Israel Perpetrating War Crimes In Plain Sight In Gaza, Says Ex-UK Diplomat

Mark Smith, who quit Dublin embassy role, says he raised his concerns over weapons sales with foreign secretary

By Kiran Stacey

August 24, 2024

Source: The Guardian




Israel is “flagrantly and regularly” committing war crimes in Gaza, according to a former British diplomat who recently resigned over ministers’ failure to ban arms sales to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Mark Smith, who resigned as a counter-terrorism official at the British embassy in Dublin after raising complaints about the sale of British weapons to Israel, told the BBC on Monday that he believed Israel to be in breach of international law.

Smith told Radio 4’s Today programme: “When you look at what constitutes a war crime, it’s actually quite clear, even from what you see in open source on the TV, that the state of Israel is perpetrating war crimes in plain sight.

“Anybody who has a kind of basic understanding of these things can see that there are war crimes being committed, not once, not twice, not a few times, but quite flagrantly and openly and regularly.”
Israel committing war crimes in Gaza in ‘plain sight’, says former British diplomat – audio

Smith’s exit became public over the weekend after a resignation email was leaked in which he accused senior members of the Israeli government of “open genocidal intent”. In a message that was sent to hundreds of officials and advisers, Smith said there was “no justification for the UK’s continued arms sales to Israel, yet somehow it continues”.

The resignation came as the British government carries out a review of its export licensing rules for arms to Israel. David Lammy, now the foreign secretary, called in opposition for a “pause” in sales but since taking office has said he is looking at curbs on “offensive weapons in Gaza”.

Lammy’s review has been delayed because of the widening Middle East crisis and because of the legal difficulty in distinguishing between offensive and defensive weapons.

While that review goes on, lawyers have submitted claims to the high court in London of Palestinians being tortured, left untreated in hospital and unable to escape constant bombardment. The lawyers are seeking a court order blocking further arms sales because of what they say is a clear risk that the weapons would be used to commit breaches of international humanitarian law.

Weapons manufacturers seeking export licences to sell to Israel say they have been told that new licences have been suspended pending the review.

Smith, who says he previously led a government assessment of the legality of arms sales to different countries, said on Monday he had raised his concerns with the foreign secretary and at “pretty much every level of the organisation”.

Asked what response he had been given, he replied: “I resigned because of this issue, so you can put the pieces together. But suffice to say that any response was not satisfactory.”


Kiran Stacey
Guardian political correspondent based in Westminster.

 

Amber De Botton: From Downing Street To The Guardian

Why would the Guardian employ a Tory prime minister’s spin doctor as its new communications chief?

By Mark Curtis

August 24, 2024

Source: Declassified UKFacebook

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“Our quality, investigative journalism is a scrutinising force at a time when the rich and powerful are getting away with more and more”, says the Guardian in a fundraising plea to its readers.

So why has the paper recently appointed Amber de Botton, Rishi Sunak’s former director of communications, as its new chief communications officer?

Would Declassified employ a former propagandist for a Conservative prime minister as our director of communications? 

I can’t envisage it. Why not?

Because they couldn’t be trusted to share our values. We’re about challenging Whitehall’s power not speaking for it. Could someone so easily morph from one to the other, simply by changing jobs?

De Botton took up the post in June after serving Sunak for nearly a year from November 2022.

When she quit, the Guardian itself noted that de Botton was brought in by the Conservative prime minister “to salvage the government’s sinking reputation”. 

Doesn’t her appointment further highlight that the paper, far from being a challenger of the establishment, is really a voice for it, but somewhat disguised underneath occasional critical reporting and its ‘liberal’ facade?

As we at Declassified have repeatedly shown, the Guardian is not the paper many progressive liberal-minded people think it is. For one thing, its worldview routinely promotes the crucial establishment myths of benign British and American power.

Although many people might see the paper challenging Whitehall in a way that the Telegraph or Times might not, the Guardian rarely seeks to investigate or expose UK foreign policies and routinely ignores key aspects of the UK’s role in the world.

It may cover some issues relatively independently, but it also regularly acts as a platform for the British security state. For example, the Guardian frequently writes puff pieces on the UK’s largest intelligence agency. This is curious, isn’t it?

Cosy revolving door

The appointment of a senior official from Whitehall to a leading UK newspaper is another example of the cosy relationship that exists in Britain between those in power and the people who are meant to be holding them to account.

De Botton was previously Sky News’ Deputy Head of Politics and ITV’s Head of UK News and Head of Politics before deciding to work for the unelected prime minister’s Conservative government.

Her role now is to act as the Guardian Media Group’s “chief media spokesperson, advising senior leaders and developing a long-term approach to building the company’s position on key issues”.

When the Guardian appointed de Botton, its editor Katharine Viner said: “As we continue to build our position as one of the world’s leading media organisations, we look forward to welcoming Amber to the Guardian.”

The paper’s press release added a statement from de Botton saying: “I have long-admired The Guardian’s agenda-setting journalism. The group has a powerful role internationally in the future of news media. I am excited to have the opportunity to promote stories that change lives, laws and legacies.”

I wonder what she told Rishi Sunak on applying to become his chief spin doctor. Was she just as excited and had long admired the Tory party?

The Guardian was approached for comment.

AU CONTRAIRE 
Ukraine’s Hiroshima Moment is Drawing Closer (The Consequences of Neocon Madness)

By Thomas Palley

August 23, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image by James Stencilowsky


In August 1945, the US atom bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, nuclear weapons have never been used in conflict. That may soon change as Ukraine faces the increasing likelihood of a Hiroshima moment.

Conditions in Ukraine increasingly give Russia military and geopolitical cause to use tactical nuclear weapons. Though Russia will use them, the US and NATO are deeply implicated in the process. They are in the grip of Neocon madness which casually dismisses potentially catastrophic consequences and blocks all off-ramps.

Lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki

One way to understand the current moment is via the history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Those attacks also had military and geopolitical motivations. The former is widely recognized: the latter is not.

According to standard history, in August 1945, Japan was de facto defeated and had signaled willingness to “conditionally” surrender. However, the US wanted “unconditional” surrender. It also estimated conquest of Japan might cost a million US casualties. Consequently, it elected to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby achieving unconditional surrender without such casualties.

The geopolitical motivation concerned the Soviet Union. It had declared war on Japan the day after the Hiroshima attack, and the US feared it would conquer Japan’s lightly defended north. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs prevented that by abruptly ending the war. They also sent the Soviet Union a chilling message about US power.

The Ukraine parallel

The Ukraine war has spawned a logic which echoes 1945. The military parallel is clear. Russia wants to bring the war to an acceptable close. Even after it has conquered the Donbass oblasts, it will confront continued attacks from long-range weaponry provided by the US and its NATO junior partners. The resulting loss of Russian lives and damage will be unacceptable. Tactical nuclear weapons can surgically end the conflict, with Ukraine compelled to accept the outcome or face further destruction.

The geopolitical parallel is also clear. In 1945, the US sent a message to the Soviet Union. In Ukraine, tactical nuclear weapons will send a message to the US that continuing its strategy of incremental conflict escalation risks full-blown nuclear war.

Neocon madness: incremental escalation and the straw that breaks the camel’s back

Neoconservatism is a political doctrine which holds never again shall there be a foreign power, like the former Soviet Union, which can challenge US supremacy. The doctrine gives the US the right to impose its will anywhere in the world, which explains US intervention in Ukraine long before Russia’s 2022 invasion. The doctrine initially seeded itself among hardline Republicans, but it has since been adopted by Democrats and is now politically hegemonic.

Since the late 1990s, the Neocon project has driven a slow-motion war against Russia based on a strategy of “incremental escalation”. The first step was incorporation of Central European countries into NATO, which was followed by incorporating the former Soviet Baltic Republics. Thereafter, the US began fomenting anti-Russian sentiment in the former Republics of Georgia and Ukraine. Longer term, it seeks to foster Russia’s disintegration, as advocated by US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in the 1990s.

A similar incremental escalation strategy has marked US/NATO involvement in Ukraine. In the decade prior to the war, Ukraine was the largest recipient of US military aid in Europe and NATO members stalled the Minsk peace process. Thereafter, engagement has been steadily ratcheted up, turning assistance into a proxy war and then into a tacit direct conflict with Russia. The time-line includes sabotaging peace negotiations in early 2022; providing Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and artillery ordinance; providing Patriot missile air defense systems; transferring MIG-29 jets from former Warsaw Pact countries; providing ultra-long-range artillery, advanced infantry carriers, and tanks; providing long-range HIMARS rocket systems, and longer-range ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles; and providing modernized F-16 jets.

Side-by side, the US has provided satellite information, while under-cover advisers have assisted long-range missile attacks deep inside Russia which include attacking the Kerch bridge, Russian naval vessels at sea, naval yards in Crimea and in Novorossiysk, Russia’s high altitude AWACS defense system, and an attack on Russia’s anti-ballistic missile defense system.

The incremental escalation strategy aims to tighten the noose, with each tightening supposedly small enough to deny Russia grounds for invoking the nuclear option. However, the strategy risks blindness to the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Ending the war, ending incremental escalation, and restoring deterrence

Walking in the other’s shoes can be enlightening. Russia’s goals are threefold. First, it wants to end the war on acceptable terms. Second, it wants to blunt the US strategy of incremental escalation. Third, it wants to restore credibility of its nuclear deterrent which has been compromised by escalations that have blurred red lines which should not be crossed.

Using tactical nuclear weapons has become increasingly rational as it would achieve all three goals, which is why the situation is dire. The great paradox is deterrence aims to prevent nuclear war, yet restoration of deterrence may require using nuclear weapons as it proves willingness to do so.

Many Neocon supporters have casually talked of “Putin’s nuclear bluff”. The reality is it is the US threat of nuclear retaliation that is a bluff. No sane US politician or general would risk thermo-nuclear war for the sake of Ukraine.

A grim prognosis

There is still time to freeze the sequence. The problem is peace cannot get a hearing. Ukraine’s flawed democracy is suspended, the Azov extremists are in control, and any Ukrainian opposing the war faces imprisonment or worse.

In the US, the Neocons are in charge and the public is fed a Manichean narrative that paints the West as good and Russia as evil. That false narrative is constantly reinforced, and it makes compromise politically and ethically harder.

The prognosis is grim. Ironically, the thing that may prevent a Hiroshima moment is Russian success on the battlefield.

 

Climate Crisis & Election Roundtable: From Tim Walz’s Record to Project 2025 to Israel

By Tara Houska, Collin Rees , Michael Mann , Amy Goodman , Nermeen Shaikh 

August 23, 2024

Source: Democracy Now

Climate activists disrupted a DNC-adjacent event sponsored by ExxonMobil on Wednesday, the same day that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz formally accepted his nomination as vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. Walz has faced harsh criticism from Indigenous and environmental rights groups in Minnesota for his authorization of the Line 3 oil pipeline through Native treaty lands in the state. We host a roundtable discussion on the climate crisis and the Democratic Party’s response with Ojibwe lawyer and founder of the Giniw Collective Tara Houska; climate organizer Collin Rees, who was part of the ExxonMobil action at the DNC; and climate scientist Michael Mann.

 

Solving the Housing Crisis via the Commons

By Dil Green

August 23, 2024

Source: Low Impact

Image via Lowimpact.org

This is Part 1 of a two-parter, about how the housing crisis causes debt-bondage and wage-slavery, and how the housing Commons can release people from debt and give them freedom to do what they know needs to be done.

Part 2: how the housing commons can solve the housing crisis.

In Stroud Commons, we’re looking to find ways to speed up the building of the commons – especially the housing commons, which we were talking about in terms of ‘the rock on which the commons can be built’ before we’d even formed the core group in Stroud. Dil Green of Mutual Credit Services (MCS – who design models for the commons in all sectors), posted a message in our chat group, giving his take on the housing crisis, and how we might speed up the housing commons by allowing / helping / encouraging people to put their house into the commons, and carry on living in it for the rest of their life – and pass it on to their family, too. They’d be able to free up cash (like equity release, but without having to go into more debt), they could retire early, maintenance of the property would be taken out of their hands, and as they get older, commoners will visit regularly to chat, check they’re OK and see if they need anything. Freed from debt-bondage and wage-slavery, and with greater security, people will have more time. And they would spend it on things they know need to be done.

We’ve turned the thread into a 2-part article. Part 1 is about the housing crisis, and Part 2 is about how the housing commons can help solve it.

First, let’s look at the problem:

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How the housing crisis causes debt-bondage and wage-slavery

There is a housing crisis in the UK, but it’s not the way the papers frame it – which is all about numbers of houses, nimbys, building on the green belt or building council houses – it’s not a supply problem, really – it’s a distribution problem, caused by over-inflated prices.

The reason we’re told it’s a supply problem is because there is so much money (and employment) in housing development, and because the UK finance system is hooked on mortgage income. All politicians (even the Greens) seem gung-ho on building more houses. But house building is an enormous cause of CO2 emissions and other environmental degradation. Surely, we should be looking to solve the distribution problem – dealing with house prices – before digging up the green belt?

The graph shows UK house price inflation in blue and population growth in green; clearly, this is not a simple supply/demand relationship. It is best described as a government sponsored ‘Ponzi scheme’ – where the ‘too good to be true’ rewards are paid for by ‘greater fools’ joining in – until the whole thing crashes. Similar schemes are under way in every country across ‘the West’.

Over the last fifty years, the cost of having a secure place to live has eaten up a larger and larger fraction of people’s income. Over the period of the graph, the price of UK housing has approximately doubled in relation to earnings. 

This has gone hand-in-glove with the  campaign to turn more and more people into ‘home-owners’ – aka slaves to mortgage debt for most of their working lives.

Employers are told – ‘if you want a reliable worker, look for someone with a mortgage and 2 kids’. Why? Because they will undergo almost any pain in order to provide a safe place for those kids to live, and they are already in debt-bondage. Wage-slavery comes as part of the package.

The ‘reward’ for participation in this programme has been the enrichment of a small fraction of the population – those lucky enough to get onto the ‘ladder’ early on (ie at least 20 years ago). The problem with this is that the upwards escalator of house prices cannot carry on forever – there is only so much of your income that can be allocated to a place to live, and it’s already too high for most. Those rewards are simply not possible for most people under the age of 40.

The 2008 crisis was triggered by the housing market in the US, and that instability is not going away – there will be other crises, and soon. In the UK, the ‘value’ of the housing stock is now considered to be somewhere between £7-8 trillion – around £200,000 per working person (about half of us). Since we all buy our houses on debt, and mortgages double the initial price of the houses we (and landlords) buy, that suggests that every working person will spend £400k on having somewhere to live in their lifetime – but the average lifetime income is only £570k! Something has to break.

The Housing Commons offers a way out of this mess, a way which diminishes debt-bondage and wage slavery, de-risks the housing finance system, and does not attack individuals who ‘got lucky’ (after all, their lives have already been spent in wage-slavery and debt-bondage).

But there’s more. If we can, even by a fraction, free people from debt-bondage and wage-slavery, it will liberate them to do what, deep down, they know they want to do – work to secure their and their children’s longer-term future.

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Part 2: how a housing commons can address and help solve the housing crisis – very quickly, by allowing people to put their homes into the commons, but be better off, and with lots of practical and social benefits.

 

Glencore’s Israeli-bound Coal Becomes the Next Test of South Africa’s Anti-genocide Stance

By Allan Boesak, Patrick Bond , Roshan Dadoo 

August 22, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share 

Israel’s fossil-energy supply is among the most damaging components contributing to the genocide underway in Gaza – and to its longer-term maintenance of apartheid, including land-grab settlements in Palestine. The coal-fired power plants at Ashdod and Hedera ports typically supply 20-30% of power to a grid that feeds the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the illegal West Bank settlements.

Last December, South Africa invoked the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) after Israel began mass murder and bombings against more than two million Palestinians in Gaza in response to the Al Aqsa Flood Operation of October 7 when resistance fighters broke out from the besieged Gaza prison.

The IDF revenge – along with its ‘friendly fire’ and the ‘Hannibal Directive’ that also killed several hundred Israeli civilians near the Gaza border – is so extreme that International Criminal Court prosecutors prepared war-crimes arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Article 1 of the Genocide Convention requires all statesto undertake ‘to prevent and to punish genocide’.

Court order to stop empowering Israel

The ICJ has also insisted that all States halt any “aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” That logically includes South African state aid – e.g. via Transnet rail shipments, or the depletion of a sovereign natural resource taken from Mpumalanga Province mines – in the form of coal supplies to the Israel Electric Corporation.

In situations of armed conflict, additional international humanitarian and criminal law standards apply to corporations and individual business leaders, who must consider whether their operations contribute to gross human rights violations or international crimes.

A similar vulnerability occurred within a different apartheid system, South Africa’s, in 1985 when financial sanctions (thanks to international solidarity campaigning) and internal United Democratic Front protest from below caused such a squeeze that President PW Botha declared a debt default, imposed exchange controls and shut the stock market. The response by business leaders was to visit Zambia to meet exiled African National Congress leaders, beginning the democratization process as whites finally began to accept ‘one person, one vote’ democracy.

Yet some of the same businesses that enjoyed apartheid profits, e.g. Anglo American and Glencore, went on to empower Israeli apartheid. Even after the Gaza genocide began last October, three massive ships left Richard’s Bay – the most recent on January 20 – carrying dirty coal which fuels both genocide and climate crisis.

Coal-fired genocide

The last year for which United Nations Comtrade data are available, 2021, shows 6.5 million tonnes of coal imported by Israel, of which 50% was Colombian, 36% Russian, 13% South African and 1% Turkish. (In May this year, Turkey imposed full trade sanctions on Israel.) In 2023 the amount of coal consumed by Israel was 5.2 million tonnes.

And according to a June 2024 report by SPGlobal, “Israel imported 1.4 million tonnes of thermal coal in 2024 so far… Colombia accounted for 855,700 tonnes – or 60% of all imports during this period. Other key suppliers included Russia with 247,500, South Africa at 169,200, the U.S. at 86,100 and China supplying 53,000.”  

The Boycott Divestment Sanctions ‘BDS’ strategy called for by the broadest-ever range of Palestinian civil society in 2005, draws on lessons two decades earlier in ending South African apartheid. It has now become urgent for the SA government, trade unions, community organisations, social movements and anti-coal environmentalists to mobilise and end any economic complicity with Israel’s genocide.

In the energy sector we are targeting companies that include Glencore (the main firm selling coal from Colombia) and its Astron Energy subsidiary and main coal-mining partner African Rainbow Minerals, Thungela (formerly AngloCoal) and any other South African firms as well as state owned enterprises such as Transnet that have profited from empowering Israeli apartheid.

Since South African coal has been fueling oppression of Palestine for decades, it is long overdue to bring the damage to a halt and for the guilty firms to pay reparations for past earnings, just as did Detroit-based General Motors for apartheid profiteering in pre-1994 South Africa.

Colombia’s example

On June 8, Colombian President Gustavo Petro issued a proclamation to “suspend coal exports to Israel until the genocide is stopped,” on grounds that in the context of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, coal is “an energy supply and strategic resource for the manufacturing of weapons, the mobilization of troops, and the manufacturing of supplies for military operations” – as well as being a major contributor to the climate crisis.

The Colombian Mining Association vowed to disobey Petro and in June-July the coal shipments continued, including from Glencore’s main port on June 25. But Petro has persevered and last week ruled that on Thursday August 22, those shipments must end.

Glencore ‘ethics’

While Colombia’s halt to Israel coal sales will affect 5.1% of exports, in South Africa’s case the equivalent is typically lower than 1%. Earnings from these exports fluctuate with price and quantity: $101 million in 2021; $184 million in 2022; and $78 million in 2023. 

But the costs of coal exports – in terms of local pollution, greenhouse gas damage and depleted hydrocarbons, as well as labour, operating costs and environmental remediation – are far higher than the gross income. Still, any worker or community adversely affected should be first in line for Just Energy Transition funds.

A few weeks ago, at Glencore’s Annual General Meeting in Switzerland, a shareholder asked “if you’re conducting human rights assessments on the use of the coal you’re exporting to Israel to ensure that you’re not held liable”? Board Chairman Kalidas Madhavpeddi replied, “The company supplies to many countries around the world and it’s almost impossible to tell you the answer to your question.” The shareholder followed up, “So you don’t check how the coal is being used?”

The answer revealed the firm’s lack of ethics: “Coal is used in power generation, that’s simple.” The two Glencore directors from South Africa who were there – CEO Gary Nagle and Senior Independent Director (and former SA central bank governor) Gill Marcus – were notably silent.

Glencore’s roots are in Marc Rich & Co, a firm central to apartheid-era sanctions-busting and racism-profiteering. After being renamed Glencore, the Swiss firm took a Johannesburg Stock Exchange secondary listing, in which our civil servants own 2% worth, or $1.1 billion. From 2018-22, Glencore was successfully prosecuted under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for widespread bribery across Africa and Latin America. It paid $1.5 billion in fines, in the process revealing deep collusion with notorious Israeli tycoon Dan Gertler in central Africa.

Shir Hever, considered to be Israel’s leading progressive political economist, concludes: “If South Africa now follows in the footsteps of Colombia, it would be such a powerful move, that it could possibly bring the genocide to a halt.”

For these reasons, protests against Glencore on August 22 at its Johannesburg headquarters and subsidiary Astron’s Cape Town site – kick off South African BDS campaigning aimed at disempowering genocide.

(Rev. Boesak, a liberation theologian, was formerly SA Ambassador to the United States; Bond is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UJ; and Dadoo coordinates the BDS Coalition in SA.)

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