Deconstructing a Military Mindset

By an active duty Air Force officer and recent graduate of the AF Academy.

by Joy Metzler / October 14th, 2024

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of Georgia Tech, the US Air Force, Department of Defense, or the US Government.

Somewhere around the age of 20, I sat in a large auditorium at the United States Air Force Academy with a thousand other cadets and cheered at footage of real drone strikes on real people, laughing along with everyone else as we watched little, pixelated figures run for cover that we all knew was futile. When I look back on that event, I wonder what part of me I had to sacrifice to find humor in the loss of life.

In many ways, it’s thanks to the Air Force Academy that I currently have an anti-war stance. I was given the tools to examine my military service and foreign policy in a couple mundane, core classes: law and ethics, though my ethics course has stuck with me the most, ironically enough. I hated my ethics course because I thought most of it was redundant and self-explanatory: don’t do bad things! I couldn’t understand why people dedicated their lives to it.

Despite my best efforts, I learned a lot about the darker side of American history – we talked about the My Lai Massacre, the dropping of the atomic bombs, Ehren Watada and his refusal to deploy in an unjust war, drone warfare and the moral implications of being so far removed from the resultant violence. We learned to question the moral nature of military decisions.

This was quite a shock to someone like me, who had until then been so inundated with military stories of valor and bravery, but I wrote it off as best as I could, unwilling to put in the work of deconstructing a pro-military mindset that was six years in the making.

It wasn’t until 2024 that the pieces of the puzzle started coming together for me.

The active genocide in Gaza is in blatant disregard of international law and in violation of every rule surrounding civilian casualties in war, both concepts that were heavily covered during my academy schooling. I had tried to take a neutral stance, one that would allow me to continue justifying the US’ actions, but seeing in the news and talking to veterans and active duty members who had the courage to speak up gave me the push I needed to decide for myself that I wouldn’t stand by anymore.

I was horrified at the violence that was being endorsed and supported by our government in clear violation of what I had once thought was basic ethics. More than that, I realized that the U.S. decides who is worthy of life and who is to die, and by being part of the military, I have a hand in that. War is a terrible business, one that we’ve become desensitized to, and I don’t believe that we have to accept the inevitability of violence.

I encourage everyone currently serving to critically examine the nature of their service.

As an active duty service member, I have been told repeatedly that military strength is the only way to counteract the threats we face in the world. But once again we see violence, this time perpetrated by the Israeli government, only leads to death and destruction in an ever growing conflict. Hate begets hate.
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Joy Metzler,  2d Lt., USAF, is currently on active duty and has applied for conscientious objector status. Read other articles by Joy.

 

The Badly Tarnished Nobel Peace Prize is Finally Awarded to a Group that Truly Deserves It

But honoring the victims of the US atomic bombings of Japan comes as Russia threatens to use nukes, and the US pushes a war on Russia that could lead to nuclear disaster

by Dave Lindorff / October 14th, 2024

Hiroshima (left, which the US destroyed with the first atomic bomb ever used in war on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki, which the US destroyed three days later on Aug. 9 with the last atomic used in war so far. Over a quarter million people, mostly women and children, died in the two blasts, which were not an effort to end the war, but as a demonstration to the Soviet Union of America’s awsome new monopoly on destructive power. (USA government and ICRC Archive photo)

Pity the Biden and Harris speechwriters tasked with composing a congratulatory comment for the head of state and the vice-head of state to offer to Toshiyuki Mimaki recipient of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize along with Nihon Hidankyo, the organization of Hibakusha. (Hibakusha are the victims of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

Those congratulations — if they are ever even offered — will have to be artfully composed. They would, after all, have to both praise Nihon Hidankyo’s decades of efforts to end nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war, and to shake the governments and peoples of the world out of an apathetic acceptance of nuclear weapons as just another fact of human existence, while the same time avoiding any mention of America’s horrific war crime in instantly obliterating two Japanese cities of no military significance, in the process killing a quarter million civilians.

The Nobel Peace Prize has long been tarnished. It was awarded to President Obama before he had spent a year in office with no significant peace initiative on his record, and before he became one of the more aggressive presidents in history in terms of projecting US military power unilaterally. Earlier the award was shared by war criminal Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, the head of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (who refused to accept his honor and the money that comes with it), and Teddy Roosevelt, imperialist war monger of an earlier era.

But the shared Nobel award to Mimaki and Nikon Hidankyo  is clearly deserved.

Shamefully, no American president has acknowledged this epic American war crime perpetrated at the end of World War II over the span of three days in August 1945.

In 2016, President Obama became the first and only president to attend a memorial of the atomic bombings in Japan, but while a controversial Nobel Peace Laureate himself, with the added obligation, it would seem, to emphasize the need to end 79 years of nuclear madness, he did not apologize for America’s two atomic bombings. Instead, he simply expressed his “sympathy” for the deaths caused by those two bombs.

The US officially continues to insist that the dropping of both bombs was a necessary act of war, allegedly required to bring it to an end, and to prevent the need for a US land invasion of the Japanese archipelago. It is a laughable position, as Japan’s navy and air force by Aug. 6, when Hiroshima was bombed, had been totally destroyed. Most of Japan’s cities, as well as its energy and transport systems ad been destroyed, and its main army was trapped in Manchuria, China and Korea with no resupply possible and no way to reach Japan. The government was at that point predicting massive starvation in the coming winter if the country were laid siege to, making surrender only a matter or time.

Five-star General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the top US general in World War II, well aware of Japan’s desperate condition by August 1945, opposed the use of the atomic bomb on the battered nation. In a memoir written in 1963, three years after he had left the White House, Eisenhower recalled telling Secretary of War Henry Stimson not to use the bomb, writing: “I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”

But with the example of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender as a precedent, President Truman and his foreign policy advisers demanded the same thing from Japan (and in fact this has become the US’s approach to all wars — a demand for unconditional surrender rather than a negotiated end).

It’s been 79 years since the first atomic bomb was tested in the Alamogordo Desert, the first atomic bomb was dropped in war on the city of Hiroshima, and the last atomic bomb dropped in war destroyed the city of Nagasaki. Indeed, those three bombs, all detonated within a 24-day span between July 16 and Aug. 9, 1945 (if one excludes the subsequent decades of nuclear tests), might be viewed as a remarkably short nuclear era. However, as unlikely as this eight-decade interregnum without any nuclear war since then might seem, tens of thousands of nuclear bombs, warheads and shells had been constructed over that period by just the United States and the Soviet Union and later the post-Communist Russian Federation, not to mention the other seven nuclear powers.

But that nuclear war-free period has been anything but peaceful, and the fact that there has not been a nuclear war over that time has been a matter often of luck or the courage of individuals who refused launch orders or violated nuclear protocols at great personal risk.

Indeed, the only reason nuclear weapons were not used in the early 1950s was that a handful of courageous American and British scientists who had helped make the first atomic bomb had made sure, by secretly sharing it,  that the US was not the only country to have them. (One of the most consequential of those was Ted Hall, a teenage physicist at Los Alamos who worked on the plutonium bomb used in the Trinity test and on Nagasaki, but also gave all the plans for that bomb to the Soviet Union, enabling the USSR to successfully test a copy in 1949. My book, Spy for No Country: The story of Ted Hall, the teenage atomic spy who may have saved the world, published earlier this year by Prometheus Books, explains that amazing story.)

Today, the US is 14 years into a $1.7 trillion “modernization” program to build ten new nuclear-tipped missile submarines, each with enough explosive power to destroy not just a country but all life on earth, each capable of launching a devastating surprise first strike on Russia, China, Iran or any other state the US wishes to neutralize. That program is also modernizing the bombs themselves, to make them more “useable” by giving local commanders controlling the delivery systems the ability to dial the power of the explosions up or down. New missiles, new bombers, new army delivery systems, and other new weapons, as well as as front-line nuclear launch sites near to US “enemies” are part of the program too.

At the same time the US is supplying hugely destabilizing and threatening weapons to Ukraine affair use in its war with Russia, the only country with a nuclear arsenal roughly equal in destructive power to that of the US. These weapons would  allow Ukraine to attack Russian targets, even using US satellite intelligence and guidance capability to direct their fire. Whatever one may think about Russia’s launching a war against Ukraine, a former part of the Soviet Union, the US is risking a global nuclear war by its actions.

The US is also the primary supplier of arms and military hardware like F-35 and F-16 bombers and the massively destructive and indiscriminate two-ton bombs to Israel which have in just one year killed over 42,000 trapped Palestinians in Gaza [The Lancet genocide of Palestinians has been estimated at of 186,000 — DV ed.] and which are now killing Lebanese civilians in a second war. That war has been declared by the UN’s International Court of Justice to be genocidal, making those who support it equally guilty.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who was three when the first US bomb struck his hometown of Hiroshima,  speaking in Oslo to accept the award on behalf of himself and his Hibakusha organization, alluded to this when he said,  after expressing joy when he learned he and his organization had won the Nobel Peace Prize:

“You hear countries making threats like, ‘We will use nuclear weapons any time.’

“The United Nations has decided that there will be five countries with nuclear weapons, but more and more countries are acquiring them. The idea that the world is safe because there are nuclear weapons – we are absolutely opposed to this.

“It is impossible to maintain peace in the world in a world with nuclear weapons.”

He added:

“Especially in places like Israel and Gaza, children are being covered in blood and living every day without food, having their schools destroyed, stations destroyed and bridges destroyed,”

“The people are wishing for peace. But politicians insist on waging war, saying, ‘We won’t stop until we win’. I think this true for Russia and Israel, and I always wonder whether the power of the United Nations couldn’t put a stop to it.”

He didn’t mention US, the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war, and, as Martin Luther famously said in his famous Riverside Church speech the year before his assassination, “the worst purveyor of violence in the world.”FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Dave Lindorff has written for the NY Times, Nation, FAIR, Salon, London Review of Books and Rolling Stone. Dave cofounded the LA Vanguard, ran the LA Daily News county bureau and was a BusinessWeek Asia correspondent. He currently writes a Substack: ThisCantBeHappening!. Read other articles by Dave.

 

Does Your Feminism Include Palestine?

by Nour Jaghama and Grace Siegelman  / October 15th, 2024

Women’s Marches are being planned across the country ahead of Election Day to “show the strength of our feminist movement.” However, curiously missing from the talking points around the strength of the feminist movement is the women of Palestine – who have endured the brutality of anti-feminist policies for decades under the illegal occupation by Israel.

Nour, CODEPINK’s Palestinian-American organizer, shares a story of her grandmother’s sacrifice to take care of her children under occupation:

In Palestine, Israeli forces routinely impose curfews on Palestinian villages, forcing Palestinians to stay confined in their homes after dusk. The penalty for the slightest movement outside — or even within their homes — can mean immediate arrest or being shot on sight. My mother often recounts a story of my grandmother risking her life during curfew one night. My uncle, who was an infant at the time, was crying for milk, and my grandmother, with no other choice, had to slip out into the night. She moved silently through the shadows, hiding from Israeli soldiers as she crossed the village to find milk for her baby. My mother still remembers the fear she felt, thinking it might be the last time she’d see her mother alive. But my grandmother returned safely because Palestinian women, shaped by decades of occupation and resistance, have learned to navigate the militarized reality that surrounds them, finding ways to perform even the most basic acts of care under unimaginable conditions.

This story is not new or singular; Palestinian families have faced it on a daily basis for decades. It sparked our reflection on the co-option of feminism in the belly of the beast—where we’re writing from.

Nadia Alia wrote about the 2014 Israeli invasion in Gaza, citing many reporters detailing the “disproportionate” number of women and children victims during this violent attack. She then begged the question, what is a proportionate amount of women and children harmed during war and conflict? When did gender-based violence and violence towards the oppressed become an inevitable part of world relations? And if simply men were killed, would the crime scream quieter? When did we start weighing the scale of a tragedy based on gender — and when did we decide Palestinian men being murdered and imprisoned doesn’t impact their entire community?

Feminism may not be definitive, but at its heart is a commitment to family and community care — a stark contrast to militarism, which injects itself into every aspect of human life and erodes these fundamental values. Palestinian women embody this incompatible relationship between feminism and militarism through their constant resistance to the occupation’s infringement on their health, education, and ability to provide for their families. When the women of Palestine are forced to become breadwinners and protectors because Israel has murdered or imprisoned every man in their family, the necessity for feminism to include the women of Palestine is undeniable. To narrowly define feminism is to be inherently anti-feminist, as we are building new ways to be just, to be equitable, and to show up for our community every day — just as the women of Palestine do. However, co-opting feminism to enact harm and destruction to people and the planet is against all feminist principles and praxis. And to further assume a false sense of superiority over the communities that have been harmed by imperialism is not only inherently anti-feminist, it’s anti-human. Feminism, at its core, is antithetical to all forms of oppression, exploitation, and violence. Feminism devoid of intersectionality becomes a weapon for imperialists by depriving it of its otherwise inherently liberatory nature.

Alia’s writing from 2014 still rings clear today. We just passed a year marker of the October 7 act of resistance from Gazans defending their homeland and 76 years of Palestinians living in an open-air prison inside their own homes. Meanwhile, we head into an election season using feminism as a gateway towards further surveillance, policing, and genocide, both at home and in all corners of the earth. Women’s marches throughout the country won’t even utter the names of the hundreds of thousands of women killed in Palestine to date. What is feminist about wanting to be the most lethal force in the world? What is feminist about continuing to arm a genocidal war against Palestine and Lebanon? What is feminist about using our tax dollars that should go towards natural disaster relief and healthcare to fund murder? Supplying militarism under the guise of women’s empowerment is again not new. Still, the complacency and ignorance we see from elected officials here in the U.S. and those who appear to care for the well-being of women is always horrific and devastating. It cannot be overstated: there are no feminist bombs, feminist prisons, feminist cops, or feminist wars. There are only paid actors who have convinced people that their eventual demise and the demise of the planet is what will empower their lives today.

Israel’s occupation of Palestine creates a constant state of fear and instability, eroding the rights, safety, and dignity of millions, particularly Palestinian women who bear the weight of war and imperial feminism in devastating ways. CODEPINK started as an immediate reaction to the 2002 Bush Administration creeping closer to invading Iraq based on ‘saving women and children’ only to cause over 15,000 women in Iraq to be killed. The ‘rescue’ narrative we have seen play out in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, and all across the globe from imperial players like the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel has truly shown the lengths that liberal, western feminism will go to justify the oppression of the women and children it claims to save. It reveals the true intent this movement has for feminism: to keep the status quo and to keep marginalized lives, as Marc Lemont Hill describes it, “directly tied to the needs and interests of the powerful.” Feminist education, activism, and community care must always come from a place of love and understanding but must also be in steadfast values of abolition and divestment. We cannot let ourselves be co-opted to kill Palestinians. We cannot allow our work to be undermined to kill the people of the Congo, of Sudan, of Yemen, of Ukraine, of Russia. And we must not let our lives and choices be tied to a small group of people reaping the benefits of war.

To support Palestinian liberation means embracing a vision of feminism that stands firmly against militarism, imperialism, and colonialism. It means committing to fight for the rights of Palestinian women and all women who are oppressed in the name of advancing imperialist interests. Feminism calls us to see the connection between the liberties we fight for at home and the rights denied to women and girls across the globe. A genuinely feminist stance fights for a world where no woman, no child, and no community live under the constant threat of violence. Supporting Palestine is about embodying this vision, standing in solidarity, and fighting for a world where imperialism and colonialism are universally resisted.
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Nour Jaghama is CODEPINK’s Palestine and Iran Campaigner. Nour graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in International Studies in June 2022. She has been advocating for Palestinian liberation for over 5 years, including organizing within her university. She also organizes around related issues, such as abolition. Grace Siegelman is CODEPINK’s digital engagement manager and feminist foreign policy project coordinator. Her organizing and research focus on prison and police abolition, queer theory, gendered violence and anti-war efforts. She connects her own work to the communities in Chicago and communities across the globe, in Palestine, Yemen and Cuba. Read other articles by Nour Jaghama and Grace Siegelman .

 

Israel’s War on the United Nations

by Binoy Kampmark / October 15th, 2024

The United Nations is an easy body to hate.  At times, it seems to be effusion without substance, body with no backbone.  It was conceived in a fit of post-war idealism, when egos were humbled and hatred briefly stemmed.  Over the ruins of the Second World War, the builders were favoured over the destroyers and mischief makers – at least for a time.

On its establishment, the UN became a hostage to the political intrigues and power blocs that have continued to plague it for its duration.  Of particular concern was the body’s pursuit of international law protocols – formulation, drafting and implementation.  A central feature of this: resolutions passed by various bodies, the most significant being by the UN Security Council.  Such measures are followed by nation states when convenient, ignored when not.

One such nation state in the mischief making class is Israel.  Its relationship with the UN has often been tetchy.  The Anti-Defamation League, for instance, admits that the body “played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Jewish State by passing UN Resolution 181 in 1947”.  The resolution, with its hefty consequences, called for “the partition of British Mandate Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.”  The same organisation, however, goes on to note with satisfaction the remarks in April 2007 by then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon: “Unfortunately, because of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, Israel’s been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias – and sometimes even discrimination.”

For various periods of its history, Israel has felt hard done by in the international forum.  The folder of resolutions against it has burgeoned. Notable ones include UNSC Resolution 242 (1967) which asserts, in accordance with the UN Charter principles, that a “just and lasting peace in the Middle East” includes the withdrawal of Israel’s armed forces from territories occupied during the Six Day War and the termination of territorial claims and affirmation of sovereignty of all States in the area.  UNSC Resolution 338 (1973), passed in response to the Yom Kippur War between Israel, Egypt and Syria, called on the parties to cease hostilities within 12 hours and implement Resolution 242 “in all its parts”.

UN Resolution 2334, passed in December 2016, particularly hurt, striking at the expansionist, displacing drive of the Jewish state through settlements in occupied territory that amount to de facto colonisation. It particularly condemned “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem”.  This included, among other matters, the expansion of the settlements, the transfer of Israeli settlers, the confiscation of land and the displacement of Palestinian civilians.

Instead of seeing such a measure as a clear assessment of predation in breach of international law and the principles of the UN Charter, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, called it an unnecessary reward to the Palestinians “to continue down a dangerous path they have chosen” in avoiding direct negotiations with Israel. That Israel cared not a jot on that score hardly mattered.

A number of recent incidents reveals the poor regard the United Nations is held in, notably within Israel’s warring circles.  Its agency aiding Palestinians, UNRWA, is threatened by two bills before the Israeli parliament that will significantly hamper its operations by evicting the body from its premise in territories within Israel’s control.  The proposed laws will also abolish any associated privileges and immunities.  Having failed to convince all major donors to the organisation that it should be defunded for being packed with Hamas apologists and operatives (the evidence has always been paltry on that score), the Israeli government is using a legal sledgehammer fashioned by the Knesset.

The passage of the bills, warns UN Secretary-General António Guterres, “would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.”  The provision of shelter, food and healthcare “would grind to a halt” without the agency.  Some 600,000 children “would lose the only entity that is able to re-start education, risking the fate of an entire generation.”

With Israel’s broadening campaign against Hezbollah to the north, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is facing continuous harassment by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).  Established in 1978 by the Security Council to confirm the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon and aid Lebanese authorities restore peace and security in the area, UNIFIL has been a source of endless irritation to the IDF’s operations.

In an October 13 statement, UNIFIL revealed that two IDF Merkava tanks at 4.30 that morning had gone about the business of destroying the main gate of their post in Ramyah, near the Israeli border.  The tanks forcibly entered, after which Israeli personnel demanded that the base turn out its lights.  “The tanks left about 45 minutes later after UNIFIL protested through our liaison mechanism, saying that IDF presence was putting peacekeepers in danger.”

At 6.40 am, peacekeepers at the same post reported the firing of several smoke emitting rounds 100 metres to the north.  “Despite putting on protective masks, fifteen peacekeepers suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions, after the smoke entered the camp.”

On October 14, persisting in its approach of impeding and harrying the peacekeeping force, the IDF halted “a critical UNIFIL logistical movement near Meiss ej Jebel, denying it passage.  The critical movement could not be completed.”

The statement goes on to remind the IDF about its obligations to ensure the safety and security of the UN peacekeepers and property.  Breaching a UN position violated UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006), while any deliberate attack on peacekeepers was a serious violation of international humanitarian law, in addition to breaching resolution 1701.

In an almost disdainful manner, the IDF suggested in a statement that the peacekeepers had entirely misunderstood the brutal encroachment.  The actions had been motivated by goodwill to evacuate soldiers wounded by an anti-tank missile.  “For the sake of evacuating the wounded, two tanks drove backwards, in a place where they could not advance otherwise in light of the threat of shooting, a few metres towards the UNIFIL position.”  The smokescreen had been created to aid the evacuation, while the entire operation was conducted throughout with continuous contact with the UN peacekeepers. After a time, the dressing of lies becomes tatty and banal.

Typically, it fell to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to shed some light on the mendacious fog.  UNIFIL, he suggested, had to immediately withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon.  “It is time for you,” stated the PM in a pointed message to Guterres, “to withdraw UNIFIL from Hezbollah strongholds and from the areas of combat.”  Yet again, international law which, in this case, provides legitimacy to the UN peacekeeping operations in the area, could be treated as a tissue easily torn.FacebookTwitter

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

Unraveling the Mystery of the Middle East Crisis

Why is a Genocide Supported?

by Dan Lieberman / October 15th, 2024

There are other issues I would prefer to write about; all are affected by the Middle East crisis.

Economics

Economics is a “dismal science” that has a postulate ─ all money is debt. This postulate leads to the realization that the capitalist economy grows and survives with mounting debt and only the government can carry the debt burden. Debt forces the government to manage the economy and a more managed economy continually develops. U.S. Middle East policy generates constant wars, promotes an arms race, and is partly responsible for the continually increasing debt and managed economy.

Foreign Policy

Establishing hegemony by making the world recognize American exceptionalism, regardless of opponents are killed in the process, defines U.S. foreign policy. This one-sided and arrogant policy aligns with Israel’s modus operandi. It has been historical, counterproductive in several adventures, is doomed to failure in the present crisis, and will continue to harm the American people.

Politics

Extravagant divisions in the electorate and political system demonstrate a lack of comprehension of the political system by government officials and political strategists. Israel’s supporters take advantage of the mayhem in the political system and influence politicians and voters.

Media

Knowledge leading to capable decisions has not accompanied the rapid expansion in communications. Money talks and media squawks. Media is a convenient means of controlling and manipulating minds. Israel supporters are adept in using the media to manipulate the American public.

The Middle East crisis, engineered by Israel and the United States, overrides all other issues. It is unfathomable, an artificial construct that is incomprehensible. The issue can be resolved in one minute of time ─ stop the oppression of the Palestinians and grant them equal rights. Instead, deliberate destructions of the Palestinian community and of those who attempt to aid the Palestinians are the avenues of resolution. A spillover into greater destruction of other peoples, including the perpetrators of the genocide, is predicted. Get rid of everyone and the world’s problems will vanish.

The unending crises are a mystery and unraveling the mystery has become more of a detective story than an academic pursuit. Why is there a genocide, why is it supported, and can it be stopped? Historians, foreign policy experts, journalists, political commentators, and wise old men have not provided adequate answers to the questions. There is more to committing genocide than power politics.

At 10:54 PM, October 6, 2024, the world population was 8,226,477,186. Take a guess and estimate that 1.5 billion have sufficient awareness (not knowledge) of the Middle East crisis to attach themselves to a side in the crisis. Only a portion of inhabitants of the western world and India would favor the Israeli aggressive tactics; maybe 100 million in India and 200 million in the western world, compared to 1.2 billion in the rest of the Arab, African, Latin American, Central and Southeast Asia, and China worlds.

Take a more rigid perspective on what is definitely a genocide ─ no mistake in characterizing the violence against the Palestinians by that term. How does the number of those who know it is a genocide and still favor Israel compare with those who view it as a genocide and want it stopped? My guess is that a small clique of 7 million Zionist Jews (the Christian Zionists may favor Israel but do not influence others) actively influence 100 million people to favor their cause, and a billion of the world’s population react in horror to the genocide. A small clique of 7 million people are moving the world to enormous destruction and one billion remain powerless to prevent it. How can that be?

The mystery deepens with the revelation that this scenario has no reason. The argument that Jews, who are the wealthiest group in almost all western nations and occupy positions of prestige and importance in much greater portion than others, fear attack and need a land for themselves falls flat. In the land called Israel, only a small portion of the Jewish population can gain excessive wealth and dominance, while all live in constant fear of attack and animosity from much of the universe.

A one-state Israel, where all ethnicities live together and have equal rights can function as any democratic state. The Israeli Palestinians and Druze have been good citizens. Palestinians in all parts of the world — Chile, United States, Germany, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon — have pursued activities that benefitted their adopted nations. If the Jews in the one-state followed a similar pattern of dominance that Jews in the western world exhibit, then a greater portion of Israeli Jews will achieve enhanced prosperity in the expanded economy. The one-state might benefit the lesser advantaged Israeli Jews.

Let’s clarify nonsense. Jews can live almost any place throughout the western world and not be oppressed or subjected to violent anti-Jewish attacks. In 2020, Mexico had a population of 126,799,054 and a Jewish population of 58,876 people, 0.05 percent, and an infinitesimal part of the Mexican citizenry. On Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum, one of the relatively few Jews in Mexico, was sworn in as president without incident. Worshippers of contrived anti-Semitism statistics, please explain that happening. There are few cases of physical attacks against Jews, and the ADL promotes the U.S. as a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Compare Jewish life in the United States with the centuries of life of African Americans, who live at the economic margin, are subjected to periodic police attacks that take their lives, and do not consider establishing a land of their own. Anti-Semitism is trivial compared to the discrimination that severely disrupts the lives of other Americans. Let’s not confuse anti-Jewish feeling, due to Jewish support of the genocide of the Palestinian people, with arbitrary prejudice against Jews.

Why is there a genocide?

Israeli murderous rampages lack compassion for Palestinian suffering, show no sympathy for the killed and no remorse for even “accidental” killings. Calculated dehumanization of the civilized, educated, endurable, and heroic Palestinian people certifies the inhumanity and criminal bent of the Zionist Jews.

Israel’s genocidal reaction to Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, a day that will be pressed forever in the American conscience, was unnecessary. The preferred strategy for a responsible military that values life is to reinforce the border, which could easily be made impenetrable. Using Mossad’s network of informers, infiltrators, and military drone and satellite surveillance, the Israeli military has mapped locations and movements of Hamas’ military leaders and fighting wing. Selective targets for drone and commando raids could have disrupted Hamas’ fighting capability. After crippling Hamas, the military could have developed a strategy that totally immobilizes Hamas and minimizes civilian casualties.

Israeli tank battalions could have surrounded schools, apartment buildings, hospital and refugee centers before broadcasting evacuation and surrender orders. After evacuation, which saves civilian lives, the tanks could have probed or shelled buildings they claimed harvested Hamas. No armed brigades surrounded buildings, no evacuation advisories occurred, and no Hamas operatives have been shown to be present in the wreckage. Just the opposite has happened; the Gazans have been told to flee and then have been shot by snipers. Doctors are shocked at the casualties and reports that have an unusual number of children shot in the head. Whole extended families of 30-70 people have been killed without warning. Israel is fighting an army that has no antitank guns, no heavy weapons, and just a few cadres still willing to fight. There is no Hamas army and there is no real war.

The Gaza campaign is not a military campaign; it is an excuse for a deliberate genocide. It has nothing to do with political and military strategies that are developed from able and astute minds. It comes from these minds — depraved, egocentric, inhuman, and criminal bent.

These criminal bent cannot distinguish between right and wrong, are trained to attach themselves to a unique tribe, and emotionally detach themselves from others. The criminal mind drives a great portion of the Israel community. This was shown in an interview by Christine Amanpour with an Israeli woman whose daughter was kidnapped by Hamas. The woman tells Christine Amanpour that “October 7 was a catastrophe for the whole world. Hamas is terrorist and terrorizing its own people. The world thanks us for fighting for them. Hamas is seeking to eliminate us and the free world.”

It is obvious the woman is reciting a script prepared by the Israeli propaganda machine. She does not concentrate on the travails of her daughter and displays a mind trained to attach itself to a unique tribe and emotionally detach itself from others. Only Israelis matter, and the world should recognize that damage to Israelis is damage to the entire word. Israelis are rescuing all of us. Hamas and its slingshots are “seeking to eliminate nuclear armed Israel and the free world.”

Here is the difference between terrorist Hamas that terrorizes its own people and benevolent Israel.

Image Courtesy of CNN Gaza before October 7

Image courtesy of Reuters  Gaza after October 7

Terrorist Hamas has terrorized the population by constructing housing, schools, universities, hospitals, sports arenas, and given Gazans the tools to live, while Israel did all it could to disrupt their lives. Benevolent Israel has no compunction in destroying housing, schools, universities, hospitals, and tools that terrorist Hamas has given its people to survive the continuous onslaught against them.

It’s Gresham’s law ─ bad money drives out good money ─ applied to human existence — bad people drive out good people; in this case, the worst constantly replacing the less worst. There are many Israelis, even settlers, who want to cooperate with the Palestinians, but the plurality that gained government control permits and encourages robbery and murder of Palestinians. The settlers take advantage of the opportunities.

The genocide proceeds from a criminal bent leadership that organizes criminal activities, which is rationalized. Provoke the Palestinians to respond to an attack and then accuse them of attacking ─ a favorite and successful trickster investment by the Zionist Jews, which has given them huge dividends. The Zionists expect those robbed and harmed will seek justice, from within and from without. Way to stop that is to get rid of them. With no them, there is nothing to worry about. There is no resurrection.

Why are nations and groups supporting the genocide?

All those who support the genocide of the Palestinian people are inflicted with the criminal bent plus gene — might makes right and anyone who does not recognize your might has no right to live. Bill Maher, a political comedian who posed as a human rights advocate, revealed how the American conscience reflects the Zionist conscience. In an HBO episode, Maher exclaimed, “The State of Israel is here to stay and the Palestinians will need to get used to it.” At other times, he defended Israel’s war on the Gazans and defended his positions with,

History is brutal, and humans are not good people, and, I would submit that Israel did not steal anybody’s land. This is another thing I’ve heard the last couple of weeks, words like ‘occupiers’ and ‘colonizers’ and ‘apartheid,’ which I don’t think people understand the history there. The Jews have been in that area of the world since about 1200 BC, way before the first Muslim or Arab walked the earth. Other people do not understand the history there.

Bill Maher is considered a political satirist with a large following. He must have been satirizing when stating, “The Jews have been in that area of the world since about 1200 BC, way before the first Muslim or Arab walked the earth.” Any existing Neanderthals to claim the land? Where have the Palestinians prevented Israel’s existence? If they did, how did Israel get so strong? Aren’t the Zionist Jews attempting to prevent Palestinian existence? Aren’t the Palestinians here to stay and shouldn’t the Jews get over it? Maher follows the usual Zionist scheme ─ attribute to the adversary the iniquities and guilt of the Zionists.

The United States, beginning with the landing of the Pilgrims, and Israel, beginning with the landing of the Zionists, follow identical patterns of history. Both obtained assistance from the indigenous people and then obliterated them. Continuous wars, always in defense, never compromising, always killing mercilessly, and each convinced of their exceptionalism categorize the Israelis and Americans ─ partners in crime against humanity, willing accomplices to genocide.

Can the genocide be stopped?

Rays of hope indicate nations will take a firm stand against the genocide and rally support for the Palestinians.

• China has taken an active role in promoting a ceasefire.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the United Nations General Assembly it should recommend use of force if the UN Security Council fails to stop Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.
• Russia has shown sympathy for the Palestinian cause but is unable to act while being tied up in Ukraine.
• France’s President Macron has asked all nations to stop sending arms to Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response to President Macron’s plea revealed his lack of responsible executive behavior in international relations, his twisted mind, escape from reality, and superior attitude.

As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side….Yet President Macron and some other Western leaders are now calling for an arms embargo against Israel. Shame on them.

Let me tell you this, Israel will win with or without their support, but their shame will continue long after the war is won.

• Spain, Norway and Ireland have recognized Palestine statehood. Spain announced it would join South Africa’s genocide case before the International Court of Justice against Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Response from Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz repeated Netanyahu’s’ obsessive behavior, the twisted mind, the escape from reality, and the superior attitude. In an X message, addressed to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, Katz wrote,

Hamas thanks you for your service….Khamenei, Sinwar, and deputy PM Yolanda Diaz (Spain’s deputy PM) call for the elimination of Israel and for the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian terror state from the river to the sea….Sanchez, when you don’t fire your deputy and declare recognition of a Palestinian state — you are a partner to incitement to the genocide of Jews and to war crimes.

• Iran has entered the hostilities and defiantly said it will not back down. Does Iran have a power that allows its defiance?

The minds and authorities that gave us genocide of the Native Americans, slavery, and genocide of the Palestinians cannot be changed. There is little hope that revolutions in the United States and Israel will occur and correct the situation. Where are the Obamas? Unfortunately, Israel, together with its supplicating ally, the mighty U.S., feels comfortable. It has destroyed its antagonists. Hamas is impotent, Hezbollah is in disarray, with Netanyahu boasting that “Lebanon could face destruction like Gaza,” a confession that destruction of Gaza and not Hamas guides Israel’s military actions. Iran awaits an attack that Defense Minister Gallant describes as “deadly, precise and, above all, surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened. They will see the results.”

The rays of hope that indicate nations will take a firm stand against the genocide and rally support for the Palestinians is blocked by the knowledge that all will burn. The world is trapped. Israel has nuclear weapons and will not hesitate to use them, knowing that by its small size and close location to other nations, opponents realize that radioactive fallout from atomic bombs falling on Tel Aviv will jeopardize surrounding nations. The military option is not plausible.

Israel has always posed the crisis as “it’s us or them,” another departure from reality that is used to justify its criminal behavior. “Us” refers to, “They intend to destroy us”(Israel.)” “Them “refers to, “We destroy them before we are destroyed.” Nobody has shown the power or proclivity to have it “us.” Battle maps show Arab nations with large arrows thrusting huge armies to batter Israel. Where are any of them?

With Israel having atomic weapons and a mentality that will use them, stopping the genocide by military means predicts it will be “us” and “them,” where “us” are the peace loving people of the world and them are all the Israelis — Jews, Muslims and Christians. Israel has the world in a “lose-lose” situation and will never accept a “win-win” situation. This leaves little room to maneuver and ability to save the Palestinians. Social isolation and economic deprivation, including sanctions of the criminal nation, are paths to forcing the issue. They are long and difficult and have not proven effective in past genocides.

The solution to stopping Israel’s massacre of the Palestinians lies with the Israelis and Jews around the world. Israel’s genocidal policies have generated internal detractors, social unrest, political divides, an economic decline, and military disagreements. All combat is neutralized by “us” or “them,” supplied by the constant war against the Palestinians, which demands absolute loyalty to the state that is shielding its Jews from another Holocaust. This steady stream of propaganda is similar to the manner in which the Nazi state convinced a plurality of Germans to support the Nazis until the end. It’s a toss up as to who better fits the image of Nazism ─ Deutschland or Zionistland?

The “us” or “them,” reinforced by a population that has been nurtured on a daily cereal of holocaust and enjoys being a victim, explains the bewildering Israeli Jewish position on blithely, and it is blithely, committing genocide. The real Jews, those in the Western world, who understand Judaism and the struggles of their immigrant ancestors, have been thrust into a battle to rescue Judaism and the Palestinians.

As mentioned before, Jews live well and peacefully everywhere, except in Israel. If their sleep is disturbed, it is because of Israel and its partners in crime. The anti-defamation League (ADL), better named the Defamation League, is a business; it exists to find anti-Jewish expressions and the more it can manufacture, the more successful it is as a business. The Israel Lobby is a conspiratorial lobbying arm of the Israeli government, reaching deeply into media, DC “Think Tanks,” government agencies, religious institutions, cultural institutions, and households, providing an invisible army of millions, many born in Israel and sent by Israel to corrode the political system, influence the electoral system, and delude the central nervous systems. Defeating the anti-Judaism branches of the anti-Jewish Zionist extremists is a challenge that is met by numbers, dollars, resources, energy, demonstrations, public relations, media advertisements and strategic thinking, which translates to being one step ahead of the most conniving, lying, cheating, and deceiving assortment of killers the world now sees. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald,

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.

It has eluded us now;
Tomorrow, we will run a little faster,
Stretch our arms a little longer.

Boats against the current,
Borne back ceaselessly into the Past.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

 

Denouncing the Renewal of the U.S.-Kenya Mission to Haiti

The Multinational Security Support Mission in Haiti Must End

by Black Alliance for Peace / October 15th, 2024

The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace strongly denounces the UN Security Council’s vote to extend the U.S. funded, Kenya-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in Haiti. We assert that any U.S./UN-led armed intervention in Haiti is not only unjustifiable but also unlawful. We stand with the Haitian people and civil society groups who have consistently opposed foreign armed intervention, arguing that Haiti’s issues stem from ongoing and long-standing interference by the U.S., the UN, and the Core Group.

On Monday, September 30, the UN Security Council unanimously  adopted  a  resolution extending for one year the authorization for the MSS mission to Haiti, which claims to help quell rampant gang violence. Yet, the mission will only be the latest in a line of failed interventions aimed at denying the popular sovereignty of the Haitian people. Prior to this vote, members of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Haiti/Americas Team delivered letters to the permanent UN Missions and Embassies of several countries represented on the UN Security Council, asking them to support the Haitian masses and oppose ongoing U.S.-orchestrated armed intervention. A public version of this letter appears here. While our letters were unsuccessful, we will continue to mobilize against this expanding intervention, which lacks legitimacy: the MSS was authorized under an illegitimate U.S.-installed Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, and deployed through the nine-member “Presidential Council” and Prime Minister, neither of which has any legal status or legitimacy in Haiti.

Though the Biden administration has halted its efforts to convert the MSS into an official United Nations Peacekeeping operation, we understand that a full, long-term foreign military occupation of Haiti is the eventual goal of the U.S. and its neocolonial proxies. We warn that the U.S. aims to use Haiti as a staging ground for a permanent military base in the region to, as articulated in its foreign policy documents, secure “U.S. national security and interests” and manage rival powers, presumably Russia and China.

In a time of global upheaval, marked by a live-streamed genocide in Gaza and violent clashes between cartels and police in Mexico, it is perplexing that the U.S., France, and Canada continue to call for the foreign occupation of Haiti — a country that, while facing internal conflicts, does not threaten regional or global security. We once again call on the international community to respect Haitian sovereignty and support the Haitian masses in their ongoing struggle against the relentless occupation by foreign powers. Allowing continuous U.S. and Western control over Haiti’s political apparatus not only threatens to extinguish the nation’s hard-won sovereignty, but also weakens the sovereignty and self-determination of every other nation in the Caribbean, and Central and South America. There can be no “Zone of Peace” in the Americas if there is no peace and freedom for the people of Haiti.

U.S. out of Haiti!

Kenya out of Haiti!

No to Another Occupation!

Free Haiti!
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The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement. Read other articles by Black Alliance for Peace, or visit Black Alliance for Peace's website.

 Economists expect higher inflation, deficits, interest rates under Trump than Harris: Poll

Aris Folley
Mon, October 14, 2024 


Economists expect higher inflation, national deficits and interest rates under former President Trump’s proposed agenda than under policies proposed by Vice President Harris, a new survey by The Wall Street Journal finds.

In the survey conducted Oct. 4-8, 68 percent of respondents said they think inflation would rise faster under a second Trump term than if Harris were to become president — up 12 percentage points from when the outlet asked in July.


By contrast, the Journal said 12 percent of those surveyed thought inflation would be higher if Harris assumed the Oval Office, and the rest “saw no material difference between the candidates.”

Additionally, 65 percent of economists said they saw Trump’s policies adding more to the nation’s deficits compared to Harris’s policy agenda. The figure marks a 14 point jump from the Journal’s July survey.

The survey’s results come not long after the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated the plans proposed by both candidates could increase the national debt by trillions of dollars through 2035. However, the report found that Trump’s tax and spending plans could add twice as much to the national debt as those brought by Harris.

The budget watchdog found Harris’s plans could add $3.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, compared to an estimated $7.5 trillion boost to the national debt from Trump’s plans.

In the latest survey by the Journal, economists were also asked about the potential impact of some of Trump’s proposed tariffs on domestic manufacturing employment. Fifty-nine percent of economists said employment would be lower compared to 16 percent who said it would rise in the coming years. The rest of those who answered said employment would remain unchanged.

A majority of economists in the poll also said they anticipated higher interest rates under a second Trump term, with 61 percent of those surveyed saying as much.

Forty-five percent of economists expect economic output to expand faster under Harris overall, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump, and 18 percent who “saw no material difference,” the Journal said.

Moody’s Analytics also projected Trump’s economic agenda to add to inflation and slow the pace of growth in a July analysis.

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