SOUTH KOREA
Main opposition accuses gov't of 'submissive' attitude toward U.S. over eavesdropping suspicions

Diplomacy 

 April 12, 2023

By Kim Na-young

SEOUL, April 12 (Yonhap) -- The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) on Wednesday blasted the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol for taking a submissive attitude toward the United States over suspicions that U.S. intelligence agencies eavesdropped on South Korea and other allies.

According to reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post, a set of leaked Pentagon documents shared on social media revealed that U.S. intelligence services eavesdropped on conversations at the South Korean presidential office in early March regarding whether to provide weapons support to Ukraine.

A day earlier, the defense chiefs of South Korea and the U.S. agreed on the assessment that much of the information in the purported documents was fabricated, while Yoon's office rejected the eavesdropping allegations as "absurd and false."

In Washington, Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Tae-hyo also said that no circumstances have been found that indicate the U.S. eavesdropped on South Korea with "malicious intentions." Kim was in Washington to discuss preparations for Yoon's upcoming state visit to the U.S.

"Are there bad intentions and good intentions in eavesdropping?" Park Jie-won, an adviser to the DP and a former chief of the National Intelligence Service, said in a radio interview. "The act itself is illegal and bad."

Rep. Jung Chung-rai said the government is trying to defend the U.S.

"It's like someone who was slapped in the face saying he was not when the one who hit him says he did slap him in the face," Jung said. "Is the Yoon Suk Yeol administration a lawyer for the U.S.?"

The lawmaker appeared to be referring to remarks by Chris Meagher, an assistant to the defense secretary, earlier this week that the photos of the purported Pentagon documents appear to be "similar in format to those used to provide daily updates to our senior leaders."

"The presidential office said the eavesdropping allegation is an absurd lie. Then is it the U.S. defense ministry who is lying, or the presidential office?" DP Rep. Park Chan-dae said in a party leadership meeting.

The DP Chairman Lee Jae-myung said the party will push for legislative measures to strengthen the security of the presidential office and find out the truth of this case.

"Incidents like the Seoul sky being infiltrated by a North Korean drone and the presidential office being exposed to tapping of foreign intelligence services should never happen again," Lee said, referring to the document leakage case and the penetration of the no-fly zone around the presidential office by a North Korean drone in December.


Rep. Lee Jae-myung (C), the chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party, speaks at a party meeting at the National Assembly in western Seoul on April 12, 2023. (Yonhap)

nyway@yna.co.kr

(END)

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Can Indiana Jones overcome its Orientalist past?

Swara Salih

THE NEW ARAB
31 March, 2023

After a hiatus, the Indiana Jones franchise is back and problematic as ever. Typically reductive, the trailer for the new film, Dial of Destiny, slots back into regurgitating long-held tropes about the East as a dangerous and dastardly land.

Growing up, I didn’t watch the Indiana Jones series. The first one I ever saw was in high school when I saw Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with a friend in the cinema.

It wasn’t the best movie, but it thankfully did away with the series’ Orientalist tradition of portraying the East as a dangerous, exotic, and barbaric place needing to be tamed by the white saviour Dr Jones, who wants to “save” their cultural artefacts to place them in British museums.

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Unfortunately, with the new trailer for Dial of Destiny, this film series seems to be continuing to embrace its Orientalist roots just as enthusiastically even after so many years.

"Temple of Doom rightly has a notorious reputation for its racism and Orientalism, but this nature is ingrained throughout the franchise"

When I finally watched the original Indiana Jones series a few years ago, the Orientalist depictions of the region didn’t shock me as much as they should have. Perhaps that was because I was so used to such depictions before I started researching more of the depths of Orientalism.

But as I watched the second instalment, Temple of Doom, which takes place in India, the racism against South Asian people was staggeringly obvious.


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The Indian royals at the Pankot Palace in Mayapore ate baby snakes, monkey brains, eyeball soup, and beetles, and practised human sacrifice (attempting to with stolen children from Mayapore), and overall showed a farcical depiction of South Asian royals as “backwards” and “barbaric” for Dr Jones and the audience to be repulsed at.

Even if Steven Spielberg intended the dinner scene as a “joke”, it continues to repulse brown audiences to this day and is a depiction the filmmaker hasn’t apologised for, despite his overall regret about the quality of the movie.

It’s up to Dr Jones to save the innocent children from forced labour (and presumably human sacrifice) leaning more into the white saviour trope of the franchise.

Temple of Doom rightly has a notorious reputation for its racism and Orientalism, but this nature is ingrained throughout the franchise.

The depictions of Arabs and SWANA aren’t quite as cartoonish and outlandish but perpetuate racist Orientalism nonetheless.

Along with the yellow filter, when you bring up “Arab” and “Indiana Jones,” people likely think of the Arab swordsman working for Nazi intelligence (played by white British actor Terry Richards in heavy brownface) who superciliously swings his shamshir in front of Jones before the protagonist promptly shoots and kills him.

“Silly Arab, bringing a sword to a gunfight!” the film says.

The very premise of the film the swordsman appears in, Raiders of the Lost Ark, requires Jones and Marion Ravenwood to claim the titular Ark from its resting ground in Egypt.

The use of Egypt and its people as “barbaric and wild window” dressing for this plot makes Raiders of the Lost Ark a relic of Western Orientalism all on its own.

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But another, and perhaps more longstanding severe, element of the Indiana Jones franchise’s racism towards Arab peoples was in the very casting of his Egyptian and Arab ally, Sallah Mohammed Faisel el-Kahir, played by white Welsh actor Jonathan Rhys-Davies.

The conception of this character is rooted in Orientalist stereotypes of an exotic brown helper man to the white saviour, with Spielberg saying in an interview with Empire Magazine, “Sallah was originally written as a Sam Jaffe or Gunga Din type — almost a small creature from the Star Wars cantina in an earthbound adventure film. I had originally offered the part to Danny DeVito, who wanted to do it but couldn't fit it around his schedule for Taxi.”

For those that don’t know, “Gunga Din” is a reference to a poem by The Jungle Book author Rudyard Kipling, and depicts an Indian man subservient to a British coloniser during the British Raj.

Besides the troubling colonialist aspect of this comparison, Sallah is Egyptian and not Indian. But even besides that, conceiving an Egyptian character as “a creature from the cantina of Star Wars” is even more dehumanising, even if Spielberg thought he was being harmless in the comparison.


"As much as I'm open to franchises evolving from their Orientalist past, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much progress on this front with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which has no creative involvement from Arab or other North African peoples and no Arabs or North Africans in the main cast"

While Sallah, the character, maybe thankfully be more benign in his actual overall depiction with Rhys-Davies giving him some actual interiority (though he is still very much a sidekick to Dr Jones), the casting of a non-North African and non-Arab in this Egyptian role is troubling enough but becomes more severe back in 2015 with Rhys-Davies’ Islamophobic comments about Muslims on CNN.

“There is something in Islam that is belligerent, offensive, insidious and ideologically opposed to the values that we believe,” he said, referencing Islam as a core reason for terrorism, and blaming Muslims writ-large for not condemning or stopping such terrorist acts — when Muslims make up nearly two billion worldwide and are not all to hold accountable for the acts of a microcosm of a percentage of those who claim to share their faith.

In contrast, Rhys-Davies said: “There is something in Christianity that offers hope,” and “the jewel in the crown is the abolition of slavery,” neglecting to mention or consider how many millions suffered and died under British colonialism justified in the name of the European Christian faith.



While not all Egyptians are Muslim of course, over 90% of the country is, along with most of the SWANA region. So, for Rhys-Davies to make these comments and not apologise for them while continuing to feature an Egyptian character that has conceptions in these Orientalist stereotypes is rather deplorable.

The trailer for the new film that came out last December features a voiceover by Sallah. “I miss the desert,” he says as we see a Moroccan street bathed in the yellow filter, with him bidding his friend Dr Jones to come back to the Orientalist playground.

Every flash of Morocco also has a yellow filter.

The last scene in the trailer shows Dr Jones and his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in a Moroccan room filled with, what are presumably dangerous criminals, again, all lighted with that Orientalist yellow filter.

“Get back!” he yells at them while cracking his whip. Except for this time, all of the people here, including some North Africans, have guns as well.

Again, the film depicts North Africa as a dangerous and exotic place, steeping deeper into the Orientalism that is seemingly so inherent to the franchise, and arguably one that has been useful in selling it.

 
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Hanna Flint

As much as I am open to franchises evolving and improving upon their Orientalist pasts, I don’t think we’ll be seeing much progress on this front with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

It has no creative involvement from Arab or other North African peoples (director James Mangold and script by Mangold, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth) and features no Arabs or North Africans in the main cast.

Of course, as more trailers, synopses, and reviews come out, there might be more than initially meets the eye, but based on the history, what marketing has chosen to emphasise first, and the continuation of the casting of a certain Islamophobe, I fear that North Africa’s image in mass entertainment will suffer once again — although, I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

Swara Salih is a writer and podcaster who has written for The Nerds of Color and But Why Tho?. He co-hosts The Middle Geeks podcast, which covers all things SWANA/MENA representation, and is a co-host of the Spider-Man/Spider-Verse podcast Into The Spider-Cast.

Follow him on Twitter: @spiderswarz

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: My Favorite Muslim 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/02/ibn-khaldun-14th-century-arab.html

Israeli protests seek to uphold the settler colonial status quo, Palestinian resistance is the means of liberation


Tara Alami
06 Apr, 2023

The New Arab

The anti-government Israeli protests that have taken place over the last months highlight an unravelling of contradictions within the Zionist project. But ultimately, they seek to continue flying the colonial flag, writes Tara Alami.

The self-serving rallies by Israeli settlers remain nothing but a trivial backdrop to decades of genocide and dispossession committed by the state whose colonial flag they uphold and love, writes Tara Alami. [GETTY]

During the past several years, Zionist settlers have periodically organised protests against their colonial government’s tendency towards “extremism.” While so-called progressive settlers fill the streets of the territories occupied in 1948, built on the rubbles of raided Palestinian villages and unmarked mass graves, “Israel” is declared the 4th happiest country in the world. A desperate attempt to curate the image of the Zionist state as a pleasant, democratic, queer haven where citizens manage to thrive despite being surrounded by Palestinian and Arab “terrorism”.

This will inevitably fail as soon as settlers who would quietly endorse the theft of Palestinian land and life, are displeased with state repression directed towards themselves. Like when an elected finance minister calls himself a “fascist homophobe,” undermining years of Zionist pinkwashing efforts.

It’s difficult to hide genocide, dispossession, and occupation behind a translucent veil of civil rights.

''Zionist settlers’ attempts to maintain democracy within a nation-state built on violence and destruction while not only separating themselves from that material reality, but also refusing to accept that such a state can and will have a monopoly on violence towards its own citizens as well, is a sign of a crumbling propaganda machine.''

Like the 2011 protests, settlers in “Israel” are rallying behind basic demands, like a democratic government and social justice issues. Surrounded by hundreds of Israeli flags, some even advocate for an “end to the occupation” and to stop building “illegal settlements" in the West Bank, as if the Zionist state within the borders formed in 1948 is not a settlement in and of itself.

But behind this thin veneer of ostensibly “progressive” slogans and posters is, perhaps at best, a fundamental refusal to reckon with the implications of the existence of the Zionist state on stolen Palestinian land. Or most likely, an endorsement with recommendations for cosmetic changes that preserve individual liberties for colonisers coddled by a genocidal settler-colonial ethnostate.

It’s the freedom to colonise comfortably that matters to settlers, not progressive reforms or lack thereof.

Zionism being witnessed in its clearest form – extremist – is an uncomfortable development for settlers and those bankrolling the Zionist project. In an angsty response to Biden lightly scolding Netanyahu for his proposed judicial overhaul, Ben Gvir contended that the Zionist state is “not another star on the American flag.” And yet, the same “progressive” settlers condemning Netanyahu are rallying behind banners of the intertwined flags of two settler colonies, the Zionist state and the US. Additionally, Zionist cops are using quintessentially American police violence to dispel protestors.

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On 2 April, one of the most notorious state-sponsored hasbara propagandists, the ‘Special Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism,’ was fired by the Zionist government after publicly criticising Netanyahu. But even settlers who vaguely criticise “Israel” or their politicians from within, insist on obfuscating reality. In a typical response by Zionist “critics,” former Attorney General Ben Yair, says that the state practices apartheid, whilst also consciously refusing to acknowledge that apartheid is a tool secondary to Zionist settler-colonialism. This is because doing so would implicate them in more than 75 years of ethnic cleansing and land theft — an admission too damning for the illusion of the Zionist regime’s potential as the only progressive, democratic state in the region.

Zionist settlers’ attempts to maintain democracy within a nation-state built on violence and destruction while not only separating themselves from that material reality, but also refusing to accept that such a state can and will have a monopoly on violence towards its own citizens as well, is a sign of a crumbling propaganda machine.

In reality, the accelerated unravelling of contradictions within Zionist society and politics by settlers’ infuriation with a modicum of state repression as they proudly rally behind a colonial flag, is an imminent consequence for a colonial nation threatened by ongoing, steadfast Palestinian resistance to decades of genocide and dispossession.

The so-called progressive house of cards within which the colonial, genocidal face of Zionism which was loosely hidden over the past several decades, is bound to fall when Zionist settlers themselves cannot reconcile the contradictions underlying their livelihood and existence on stolen land.

Palestinians – whether in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Gaza, the territories stolen and occupied in 1948, or in exile – are seeking and struggling for liberation from a settler-colonial enterprise and imperialist proxy. The clear display of contradictions within Zionist society certainly does not amount to liberation, but signs of a faltering nation struggling with itself are a progressive move towards the unavoidable end of the Zionist project.

Palestinian martyr, intellectual, and revolutionary Basel Al-Araj insists we engage with the Zionist enemy, certainly not in what Kanafani calls “a conversation between the sword and the neck,” but rather in an attempt to understand and properly respond to the weakness of its foundation, to signs of its deterioration, and ultimately to its forthcoming ruin from within.

As a banner at one of the rallies which read: “Save Our Startup Nation” highlighted all too well, the purpose of such callous spectacles is to preserve the status quo — a settler-colonial nation bankrolled by the imperial core, a neoliberal colony founded and upheld by genocide and land theft, but with aesthetically pleasing, digestible individual liberties.

Like they do every year during Ramadan, Israeli Occupation Forces stormed and raided Al-Aqsa during prayer just days ago. At least 400 Palestinian worshippers were reportedly detained, women were beaten and tortured and rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades were used by Zionist soldiers, and more than 500 Palestinians were injured. The self-serving rallies by Israeli settlers remain nothing but a trivial backdrop to decades of genocide and dispossession committed by the state whose colonial flag they uphold and love.

The ultimate goal is to save the ostensible liberty to invest in a security and surveillance tech startup, the liberty to be queer, to wear vegan boots and build national parks, to have five elections within four years, and most importantly, the liberty to also colonise, pillage, and murder — but quietly.



Tara Alami is a Palestinian writer and organiser from occupied Jerusalem and occupied Yafa. She is based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal).
Follow her on Twitter: @taraxrh

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.

How Washington uses "proxies" to instigate "color revolution" in Venezuela?

(Xinhua) 13:34, April 10, 2023

CARACAS, April 9 (Xinhua) -- At the first "Summit for Democracy" held by the United States in December 2021, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido was invited to speak online as a self-proclaimed "interim president."

Just over a year later, however, Guaido was no longer in the limelight because he had been ditched by Washington as a worthless pawn.

"A GUEST OF HONOR"

On the evening of Feb. 4, 2020, Guaido attended the State of the Union address by then U.S. President Donald Trump, who introduced Guaido as Venezuela's "true and legitimate" leader. The following day, Guaido met with Trump at the White House, and photos of them in the Oval Office made headlines.

Born in 1983 in La Guaira in Venezuela, Guaido obtained a degree in industrial engineering from the Andres Bello Catholic University in 2007. In 2009, Guaido helped found the Popular Will party. He was sworn in as president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly of Venezuela on Jan. 5, 2019.

In May 2018, Nicolas Maduro was re-elected in Venezuela's presidential election. However, under the pretext of "democracy" and "human rights," the United States, together with its allies and Venezuela's opposition, refused to recognize the legitimacy of Maduro's government. On Jan. 23, 2019, Guaido declared himself the "interim president" of Venezuela. On the same day, the United States announced its recognition of Guaido and expressed support for him. Maduro immediately announced that Venezuela severed its diplomatic relations with the United States.

While financing Guaido, the United States has attempted to pressure Maduro to step down through diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and military threats. Under American pressure, more than 50 countries and the European Union recognized Guaido as the so-called "legitimate president."

In fact, Washington's search for "proxies" like Guaido began early. As disclosed by the Fact Sheet on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) released by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs last year, after Hugo Chavez, the "anti-U.S. fighter," was elected president of Venezuela in 1999, NED accelerated its behind-the-scenes operations.

It provided continuous funding to the Venezuelan opposition and invited people to "training courses" in the United States. In 2005, Guaido and four other Venezuelan "student leaders" attended NED-funded training for insurrection. Later, Guaido enrolled at a U.S. university and, with the support of NED, has been active in relevant political groups in the United States.

On April 30, 2019, Guaido showed up along with some military personnel outside an aviation military base in the east of the capital city of Caracas, calling on civilians and soldiers to act against the government of Maduro.

"Today interim President Juan Guaido announced start of Operacion Libertad. The U.S. Government fully supports the Venezuelan people in their quest for freedom and democracy. Democracy cannot be defeated," then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted on the same day.

At a think tank event in May 2022, former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton mentioned the U.S. attempt to subvert Maduro's government, saying that "my only regret is we didn't succeed, although we came close."

After the failed coup, the "interim government" led by Guaido, with the support of the United States, tried to launch a "color revolution" and incited young people to protest against Maduro's government violently. Official figures showed that months of violent protests caused hundreds of casualties and economic losses of tens of billions of dollars in the South American country in the first half of 2019.

WASHINGTON'S REVERSAL

The continued violence has not toppled Maduro's government. As Guaido's attempts to grab power failed and his support among Venezuela's opposition was on the decline, many in the United States began to question betting on him. In 2022, as tensions in Ukraine mounted, global energy supplies tightened and prices soared, Washington's attitude towards Guaido changed.

On Dec. 30, 2022, a vessel chartered by U.S. energy giant Chevron approached Venezuelan waters to pick up a cargo of Venezuelan crude destined for the United States for the first time in nearly four years.

Coincidentally, Venezuela's opposition passed a resolution to dissolve the "interim government" and remove Guaido as "interim president." A U.S. government spokesperson said it respects the decision and will continue to maintain communication and cooperation with Venezuela's opposition.

Asked whether Washington still recognized Guaido as "interim president," Coordinator for Strategic Communication at the U.S. National Security Council John Kirby said earlier this year that he did not want to "get into hypotheticals."

The end of Guaido's "interim government" could pave the way for the United States to ease oil sanctions on Maduro's government, opening up an alternative source of supply for Western nations boycotting Russian crude, said a report by the Financial Times.

The United States used to be a main destination for Venezuela's energy, but the South American country's ties with Washington have deteriorated since Chavez took office. Therefore, the United States imposed unilateral sanctions, including the oil embargo, to put pressure on Venezuela, while supporting "proxies" that could be used for its own sake. Guaido is among the "proxies."

However, once those "proxies" are not in the interests of the United States, it will throw them away without hesitation. That is the fate of Guaido.

(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun)

The great sage of Islamic medicine: How 10th-century Muslim polymath Ibn Sina introduced the world to quarantine methods

Society4 min read
Ufuk Necat Tasci
23 March, 2023

Ibn Sina is a giant of academia. A master of humanities, law, science and medicine, his contributions to knowledge have rippled for millennia. Now known for pioneering the quarantine technique, we take a brief look at some of his huge achievements.

By the age of 18, Ibn Sina, was an expert on philosophy, theology and jurisprudence. Next on his list to master were science and medicine, two disciplines that are now indebted to the 10th-century Muslim polymath.

Born in modern-day Uzbekistan in 980AD, Ibn Sina is known as the 'father of early modern science' and is popularly credited with the quarantine technique, something we're now familiar with following the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.

The technique was first introduced a thousand years ago by Ibn Sina to tackle the eruption of infectious diseases and human-to-human transmission.

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Ibn Sina, or Avicenna as he is popularly known in the West, is also one of the major medieval Muslim thinkers who made their way into the Western Canon.

Ibn Sina's name was mentioned in Dante's masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, his portrait is in a number of Europe's best medical schools, and a crater on the moon is named after him.

[Ibn Sina] is affectionately referred to as the Galen of Islam, The Prince and Chief of Physicians, The Teacher Second Only to Aristotle, and The Aristotle of the Arabs

Ibn Sina is perhaps best known for his work The Canon of Medicine. Published in 1025, the text detailed how a 40-day quarantine is key to slowing down and weakening the spread of contagious infections. The book would end up becoming one of early medicine's essential texts and was used as one of the discipline's core textbooks for over 600 years.

The Canon of Medicine is divided into five books. The only one translated into English is the first, which handles basic medical and physiological principles as well as anatomy, regimen and general therapeutic procedures.

The second book concerns medical substances, arranged alphabetically, and their available properties, while the third one focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases specific to one part of the body.

The fourth book handles conditions not specific to one body part, such as poisonous bites and obesity. And finally, the fifth book is a formulary of compound remedies.

Ibn Sina's works have inspired scientists throughout the ages. He is affectionately referred to as the Galen of Islam, The Prince and Chief of Physicians, The Teacher Second Only to Aristotle, and The Aristotle of the Arabs. And whilst it is believed that Ibn Sina wrote 450 books, only around 240 of them survived.

Among those, more than 40 of his manuscripts are related to medicine. In addition to The Canon of Medicine, his other masterpiece, The Book of Healing is an encyclopaedia on science, religion and philosophy.

Ibn Sina discovered how germs cause diseases for the first time. He explained how humans are developing jaundice and serious bacterial infections like charbon. By using the sedation technique, he managed to cure some life-threatening interior diseases. Ibn Sina also discovered the method of diagnosing diabetes by measuring the sugar rate in urine samples.

Ibn Sina argued that the soul and body are two ores which can contract diseases based on their characteristic traits and examined his patients based on some details like their age, body type, nutrition type and lifestyle. He used some methods to check whether the patient's liver or spleen was normal or not by simply using his bare hands.

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He also played a key role in separating the two thoughts of systemic circulation and microcirculation, leading him to the idea that germs are the main carriers of disease. This conclusion was vital and helped Louis Pasteur, almost a thousand years later, to develop his germ theory.

Ibn Sina's The Book of Healing helped develop the Western understanding of medicine, whilst his psychology and theory of knowledge influenced William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris and Albertus Magnus. His thoughts on metaphysics influenced Thomas Aquinas.

A devout Muslim, Ibn Sina sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic theology. His main target was to prove the existence of Allah (God) and the creation of the universe in scientific terms by using reasonable and logical rhetoric. His impact on Islamic schools was seen until the 19th century.

Dr Ufuk Necat Tasci is a political analyst, academician and journalist. His research areas and interests include Libya, the foreign policy of Turkiye, proxy wars, surrogate warfare, new forms of conflict and history

The Good Friday Agreement: 25 years of deflecting from British imperialism

Farrah Koutteineh & Paul McGoldrick

The New Arab
11 Apr, 2023

World leaders including Biden, Sunak, Blair & Clinton will mark 25 years of the so-called peace agreement in Belfast, but it's no cause for celebration as segregation & inequality continue, argue Farrah Koutteineh & Paul McGoldrick.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (R), former US Senator George Mitchell (C) and former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern (L) smiling on April 10, 1998, after they signed The Good Friday Agreement. [GETTY]

This week will see global leaders both past and present, from Biden to Sunak, to Blair and the Clintons, descending upon Belfast to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Indeed the 10 April 1998 was a landmark moment in Irish history when two agreements were signed – one between the British and Irish governments, and the other between the ‘Northern Irish’ political parties. It affirmed that the North of Ireland would constitutionally remain a part of the UK, outlined a power sharing assembly to make up a devolved government of both Irish-Republican and British-Unionist parties, promised police reform, granted the early release of political prisoners, and called for the disarmament of paramilitary groups, which included the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and others.

Also referred to as the Belfast Agreement, it was signed by a select few political leaders from the UK to the Republic of Ireland, aided by the Clinton administration, and was voted on by the public in both the North & South in an all-Ireland referendum.

''An obvious and expected absence in the reportage of the Good Friday Agreement’s 25th anniversary, is its unwritten aim: ensuring the longevity of British imperialism in Ireland. Indeed, continuing to distort the history of 800 years of British oppression of Ireland with a fabricated narrative of sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants, would pacify what was becoming an uncontainable issue: Irish resistance.''

It came after over 30 years of intensified armed Irish-republican struggle against British military occupation and its partition of the North of Ireland, often referred to as ‘The Troubles’, which claimed the lives of over 3,600 people.

As global political leaders arrive in Belfast this week to mark the agreement's quarter centenary, the vast majority of the population across the North of Ireland who live in deprived, impoverished and segregated communities, who are victim to corrupt sectarian policing, and a mental health crisis, are not joining in the celebrations.

This is largely because decades on, the vast majority of points that were outlined in the agreement have either failed in practice, or have remained empty words on paper.

One of the main aims – outlining power-sharing of its devolved government between Unionist and Republican parties – has proven to be a colossal failure. The North’s executive, which is the sitting government at the time, presides over the local Assembly (Stormont) in Belfast. However, Stormont has been in a state of collapse for almost half of its existence. In fact, if you add up the number of party boycotts, political stalemates and executive dissolutions, the North has effectively been without a functioning government for 10 entire years since 1998.

One of the most contentious parts of the agreement was the promise of police reform. For decades, the police force in the North, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), was deeply sectarian, consisted mostly of Protestant officers who colluded with British intelligence and Protestant/loyalist paramilitary groups in carrying out political assassinations and subjugated the Irish-Catholic population. However, the agreement seems to have merely rebranded the RUC into today’s Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI); with many RUC officers continuing to serve.

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According to recent statistics published by the PSNI, their broader religious make-up comprises 67% perceived as Protestant and 32% perceived as Catholic, and its elite Special Branch, remains almost 80% Protestant, despite the agreement’s promise to achieve 50/50 representation.

Discrimination against the Irish/Catholic community is confirmed by the PSNI’s own statistics which state they are twice as likely to arrest and charge a Catholic in the North than a Protestant. Between 2016 to 2020 they arrested 57,000 Catholics compared to 31,000 Protestants. Of those that they then charged, 27,000 were Catholic’ and 15,000 were Protestant.

In reality, since the often referred to ‘peace agreement’ which has historically been praised for supposedly ‘bringing two sides together’, the North of Ireland has only become more segregated. For example, there are more segregation walls or “peace walls” – 116 of them to be precise – dividing Catholic and Protestant communities today than there were at any point before the agreement. Furthermore, 93% of all schools remain segregated by religion, and 90% of all social housing is also still segregated.

One of the vital points of the agreement was for the North of Ireland to constitutionally remain part of the UK, and since 1998 it has remained the poorest part of it. Over 330,000 people are living in abject poverty, 1 in 4 children are living on the poverty line and there is an ever increasing homeless population. To make matters worse, privatisation is expanding faster across the North of Ireland than anywhere else in the UK, with Westminster’s neoliberal policies forcing the shutdown of hospitals, healthcare centres and vital public services.

Another undoubtable failure of the agreement was the absence of any solution to address the decades of trauma people in the North experienced. Statistics reveal that thousands more people have died by suicide after the Troubles, than died during, and there’s been an estimated 5748 deaths recorded as suicide since 1988. A veritable and persisting mental health emergency.

Finally, an obvious and expected absence in the reportage of the Good Friday Agreement’s 25th anniversary, is its unwritten aim: ensuring the longevity of British imperialism in Ireland. Indeed, continuing to distort the history of 800 years of British oppression of Ireland with a fabricated narrative of sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants, would pacify what was becoming an uncontainable issue: Irish resistance.

Historically, radical class unity had long existed between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, most notably the 1932 strikes, where over 60,000 workers from both communities fought for fair pay and better living conditions. The divides only developed and deepened through the concerted efforts of British forces.

Ultimately the agreement was fundamental in Britain’s suppression of Irish resistance. This was achieved through its policy of disarming paramilitary groups (which were predominantly Irish resistance groups) and the renaming of the North’s police force, who didn’t adopt any of the changes stated but continue to work alongside British intelligence in undermining Irish republican activity aimed towards ending British presence.

It couldn’t be clearer that this agreement was only crafted and signed to prolong British imperialist interests in Ireland.

As world leaders flock to Belfast regurgitating the same disingenuous sentiment that the Good Friday Agreement brought an end to violence, all the facts prove otherwise. Violent segregation, a corrupt sectarian police force, suicide, homelessness and abject poverty all persist for the people of the North, from both sides of the ‘peace walls’. They do not reap any benefit from the Good Friday Agreement, instead they are pawns in Britain’s long game of imperialism on the Island.

Farrah Koutteineh is head of Public & Legal Relations at the London-based Palestinian Return Centre, and is also the founder of KEY48 - a voluntary collective calling for the immediate right of return of over 7.2 million Palestinian refugees.

Paul McGoldrick is a member of the Robert Emmet 1916 Society who are based in Co. Fermanagh, Ireland. They are a socialist republican pressure group who are involved in grassroots leftwing activism. Paul is also a mental health campaigner involved in various community lead initiatives aimed at tackling social deprivation and inequality.

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

Elbit Systems vs Tony Greenstein: A shining example of the UK's crackdown on Palestine activism

Emad Moussa

The New Arab
12 Apr, 2023

The UK government’s targeting of Palestine solidarity attempts to criminalise and depoliticise action taken by activists like Tony Greenstein, and silence campaigns on Israel’s crimes under the guise of ‘fighting anti-Semitism’, argues Emad Moussa.


Elbit’s headquarters was for years the target of an ongoing campaign by rights activists, particularly Palestine Action, for their complicity in Israeli war crimes against Palestinians, writes Emad Moussa. [GETTY]

Until very recently, Elbit Systems Ltd, the Israeli arms firm, was one of the main beneficiaries of some of the UK Ministry of Defence’s lucrative contracts. But in December last year, the firm was reportedly ousted from two contracts to deliver training for the Royal Navy.

Elbit’s headquarters was for years the target of an ongoing campaign by rights activists, particularly Palestine Action, for their complicity in Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. This speculatively made the UK Armed Forces feel that their association with the firm was too problematic for their image.

For the activists who set out to expose the firm’s complicity in war crimes, the Elbit aftereffect continues to define much of their lives. Not only that, their cases have become yet another iteration of the UK government’s renewed attempts to suppress Palestine activism.

''In addition to the heavy judiciary’s gavel, Tony Greenstein has been demonised by pro-Israel groups as an anti-Semite. The UK-based newspaper The Jewish Chronicle, among others, had already developed a negative fixation on him, publishing several articles with 'anti-Semitism' as the recurring theme, either to ‘explain’ Greenstein’s activism or the reason he was suspended from the Labour Party in 2018.''

One of those activists is Tony Greenstein, a long-time British Jewish anti-Zionist and writer, and a founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Movement. Along with five others, and personally labelled the ‘lead defendant,’ Greenstein is currently standing trial at the Wolverhampton Crown Court charged with the possession of ‘articles with intent to destroy property’ belonging to Elbit.

Two years ago, a group of Palestine Action activists, including Greenstein, were intercepted by the police on their way to Elbit’s UAV engines factory near Shenstone, Staffordshire. The goal was to climb over the factory roof and spray it with red paint symbolising the blood of Palestinian children killed by Israel, and to attract public attention to Elbit’s role.

After arrest, Greenstein was kept in a holding centre for a week before being bailed out in anticipation of the trial. Due to Covid and the resulting Crown Court backlog, the trial was postponed for two years. If convicted, the 69-year-old activist is facing up to one year in prison.

Stripped down to its bare legal components, the court procedures appear like a typical case of ‘criminal conduct’ associated with property damage. Greenstein, however, argues that the judiciary approach was to take Palestine out of the equation, depoliticise the case, and simply reduce it to a criminal act.

The police action and, subsequently, the judiciary reaction have been highly disproportionate to the ‘threat’ posed by the activists. What is even more critical is that the disproportionate response did not apply to Elbit’s serious breach of not only international law but also the UK’s human rights norms.

One can only speculate, in this light, that the MoD’s cancellation of contracts with Elbit was more about dodging public embarrassment and less about committing to the UK or international laws tackling the usage of lethal weapons against civilians.

In addition to the heavy judiciary’s gavel, Greenstein has been demonised by pro-Israel groups as an anti-Semite. The UK-based newspaper The Jewish Chronicle, among others, had already developed a negative fixation on him, publishing several articles with “anti-Semitism” as the recurring theme, either to ‘explain’ Greenstein’s activism or the reason he was suspended from the Labour Party in 2018.

Asked whether that sounded ludicrous considering he is Jewish, he explained that anti-Semitism merely means opposing the Israeli state, which is falsely projected unto the world as the ‘collective Jew.’ Hence the conflation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

The new definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has indeed broadened the ‘anti-Semitic label,’ becoming a point of reference to Israel’s advocates and state officials. Even with the lack of certain examples in the definition, the IHRA has urged civil society bodies, locally and internationally, to adopt it on the basis that it reflects a hard-won consensus among IHRA’s member countries.

A 2021 Oxford University report found irrefutable evidence that the IHRA definition was principally drafted and negotiated by pro-Israel advocacy groups, not Jewish history scholars. Instead of protecting Jews against anti-Semitism, it was skewed to shield the Israeli state against valid criticism.

The British government adopted the IHRA definition in 2016. It has since deployed it repeatedly as a quasi-legal apparatus to disrupt the UK’s free speech whenever Israel was in question.

UK universities, for instance, were pressured to embrace the definition or otherwise lose funding streams. The result was - and continues to be - stifling and sabotaging the career of academics and scholars who dared to stand up for Palestinian rights. From the smearing campaign against Bristol University’s Professor David Miller to Sheffield University suspending Palestinian academic Shahd Abu Salameh, all are examples of how the UK government has selectively weaponised anti-Semitism to silence pro-Palestine dissent.

Perturbing for rights campaigners in particular is the introduction of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (PCSC). The Bill grants the police not only additional powers to suppress protests but also broad discretion on what constitutes illegal campaigning or activism. Against the PCSC backdrop, the government is also planning to introduce a bill banning BDS, which would severely cripple social movements campaigning for justice in Palestine.

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Not all is bad news, however. Successful push-backs are also a growing phenomenon. Greenstein remains optimistic that public opinion is steadily shifting in Palestine’s favour. “At some point,” he said, “anti-Zionism was a very small fringe amongst Jews. But nowadays, more [disillusioned] Jews are turning their back to the Zionist state.”

His optimism is not without grounds. After a decade in which US Democrats have shown increasing affinity toward the Palestinians, their sympathies now lie with Palestinians not Israelis, 49% to 38% respectively. This is paralleled by growing indicators that the Israeli hasbara has been losing its influence in the US, with more Americans saying it is “acceptable”, even a “duty” for the U.S. Congress to question the Israeli-American relationship.

As it stands, a tangible change in government policies toward Palestine in Britain may not be likely in the foreseeable future. An increase in activism may even lead to further criminalisation of solidarity efforts. But that could also trigger more dissent, especially when free speech becomes conditional.

With that in mind, Greenstein likes to look back at history as an indication that times can change. Political activism deemed criminal today, could be heroised tomorrow. Nelson Mandela was once a ‘terrorist’ and the suffragette movement was treated as ‘criminal’, but today they are seen as inspiring examples of historical justice. Victory was obtained by people waging struggles in the past, and it will one day be the case for Palestinians also.

Dr Emad Moussa is a researcher and writer who specialises in the politics and political psychology of Palestine/Israel.
Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa

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.

The long and brutal history of enforced disappearances in Iraq

Iraq has one of the largest numbers of missing persons worldwide, with up to one million people having been forcibly disappeared in the past 50 years.

In-depth
Paul Iddon
11 April, 2023

The spate of people who were "disappeared" throughout Iraq over the past century has once again been raised by the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED).

In a recent statement, the committee "urged Iraq to immediately establish the basis to prevent, eradicate and repair this heinous crime," noting that enforced disappearances aren't clearly defined as a crime under Iraqi law.

The committee estimates that 250,000 to one million people have disappeared in Iraq since 1968 when Saddam Hussein's Baath Party seized power. The broad estimate is unsurprising considering the scale of the atrocities that has seen large numbers of people forcibly disappeared in Iraq since 1968.

As a result, Iraq has one of the largest numbers of missing persons worldwide.

"A UN committee estimates that 250,000 to one million people have disappeared in Iraq since 1968, when Saddam Hussein's Baath Party seized power"

As early as 1969, Saddam Hussein set the tone for what would come under his rule. He met a family who had a relative unjustly executed by the Baath Party and insisted they take the blood money the regime offered them.

"Take the money," he reportedly told them. "Do not think you will get revenge, because if you ever have the chance, by the time you get to us, there will not be a sliver of flesh left on our bodies."

Saddam's tyrannical reign had consequences that would affect Iraqis of various backgrounds for generations.

In the 1970s, the regime uprooted and deported hundreds of thousands of Persian Iraqis who had lived in the country for millennia. After defeating the Kurdish movement in 1975, the regime moved to ‘Arabise’ parts of the country, destroying hundreds of Kurdish villages in the process, especially in Kirkuk province.

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That was a mere preview of the crimes the Baathists would perpetrate in the 1980s. In 1979, Saddam consolidated his power with an infamous purge of his parliament, becoming the undisputed ruler of Iraq. In 1980, he invaded Iran, initiating a war that lasted eight years and left at least a million dead in its wake.

In 1983, he moved against the Barzani tribe in Iraqi Kurdistan. He condemned them as collaborators of Iran and subsequently had 8,000 of the tribe's men and boys disappeared, leaving their women, traditional homemakers who did not previously work or independently earn money, destitute and fending for themselves.

In a visit to Iraqi Kurdistan's Erbil that year, Saddam said the Barzanis were "severely punished and have gone to hell".

Only after Saddam was deposed in 2003 did Kurds begin to retrieve the remains, buried hundreds of miles from Iraqi Kurdistan in Iraq's desert border regions. Bodies of Barzani males who disappeared that year continue to be found 40 years later.

In July 2022, 100 bodies found in mass graves in southern Iraq were returned to Barzan in Iraqi Kurdistan for burial. Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani expressed his condolences and hope that "their souls are in better places".

Next to the village of Barzan graves have been dug for the Kurds that were killed during the Anfal, a series of genocide campaigns Saddam Hussein led from February to September 1988 to eradicate the Kurdish people. [Getty]

The mass killing of the Barzanis was followed by the Anfal ("spoils of war") campaign that began in 1987. That brutal campaign saw Iraqi forces murder an estimated 182,000 people, including 5,000 men, women, and children, in a single day in the infamous bombing of Halabja with chemical weapons on 16 March 1988.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded that Saddam's regime "committed the crime of genocide" for its actions against Kurds in this period.

Following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, after Iraq was expelled from Kuwait by a multinational US-led coalition, the Kurds in the north and the Shia Arabs in the south revolted against Saddam, hoping the US would support them. It did not.

While US intervention in the north helped the Kurds establish their autonomous region outside of Saddam's control, he still retained control over the Shia south and cracked down hard.

"Twenty years after Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime was deposed, enforced disappearances remain widespread in Iraq"

"Thousands of Shi'a, including hundreds of clerics, have been imprisoned without charge or have disappeared in state custody since the uprising; many Shi'a shrines and institutions in al-Najaf and Karbala were devastated during the rebellion or demolished by government forces in its aftermath," read a 1992 HRW report.

In 2003, Saddam was toppled by a swift Anglo-American ground invasion of Iraq, briefly kindling hopes that better days were ahead for the brutalised Iraqi people. The uncovering of mass graves revealed the extent of the toppled dictator's crimes against Iraqis. Still, many of the disappeared remained missing or unidentified.

Iraq entered a new phase marked by sectarian violence and terror. Even though Saddam was gone, Iraqis continued to suffer from enforced disappearances. During the violence that brought the country into a state of civil war in the late 2000s, sectarian murders were rife, as were disappearances at the various checkpoints ordinary Iraqis had to pass through every day by soldiers, police, and militiamen.

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The rise of the Islamic State (IS) group in 2014 led to a new round of disappearances and atrocities in Iraq. The group infamously conquered one-third of the country that year and subjected the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq to a systematic campaign of abductions and genocide.

Yazidi males were summarily executed, while women and girls were enslaved and raped. Even after the last of the territory that made up IS's self-styled caliphate was recaptured in 2019, thousands of Yazidis remained missing.

The Free Yezifi Foundation estimates that IS enslaved 6,417 Yezidi women and children and that over 2,693 Yezidi men and women remain missing. The majority of them are presumed dead.

The Shia-majority Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) were formed in response to IS's onslaught. Some of the more extreme elements fighting under the PMF umbrella carried out retributions against Sunni populations.

An aerial picture shows mourners gathering around coffins wrapped with the Iraqi flag during a mass funeral for Yazidi victims of the Islamic State (IS) group in the northern Iraqi village of Kojo in Sinjar district, on 6 February 2021. [Getty]

In 2017, Amnesty International reported that 643 men and older boys in Anbar province's Saqlawiya disappeared after being abducted by PMF forces as they fled the June 2016 battle of Fallujah and separated from their families.

In 2018, HRW noted that thousands of Iraqi men faced arbitrary arrests by government forces and the PMF, which was officially a state paramilitary. The overwhelming majority of cases that HRW report documented were Sunni Arab males as young as nine and as old as 70.

Such cases demonstrate the sad fact that 20 years after Saddam Hussein's tyrannical regime was deposed, enforced disappearances remain widespread in Iraq.

This state of affairs has led some to lament that Iraq merely transitioned from a republic of fear under Saddam – where Iraqis feared running afoul of the authorities and being forcibly disappeared and brutally tortured – to a republic of terror under militias, many of them officially state-sanctioned.

"The Iraqi people used to know exactly who it was who killed them, whereas today they are ignorant of the exact identity of their killers"

"Perhaps the sole major difference left between then and now is that in the Republic of Fear, the source of that fear was known, whereas its source is now obfuscated in today's Republic of Terror," wrote Dr Munqith Dagher in 2020.

"The Iraqi people used to know exactly who it was who killed them, whereas today they are ignorant of the exact identity of their killers."

The UN committee's report is a reminder that conclusively determining what happened to those Iraqis who have disappeared since 1968 remains important, as is taking firmer steps to end this cruel practice once and for all.

Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, who writes about Middle East affairs.

U$A

The Coming Commercial Real Estate Crash That May Never Happen

By Tim Mullaney,CNBC • Published April 10, 2023 

Richard Baker | In Pictures | Getty Images

Concerns about a commercial real estate crash have followed the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and regional banking crisis.

Some bank real-estate loans may be threatened by persistence of work-from-home.

Almost a quarter of office-building loans need to be refinanced in the next year at higher rates and lower quality properties where vacancy rates are high are at the greatest risk.

But industrial, retail and hotels are solid.

Only two months ago, SL Green & Co. chief executive Marc Holliday was sounding happy. The head of New York's biggest commercial landlord firm told Wall Street analysts that traffic to the company's buildings was picking up, and more than 1 million square feet of space was either recently leased or in negotiations. The company's debt was down, it had finished the structure for its 1 Madison Avenue tower in Manhattan, and local officials had just completed an extension of commuter rail service from Long Island to Green's flagship tower near Grand Central Station.

"We are full guns blazing," Holliday said on the quarterly earnings call, with workers headed back to offices after a pandemic that rocked developers as more people worked from home, raising the question of how much office space companies really need any more. "We can hopefully …continue on a path to what we think will be a pivot year for us in 2023."

Then Silicon Valley Bank failed, and Wall Street panicked.

Shares of developers, and the banks that lend to them, dropped sharply, and bank shares have stayed low. Analysts raised concerns that developers might default on a big chunk of $3.1 trillion of U.S. commercial real estate loans Goldman Sachs says are outstanding. Almost a quarter of mortgages on office buildings must be refinanced in 2023, according to Mortgage Bankers' Association data, with higher interest rates than the 3 percent paper that stuffs banks' portfolios now. Other analysts wondered how landlords could find new tenants as old leases expire this year, with office vacancy rates at record highs.

How much an office crash could hurt the economy

There are reasons to think the road ahead will be rocky for the real estate industry and banks that depend on it. And the stakes, according to Goldman, are high, especially if there is a recession: a credit squeeze equal to as much as half a percentage point of growth in the overall economy. But credit in commercial real estate has performed well until now, and it's far from clear that U.S. credit issues spreading outward from real estate is likely.

"There's a lot of headaches about calamity in commercial real estate," said Kevin Fagan, director of commercial real estate analysis at Moody's Analytics. "There likely will be issues but it's more of a typical down cycle."

The vacancy rate for office buildings rose to a record high 18.2% by late 2022, according to brokerage giant Cushman & Wakefield, topping 20 percent in key markets like Manhattan, Silicon Valley and even Atlanta.

But this year's refinancing cliff is the real rub, says Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR, a closely-held Manhattan development firm. Loans that come due will have to be financed at higher interest rates, which will mean higher payments even as vacancy rates rise or remain high. Higher vacancies mean some buildings are worth less, so banks are less willing to touch them without tougher terms. That's especially true for older, so-called Class B buildings that are losing out to newer buildings as tenants renew leases, he said. And the shortage of recent sales makes it hard for banks to decide how much more cash collateral to demand.

"No one knows what is a fair price," Rechler said. "Buyers and sellers have different views."
What the Fed has said about commercial real estate

Federal Reserve officials up to and including Chair Jerome Powell have stressed that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were outliers whose failures had nothing to do with real estate – Silicon Valley Bank had barely 1 percent of assets in commercial real estate. Other banks' exposure to the sector is well under control.

"We're well aware of the concentrations people have in commercial real estate," Powell said at a March22 press conference. "I really don't think it's comparable to this. The banking system is strong, it is sound, it is resilient, it's well capitalized."

The commercial real estate market is a bigger issue than a few banks which mismanaged risk in bond portfolios, and the deterioration in conditions for Class B office space will have wide-reaching economic impacts, including the tax base of municipalities across the country where empty offices remain a significant source of concern.

But there are reasons to believe lending issues in commercial real estate will be contained, Fagan said.

The first is that the office sector is only one part of commercial real estate, albeit a large one, and the others are in unusually good shape.

Vacancy rates in warehouse and industrial space nationally are low, according to Cushman and Wakefield. The national retail vacancy rates, despite the migration of shoppers to online shopping, is only 5.7%. And hotels are garnering record revenue per available room as both occupancy and prices surged post-Covid, according to research firm STR. Banks' commercial real estate lending also includes apartment complexes, with rental vacancies rates at 5.8 percent in Federal Reserve data.

"Market conditions are fine today, but what develops over the next two to three years could be pretty challenging for some properties," said Ken Leon, who follows REITs for CFRA Research.

Still, most debt coming due in the next two years looks like it can be refinanced, Fagan said.

That's one of the reasons Rechler has been drawing attention to the issues. It shouldn't sneak up on the market or economy, and it should be manageable with the loans spread out across their own maturity ladder.

About three-fourths of commercial real estate debt generates enough income to pass banks' recent refinancing standards without major changes, Fagan said. Banks have been extending credit using a rule of thumb that a property's operating income will be at least 8% of the loan every year, though other experts claim a 10% test is being applied to some newer loans.

To date, banks have had virtually no losses on commercial real estate, and companies are showing little need to default either on loans to banks or rent payments to office building owners. Even as companies lay off workers, the concentration of job losses among big tech employers, in Manhattan, at least, means that tenants have no trouble paying their rent, S.L. Green said.
Bank commercial mortgage books

Take Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial, or Cincinnati-based Fifth Third, two of the biggest regional banks.

At PNC, the $36 billion in commercial mortgages on the books of the bank is a small fraction of its $557 billion in total assets, including $321.9 billion in loans. Only about $9 billion of loans are secured by office buildings. At Fifth Third, commercial real estate represents $10.3 billion of $207.5 billion in assets, including $119.3 billion in loans.

And those loans are being paid as agreed. Only 0.6% of PNC's loans are past due, with delinquencies lower among commercial loans. The proportion of delinquent loans fell by almost a third during 2022, the bank said in federal filings. At Fifth Third, only $10 million of commercial real estate loans were delinquent at year-end.

Or take Wells Fargo, the nation's largest commercial real estate lender, where credit metrics are excellent. Last year, Wells Fargo's chargeoffs for commercial loans were .01 of 1 percent of the bank's portfolio, according to the bank's annual report. Writeoffs on consumer loans were 39 times higher. The bank's internal assessment of each commercial mortgage's loan's quality improved in 2022, with the amount of debt classified as "criticized,'' or with a higher-than-average risk of default even if borrowers haven't missed payments, dropping by $1.8 billion to $11.3 billion

"Delinquencies are still lower than pre-pandemic," said Alexander Yokum, banking analyst at CFRA Research. "Any credit metric is still stronger than pre-pandemic."
Wall Street is worried

The riposte from Wall Street is that the good news on loan performance can't last – especially if there is a broader recession.

In a March 24 report, JPMorganChase bank analyst Kabir Caprihan warned that 21% of office loans are destined to go bad, with lenders losing an average of 41% of the loan principal on the failures. That produces potential writedowns of 8.6%, Caprihan said, with banks losing $38 billion on office mortgages. But it is far from certain that so many projects would fail, or why value declines would be so steep.

RXR's Rechler says that market softness is showing in refinancings already, in ways banks' public reports don't yet reveal. The real damage is showing up less in late loans than in the declining value of bonds backed by commercial mortgages, he said.

One sign of the tightening: RXR itself, which is financially strong, has advanced $1 billion to other developers whose banks are making them post more collateral as part of refinancing applications. Rechler dismissed rating agencies' relatively sanguine view of commercial mortgage backed securities, arguing that markets for new CMBS issues have locked up in recent weeks and ratings agencies missed early signs of housing-market problems before 2008's financial crisis.

The commercial mortgage-backed bond market is relatively small, so its short-term issues are not major drivers of the economy. Issuance of new bonds is down sharply – but that began last year, when fourth-quarter deal volume fell 88 percent, without causing a recession.

"The statistics don't reflect where it's going to come out as regulators take a harder look," Rechler said. "You're going to have to rebalance loans on even good properties."

Wells Fargo has tightened standards, saying it is demanding that payments on refinanced loans take up a smaller percentage of a building's projected rent and that only "limited" exceptions will be made to the bank's credit standards on new loans.

Without a deep recession, though, it's not clear how banks' and insurance companies' relatively diversified loan portfolios get into serious trouble.

The primary way real estate could cause problems for the economy is if an extended decline in the value of commercial mortgages made deposits flow out of banks, forcing them to crimp lending not just to developers but to all customers. In extreme cases, that could threaten the banks themselves. But if developers continue to pay their loans on time and manage refinancing risk, MBS owners and banks will simply get paid as loans mature.

Markets are split on whether any version of this will happen. The S&P United State REIT Index, which dropped almost 11% in the two weeks after Silicon Valley Bank failed, has recovered most of its losses, down 2% over the past month and remains barely positive for the year. But the KBW Regional Banking Index is down 14% in the last month, even though deposit loss has slowed to a trickle.

The solution will lie in a combination of factors. The amount of loans that come up for refinancing drops sharply after this year, and new construction is already slowing as it does in most real estate downturns, and loan to value ratios in the industry are lower than in 2006 or 2007, before the last recession.

"We feel like there's going to be pain in the next year," Fagan said. "2025 is where we see our pivot toward a [recovery] for office."