It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Gaza’s Unbreakable Resistance: A Historical Perspective on the War and Its Aftermath
The problem with political analysis is that it often lacks historical perspective and is mostly limited to recent events.
The current analysis of the Israeli war on Gaza falls victim to this narrow thinking. The ceasefire agreement, signed between Palestinian groups and Israel under Egyptian, Qatari, and US mediation in Doha on January 15, is one example.
Some analysts, including many from the region, insist on framing the outcome of the war as a direct result of Israel’s political dynamics. They argue that Israel’s political crisis is the main reason the country failed to achieve its declared and undeclared war objectives—namely, gaining total “security control” over Gaza and ethnically cleansing its population.
However, this analysis assumes that the decision to go to war or not is entirely in Israel’s hands. It continues to elevate Israel’s role as the only entity capable of shaping political outcomes in the region, even when those outcomes do not favor Israel.
Another group of analysts focuses entirely on the American factor, claiming that the decision to end the war ultimately rested with the White House. Shortly after the ceasefire was officially declared in Gaza, a pan-Arab TV channel asked a group of experts whether it was the Biden or Trump administration that deserved credit for supposedly “pressuring Israel” to agree to a ceasefire.
Some argue that it was Trump’s envoy to Israel, Steve Witkoff, who denied Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any room to maneuver, thus forcing him, albeit reluctantly, to accept the ceasefire terms.
Others counter by saying that the agreement was initially presented by the Biden administration. They argue that Biden’s supposedly active diplomacy ultimately led to the ceasefire.
The latter group fails to acknowledge that it was Biden’s unconditional support for Israel that sustained the war. His UN envoy’s constant rejection of ceasefire calls at the Security Council made international efforts to stop the war irrelevant.
The former group, however, ignores the fact that Israeli society was already at a breaking point. The war on Gaza had proven unwinnable. This means that, whether Trump pressured Netanyahu or not, the outcome of the war was already sealed. Continuing the war would have meant the implosion of Israeli society.
On the Palestinian side, some analyses—affiliated with one faction or another—exploit the war’s outcome for political gain. This type of thinking is extremely insensitive and must be wholly rejected.
There are also those hoping to play a role in Gaza’s reconstruction to gain political and financial leverage and increase their influence. This is a shameful stance, given the total destruction of Gaza and the urgent need to recover the thousands of bodies trapped under rubble, as well as to heal the wounded and the population as a whole.
One thing all these analyses overlook is that Israel failed in Gaza because the population of Gaza proved unbreakable. Such notions are often neglected in mainstream political discussions, which tend to commit to an elitist line. This line is entirely removed from the daily struggles and collective choices of ordinary people, even when they achieve extraordinary feats.
Gaza’s history is one of both pain and pride. It stretches back to ancient civilizations and includes great resistance against invasion, such as the three-month siege by Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army in 332 BCE.
Back then, Gazans resisted and endured for months before their leader, Batis, was captured, tortured to death, and the city was sacked.
This legendary resilience and sumoud (steadfastness) proved crucial in numerous other fights against foreign invaders, including resistance to Napoleon Bonaparte’s army in 1799.
Even if some of Gaza’s current population is unaware of that history, they are a direct product of it. From this perspective, neither Israeli political dynamics, the change of the US administration, nor any other factor is relevant.
This is known as “long history” or longue durée. Far from being merely an academic concept, the long legacy of resistance against injustice has shaped the collective mindset of the Palestinian population in Gaza over the years. How else can we explain how a small, isolated, and impoverished population, living in such a tiny piece of land, managed to withstand firepower equivalent to many nuclear bombs?
The war ended because Gaza withstood it—not because of the kindness of an American president. It is crucial that we emphasize this point repeatedly, rather than seeking inconclusive and irrational answers.
It matters little how we define victory and defeat for a nation still suffering the consequences of a war of annihilation. However, it is important to recognize that Palestinians in Gaza stood their ground, despite immense losses, and prevailed. This can only be credited to them—a nation that has historically proven unbreakable. This truth, rooted in “long history,” remains valid today.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Israel’s ‘Genocide General’ Welcomed in London – and the Media Yawns
There have been two stories deeply revealing – in starkly contrasting ways – of the West’s relationship to Israel’s industrialised, militarised slaughter of the people of Gaza over the past 15 months.
Last week, Declassified UK carried out one of the fundamental duties of journalism. Its reporter Alex Morris sought to hold accountable a war crimes suspect evading justice. And not just any suspect.
Morris doorstepped Major General Oded Basyuk as he led an Israeli military delegation through the streets of London in meetings with the Ministry of Defense and the Royal United Services Institute, a UK “security think-tank” with close ties to the British government.
Basyuk, sometimes spelt Basiuk, heads the Israeli military’s operations directorate, whose responsibilities have included the development of the military strategy that guided Israel’s brutal 15-month assault on Gaza.
The International Court of Justice ruled a year ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza. Israel has effectively been on trial ever since.
Meanwhile, the ICJ’s sister court, the International Criminal Court (ICC), has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity – most notably for their policy of blocking aid and starving the entire population of 2.3 million Palestinians there.
Basyuk was one of the central figures helping to devise and direct these genocidal acts.
He was also pivotal in overseeing the Israeli military’s invasion and occupation of south Lebanon. Israeli forces have been similarly levelling entire communities there and slaughtering civilians.
In other words, Basyuk is one of the biggest cogs in Israel’s genocidal war machine.
If the ICC finds the nerve to take on the new Trump administration – which is almost certain to sanction court officials for charging Netanyahu and Gallant – Basyuk will be at the head of the queue for an arrest warrant.
Diplomatic immunity
Which leads to a number of conundrums.
Not least, why is a major war crimes suspect such as Basyuk freely wandering the streets of London in the midst of two genocide-related legal cases against Israel?
Given that the ICC can issue arrest warrants in secret, and at short notice, how is Basyuk so confident that he can visit the UK without legal repercussions?
Further, Britain’s universal jurisdiction laws mean serious crimes can be prosecuted in the UK wherever they occurred, and separately from the ICC. A private application for his arrest could have been issued while he was here.
The only plausible answer is that the government of Keir Starmer gave him a gold-plated assurance that he would not be arrested under any circumstances during his visit.
That is precisely what happened back in November when Israel’s now-outgoing military chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, visited Britain to meet officials from the Ministry of Defense and Foreign Office.
Starmer’s government issued Halevi with diplomatic immunity – a so-called “special mission certificate” – that blocked any possibility of legal redress against him.
As a signatory to the Rome Statute, it should be noted, Britain is legally obliged to enforce an arrest warrant issued by the ICC, though it has equivocated about whether in practice it would carry out an arrest of either Netanyahu or Gallant, if put to the test.
Criminal complicity
There are other puzzling questions that need answers.
In the midst of legal cases at the world’s two highest courts against the Israeli military for crimes against humanity, why would the Ministry of Defense think that Basyuk – one of Israel’s highest ranking commanders – was a suitable person to be meeting with and talking to?
What knowledge does Basyuk currently have to share with our own military chain of command that makes it so important to meet with him face to face in London, especially when his visit could potentially drag Starmer’s government into a legal showdown with the ICC or expose a shameful evasion of its legal obligations?
Basyuk’s visit serves as a reminder that the MoD is profoundly implicated in the Gaza genocide – as is Starmer himself.
It has approved the continuing sale of more than 90 per cent of British weapons and components to Israel, including those that have kept Israel’s fleet of F-35s in the air so that they can carpet bomb Gaza.
Additionally, the MoD is believed to have helped ship US and German munitions to Israel through air bases in the UK and from an RAF base in Cyprus, Akrotiri, without which the mass slaughter of Gaza’s children would not have been possible.
As Declassified revealed in October, the UK has been allowing regular secret flights of US special forces from Akrotiri to Israel.
And the MoD has been conducting surveillance flights over Gaza, almost certainly with the purpose of supplying intelligence to Israel to help it select targets as it has destroyed most residential properties, schools, universities, libraries, mosques, churches and bakeries.
A strong suspicion must be that the MoD invited Basyuk not only to deepen ties between the two militaries but to prepare for a renewed British role in the genocide should Israel return to the bombardment of Gaza after the first stage of the ceasefire is completed, as Netanyahu has threatened.
Media silence
And then there are questions for the British media.
How is it possible that Basyuk, a major war crimes suspect, is strolling around London at the head of an official Israeli military delegation in the midst of a genocide investigation by the ICJ and no major British media outlet has shown the slightest interest in doorstepping him, or in asking questions of the government about his visit?
Only Declassified UK – an independent outlet with a tiny fraction of the resources of the BBC, the Guardian, the Times or the Telegraph – has chased him down, embarrassed him by asking him to his face whether he is a war criminal, and drawn attention to his presence in the UK.
It is not even as though we can assume this collective failure by the British establishment media was an oversight, and that for some inexplicable reason their military and security correspondents all failed to learn of Basyuk’s visit, as Declassified UK had done.
Because all these media outlets also ignored the video that went viral of Declassified UK’s Alex Morris challenging Basyuk to his face, “Are you a war criminal, General Basyuk?” and “Are you worried about being investigated by the ICC for war crimes?”
In stark contrast to the Israeli media, which widely reported on this supremely awkward confrontation for Basyuk, the British media has remained studiously silent.
They have not wondered why Basyuk, or earlier Halevi, has been allowed into the UK. Or what assurances Basyuk was given. Or what he and Halevi were here to discuss with the British officials.
Similarly, they have not taken this as an opportunity to focus on another story that so far has entirely passed them by and that Declassified has been at the forefront of exposing: Britain’s deep complicity in Israel’s genocide and the covert role in the genocide of RAF base Akrotiri, on Cypus.
These are not oversights. They are a consistent pattern of failure by the media that indicates one thing only: that these failures are entirely intentional. The British media has conspired with the British government every bit as criminally as the British government has colluded in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Through its silence, the British media has given the government cover to assist Israel in its mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians.
Europe-wide crackdown
The British establishment media has been similarly silent – if for opposing reasons – on another development related to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
While Basyuk was moving around London to meet British officials without fear of arrest or scrutiny, a Palestinan-American journalist was arrested by the police in Zurich at the weekend shortly before he was about to begin a speaking tour of Switzerland.
Ali Abunimah, editor of the veteran website Electronic Intifada, which is dedicated to Israel-Palestine issues, has been a long-standing and trenchant critic of Israel’s decades of abuses of the Palestinian people.
Alongside Declassified UK and a handful of other independent sites, Electronic Intifada has helped to challenge some of the key narrative deceptions Israel has promoted to rationalise the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza – fake news that British media outlets have too often enthusiastically regurgitated.
Abunimah and his team undermined falsified claims of Hamas beheading and baking babies alive during its attack on Israel on October 7 2023, and of mass rapes by Hamas fighters that day.
The site has shone a light too on a secretive Israeli military protocol, the Hannibal directive, that was invoked during Hamas’ attack.
It allowed the Israeli military to kill a significant number of Israeli civilians, including children, to prevent them being abducted. Some of the resulting, horrifying deaths have been attributed to Hamas.
United Nations legal and human rights experts lost no time in condemning Abunimah’s arrest, calling it “shocking” and evidence of an “increasingly toxic” climate in Europe towards free speech.
But the Swiss authorities are not acting in isolation. This is part of a concerted, Europe-wide crackdown on protest against Israel or support for Palestinian rights – and Britain has been leading the way.
Draconian terror laws
Abunimah’s British colleague Asa Winstanley, an investigative journalist, had his home raided by London counter-terrorism police in October and his electronic devices seized under draconian terrorism laws.
He is one of several independent journalists being hounded over their criticisms of Israel.
Activists with Palestine Action, and its leader Richard Barnard, have been arrested and charged under similar laws for trying to stop firms in the UK making and supplying weapons to Israel for use in the genocide.
Israeli Jewish activists living in the UK, including Professor Haim Bresheeth and Yael Kahn, both of whom lost family members in the Holocaust, have been arrested in recent months for making speeches criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
Another anti-Zionist Jewish activist, Tony Greenstein, was charged in December under the same terrorism laws.
And in a sign that the Starmer government is determined to stamp out wider pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activism, the Metropolitan police used an iron fist this month in cracking down on the latest mass peaceful protest in London against the genocide – one that sought to highlight the heavy slanting of the BBC’s coverage in Israel’s favor.
The police arrested and charged two of the march organizers, including Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, with entirely confected “public order” offenses.
The Met also interviewed “under caution” and are investigating the march’s two figureheads: the leftwing MPs John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour party.
World on its head
The contrast could not be more clear-cut – or telling.
Starmer’s government is happy to invite foreign war crimes suspects to the UK to learn from them, safe in the knowledge that the British media will do nothing to highlight their crimes or the UK’s complicity in those crimes.
And the Starmer government is equally happy to bully, arrest and charge journalists and peaceful demonstrators opposed to those war crimes, safe in the knowledge that the British media will do nothing to highlight the UK government’s duplicity or its trampling over the fundamental rights of free speech and protest.
The British police leave Israeli state terrorists in peace, while hounding peaceful protesters as terrorists. The world is turned on its head.
But this glaring contrast in treatment – by the government, the Met and the establishment media – serves precisely the same end: shielding Israel and its enablers in the British government from accountability.
All three institutions of the British state have colluded in oiling the wheels of Israel’s genocide machine. All have conspired to keep war crimes suspect General Basyuk out of public view, and make it harder to get him where he belongs: in the dock at The Hague.
All three have played separate but critically important roles in making the genocide in Gaza possible. And for that, they should be put in the dock too.
Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net. This originally appeared in the Declassified UK .
There’s One Word for Trump’s Erratic Negotiating Strategy: “Stupid”
Photograph Source: Office of Senator John Thune – Public Domain
Donald Trump is carrying through his campaign pledge in threatening every country in the world with big taxes on the goods we import (tariffs) from them. However, he does keep changing the size of the taxes he wants to hit us with and who will be most affected. In the latest version imports from Mexico and Canada are taxed more heavily than imports from China, the opposite of the campaign promise. He also keeps changing the reasons for the taxes, but Trump doesn’t seem to care.
Many of his supporters boast about how Trump’s unpredictability is a brilliant negotiating strategy. The opposite is true. In planning long-term investment and trade relations, companies value stability. The last thing they want is to deal with a country where the rules change depending on what its leader last read on social media.
This is exactly the image Trump is projecting to the world with his bizarre demands to our trading partners. First and foremost, he is attacking Mexico and Canada, two countries with him he negotiated trade deals in his first term. He is complaining about how these countries are ripping us off because they have trade surpluses. He also is demanding they stop illegal immigrants from entering the United States and also prevent fentanyl from crossing their borders.
All of these complaints are close to absurd. On the surplus point, in what planet is a country ripping us off because they sell us more stuff than we buy from them? Does a supermarket rip us off because they sell us food, but don’t buy anything from us, unless we own a food processing plant?
If a country has a trade surplus it means that they are giving us goods and services in exchange for dollar bills. That allows us to have a higher standard of living than would otherwise be the case.
Trump’s complaint against Canada is especially bizarre because the entire trade deficit is due to the oil we import from Canada. Is Canada ripping us off because they sell us their oil?
The other two complaints are equally absurd. There is very little illegal immigration from Canada and Mexico has been very cooperative with both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration in trying to restrain illegal immigration.
As far as fentanyl, both countries have worked to limit the flows to the U.S. even though they have not been 100 percent successful. The United States also is not 100 percent successful in containing the shipment of fentanyl and other illegal substances within its own borders.
So, what exactly does Trump want? The governments of Mexico and Canada might be more competent than Trump’s people, but they are not that much more competent. They cannot plausibly end the flow of illegal drugs altogether.
In short, Trump is throwing out a trade deal that he negotiated himself, with border countries and close allies, over imaginary complaints. That is indeed makes Trump unpredictable, but also not the sort of person with whom you want to do business.
What foreign company would look to undertake large-scale investment, either for exports to the United States, or in the United States itself, knowing that Trump could decide to impose new rules based on any absurd thing in the world. That would not be a clever business strategy.
The logical response from foreign leaders trying to boost their own economies would be to do as little business as possible with the United States and to look to charge a premium on the transactions they do undertake. This is largely the story of Trump’s business career. Because he had a history of not paying contractors, many refused to work for him altogether, and the ones that did work for him wanted to be paid in advance.
In this context, it’s worth remembering that many of Trump’s businesses went bankrupt. His big success prior to entering politics was as a reality TV show star. He played a successful businessperson on TV, he was not one in reality.
Economists often say the government should not be run like a business, but in this case the comparison is useful. A businessman that shows himself to be an untrustworthy partner soon finds that no one wants to do business with him. If Donald Trump shows that the United States can be trusted to abide by its deals and conduct normal trading relations, our trading partners will look elsewhere.
That means we can expect the European Union and UK to look to form closer trading ties with China, the world’s other major superpower. We will likely see the same with Canada and Mexico. They may not especially like Xi’s autocratic government, but this is about business, not politics. A United States that is increasingly isolated in the world may be MAGA, but it is not good for the economy or our society.
This originally appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.
Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.
Trump is Not a King: Moving Closer to Authoritarianism
Let’s be clear. The Trump Administration’s action last night to suspend all federal grants and loans will have a devastating impact on the health and well-being of millions of children, seniors on fixed incomes, and the most vulnerable people in our country. It is a dangerous move towards authoritarianism and it is blatantly unconstitutional. Our Founding Fathers explicitly gave Congress the power of the purse. Under our system of checks and balances, no president has the right to choose which laws to follow and which laws to ignore.
Further, this illegal action raises more questions than it answers:
Will our nation’s community health centers receive the federal grants they need to continue to provide primary health care to more than 30 million Americans who desperately need it? Or is that on pause?
Will Head Start programs throughout the country receive the federal grants they need to provide high-quality early education to nearly 1 million children? Or will their parents find that they are no longer enrolled in Head Start?
Will pregnant mothers and their babies receive the vital nutrition assistance they need to stay healthy through the WIC program? Or will they be denied the food they need?
Will states be denied the federal grants Congress passed to keep millions of seniors on fixed incomes and families with children warm in the winter through the LIHEAP program? Or will these vulnerable Americans freeze because they are no longer able to pay their heating bills?
These are just a few of the questions that Trump’s dangerous and illegal action has raised.
Bottom line: This unconstitutional memo must be rescinded. The American people — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — must come together to defeat this move towards authoritarianism. If President Trump wants to change our nation’s laws he has the right to ask Congress to change them. He does not have the right to violate the United States Constitution. He is not a king.
Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress.
