious Jewish people who support Palestinian rights and do not identify with Israel and Zionism.

Israeli Soldiers Tell Story of Savage Cruelty In Gaza – One Given Blessing By The West

Women and children are being targeted intentionally, say Israeli whistleblowers. From ground troops to commanders, the rules of war have been shredded.

By Jonathan Cook

July 20, 2024

Source: Middle East Eye


Israeli soldiers seen near the Gaza fence, southern Israel, January 7, 2024. 

(Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)


They just keep coming. On the weekend, Israel launched another devastating air strike on Gaza, killing at least 90 Palestinians and wounding hundreds more, including women, children and rescue workers.

Once again, Israel targeted refugees displaced by its earlier bombs, turning an area it had formally declared a “safe zone” into a killing field.

And once more, western powers shrugged their shoulders. They were too busy accusing Russia of war crimes to have time to worry about the far worse war crimes being inflicted on Gaza by their Israeli ally – with weapons they supplied.

The atrocity committed at al-Mawasi camp, packed with 80,000 civilians, had the usual Israeli cover story – one rolled out to reassure western publics that their leaders are not the utter hypocrites they appear to be for supporting what the World Court has described as a “plausible genocide”.

Israel said it was trying to hit two Hamas leaders – one of them Mohammed Deif, head of the group’s military wing – although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed uncertain as to whether the strike was successful.

No one in the western media appeared to wonder why the pair preferred to make themselves a target in an overcrowded, makeshift refugee camp, where they were at huge risk of being betrayed by an Israeli informant, rather than sheltering in Hamas’s extensive tunnel network.

Or why Israel deemed it necessary to fire a multitude of massive bombs and missiles to take out two individuals. Is that Israel’s new, expansive redefinition of a “targeted assassination”?

Or why its pilots and drone operators continued the strikes to hit emergency rescue crews dealing with the initial destruction. Was there intelligence that Deif was not just hiding in the camp, but had hung around to dig out survivors, too?

Or how killing and maiming hundreds of civilians in an attempt to hit two Hamas fighters could ever possibly satisfy the most basic principles of international law. “Proportion” and “distinction” require armies to weigh the military advantage of an attack against the expected toll on civilian life.
Biblical vengeance

But Israel has torn up the rulebook on war. According to sources within the Israeli military, it now considers it acceptable to kill more than 100 Palestinian civilians in the pursuit of a single Hamas commander – a commander, let us note, who will simply be replaced the moment he is dead.

Even if the two Hamas leaders were assassinated, Israel could not have been in any doubt that it was perpetrating a war crime. But it has learned that, the more routine its war crimes become, the less coverage they receive – and the less outrage they provoke.

In recent days, Israel has struck several United Nations schools serving as shelters, killing dozens more Palestinians. On Tuesday, another strike in the “safe zone” of al-Mawasi killed 17.

According to the UN refugee agency, Unrwa, more than 70 percent of its schools – almost all of them serving as refugee shelters – have been bombed.

Last week, western doctors who had volunteered in Gaza said Israel was packing its weapons with shrapnel to maximise injuries to those caught in the blast radius. Children, because of their smaller bodies, were being left with much more severe wounds.

Aid agencies cannot properly treat the wounded, because Israel has been blocking the entry of medical supplies into Gaza. Committing war crimes, if western publics have not worked it out by now, is the very point of the “military operation” Israel launched in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s one-day attack on 7 October.

That is why there are more than 38,800 known deaths from Israel’s 10-month assault – and likely at least four times that number unrecorded, according to leading researchers writing in the Lancet medical journal this month.

That is why it will take at least 15 years to clear the rubble strewn across Gaza by Israeli bombs, according to the UN, and as much as 80 years – and $50bn – to rebuild homes for the remnants of the enclave’s 2.3 million people still alive at the end.

Israel’s twin goals have been biblical vengeance and the elimination of Gaza – a genocidal rampage to drive the terrified population out, ideally into neighbouring Egypt.
Shoot-everyone policy

If that was not clear enough already, six Israeli soldiers recently stepped forward to speak out about what they had witnessed while serving in Gaza – a story the western media has entirely failed to report.

Their testimonies, published by the Israel-based publication 972 last week, confirm what Palestinians have been saying for months.

Commanders have authorised them to open fire on Palestinians at will. Anyone entering an area the Israeli military is treating as a “no-go zone” is shot on sight, whether man, woman or child.

Back in March, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz warned that the Israeli military had created just such “kill zones”, where anyone entering was executed without warning.

After months of an Israeli aid blockade that has created a man-made famine, Israel’s military has turned the people of Gaza’s ever-more frantic search for food into a game of Russian roulette.

This perhaps explains, in part, why so many Palestinians are unaccounted for – Save the Children estimates some 21,000 children are missing. The soldiers quoted in 972 say the victims of their shoot-everyone policy are bulldozed out of view along routes where international aid convoys pass.

A reserve soldier, identified only as S, said a Caterpillar bulldozer “clears the area of corpses, buries them under the rubble, and flips [them] aside so that the convoys don’t see it – [so that] images of people in advanced stages of decay don’t come out”. The soldier also noted: “The whole area [of Gaza where the army operates] was full of bodies… There is a horrific smell of death.”

Several of the soldiers reported that stray cats and dogs, denied food and water for months just like Gaza’s population, feed on the dead bodies.

The Israeli military has repeatedly refused to publish its open-fire regulations since it was first challenged to do so in the Israeli courts in the 1980s.

A soldier named B told 972 that the Israeli army enjoyed “total freedom of action”, with soldiers expected to shoot directly at any Palestinian approaching their positions, rather than a warning shot in the air: “It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.”

When civilians were ordered to evacuate from a school serving as a shelter in Gaza City, B added, some mistakenly exited right towards the soldiers, rather than to the left. That included children. “Everyone who went to the right was killed – 15 to 20 people. There was a pile of bodies.”

According to B, any Palestinian in Gaza can inadvertently find themselves a target: “It is forbidden to walk around, and everyone who is outside is suspicious. If we see someone in a window looking at us, he is a suspect. You shoot.”
‘Like a computer game’

Drawing on military practices familiar in the occupied West Bank too, the Israeli army encourages its soldiers to shoot even when no one is engaging them. These random, indiscriminate eruptions of fire are known as “demonstrating presence” – or more accurately, terrorising and endangering the civilian population.

In other instances, soldiers open fire just to let off steam, have fun, or, as one soldier put it, “experience the event” of being in Gaza.

Yuval Green, a 26-year-old reservist from Jerusalem, the only soldier prepared to be named, observed: “People were shooting just to relieve the boredom.”

Another soldier, M, similarly noted that “the shooting is very unrestricted, like crazy” – and not just from small arms. Troops use machine guns, tanks and mortar rounds in a similar, unwarranted frenzy.

A, an officer in the army’s operations directorate, pointed out that this mood of utter recklessness extended all the way up the chain of command.

Although the destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and international aid organisations requires authorisation from a senior officer, in practice, such operations are almost always approved, A said: “I can count on one hand the cases where we were told not to shoot. Even with sensitive things like schools, [approval] feels like only a formality … No one will shed a tear if we flatten a house when there was no need, or if we shoot someone who we didn’t have to.”

Commenting on the mood in the operations room, A said destroying buildings often “felt like a computer game”. In addition, A cast doubt on Israel’s claim that Hamas fighters comprised a high proportion of Gaza’s death toll. Anyone caught in Israel’s “kill zones” or targeted by a bored soldier was counted as a “terrorist”.
Burning homes

The soldiers also reported that their commanders destroyed homes not because they were suspected of serving as bases for Hamas fighters, but purely out of an urge for revenge against the entire population.

Their testimonies confirm an earlier Haaretz report that the army was implementing a policy of torching Palestinian homes after they served their purpose as temporary locations for soldiers. Green said the principle was: “If you move [on], you have to burn down the house.” According to B, his company “burned hundreds of houses”.

A policy of wanton, vengeful destruction is similarly implemented – on a far larger scale – by Israel’s fighter pilots and drone operators, explaining why at least two-thirds of Gaza’s housing stock has been left in ruins.

There are other deceptions too. One of the stated reasons for Israel being in Gaza is to “bring back the hostages” – many dozens of Israelis who who were dragged into Gaza on 7 October. That message, however, has apparently not reached the Israeli military.

Green noted that, despite a blunderbuss operation last month that killed more than 270 Palestinians to rescue four Israeli hostages, the army is actually deeply indifferent to their fate.

He said he heard other soldiers stating: “The hostages are dead, they don’t stand a chance, they have to be abandoned.”

Back in December, Israeli troops shot dead three hostages waving white flags. Reckless shooting into buildings poses the same threat to the lives of hostages as it does to Palestinian fighters and civilians.

Such indifference might also explain why the Israeli political and military leadership has been willing to conduct such a comprehensive bombing of buildings and tunnels in Gaza, risking the lives of the hostages as much as Palestinian civilians.
Culture of violence

The story told by these soldiers in 972 should not surprise anyone – apart from those still desperately clinging to fairytales about Israel’s “most moral army in the world”.

In fact, an investigation by CNN on the weekend found that Israeli commanders identified by US officials as committing particularly heinous war crimes in the occupied West Bank over the past decade have been promoted to senior positions in the Israeli military. Their job includes training ground troops in Gaza and overseeing operations there.

A whistleblower from the Netzah Yehuda battalion who spoke to CNN said the commanders, drawn from Israel’s religious extremist ultra-Orthodox sector, stoked a culture of violence towards Palestinians, including vigilante-style attacks.

As the CNN investigation indicates, the wanton death and destruction in Gaza is very much a feature, not a bug.

For decades, the Israeli military has been implementing its inhumane policies towards Palestinians not just in the tiny enclave, but across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem too.

Israel has been suffocating Gaza with a siege for 17 years. And since 1967, it has been suffocating the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem with illegal settlements – many of them home to violent Jewish militias – to drive out the Palestinian population.

What is new is the intensity and scale of the death and destruction Israel has been allowed to inflict since 7 October. The gloves have come off, with the West’s approval.

Israel’s agenda – of leaving historic Palestine empty of Palestinians – has been advanced from an ultimate, distant goal to an urgent, immediate one.
Snake-like politicians

Nonetheless, Israel’s much longer history of violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is about to come sharply into focus, despite the best efforts of Israel to keep our attention fixed on a Hamas “terrorism” threat.

The International Court of Justice in the Hague, often referred to as the World Court, is considering two cases against Israel. Best known is the one launched in January, putting Israel on trial for genocide.

But on Friday, the World Court is due to issue a ruling on an older case – one that predates 7 October. It will pronounce on whether Israel has broken international law by making the occupation of Palestine permanent.

While stopping the genocide in Gaza is more pressing, a ruling from the court recognising the illegal nature of Israel’s rule over Palestinians is equally important. It would give legal backing to what should be obvious: that a supposedly temporary military occupation long ago mutated into a permanent process of violent ethnic cleansing.

Such a ruling would provide the context for understanding what Palestinians have been truly up against, while western capitals and western media have gaslit their publics year after year, decade after decade.

This week, Oxfam accused the new British government under Keir Starmer of “aiding and abetting” Israel’s war crimes by calling for a ceasefire from one side of its mouth while actively supplying Israel with weapons to continue the slaughter. The Labour government is also dragging its feet on restoring funding to Unrwa, best placed to address the famine in Gaza.

At Washington’s behest, Labour is seeking to block efforts by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes. And there are still no signs that Starmer has any plans to recognise Palestine as a state, thus putting a UK marker down against Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme.

Sadly, Starmer is typical of the West’s snake-like politicians: flaunting his outrage at Russia’s “depraved” attacks on children in Ukraine, while keeping silent on the even more depraved bombing and starvation of Gaza’s children.

He vows that his support for Ukrainians “won’t falter”. But his support for Palestinians in Gaza facing a genocide never even started.

The Palestinians of Gaza – and the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem – are not just up against a law-breaking, savage Israeli military. They are being betrayed each day afresh by a West that gives such barbarity its blessing.




Jonathan Cook
British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His books are Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto, 2006); Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto, 2008); and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed, 2008).

 

CODEPINK’s Palestinian-American Staff Member ARRESTED on False Accusation of Assault by Member of Congress

by Dissident Voice Communications / July 16th, 2024

Milwaukee, WI – In an incident of political thuggery and intimidation at the RNC, CODEPINK’s Palestinian campaign organizer, Nour Jaghama, has been unjustly arrested by police on accusation of assaulting a member of Congress.

While peacefully waiting in line to enter the event, Nour, a visibly Palestinian woman, was intentionally bumped into by a bald, white member of Congress while he tried to shove past her. Despite not reacting to this, Nour was falsely accused of “alleged” assault by a Texas State police officer on the scene and we are told she will be taken to a Milwaukee Police Department for arrest. Notably, two other CODEPINK staff members ahead of her in line passed through without any issues, raising concerns of racial profiling.

Nour holding a Peace Now sign at the March On The RNC rally on Monday, July 15 in Milwaukee, WI.

It is a microcosm of the misogyny at the RNC that the more gentle non-violent woman, the only Palestinian in line with our group is assaulted and then even when she did not respond she was the one who was arrested.Facebook

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Dissident Voice Communications (DVC) is a non-profit meta-company in the public interest (well, depends on which public), we aim to challenge the hegemony of Big Media by communicating... all sorts of stuff. Read other articles by Dissident Voice Communications.

 

What US Seeks is to Maximize Its Exploitation of Taiwan’s Interests

Trump makes it clear

by Global Times / July 18th, 2024

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities of Taiwan should be trembling now. Former US president Donald Trump, who is the Republican Party’s official 2024 presidential nominee, accused Taiwan of stealing US chip business and claimed that Taiwan “should pay” for US protection, according to Bloomberg on Tuesday.

Trump’s words reflect the strong intention of many US politicians who attempt to replenish the US economy by exploiting the Taiwan island. We wonder how the DPP authorities, who rely on the US to seek “independence,” feel when they heard Trump’s comment. They must be feeling on edge, terrified.

In fact, Taiwan has been paying “protection fees” to the US, a large portion of which is spent on purchasing expensive American weapons that Taiwan can’t bargain for. The US has sold arms to Taiwan over 100 times in the past more than four decades. Statistics indicate that the total arms sales from the US to the Taiwan island have surpassed $70 billion up to now. This $70 billion could have been utilized to improve the livelihoods of the people on the island and boost the economy, but instead it was used to procure American weapons and pay “pro-tection fees” to the US. “US-Taiwan collusion” not only seriously impedes Taiwan’s economic development and harms the interests of people on the island, but also creates instability in the Taiwan Straits and escalates tensions.

Even so, US politicians, like Trump, are far from being satisfied. Trump mentioned in his in-terview with Bloomberg that the US is no different from “an insurance company” and Taiwan doesn’t give the US anything.

Trump and his likes want to exploit Taiwan for more “protection fees,” but once a conflict occurs across the Taiwan Straits, will the US really defend Taiwan because of the “protection fees” paid by Taiwan?

The US has maintained strategic ambiguity when it comes to defending Taiwan. There is currently no formal agreement requiring the US to send troops to defend Taiwan once there is a conflict in the Taiwan Straits. It would be a strategic gamble by the US to break through this framework and engage in war with another major power. The so-called US’ commitment to Taiwan is not even an insurance policy.

Xin Qiang, director of the Taiwan Studies Center at Fudan University, told the Global Times that “an ‘insurance company’ must be responsible for repayment as long as the conditions are met. But the so-called protection of Taiwan by the US has no legal binding force, and it is entirely based on the interests of the US, not for the benefit of Taiwan.” The “protection” the DPP authorities are seeking from the US with enormous money is an utterly expensive joke, and no matter how much money Taiwan spends, it will be a waste.

As those secessionists try to seek ‘Taiwan independence’ backed by the US, the island will have to pay further “protection fees” to satisfy the desire of the US if requests, Yuan Zheng, deputy director and a senior fellow of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times. Taiwan has either the room nor the ability for bargaining if it continues to rely on the US to seek “independence.”

Trump’s remarks reflect the shameless but true thoughts of many US politicians. The US wants to maximize its exploitation of the Taiwan island’s interests, use it to contain the mainland geopolitically, and gain economic benefits as much as possible. With the ambiguous “pro-tection” promises, the US tightly controls the DPP authorities and exploits endlessly.

The DPP authorities are obsessed with the “protection” of the US. If the DPP authorities regard the wealth that Taiwan has accumulated for decades as a tribute to the US, and totally believe the US’ empty promises, it is tantamount to drinking poison to quench its thirst.

We must remind the DPP authorities not to dream of achieving “Taiwan independence” by relying on the US. When the time comes for a showdown, the US will not take huge risks to “defend Taiwan.” Just as Trump said in the interview: Why are we [the US] doing this?

 

The Pacific Lands and Seas Are Neither Forbidden nor Forgotten

by Vijay Prashad / July 18th, 2024

Mahiriki Tangaroa (Kūki ’Airani), Blessed Again by the Gods (Spring), 2015.

Since May, a powerful struggle has rocked Kanaky (New Caledonia), an archipelago located in the Pacific, roughly 1,500 kilometres east of Australia. The island, one of five overseas territories in the Asia-Pacific ruled by France, has been under French colonial rule since 1853. The indigenous Kanak people initiated this cycle of protests after the French government of Emmanuel Macron extended voting rights in provincial elections to thousands of French settlers in the islands. The unrest led Macron to suspend the new rules while subjecting islanders to severe repression. In recent months, the French government has imposed a state of emergency and curfew on the islands and deployed thousands of French troops, which Macron says will remain in New Caledonia for ‘as long as necessary’. Over a thousand protesters have been arrested by French authorities, including Kanak independence activists such as Christian Tein, the leader of the Coordination Cell for Field Actions (Cellule de coordination des actions de terrain, or CCAT), some of them sent to France to face trial. The charges against Tein and others, such as for organised crime, would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

The reason France has cracked down so severely on the protests in New Caledonia is that the old imperial country uses its colonies not only to exploit its resources (New Caledonia holds the world’s fifth largest nickel reserves), but also to extend its political reach across the world – in this case, to have a military footprint in China’s vicinity. This story is far from new: between 1966 and 1996, for instance, France used islands in the southern Pacific for nuclear tests. One of these tests, Operation Centaure (July 1974), impacted all 110,000 residents on the Mururoa atoll of French Polynesia. The struggle of the indigenous Kanak peoples of New Caledonia is not only about freedom from colonialism, but also about the terrible military violence inflicted upon these lands and waters by the Global North. The violence that ran from 1966 to 1996 mirrors the disregard that the French still feel for the islanders, treating them as nothing more than detritus, as if they had been shipwrecked on these lands.

In the backdrop of the current unrest in New Caledonia is the Global North’s growing militarisation of the Pacific, led by the United States. Currently, 25,000 military personnel from 29 countries are conducting Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), a military exercise that runs from Hawai’i to the edge of the Asian mainland. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research worked with an array of organisations – a number of them from the Pacific and Indian Oceans – to draft red alert no. 18 on this dangerous development. Their names are listed below.

They Are Making the Waters of the Pacific Dangerous

What is RIMPAC?

The US and its allies have held Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises since 1971. The initial partners of this military project were Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which are also the original members of the Five Eyes (now Fourteen Eyes) intelligence network built to share information and conduct joint surveillance exercises. They are also the major Anglophone countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO, set up in 1949) and are the members of the Australia-New Zealand-US strategy treaty ANZUS, signed in 1951. RIMPAC has grown to be a major biennial military exercise that has drawn in a number of countries with various forms of allegiance to the Global North (Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Tonga).

RIMPAC 2024 began on 28 June and runs through 2 August. It is being held in Hawai’i, which is an illegally occupied territory of the United States. The Hawai’ian independence movement has a history of resisting RIMPAC, which is understood to be part of the US occupation of sovereign Hawai’ian land. The exercise includes over 150 aircraft, 40 surface ships, three submarines, 14 national land forces, and other military equipment from 29 countries, though the bulk of the fleet is from the United States. The goal of the exercise is ‘interoperability’, which effectively means integrating the military (largely naval) forces of other countries with that of the United States. The main command and control for the exercise is managed by the US, which is the heart and soul of RIMPAC.

Fatu Feu’u (Samoa), Mata Sogia, 2009.

Why is RIMPAC so dangerous?

RIMPAC-related documents and official statements indicate that the exercises allow these navies to train ‘for a wide range of potential operations across the globe’. However, it is clear from both US strategic documents and the behaviour of the US officials who run RIMPAC that the centre of focus is China. Strategic documents also make it clear that the US sees China as a major threat, even as the main threat, to US domination and believes that it must be contained.

This containment has come through the trade war against China, but more pointedly through a web of military manoeuvres by the United States. This includes establishing more US military bases in territories and countries surrounding China; using US and allied military vessels to provoke China through freedom of navigation exercises; threatening to position US short-range nuclear missiles in countries and territories allied with the US, including Taiwan; extending the airfield in Darwin, Australia, to position US aircraft with nuclear missiles; enhancing military cooperation with US allies in East Asia with language that shows precisely that the target is to intimidate China; and holding RIMPAC exercises, particularly over the past few years. Though China was invited to participate in RIMPAC 2014 and RIMPAC 2016, when the tension levels were not so high, it has been disinvited since RIMPAC 2018.

Though RIMPAC documents suggest that the military exercise is being conducted for humanitarian purposes, this is a Trojan Horse. This was exemplified, for instance, at RIMPAC 2000, when the militaries conducted the Strong Angel international humanitarian response training exercise. In 2013, the United States and the Philippines cooperated in providing humanitarian assistance after the devastating Typhoon Haiyan. Shortly after that cooperation, the US and the Philippines signed the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (2014), which allows the US to access bases of the Philippine military to maintain its weapons depots and troops. In other words, the humanitarian operations opened the door to deeper military cooperation.

RIMPAC is a live-fire military exercise. The most spectacular part of the exercise is called Sinking Exercise (SINKEX), a drill that sinks decommissioned warships off the coast of Hawai’i. RIMPAC 2024’s target ship will be the decommissioned USS Tarawa, a 40,000-tonne amphibious assault vessel that was one of the largest during its service period. There is no environmental impact survey of the regular sinking of these ships into waters close to island nations, nor is there any understanding of the environmental impact of hosting these vast military exercises not only in the Pacific but elsewhere in the world.

RIMPAC is part of the New Cold War against China that the US imposes on the region. It is designed to provoke conflict. This makes RIMPAC a very dangerous exercise.

Kelcy Taratoa (Aotearoa), Episode 0010 from the series Who Am I? Episodes, 2004.

What is Israel’s role in RIMPAC?

Israel, which is not a country with a shoreline on the Pacific Ocean, first participated in RIMPAC 2018, and then again in RIMPAC 2022 and RIMPAC 2024. Although Israel does not have aircraft or ships in the military exercise, it is nonetheless participating in its ‘interoperability’ component, which includes establishing integrated command and control as well as collaborating in the intelligence and logistical part of the exercise. Israel is participating in RIMPAC 2024 at the same time that it is waging a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Though several of the observer states in RIMPAC 2024 (such as Chile and Colombia) have been forthright in their condemnation of the genocide, they continue to participate alongside Israel’s military in RIMPAC 2024. There has been no public indication of their hesitation about Israel’s involvement in these dangerous joint military exercises.

Israel is a settler-colonial country that continues its murderous apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people. Across the Pacific, indigenous communities from Aotearoa (New Zealand) to Hawai’i have led the protests against RIMPAC over the course of the past 50 years, saying that these exercises are held on stolen ground and waters, that they disregard the negative impact on native communities upon whose land and waters live-fire exercises are held (including areas where atmospheric nuclear testing was previously conducted), and that they contribute to the climate disaster that lifts the waters and threatens the existence of the island communities. Though Israel’s participation is unsurprising, the problem is not merely its involvement in RIMPAC, but the existence of RIMPAC itself. Israel is an apartheid state that is conducting a genocide, and RIMPAC is a colonial project that threatens an annihilationist war against the peoples of the Pacific and China.

Ralph Ako (Solomon Islands), Toto Isu, 2015.

Te Kuaka (Aotearoa)
Red Ant (Australia)
Workers Party of Bangladesh (Bangladesh)
Coordinadora por Palestina (Chile)
Judíxs Antisionistas contra la Ocupación y el Apartheid (Chile)
Partido Comunes (Colombia)
Congreso de los Pueblos (Colombia)
Coordinación Política y Social, Marcha Patriótica (Colombia)
Partido Socialista de Timor (Timor Leste)
Hui Aloha ʻĀina (Hawai’i)
Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation (India)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Demokratik Kerakyatan (Indonesia)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Militan (Indonesia)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Perkebunan Patriotik (Indonesia)
Pusat Perjuangan Mahasiswa untuk Pembebasan Nasional (Indonesia)
Solidaritas.net (Indonesia)
Gegar Amerika (Malaysia)
Parti Sosialis Malaysia (Malaysia)
No Cold War
Awami Workers Party (Pakistan)
Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (Pakistan)
Mazdoor Kissan Party (Pakistan)
Partido Manggagawa (Philippines)
Partido Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (Philippines)
The International Strategy Center (Republic of Korea)
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (Sri Lanka)
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist)
CODEPINK: Women for Peace (United States)
Nodutdol (United States)
Party for Socialism and Liberation (United States)

When the political protests began in New Caledonia in May, I hastened to find a book of poems by Kanak independence leader Déwé Gorodé (1949–2022) called Under the Ashes of the Conch Shells (Sous les cendres des conques, 1974). In this book, written the same year that Gorodé joined the Marxist political group Red Scarves (Foulards rouges), she wrote the poem ‘Forbidden Zone’ (Zone interdite), which concludes:

Reao Vahitahi Nukutavake
Pinaki Tematangi Vanavana
Tureia Maria Marutea
Mangareva MORUROA FANGATAUFA
Forbidden zone
somewhere in
so-called ‘French’ Polynesia.

These are the names of islands that had already been impacted by the French nuclear bomb tests. There are no punctuation marks between the names, which indicates two things: first, that the end of an island or a country does not mark the end of nuclear contamination, and second, that the waters that lap against the islands do not divide the people who live across vast stretches of ocean, but unite them against imperialism. This impulse drove Gorodé to found Group 1878 (named for the Kanak rebellion of that year) and then the Kanak Liberation Party (Parti de libération kanak, or PALIKA) in 1976, which evolved out of Group 1878. The authorities imprisoned Gorodé repeatedly from 1974 to 1977 for her leadership in PALIKA’s struggle for independence from France.

During her time in prison, Gorodé built the Group of Exploited Kanak Women in Struggle (Groupe de femmes Kanak exploitées en lutte) with Susanna Ounei. When these two women left prison, they helped found the Kanak National Liberation and Socialist Front (Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste) in 1984. Through concerted struggle, Gorodé was elected the vice president of New Caledonia in 2001.

Stéphane Foucaud (New Caledonia), MAOW! (2023).

In 1985, thirteen countries of the south Pacific signed the Treaty of Rarotonga, which established a nuclear-free zone from the east coast of Australia to the west coast of South America. As French colonies, neither New Caledonia nor French Polynesia signed it, but others did, including the Solomon Islands and Kūki ‘Airani (Cook Islands). Gorodé is now dead, and US nuclear weapons are poised to enter northern Australia in violation of the treaty. But the struggle does not die away.

Roads are still blocked. Hearts are still opened.Facebook

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

 

Remembering a Genocide in the Midst of Another

by Maryam Sakeenah / July 18th, 2024

This month on 11th July 2024, the UN commemorated the Srebrenica Genocide of 1995 with official statements and speeches by dignitaries, memorial services, moments of silence and designating a day for remembering what has been called the greatest atrocity in modern Europe.

What is ironic, however, is the fact that the world comes together to remember Srebrenica in the midst of another harrowing genocide — one that is live-streamed straight into every waking moment, all over the world. Ten months into the nightmarish bloodbath in Gaza that has cost nearly 40,000 lives, world leaders are still haranguing over the events of October 7, still unsure and half-hearted towards the urgent and pressing need to enforce a cease-fire to end an unimaginably horrific war, most victims of which have been children.

Alija Izetbegovich, the iconic Muslim leader of Bosnia during the Bosnian war and Srebrenica massacre, had once said, “Do not forget this genocide. If you forget it, another will happen…” The words bear premonition as they echo the age-old cliche that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Here we stand, remembering a genocide while having unleashed another one thirty years on, with the bloody tide showing no signs of abating — as if human lives were like the flies that the wanton boys kill for sport.

To learn the right lessons from Srebrenica, one must revisit in 1992, the Muslim majority republic of Bosnia immediately after it seceded from Communist Yugoslavia as a result of a popular referendum. Bosnia’s Orthodox Christian Serb minority, however, refused to accept this and began a rebellion. Given how well-armed Serbia was as an ally of powerful erstwhile Communist Russia, what started as ethno-religious strife quickly flared up into a war against which Bosnia was nearly defenceless. Several appeals for help by Alija Izetbegovic resulted in no more than humanitarian assistance from the Arab-Muslim world. Izetbegovic feared a genocide, given the violence displayed by the Serb forces under Ratko Mladic, known as the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’. Mladic, as the commander of the army of Republika Sprska (the self declared Serb autonomous zone inside Bosnia), had earlier threatened: “You Muslims cannot defend yourselves if a civil war breaks out.”

Bosnia’s countless appeals ultimately led to the arrival of UN peacekeeping forces in the area. Not surprisingly, the UN forces proved utterly ineffectual as the Serb army carried on its atrocities with over 100,000 Muslim Bosniaks killed.

Serb violence against the Bosniaks was neither isolated from context nor sudden. It climaxed after centuries of endemic structural violence built on nationalist Islamophobic narratives rife in the region.  When Mladic began the genocidal operation in Srebrenica, he said on camera while addressing his troops, “This is the time to take revenge on the Turkish rabble and return Srebrenica to the Serbs…” The reference to Bosniaks as “Turks” reeks of ethnocentric hate deeply embedded in a prejudicial understanding of history. Serbia had been under Ottoman rule for three centuries, and the reference to ethnic Bosniak Muslims as “Turks” aims to build on the Islamophobic nationalist narrative of victimhood by Turkish-Muslim rulers centuries ago.

As the Bosnian war raged on from 1992 to 1995 with terrible atrocities including the blockade of Sarajevo which prevented fuel, food and water to the area, rapes and mass murders, UN peacekeepers from Netherlands were unable to halt the violence. They were outgunned and outnumbered, and could neither expect the scale of the violence nor were they equipped or even really willing to take decisive action against it. As late as in 2022, twenty-seven years after the Srebrenica genocide, the Dutch government acknowledged partial complicity of its peacekeepers in Bosnia and offered “apology for not taking effective action to stop the “Srebrenica genocide” — too little, too late.

During the war, Srebrenica in Eastern Bosnia had been designated as a “safe zone” where hundreds of thousands were sheltering. However, when the international community warned of action against Republika Srpska and Serbia, driven by a misdirected vengeance, the Serb leadership decided to violate the safe zone and besieged Srebrenica. As the Dutch peacekeepers looked on, Bosniak men and women were segregated, and all men including minor boys, were herded together and shot fatally, their bodies huddled together and thrown into mass graves.

The horrific reality of the war crimes later surfaced, and it was established after investigations that in July 1995, a massacre of 8,372 Muslim men and boys by Serb forces over just three days had been systematically committed — known now in the annals of history as the “Srebrenica Genocide”.

Some months later, as the world came to know of the horrors that had been unleashed, there was an attempt by the Serb leadership to cover up the evidence. The mass graves of 8,372 Muslims were bulldozed and whatever remained of the bodies was scattered in unmarked areas all over the region. To this day, search for human remains continues in Srebrenica. Some 1,200 of those who went missing in July 1995 have still not been identified or given the dignity of a proper funeral and burial.

While the Dayton Accords of 1996 enforced a ceasefire after what the Bosniaks had endured, peace in the region is still tenuous. Tensions are rife as the Serb Autonomous Zone inside Bosnia continues with its ultraconservative nationalism and ethnic prejudice, refusing to acknowledge what was done to the Bosniaks from 1992-1995 as a genocide. The current UN Peace Representative for Bosnia — Hans Christian Schmidt– has warned earlier this year that ethnic tensions between Bosnia and the autonomous Serb community remain dangerously high still, and the possibility of internecine violence once again cannot be ruled out.

There are some clear parallels between the Bosnian genocide three decades ago and the Israeli military onslaught on Gaza in 2023-24. Like the Serbs, Israelis justify their actions on the narrative of historical victimhood. They present their victim as the perpetrator, stereotyping through Islamophobic propaganda that makes you believe Muslim Palestinian children are fair targets as potential “Islamist terrorists” and “jihadists” in the making. Like in the case of Bosnia, the world was never moved to decisive action to end the bloodbath until too late. Not surprisingly, the victims in both cases happen to be Muslims. While Serbia had been armed to the teeth by its mentor Soviet Russia, Israel has been heavily armed by the US, Germany, UK and other Western allies that continue to send military supplies to the Zionist state. In both cases, the population against whom these lethal weapons are unleashed is extremely vulnerable, unarmed and defenceless. In both Bosnia and now in Palestine, the UN proved a complete failure. And perhaps most poignantly, in both cases the Muslim world failed to stand up and act together, other than sending some humanitarian supplies for the victims.

Yet there are aspects in which the Gaza genocide emerges as a unique and unprecedented case in point. Gaza’s suffering has been long and historic, since the Nakba of 1948, and the world has continued to ignore its plight. Gaza has for years been under severe blockade, with many observers describing it as an “open air prison.” Israel, on the other hand, seen as the Middle East’s only beacon of democracy with Western liberal values and culture is considered as the West’s only reliable ally in the volatile region — the ‘blue-eyed boy’ of the Western world. It enjoys tremendous influence and solid support from its Western benefactors, even after having committed gross defiant violations of human rights and international law. The ongoing siege and death toll in Gaza is more protracted, and the scale of devastation far greater,  surpassing anything we may have witnessed in modern history.

Bosnia found some solace with the trial of Serb war criminals at The Hague, as a result of which 21 perpetrators of the genocide were pronounced guilty- including Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, Republika Sprska leader Radovan Karadzic and Serb army commander Ratko Mladic. The case for Palestine, on the other hand, given the global power and influence of the Zionist lobby, has found no echo in the corridors of power, and any wholesale transparent accountability for the genocidal far right Israeli regime seems to be a remote possibility.

This is precisely why the global commemoration of the Bosnian genocide seems meaningless when the UN and the international community have proven so utterly spineless in the case of Gaza. Remembering and honouring Srebrenica means learning its lessons and promising “Never Again”. With humanity abysmally failing to show any resolve to end Israel’s relentless and brutal assault on Palestine, carefully crafted words for Srebrenica from high podiums ring hollow indeed.Facebook

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Maryam Sakeenah is a student of International Relations based in Pakistan. She is also a high school teacher and freelance writer with a degree in English Literature. She is interested in human rights advocacy and voluntary social work and can be reached at: meem.seen@gmail.com. Read other articles by Maryam.