CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

How Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s alleged bribery scheme took off and unraveled

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani speaks during an inauguration ceremony after the Adani Group completed the purchase of Haifa Port in Israel on Jan. 31, 2023.(REUTERS/File Photo)

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Reuters
November 22, 20240

Gautam Adani allegedly tried to bribe local officials in India to persuade them to buy electricity produced by his renewable energy company Adani Green Energy
The allegations caught the attention of US watchdog agencies as Adani’s companies were raising funds from US-based investors in several transactions starting in 2021


NEW YORK: In June of 2020, a renewable energy company owned by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani won what it called the single largest solar development bid ever awarded: an agreement to supply 8 gigawatts of electricity to a state-owned power company.
But there was a problem. Local power companies did not want to pay the prices the state company was offering, jeopardizing the deal, according to US authorities. To save the deal, Adani allegedly decided to bribe local officials to persuade them to buy the electricity.
That allegation is at the heart of US criminal and civil charges unsealed on Wednesday against Adani, who is not currently in US custody and is believed to be in India. His company, Adani Group, said the charges were “baseless” and that it would seek “all possible legal recourse.”
The alleged hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes promised to local Indian officials caught the attention of the US Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission as Adani’s companies were raising funds from US-based investors in several transactions starting in 2021.
This account of how the alleged scheme unfolded is drawn from federal prosecutors’ 54-page criminal indictment of Adani and seven of his associates and two parallel civil SEC complaints, which extensively cite electronic messages between the scheme’s alleged participants.
In early 2020, the Solar Energy Corporation of India awarded Adani Green Energy and another company, Azure Power Global, contracts for a 12-gigawatt solar energy project, expected to yield billions of dollars in revenue for both companies, according to the indictment.
It was a major step forward for Adani Green Energy, run by Adani’s nephew, Sagar Adani. Up until that point, the company had only earned roughly $50 million in its history and had yet to turn a profit, according to the SEC complaint.
The logo of the Adani Group is seen on the facade of its Corporate House on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, on November 21, 2024. (REUTERS)

But the initiative soon hit roadblocks. Local state electricity distributors were reluctant to commit to buying the new solar power, expecting prices to fall in the future, according to an April 7, 2021 report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think tank.
Sagar Adani and the Azure CEO at the time discussed the delays and hinted at bribes on the encrypted messaging application WhatsApp, according to the SEC.
When the Azure CEO wrote on Nov. 24, 2020, that the local power companies “are being motivated,” Sagar Adani allegedly replied, “Yup ... but the optics are very difficult to cover. In February 2021, Sagar Adani allegedly wrote to the CEO, “Just so you know, we have doubled the incentives to push for these acceptances.”
The SEC did not name the Azure CEO as a defendant, but Azure’s securities filings show the CEO at the time was Ranjit Gupta.
Gupta was charged by the Justice Department with conspiracy to violate an anti-bribery law. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Azure said on Thursday it was cooperating with the US investigations, and that the individuals involved with the accusations had left the company more than a year ago.

‘Sudden good fortune’
In August of 2021, Gautam Adani had the first of several meetings with an official in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, to whom he allegedly ultimately promised $228 million in bribes in exchange for agreeing to have the state buy the power, according to the Justice Department’s indictment.
By December, Andhra Pradesh had agreed to buy the power, and other states with smaller contracts soon followed. Other states’ officials were promised bribes as well, US authorities said.
During a Dec. 6, 2021 meeting at a coffee shop, Azure executives allegedly discussed “rumors that the Adanis had somehow facilitated signing” of the deals, according to the SEC.
Gautam Adani said on Dec. 14, 2021, the company was on track “to become the world’s largest renewables player by 2030.”
“The sudden good fortune for Azure and Adani Green prompted speculation in the marketplace about the contract awards,” the SEC wrote in its complaint.

Letter from the SEC
Before long, the SEC began to probe. The agency sent a “general inquiry” letter to Azure — which at the time traded on the New York Stock Exchange — on March 17, 2022, asking about its recent contracts and if foreign officials had sought anything of value, according to the Justice Department indictment.
According to the Department of Justice, Gautam Adani told representatives of Azure during a meeting in his Ahmedabad, India office the next month that he expected to be reimbursed more than $80 million for the bribes he had paid officials that ultimately benefited Azure’s contracts.
Some Azure representatives and a leading investor in the company decided to pay Adani back by allowing his company to take over a potentially profitable project. The representatives and investor allegedly agreed to tell Azure’s board of directors that Adani had requested bribe money, but hid their role in the scheme, prosecutors said.
All the while, Adani’s companies were raising billions of dollars in loans and bonds through international banks, including from US investors. In four separate fundraising transactions between 2021 and 2024, the companies sent investors documents indicating that they had not paid bribes — statements prosecutors say are false and constitute fraud.

FBI search
During a visit to the United States on March 17, 2023, FBI agents seized Sagar Adani’s electronic devices. The agents handed him a search warrant from a judge indicating that the US government was investigating potential violations of fraud statutes and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
According to prosecutors, Gautam Adani emailed himself photographs of each page of the search warrant on March 18, 2023.
His companies nonetheless went through with a $1.36 billion syndicated loan agreement on Dec. 5, 2023, and another sale of secured notes in March 2024, and once again furnished investors with misleading information about their anti-bribery practices, according to prosecutors.
On Oct. 24, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn secured a secret grand jury indictment against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani, Gupta, and five others allegedly involved in the scheme.
The indictment was unsealed on Nov. 20, prompting a $27 billion plunge in Adani Group companies’ market value. Adani Green Energy promptly canceled a scheduled $600 million bond sale.

AOC votes to back Israel lobby’s bogus “anti-Semitism” definition

Tamara Nassar and Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada 

21 November 2024

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez votes for bill embracing IHRA anti-Semitism definition. Ståle GrutNRKbeta

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted for a resolution on Wednesday which endorses a bogus Israel lobby definition of anti-Semitism.

In backing the measure, she broke with several other members of the so-called Squad, the dwindling group of progressive Democrats in Congress, and sided with the Anti-Defamation League, a powerful Israel lobby group that welcomed the resolution’s passage.
Representatives Cori Bush of Missouri, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan were the only Democrats to vote no on the resolution.



“I opposed this resolution because it embraces the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which dangerously conflates criticism of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism,” Tlaib said.

Tlaib expressed concern that the resolution “will be used to stifle dissent and chill free speech, especially Palestinian human rights advocacy.”

Omar said that “this resolution does nothing to combat anti-Semitism.”

She vowed to “continue to stand against any attempt to silence genuine concerns [about] the Israeli government as anti-Semitism.”
By contrast, Ocasio-Cortez’s vote for the Israel lobby-backed resolution sent her staff into damage control mode amid fierce criticism.



Ocasio-Cortez voted for House Resolution 1449, which calls for “endorsing and embracing the so-called Global Guidelines for Countering Anti-Semitism.

However, these guidelines are anything but “global.”

They are an initiative of the United States government and Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator who has a history of lying about nonexistent anti-Semitic incidents to push her pro-Israel agenda.

The guidelines were launched at a US-led conference in Buenos Aires in July with the enthusiastic backing of Israel lobby groups.

But nearly all of the 33 countries signing on to the guidelines are Israel’s closest European and North American allies or arms suppliers. They can now boast of Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement too.

The guidelines urge states, international bodies and civil society to adopt a set of so-called best practices to combat anti-Semitism.

The guidelines endorse the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism as “an important internationally recognized instrument used by over 40 UN member states since its adoption in 2016.”

But despite this effort to market the IHRA definition as universally accepted and uncontroversial, there has been growing and successful pushback to efforts to institutionalize it.

The IHRA, an organization made up of Israel and several dozen of its closest allies, uses the cover of Holocaust remembrance to legitimize and institutionalize its definition of anti-Semitism which has primarily been weaponized to smear and censor supporters of Palestinian rights.

The definition comes with 11 illustrative “examples” of anti-Semitism, the majority of which actually concern criticism of Israel and its official state ideology, Zionism.
Damage control

The House resolution passed with an overwhelming majority, with 388 representatives voting for it, including Ocasio-Cortez, and only 21 voting against.

Even as a symbolic gesture, Ocasio-Cortez did not join her three fellow Squad members who opposed it.

Mike Casca, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, took to X, also known as Twitter, on Wednesday evening to do some damage control after her vote sparked criticism from supporters of Palestinian rights.

“She opposes codification of IHRA. This non-binding resolution didn’t do that,” Casca wrote in response to this writer’s criticism of Ocasio-Cortez’s vote.

But this is dishonest and disingenuous spin.

Although it is true that the bill does not codify the IHRA definition in law, it gives a stamp of approval from Congress to a McCarthyite, anti-Palestinian tool that is being widely used to stifle criticism of Israel as it carries out a genocidal slaughter of Palestinians.

The IHRA definition is often marketed as “non-legally binding,” perhaps to allay fears about its use for repression.

In the United States, where the First Amendment protects free speech, criticism of Israel cannot be outlawed outright.

But the EU has called for the IHRA definition to be used by law enforcement agencies as a tool to “better recognize anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic crimes” and to “assess security threats.”

Israel and its lobby have also pushed for the IHRA definition to be adopted by private institutions, including schools and universities in the United States, where it has become increasingly common to use the pretext of combating anti-Semitism to crush student protest against institutional complicity in Israel’s genocide.

A number of college campuses across the US have already adopted the IHRA definition. Its further normalization and embrace by public officials, especially self-identified progressives such as Ocasio-Cortez, lends it further credence.

Even without it being codified as the law of the land, the IHRA definition is already a danger to free speech and advocacy for Palestinian rights, which is why Casca’s assurance that Ocasio-Cortez opposes its “codification” is a deflection.

If Ocasio-Cortez indeed opposes the IHRA definition’s codification, why would she vote for a resolution that lists it as a best practice, or offer support for it in any way?

Earlier this week, Ocasio-Cortez complained about powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC’s influence on her colleagues in Congress.

“If people want to talk about members of Congress being overly influenced by a special interest group pushing a wildly unpopular agenda that pushes voters away from Democrats then they should be discussing AIPAC,” she wrote on X.

Amy Spitalnick, who Ocasio-Cortez invited on a livestream earlier this year to speak about anti-Semitism, accused the congresswoman of playing “into dangerous tropes,” a not so subtle accusation of anti-Semitism.

Spitalnick heads the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a pro-Israel advocacy group. Ocasio-Cortez had described Spitalnick as one of “the foremost experts in the country in fighting anti-Semitism in America.”

Clearly, Ocasio-Cortez got back in line with her Wednesday vote.

Ocasio-Cortez fervently endorsed Joe Biden in his abortive re-election bid, despite her acknowledging his administration’s participation in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

After the ailing and deeply unpopular Democratic president dropped out, the congresswoman then immediately endorsed Kamala Harris for president as well, claiming on the stage of the Democratic National Convention that the vice president was “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.”

On Wednesday, the Democratic Party-run US administration vetoed for the fourth time over the course of Israel’s genocide in Gaza a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire.

Ocasio-Cortez is correct that many of her colleagues in Congress do the bidding of the Israel lobby, but perhaps she should take a look in the mirror.

Tamara Nassar is associate editor and Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.

The Shift: Dems throw Palestinian activists under the bus in election postmortems

By Michael Arria

November 21, 2024 1
MONDOWEISS

Pennsylvania  (D) Senator John Fetterman 

(Photo: Flickr/Governor Tom Wolf)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but a number of pundits are attempting to blame the left for Kamala Harris’s loss.

In this narrative, it’s not the highly-paid Democratic consultants or the donor class who helped deliver another four years of Trump. No, the blame should be pinned on activists and progressive groups.

One such argument was put forward in a recent New York Times op-ed by Adam Jentleson, “When Will Democrats Learn to Say No?”

According to Jentleson one of Harris’s big problems was the fact she backed handful of progressive positions five years ago.

“To cite a few examples, when Kamala Harris was running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, the A.C.L.U. pushed her to articulate a position on surgeries for transgender prisoners, needlessly elevating an obscure issue into the public debate as a purity test, despite the fact that current law already gave prisoners access to gender-affirming care,” writes Jentleson. “This became a major line of attack for Mr. Trump in the closing weeks of this year’s election. Now, with the G.O.P.’s ascent to dominance, transgender Americans are unquestionably going to be worse off.”

“The same year, a coalition of groups including the Sunrise Movement and the Working Families Party demanded that all Democrats running for president embrace decriminalizing border crossings,” he continues. “When candidates were asked at a debate if they would do so, every candidate on the stage that night raised a hand (except Michael Bennet). Groups like Justice Democrats pushed Democrats to defund the police and abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Positions taken a few years ago are fair game in campaigns, and by feeding into Republican attacks these efforts helped Mr. Trump and left the people and causes they claim to fight for under threat.”

His conclusion is straightforward: Democrats need to reject calls for progressive reforms and champion “heterodox” politics in order to win the 2026 midterms. In other words, they have to throw vulnerable populations under the bus and abandon any kind of commitment to combatting climate change.

There’s a lot missing from Jentleson’s analysis, but let’s start here: the progressive stances endorsed by Democratic candidates during the 2020 primaries did not materialize out of thin air.

The first Trump presidency was greeted by immediate protest and vast organizing, which led to some of his most draconian policy plans being blocked. We went on to watch the government botch the public health response to COVID and leave workers hung out to dry. People flooded the streets and demanded change after watching George Floyd get murdered by a police officer on camera. By some metrics, they were the most attended protests in the history of the United States and the actions led to a wider national conversation about race, history, and policing. We also saw millions of young people enthusiastically support the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, who ran on the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and higher taxes on the rich.

The fact that Democrats publicly endorsed some of these positions is a testament to the hard work of activists who helped shift the public discussion through organizing. This is one of the ways that progress has historically worked in the United States. Jentleson’s assertion that this ended up being a big problem because there was Republican backlash could be used to throw water on virtually every social movement ever. That’s how it always works. In his book The Reactionary Mind political scientist Corey Robin writes that conservatism is a meditation on the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back.

Jentleson neglects to point out that Harris openly abandoned all the progressive positions she embraced while running to be the 2020 nominee during her 2024 presidential campaign, but maybe that goes without saying. Perhaps it also goes without saying that Harris’s presidential campaign was partially geared to win over Republicans, by touting an endorsement from Dick Cheney, promising a tough border policy, and failing to articulate any kind of robust plan for the working class. Maybe it doesn’t have to be pointed out that Harris vowed to continue weapon sales to Israel, despite continuous left-wing pressure calling on her to change course.

However, I think Jentleson should remind readers that Harris was one of the first Democratic candidates to withdraw from the 2020 primary. In fact, she quit the race in 2019.

This certainly wasn’t because Harris was “too woke.” In fact, it’s pretty easy to make the opposite argument. A former prosecutor who presided over a truancy crackdown simply didn’t have a lot of appeal at a time when many people were already reading books like The New Jim Crow and talking about decarceration, partially because of Ferguson, Baltimore, and a number of other recent uprisings. Within six months over half the population believed burning down the Minneapolis police precinct was justified.

But let’s leave all that aside and talk about the elephant in the room. How does someone write a piece about groups having too much influence on the Democratic party and not mention pro-Israel lobbying organizations? AIPAC spent over $100 million on the last election cycle and ousted multiple progressives with massive help from GOP donors. I’m going to go out on a limb and say they are a more relevant target when we’re assessing what’s wrong with the Democrats.

The real punchline of this Op-Ed is revealed in the author bio section at the end. Jentleson is the former chief of staff to Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a guy who has spent the past year enthusiastically celebrating the genocide in Gaza. He’s even positioned himself to the right of the Biden administration on the issue, criticizing the White House for briefly threatening to condition military aid. Last week Fetterman attacked The Pope for calling for an investigation into Israel’s genocide.

When he originally ran for Senate Senate Fetterman was insufficiently anti-Palestinian by the standards of lobbying groups, so he allowed Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) to write his position paper on the issue.

Fetterman beat TV personality and snake oil salesman Dr. Oz in that election. Now Trump has nominated Oz to oversee Medicare and Medicaid.

“If Dr. Oz is about protecting and preserving Medicare and Medicaid, I’m voting for the dude,” tweeted Fetterman.

When Will Democrats Learn to Say Yes, indeed.
Bernie Resolutions

This week the Senate rejected a series of resolutions that would have blocked some arms sales to Israel.

The Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) were introduced by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders last month and applied to tank ammunition, fighter jets, and other weapons.

The first resolution, on tank ammunition, was rejected by a vote of 18-79. Here’s the Democrats that voted for it:

Dick Durbin (D-IL), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Angus King (I-ME), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Tina Smith (D-MN), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Peter Welch (D-VT).

Sen. George Helmy (D-NJ) joined his 18 colleagues in voting for the resolutions on military equipment and mortar rounds. It’s unclear why someone would support sending Israel more tank ammunition, but draw the line at other kinds of ammunition, but I digress.

There was no chance of this thing passing. It was never going to clear the Senate and even it had by some miracle, it would have still had to make it through the House and ultimately be signed by the president. We know Biden and Trump do not want to condition military weapons to Israel.

Having said all that, this was an historic moment as it was the first time the Senate had ever voted on the issue.

I have few takeaways:

1.) Despite the fact this wasn’t going to pass, we saw a full-court press from pro-Israel lawmakers and groups to limit the amount of Senators who endorsed it.

The White House circulated talking points on Capitol Hill, Chuck Schumer worked to whip votes, and AIPAC lobbied its supporters on the issue. I believe this speaks to a deep concern about Israel’s diminishing reputation. An impressive vote would simply the latest example that ironclad support for Israel is starting to crack.

2.) I was surprised to see Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey vote for the resolutions, as he’s been a staunch supporter of Israel for his entire political career. I believe it’s important to look at the increasing local pressure he’s faced on the issue.

In 2022 I wrote an article about activists targeting Markey over his stance. “Liberation politics are not a buffet, but an ethos,” one of them told me. “Senator Markey has made it clear that the ‘progressivism’ he claims to support – rights to healthcare, ending racial violence, and economic freedom – shouldn’t extend to Palestinians under occupation. That is racist, and progressives in Massachusetts should see it for what it is.”

3.) Tammy Baldwin just narrowly won her election, but voted “present.” It will be interesting to see what kind of pressure she’ll face from the left in Wisconsin.

4.) We constantly hear about how lawmakers have to unequivocally support Israel in order to stay in power, so how do we explain the fact that Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff felt compelled to back the resolutions? They represent a 50/50 state that just flipped back to red in the presidential election and are probably two of the more vulnerable members of their caucus.

Watermelon Index launched to expose UK firms' 'complicity in war on Gaza'

Progressive International's Watermelon Index exposes over 400 UK companies complicit in Israel's Gaza war.

Sebastian Shehadi
21 November, 2024
THE NEW ARAB

Based on the findings of the index, Progressive International says that it is particularly interested in companies across technology, energy, logistics & shipping and finance & insurance.[GETTY]

Progressive International - a global alliance of activists, leaders, and organisations advocating for social justice - has unveiled the Watermelon Index, a live database exposing over 400 UK companies allegedly linked to Israel's war on Gaza and the occupation of Palestinian territories.

Described as a "tool for worker-led resistance against the occupation and genocide in Palestine", the index provides detailed evidence of corporate complicity across sectors such as military support, settlement production, population control, economic exploitation, and cultural entanglements.

The initiative envisions workers as key agents within these corporations who hold unique powers to disrupt supply chains, halt production, and challenge complicity with Israel's war on Gaza from within, in a crucial act of solidarity with Palestinians on a global scale.

"Israel's war machine is enabled by the financial, military, diplomatic, and cultural support it gets from companies around the world," Watermelon Index organiser, Kimia Talebi, told The New Arab.

"Workers in these companies hold the power to throw sand in the wheels of the war machine and many thousands of them are [doing so], like the Indian dock workers at 11 ports refusing to handle weaponry that could be used to kill Palestinians."


The index also seeks to empower consumers by offering transparency and actionable insights into corporate involvement in Israel's actions against Palestinians, such as highlighting Airbnb's alleged direct and indirect support for Israel via five categories: the military, settlement production, population control, economic exploitation, and cultural involvement.

It provides detailed evidence for each category, such as Airbnb's listings of accommodations in illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Notably, Airbnb's website advertises properties in 39 settlements in the occupied West Bank alone.

Based on the findings of the index, Progressive International says that it is particularly focused on companies - from corporate giants to smaller firms - across technology, energy, logistics, shipping, finance, and insurance.

Many have heeded calls from Palestinian trade unions to workers and labour groups around the world to stand up to their employers' complicity in Israel's crimes against the Palestinians, resulting in dockworkers in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Namibia, and India refusing to handle military cargo likely to be used in the war on Gaza.

Pressure from Japanese unions and protestors forced the corporate giant Itochu to end cooperation with Israel's largest private military company, Elbit Systems.

The Watermelon Index is seeking to support existing worker-led campaigns and foster new ones, according to Progressive International, which is comprised of over 100 political parties, trade unions, social movements, and activist groups.

"Please use the Index to find existing campaigns against corporate complicity or contact us to get support in setting up new ones," says Talebi.

"The time to act has never been more urgent — and the need for workers to reclaim their power has never been clearer.

Western literature serves Israeli colonisation, US publishers must cut ties

Books Against Genocide explain how Western publishers play a key role in funding the Zionist project. As workers they are organising to force companies to stop.

Perspectives



Books Against Genocide
19 Nov, 2024
THE NEW ARAB

While well over 40,000 Palestinians have been martyred, publishing has perpetuated a propagandised Zionist narrative, write Books Against Genocide. [GETTY]

“The effort to become a great novelist simply involves attempting to tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more.” —James Baldwin

The American book industry sees itself as the keeper of this truth, as the arbiter of literature, as the necessary gatekeeper of a sanctified canon. Yet time and again, it doubles down on the status quo and props up the powerful, championing not the voices of the many but the interests of a few.

Never before has the true nature of US publishing been so apparent as during the past year of the Zionist entity’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza. Western literature and publishing are instrumental to the colonisation of Palestine, from their foundational role in the inception of Zionist ideology to present-day investments in “Israeli” technology.

Behind the scenes at most major publishing houses (which, it’s important to note, are subsidiaries of multinational media empires like NewsCorp and Paramount), the climate is hostile to anyone with a conscience. Official company statements following October 7 condemned the Al-Aqsa Flood, relegating Hamas, the armed resistance and elected government of Gaza, to “terrorists,” and offering no acknowledgment of the Zionist entity’s illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

NewsCorp, Paramount (parent companies of HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster respectively at the time), and Penguin Random House pledged significant contributions to the United Jewish Appeal-Federation, an organization that from October 2023 to December 2023, donated $64.2 million to illegal settlers of "Israel" and $0 to the people of Palestine.

Macmillan’s CEO, Jon Yaged, did not even have the decency to name Palestine in his email to the company, instead opting for “the Middle East.” And well before October 7, Holtzbrinck and Bertelsmann (German parent companies of Macmillan and Penguin Random House respectively) were embracing their Nazi roots by investing millions in “Israeli” tech, AI, surveillance, and security technologies.

While well over 40,000 Palestinians have been martyred, publishing has perpetuated a propagandised Zionist narrative, publishing titles trafficking in myths of mass-rape like Black Saturday by Trey Yingst, and defence of settler colonialism like On Settler Colonialism by Adam Kirsch.

In the last year, a junior Big Five employee was laid off less than two weeks after speaking out against a planned Zionist book. Other acts of individual defiance by authors, booksellers, and beyond are also met with retaliation, while publishing industry DEI taskforces facilitate “antisemitism education" trainings, a manipulative deflection under the guise of “equity” with collaborators such as Project Shema, a proxy to the racist Anti-Defamation League whose founder denies the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

In response to industry complicity, a movement of book workers arose to insist on literature’s power to liberate, including Books Against Genocide (BAG), a collective of Big Five publishing professionals demanding our companies end all relationships with the Zionist project, along with writer-led coalitions like Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) and KidLit4Ceasefire – the latter two having called on Joe Biden to declare a permanent and unconditional ceasefire and demanded their industry colleagues uphold the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott (PACBI).

WAWOG has since organised sustained boycotts against both PEN America and the New York Times. Just last month, 500 international publishers demanded that the Frankfurt Book Fair cut ties with “Israel.”

Related
Palestinian liberation does not need Western approval
Perspectives
Mjriam Abu Samra

The publishing establishment is no match for this new movement, which has targeted one shamelessly hypocritical group within the vast Zionist ecosystem of mainstream publishing: alleged “free-speech” advocacy organization PEN America. PEN America claims to stand “at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression worldwide” but refused to call for a ceasefire or address the systematic assassinations of writers and journalists in Gaza.

After Israeli Occupation Forces unlawfully arrested Palestinian freedom fighter and author Ahed Tamimi, PEN America released (and then redacted) an egregiously insensitive statement calling on her family to “investigate” the antisemitic post that was fabricated to justify said arrest, and they forcibly removed Palestinian American author Randa Jarrar from protesting a PEN event with Zionist actor Mayim Bialik.

More than 1,300 prominent writers across genres denounced PEN America's performative “humanitarian” charade with an open letter. Twenty-one writers nominated for various PEN awards withdrew from consideration. This sustained pressure led to the cancellation of the PEN World Voices Festival and the PEN Jean Stein award, redirecting the latter’s $75,000 prize money to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

Ultimately, one cannot deny literature’s inextricable link to modern revolutionary movements, which is why the Zionist entity kills Palestinian poets and writers with the same strikes as it does Palestinian resistance fighters. And now, these various efforts in publishing are beginning to coalesce, broadening the monetary and ideological divestment from Israel to not only ensure Zionism’s obsolescence in publishing, but also to project a new vision for the industry’s future: a unified community of authors, literary agents, publishing workers, booksellers, librarians, and readers bound by their commitment to justice and powerful enough to unseat the existing status quo.

Books Against Genocide is a coalition and campaign of book workers pressuring US "Big 5" trade book publishers to end their relationships with the Zionist project called "Israel."

JCB's literature prize sponsors violence from India to Palestine

British construction company JCB's literature prize masks its ongoing role in genocide from India to Palestine and Kashmir, says Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya.

Voices
Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya
21 Nov, 2024
THE NEW ARAB

The JCB prize for literature is an indicator not only of the ever-presence of corporates in India’s cultural world, but also of ongoing British imperialism under Modi’s fascist government, writes Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya [photo credit: Getty Images]

On November 23, the winner of India’s JCB Prize for Literature is set to be announced.

The prize — an award of 2,500,000 rupees (almost $30,000) — is overseen by British construction company JCB and its eponymous literature foundation.

However, JCB has also played a disturbing role in carrying out the Hindu supremacist (or Hindutva) agenda of India’s central government, led by Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Ahead of the announcement, an open letter on the literature prize has been signed by 120 high-profile authors across India, the UK and globally. The letter condemns the ‘hypocrisy’ of the prize in failing to acknowledge the widespread use of JCB equipment in the destruction of Muslim homes and places of worship. The demolitions have also targeted Dalits and other oppressed communities.

This so-called ‘bulldozer justice’ taking place in Modi’s India is a clear step towards ethnic cleansing, in line with the openly stated aim of government ministers to make the country a Hindu state, with some even calling for the genocide of the Muslim population.

Related


Narendra Modi is fashioning India in his own, despotic image
Perspectives
Ashok Swain

As the open letter states, JCB is likewise fuelling Israel’s continued attempts at ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through ongoing settlement expansion in the West Bank, even as the genocidal war on Gaza continues.

Amnesty International found large-scale evidence of the repeated use of JCB bulldozers and backhoe loaders in demolitions of Palestinian homes, due to contracts between JCB’s dealer, Comasco Ltd, and the Israeli Ministry of Defence.

Meanwhile, in Indian-occupied Kashmir - the world’s most heavily militarised region - JCB machines have consistently been used in house demolitions during large scale evictions, despite many residents providing proof of ownership. This is just one aspect of a broader regime of human rights violations of the Kashmiri people by the Indian state, particularly since 2019, when the limited autonomy of the state of Jammu and Kashmir was revoked by the Indian government.

The open letter forms part of the wider campaign "JCB: Stop Bulldozer Genocide", which demands that JCB must end its relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Defence and cease all activities in occupied Palestine.

In terms of India, the campaign demands that JCB commit to ensuring that its products are not used for human rights violations in India and Kashmir through robust monitoring and prevention systems. This includes making compulsory the use of its existing LiveLink technology to trace and locate JCB machines.
JCB's dirty record

JCB is deeply intertwined with corruption amongst the wealthy UK establishment. Its chairman Anthony Bamford has close ties with the UK Conservative Party and particularly with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, having even hosted Johnson’s wedding in 2022 — making up part of the complex web of connections between the UK and India’s respective far right regimes.

The JCB empire is owned by Bamford and controlled by the Bamford family trusts, which have been involved in offshore tax scandals.

The empire is also a major donor to the Conservative Party, to which it gave £300,000 in 2024 alone. Furthermore, this month the former Conservative Party energy minister, Claire Coutinho, faced claims of conflict of interest after it was found she had accepted donations from Lord Bamford whilst overseeing the awarding of millions to JCB businesses in green grants - a classic example of government and corporate greenwashing.

The website for the literature prize mentions JCB’s desire to "communicate to readers everywhere the full diversity of India’s literature" a sentiment directly contradicted by the company’s role in destroying the homes of marginalised communities on behalf of Hindutva forces.

Mita Kapur, director of the literature prize, told Scroll.in that the books on the longlist for the prize represent "a diverse array of Indian fiction", echoing the prize’s emphasis on diversity. Notably, however, the candidates shortlisted for the prize are nearly all Hindu, and four out of five are men, despite the prize being overseen by a team of women.

The blurb of one book on the longlist, Of Mothers and Other Perishables by Radhika Oberoi, includes an apparently climactic point in the text when "protestors swarm the streets, hollering against a new bill that persecutes the Muslim community".

This is seemingly a reference to the real mass resistance to the Citizenship Amendment Act and accompanying laws, which were first introduced by Modi’s government in late 2019 and attempt to disenfranchise India’s Muslims. Tellingly, Oberoi’s novel has not made it to the JCB prize shortlist.

The letter comes as many writers across the globe have distanced themselves from Israel in recent weeks and signed letters pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions.

The JCB prize for literature, however, is particularly insidious, since the company’s role in destruction of lives and livelihoods - and fuelling ethnic cleansing in India, Palestine and Kashmir - remains relatively little known.

Despite the reliance of Indian literature on corporate sponsorship - as a result of a broad lack of arts funding - this is not the first time Indian authors have targeted a literary initiative with unethical corporate connections. For example, the Jaipur literary festival was widely boycotted in 2016 on account of its sponsorship by Vedanta, a mining company responsible for the widespread displacement of indigenous communities.

Indian author Asad Zaidi, a signatory of the open letter, said: "[JCB] machines have come to symbolise displacement and destruction in contemporary India. Unsurprisingly, JCB has been trying to charm and lure the cultural intelligentsia, including writers and translators, into its image-building exercise as a protector and promoter of high cultural values. Its literary and translation prizes are part of this charade."

Another signatory, Dalit poet Cynthia Stephens said:

"Heavy earthmoving equipment is like a knife. It can be used to build infrastructure for human comfort, but in recent years has been more used to destroy the lives of the poor and marginalised. We condemn such hypocrisy on the part of the company and those administering the prize."

Whilst India’s Supreme Court ruled against ‘bulldozer justice’ just over a week ago, declaring that authorities cannot demolish someone’s home merely because they have been accused of a crime, it is unclear whether this will be implemented in practice and popular opposition remains crucial.

Challenging the literature prize is fundamental to the ongoing campaign against bulldozer genocide.

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Perspectives
Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya

Through the literature prize, JCB is attempting to maintain its image as a source of both cultural and economic prosperity in India.

The website for the prize emphasises the company’s role in creating jobs for Indian workers, citing JCB’s "substantial and longstanding involvement in the country’s social and economic life". This involvement, in fact, includes the destruction of the livelihoods of some of India’s most marginalised people.

The JCB prize for literature is an indicator not only of the ever-presence of corporates — including those complicit in genocide — in India’s cultural world, but also of ongoing British imperialism under Modi’s fascist government.

As author Siddhartha Deb put it: "If the JCB Prize is intended to support Indian writing, that means Indian writing is complicit in British racism, Hindu fundamentalism, and Zionist ethnic cleansing."

Alongside the global boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, it is more urgent than ever to connect the dots and condemn the JCB prize in solidarity with those facing demolition and displacement — both in Palestine under Israeli occupation and in India and Kashmir amidst the steady rise of Hindutva fascism.

Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya is a writer, activist and editor. She is interested in arts and culture and social movements.

Follow her on X: @AnanyaWilson

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff, or the author's employer.

Israel has a long history of smearing journalists

Israel tries to discredit Palestinian journalists with unsubstantiated ‘terrorist’ labels. Jodie Ginsberg says Israel must end attacks on the media.

Jodie Ginsberg
18 Nov, 2024

THE NEW ARAB

Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh mourning his son, journalist Hamza Dahdouh who was killed alongside freelance video journalist Mustafa Thuraya in an Israeli drone strike in Rafah. [GETTY]

Moments before he was killed in 2004, student journalist and freelance photographer Mohamed Abu Halima spoke on the phone to a producer at his radio station, describing the army jeeps he had seen close to Balata refugee camp, outside the city of Nablus in the West Bank. The producer, Moaz Shraida, said Abu Halima told him he had started to photograph the jeeps. Shraida heard gunfire. Then, nothing.

According to witnesses, Abu Halima was shot in the stomach by Israeli armed forces (Palestinian journalists describe the waist and neck as the spots favoured by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) because they are not covered by body armour). He died in hospital. A spokesperson for the IDF at the time said that as far as the army knew, Abu Halima “was not a journalist" and that he "was armed and he opened fire on IDF forces". To the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) knowledge, no investigation has ever been held into the journalist’s killing.

Twenty years later, this pattern in which Israel alleges that journalists are militants or terrorists – without providing credible evidence or undertaking transparent investigations into their killings – persists.
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Israel’s tactics

Smearing journalists as criminals is a tactic particularly prevalent in autocratic regimes – but also a tactic used frequently by Israel in recent decades – and has two clear aims. The first is to justify attacks on journalists after the fact. A CPJ report published in May 2023 found that in at least six of the 20 cases of journalists killed by the IDF over the preceding 22 years, the IDF had alleged the individuals were involved in militant activity. In none of the 20 cases has anyone been held accountable for the deaths and few have even been accorded a transparent investigation.


The second tactic is intended to discredit Palestinian journalists more broadly. By seeding the idea that the journalists – the only individuals able to report what is happening inside Gaza – are terrorists, Israel can effectively smear all Palestinian journalists. This aims to undermine their credibility and thus, by extension, asks viewers and readers to doubt what they are seeing, and therefore to dismiss it.

It seems no coincidence that the allegations against the six Al Jazeera journalists in October came just as the IDF launched a major violent offensive that one senior officer said was aimed at creating a “cleansed space” in northern Gaza. Palestinian journalists who have been trying to report from the area told CPJ that atrocities were being committed amid a “news void”.
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Farrah Koutteineh

Last month, Israel published documents it said proved six Al Jazeera journalists operating in Gaza were affiliated with militant groups. Al Jazeera vehemently rejected the claims, which came as Israel launched an assault on northern Gaza, attacks that rights groups said amounted to ethnic cleansing. Al Jazeera is one of the few major international broadcasters to still have reporters providing daily broadcasts from Gaza, where no international journalists have been allowed independent access since the start of the war.

Unreliable justifications

CPJ has been unable to independently verify the documents shared by the IDF on social media, but other experts have cast doubt on these and other similar documents produced in the past. For example, following the killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul and freelance camera operator Rami Al Refee in a drone strike in July, the IDF published documents that showed Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007. He would have been 10 years old.

After Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Al Dahdouh and freelancer Mustafa Thuraya were killed in an Israeli strike on January 7, Israel alleged that they were terrorists operating a drone “posing a threat” to IDF soldiers. A Washington Post analysis of their drone footage found “no indications that either man was operating as anything other than a journalist that day.” The available footage shows that the journalists did not film any IDF troops, aircraft, or military equipment, nor were there any indications of IDF troops in the vicinity of the area they filmed.

The Washington Post investigation also noted that both journalists passed through Israeli checkpoints on their way to the south early in the war and that Dahdouh had been approved to leave Gaza—“a rare privilege unlikely to have been granted to a known militant.”
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Lex Takkenberg

The smear tactics are all part of a deliberate and much broader campaign to censor information coming out of Gaza and the West Bank that includes the targeting and killing of journalists, attacks on media facilities, bans on foreign media mainly targeted at Al Jazeera’s reporting, and threats to independent news outlets like Haaretz.

And it is having its desired effect: to disguise and diminish in the public’s eyes the catastrophic and disproportionate impact of the war on Palestinian civilians, and to dehumanise those suffering to help justify Israel’s disproportionate assault on Gaza.

This must not be allowed to stand. CPJ has called repeatedly for Israel to halt its attacks on the media and for Israel’s allies to use all tools at their disposal to ensure Israel upholds its commitments to a free press: this includes suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement, as well as further EU targeted sanctions, and immediate action from the United States to halt the transfer of weapons being used in strikes on civilians.


In the absence of this much-needed and too long-delayed action, journalists will continue to play a pivotal role in documenting this war. It is vital that they be allowed to perform that act of witnessing and that we, as outside witnesses ourselves to these systematic attacks, play our part by speaking out loudly and clearly in their defence.

Jodie Ginsberg is the chief executive officer of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Follow her on X: @jodieginsberg

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

Opinion

Israeli prepares to annex the occupied West Bank and impose a fait accompli on the Palestinians



A view of the West Bank separation barrier, which separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem, has become the site of many artists’ drawings to depict the Israeli attacks on Palestinians, on November 12, 2024 in Bethlehem, West Bank [Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu Agency]

MEMO
November 21, 2024 

by Aziz Mustafa


As soon as it was known that Donald Trump will be back in the White House in January, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that 2025 would be the year to impose the occupation state’s sovereignty over “Judea and Samaria”, known to the rest of the world as the West Bank. Naftali Bennett made a similar announcement in 2016, when Trump was a US presidential candidate for the first time. The Palestinian territory, said Bennett, should be part of the occupation state.

Annexation is illegal under international law.

Any Israeli attempt to annex the West Bank projects a worrying picture of the consequences. The Israelis themselves are monitoring this, but it is not acknowledged by the right-wing government, because even partial annexation could lead to some negative responses that would jeopardise the occupation state’s position. While the Jewish settlers and their leaders who support annexation claim that it can be implemented gradually and thus be revealed as a fait accompli, with reduced negative consequences, research suggests that this is a delusion.

The gradual annexation of so-called Area C of the West Bank (delineated by the Oslo Accords and controlled fully by Israel), or even part of it, is expected to lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and thus the end of its security coordination with the occupation state, and the occupation army will have to control the occupied Palestinian territory. In such a situation, Israel will be forced to fund a military-run regime and be responsible for the lives of 2.8 million Palestinians. The cost of such a move is estimated at $14.5 billion annually, including expenses for health services, education and national insurance for Palestinians.

OPINION: Smotrich has confirmed that the quest for ‘Greater Israel’ is real

Moreover, the annexation of the West Bank could damage the Israeli economy due to a predicted decline in foreign investment and the imposition of international sanctions. Security will also be affected, as the occupation army will be required to double its presence on the ground, hindering its readiness for war on other fronts. Vital security cooperation under the peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt will be hit, with the potential for Jordan to become dangerously unstable within the international arena, and Israel could find itself in a serious diplomatic crisis.

Even if the incoming Trump administration supports the annexation move, even tacitly, the reaction of Europe and the Arab world is expected to be harsh. It is likely to include economic and diplomatic sanctions, and Israel’s international legitimacy, such as it is, will be damaged severely.


It might even be declared to be a pariah state, similar to South Africa during the apartheid era.

The main fear, though, is that annexation will lead to a point of no return, where the occupation state will be forced to choose between two impossible options: a binational state in which it will lose its Jewish majority, or an apartheid regime in which millions of Palestinians live under Israeli military rule, without full civil rights. Israel has already been found to have passed the threshold as an apartheid state by B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Coinciding with Israeli preparations to annex the West Bank, the government’s attitude towards Palestinian construction, especially in Area C, means implementing a demographic and population revolution in favour of the Jewish immigrant settlers at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians.

There were 2,868 new Palestinian buildings built in Area C from June 2023 to May 2024, less than half of the number built in the corresponding periods in previous years since 2018. The monthly average in 2023 was 260 new Palestinian buildings, compared with an average of 608 buildings per month in previous years from 2018 onwards. This is a 57 per cent decrease. Meanwhile, there has been very intense activity by the occupation army, prompting many Palestinians to stay in their homes and postpone their housing plans.

READ: Israel forces assault staff member after storming Palestinian school

The operations of the army-run Civil Administration in the West Bank; the appointment of far-right extremist Smotrich as Finance Minister and as an additional minister in the Defence Ministry; and the establishment of the Settlement Directorate have all contributed to imposing more control over Palestinian land in the West Bank. This began with building a strategy for work and determining the location for Palestinian construction, and has been extended to a legal advisory system to deal with petitions, the confiscation of engineering equipment and the demolition of “unlicensed” structures that deter Palestinian residents from trying to extend their homes or build new properties.

A major factor in the decline in Palestinian construction has been the decisive move by the Ministry of Settlements and National Missions, headed by Orit Strook, to fund land coordinators in all settlement councils. Their job is to patrol in a vehicle and use drones to detect and report any Palestinian construction. The result has been the confiscation of more than 440 tractors, small trucks and engineering tools used by Palestinian contractors, leaving them without tools for lengthy periods, which is costly and forces them to think twice before their next construction project.

The occupation authorities do not hesitate to demolish any new Palestinian building.

Unlike the past, the procedure is short and sharp. The heads of Palestinian villages know that anything being built has a low chance of survival and faces rapid demolition. The occupation authorities have destroyed 901 Palestinian buildings in Area C this year alone, and declared 5,978 acres to be state land. This is equivalent to half of the entire area that was declared as state land since the 1993 Oslo Accords.

With 19 per cent of Palestinian new-build sites destroyed in 2021, 27 per cent in the following year, 2022, and 22 per cent in 2023, a shocking increase has been recorded this year, with 68 per cent of new Palestinian buildings destroyed. All of this is in preparation for the annexation of the West Bank as soon as Donald Trump takes office in January. With many supporters of Israel’s illegal settlements nominated for major positions in his administration, the incoming US president may be unable to stop the annexation plan, even if, as Republican Party sources claim, he opposes it.

The shadow of Israeli settlement expansion hangs over Gaza

Analysis: With an emboldened Israeli far-right calling to resettle Gaza, Israel's systematic destruction is seen as a prelude to mass Palestinian displacement.

Mohamed Solaimane
21 November, 2024

THE NEW ARAB

Since its launch on 5 October this year, Israel’s campaign of forced evacuations in northern Gaza has claimed over 2,000 Palestinian lives and left more than 6,000 injured. While the immediate toll is devastating, Gazans fear an even darker threat looms over the enclave’s future.

Eyewitness accounts detail the widespread levelling of neighbourhoods in northern Gaza, with bulldozed infrastructure and new road networks tailored for military use. Coupled with growing calls within Israel’s political establishment to reinstate settlements in the area, these developments are deepening fears of permanent Palestinian displacement.

The destruction has sparked speculation that Israel intends to establish a buffer zone along its border with Gaza, a security measure that could also prevent the return of displaced Palestinians, but more troubling is the spectre of reintroducing settlements to northern Gaza, a region Israel evacuated in 2005 when it dismantled 21 settlements as part of a unilateral withdrawal.

The Israeli resettlement of Gaza is no longer a fringe idea
In-depth
Jessica Buxbaum

While Israel’s government has not explicitly announced plans to annex northern Gaza or resettle it with Israeli civilians, observers point out that the widespread displacement and destruction align with longstanding proposals from Israeli military figures to establish a no-man’s land in northern Gaza, intended as a buffer zone against potential attacks.

Far-right parties and settlement organisations in late October organised a provocative rally held just hundreds of meters from Gaza’s border. The event featured members of Israel’s parliament and cabinet, all advocating for renewed settlement in Gaza. This gathering followed a January conference, during which far-right activists and lawmakers signed a petition urging the Israeli government to rebuild settlements in Gaza and northern parts of the West Bank.

Ahmed Fayad, a researcher in Israeli affairs, argues that these calls are “deeply rooted” in the ideology of the Zionist movement now dominating the government.

“This government believes that wherever settlements exist, the army will defend them, thereby ensuring security for surrounding areas,” Fayad told The New Arab, adding that he sees the push for settlements in northern Gaza as driven by “ideological conviction” as well as “political and military aims”.

Israel’s current actions in northern Gaza, which include razing buildings, displacing populations, and enforcing strict security protocols, appear designed to create “a buffer zone, ostensibly to protect nearby Israeli communities,” he adds.

The widespread displacement and destruction in north Gaza align with longstanding proposals from Israeli military figures to establish a no man's land intended as a buffer zone. [Getty]


“It’s too early to conclude that far-right proposals for new settlements will gain traction,” he noted. “Settlements require a level of security and stability that simply doesn’t exist in Gaza right now. The territory is still a closed military zone, inaccessible even to Israelis.”

The future of Gaza, Fayad contended, depends on how Israel envisions its administration of the territory in the post-war era.

“There’s a clear desire among elements of the Israeli government, as well as far-right activists, to reestablish settlements in Gaza,” Fayad said. “Legislative and administrative measures already in place could make this relatively easy to execute. However, such a move hinges on military and political decision-making, which is complicated by the memory of the severe security risks settlements faced before Israel’s 2005 withdrawal.”
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The shift from political discourse to open calls for action is evident in statements by Israeli politicians and officials. Current and former members of Israel’s Knesset, ministers, and other high-ranking figures have increasingly advocated for establishing settlements across Gaza.

Mowaffaq al-Kafarna, a political science professor at Gaza University, does not rule out the eventual establishment of settlements but considers it unlikely during the current military campaign.

“The war is ongoing, and the complexities of ensuring security for settlements make such a move implausible at this stage,” he said.

However, he warns that Israel’s actions on the ground suggest a long-term strategy to completely evacuate northern Gaza.


“In this scenario, northern Gaza’s depopulation is just the beginning, with the process potentially extending to Gaza City itself,” al-Kafarna explained. “Israel seems intent on creating a northern Gaza entirely devoid of Palestinian presence, starting with this evacuation as a precursor to wider changes.”

He pointed to the systematic destruction of neighbourhoods and the construction of new road networks bisecting northern Gaza as evidence.

“The division of northern Gaza into isolated sections, combined with widespread destruction, lays the groundwork for gradual and comprehensive depopulation,” he said. “What we’re seeing is the first phase of a larger plan to establish security zones. Settlements may follow, depending on Israel’s long-term calculations.”

He also believes the overarching goal is to neutralise Gaza as a threat to Israel, dismantle resistance groups entirely, and replace Hamas with a pliable civilian administration loyal to Israeli interests.

“This is about ensuring Gaza can never challenge Israel again,” al-Kafarna said. “It’s not just about military domination but also political control, ensuring free movement for the Israeli military while maintaining a civilian administration subservient to Israeli security interests.”

There's a clear desire among elements of the Israeli government, as well as far-right activists, to reestablish settlements in Gaza. [Getty]


One possibility, he suggests, is the incorporation of Gaza under Israel’s broader political and security apparatus. However, this would likely exclude any responsibility for the Palestinian population, which Israel might delegate to international organisations.

“This would contrast sharply with the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority manages civilian life. In Gaza, there would be no place for any Palestinian-led authority,” he noted.

From the Palestinian perspective, the signs on the ground suggest that settlements are not a distant possibility but an imminent reality. Nasser Attaallah, a Palestinian writer and political analyst, believes that Israel’s policies and actions in northern Gaza are preparing the ground for settlement expansion.

“Netanyahu and his extremist government have dredged up distorted historical and ideological justifications to legitimise these brutal crimes,” Attaallah said. “Settlement in Gaza is no longer just a plan; it’s becoming a reality.”

He warned that such moves will further entrench Palestinian dispossession, with “devastating consequences for the already shattered social and economic fabric of Gaza”.


For Palestinians like Attaallah, the renewed settlement discourse signals a return to a dark chapter they hoped was closed.

“We are witnessing the resurrection of an old nightmare,” he said, “and the world seems powerless to stop it”.

As Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, Palestinian voices express a deepening sense of despair and inevitability over the region’s future. For many, the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, which set off the latest escalation, has become a pretext for what they describe as the total obliteration of Gaza.
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“Gaza is facing a full-scale settlement project,” Attaallah asserts. He argues that years of far-right planning, previously limited to policy papers, are now becoming a reality under the current government. The situation is further compounded, he believed, by the global landscape, particularly the influence of now-President-elect Donald Trump.

“During his first term, Trump legitimised settlements and supported every move by the Israeli right wing. With an administration sympathetic to the settler cause, the situation for Palestinians can only worsen,” he explained.

For Palestinians, this rhetoric, combined with the devastation on the ground, signals the erasure of any prospects for autonomy or stability. The stakes, Attaallah emphasises, could not be higher.

“This is about more than land - it’s about the survival of a people and the obliteration of their existence.”

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.

Opinion

Realism and the invasion of Gaza: 

Critiquing Israel’s Zionist agenda


Palestinians fleeing to Gaza City with their belongings they could take with them, on October 23, 2024 in Gaza City, Gaza. [Mahmoud Isleem – Anadolu Agency]

MEMO
by Syeda Fatima Shuja

November 21, 2024

Realism is a prominent school of thought in international relations and often justifies state actions based on national interests, power dynamics and security. It prioritises the preservation of the state’s autonomy and survival, even at the expense of ethical considerations. However, realism fails to address the moral implications of state actions adequately, particularly when they result in human suffering and violations of international law.

“States,” said Kenneth Waltz in 1979, “are the principal actors in international politics, and their primary concern is survival. The structure of the international system compels states to act in ways that maximise their security.”

In the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, realism’s reliance on power and security has often masked the underlying injustices and deprivations faced by the Palestinians. It has perpetuated a binary understanding of the conflict, overlooking the complexities of historical grievances, political motivations and the legitimate Palestinian struggle for self-determination.


This narrow perspective overlooks the crucial need for justice, accountability and the recognition of Palestinian rights.

Israel’s latest invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip, a densely populated territory now under complete Israeli control, is a stark example of how realist thinking can fail to address fundamental moral concerns. The ongoing blockade, military operations and restrictions on movement have caused immense human suffering, yet these actions are often justified by the need to ensure Israel’s security. This approach ignores the long-term consequences of the occupation, including the erosion of trust, the perpetuation of violence and the hindering of peace negotiations. Not for nothing has it been called a “plausible genocide” by the International Court of Justice.

READ: IDF soldiers will pay for Netanyahu seeking to impose military rule in Gaza, warns Gallant

The justification used by Israel for its capture of the Gaza Strip is rooted in a combination of historical narratives, security concerns and political calculations. The claim that Gaza is a strategic buffer zone for Israel is often used to justify the occupation, arguing that the territory’s control is vital for Israel’s security. This narrative, however, is highly contested, with critics arguing that it overlooks the disproportionate use of force against Palestinian civilians and the role of the “unlawful” (as per the ICJ) occupation itself in fuelling conflict.

For Israel, the war in Gaza is framed as a war of self-defence against the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, but, in reality, it amounts to a genocide against the Palestinians. The occupation of the Gaza Strip can be seen as a strategic move, aiming to gain an advantageous position in future negotiations. Moreover, Israel is interested in the natural gas fields off the coast of Gaza. The Zionist state also wants to eliminate the possibility of serious resistance from Gaza when extremist Jews seek to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and build a temple in its place.

Although the ongoing air strikes, blockade of humanitarian aid and essential goods and services, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure including hospitals, schools and homes have led to a staggering number of civilian casualties, there has been little or no adequate action by the international community to stop the carnage. At least 44,000 Palestinians have been killed, mainly women and children, while 104,000 have been wounded. The sheer scale of the violence, along with the targeting of civilians, has drawn accusations of disproportionate force and collective punishment.


The loss of innocent lives, particularly children, has been devastating.

Thousands of children have been killed or severely wounded in their homes and schools, leaving families in shock. Women’s rights and safety have also been undermined as they bear the burden of displacement, loss of loved ones and injury. Rapes by soldiers have been reported. Whole communities and generations have been affected, losing their homes, futures and hopes.

READ: British MPs urge government to endorse ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu, Gallant

The ongoing genocide in Gaza raises serious questions about Israel’s treatment of civilians. This is not self-defence as outlined by the realist perspective, as the state is not focusing on addressing the threat posed by Hamas, which it regards as a terrorist organisation. That’s just an excuse. Ethnic cleansing of the enclave is the objective, either through killing or displacement. What’s more, an occupation state — Israel in this case — has no legal right to claim “self-defence” against the legitimate resistance of the people living under its military occupation.

The occupation state has ignored the repeated calls by the international community to respect international law and protect civilians. This highlights the need for reform of the United Nations, where Israel has been protected by the US veto and no means of enforcing resolutions are available. This emboldens Israel and allows it to act with total impunity. The effects are starting to be felt badly across the whole region.

While there has been much talk about the political aspects of “the day after” the war, little thought has apparently been given to the undoubted serious physical and mental health issues affecting the Palestinians in Gaza. Children are traumatised, as are their parents. Who is going to help them?

In the middle of all of this, even as Western governments struggle with poverty and declining public services in their own countries, they continue to give billions of dollars in aid to Israel as well as preferential trading, research and arms agreements.


Nobody is able to explain why with any degree of conviction.

Realism fails to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza because it focuses solely on power dynamics and security concerns, ignoring the human suffering and rights violations. This narrow perspective perpetuates the cycle of violence without tackling the underlying cause: the decades-old occupation. A just approach based on international law and human rights is needed to end the conflict.

“The Israeli occupation of Palestine is an affront to human rights, an act of aggression, and a violation of international law,” said Noam Chomsky. How right he was.

Opinion

Smotrich has confirmed that the quest for ‘Greater Israel’ is real


Israel’s Finance Minister and leader of the Religious Zionist Party Bezalel Smotrich on March 20, 2023 [GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images]

MEMO
by Hussein Laqra’a
November 20, 2024


The leaders of 56 Arab and Islamic countries advocated at the Riyadh Summit last week for the “two-state solution” and the need to establish a Palestinian state on the nominal borders of 4 June 1967, and tried to convince the world that it is the only solution to the Palestinian issue. In response, the extreme far-right Finance Minister of the occupation state, Bezalel Smotrich, insisted that 2025 will be the year that “Judea and Samaria” — the occupied West Bank — will be annexed to Israel and that he expects US President-elect Donald Trump to support this step. He basically confirmed that the quest for “Greater Israel” is real.

The nominal borders as at 4 June 1967 were the 1949 Armistice (“Green”) Line between the Zionist state of Israel and the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. These occupied Palestinian territories combined make up no more than 22 per cent of occupied Palestine. This means that the 56 Arab and Islamic countries have agreed that 78 per cent of Palestinian land should be served to the Zionist occupation state on a silver platter. In fact, the 2002 Arab Summit in Beirut approved of this.

Some Arabs paid for advertisements in Israeli newspapers to promote this “Arab Peace Initiative”, but the Zionist Prime Minister at the time, war criminal Ariel Sharon, said that it “is not worth the ink it was written with” and rejected it completely. This rejection of the initiative continues to this day, despite Arab pleas and appeals, as well as the many humiliating concessions made by the Palestinian Authority since the 1993 Oslo Accords were signed. The occupation regime and parliament passed a bill recently refusing to recognise a Palestinian state, even if the entire world does so. The Israeli right and left, government and opposition, all agreed on this.

OPINION: A nation in denial: Why Israel’s defeat is imminent

Now Smotrich is working to bury the two-state solution once and for all, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports him. We have to ask, therefore, why the Arab and Islamic countries are trying to revive the moribund “two-state solution” despite it being biased and complicit with the occupation?


More than 30 years of “negotiations” have simply bought time for the occupation regime to steal more Palestinian land.

We now know — if anyone was ever in any doubt — that the settler-colonial state rejects sharing Palestine with the Palestinians, even if it is only 22 per cent of the historic territory. While arguing that chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are “anti-Semitic”, the Zionists have no qualms about stating openly that they want a Jewish state “from the river [Jordan] to the [Mediterranean] sea”. Intensive settlement activity — all illegal under international law — is swallowing up what remains of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and probably northern Gaza as well if the occupation regime is allowed to get away with its ethnic cleansing and genocide. It would have made far more sense, therefore, for the Arab and Islamic leaders to turn this humiliating page, forget about a “two-state solution” and declare the death of the so-called “peace process”. At the same time, they could have announced their collective political and practical support for legitimate resistance to the brutal Israeli occupation.

I have been saying for years that the Palestinian Authority is wrong to participate in futile negotiations with the occupation state to establish an independent Palestinian state that the Zionists will never accept. And that this path will lead to the loss of what remains of Palestine and thus the liquidation of its cause.

I have also said that the Arabs are wrong to waste their time chasing the mirage of peace with a criminal, fascist, racist, expansionist regime which wants all of Palestine for itself; and, indeed, wants to establish “Greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates, despite the peace treaties and normalisation agreements with its neighbours whose land it will steal. When the occupation finishes swallowing the West Bank and East Jerusalem with settlements and announces their annexation, it will devote itself to expanding at the expense of its Arab neighbours, into Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, even if it takes another eight decades. When the right time is right, the occupation will do this and will not care about any of the normalisers who are now supporting it against any and all legitimate resistance, thinking that they are thereby weakening Iran’s influence in the region and creating the appropriate conditions for a comprehensive peace deal.

Smotrich stood next to a map of the State of Israel in March 2023 in France, and “Israel” included Jordan, even though the Zionist entity signed a peace treaty with the Hashemite Kingdom in 1994. Didn’t the terrorist Menachem Begin sign a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979?

That won’t stop the Zionists. They want it all, and give nothing in return.

The issue is quite clear, but unfortunately the Arabs continue to bury their heads in the sand. If they were rational, they would have stopped the reckless promotion of the two-state solution illusion that the occupation regime does not want, and the normalisation countries would have severed, not strengthened their relations with it. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority would announce the end of security coordination with the enemy forces in the West Bank, the cancellation of the Oslo Accords, and its return to resistance against the occupation. If the Arabs were rational, they would have backed the legitimate resistance as their own first line of defence instead of abandoning the Palestinians in Gaza. Are they all insane?

Translated from Echoroukonline, 

16 November 2024