Landmark UN Vote on Resolution Expanding Palestine's Rights and Membership Prospects

The UN General Assembly is expected to vote on a resolution granting Palestine additional rights and privileges, including the right to speak on all issues and propose agenda items, but not the right to vote. The resolution also calls on the Security Council to reconsider Palestine's request for full membership. The United States, which has vetoed a similar resolution in the Security Council, opposes the measure, arguing that Palestinian membership should be achieved through negotiations with Israel. However, the resolution is expected to pass with a large majority, as there are no vetoes in the General Assembly.

PTI | United Nations | Updated: 10-05-2024

The UN General Assembly is expected to vote Friday on a resolution that would grant new "rights and privileges" to Palestine and call on the Security Council to favorably reconsider its request to become the 194th member of the United Nations.

The United States vetoed a widely backed council resolution on April 18 that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought and Israel has worked to prevent, and U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood made clear Thursday the Biden administration is opposed to the assembly resolution.

Under the U.N. Charter, prospective members of the United Nations must be "peace-loving," and the Security Council must recommend their admission to the General Assembly for final approval. Palestine became a U.N. non-member observer state in 2012. "We've been very clear from the beginning there is a process for obtaining full membership in the United Nations, and this effort by some of the Arab countries and the Palestinians is to try to go around that," Wood said Thursday. "We have said from the beginning the best way to ensure Palestinian full membership in the U.N. is to do that through negotiations with Israel. That remains our position." But unlike the Security Council, there are no vetoes in the 193-member General Assembly and the resolution is expected to be approved by a large majority, according to three Western diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations were private.

The draft resolution "determines" that a state of Palestine is qualified for membership - dropping the original language that in the General Assembly's judgment it is "a peace-loving state." It therefore recommends that the Security Council reconsider its request "favorably." The renewed push for full Palestinian membership in the U.N. comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage. At numerous council and assembly meetings, the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinians in Gaza and the killing of more than 34,000 people in the territory, according to Gaza health officials, have generated outrage from many countries.

The original draft of the assembly resolution was changed significantly to address concerns not only by the U.S. but also by Russia and China, the diplomats said.

The first draft would have conferred on Palestine "the rights and privileges necessary to ensure its full and effective participation" in the assembly's sessions and U.N. conferences "on equal footing with member states." It also made no reference to whether Palestine could vote in the General Assembly.

According to the diplomats, Russia and China which are strong supporters of Palestine's U.N. membership were concerned that granting the list of rights and privileges detailed in an annex to the resolution could set a precedent for other would-be U.N. members - with Russia concerned about Kosovo and China about Taiwan.

Under longstanding legislation by the U.S. Congress, the United States is required to cut off funding to U.N. agencies that give full membership to a Palestinian state - which could mean a cutoff in dues and voluntary contributions to the U.N. from its largest contributor.

The final draft drops the language that would put Palestine "on equal footing with member states." And to address Chinese and Russian concerns, it would decide "on an exceptional basis and without setting a precedent" to adopt the rights and privileges in the annex.

The draft also adds a provision in the annex on the issue of voting, stating categorically: "The state of Palestine, in its capacity as an observer state, does not have the right to vote in the General Assembly or to put forward its candidature to United Nations organs." The final list of rights and privileges in the draft annex includes giving Palestine the right to speak on all issues not just those related to the Palestinians and Middle East, the right to propose agenda items and reply in debates, and the right to be elected as officers in the assembly's main committees. It would give the Palestinians the right to participate in U.N. and international conferences convened by the United Nations - but it drops their "right to vote" which was in the original draft.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority's application for U.N. membership in 2011. It failed because the Palestinians didn't get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council's 15 members.

They went to the General Assembly and succeeded by more than a two-thirds majority in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.

In the Security Council vote on April 18, the Palestinians got much more support for full U.N. membership. The vote was 12 in favor, the United Kingdom and Switzerland abstaining, and the United States voting no and vetoing the resolution.

Risch Leads 24 Colleagues in Introducing NOPE Act to Cut Off U.S. Funding to UN if PA Receives More Privileges

MAY 09, 2024


WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today led 24 Senate colleagues in introducing the No Official Palestine Entry (NOPE) Act, legislation to update existing funding prohibitions in law that would cause the United States to cut off assistance to entities that give additional rights and privileges to the Palestinian Authority.

“The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are deeply flawed, plagued by corruption, and incite terrorism through the egregious ‘pay for slay’ program. Giving the PLO a voice at the United Nations is preposterous and fails to account for the PLO’s role in inspiring generations of Palestinians to support acts of terror,” said Risch. “This legislation will ensure taxpayer dollars are not used to give the PLO credibility.”

In addition to Risch, the

Full text of the legislation can be found here.

Background:

On Friday, May 10th, the Palestinian Authority will pursue a vote in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to enhance its current status at the UN. This enhanced status may fall short of full membership, but it would include numerous rights and privileges that previously have only been granted to full members.

Current U.S. law prohibits U.S. funding to organizations, such as the UN, which give the PLO full membership or standing as a member state. The NOPE Act updates the existing funding prohibition to organizations that offer the PLO “any status, rights, or privileges beyond observer status.

###

WHEN TONY BLAIR BOMBED MONTENEGRO

Britain’s direct involvement in NATO raid that killed a Montenegrin civilian revealed for the first time.

PHIL MILLER
29 APRIL 2024

Blair welcomed Montenegro’s president Milo Djukanovic to Downing Street, a year after bombing his country. (Photo: PA via Alamy)

Montenegro opposed Serbia’s conduct in the Kosovo war of 1999 but was not spared from NATO bombing of Yugoslavia

Future head of MI6 gave clearance for “precision guided munitions” to be dropped on Montenegro’s capital

Royal Air Force has bombed eight different countries or territories since 1999

Twenty five years ago today NATO bombed Montenegro’s main airport.

It came amid airstrikes on Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, where Bill Clinton and Tony Blair waged a “humanitarian intervention” ostensibly to save ethnic Albanians from Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Yet a 61-year-old woman, Paska Juncaj, was killed in the strikes on Montenegro’s capital Podgorica, which lasted for 24 hours.

“Shrapnel hit her in the head while she was on the way to an air raid shelter with her son,” a hospital official told Reuters.

Three others were injured – one seriously – and two houses destroyed after a cluster bomb missed its target.

Bombing Montenegro at all was controversial, because the country was friendly to NATO.

And although it remained in Yugoslavia with Serbia, its president Milo Djukanovic was anti-Milosevic and took a neutral stance on Kosovo.

The country would eventually join NATO as a member in 2017.
Approving air strikes

The Atlantic alliance did not specify which of its members had taken part in the air strikes on Montenegro at the time.

Such secrecy would become a common feature of future NATO air wars, making it hard for victims to hold individual states responsible.

But a formerly classified document reveals that Britain was heavily involved in the attack on Montenegro.

Blair’s defence secretary, George Robertson, believed an attack on Podgorica’s airport was justified because “it was being used as a base for operations in and over Kosovo” by Yugoslav jets and helicopters.

John Sawers, Blair’s foreign affairs adviser and future head of MI6, gave clearance for “precision guided munitions” to be dropped at 4 points of the airfield, which had both civilian and military functions.

“The risk of casualties was low, for both civilian and military, and of collateral damage, medium”, Robertson’s private secretary Christopher Deverell noted in a memo to Downing Street marked, “Secret – Personal” and “Limited distribution”.

On the same day, a Cabinet Office meeting of legal advisors recorded “some concern about the acceptability of explanations that have been given by NATO and national spokesmen for attacks by non-UK NATO forces on certain targets which were on the face of it civilian in character.”

Sawers concluded: “I think it would be right to continue to plan on the assumption that the Prime Minister is almost certain to agree to targets where collateral damage is assessed as high but civilian casualties remain low.”

The file has since been declassified and was passed to the National Archives in London this December.

The MoD, NATO and Lord Robertson did not respond to requests for comment.
Culture of impunity

Dr Iain Overton from campaign group Action on Armed Violence told Declassified: “The lack of transparency displayed by the Ministry of Defence over its air strikes is long and concerning. They repeatedly deny civilian harm even in the face of detailed evidence. This revelation just adds to the proof that this culture of opacity and impunity prevails at the highest level.”

It is unclear whether Britain had any involvement in another NATO attack on Montenegro the following day – 30 April 1999 – when a bridge in the village of Murino was struck by ten missiles.

Six civilians died in that airstrike, including three children, sparking a long running campaign for justice.

British aircraft did participate in the wider bombing of Serbia and Kosovo. The 78-day campaign by NATO left around 500 civilians dead, according to Human Rights Watch.

Milosovic was later overthrown and died while on trial at The Hague. Blair’s ally in the conflict, Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leader Hashem Thaci, is currently on trial for war crimes.

Over the next 25 years, Britain conducted airstrikes in eight countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

The list does not include military interventions like in Sierra Leone, as they did not feature aerial bombardments.

This month the RAF flew missions to protect Israel from Iranian drones.
‘My enemy’s enemy’

Britain’s military intervention in Kosovo produced mixed results. Although it allowed the return of ethnic Albanian refugees, it sparked reprisals against ethnic Serbs and empowered the KLA.

During the air war, Sawers pushed for Britain to deepen ties with the KLA, who were fighting Serb forces on the ground.

Sawers said Britain risked being “too sniffy” towards the KLA and that: “Our starting point in a conflict like this should be that your enemy’s enemy is your friend. We can sort out our differences later.”

Sawers also suggested a “minimalist interpretation” of the UN arms embargo. Blair replied: “I agree”. The KLA had easy access to small arms from their bases in Albania, where the collapse of pyramid schemes had left the state in tatters.

The file gives an important insight into the mindset of Sawers, who went on to run MI6 a decade on from the Kosovo war. In 2011 he oversaw a similar strategy in Libya where British intelligence sided with banned terrorist groups to topple Muammar Gaddafi.





Narco-state

In both cases, the Machiavellian policies have left a troubled legacy. Kosovo became virtually a narco-state on the edge of Europe, while Al Qaeda spin off groups like ISIS flourished in Libya’s power vacuum and spread terrorism to the UK.

A memo on the KLA written by a Whitehall staffer in 1999 noted it “does contain unsavoury elements…Links to drugs/crime.”

It added that the UK “do not support their goal (independence) or methods,” although Britain would be the first country to recognise Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008.

The MoD and Foreign Office warned: “Not all the Kosovo Albanians support the KLA. And the KLA is prone to feuding, and not incapable of atrocities itself. NATO cannot be seen to be in alliance with them…KLA rule might not be a liberal experience.”

Another document warned they were “not much better than the Serbs”.

Two months after Milosevic agreed to pull his forces out of Kosovo, leaving Thaci in control, the Independent reported “around 30 people a week are being killed in Kosovo as organised gangs take advantage of the UN’s failure to police the province.”

A NATO spokesman admitted there was a “law and order vacuum” with Western diplomats saying “gangs, some of which are suspected of having links to the Kosovo Liberation Army, are taking apartments, real estate, businesses, fuel supplies and cars from Kosovo Albanians and Serbs, who have little recourse to justice.”

RELATED

ON TRIAL FOR WAR CRIMES – TONY BLAIR’S FORMER ALLIES

A declassified British government file written shortly after the war said a senior KLA veteran was “up to his neck in smuggling and organised crime”. Kosovo was described in the media as a “smugglers’ paradise” and “the Colombia of Europe”, supplying up to 40% of heroin on the continent.

Sex trafficking and forced prostitution also rose in post-war Kosovo as gangs supplied NATO peacekeepers with “hundreds of women, many of them under-age girls”, Amnesty International warned in 2004.
Organised crime

Thaci became Kosovo’s first prime minister, despite NATO believing he was among the country’s “biggest fish” in organised crime.

An investigation by the Council of Europe accused Thaci of organ harvesting, with his inner circle allegedly murdering Serb captives to sell their kidneys on the black market.

It also cited reports from anti-narcotic agencies who identified Thaci as having “violent control over the trade in heroin”.

Kosovar gangs often have close familial links with the wider Albanian mafia. The National Crime Agency said in 2017 that “Albanian crime groups have established a high profile influence within UK organised crime, and have considerable control across the UK drug trafficking market, particularly cocaine.”

Drug deaths in Britain have now reached a 30-year high, with almost 5,000 fatalities in 2022.

After decades of impunity, Thaci is now on trial for 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to the KLA.

The degree of corruption and intimidation is so high in Kosovo that his trial has to be held at a special court in The Hague.

Tougher rules on prison visits had to be implemented in December after prosecutors complained that visitors tried to compel “witnesses to withdraw or modify their testimony in a manner favorable” to the defendants.

Thaci denies all the charges against him.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phil Miller is Declassified UK's chief reporter. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo

War in Kosovo and sexual violence, a painful legacy




©HTWE/Shutterstock


In Kosovo, thousands of people suffered sexual violence during the war: today institutions recognise them as civilian victims of the conflict, but for many talking about the trauma they suffered remains an insurmountable obstacle
26/04/2024 - Arta Berisha Pristina

"Unheard Voices" is a memoir that collects untold stories of men and boys, as young as 14, who were raped during the war in Kosovo.

Even though they have not yet spoken publicly, at least ten men raped by Serbian forces during the war told their tragic stories to civil society organisations that support survivors of wartime sexual violence. This confirms that sexual violence as a weapon of war does not target only women and girls.

"I have a certain shadow, a certain ice in my soul, I can't take it away, because what they have done to me doesn't hurt anymore, the pain has passed, but my soul is ice cold", writes one of the witnesses in the book, a survivor who was only 14 at the time.

The book was presented at the Women Peace Security Forum , organised by the President of Kosovo in Prishtina last week, as part of an awareness campaign dedicated to survivors of sexual violence during the war in Kosovo which started on April 14, the Memorial Day for victims of sexual violence during the war.

The number of survivors is estimated up to 20,000 including women, girls, men and boys. However, few have spoken up publicly, mainly because of social norms and taboos that still dominate Kosovo's society, especially when it comes to acknowledging rape as a war crime instead of shaming the victims.

Likewise, very few victims had their status recognised by the Government Commission on Recognition and Verification of the Status of Sexual Violence Victims during the Kosovo liberation war, created in 2017 .

Deadlines

At the very beginning, the time limit for applications was five years, the same as the duration of the Commission's mandate. Last year, this term expired, but the Kosovo government decided to extend it for another two years, namely until May 15, 2025, due to the small number of applications.

At the Peace Forum, Minister of Justice Albulena Haxhiu said that 1555 people, including 88 men, have had their status recognised by the Commission so far.

"It is estimated that in Kosovo, about 20,000 thousand people were raped during the war; together with the President and Prime Minister, we are working to encourage them to apply for recognition, because it is not their fault that they have been sexually abused".

Civil society organisations believe that the government should not put a deadline to applications.

"Taking into account the specific nature of crimes of sexual violence, the peculiarities of the trauma, the difficulties of documentation, the stigma and exclusion surrounding the victims both in the family and in the community they live in, as well as other international practices, we as an organisation have constantly advocated that the right to apply should be a permanent right guaranteed by law", Feride Rushiti, Executive Director of the Kosovo Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims, told OBCT.

According to some sources speaking to OBCT, decision-makers hoped that a deadline would motivate survivors to apply. Unfortunately, this was not the case. According to an electronic answer by the Commission, since the beginning of the process on 05.02.2018, the Commission has received 2028 applications.

Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman became the first woman to speak out publicly, first on public TV in 2018 and then on several other platforms. When she was only 16, she was abducted by a Serbian police officer and raped by him and another civilian in a village nearby her home.

"I believe there is no need to put deadlines on this", she said to OBCT, adding that she is in permanent contact with the victims, and some of them told her that their husbands have died and now they are ready to apply.

Krasniqi Goodman also asked the Kosovo Government to reconsider all the applications that the Commission has refused as not completed due to the difficulties victims have 25 years after the crime to testify about what really happened.

Niger’s Military Coup Triggers Child Marriages, Sex Work in Neighboring Countries

By Issa Sikiti da Silvail

Girl refugees from Niger now living in Benin, often end up as child brides. Graphic: IPS

COTONOU/BENIN , Apr 26 2024 (IPS) - A group of young girls aged between 15 and 17 sit tight, following attentively a lesson being taught by a Mualim (Islamic teacher) in a makeshift madrassah (Qur’anic school) located in one of the impoverished townships of Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou. They arrived in Benin recently, fleeing poverty, hunger, climate change, and rising insecurity in their home country, Niger, in the aftermath of the military coup that toppled democratically-elected president Mohamed Bazoum.

Among them are Saida, 15, and Aminata, 16, who are already “married” to Abdou, 22, and Anwar, 25, two Niger youths who have been living in Benin for some time. The lessons are over and Saida heads outside the overcrowded compound where her husband, Abdou, came to pick up his wife on a rundown motorbike.

“She has not been feeling well lately and I think she might be pregnant,” Abdou says without embarrassment. Asked about the circumstances leading to the couple becoming husband and wife, he says: “If in Benin or where you come from, this seems strange, it is normal in Niger for a young girl to become someone’s wife as soon as she reaches 15.”

Niger has one of highest prevalence rates of child marriages in the world, where 76% of girls are married before their 18th birthday and 28% are married before the age of 15, according to Girls Not Brides figures.

Child marriage is most prevalent in Maradi (where 89% of women aged 20–24 were already married by age of 18), Zinder (87%), Diffa (82%) and Tahoua (76%). Girls as young as 10 years old in some regions are married, and after the age of 25, only a handful of young women are unmarried, according to the Girls Not Brides statistics.

Steady increase 

However, Abdou says there has been a steady increase in such cases since the military coup due to the social and economic meltdown triggered by regional and international sanctions, which left Niger’s economy hanging in balance. France, a former colonial power, suspended development and budget aid to Niger, vowing not to recognize the new military authorities. In 2021, The French Development Agency (AFD) committed €97 million to Niger.  Moreover, the World Bank recently warned that 700,000 more people will fall into extreme poverty this year in Niger. In addition, nearly two million children could be out of school, including 800,000 girls.

Multiple suspensions of development aid from several countries and organizations will result in a shortfall of nearly US$1.2 billion in 2024 (more than 6% of the country’s GDP).

“Life has become unlivable since the coup and the closure of borders. In addition, insecurity has risen, forcing farmers to stay away from their fields. In other parts, climate change has rendered farmland useless; it is a triple tragedy for Niger, but the authorities continue to talk nonsense on TV,” says a Benin-based Islamic teacher identified only as Oumarou, who fled to Cotonou in the aftermath of the coup.

“And as a result, many families are left penniless and dependent on humanitarian assistance. Consequently, some families are seeking help from their relatives and family friends living in Benin and Togo to take their daughters under their care. Niger’s people help each other a lot and prioritize community life over individual interests.

“The girls arrive in these two countries and are quickly dispatched to Niger’s households, where they work as domestic workers without pay. Yes, they don’t get paid because they eat and sleep there and are made to feel as if they are part of the family.”

However, Oumarou says that as time goes by, these people begin to feel that they can no longer carry the burden. That is where they pass a message through the elders to Niger youths who want a wife to come and discuss.

Suitors wanted 

“As soon as a suitor is found, we inform the girls’ parents, who, in most cases, do not hesitate to allow the marriage to proceed. As God-fearing people, we cannot let the youth take a girl without doing a formal religious ceremony.

Asked if he was aware that he was committing a crime by acting as an accomplice to child marriages, he became defensive and politicized the issue: “What’s criminal and illegal in that procedure? How can you describe our good gesture to help these poverty-stricken girls rebuild their lives as a crime?

“Okay, if it’s indeed a crime. How do you say about France, which has been stealing our natural resources, notably our uranium, for decades without giving us anything in return? And what about the crimes committed by the West during the colonial era in Africa? Did anyone investigate those crimes and bring the perpetrators to book or make reparations for what they did?” the man said, storming out of the room where the interview was taking place.

However, not everyone in Niger is God-fearing and therefore does not follow the religious procedure. Anwar says her wife told him that she owes him her life after rescuing her from the abusive family where she was working as a donkey.

“I have been taking care of her ever since as a wife and a little sister. I don’t need anyone’s permission or blessings to make her my wife. We have been living under the same roof since last year and that’s a sign of marriage,” he says with a wide smile.

Aminata describes the hell she went through while working for one of these families. “They make you work like a slave, right from Fajr [Islamic dawn prayer] up to Isha [evening prayer] and even beyond. It’s very stressful. Most of the time, you don’t even eat well. They keep yelling at you whenever you make a slight mistake. Anwar is a good man and a caring husband,” she says through a translator.

Anwar says most of these girls do not have a formal (western) education. “That’s why they cannot understand French. They only speak their vernacular language and some Arabic because they only attend Qur’anic school.”

Niger has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, and very few girls attend formal school, as priority is given to boys. The Niger literacy rate for 2021 was 37.34%, a 2.29% increase from 2018.

Factors that contribute to this, including high dropout rates, high illiteracy rates, insufficient resources and infrastructure, unqualified teachers, weak local governance structures, and high vulnerability to instability, have been blamed for the low level of educational attainment, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“I want to ensure that she gets a good education now that she is in Benin, far away from that rotten country, where the system does not allow girls, especially in the rural areas, to attend school,” Anwar, who himself did not finish high school, says.

Niger girls no longer “God-fearing”? 

While child brides jostle for makeshift husbands to take care of them away from their impoverished and famine-hit country, in other parts of Benin, street life has become the way of survival for some Niger women. “Niger men used to mock us, saying that their women were God-fearing and not immoral like us. Now the trend has been reversed. Look at the way those two Niger girls out there are shoving for a wealthy client,” Susan, a Beninese sex worker, says.

She claims the girls arrive in the “workplace” every evening well covered from head to toe but take it off and put on some sexy clothes, only to wear them again after the end of the shift. “Now, who fears God the most? The hypocrites or the people like us who have nothing to hide?”

Prostitution is illegal but remains prevalent in big cities and near major mining and military sites. UNAIDS estimates there are 46,630 sex workers in the country. Some sources say poverty, forced marriages, rising insecurity, and climate change continue to push many girls into prostitution, sometimes with the complicity of their families and marabouts (witchdoctors).

A source close to Nigerian and Ivorian pimping syndicates says there is a huge appetite for Niger girls in several countries across the region, including Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Ghana. Asked why it is the case, the source says: “From what I heard, girls from other countries, including Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria, have been used many times and are big-headed, while Niger girls seem fresh, disciplined, respectful, and docile. That’s why they make good wives. The demand has been growing since the coup.”

The source says the three countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) desire to quit the regional bloc, Ecowas, will have a negative effect on the sex trafficking business as it will curtail the free movement of people and goods across the region. According to a 2022 report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), women and girls constitute 69% of victims and survivors of trafficking in Niger.

While Niger’s military authorities reinforce their grip on power and castigate the West’s neo-colonialist and imperialist attitude and Ecowas’ interference in Niger’s internal affairs, life seems to be getting harder in this uranium-producing West African nation, forcing thousands of underage girls and women to seek a better life elsewhere.

A researcher who recently returned to Benin from Niger says: “You must live in Niger right now to understand what is going on there. Forget what you see on state TV. If residents of the big cities, like the capital Niamey, are trying harder to stay alive, many people are hopeless in the countryside because the humanitarian situation is terrific.

“Those who say development aid does not work are lying because they have never been on the ground to see for themselves.”

Note: The names have been changed to protect their identities.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape - Frauenkultur

... Against. Our Will. Men, Women and Rape. SUSAN BROWNMILLER. Fawcett Columbine • New York. Page 5. Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If ...

Kosovo in Retrospect: Rise and Fall of the ‘Rules-Based Order’

Philip Hammond reflects on the significance of the Kosovo war, which began 25 years ago this week

By Philip Hammond

March 25, 2024

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


Soldiers representing NATO partner and allied nations. Image via GetArchive



NATO expansion, Western leaders vaunting wars for values, international judges ruling on accusations of genocide, calls to defend civilisation against barbarism — it sometimes feels as if we are still in the 1990s. Yet looking back to the 1999 Kosovo conflict reveals how much has changed in the past quarter century. Then, the West’s post-Cold War ‘rules-based order’ was at its height. Today, it is slowly, violently collapsing as a new, multipolar world emerges.

Dawn of the rules-based order

The Kosovo conflict was the key event in establishing the ‘rules-based order’. The term sounds like it might just be a synonym for ‘international law’, but is in fact its antithesis — as legal scholars have belatedly begun to notice. Specifically, the ‘rules-based order’ entails a break from the post-1945 UN system, which was premised on the principles of sovereign equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states.

In 1999 the UN was bypassed, to avoid a Security Council veto by Russia, and the bombing of Yugoslavia was instead carried out by NATO. Even its supporters admitted this was illegal under international law, but argued it was nevertheless ‘justified on moral grounds’. This was the era of what in Britain was called ‘ethical foreign policy’, when conscience was said to compel military action in defence of universal moral values.

In a famous April 1999 speech, Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed NATO was waging a ‘just war’ which laid the basis for a ‘new doctrine of international community’. The doctrine essentially consisted of a globalist perspective on the economy, the environment and ‘international security’: Blair said the ‘most pressing foreign policy problem’ was to ‘identify the circumstances in which we should get actively involved in other people’s conflicts’.

This was a vision of a ‘community’ that would be policed by the dominant military states since, as Blair explained, ‘nations which have the power, have the responsibility’. This is the essence of the rules-based order: in line with their own self-proclaimed ‘values’, the powerful decide where and how to ‘get actively involved’ in the affairs of the less powerful.

A ‘right to intervene’

Less than a fortnight before it started bombing Yugoslavia, NATO completed its first wave of eastward enlargement, admitting Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Already it appeared that, as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken put it recently, ‘if you’re not at the table in the international system, you’re going to be on the menu’.

The same month as Blair was preaching his ‘doctrine’, Czech president Vaclav Havel similarly envisaged a future world governed by ‘cooperation between larger, mostly supranational, entities’, in which ‘the notion that it is none of our business what happens in another country’ would ‘vanish down the trapdoor of history’. Conceding that Yugoslavia was being ‘attacked … without a direct mandate from the UN’, Havel maintained that this was because of NATO’s ‘respect … for a law that ranks higher than the law which protects the sovereignty of states’ — the ‘higher value’ of universal human rights.

The logic was drawn out by Bernard Kouchner, the first governor of post-war Kosovo. He claimed it was time for a ‘decisive evolution in international consciousness’, whereby a ‘new morality’ would be ‘codified in the “right to intervention” against abuses of national sovereignty’. Mere humanitarianism was not enough: ‘we need to establish a forward-looking right of the world community to actively interfere in the affairs of sovereign nations’.

After 9/11, ethical justifications for war were incorporated into the ‘war on terror’, despite occasional incongruities of tone. Washington reportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring public relations consultants to ‘humanise the war’ in Afghanistan, where US planes dropped aid as well as cluster bombs (both in yellow packaging) in an effort to save some Afghans while killing others. According to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the bombing was ‘a triumph for human rights’. Similarly, in Iraq president George Bush Jr. promised ‘liberation’ while Blair emphasised the ‘moral case for removing Saddam’.

‘Benign’ dictatorship

Many observers criticised what they saw as the cynical, instrumental use of humanitarianism in the war on terror, yet the problem is not simply that interventions are selective, poorly implemented or undermined by ulterior motives. Rather, the core problem is that the best one can hope for under such a system is a benign global dictatorship. The rules-based order returns us to a neo-colonial world where the powerful decide which people need to be ‘helped’ and abrogate to themselves the right to do so.

It is the polar opposite of sovereign equality, a world of international protectorates (in Bosnia and Kosovo) and regime-change wars (in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya). The latter have produced nothing but bloody chaos; the former have merely frozen conflicts rather than resolving them. In Kosovo, a quarter century of Western state-building has produced a ‘failed state’ where the Serbian minority still endures daily harassment and violence.

None of this is to idealise the UN, where real power has always resided in the Security Council. Before Kosovo, interventions under the UN banner were launched against Iraq, Somalia and Haiti, and Western powers took it upon themselves to decide where to draw the borders of new states in the former Yugoslavia, knowingly exacerbating conflict as they did so. For much of the 1990s it looked like a retooled UN might provide the framework for the ‘new world order’ proclaimed by George Bush Snr. at the start of the decade, but the logic of a unipolar world pointed in the opposite direction.

During the Cold War, although the post-1945 conventions of sovereign equality and non-interference were often infringed, they were nevertheless important in delegitimising aggressive foreign policy, and represented an historic gain for states which were previously mere colonial possessions. The ‘Illegal yet legitimate’ formula used for Kosovo showed how far this had unravelled in the 1990s.

The propaganda war

Critics of Western policy in the 1990s tended to argue that it was not forceful enough; that terrible things were allowed to happen while the Western powers were constrained by the unwieldy UN system. In 1999, NATO leaders were largely successful in presenting themselves as the solution to this problem, thanks to the extreme subservience (with a few honourable exceptions) of Western journalists.

The claim that NATO bombing was morally justified, even if illegal, meant the media presentation of the war was crucial. Yet virtually everything NATO said about Kosovo was either misleading or outright false. NATO supposedly went to war reluctantly, after diplomatic efforts had been exhausted, but the so-called ‘peace agreement’ was designed to be rejected. A US official explicitly told reporters at the time that ‘We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that’s what they are going to get.’ To keep this information from the public, journalists were simply told not to report it, and they complied.

The other key claim in the build-up to war was that Yugoslav forces were massacring ethnic-Albanian civilians, notably at the village of Račak on 15 January 1999. William Walker, the American head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Kosovo, visited the scene and immediately declared it an ‘unspeakable atrocity’ and a ‘crime against humanity’. The New York Times ran a front-page story about ‘mutilated bodies’ with ‘eyes gouged out’ and ‘heads smashed in’. President Bill Clinton described ‘innocent men, women and children taken from their homes to a gully, forced to kneel in the dirt, sprayed with gunfire’.

These accounts bore little relation to what actually happened at Račak — a firefight between Yugoslav security services and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas — but most Western journalists just repeated them. One of the few who did contest the official version of events, French reporter Renaud Girard, said he was rounded on by British and American colleagues who complained ‘You’re killing our story’. As one study of this and other episodes in the propaganda war notes, the media created an ‘illusion of multiple sources’ as different outlets reproduced the same distorted accounts, and an ‘illusion of independent confirmation’ as officials cited news reports as corroboration of stories they had fed to journalists in the first place.

NATO also repeatedly claimed it had to start bombing to prevent a refugee crisis. State Department spokesman James Rubin, for example, said on 25 March 1999 that if NATO had not acted, ‘you would have had hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border’. Privately, however, they knew they were about to cause just such a crisis. A US diplomat with the OSCE, Norma Brown, later said that ‘everyone knew there would be a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions if NATO bombed. It was discussed in NATO; it was discussed in the OSCE’. Yet as the crisis unfolded, journalists treated it as confirmation that the airstrikes were necessary and right, ‘forgetting’ that preventing it had ever been a justification for bombing. One British TV journalist claimed afterwards: ‘This is why NATO went to war: so the refugees could come back to Kosovo’.

NATO of course denied any responsibility, insisting the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Kosovo Albanians was the result of a premeditated policy and would have happened anyway. On cue, secret documents outlining just such a Serbian plan – ‘Operation Horseshoe’ – were revealed by the German government. This supposed ‘blueprint for genocide’ was exposed as a fake concocted by the German intelligence services – but only months after the war ended.

Germany was also among the first Western states to start arming and training the KLA from the mid-1990s. In addition to building a guerrilla army, NATO powers also undermined what remained of the Yugoslav state by funding political opponents of the regime, leading to the overthrow of President Slobodan Milošević in 2000 — a blueprint for subsequent ‘colour revolutions’.

The fall

The propaganda surrounding the current wars in Ukraine and Israel can sometimes make it seem as if little has changed politically in the West, but of course much has. We are long past the messianic zeal of liberal interventionism or the hubris of war-on-terror attempts to remake reality. The West is even more risk-averse than in 1999, when NATO did its own high-altitude bombing. Now it sends weapons and celebrates what a ‘good deal’ this is for arms manufacturers.

Blair’s description of the Kosovo war as ‘a battle between good and evil; between civilisation and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship’ was an attempt to sell NATO bombing as an epic struggle for values. Now, just beneath the surface of the values-talk, commentators promote the West’s proxy war against Russia on the grounds that it is ‘cheap’ and that it is somebody else’s sons who are being killed.

Some have taken up Israel’s claim to be waging an ‘existential struggle between civilisation and barbarism’ in Gaza, but Israeli actions — killing more than 30,000, injuring twice as many again, and displacing most of the population — present an even less attractive advertisement for ‘civilisation’ than NATO’s 78-day bombing of Serbia. As one assessment puts it, whatever the outcome of current conflicts, ‘the West seems to have already lost on the normative and narrative front’.

In part, this is due to the affordances of social media and the increasing irrelevance of the ‘legacy’ gatekeepers, though of course governments are seeking new means of control. But there are two more fundamental changes. The first is the underlying shift in geopolitical power and a growing willingness to challenge Western hegemony. The second is the rise of populism and the rejection of globalist elites within Western countries. When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, one of the elite’s greatest worries was that this would be a setback for globalism. The influential writer (and husband of Victoria Nuland) Robert Kagan, for example, said he feared that ‘America may once again start behaving like a normal nation’, pursuing its own interests but not taking ‘responsibility for global order’.

There is no room for complacency. As a new, multipolar order begins to take shape, it sometimes seems that we are entering a period of heightened danger with little to look forward to but a choice between different kinds of authoritarianism. And populist leaders have mostly so far failed to live up to their promises — in Britain, for example, the post-Brexit political class has done everything possible to reinforce the UK’s involvement in trans-national institutions, particularly NATO.

Yet the decline of Western dominance and the rise of multipolarity are inherently positive insofar as they represent a challenge to globalism and offer new possibilities for smaller states to reassert their sovereign independence. Today there is new hope that Kagan’s nightmare — that the US and its allies will get ‘out of the world order business’ — may yet come true.


Philip Hammond is Emeritus Professor of Media & Communications at London South Bank University. He is the editor, with Edward S. Herman, of Degraded Capability: The Media & the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto Press, 2000).

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=KOSOVO

Seeing the Forest for the Trees
Thesis on The Kosovo Crisis and the Crisis of Global Capitalism
(originally written May 1999, Bill Clinton set the stage for George W. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq for humanitarian purposes.)
http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/01/war-whats-it-good-for-profit.html

Will the United States Again Look the Other Way When the World Court Rules?

As the ICJ reviews South Africa’s charges of Israel with genocide, it’s important to look at how the United States has responded to the court in the past.

Panorama of the International Court of Justice court room, principal judicial organ of the United Nations located at The Hague

BY STEPHEN ZUNES
JANUARY 20, 2024

Days before the start of 2024, South Africa initiated proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), charging that Israel was violating its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in its war on the civilian population of Gaza. The application requests a series of “provisional measures,” including a suspension of military operations in Gaza.

Genocide is one of those rare terms where the legal definition is broader than the popular understanding. It does not just include systematic mass extermination—such as the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, or the 1994 Rwandan genocide—but also military campaigns “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” Recent examples would include the Guatemalan junta’s campaign against Indigenous peoples in the highlands during the 1980s, Sudan’s war in Darfur, the attacks by Bosnian Serbs against Bosnian Muslims, Serbia’s war on Kosovo, Iraqi and Turkish campaigns against the Kurds, and the U.S. designation of “free fire zones” in rebel-held areas of Vietnam.

Israel’s indiscriminate military assault on crowded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, the most destructive bombardment over a comparable time period in any war this century, would appear to meet such a definition.

Israel’s indiscriminate military assault on crowded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip, the most destructive bombardment over a comparable time period in any war this century, would appear to meet the definition of genocide.

Despite this, the Biden Administration and Congressional leaders have categorically denounced South Africa for submitting the application and the Court for considering it. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence presented by the South Africans, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby has insisted that the submission is “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” By contrast, there have been no objections raised over the concurrent application by Gambia that accuses Myanmar of genocide for its war on the Rohingya, or disagreements with previous genocide cases before the ICJ.

While the Biden Administration has stridently objected to South Africa’s case, it has also acknowledged that it has not conducted any formal assessment as to whether Israel has violated the genocide treaty or other international humanitarian laws.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, when pressed by reporters, responded by saying he would not discuss any internal deliberations. “I’m not aware of any kind of formal assessment being done by the United States government to analyze the compliance with international law by our partner Israel,” Kirby acknowledged. “We have not seen anything that would convince us that we need to take a different approach in terms of trying to help Israel defend itself.”

Matthew Duss of the Center for International Policy noted that “the Administration issued an assessment of Russian war crimes within a month of the Ukraine invasion. The United States has far more visibility into Israeli operations, so the claim that they’ve not been able to make such an assessment about Gaza after three months really strains credulity.”

A January 16 vote in the Senate to enact a provision in U.S. foreign assistance law that requires the State Department to examine the human rights practices of governments receiving U.S. aid, including Israel, was defeated by a 72-11 bipartisan majority.

The ICJ has its origins in the Permanent International Court, established in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1899. Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the ICJ—also known as the World Court—has functioned as the judicial arm of the U.N. system. Designed to better enable nations to settle their disputes nonviolently, the ICJ has been used by Washington on a number of occasions to advance U.S. foreign policy interests ranging from fishing disputes with Canada to the seizure of American hostages by Iran.

justflix, CC BY-SA 4.0
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands

The ICJ is a separate body from the International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in The Hague, which was established in 2002 to prosecute individuals for war crimes when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so. The United States has refused to ratify the ICC treaty; it has also pressured other nations to reject it, demanded special exemption from the ICC’s authority, and raised strong objections to an ongoing ICC investigation into Israeli war crimes. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims that the ICC seeks “to target Israel unfairly,” even though the investigation also includes war crimes by Hamas and is one of more than a dozen ongoing conflicts which the ICC is also investigating.

Although the United States has expressed hostility towards the ICC, the Biden Administration is assisting in the gathering of evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Despite the United States’ key role in the development of international humanitarian law, and despite the fact that the ICJ has more often than not ruled in favor of the United States and its allies, recent decades have seen increasing American hostility toward any legal constraints upon U.S. foreign policy.


The Reagan Administration withdrew the United States from compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court.

In 1986, for example, the ICJ—in a 14-1 vote with only the American judge dissenting—called for the United States to cease its attacks against Nicaragua, both directly and through its proxy army of Nicaraguan exiles known as the FDN (or “Contras”), who were notorious for their attacks against civilian targets. The court also ruled that the United States had to pay the Nicaraguan government more than $2 billion in compensation for the damage inflicted upon the country’s civilian infrastructure. The Reagan Administration refused to comply with either directive and withdrew the United States from compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court. No subsequent President has re-committed the United States to its authority.

Similarly, in 1996, the World Court voted that the United States and other nuclear powers were legally bound by provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty—signed and ratified by the United States and all but a handful of the world’s nations—to take serious steps to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. The Clinton Administration refused to comply, and Congress continues to approve White House requests for funding the development and procurement of new nuclear weapons systems.

In an advisory opinion in 2004, also by a 14-1 vote with only the U.S. judge dissenting, the court ruled that while Israel, like any country, could construct a separation barrier along its internationally recognized border, it could not build it in a serpentine manner deep inside the occupied West Bank in order to incorporate illegal settlements into Israel. The decision was roundly condemned by both the Bush Administration and by Democratic presidential nominee and future Secretary of State John Kerry, who claimed that it was a “political” decision that denied Israel’s right to self-defense. The U.S. House of Representatives, by a 361-45 majority, passed a resolution deploring the decision.

The Israeli separation wall with Palestine.

What upset Bush, Kerry, and Congress is that the ICJ, in its advisory opinion, noted that all nations “are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation arising from the construction of the wall, and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation.”

Part of the hostility to the 2004 opinion was the court’s insistence that every country that is party to the Fourth Geneva Convention must “ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention.”

It could be assumed that Washington might react in a similar hostile manner should the court rule favorably on South Africa’s claim of genocide.

Any such strict and uniform application of international law would interfere with U.S. policy objectives in the region, which rely heavily on the use of military force. This is why any attempt to enforce international humanitarian law must be met by slander, condemnation, and other attacks against the credibility of the international organizations daring to suggest that the United States and its allies are not somehow exempt from such legal obligations.


These attacks against the World Court by both Republicans and Democrats are not simply an endorsement of the dangerous and illegal policies of a rightwing ally. They are, in effect, a declaration of empire.

Attacks on the ICJ and ICC appear to be part of a broader effort to undermine and discredit the U.N. system. International law and intergovernmental organizations are seen by both Republicans and Democrats as interfering with the prerogatives of the U.S. government and its allies in strategically important areas like the Middle East. Given the overwhelming military dominance of the United States globally and allies such as Israel regionally, international legal institutions are among the few potential restraints on the unfettered exertion of American power.

As a result, the bipartisan attacks should not be seen simply as “pro-Israel” sentiment, particularly in light of the long-term detrimental impact on Israeli security if Israel continues its current policies. Instead, Washington’s unified hostility must be viewed as part of a broader effort to undermine international law in order to give the United States free rein in pursuing its policy objectives in the Middle East and beyond.

These attacks against the World Court by both Republicans and Democrats are not simply an endorsement of the dangerous and illegal policies of a rightwing ally. They are, in effect, a declaration of empire. If such policies go unchallenged, Palestinians will 

Stephen Zunes, a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, is currently serving as the Torgny Segerstedt Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

READ MORE BY STEPHEN ZU

“Are We the Baddies?”

Western support for genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes

by Jonathan Cook / December 31st, 2023

The desperate smear campaign to defend Israel’s crimes highlights the toxic brew of lies that’s been underpinning the liberal democratic order for decades.

In a popular British comedy sketch set during the Second World War, a Nazi officer near the front lines turns to a fellow officer and, in a moment of sudden – and comic – self-doubt, asks: “Are we the baddies?”

For many of us, it has felt like we are living through the same moment, extended for nearly three months – though there has been nothing to laugh about.

Western leaders have not only backed rhetorically a genocidal war by Israel on Gaza, but they have provided diplomatic cover, weapons and other military assistance.

The West is fully complicit in the ethnic cleansing of some two million Palestinians from their homes, as well as the killing of more than 20,000 and the injuring of many tens of thousands more, a majority of them women and children.

Western politicians have insisted on Israel’s “right to defend itself” as it has levelled critical infrastructure in Gaza, including government buildings, and collapsed the health sector. Starvation and disease are starting to pick off the rest of the population.

The Palestinians of Gaza have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from Israel’s US-supplied bombs. If they are ultimately allowed to escape, it will be into neighbouring Egypt. After decades of displacement, they will be finally exiled permanently from their homeland.

And as western capitals seek to justify these obscenities by blaming Hamas, Israeli leaders allow their soldiers and settler militias, backed by the state, to rampage across the West Bank, where there is no Hamas, attacking and killing Palestinians.

In defending Gaza’s destruction, Israeli leaders have reached readily for an analogy with the allies’ firebombing of German cities like Dresden – apparently unembarrassed by the fact that these were long ago acknowledged as some of the worst crimes of the Second World War.

Israel is waging an old-style, unabashed colonial war against the native population – of the kind that predates international humanitarian law. And western leaders are cheering them on.

Are we sure we are not the baddies?

Slave revolt

Israel’s attack on Gaza provokes revulsion from so many because it seems impossible to rationalise it. It feels like a reversion. It lays bare something primitive and ugly about the West’s behaviour that has been obscured for more than 70 years by a veneer of “progress”, by talk about the primacy of human rights, by the development of international institutions, by the rules of war, by claims of humanitarianism.

Yes, these claims were invariably bogus. Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine were all sold based on lies. The true goal of the US, and its Nato sidekicks, was plundering the resources of others, maintaining Washington as the global top dog, and enriching a western elite.

But importantly, the deception was sustained by an overarching narrative that dragged along many westerners in its wake. Wars were to counter the threat of Soviet communism, or Islamic “terror”, or a renewed Russian imperialism. And as a positive corollary, these wars claimed to be liberating oppressed women, protecting human rights, and fostering democracy.

None of that narrative overlay works this time.

There is nothing humanitarian about bombing trapped civilians in Gaza, turning their tiny prison enclave into rubble, reminiscent of earthquake disaster zones but this time an entirely man-made catastrophe.

Even Israel does not have the gall to claim to be liberating the women and girls of Gaza from Hamas as it kills and starves them. Nor does it pretend to be interested in democracy promotion. Rather, Gaza is full of “human animals” and must be “flattened”.

And it has been all but impossible to make Hamas, a group of a few thousand fighters penned into Gaza, appear a credible threat to the West’s way of life.

Hamas cannot send any kind of warhead into Europe, let alone in 45 minutes. Their prison camp, even before its destruction, was never the plausible heart of some Islamist empire ready to overrun the West and subject it to “sharia law”.

In fact, it has been barely feasible to refer to these past weeks as a war. Gaza is not a state, it has no army. It has been under occupation for decades and under siege for 16 years – a blockade in which Israel has counted the calories allowed in to maintain low-level malnutrition among Palestinians.

As the American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein has noted, Hamas’ breakout on 7 October is better understood not as a war but as a slave revolt. And like slave rebellions throughout history – from Spartacus’ against the Romans to Nat Turner’s in Virginia in 1831 – it was inevitably going to turn brutal and bloody.

Are we on the side of the murderous prison guards? Are we arming the plantation owners?

Mass gaslighting

In the absence of a persuasive justification for assisting Israel in its genocidal campaign in Gaza, our leaders are having to wage a parallel war on the western public – or at least on their minds.

To question Israel’s right to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza, to chant a slogan calling for Palestinians to be free of occupation and siege, to want equal rights for all in the region – these are now all treated as the equivalent of antisemitism.

To demand a ceasefire to stop Palestinians dying under the bombs is to hate Jews.

The extent to which these narrative manipulations are not only abhorrent but themselves constitute antisemitism should be obvious, were we not being so relentlessly and thoroughly gaslit by our ruling class.

Those defending Israel’s genocide suggest that it is not just Israel’s ultra-right government and military but all Jews who will the destruction of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of its population, and the murder of thousands of Palestinian children.

That is the real Jew hatred.

But the path to this mass gaslighting operation has been paved for a while. It began long before Israel’s levelling of Gaza.

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015, he brought for the first time a meaningful anti-imperialist agenda to the heart of British politics. And as a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, he was viewed by the establishment as a threat to Israel, a critically important US client state and the lynchpin of the West’s projection of military might into the oil-rich Middle East.

Western elites were bound to respond with unprecedented hostility to this challenge to their forever war machine. This appears to have been duly noted by Corbyn’s successor, Keir Starmer, who has since made sure to present Labour as Nato’s number one cheerleader.

During Corbyn’s tenure, little time was lost by the establishment in working out the best strategy for putting the Labour leader permanently on the back foot and undermining his well-established anti-racist credentials. He was recast as an antisemite.

The campaign of smears not only damaged Corbyn personally but tore the Labour Party apart, turning it into a rabble of feuding factions, eating up all the party’s energy and making it unelectable.

Smear campaign

That same playbook has now been rolled out against much of the British and US public.

This month the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution equating anti-Zionism – in this case, opposition to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza – with antisemitism.

Protesters who have turned out to demand a ceasefire to end the massacres in Gaza are characterised as “rioters”, while their chant of “from the river to the sea” calling for equal rights between Israeli Jews and Palestinians is denounced as a “rallying cry for the eradication of the state of Israel and the Jewish people”.

Tellingly again, this is an inadvertent admission by the western ruling class that Israel – constituted as a Jewish chauvinist, settler-colonial state – can never allow Palestinians equality or meaningful freedoms any more than apartheid South Africa could for the native Black population.

In a complete inversion of reality, opposition to genocide has been reframed by US politicians as genocidal.

This mass smear campaign is so unmoored that western elites are even turning on their own to shut down freedoms of speech and thought in the institutions where they are supposed to be heavily protected.

The heads of three top US universities – from which the next members of the ruling class will emerge – were grilled by Congress about the threat of antisemitism to Jewish students from campus protests calling for an end to the killing in Gaza.

The West’s order of priorities was laid bare: protecting the ideological sensitivities of a section of Jewish students who fervently support Israel’s right to kill Palestinians was more important than either protecting Palestinians from genocide or defending basic democratic freedoms in the West to oppose genocide.

The reticence of the three university presidents to cave in to the politicians’ demands for the snuffing out of free speech and thought on campus led to a campaign to defund their colleges as well as calls for their heads.

One, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, has already been forced out of office.

Crisis on all fronts

These developments are not the outcome of some strange, temporary, collective psychosis overtaking western establishments. They are yet more evidence of a desperate failure to stop the West’s long-term trajectory towards crises on multiple fronts.

They are a sign, first, that the ruling class understands it is again visible to the public as a ruling class, and that its interests are beginning to be seen as completely divorced from those of ordinary people. The scales are falling from our eyes.

The simple fact that one can again use the language of “establishments”, a “ruling class” and “class war” without sounding unhinged or like a throwback to the 1950s is an indication of how perception management – and narrative manipulation – so central to upholding the western political project since the end of the Second World War is failing.

Claims about the triumph of the liberal democratic order declared so loudly in the late 1980s by intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama – or “the end of history”, as he grandly termed it – now look patently absurd.

And that is because, second, western elites clearly have no answers for the biggest challenges of our era. They are floundering around trying to deal with the inherent paradoxes in the capitalist order that liberal democracy was there to obscure.

Reality is breaking through the ideological cladding.

The most catastrophic is the climate crisis. Capitalism’s model of mass consumption and competition for the sake of competition is proving suicidal.

Limited resources – especially in our oil-addicted economies – mean growth is proving an ever-more costly extravagance. Those raised from birth to aspire to a better standard of living than their parents are growing not richer, but more disillusioned and bitter.

And the promise of progress – of kinder, more nurturing and equal societies – now sounds like a sick joke to most westerners under the age of 45.

Brew of lies

The claim that the West is best is starting to look like it rests on shaky foundations, even to western audiences.

But that idea crumbled long ago abroad, in the countries either devastated by the West’s war machine or waiting for their turn. The liberal democratic order offers them nothing except threats: it demands fealty or punishment.

Which is the context for the current genocide in Gaza.

As it claims, Israel is on the front lines – but not of a clash of civilisations. It is an exposed, precarious outpost of the liberal democratic order, where the brew of lies about democracy and liberalism are at their most toxic and unconvincing.

Israel is an apartheid state masquerading as “the only democracy in the Middle East”. Its brutal occupation forces masquerade as “the most moral army in the world”. And now Israel’s genocide in Gaza masquerades as “the elimination of Hamas”.

Israel has always had to obscure these lies through intimidation. Anyone daring to call out the deceptions is smeared as an antisemite.

But that playbook has sounded grossly offensive – inhuman even – when the matter at hand is stopping genocide in Gaza.

Where does this ultimately lead?

Nearly a decade ago, the Israeli scholar and peace activist Jeff Halper wrote a book, War Against the People, warning: “In an endless war on terror, we are all doomed to become Palestinians.”

Not just the West’s “enemies”, but its populations would come to be seen as a threat to the interests of a capitalist ruling class bent on its permanent privilege and enrichment, whatever the costs to the rest of us.

That argument – which sounded hyperbolic when he first aired it – is beginning to seem prescient.

Gaza is not just the front line of Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people. It is also a front line in the western elite’s war on our ability to think critically, to develop sustainable ways to live, and to demand that others be treated with the dignity and humanity we expect for ourselves.

Yes, the battle lines are drawn. And anyone who refuses to side with the baddies is the enemy.

Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.