AGENT DE L'IMPÉRIALISME

Fall of Ariel Henry, disputed prime minister of Haiti

Agence France-Presse
March 12, 2024 

Ariel Henry, who has agreed to resign as prime minister of Haiti, came late to politics after a career as a neurologist (Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP)

Ariel Henry, a renowned doctor but controversial political leader who resigned on Monday, became prime minister of Haiti after the 2021 assassination of president Jovenel Moise, but never managed to put an end to the violence and chaos in his country.

Moise selected Henry for the post just two days before he was killed by a group of mostly Colombian mercenaries.

Henry, 74, studied medicine in France and made a name for himself in Haiti as a neurologist.

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During his medical career, he headed the neurosurgery department of one of Haiti's most renowned private hospitals and taught in state universities in Port-au-Prince, only entering politics late in life.

In January 2015, president Michel Martelly named him interior minister, a position he held for less than eight months.

After a change in the head of government in September 2015, he was appointed minister of social affairs and labor for six months, before leaving the political scene for more than five years.

In July 2021, president Moise chose him as his seventh prime minister.

But just two days later, on July 7, Moise was assassinated in his residence.

The attack plunged the already fragile country into chaos and Henry did not even have time to officially take office.


After two weeks of uncertainty and under pressure from foreign embassies, he was finally installed as head of a government already suffering from a legitimacy deficit.

The investigation into the president's assassination only increased distrust of him: the night of the murder, Henry had several telephone conversations with one of the main suspects.

And in early 2022, CNN broadcast a recording attributed to a judge accusing Henry of having planned and financed the attack.


Henry dismissed the allegations as a "distraction" and said it was difficult to recall the names of everyone who called him that day and the nature of the conversations they had.

- Gangs extend control -

As civil society and part of the political opposition struggled to agree on offering an alternative, the prime minister retained control of the state, but without much impact in the face of the repeated and growing crises shaking the country.

Well before the death of Moise, criminal gangs had already extended their control over the country.

With gangs controlling a large part of the capital Port-au-Prince, preventing access to the offices of the prime minister, Henry had to organize ministerial meetings from his official residence.

On January 1, 2022, Henry was forced to flee under bursts of gunfire from a national ceremony marking the 218th anniversary of Haiti's independence in the city of Gonaives, which he said was an attempt on his life.

According to an agreement concluded in December 2022, Henry was to hold elections sometime in 2023 and then cede power to newly elected officials on February 7, 2024.

However, elections have not been held and Henry refused to step down, exacerbating the crisis and increasing questions over his legitimacy.

The country was without a president -- Moise was not replaced -- or parliament as all its lawmakers' terms had run out and national polls had not been held since 2016.

As the gangs extended their control, they formed an alliance with the declared aim of overthrowing the prime minister.

They attacked police stations, Port-au-Prince's airport and even prisons, freeing thousands of inmates.

On March 5, powerful gang leader Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier, a former policeman, warned the country was headed for "civil war" if Henry did not resign.

As the gangs launched their coordinated campaign of violence, Henry was on a visit to Kenya to sign an agreement for the deployment of Kenyan police to Haiti as part of a multinational mission supported by the United Nations and the United States.

His plane, prevented from landing back in Haiti, finally took him to the US island of Puerto Rico, from where he announced his resignation on Monday.

The United States, which was pushing with other countries for a political transition in Haiti, said he was welcome to remain if he wished to stay there.

Haiti’s Nightmare Is Made in America

by Ted Snider Posted onMarch 13, 2024

No stranger to nightmares, Haiti is descending into another one.

Armed gangs, many of whom grew in power and wealth during the current administration of Prime Minister Ariel Henry with whom they had collaborated, have engaged in turf wars that have internally displaced over 362,000 people, according to United Nations estimates. They engineered prison breaks, and on March 8, armed gangs surrounded the National Palace.

Haitian gang leaders have “demanded that the country’s next leader be chosen by the people and live in Haiti.” Henry was not elected. He was placed in power by the “Core Group,” made up of UN representatives, the United States, France, Canada, Spain, Germany, the Organization of American States, and the European Union after the assassination of President Jovenal Moïse. Gang leaders have demanded his resignation.

On March 11, Henry, who is stranded in Puerto Rico, finally announced that he would resign after repeatedly postponing elections. The announcement came after a meeting on March 11 of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM). Celebrations reportedly erupted on the streets of Haiti.

The United States, which has consistently backed Henry, had hoped he could survive to oversee the transition, but the chaos and brutality on the streets forced their hand. Without American support, the unpopular ruler had no way to survive.

Democracy in Haiti has meant never getting to choose your own leader. The United States and its partners have a long and terrible history of coups and interference in Haiti that have hijacked and undermined Haitian democracy. Haiti’s democratic wishes have long been snuffed out by the United States, and the people of Haiti have never had much say in whom they want to lead their country. In 1959, when a small group of Haitians tried to overthrow the savage U.S.-backed dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier, the U.S. military, which was in Haiti to train Duvalier’s brutal forces, not only helped locate the rebels but took part in the fighting that squashed them.

A quarter of a century later, when the people of Haiti longed to elect Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, the CIA, with the authorization of President Ronald Reagan, funded candidates to oppose him. In 1989, the United States undermined the Aristide government, and, immediately following the coup, supported the junta and increased trade to Haiti in violation of international sanctions. CIA expert John Prados says that the “chief thug” amongst the groups of militia behind the coup was a CIA asset. Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, agrees. Weiner says that several of the leaders of the junta that took out Aristide “had been on the CIA’s payroll for years.”

When the people of Haiti got the chance again and elected Aristide in 2004, the United States, with the help of Canada and France, crushed their choice, kidnapped Aristide, and sent him to exile in Africa. Aristide has said, “The coup of September 1991 was undertaken with the support of the U.S. administration, and in February 2004 it happened again, thanks to many of the same people.”

A secret cable recently obtained by The Grayzone appears to place a CIA officer in contact with “questionable individuals” identified in the cable as Haitians “with ties to coup plotters.” And France’s ambassador to Haiti at the time of the coup, Thierry Burkard, has revealed that “France and the United States had effectively orchestrated ‘a coup’ against Mr. Aristide…”

Henry, himself, had replaced the enormously unpopular Moïse, who had been illegally holding onto power and growing increasingly authoritarian under the protection of U.S. backing. Many in Haiti complained of Henry’s long rule without being elected. Supposedly installed as an interim leader, “with U.S. support,” Brian Concannon says, “Henry’s unconstitutional term as prime minister exceeded any other prime minister’s term under Haiti’s 1987 Constitution.”

Henry’s forced resignation offers Haitians a way out of the nightmare. He will step down after the establishment of a transitional presidential council and the appointment of an interim prime minister. The transitional council will reportedly include “representatives from several coalitions, the private sector and civil society, and one religious leader.”

But this way out of the nightmare only has a chance of succeeding if the United States reverses its historical course and does not block the road. The U.S. had sided with Henry in demanding international troops in Haiti to restore order. Others, with an eye on history, saw international troops as a way to prop up the Henry regime. Concannon raises the concern that American insistence on an international force “raises fears that the United States will… continue its policy of installing and propping up undemocratic regimes in Haiti.” That concern, he says, is intensified by American insistence that any new Haitian government must immediately welcome “a multinational security support mission.”

After the CARICOM meeting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. will provide $300 million for a Kenyan-led multinational security mission to Haiti.

As Concannon has pointed out, the sovereignty, legitimacy, and popular acceptance of a government “allowed to form only if it accepts a U.S.-imposed occupation force originally designed to prop up a hated, repressive government” is in doubt.

Hopefully, the United States will allow Haitians to choose their own leader and honor that choice, and allow the new Haitian government to choose its own policy on restoring order and choose whether Haitians want an international force.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

What’s Going on in Haiti?

BAP Backgrounder: Haiti Behind the Headlines

by Black Alliance for Peace / March 12th, 2024

Haiti is in the headlines again and, as usual, the headlines on Haiti are mostly negative. They are also largely false. Haiti, they tell us, is overrun by “gang violence.” Haiti is “a failed state,” standing on the verge of “anarchy” and teetering on the edge of “collapse.” Haiti, they tell us, can only be stabilized and saved through foreign military invasion and occupation. We have seen these stories before. We know their purpose. They serve to cover up the true origins of the “crisis” in Haiti while justifying foreign military intervention and setting up an attack on Haiti’s sovereignty.

What is the reality behind the headlines? The reality is that the crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism. Those countries calling for military intervention – the US, France, Canada – have created the conditions making military intervention appear necessary and inevitable. The same countries calling for intervention are the same countries that will benefit from intervention, not the Haitian people. And for twenty years, those countries that cast Haiti as a failed state actively worked to destroy Haiti’s government while imposing foreign colonial rule.

On Haiti, the position of the Black Alliance for Peace has been consistent and clear. We reject the sensationalist headlines in the Western media with their racist assumptions that Haiti is ungovernable, and the Haitian people cannot govern themselves. We support the efforts of the Haitian people to assert their sovereignty and reclaim their country. We denounce the ongoing imperialist onslaught on Haiti and demand the removal of Haiti’s foreign, colonial rulers.

What’s Going on in Haiti?

• The crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism – but what does this mean? It means that the failure of governance in Haiti is not something internal to Haiti, but it is a result of the concerted effort on the part of the west to gut the Haitian state and destroy popular democracy in Haiti.
• Haiti is currently under occupation by the US/UN and Core Group, a self-appointed cabal of foreign entities who effectively rule this country.
• The occupation of Haiti began in 2004 with the US/France/Canada-sponsored coup d’état against Haiti’s democratically elected president. The coup d’etat was approved by the UN Security Council. It established an occupying military force (euphemistically called a “peacekeeping” mission), with the acronym MINUSTAH. Though the MINUSTAH mission officially ended in 2017, the UN office in Haiti was reconstituted as BIHUH. BINUH, along with the Core Group, continues to have a powerful role in Haitian affairs.
• Over the past four years, the Haitian masses have mobilized and protested against an illegal government, imperial meddling, the removal of fuel subsidies leading to rising costs of living, and insecurity by elite-funded armed groups. However, these protests have been snuffed out by the US-installed puppet government.
• Since 2021, attempts to control Haiti by the US have intensified. In that year, Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse was assassinated and Ariel Henry was installed by the US and UN Core Group as the de facto prime minister. In the wake of the assassination of Moïse and the installation of Henry, the U.S. has sought to build a coalition of foreign states willing to send military forces to occupy Haiti, and to deal with Haiti’s ostensible “gang” problem.
• The armed groups (the so-called “gangs”) mainly in the capital city of Haiti should be understood as “paramilitary” forces, as they are made up of former (and current) Haitian police and military elements.  These paramilitary forces are known to work for some of Haiti’s elite, including, some say, Ariel Henry (Haiti’s former de facto prime minister). It should also be noted that Haiti does not manufacture guns; the guns and ammunition come primarily from the US and the Dominican Republic; and the US has consistently rejected calls for an arms embargo.
• Moreover, as Haitian organizations have demonstrated, it is the UN and Core Group occupation that has enabled the “gangsterization” of the country. When we speak of “gangs,” we must recognize that the real and most powerful gangs in the country are the US, the Core Group, and the illegal UN office in Haiti – all of whom helped to create the current crisis.
• Most recently, Ariel Henry traveled to Kenya to sign an agreement with Kenya prime minister William Ruto authorizing the deployment of 1,000 Kenyan police officers as the head of a multinational military force whose ostensible purpose was to combat Haiti’s gang violence. But the US strategy for Haiti appears to have collapsed as Henry has been unable to return to Haiti and there is renewed challenge to the constitutionality of that deployment.
• The US is now scrambling for control, seeking to force Henry’s resignation while looking for a new puppet to serve as a figurehead for foreign rule of Haiti. While Haiti currently does not have a government, it has not descended into chaos or anarchy. The paramilitaries, it seems, are waiting for their orders to act, while the US strategy for Haiti is in crisis.

Why Haiti?

For BAP, the historic struggles of the Haitian people to combat slavery, colonialism, and imperialism have been crucial to the struggles of African people throughout the globe. The attacks on Black sovereignty in Haiti are replicated in the attacks on Black people throughout the Americas. Today, Haiti is  important for U.S. geopolitical and economic viability. Haiti is in a key location in the Caribbean for US military and security strategy in the region, especially in light of the coming US confrontation with China and in the context of the strategic implementation of the Global Fragilities Act. Haiti’s economic importance stems from what western corporations perceive as a vast pool of cheap labor, and its unexploited land and mineral wealth.

BAP’S Position on the Current Situation in Haiti

• BAP, as with many Haitian and other organizations, have consistently argued against a renewed foreign military intervention.
• We have persistently demanded the end of the foreign occupation of Haiti. This includes the dissolution of the Core Group, the UN office in Haiti (BINHU), and the end of the constant meddling of the US, along with its junior partners, CARICOM, and Brazil’s Lula.
• We have denounced the governments of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) (with the exception of Venezuela and Cuba), for supporting US plans for armed intervention in Haiti and the denial of Haitian sovereignty.
• We have denounced CARICOM leaders, and especially Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, for not only supporting US planned armed intervention in Haiti and offering their police and soldiers for the mission, but for also following US and Core Group dictates on the way forward in Haiti. Haiti’s solutions should come from Haitian people through broad consensus. CARICOM leaders cannot claim to be helping Haiti when they are acting as neo-colonial stooges of the US and the Core Group.
• We have denounced the role of Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, for not only continuing Brazil’s role in the Core Group, but for also leading the charge, along with the criminal US government, for foreign armed military invasion of Haiti. We remind everyone that it was Lula’s government that led the military wing of the 2004 violent UN occupation of Haiti. Brazil’s soldiers led the mission for 13 years (until 2017).
• In solidarity with Haitian groups, we have denounced the UN approved, US-funded, Kenyan-led foreign armed invasion and occupation of Haiti. We are adamant that a U.S./UN-led armed foreign intervention in Haiti is not only illegitimate, but illegal. We support Haitian people and civil society organizations who have been consistent in their opposition to foreign armed military intervention – and who have argued that the problems of Haiti are a direct result of the persistent and long-term meddling of the United States, the United Nations, and the Core Group.
• We demand US accountability for flooding Haiti with military grade weapons. We demand that the US enforce the UN-stated arms embargo against the Haitian and U.S. elite who import guns into the country.
• We will continue to support our comrades as they fight for a free and sovereign Haiti.

Long live Haiti! 

• First published in The Black Alliance for Peace

 

Shortages Loom After Gangs Attack Haiti's Main Container Terminal

The CPS terminal in Port-au-Prince (file image courtesy Caribbean Port Services)

PUBLISHED MAR 10, 2024 9:21 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Haiti faces a serious risk of shortages of food, medical supplies and other basic necessities because of extreme gang violence in Port-au-Prince, where heavily-armed criminals have sacked homes, stores, police stations, hospitals - and the nation's largest port, Autorité Portuaire Nationale (APN).

Early last week, gang members tried to destroy the electrical power supply for Caribbean Port Services, the main container terminal at APN. On Wednesday night, they attacked from multiple directions and ransacked the storage yard, and they continued looting into the next day, the manager told the Washington Post. The extent of the damage is unknown, and the terminal has shut down. 

Air flights and cross-border trucking to the Dominican Republic have also been impacted by the gang violence. The closure of Haiti's main cargo terminal will have an immediate impact on basic goods and services, aid agencies have warned.  

"Very soon, if there isn’t an aerial, port or road opening, all hospital institutions, including Doctors Without Borders, will be unable to continue providing care," Jean-Marc Biquet, head of Doctors Without Borders in Haiti, told the Post.

Violent gangs have spread throughout Haiti over the past several years, and have grown in strength through extortion, kidnapping, corruption and theft. Last week a consortium of gang leaders organized a prison break to release 4,000 inmates, then launched a campaign to seize the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Their demands include an amnesty for their past crimes, a role in the political system, and the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is currently in Puerto Rico. 

As the security situation in Port-au-Prince remains tenuous, the U.S. State Department asked the Pentagon to help airlift nonessential personnel from its embassy, which is located two miles by road from the airport. Military personnel carried out an operation overnight Saturday to remove some of the civilian staff and deliver additional security support to the embassy site. The mission will allow the embassy's work to continue, U.S. Southern Command said in a statement. 

 

Peoples’ China: What Lies Ahead?

by Greg Godels / March 11th, 2024

Whither China? was the name of a widely circulated pamphlet authored by the respected Anglo-Indian Marxist author, R. Palme Dutt. Writing in 1966, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the throes of the “Cultural Revolution,” the pamphlet sought to shed light on the PRC’s tortured road from liberation in 1949 to a vast upheaval disrupting all aspects of Chinese society as well as foreign relations. To most people — across the entire political spectrum — developments within this Asian giant were a challenge to understand. To be sure, there were zealots outside of the PRC who hung on every word uttered by The Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao, and stood by every release explaining Chinese events in the People’s Daily, Red Flag and Peking Review. A few Communist Parties and many middle-class intellectuals embraced the Cultural Revolution as a rite of purification. Yet for most, as with Palme Dutt, the paramount question remained: Where is the PRC going?

Today, forty-five years later, the question remains open.

I wrote the above thirteen years ago. I contend that the question remains open today. Much has changed, however. In 2011, China-bashing was widespread especially where jobs had disappeared in manufacturing, but largely tempered by a Western business sector anxious to exploit low wages and the Chinese domestic market.

But almost simultaneously with the 2011 posting, the Obama administration made official its “pivot to Asia,” directed explicitly at Peoples’ China. As the Brookings Institute ‘diplomatically’ put it, “Washington is still very much focused on sustaining a constructive U.S.-China relationship, but it has now brought disparate elements together in a strategically integrated fashion that explicitly affirms and promises to sustain American leadership throughout Asia for the foreseeable future.” More explicitly, they intend “to establish a strong and credible American presence across Asia to both encourage constructive Chinese behavior and to provide confidence to other countries in the region that they need not yield to potential Chinese regional hegemony.”

To be sure, the officially declared Obama administration hostility to the PRC was neither a reaction to job loss nor to deindustrialization. The Administration showed no interest in recreating lost jobs or restoring the industrial cities in the Midwest. The real purpose is revealed in the simple phrase “Chinese regional hegemony.” Clearly, by 2011, ruling circles in the US had decided that the PRC was more than an economic cherry ready to be plucked. Instead, it had developed into an economic powerhouse, a true, even the true, competitor in global markets; indeed, it had become a robust threat to U.S. hegemony.

With the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the anti-PRC campaign continued, though conducted in an accelerated, cruder fashion, employing sanctions, threats, ultimatums, and even legal chicanery (the detention of one of Huawei’s executives, the daughter of the company’s founder).

The subsequent Biden administration pursued the same approach, adding another level of belligerence by stirring conflict in the South China Sea and reigniting the Taiwan issue. To anyone paying attention, successive administrations were intensifying aggression against the PRC, a process fueled by the eagerly compliant mainstream media.

It has become commonplace on the left to explain the growing hostility to the PRC by the U.S. and its NATO satellites as the instigation of a new Cold War, a revival of the anti-Communist crusades strengthening after World War II. In the past, I have suggested as much. But that would be grossly misleading.

The original Cold War was a struggle between capitalism and socialism. Whether Western critics will concede that the Soviet alternative was really socialism is irrelevant. It was a sharp and near-total alternative, and the West fought it as such. The Soviet Union did not organize its production to participate in global markets, it did not compete for global markets, nor did it threaten the profitability of capitalist enterprises through global competition. In short, the Soviet Union offered a potent option to Western capitalism, but not the threat of a rival for markets or profits. Moreover, Soviet foreign policy both condemned capitalism and explicitly sought to win other countries to socialist construction.

The same cannot be said for the Western antagonism to the PRC. The West courted Peoples’ China assiduously from the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution through the entire Deng era. Western powers saw the PRC as either an ally against the Soviet Union, a source of cheap labor, an investment windfall, or a virgin market. But with China’s success in weathering the capitalist crisis of 2007-2009, the U.S. and its allies began to look at the PRC as a dangerous rival within the global system of capitalism. Chinese technologies more than rivaled the West’s; its share of global trade had grown dramatically; and its accumulation of capital and its export of capital were alarming to Western powers bent on pressing their own export of capital.

In contrast to the actual Cold War, even the most ardent defender of the “Chinese road to socialism” cannot today cite many instances of PRC foreign policy strongly advocating, assisting, or even vigorously defending the fight for socialism anywhere outside of China. Indeed, the basic tenet of PRC policy — the noninterference in the affairs of others, regardless of their ideologies or policies — has more in common with Adam Smith than Vladimir Lenin.

What the Soviet Union took as its internationalist mission — support for those fighting capitalism — is not to be found in the CPC’s foreign policy. Nothing demonstrates the differences more than the Soviet’s past solidarity and aid toward Cuba’s socialist construction and the contrasting PRC’s commercial and cultural relations and meager aid.

Accordingly, the PRC’s commercial relations with less developed countries can raise substantial issues. Recently, Ann Garrison, a highly respected solidarity activist, often focusing on imperialism in Africa, wrote a provocative article for Black Agenda Report. In her review of Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers our Lives — an account of corporate mining and labor exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo– Garrison makes the following commentary guaranteed to raise the ire of devotees of the “Chinese road to socialism”:

[The author of Cobalt Red] explains battery technology and the global dominance of battery manufacture by South Korean, Japanese, and, most of all, Chinese industrial titans. Huge Chinese corporations so dominate Congolese cobalt mining, processing and battery manufacture that one has to ask why a communist government, however capitalist in fact, doesn’t at least somehow require more responsible sourcing of minerals processed and then advanced along the supply chain within its borders. I hope that Kara’s book has or will be translated into Chinese. (my emphasis)

Predictably, rejoinders came fast and furious. In both an interview and response posted on Black Agenda Report, Garrison’s critics struggled to explain why PRC-based corporations were not contributing to the impoverishment and exploitation of Congolese workers. They cited Chinese investments in infrastructure and in modernization; they noted huge increases in productivity wrought by Chinese technology; they reminded Garrison of the corruption of the DRC government and local capitalists, and even blamed capitalism itself. How, one critic asked, could the PRC be singled out, when other (admittedly capitalist) countries were doing it as well?

Yet none even made a feeble attempt to explain how the extraction of one of the most sought-after minerals in modern industry could leave the people of the mineral-rich DRC with one of — if not the lowest — median incomes in the entire world. This striking fact points to the enormous rate of exploitation engaged in cobalt, copper, and other resource extraction in this poverty-stricken African country (for a Marxist angle on this question, see Charles Andrews’s article, cited by Garrison, but seemingly misunderstood by her).

In their zeal to defend the PRC’s Belt and Road initiative, these same defenders of the penetration of Chinese capital in poor countries often cite the frequent Chinese concept of “win-win” — the idea that Chinese capital brings with it victory for both the capital supplier and those ‘benefitted’ by the capital. Theorists of the non-class “win-win” concept are never clear exactly who the beneficiaries are — other capitalists, corrupt government officials, or the working class. Nevertheless, within the intensely competitive global capitalist system, this “win-win” is not sustainable and is contrary to both experience and the laws of capitalist development. Theoretically, it owes more to the thinking of David Ricardo than Karl Marx.

The PRC’s vexing relationship to capitalism has produced contradictions at home as well as globally. The ongoing collapse of the largely private construction/real-estate industry is one very large example. Once a major factor in PRC growth, overproduction of housing is now a substantial drag on economic advance. Monthly sales of new homes by private developers peaked late in 2020 at over 1.5 trillion yuan and fell to a little more than .25 trillion yuan at the beginning of 2024.

With the private real estate sector on the verge of bankruptcy and a huge number of residential properties unsold or unfinished, the PRC leadership is caught in a twenty-first-century version of the infamous scissors crisis that brought the Soviet NEP — the experiment with capitalist development of the productive forces — to a halt. If the government allows the private developers to fail, it will have harsh repercussions throughout the private sector, with banks, and foreign investors. If the government bails out the developers, it will remove the market consequences of capitalist excess and put the burden of sustaining capitalist failure on the backs of the Chinese people.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the government, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is considering placing “the state back in charge of the property market, part of a push to rein in the private sector.” The WSJ editors construe this as reviving “Socialist Ideas” — a welcome thought, if true.

The article claims that in CCP General Secretary Xi’s view, “too much credit moved into property speculation, adding risks to the financial system, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and diverting resources from what Xi considers to be the ‘real economy’ — sectors such as manufacturing and high-end technology.…”

Putting aside the question of how the private real estate sector was allowed to create an enormous bubble of unfinished and unsold homes, the move to return responsibility for housing to the public sector should be welcome, restoring price stability and planning, and eliminating speculation, overproduction, and economic disparities.

Unfortunately, there will be uncertain consequences and difficulties for banks, investors, and real estate buyers who purchased under the private regimen.

It is worth noting that no Western capitalist country or Japan has or would address a real estate bubble by absorbing real estate into the public sector.

Under Xi’s leadership, the direction of the PRC’s ‘reforms’ may have shifted somewhat away from an infatuation with markets, private ownership, and foreign capital. The former “enrich yourselves” tolerance for wealth accumulation has been tempered by conscious efforts at raising the living standards of the poorest. Xi has made a priority of “targeted poverty alleviation,” with impressive success.

Western intellectuals harshly criticize the PRC’s ‘democracy’ because it rejects the multi-party, periodic election model long-favored in the West. These same intellectuals fetishize a form of democracy, regardless of whether that particular form earns the trust of those supposedly represented. The mere fact that a procedure purports to deliver democratic or representative results does not guarantee that it actually makes good on its promise.

If China-critics were truly concerned with democratic or popular outcomes, they would turn to measures or surveys of public confidence, satisfaction, or trust in government to judge the respective systems. On this count, the PRC is always found at or near the top in public trust (for example, hereand here). Moreover, Chinese society shows high interpersonal or social trust, another measure of success in producing popular social cohesion by a government.

It’s telling that with the Western obsession with democracy, there is little interest in holding bourgeois democracy up to any relevant measure of its trust or popularity. When it is done, the U.S. fares very poorly, with a six-decade decline in public trust, according to Pew. As recently as February 28, the most recent Pew poll shows that even people who do respect “representative democracy” are critical of how it’s working. Their answer to their skepticism may be found “if more women, people from poor backgrounds and young adults held elective office”, say respondents. Those elites who so glibly talk of “our democracy,” in contrast to those including the CCP that they call “authoritarians,” might pause to listen to the people of their own country.

The PRC has shocked Western critics with the breakneck pace of its adoption of non-emission energy production. In 2020, the Chinese anticipated generating 1200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030. That goal and more will likely be reached by the end of 2024. Overall, the PRC expects to account for more new clean-energy capacity this year than the average growth in electricity demand over the last decade and a half. This means, of course, that emissions have likely peaked and will be receding in the years ahead– an achievement well ahead of Western estimates and Western achievements, and a victory for the global environmental movement.

At the same time, the PRC’s successful competition in the solar-panel market makes it the target of global competitors, a brutal struggle that undermines the espoused “win-win” approach. Despite the benign tone of “win-win,” market competition is not bound by polite resignation, but aggression, conflict, and, as Lenin affirmed, ultimately war. That is the inescapable logic of capitalism. PRC engagement with the market cannot negate it.

Western leftists too often simplify the ‘Chinese Question’ by making it a parlor game revolving around whether China is or is not a socialist country, an error confusing a settled, accomplished state of affairs with a contested process.

As long as capitalism exists and holds seats of political power, the process of building socialism remains unstable and unfinished.

The 1936 Soviet constitution declared in Article One that the USSR was “a socialist state of workers and peasants,” a status that was under great duress over the subsequent following decades. The 1977 constitution stated even more boldly that the USSR was “a socialist state of the whole people…,” a state without classes and, by implication, class struggle. A decade and a half later, there was no USSR. Building socialism is a fragile process and one prone to reversals and defeats.

Thus, we should follow Palme Dutt’s sage advice and observe developments in the PRC with vigilance and a critical eye. If building socialism is a dynamic process, we should attend to its direction, rather than pronouncing its summary success or failure. The PRC is a complex creation with a complex — often contradictory — relationship with other countries as well as the socialist project. The cause of  socialism is ill served by either ignoring or exaggerating both missteps and victories in the PRC’s revolutionary path.

Greg Godels writes on current events, political economy, and the Communist movement from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.

The Press Freedom Case of the Century

As the official case against Assange stagnates, an international movement to free him has only grown stronger

by Kevin Gosztola / March 11th, 2024

In March 2023, when my book on the case against Julian Assange was published, the detained WikiLeaks founder was waiting to find out if an appeals court in London would allow him to appeal extradition to the United States.

Now, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange [review] has been available on bookshelves for one year—and Assange still does not know if he has permission to appeal.

Such limbo has developed into a feature of the prosecution against Assange. The march of time whittles away at Assange while cold-blooded authorities keep him in arbitrary detention.

Assange was 38 years of age when WikiLeaks garnered praise for publishing disclosures from US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Assange was an ardent, nimble, and sharp-witted advocate for the truth. But at 52, Assange is increasingly frail as delays in proceedings compound physical and mental health problems that he must endure in Belmarsh prison.

President Joe Biden’s administration may prefer the limbo to an unprecedented trial that will invite global condemnation. No Biden official has expressed any reservations when it comes to charging Assange.

Biden officials still sidestep reporters, who ask why the US government won’t drop the charges against Assange. Biden’s National Security Council spokesperson said in October, “This is something the Justice Department is handling, and I think it’s better if you go to them on that.”

But the State Department has not always been so disciplined. On World Press Freedom Day in 2023, State Department spokesperson Verdant Patel endorsed the prosecution that was launched under President Donald Trump.

“The State Department thinks that Mr. Assange has been charged with serious criminal conduct in the United States, in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in our nation’s history. His actions risked serious harm to U.S. national security to the benefit of our adversaries,” Patel stated.

Patel added, “It put named human sources to grave and imminent risk and risk of serious physical harm and arbitrary detention.”

What the State Department uttered was familiar. This is how officials responded when WikiLeaks first published US diplomatic cables in 2010.

To be clear, Assange’s “role” was that of a publisher who received documents from Manning and engaged in standard newsgathering activities.

A 2011 Associated Press review of sources, whom the State Department claimed were most at risk from publication of the cables, uncovered no evidence that any person was threatened. In fact, the potential for harm was “strictly theoretical.”

Despite the stagnation of the case against Assange, an international movement to free him has only grown stronger. Lawmakers in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Mexico sent letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding an end to the case.

Twenty unions affiliated with the European Federation of Journalists showed solidarity by granting Assange honorary membership in each of their organizations.

On March 4, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he hoped the British courts would block extradition, which is remarkable given Germany’s status as a powerful NATO country.

More significantly, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese backed a motion passed by the Australian Parliament that called on the US government—a close military and intelligence partner—to “bring the matter to a close” so that Assange may return home to his country.

Assange is one of the world’s most well-known political prisoners. If the US government puts the WikiLeaks founder on trial, it will not only threaten the First Amendment in the United States but also imperil investigative journalism everywhere around the world.

It is unlikely that the legal system in the United Kingdom or the United States will save us from the damage to global press freedom that officials are inflicting on our collective rights. To prevent further damage, we will have to find a way to shame the US government into abandoning the case. Otherwise, even more of us may find ourselves prosecuted for committing acts of journalism.

First published at Project Censored.

Kevin Gosztola is the author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange. He is cofounder and managing editor of Shadowproof, an independent news outlet focused on systemic abuses of power in business and government, and the curator of The Dissenter newsletter. Read other articles by Kevin.

Matters of Revenue: Meta Abandons Australia’s Media Stable

by Binoy Kampmark / March 11th, 2024

It was praised to the heavens as a work of negotiated and practical genius when it was struck.  The then Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, had finally gotten those titans of Big Tech into line on how revenue would be shared with media outlets for using such platforms as supplied by Facebook and Google.

Both companies initially baulked at the News Media Bargaining Code, which led to a very publicised spat between Facebook and the Morrison government.  For a week in February 2021, users of Facebook in Australia were barred from sharing news.  A number of government agencies, trade unions, media groups and charities found the restrictions oppressive.

Amendments were eventually made to the Code to make matters more palatable to the tech behemoths, notably on the arbitration mechanism and their algorithmic use of ranking news.  Revenue sharing agreements with various media outlets were struck, most notably with members of the standard stable, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and News Corp.  With a degree of perversity, traditional news publications could now receive revenue for using free sharing platforms, having failed to address their own stuttering revenue models.  (The fall in advertising revenue has been particularly punishing.)

With a jackal’s glee, Rupert Murdoch could claim to have made a fiendish pact with Facebook to prop up parts of his ailing News Corp empire, leaving Facebook’s pproach to surveillance capitalism unchecked and uncritiqued.

Such agreements on sharing news were always conditional on continued approval by Facebook, which is now operating under the rebrand of Meta.  Various countries have similarly tried to compel digital platforms to pay for news content that they permit, freely, to be shared.  It is also clear that Meta is particularly keen to deprecate them and eventually let them lapse.

In February, a statement from Meta made it clear that these arrangements would not be renewed.  “The number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the US has dropped by over 80% last year.  We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content – they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests.”

Such jaw dropping observations would have surprised users who have foolishly made Facebook a central pitstop in their news journey – and what counts as “news” in the narrow, arid world of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  But according to Meta, news made up less than 3% of what people saw on their Facebook feed in 2023.

Meta’s public declaration of intent threatens various media companies with significant loss.  In Australia, Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media and News Corp risk losing between 5 and 9% of net profit.

The entire field of revenue sharing between the digital platforms and media groups has been opaque.  The Australian Financial Review managed to obtain two summaries of agreements signed by the Australian Network Ten, owned by Paramount, and Facebook, shedding some light on negotiation strategies.  For the social media giant, videos are all the rage, and one of the summaries notes the insistence by Facebook that Network Ten share 18,000 videos on its platform while threatening termination of its contract in the event it was taken to arbitration.

The Albanese government, through Communications Minister Michelle Rowland and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones, described Meta’s decision to halt paying news outlets “a dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media.”  But to have assumed it ever had such a commitment was surely naïve to begin with.

Michael Miller, Executive chairman of News Corp Australia, could not resist his own flourish of disingenuous exaggeration.  “If content providers were farmers Meta would steal their crops and demand their victims thank them for the privilege.”  Meta’s refusal to pay for news would create “shockwaves for Australia, our democracy, economy and way of life”.  The vital question here is what, exactly, are these agreements doing?

For one thing, the Bargaining Code, which never stipulated how the money would be used, has done nothing to enliven a media scape that remains imperially confined to a handful of providers.  A conspiracy of convenience arose between one set of giants furnishing the digital platforms, with another of giants claiming to provide the news.  Smaller outlets have had little say in these arrangements.  Facebook, for instance, showed no interest in reaching revenue sharing arrangements with the SBS broadcaster or The Conversation.  And to consider such representatives as News Corp sterling examples of democratic protection is a view not only misplaced but deserving of ridicule.

The ABC’s Managing Director, David Anderson, has at least admitted that funding obtained through its arrangements with Meta has been useful in supporting 60 journalists.  News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven News Media have been less than forthcoming, ever keen using the shield of commercial confidentiality.  In terms of employees, Nine Entertainment reported a fall in the number of employees from 5254 at the end of the 2022 financial year to 4753 at the end of 2023.  “It is likely,” suggests Kim Wingerie in Michael West Media, “that the A$50 million or more they receive annually from Meta and Google is used predominantly to prop up their net profit.”

Meta’s promise to abandon agreements reached with the media hacks is no reason to be gloomy.  The company’s loathing of privacy, its delight in commodifying the data of its users, and its insistence on tinkering with human behaviour, make it a continuing societal menace.  Governments and news outlets would do far better in critiquing and challenging those aspects, rather than taking revenue that seems to silence the critical instinct.

United Against Israel: Time To End World’s Longest Occupation

by Ramzy Baroud Posted on      March 12, 2024

Left to its own devices, Israel would never grant Palestinians their freedom.

In the past, some, whether ignorantly or not, claimed that peace in Palestine can only be achieved through ‘unconditional negotiations’.

This mantra was also championed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he cared enough to pay lip service to the ‘peace process’ and other US-originated fantasies. Back then, he spoke about his readiness to hold unconditional negotiations, though constantly arguing that Israel does not have a peace partner.

All of this was, of course, ‘doublespeak’. What Netanyahu and other Israelis were, in fact, saying is that Israel should be freed from any commitment to international law, let alone international pressure. Worse, by declaring that Israel has no Palestinian peace partner, the Israeli government has essentially canceled the hypothetical and ‘unconditional negotiations’ before they even took place.

For years – in fact, for decades – Israel was allowed to perpetuate such nonsense, empowered, of course, by the total and unconditional support of Washington and its other Western allies.

In an environment where Israel receives billions of dollars of US-Western aid, and where it grew to become a thriving technological hub, let alone one of the world’s largest weapons exporters, Tel Aviv simply had no reason to end its occupation or to dismantle its racist apartheid in Palestine.

But things must change now. The genocidal Israeli war in Gaza should completely alter our understanding, not only of the tragic reality underway in Palestine, but of past misunderstanding as well. It should be made clear that Israel never had any intentions of achieving a just peace, ending its colonialism in Palestine, that is, the expansion of illegal settlements or granting Palestinians an iota of rights.

To the contrary, Israel has been planning to carry out a genocide against the Palestinians all along.

Israel has already carried out terrible war crimes against Palestinians, during the Nakba in 1947-48, and in successive wars, ever since. Each crime, large or small, was always accompanied by a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Over 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed when Israel was established on the ruins of Palestine 76 years ago. An additional 300,000 were ethnically cleansed during the Naksa, the war and ‘setback’ of 1967.

Throughout the years, mainstream Western media did its best to completely hide the Israeli crimes, or minimize their impact, or blame someone else entirely for them. This process of shielding Israel remains in place to this day, even when tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October 7 and when the majority of Gaza, including its hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, civilian homes and shelters have been erased.

Considering all of this, anyone who still speaks of ‘unconditional negotiations’ – especially those conducted under the auspices of Washington – is, frankly, only doing so to help Israel escape international legal and political accountability.

Luckily, the world is waking up to this fact and, hopefully, this awakening will mature sooner rather than later, as Israeli massacres in Gaza continue to claim hundreds of innocent lives every single day.

This collective realization that Israel must be stopped through international measures is also accompanied by an equally critical realization that the US is not an honest peace broker. In fact, it never was.

To appreciate the ruinous role of the US in this so-called conflict, just marvel at this fact. While practically every country that participated with a legal opinion and a political position in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) public hearings from February 19 to the 26, formulated its position based on international law, the US did not.

“The Court should not find that Israel is legally obligated to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from occupied territory,” the acting legal adviser for the US State Department, Richard Visek, embarrassingly said on February 21.

76 years after the Nakba and following 57 years of military occupation, the US legal position remains committed to defending the illegality of Israel’s conduct throughout Palestine.

Compare the above stance to the rounded, courageous and legally grounded position of almost every country in the world, especially of the over 50 countries which requested to speak at the ICJ hearings.

China, whose words, and actions seem far more consistent with international law than many Western nations, especially now, went even further. “In pursuit of the right to self-determination, Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is (an) inalienable right well founded in international law,” Chinese representative Ma Xinmin told the ICJ on February 22.

Unlike the cliched and non-committal position of the likes of UK Foreign Minister, David Cameron, on the need to start an “irreversible progress” towards an independent Palestinian state, the Chinese position is arguably the most comprehensive and realistic articulation.

Ma linked self-determination to liberation struggle, to sovereignty, to the inalienable rights of people, which are all consistent with international laws and norms. In fact, it is these very principles that have led to the liberation of numerous countries in the Global South.

Considering that Israel has no intention to free Palestinians from the grip of apartheid and military occupation, the Palestinian people have had no other option but to resist.

The question now is, will the international community continue to defy the US position in words only, or will it formulate a new approach to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, thus bringing it to an end by any means necessary?

In his statement to the ICJ on February 19, British barrister Philippe Sands, who is a member of team Palestine, offered a roadmap on how the international community can force Israel to end its occupation: “The right of self-determination requires that UN Member States bring Israel’s occupation to an immediate end. No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No contribution to forcible actions. No money. No arms. No trade. No nothing.”

Indeed, it is now time to turn words into actions, especially when thousands of children are being killed for no fault of their own but for being born Palestinian.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

Biden’s Pier for Gaza Is a Hollow Gesture That Will Accomplish Nothing

The US President and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.

by Jonathan Cook Posted onMarch 11, 2024

A few observations on President Biden’s building of a “temporary pier” – or what his officials are grandly calling a “port” – to get aid into Gaza:

1. Though no one is mentioning it, Biden is actually violating Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza with his plan. Gaza doesn’t have a sea port, or an airport, because Israel, its occupier, has long banned it from having either.

Israel barred anything getting into Gaza that didn’t come through the land crossings it controls. Israel stopped international aid flotillas, often violently, from reaching Gaza to bring in medicine. The blockade also created a captive market for Israel’s own poor-quality goods, like damaged fruit and veg, and allowed Israel to skim off money at the land crossings that should have gone to the Palestinians in fees and duties.

2. It will take many weeks for the US to build this pier off-shore and get it up and running. Why the delay? Because every western capital, including the United States, has supported the blockade for the past 17 years.

The siege of Gaza caused gradual malnutrition among the enclave’s children, rather the the current rapid starvation. By helping Israel inflict collective punishment on Gaza for all those years, the US and Europe were complicit in a gross and enduring violation of international law, even before the current genocide.

With his pier, Biden isn’t reversing that long-standing collusion in a crime against humanity. He has stressed it will be temporary. In other words, it will be back to business in Gaza as usual afterwards: any children who survive will once again be allowed to starve in slow-motion, at a rate that doesn’t register with the establishment media and put pressure on Washington to be seen to be doing something.

3. Biden could get aid into Gaza much faster than by building a pier, if he wanted to. He could simply insist that Israel let aid trucks through the land crossings, and threaten it with serious repercussions should it fail to comply. He could threaten to withhold the US bombs he is sending to kill more children in Gaza. Or he could threaten to cut off the billions in military aid Washington sends to Israel every year. Or he could threaten to refuse to cast a US veto to protect Israel from diplomatic fallout at the United Nations. He could do any of that and more, but he chooses not to.

4. Even after Biden buys Israel a few more weeks to further aggressively starve Palestinians in Gaza, while we wait for his temporary pier to be completed, nothing may actually change in practice. Israel will still get to carry out the same checks it currently does at the land crossings but instead in Lanarca, Cyprus, where the aid will be loaded on to ships. In other words, Israel will still be able to create the same interminable hold-ups using “security concerns” as the pretext.

5. Biden isn’t changing course – temporarily – because he suddenly cares about the people, or even the children, of Gaza. They have been suffering in their open-air prison, to varying degrees, for decades. If he had cared, he would have done something to end that suffering after he became president. If he had done something then, October 7 might never have happened, and all those lives lost on both sides – lives continuing to be lost on the Palestinian side every few minutes – might have been saved.

And if he really cared, he wouldn’t have helped Israel in its efforts to destroy UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians and a vital lifeline for Gaza, by freezing its funding, based on unevidenced claims against the agency by Israel.

No, Biden doesn’t care about Palestinian suffering, or about the fact that, while he’s been busy eating ice cream, many, many tens of thousands of children have been murdered, maimed or orphaned – and the rest starved. He cares about the polls. His timetable for helping Palestinians is being strictly dictated by the schedule of the presidential election. He needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for.

He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.

Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net. This originally appeared at his website.

 

Aid Wars over Gaza: Resuming Funding to UNRWA

by Binoy Kampmark / March 11th, 2024

The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling.  The lynchpin in the effort was a thin, poison pen dossier making claims that 12 individuals were Hamas operatives who had been involved in the October 7 attacks.  Within a matter of days, two internal investigations were commenced, various individuals sacked, and US$450 million worth of funding from donor states suspended.

As the head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, explained at a press conference on March 4, he has “never been informed” or received evidence of Israel’s claims substantiating their assertions, though he did receive the prompt about the profane twelve directly from Israeli officials.  Every year, both Israel and the Palestinian authorities were furnished with staff lists, “and I never received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”

Had Israeli authorities signed off on these alleged participants in bungling or conspiratorial understanding?  Certainly, there was more than a pongy whiff of distraction about it all, given that Israel had come off poorly in The Hague proceedings launched by South Africa, during which the judges issued an interim order demanding an observance of the UN Genocide Convention, an increase of humanitarian aid, and the retention of evidence that might be used for future criminal prosecutions for genocide.

An abrupt wave of initial success in starving the agency followed, with a number of countries announcing plans to freeze funding.  In the United States, irate members of Congress accused the agency of having “longstanding connections to terrorism and promotion of antisemitism”.  A hearing was duly held titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures” with Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies frothing at an agency that supposedly incited “violence against Israel, subsidizes US-designated terrorist organizations, denies Palestinians their basic human rights, and blocks the pathways to a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

The attempt to cast UNRWA into gleefully welcomed oblivion has not worked.  Questions were asked about the initial figure of twelve alleged militants.  News outlets began questioning the numbers.

The funding channels are resuming.  Canada, for instance, approving “the robust investigative process underway”, also acknowledged that “more can be done to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians”.  The initial cancellation of funding to the agency, charged Thomas Woodley, president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, had been “a reckless political decision that never should have been made.”

The Swedish government was also encouraged by undertakings made by UNRWA “to allow independent auditing, strengthen internal supervision and enable additional staff controls”, promising an initial outlay of 200 million kroner (US$19 million)

The Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, Johan Forssell, promised that it would “monitor closely to ensure UNRWA follows through on what it has promised.”  Aid policy spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, Gudrun Brunegård, also conceded that, given the “huge” needs on the part of the civilian population, that UNRWA was “the organisation that is best positioned to help vulnerable Palestinians.”

Much the same sentiment was expressed by the European Union, with the Commission agreeing to pay 50 million euros to UNRWA from a promised total of 82 million euros on the proviso that EU-appointed experts audit the screening of staff.  “This audit,” a European Commission statement explains, “will review the control systems to prevent the possible involvement of its staff and assets in terrorist activities.”  Having been found wanting in her screeching about-turn, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU stood “by the Palestinian people in Gaza and elsewhere in the region.  Innocent Palestinians should not have to pay the price for the crimes of [the] terrorist group Hamas.”

Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi was stiffly bureaucratic in expressing satisfaction at “the commitment of UNRWA to introduce robust measures to prevent possible misconduct and minimise the risk of allegations”.  At no point was Israel’s own contribution to the calamity, and its insatiable vendetta against the agency, mentioned.

The bombast and blunder of the whole effort by Israel was further discoloured by claims that UNRWA staff had been victims of torture at the hands of the IDF in drafting the dossier.  In a statement released by the agency, a grave accusation was levelled: “These forced confessions as a result of torture are being used by the Israeli Authorities to further spread misinformation about the agency as part of attempts to dismantle UNRWA.”  In doing so, Israel was “putting our staff at risk and has serious implications on our operations in Gaza and around the region.”

For its part, the IDF, through a statement, claimed that this was all exaggerated piffle: “The mistreatment of detainees during their time in detention or whilst under interrogation violates IDF values and contravenes IDF [sic] and is therefore absolutely prohibited.”

Increasingly on the losing side of that battle, Israeli authorities decided to cook the figures further, declaring with crass confidence that 450 URWA employees in Gaza were members of militant groups including Hamas.  Sticking to routine, those making that allegation decided that evidence of such claims was not needed.  Those employees, claimed Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, “are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza”.  “This was no coincidence.  This is systematic.  There is no claiming, ‘we did not know’.”

In the fog of war, mendacity thrives with virile vigour; but the current suggestion on the part of various donor states is that the humanitarian incentive to ameliorate the suffering of the Gaza populace has taken precedence over Israel’s persistently lethal efforts.  That, at least, is the case with certain countries, leaving the doubters starkly exposed.

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.

Sweden and Canada resume funding UN agency for Palestinian refugees