In a clear rejection of US policies and leadership in the Middle East, the UN general assembly voted overwhelmingly to back the Palestinian bid for full UN membership. The western media have mostly ignored Friday’s balloting since the widely-anticipated results represent another black eye for Washington. But the outcome of the vote is a blow to the Biden administration’s failed Gaza policy as well as a clear indication that America’s blanket support for Israel’s genocide is increasing Washington’s isolation and irrelevance.
The assembly vote was 143 to 9, which means that US diplomatic influence has eroded to the point where the White House could barely coerce 9 of their most-loyal vassal states to reject the motion. It is imperative that people fully grasp the meaning of this vote, which suggests that the so-called “Rules-Based Order” is a withering fraud that grows more anemic by the day. Additionally, the vote provides compelling evidence that the American Century is officially over and that the vast majority of the world’s nations are no longer willing to comply with Washington’s self-serving edicts.
Naturally, Israel’s envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, used the opportunity—not to express his remorse at being a participant in his nation’s sadistic rampage in Gaza—but to scold the other members of the assembly for acting courageously on a matter of principle. Without a trace of irony, Erdan accused the other members of “shredding the UN charter with your own hands. Yes, yes, that’s what you’re doing. Shredding the UN charter.”
What Erdan failed to mention is that Israel holds the world’s record for breaking UN resolutions and has yet to encounter an international law that it won’t break with impunity. Israel decided long-ago that its future depended on its ability to use the world’s biggest bully as its personal bodyguard thus allowing it to ignore any legal or moral restraints on its behavior. This is an excerpt from an article at the UK Guardian:
Friday’s resolution …. does not make Palestine a full member, or give it voting rights in the assembly, or the right to stand for membership of the security council, but the vote was a resounding expression of world opinion in favour of Palestinian statehood, galvanized by the continuing bloodshed and famine caused by Israel’s war in Gaza.
Even before the vote in the assembly on Friday morning, Israel and a group of leading Republicans urged US funding be cut anyway because of the new privileges the resolution granted to the Palestinian mission.
The US mission to the UN, which voted against the resolution, warned that it would also use its veto again if the question of Palestinian membership returned to the security council for another vote.
“Efforts to advance this resolution do not change the reality that the Palestinian Authority does not currently meet the criteria for UN membership under the UN charter,” the mission’s spokesperson, Nathan Evans, said. “Additionally, the draft resolution does not alter the status of the Palestinians as a “non-member state observer mission”. UN general assembly votes to back Palestinian bid for membership, The Guardian
Try to appreciate how hypocritical and morally bankrupt the US position really is. For the last 57 years, Republicans and Democrats alike, have paid lip-service to a two-state solution based on UN Resolution 242 which requires Israel to remove its settlements from Palestinian land in occupied Gaza and the West Bank. “Get off Palestinian land and there will be peace.” That is US policy which is backed-up by international law. But, now, under Biden, the US not only opposes Palestinian statehood (which would improve their chances of getting a fair deal.) but is also providing the money, bombs and logistical support for blowing 2 million Palestinians to smithereens. This is the Biden policy in a nutshell, and—in case you hadn’t noticed—it is a clear departure from more than a half century of US foreign policy. The reason Biden is now commonly referred to as “Genocide Joe” is because he is unilaterally breaking international law by providing material support to Israeli barbarism which makes him—and the United States—equally culpable in the premeditated annihilation of the Palestinian people. Here’s more from the Guardian:
…the resolution also makes plain that “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.”
…. “In essence, it gives the Palestinians the airs and graces of a UN member, but without the fundamental attributes of a real member, which are voting power and the right to run for the security council.”….
Despite the wording in the resolution making clear Palestine would not have a vote, Israel called on the US to cut funding for the UN because of the resolution, and a group of Republican senators announced they were introducing legislation to do that.
…. Senator Mitt Romney said in a written statement. “Our legislation would cut off US taxpayer funding to the UN if it gives additional rights and privileges to the Palestinian Authority and the PLO.” The Guardian
Nice, eh? So, the vote didn’t turn out the way Uncle Sam wanted, so now he’s going to “take his ball and go home.” That’s called, ‘being a crybaby,’ and it helps to explain why more and more leaders are joining an alternate bloc of nations called the BRICS. There’s simply no reason to align oneself with a waning superpower that is so morally corrupted that it believes that mass murder is an acceptable foreign policy. (Note: The other countries that opposed Palestine’s bid for membership were Micronesia, Argentina, Hungary, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Israel. The list helps to illustrate the ineffectiveness of US diplomacy which has virtually collapsed under Anthony Blinken.)
Not surprisingly, Russia’s Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia offered the most intelligent analysis. Here’s what he said just prior to the vote:
It is our common duty to correct the historical injustice regarding Palestinian aspirations for their own sovereign unified state, which should have been admitted to the United Nations as early as 1948. We are convinced that Palestine’s full UN membership would help to equalize the starting negotiating positions with Israel, which received is status as a UN member state more than 75 years ago.
Admission of the State of Palestine to the UN would be the first practical step towards a just solution of the Palestinian question on the UN-approved platform and within the universally recognized international legal framework. …..
This process should result in the implementation of the internationally recognized two-state solution providing for Israel coexisting in peace and security with Palestine in the 1967 borders and with the capital in East Jerusalem. For this dialogue to succeed, Israel and Palestine must be on an equal footing in accordance with the decisions of the UN Security Council….
….When this draft resolution is adopted, Palestine… will receive a number of additional opportunities for more effective work in the United Nations General Assembly and at the meetings held under UNGA’s auspices. We see this as an opportunity to at least partially correct the historical injustice against the long-suffering Palestinian people, who have lost an unprecedented number of peaceful lives over the past seven months…
… Palestine must become a full member of the UN…. We believe that the most important element of this draft is contained in its recommendation to the UN Security Council to reconsider Palestine’s application for UN membership. It is a moral obligation for all of us. Only full membership will allow Palestine to join the ranks of other members of the Organization and fully exercise the rights that this status implies. ….The Palestinian people have long deserved it. Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at the 10th Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly
Well said.
Bottom line: Biden and his handlers do not want the Palestinians to have their own state which is why he is assisting Israel in annihilating the native population and replacing them with Jewish settlers. Fortunately, under international law the Occupied Territories will be Palestinian land into perpetuity and there’s nothing the United States or Israel can do about it.
While presented to the world as a humanitarian effort, the US-led ‘Maritime Corridor’ in Gaza is a strategic maneuver aimed at consolidating US and Israeli control over land and sea.
Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza, which has killed over 35,000 civilians, predominantly women and children, has been executed alongside the denial of humanitarian aid since the war’s onset last October.
With cases of famine already in evidence, Tel Aviv’s utter disregard of the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling demanding immediate access to aid, and Washington’s veto of UN Security Council resolutions advocating for a Gaza ceasefire, both Israel and the US have come under significant global fire.
This backlash is notably strong on the campuses of major US universities, a growing student movement that has arguably breathed new life into the Palestinian solidarity movement. Concerns about the Gaza genocide’s potential damage to the global image of the US have belatedly reached the White House, with US President Joe Biden only now threatening – in advance of the November elections – to curtail the transfer of large offensive munitions to Israel.
A Maritime Corridor for Gaza
Curiously, despite his robust support of Israel’s Gaza assault until recent days, Biden appeared to take an atypical stance during his 7 March State of the Union address:
“Tonight, I’m directing the US military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier on the Gaza coast in the Mediterranean. This pier will facilitate the arrival of large ships loaded with food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters.“
That atypical initiative, during a period when hundreds of tons of US weapons were being airlifted to Israel daily, raises many questions about whether the establishment of a temporary pier in Gaza – under the guise of ‘humanitarian’ concern – is purely aimed at mitigating international criticism, or if it also serves Washington’s broader geopolitical objectives in the region.
If the US was indeed concerned about rushing aid to Gaza on an urgent basis, it could simply have done so via the Strip’s many land border crossings with Israel and the Egyptian one with Rafah, where hundreds of aid trucks have been lined up for months to deliver emergency food and medicine.
So why delay land aid for months to build a sea pier, one that potentially violates international maritime law? And is “humanitarian aid” just a ruse to occupy the seacoast of Gaza illegally?
According to Washington’s narrative, the maritime corridor is intended to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid from Cyprus to Gaza via a new pier. The corridor plans to start with 90 trucks rolling off to Gaza, and then scale up to 150 trucks. However, this volume is still far below the hundreds of trucks needed daily.
There are several hurdles and concerns associated with the maritime corridor. The operations will include Israeli inspections in Cyprus, which could lead to delays and complications. The sensitivity around inspections and security, especially concerning items deemed as “dual-use” goods (usable for both civilian and military purposes) – which in the past, per Israeli diktats, have included biscuits, chickens, and toys, and today includes maternity kits, sleeping bags, and dates – could impede the smooth processing of aid.
In its provisional measures decision, the ICJ emphasized that humanitarian aid to Gaza must not be obstructed. Therefore, Israel’s blockade has become void under normal circumstances.
In maritime operations, if a blockade is applied, no ships should be able to enter the area. Now, since the US has established a humanitarian corridor, this effectively nullifies the blockade and helps Tel Aviv pretend there isn’t one. Consequently, the US is practically invalidating the blockade decision recorded in the provisional measures decision by the ICJ, which was not supposed to be implemented – a legal loophole to provide succor to Israel’s massive international law violations.
Humanitarian aid or geopolitical strategy?
There’s significant political tension surrounding the corridor, with plenty of suspicions that it might slow down land routes or be associated with a siege strategy. The involvement of military entities and international politics adds layers of complexity and potential for delays or the politicization of aid.
Another aspect that casts doubt on the efficacy of the humanitarian aid corridor is its reliance on the Netzarim Corridor, also known as Route 749, imposed by the occupation army during the carnage. This east–west passage divides the northern and southern regions of the Gaza Strip and is a fortified road constructed by the Israeli army primarily for military access.
The route’s strategic placement and military significance complicate the entry and distribution of aid throughout Gaza. For the aid arriving through the maritime corridor, once the goods are offloaded at the pier, they still need to be transported across Gaza to reach the populations in need.
The Netzarim Corridor’s checkpoints could become bottlenecks for these deliveries. It is uncertain whether these checkpoints will allow seamless transportation of goods from the maritime corridor to the northern parts of Gaza, where famine has struck badly.
Consolidating control
Critics argue that the corridor could serve as a smokescreen for political maneuvers, posing a major threat not only to Gaza but to Egypt too, which stands to “lose its strategic advantage” over the Palestine file.
The suspicion is that the project, while ostensibly “facilitating” aid delivery, might also allow for increased control over the entirety of Gaza under the guise of humanitarian assistance. This control could potentially streamline Israel’s military operations and fortify its strategic positions within Gaza, ultimately influencing the broader geopolitical dynamics of the conflict.
Furthermore, the positioning of the pier may strategically protect Gaza’s nearby offshore gas fields, aligning with Israeli and US interests in stealing Palestinians’ energy resources.
The positioning of the aid entry points away from the northern parts of Gaza, where famine is most acute, to areas controlled by the Israeli army suggests a strategic alignment with Israel’s military objectives to remain physically in Gaza despite ceasefire negotiations that demand their complete exit from the Strip.
Concerns have also been raised about the potential for the US to take over control of the Egyptian border, effectively aiding in a permanent blockade of Gaza from Egypt, which could sever Gazans from access to any non-Israeli access to goods – forever.
In essence, while the maritime corridor could indeed alleviate a tiny portion of Gaza’s immediate humanitarian needs, its broader implications suggest a tangled web of geopolitical strategies.
Instead of establishing a floating pier for humanitarian aid, one of the most practical solutions is to send aid directly to Israel’s Ashdod Port, and from there to Gaza under UN supervision. However, in line with Israel’s military strategy, sending the aid through the Netzarim Corridor under Israeli military control to the assembly areas in the south of Gaza and directing the Palestinians to these aid points has facilitated the assault on Rafah.
Historical and strategic significance
To understand Washington’s geopolitical calculations, it’s worth examining Biden’s statements to Congress on 20 October 2023, in which he requested assistance for Israel’s security.
“This is a prudent investment. It will benefit American security for generations to come,” “We will make Israel stronger than ever,” and “We will build a good future in the Middle East.”
Palestine, situated at the crossroads between Asia and Africa and on the border of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, has been a source of contention since the earliest known great powers of history.
Historically, for powers in Africa or those controlling Egypt, Palestine has been key to securing the strategic Suez point for military strategy. Similarly, for powers in Asia or those emerging from the continent, controlling Palestine was crucial for accessing the Suez.
Today, the US faces the potential loss of access to the Bab el-Mandeb passage due to Yemen’s maritime operations in and around the Red Sea, which are now expanding to the Mediterranean. Such a loss would likely shift the balance of power in the Red Sea strategic area and further across West Asia.
When considering historical and current rivalries, it is evident that a significant benefit for Washington, as noted by Biden, is to control the Suez Canal through Tel Aviv.
It is plausible that Israel’s dominion over the Gaza Strip and the US control of the offshore waters of Gaza under the guise of humanitarian aid could facilitate US control over the exits of the Suez Canal, as well as the routes from Iran and Russia to the Eastern Mediterranean through Lebanon and Syria. The alignment of Israel’s objectives in Gaza with Washington’s strategic goals explains the continued US support of Israel – in spite of intensifying global outrage over its enabling of ethnic cleansing and land grabbing.
A silent sentinel watches over every corner in the bustling streets of Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, where the ancient echoes of history collide with the modern hum of daily life. This sentinel is not a person but a network of surveillance technology known ominously as the “Hebron Smart City.” Designed by Israeli authorities, this system blankets the city in a web of cameras, sensors and even automated weapons, tracking every movement of its Palestinian residents.
“Palestinians in Hebron are the most surveilled people on the planet,” explains journalist and activist Mnar Adley, highlighting the omnipresence of cameras and face-scanning technology. Adley says that the area, also known as al-Khalil to Palestinians, has become a testing ground for Israel’s surveillance apparatus, with advanced technologies like the “Wolf Pack” surveillance system in operation. This system collects vast amounts of data on Palestinians, including their personal details and movements, creating an atmosphere of constant surveillance.
Izzat Karake, a member of Youth Against Settlements, echoes this sentiment, noting the discomfort caused by constant surveillance. “Wherever I go as a Palestinian, I can see cameras,” he told MintPress while pointing out dozens of Israeli military cameras lining the streets. “We are constantly under surveillance.”
The Hebron Smart City, Adley explains, is more than just a collection of cameras and sensors; it is a symbol of Israel’s relentless efforts to control every aspect of Palestinian life. Face-scanning cameras, known as Red Wolf, line every street, their unblinking gaze capturing the faces of every passerby without their consent. These images are then fed into Israel’s Wolf Pack Database, a vast repository of information on Palestinians, all accessible through a mobile app, allowing them to track and monitor individuals with ease.
Amnesty International has condemned this mass surveillance project, denouncing it as “Automated Apartheid” in a scathing report. The system, they argue, reinforces existing practices of discrimination and segregation, further eroding the rights of Palestinians in Hebron at the hands of Israeli authorities, which the human rights group says has “a record of discriminatory and inhuman acts that maintain a system of apartheid. “The Israeli authorities are able to use facial recognition software – in particular at checkpoints – to consolidate existing practices of discriminatory policing, segregation, and curbing freedom of movement, violating Palestinians’ basic rights,” the report concludes.
This invasive surveillance technology that targets and monitors Palestinians compounds an already existing segregated system of apartheid in Hebron, where the city has been split into two zones, H1 and H2. These two segments of Hebron are separated by a militarized checkpoint that allows for the maintenance and expansion of an illegal Israeli settlement right in the middle of the Tel Rumeida neighborhood that overlooks the Palestinian city’s marketplace.
This is where Youth Against Settlements was born after a Palestinian building that was initially occupied first by the Israeli military and later by Israeli settlers was reclaimed for Palestinian use through a nonviolent direct action and legal campaign. Once a bustling Palestinian neighborhood, Tel Rumeida now hosts over 700 illegal Israeli settlers, heavily armed and protected by the military. The main thoroughfare, formerly known as Shuhada Street, has been renamed “Chicago Street” by Israeli authorities in an attempt to erase Palestinian heritage.
Each year, Izzat and his colleagues with Youth Against Settlements hold an annual march called Open Shuhada Street campaign that draws international attention to the illegal siege of the city. Not only has Israel occupied and fragmented this neighborhood to make room for the Israeli settlers, but it’s altering this area to Judaize the quarter – meaning planning to expand its colonization of the area to ethnically cleanse and displace Palestinians out of here, so Israeli settlers can take over. This military strategy is used to protect, expand and connect other Jewish settlements nearby in Israel’s quest to ensure an ethno-Jewish state.
Hebron has seen some of the most violent settler assaults against Palestinians, especially after Hamas’ surprise attack and Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza. In many cases, the armed settlers are escorted and protected by Israeli soldiers. Barbed wire covers Palestinian homes that are fenced in to protect them from Israeli settler attacks and harassment. But the intimidation doesn’t end there.
An AI smartshooter sits atop a checkpoint on Shuhada Street, pointing directly at Hebron’s marketplace, where thousands of Palestinians pass by each day. Israel installed the remote-controlled automatic turret gun in 2022. According to Israel’s Army spokesperson, the AI smart shooter “is used as a dispersal measure “as part of the Army’s improved preparations for confronting people disrupting order. However, the introduction of AI technology, such as the smartshooter, has only heightened tensions in the city. Residents walk through their own neighborhoods with a sense of unease, knowing that they are always under watchful eyes.
Just as Gaza has become a laboratory and showroom for Israel’s “battle-tested” weapons, the success of the Hebron Smart City facial recognition technology and database through Wolf Pack to track Palestinians will be used for Israel to continue to profit off of its illegal military occupation of Palestine and surveillance of Palestinian civilians.
This “Automated Apartheid” only further establishes segregation of Palestinians and expands Israel’s apartheid system and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Senior military officials in Sana’a have informed MintPress News of ongoing military preparations by the US, UK, and Saudi-led Coalition over the past two weeks. According to these sources, there are plans to initiate a significant aerial assault on the Yemeni mainland, focusing particularly on coastal regions in the west, as well as areas in the south near the Saudi border. This assault is expected to be accompanied by ground offensives carried out by factions aligned with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
MintPress News sources indicate a probable escalation, coinciding with significant military reinforcements. Notably, squadrons of US F-16 aircraft have been arriving at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, located less than 200 kilometers from the Yemeni border. Additionally, extensive air transport activities involving weapons and equipment have been observed over the past two weeks, with US cargo planes shuttling to and from military bases in Saudi Arabia and Djibouti.
On April 29, the Aviano Air Base in Italy declared the deployment of F-16 Fighting Falcon jets from its 510th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron to the Middle East. As stated on the Aviano Air Base website, these F-16s are set to undertake a range of missions, including safeguarding civilian vessels in the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian, alongside other crucial force protection and deterrence duties
Sources near the Saudi-led coalition-backed government in Aden revealed to MintPress News that the United States and Britain have ramped up their dialogue with the Ministry of Defense in the Aden administration. This surge comes in response to recent Yemeni activities in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean.
Military and political insiders in Sanaa informed MintPress News about the military exercise held on April 24. The event, dubbed “Desert Flag 9,” saw the participation of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and other Arab nations at the Al Dhafra base in the Emirates. This maneuver is believed to be part of preparations for the announcement of a new military coalition, ostensibly aimed at safeguarding international freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean. At the outset of the exercise, General Charles Keough, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, lauded the collaboration among allies in countering perceived Iranian threats.
Numerous officials in Sanaa and among Ansar Allah have issued public warnings about alleged plans orchestrated by the United States and Britain, with support from certain Arab nations. The Supreme Political Council, the highest governing body in the northern region, has cautioned against any hostile escalation by the United States in Yemen. It asserts that ongoing suspicious preparations aimed at dissuading Yemen from supporting Gaza will prove futile. Emphasizing that any consequences of such escalation will extend beyond Yemen’s borders, the Council has urged Saudi Arabia to prioritize its national interests over those of the United States.
It seems evident that Saudi and Emirati endeavors extend beyond merely challenging the naval blockade imposed by Ansar Allah on Israel, currently engaged in what many legal experts have termed a genocide in Gaza. Rather, indications suggest that these oil-rich nations may be poised to actively participate in an anticipated U.S. and U.K. military intervention. Their aim? To dismantle the blockade on Israel imposed by Yemeni forces and quell Ansar Allah’s assaults on Israeli vessels—actions purportedly intended to halt the ongoing genocide and alleviate the siege on civilians within the embattled enclave.
In addressing the Yemen-Saudi border situation, Muhammad Ali Al-Houthi, a member of the Supreme Political Council, raised poignant questions: “Why does Saudi Arabia deliberately target civilians on the Yemeni border with French Caesar’s cannons? Wouldn’t it be wiser for the Saudi army to position these cannons near the borders of the northern kingdom to aid the people of Gaza?” He cautioned against reckless actions, stating, “Do not play with fire. We possess a strategic arsenal far beyond what you anticipate.”
Hussein Al-Ezzi, serving as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Sana’a government, issued a stark warning:
“We are well aware of Washington’s hostile intentions. Henceforth, we hold Washington accountable for any dire consequences resulting from its reckless actions against Yemen. It may soon find itself devoid of safe havens in the region, as its interests become a common target for all those who value freedom.“
Seeking to entangle itself anew in the Yemen conflict and forge closer ties with Israel, the United States has pledged support to Saudi Arabia. This includes assistance for a Saudi nuclear program and designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally. Talks are ongoing to solidify a joint defense pact and enhance security cooperation, as reported by Saudi media.
IMPENDING ASSAULTS ON CRITICAL ASSETS
The peril isn’t just about the conflict’s escalation, but also the neighboring nations getting entangled in operations beyond their control. This risks sparking another tragic conflict, impacting not only war-torn Yemen but also neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia.
MintPress sources have confirmed that, in the case of a U.S.-led ground invasion of Yemen, planned assaults by Ansar Allah will target not only U.S. interests and bases within the involved nations but also critical facilities and assets belonging to those participating countries, such as oil installations.
Ansar Allah has issued a grave threat of launching a large-scale and aggressive assault aimed at crucial installations, including oil facilities, in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This ominous warning mirrors previous attacks, such as the devastating strikes on the Abqaiq oil facilities in September 2019, which resulted in a significant disruption to half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production.
Ali al-Quhom, a Member of the Political Council of Ansar Allah, wrote on X, “The stage has changed, and with it, the rules of engagement have changed. Saudi Arabia and the UAE must realize this, and seven years are enough to learn the lesson. Yemen has become stronger with the increase in military capabilities at all levels. Escalation will be met with escalation, and this is a fixed and inseparable rule that will never change, ever. As you lost before, you will lose now, but this time your loss will be greater than before.” He added:
“There should be no submission or surrender on the part of neighboring countries to American, British and Israeli pressure and will, indicating that any American move from the territories of neighboring countries will lead to strong Yemeni responses, these countries will be the target of Yemeni operations, We have a target bank that includes strategic and vital targets in depth and in areas of economic importance.”
IMMINENT RETALIATION
Mounting tensions in Yemen and the broader region coincide with the withdrawal of an American aircraft carrier from the Red Sea. Yemeni analysts suggest that this move signifies not only the persistence of Yemeni operations targeting maritime navigation linked to the Israeli regime but also hints at a shift towards ground-based operations for a more extensive assault on Yemeni territory. Yemeni sources indicate that the departure of USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Gravely from the Red Sea is part of the preparations for the coming assault.
General Shamsan, the head of the Military Spokesmen Committee in the Yemeni Army, informed MintPress that concurrent with the withdrawal of the American aircraft carrier, a squadron of aircraft has arrived at Saudi bases. This development aligns with diplomatic and political maneuvers. The Americans seem compelled to pivot towards attacks from land bases to mitigate potential heavy losses from retaliatory strikes against U.S. aircraft carriers and destroyers at sea.
While certain Yemenis perceive the withdrawal of the American aircraft carrier from the Red Sea as a triumph, numerous political, military officials, and analysts interviewed by MintPress regard Washington’s move with deep suspicion, framing it within the context of ongoing operational preparations, as emphasized by Brigadier General Shamsan.
Last Friday, the U.S. Navy declared that USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Gravely departed from the Red Sea after an almost four-month presence. Despite their deployment, the U.S. battle group was unable to impede Yemeni operations targeting maritime navigation associated with the Israeli regime, as these operations persisted.
Additionally, there’s a possibility, as indicated by a Yemeni source linked to the coordination between Yemeni and Iraqi resistance forces, that certain groups within the Resistance Axis, notably the Iraqi resistance, may engage in retaliatory strikes against key American and Saudi targets in the region. This prospect hints at potential conflict not only in the Red Sea but also in the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Gulf, posing a genuine threat to American interests. However, such escalation could potentially be averted or delayed, especially considering the Russian front and the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.
On the ground, clear signs of an impending conflict are emerging, particularly in the conflict zones of Taiz and Lahj, alongside other fronts. This coincides with significant military reinforcements being deployed by factions aligned with the Saudi-Emirati coalition from Aden to the strategic Tur al-Baha and Haifan fronts. These areas serve as vital contact points between Sanaa-aligned forces and coalition-backed militias. Tragically, in the Maqbanah area southwest of Taiz, an attack allegedly conducted by a drone affiliated with these factions resulted in the loss of two children and three women.
According to Yemeni military media, an American MQ9 drone was brought down above Saada Governorate while conducting a military operation. Footage released last Friday depicted Yemeni Armed Forces successfully shooting down the US MQ-9 aircraft using a missile.
In the days, military tensions between Yemeni forces and the American and British navies have surged to unprecedented levels. Reports indicate violent explosions along the coasts of Al-Khawkhah and Al-Mokha, spanning from Khor Amira, facing Bab Al-Mandab, to the southern shores of the country
Yemenis harbor a pervasive belief in the imminent likelihood of a ground invasion, a notion taken with utmost seriousness across the nation. Numerous officials, in interviews with MintPress, have openly discussed the potentiality of such an occurrence, grounded not in analysis but in raw data. Consequently, all regions, cities, and institutions have experienced a surge in recruitment efforts, operating under the banner of “Al-Aqsa Flood.”
YEMEN’S RESOLVE AMID ESCALATING TENSIONS
While Yemenis are earnestly grappling with the looming prospect of escalation, their resolve extends beyond merely halting attacks aimed at ending the conflict in Gaza and lifting the blockade. They’ve heralded an unprecedented development targeting Israeli vessels across the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, and Bab al-Mandab. On Tuesday, the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) launched strikes against two United States warships in the Red Sea and targeted the Cyclades bulk carrier, achieving precise hits. Subsequently, military media footage surfaced, showcasing the moment of the Cyclades ship’s bombing in the Indian Ocean, underscoring the Yemeni army’s capacity to execute operations hundreds of kilometers from the Yemeni coastline.
مشاهد لحظة استهداف سفينة (CYCLADES) بطائرة مسيرة والتي كانت متجهة إلى موانئ فلسطينَ المحتلة في البحر الأحمر pic.twitter.com/BNC4jPj1SM
In a televised address to the nation last Thursday discussing the latest regional developments, Ansar Allah leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi stated that the Yemeni army is enhancing its presence in the Indian Ocean, aiming to block Israeli-affiliated vessels from navigating the Cape of Good Hope route or towards the Red Sea. He further remarked, “The Yemeni front will remain open, and the Yemeni Armed Forces’ (YAF) operations in support of Palestine will continue.”
Since Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s speech, four Israeli, American, and British vessels have been hit. The Yemeni Navy struck the British ship ANDROMEDA STAR and the Israeli MSC Darwin ship on Saturday, along with an American warship and another commercial vessel named MAERSK YORKTOWN, and the Israeli MSC VERACRUZ on April 24. Preceding these events, the Yemeni army conducted four operations targeting two Israeli ships and two American ships on April 10.
Following Abdulmalik al-Houthi’s speech, four vessels affiliated with Israel, the United States and Britain were targeted by Ansar Allah. The Yemeni navy attacked the British vessel Andromeda Star and the Israeli MSC Darwinship on Saturday, as well as an American warship and a commercial vessel named Maersk Yorktown, and the Israeli MSC Veracruz on April 24. Prior to these incidents, the Yemeni army executed four operations against two Israeli ships and two American ships on April 10.
It’s worth noting that Ansar Allah has turned down several American offers aimed at halting their maritime attacks in support of Gaza. These offers included recognition of their group, revocation of their terrorist designation, payment of government employee salaries, and the signing of a comprehensive agreement with Saudi Arabia to end the war and initiate Yemen’s reconstruction.
Barbara Leaf, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, said in a press briefing that there are ongoing communications with Ansar Allah, urging the movement to engage in the Yemeni political process. However, she clarified that she wouldn’t characterize the discussions with strong language at this point. Leaf emphasized that “Washington is employing all available means, both diplomatically and militarily, to deter the Houthis from their actions,” which she described as “reckless” in the Red Sea.
Feature photo | Yemenis attend a massive rally against US-led airstrikes on Yemen and the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip in Sanaa, Yemen, March 1, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
Not only has Israel failed to defeat Hamas, but it is being dragged into discussions on Palestinian statehood, which its Gaza genocide has put back onto the international agenda.
After seven months of a brutal military assault on Gaza, it is abundantly clear that Israel has not succeeded in eradicating Hamas. Instead of delivering a decisive military victory, the occupation state finds itself being drawn kicking and screaming into negotiations over a two-state solution.
Withstanding the impracticality of establishing a genuinely independent, sovereign Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, this scenario is becoming increasingly likely despite long-standing opposition from the Israeli government. It is an extraordinary development, particularly as Tel Aviv’s strategy, as articulated by foreign policy advisor Ophir Falk, was mainly to “destroy Hamas” and its military and governance capabilities entirely.
Today, the two-state option is frantically being resuscitated in Washington, of all places, and by stalwart allies of Tel Aviv.
Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel and staunch supporter of the occupation state, argues in Foreign Affairs magazine that far from being “dead,” the two-state solution now looks to be the only reasonable game in town:
“The reason for this revival is not complicated. There are, after all, only a few possible alternatives to the two-state solution. There is Hamas’ solution, which is the destruction of Israel. There is the Israeli ultra-right’s solution, which is the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the deportation of Palestinians to other countries. There is the ‘conflict management’ approach pursued for the last decade or so by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which aimed to maintain the status quo indefinitely – and the world has seen how that worked out. And there is the idea of a binational state in which Jews would become a minority, thus ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state. None of those alternatives would resolve the conflict – at least not without causing even greater calamities. And so if the conflict is to be resolved peacefully, the two-state solution is the only idea left standing.“
Disarmament for statehood?
In widely publicized comments last week, Khalil al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas in Gaza, has appeared to endorse the 1967 borders for a future Palestinian state explicitly.
In a recent interview with AP, Hayya spoke of “a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the return of Palestinian Authority (PA) in accordance with the international resolutions” along Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
Most significantly, though, he hinted that the resistance movement’s military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, could potentially dissolve itself and/or fold its cadres into a Palestinian national army:
“All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their state, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces have turned into the national army.“
Instead of embracing these possibilities, Falk dismissed Hayya as a “high-ranking terrorist” and sought to redirect the conversation back to intransigent Israeli demands:
“Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government set a mission to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities in Gaza, free the hostages, and ensure that Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel and the rest of the civilized world in the future,” he said, adding, “Those goals will be achieved.”
Diplomacy in Doha and Istanbul
Although Hayya emphasized that his views are aligned with Hamas’ historical positions, as articulated by the resistance movement’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 1998 and reiterated in its 2017 charter of general principles and policies, his public statements highlight the immense political pressures faced by Hamas, notably from political allies Qatar and Turkiye.
These pressures aim to foster high-level international and regional talks that could potentially end the conflict and establish ‘permanent stability.’ As with any negotiation, there are essential questions to address: Who will have the authority to enforce these terms? What limitations will be imposed? These are critical issues for Palestinians besieged in Gaza and for their broader cause – as well as for Al-Qassam and the entire resistance.
Behind the scenes, both Qatar and Turkiye have been instrumental in shaping Hamas’ new diplomatic approach. The movement’s external leaders, including Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh, have participated in discussions facilitated by both countries in Doha and Istanbul.
Earlier this month, in a joint press conference with his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was explicitly supportive, also highlighting the west’s positive stance toward intensifying peace efforts based on the two-state solution.
“In our political talks with Hamas for years, they have accepted a Palestinian state to be established within the 1967 borders,” Fidan told reporters.
“They have told me that following the establishment of the Palestinian state, Hamas would no longer need an armed wing and they would continue as a political party,” he added.
The ball is in Israel’s court
Although Israel’s western allies have long sought to exclude Hamas from any and all Palestinian processes, it has become abundantly clear that Gaza’s military leadership, particularly Al-Qassam Brigades, is set to play a crucial role in any negotiation process.
This is an extraordinary victory of sorts for Hamas, which has successfully managed to insert itself into future deliberations, not only on Gaza but Palestine as a whole. The movement’s tactical decision to endorse the 1967 borders not only aims to position Hamas as a credible negotiator but also strategically corners the far-right coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
By signaling willingness to demilitarize in exchange for statehood, Hamas aims to place the onus on Tel Aviv, toying with the inherent vulnerability of its coalition government and potentially precipitating its collapse. This move not only improves Hamas’ leverage in any forthcoming negotiations but, ironically, also aligns with the US interests in seeing regime change in Israel.
It is clear that Hamas has – whether out of conviction, under pressure, or as a wily tactic – become a necessary partner in broader and long-term political negotiations concerning the future of Palestine and the region.
Over the years, the movement has itself been compelled to engage in several rounds of indirect negotiations with Israel, most notably at the end of the first decade of the millennium when Hamas was still based in Damascus. That was part of a larger regional effort spurred by Ankara to rejuvenate the peace process.
Twenty-six years ago, Khaled Meshaal met with former US President Jimmy Carter in Damascus during the latter’s nine-day West Asia tour aimed at breaking the deadlock between Israel and Hamas early in their governance of Gaza.
The Palestinian resistance movement enjoyed considerable leeway for political maneuvering due to the geopolitical climate at the time. Carter reported that Hamas expressed willingness to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders if agreed upon by the Palestinians and acknowledged Israel’s right to exist peacefully as a neighboring state.
Compelling Israel to do Hamas’ will
But today, Hamas’ renewed strength comes from two main factors: the relentless, unified military pushback by the region’s Axis of Resistance in support of their Palestinian allies and unprecedented global condemnation of Israel’s Gaza genocide – both sharply impacting and confounding Tel Aviv’s initial, over-confident war objectives.
Rather than defeating Hamas, Israel now finds itself on the back foot, engaging in negotiations that center around the one outcome it had least expected – that of a two-state solution.
Tel Aviv’s disturbing dilemma also showcases the political acumen of Hamas and the Palestinian resistance, who recognized the utility of hard power in achieving political ends rather than as an end in itself – in sharp contrast to Israel’s approach throughout this conflict.
The fact that, seven months after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Hamas retains its array of capabilities signifies not only the abject failure of Israel’s military and political objectives but also an unexpected humbling of Tel Aviv. Israel, today, is being forced into negotiations on Palestinian statehood that it has assiduously avoided for 30 long years.
This shift is undoubtedly energized by the unprecedented US student protest movement and other anti-colonial voices around the world, adding a global dimension to the local struggle. These developments are yet another ace in the hand for Hamas and another nail in the coffin for Israeli leverage.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
On April 13, Iran, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansar Allah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on Israel, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s criminal bombing of Tehran’s Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Iranian generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – particularly West Asia – will never be the same again.
“This action was hugely significant. Now, the Israelis will have to be extremely careful about what they do in Syria against Tehran. The regional balance of power has permanently shifted away from the Zionists. Tel Aviv will never recover at all. It is the end of them. They have destroyed themselves. They are seen as a regime that has no place in the civilized world, a Nazi state, across the entire globe,” geopolitical expert Dr. Mohammad Marandi tells MintPress News.
Iran’s first-ever strike on Israel, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. Israel claimed a 99% interception rate.
However, extensive photo and video material shows that most missiles hit their targets and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top-tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.
This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills through Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message—Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature but didn’t do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv’s to decide whether—and how—to retaliate. A response came on April 19 in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.
Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality, a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran’s air defenses but ultimately couldn’t. An Iranian spokesperson referred to the effort as “failed and humiliating.” This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced following Operation True Promise’s seismic success. As we shall see, Israel now has little time remaining and no good choices left to make.
Iraqi military personnel inspect Israeli missile fragments found by farmers in Latifiya and Aziziya. Photo | Sabreen
‘NEW EQUATION’
Despite its astonishing optics and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn’t a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook Iran’s longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran’s Syrian embassy was without historical parallel and concerned with Israel eliciting a major escalation to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred a broader response while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards Israel. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:
“We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point, we will attack against them.“
Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike Israel directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities and vulnerabilities of Israel and the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.
Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13, and the data yield was surely enormous. Since Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly toldPolitico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev “become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians”:
“We used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.“
If there’s a next time, too, Iran’s missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles were fired at Israel during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) general.
“One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones,” they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs “were enormous,” comparable to what Israel burned through during the entire 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.
IDF personnel remove debris from missile intercepted during the Iranian attack in southern Israel. Photo | IDF
Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly a great many orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. Dr. Marandi tells MintPress News that “most” of the initial “decoy” barrage, including drones, were collecting dust. “Tehran was looking for an excuse to get rid of them,” he says.
“Most of the heavy-duty work attempting to counter Iran’s strike was done by the Americans anyway, not the Israelis. The Iron Dome barely factored in. The two places hit hardest – the southern airbase where F35s are based and Tel Aviv’s Golan Heights intelligence base resulted in significant damage and casualties. Of course, the Zionists don’t admit this,” Dr. Marandi adds.
This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for Israel, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end Ansar Allah’s anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea. Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast at squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 Ansar Allah drones. A CIA officer lamented:
“That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor. We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.“
‘ISRAEL GOES UNDER’
There is no sign yet of Washington having publicly rectified this concern, which may account for why U.S. officials at the start of April offered Ansar Allah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade. This was summarily rejected. No business as usual – no commerce, no trade – on Yemen’s watch while Palestinians are slaughtered. In the event of any subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, too, Tehran’s drones will not be used to deter shipping either, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust Israeli air defenses.
This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause battlefield collapse and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries and states trying to keep Kiev’s lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.
That conclusion is supported by an April 22 Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran’s barrage. It “matched worst-case scenarios” outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, “this was on the high end…of what we were anticipating.” White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn’t.
On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st-century Holocaust, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation published on November 6 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself.
“Thousands” of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.“
One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn’t yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, Ansar Allah and Hezbollah could completely paralyze the country economically, render entire areas uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran’s crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a terrifying scale.
Resultantly, Israel’s “Samson Option,” under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, “We have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under.” But Tehran’s hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, chemical or biological payload of their own.
‘WHOEVER MOVES’
Israel’s Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster in every conceivable way. The fiasco’s consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent they could be fatal. This may account for Netanyahu’s flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of the Israeli Defense Forces’ defeat is such that in a scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11, Zionist “journalist” Chaim Levinson lamented:
“We’ve lost. Truth must be told… It’s unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel’s northern border…No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership’s weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we’re a shtetl with an airforce, and that’s on the condition it’s awakened in time.”
Haaretz | Apr 11, 2024
Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv’s battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IDF, has condemned the Forces’ “military and moral failures” and how “its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down”:
“[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound…Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza, and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left…Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible.“
The Economist went on to slam a “lack of enforcement” of already virtually non-existent “rules of engagement” under which the IDF operates. A “veteran reserve officer” was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily “decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed.” A sapper in another unit admitted, “The only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”:
“Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalizing Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20, the IDF’s chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, ‘to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn’t ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.’ Four months into the war, this was too little, too late.”
That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far Israel has fallen since October 7, 2023. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s citizenry. Adversaries do not fear its once-vaunted military and its ability to unilaterally strike neighboring countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.
Meanwhile, Israel has suffered population collapse, with simultaneous mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs. The trauma of perpetrating genocide and living under the daily threat of attack, as Palestinians have since 1948, has ravaged soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads and likely won’t return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.
“I don’t think 10 years from now Israel will exist. Zionism will die. The only solution is equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews throughout Palestine. This war will continue, but direct engagement with Iran would be totally destructive, militarily. So the Israelis now target Rafah, but they will be defeated there, and they know that. As long as Netanyahu is leader, we will have a continuation of this tragedy. The only way out is a coup in Tel Aviv,” Dr. Marandi concludes.
For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, Israel as we know it is on the brink of extinction, which wasn’t the case before Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel’s creation. And there is no going back to “normal.”
Time is now and forever on the side of the tenacious, undefeated Resistance – so, too, justice and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanizing words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023:
“If I must die, let it bring hope‘
Feature photo | A passerby, taking on his cellphone, walks past a banner showing missiles being launched from Iranian map in northern Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Vahid Salemi | AP
In confecting a media row about the policing of London marches against genocide, the Israel lobby knew it would score a victory, whatever happened
A gruesome discovery was made in Gaza last weekend. Some 300 Palestinian bodies – of men, women and children – were unearthed from an unmarked mass grave in the courtyard of the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
Even given Israel’s record of committing relentless atrocities in Gaza over the past six months – killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children – this one stood out.
Some bodies were reported to have been found with their hands and feet bound, and stripped of clothing, strongly suggesting they had been executed during a three-month invasion of the city by Israeli soldiers. Others were said to be decapitated, or their skin and organs removed.
Some 10,000 people had been sheltering at Gaza’s second-largest hospital when it was attacked back in February. At the time there were reports of patients and staff being picked off by sniper fire. The medical facility was left in ruins.
Another 400 people are still reported missing in Khan Younis. More mass graves are already being uncovered.
Referring to some of the bodies, Yamen Abu Suleiman, a civil defence leader in Khan Younis, told CNN: “We do not know if they were buried alive or executed. Most of the bodies are decomposed.”
The revelations from Khan Younis fit a pattern that has been gradually emerging as Israeli troops have pulled back.
Last week, the latest of several mass graves were found at Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa. Israel left the area earlier this month after destroying the hospital. Together, the graves are reported to have contained hundreds of bodies.
Further unmarked graves have been discovered in Beit Lahiya.
The United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, said he was “horrified” by the reports.
Groundswell of anger
Back in the 1990s, the identification of mass graves of thousands of Muslim men from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica led to the setting up of a special war crimes tribunal of the International Criminal Court. It ruled in 2001 that a genocide had occurred in Srebrenica committed by Bosnian Serbs – a judgment later confirmed by the International Court of Justice, sometimes referred to as the World Court.
In the circumstances, one might have expected the discovery of mass graves of hundreds of Palestinians to be front-page news – especially since the same World Court ruled three months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza.
And yet, like so many other Israeli atrocities, this one barely caused a ripple in the news cycle.
Months ago, the establishment British media largely lost interest in reporting on the continuing slaughter in Gaza. The contrast with the media’s early coverage of Ukraine has been stark. The discovery of a mass grave containing some 100 bodies in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha – blamed on Russian troops – caused international outrage.
Bucha quickly became a byword for Russian savagery, and the discovery sustained months of calls for Russian leaders to be tried for genocide.
The general indifference of British media outlets to the mass graves found in Gaza is hugely convenient for Britain’s two main political parties.
The UK has avoided pushing for a ceasefire to end Israel’s bloodletting in Gaza. It refuses to stop selling Israel weapons and components that have helped in the killing of Palestinians – and potentially aid workers too.
On Israel’s say-so, Britain has cut funding to Unrwa, the UN aid agency best placed to stop a famine Israel is wilfully inducing in the enclave by blocking aid. And a British abstention helped foil a vote in the United Nations Security Council this month to recognise Palestine as a state, something 140 other nations have already done.
The Labour party has offered only muted opposition.
Bipartisan support in the UK for Israel’s plausible genocide has provoked a groundswell of public anger, including regular protests in London that attract hundreds of thousands of marchers.
Pro-Israel hoax
Once again, however, the British media has seemed far less interested in reporting Israeli atrocities than in imputing malign motivations to large sections of the British public incensed by what is happening in Gaza.
It was quite extraordinary that the discovery of mass graves in the enclave was almost completely drowned out by an all-too-obvious hoax pulled by an Israel lobbyist.
Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, has been trying to shut down the peaceful London marches calling for an end to the butchering of men, women and children in Gaza since Israel began its military assault more than six months ago.
In Falter’s words, the hundreds of thousands of people who turn out regularly to call for a ceasefire – including a large bloc of Jews – are “lawless mobs” posing a direct threat to Jews like himself.
He has found powerful allies in the government. Home Secretary James Cleverly has said the march organisers have “real evil intent”, while his predecessor Suella Braverman labelled the protests calling for a ceasefire as “hate marches”.
Both have put pressure on the police to ban the protests for being supposedly antisemitic
There is precisely no evidence for any of these claims. In fact, according to police figures, Glastonbury music festivalgoers were nearly four times more likely to be arrested than those attending the London marches.
Which has left the continuing mass marches a major embarrassment to both the UK government and the opposition Labour party by highlighting their continuing complicity in what has become – with revelations like the discovery of mass graves – ever more clearly a genocide.
‘Crossing the street’
That is the proper context for understanding Falter’s latest intervention.
As the Metropolitan police are only too aware, Falter’s group, along with other pro-Israel activists, have every incentive to engineer a provocation to add to the already considerable pressure on the police to ban the London marches and further curtail a fundamental civil liberty: the right to protest.
A video on social media shows Falter being confronted by police in a previous incident in which he tried to drive a large van with pro-Israel messages down the march route.
But his breakthrough came this month when, accompanied by an Israeli-trained security detail and a film crew, he tried repeatedly to break through a police line along the route and walk against the flow of the march. Responsible for maintaining public order at large protests, Met officers stopped him.
There are well-known rules imposed by the police surrounding large protests on highly charged ideological issues like this one.
The marchers are not allowed to stray from the route determined by the police, and opponents – whether Israel apologists like Falter or Islamophobic white nationalists – are not allowed to approach and antagonise the marchers. The job of the police is to keep the sides apart.
Blocked by officers, Falter had his script ready. He simply insisted on his right to “cross the street” as a Jew going about his business.
Given the way the public discourse about Israel and antisemitism has been malevolently manipulated by the British establishment over the past eight years – after the long-time Palestinian solidarity activist Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader – Falter could not lose in this encounter.
If the police arrested him, he would have filmed evidence that he was being victimised as a Jew by an antisemitic police force.
If they refused to let him “cross the street”, he would have filmed proof that the march was indeed filled with Jew haters posing a threat to his safety.
And if the police failed in their duties and let him and his retinue walk against the flow of the packed protest, he – like anyone attempting to do this – would at the very least be jostled. Based on the established credulity of the establishment media in covering antisemitism, Falter was presumably confident that this could be spun as a hate crime against him.
Ugly politics
The police clearly seemed to understand Falter’s game plan. They appeared extremely reluctant to arrest him, even though a former chief superintendent, Dal Babu, observed that, in trying to push past them, Falter could have been charged with “assault on a police officer and breach of the peace”.
Instead, the officers patiently argued for at least a quarter of an hour with Falter, pointing out that he could bypass the march using a different route.
But in this lengthy, testy encounter, the Campaign Against Antisemitism boss finally got what he wanted. One officer made a slip-up, suggesting that the problem was that the skullcap-wearing Falter was “openly Jewish”.
As noted, lots of Jews attend the march and do so under banners declaring that they are Jews. Despite being “openly Jewish”, all say they are warmly welcomed by other demonstrators.
The officer’s mistake was understandable. Israel apologists and the British establishment spent years manipulating the public discourse to conflate Israel, the political nationalist ideology of Zionism and Jewishness in a blatant ploy to vilify supporters of Corbyn, the anti-racist former Labour leader, as antisemites.
The problem wasn’t that Falter is “openly Jewish”, it was that he is a vocal, openly Zionist supporter of Israel, one who makes excuses for its genocide and vilifies those who are opposed to the bloodletting. It is not his ethnicity or religion that are a provocation, it is his ugly politics.
But with the officer’s comment in the can, Falter released a heavily edited version of his confrontation with the police to an establishment media only too willing – at least, initially – to swallow two completely implausible ideas Falter was peddling.
First, that the police officer’s comment was proof that the Met is institutionally racist against Jews and that is why it has allowed the anti-genocide marches to go ahead. Falter called for the head of the Met, Sir Mark Rowley, to be sacked.
And second, and more importantly, that the officer’s comment was proof that the marches are indeed “hate marches” consisting of – as he declared to a BBC interviewer – “racists, extremists and terrorist sympathisers”.
Accusations of ‘fakery’
It may all have been fake news but it fitted an agenda the media has been promoting for years: that anything more than the lightest-touch criticism of Israel is evidence of antisemitism.
The political and media class have been increasingly struggling to credibly sustain that idea in the face of Israel committing a genocide – but Falter’s video served briefly as a shot in the arm.
From one police officer’s brief, verbal slip-up, he was able to fire up a national debate that took as its premise the idea that police were colluding with “antisemitic hate marches”.
On the back foot, the Met hurriedly agreed to meet Falter and “Jewish community leaders”, seemingly to get their advice on what needed to be done about the marches.
Sunday’s BBC evening news reported that pressure was growing on the Met “to get the balance right between allowing legitimate protest and cracking down on hate speech and intimidation”.
Good Morning Britain’s hosts fawned over Falter on Monday morning, accepting uncritically that the march posed a threat to him as a Jew and expressing concern that the police were not getting that balance right.
But quite unlike the years-long accusations of fake antisemitism whipped up by Falter and others to oust Corbyn, one that was enthusiastically amplified by the state-corporate media, the Met had powerful allies inside the establishment that pushed back.
Before Falter’s hoax could properly take hold, Sky released a much longer video of his confrontation with the police. It showed that they had blocked his way after identifying him as a provocateur. Police can be heard accusing him of being “disingenuous” and telling him to stop “running into protesters”.
Former police officers, including Babu, were invited on TV to offer a counter-narrative that cast Falter in a far less sympathetic light.
By Tuesday, the Met chief Rowley was feeling confident enough to go on the attack, praising the officer at the centre of the row and accusing pro-Israel activists of using “fakery” to undermine the Met.
Favourite tactic
But even wounded, Falter emerged decisively as the victor.
No one is talking – as they should be – about why groups like the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which regularly and so visibly meddle deeply in British politics in the interests of a foreign power, Israel, are treated as charities.
Instead, Falter has given the political and media class more ammunition to argue that the marches need to be banned, and has put police decision-making under yet more scrutiny.
Whatever bullishness Rowley exhibited in public, his battles behind the scenes against a government keen to silence the marches will have been made far more complicated.
But, more importantly, Falter has played an invaluable role in bolstering Israel’s favourite tactic. He has deflected attention in the UK away from its war crimes – including the mass graves in Khan Younis – to squabbles entirely divorced from reality about whether Jews are safe from the anti-war movement.
Precisely the same dynamic is playing out in the United States, where the establishment – from President Joe Biden down – is painting peaceful protests on college campuses against the genocide as hotbeds of hatred and antisemitism.
There, things are even more out of hand, with the police called in to make arrests of students and faculty.
In both cases, the real debate – about why Britain and the US are still actively supporting the bombing and starvation of Gaza’s population after six months of genocide – has once more been muffled by the Israel lobby’s fake news.
Establishment media have once again seized on any pretext available to them to focus on a twig rather than the forest.
Truth obscured
The pattern is hard to miss: the British establishment, including the government and the BBC, are working hand in hand to help Israel and its genocide apologists win the public relations battle.
Only briefly, when the honour of the police – the establishment’s fist – got a bloodied nose, was there a degree of pushback.
Take, for example, the day in January when the World Court ruled there was a “plausible” case made by South Africa’s lawyers that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That same day Israel successfully sabotaged the devastating news with a scoop of its own.
It alleged that some 12 Unrwa staff members it had seized in Gaza – out of a total of 13,000 in the enclave on the agency’s payroll – had confessed to taking part in Hamas’ attack on 7 October, in which some 1,150 Israelis were killed.
Israel demanded western states immediately cut all funding to Unrwa. It has been Israel’s long-term goal to eliminate the refugee agency and permanently erase the rights of Palestinians to return to homes their families were expelled from in 1948 in what is now Israel.
Most western capitals, including the UK, dutifully complied, even though the decision was certain to plunge Gaza even deeper into a famine Israel has been engineering as part of its genocidal policies.
But the announcement’s timing was important too. Western media focused their coverage on a story about Unrwa that should have been marginal, even were it true.
The World Court’s finding that Israel was plausibly committing genocide was far more significant. Nonetheless, reporting on the ruling – especially the fact that the court suspected Israel was carrying out genocidal acts – was entirely overshadowed by the claims against Unrwa.
This week, months on, an independent review commissioned by the UN and led by the former French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, found that Israel has still failed to produce any evidence to support its allegations against Unrwa.
But just as with Falter’s hoax, the goal of such accusations by Israel is never to expose the truth. The aim is to distract from the truth.
The same can be said of Israel’s still unsubstantiated claims of unprecedented savagery committed by Hamas on 7 October, from beheading babies to carrying out systematic mass rape.
None of these allegations, which have been widely regurgitated by the establishment western media, have ever been backed up with evidence. Whenever testimonies have been scrutinised, they have unravelled.
But all these claims have served a purpose. They keep western publics focused on evil humanitarian aid workers and evil anti-war protesters rather than the kind of evil that dares in broad daylight to kill 15,000 children, destroy hospitals, and hide bodies in mass graves.
Throughout history, fringe religious Zionist parties have had limited success in achieving the kind of electoral victories that would allow them an actual share in the country’s political decision-making.
The impressive 17 seats won by Israel’s extremist religious party, Shas, in the 1999 elections was a watershed moment in the history of these parties, whose ideological roots go back to Avraham Itzhak Kook and his son Zvi Yehuda Hacohen.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé referred to the Kooks’ ideological influence as a “fusion of dogmatic messianism and violence.”
Throughout the years, these religious parties struggled on several fronts: their inability to unify their ranks, their failure to appeal to mainstream Israeli society and their inability to strike the balance between their messianic political discourse and the kind of language – not necessarily behavior – that Israel’s western allies expect.
Though much of the financial support and political backing of Israel’s extremists originate in the United States and, to a lesser extent, other European countries, Washington has been clear regarding its public perception of Israel’s religious extremists.
In 2004, the United States banned the Kach party, which could be seen as the modern manifestation of the Kooks and Israel’s early religious Zionist ideologues.
The founder of the group, Meir Kahane, was assassinated in November 1990 while the extremist rabbi – responsible for much violence against innocent Palestinians throughout the years – was giving another hate-filled speech in Manhattan.
Kahane’s death was only the start of much violence meted out by his followers, lead among them an American doctor, Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down on February 25, 1994, dozens of Palestinian Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
Prayer mats covered in blood in the aftermath of the massacre carried out by Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, February 25, 1994. Photo Al-Khalil
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers while protesting the massacre was nearly as many as those killed by Goldstein earlier in the day, a tragic but perfect representation of the relationship between the Israeli state and the violent settlers who operate as part of a larger state agenda.
That massacre was a watershed moment in the history of religious Zionism. Instead of serving as an opportunity to marginalize their growing influence by the supposedly more liberal Zionists, they grew in power and, ultimately, political influence within the Israeli state.
Goldstein himself became a hero, whose grave, in Israel’s most extremist illegal settlement in the West Bank, Kiryat Arba, is now a famous shrine, a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Israelis.
It is particularly telling that Goldstein’s shrine was built opposite Meir Kahane’s Memorial Park, which indicates the clear ideological connections between these individuals, groups, and funders.
In recent years, however, the traditional role played by Israel’s religious Zionists began to shift, leading to the election of Itamar Ben-Gvir to the Israeli Knesset in 2021 and, ultimately, to his role as the country’s National Security Minister in December 2022.
Ben-Gvir is a follower of Kahane. “It seems to me that, ultimately, Rabbi Kahane was about love. Love for Israel without compromise, without any other consideration,” he said in November 2022.
But, unlike Kahane, Ben-Gvir was not satisfied with the role of religious Zionists as cheerleaders for the settlement movement, almost daily raids of Al-Aqsa and the occasional attacks on Palestinians. He wanted to be at the center of Israeli political power.
It is an interesting debate whether Ben-Gvir achieved his status as a direct result of the successful grassroots work of religious Zionism or because the political circumstances of Israel itself have changed in his favor. The truth, however, might be somewhere in the middle. Israel’s historic failure of its so-called political left—namely the Labor Party—has, in recent years, propelled a relatively unfamiliar phenomenon—the political center.
Meanwhile, Israel’s traditional right, the Likud party, grew weaker, partly because it failed to appeal to the growing, more youthful religious Zionism constituency and also because of the series of splits that occurred after Ariel Sharon’s breaking up of the party and the founding of Kadima in 2005 – a party that has been long disbanded.
To survive, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has redefined his party to its most extremist version of all time and, thus, began to attract religious Zionists with the hope of filling the gaps created because of internal infighting within the Likud.
By doing so, Netanyahu has granted religious Zionists the opportunity of a lifetime.
Soon, following the October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood operation, and in the early days of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Ben-Gvir launched his National Guard, a group which he tried, but failed, to compose before the war.
Thanks to Ben-Gvir, Israel, now, per the words of opposition leader Yair, has become a country with a “private militia.”
By March 19, Ben-Gvir announced that 100,000 gun permits had been handed over to his supporters. It is within this period that the US began imposing ‘sanctions’ on a few individuals affiliated with Israel’s settler extremist movement, a slight slap on the wrist considering the massive damage that has already been done and the tremendous violence that is likely to follow in the coming months and years.
With a portrait of late Rabbi Meir Kahane on the wall, left, a Jewish settler walks inside a building taken from a Palestinian family in Hebron, Nov. 16, 2008. Dan Balilty | AP
Unlike Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir’s thinking is not limited to his desire to reach a specific position within the government. Israel’s religious extremists are seeking a fundamental and irreversible shift in Israeli politics.
The recent push to change the relationship between the judicial and exclusive branches of government was as crucial to those extremists as it was to Netanyahu himself. However, the latter has championed such an initiative to shield himself against legal accountability. Ben-Gvir’s supporters have a different reason in mind: they want to dominate the government and the military with no responsibility or oversight.
Israel’s religious Zionists are playing a long game, which is not linked to a particular election, individual or government coalition. They are redefining the state, along with its ideology. And they are winning.
Ben-Gvir and his threats to topple Netanyahu’s coalition government have been the main driving force behind the genocide in Gaza.
If Meir Kahane were still alive, he would have been proud of his followers. The ideology of the once marginalized and loathed extremist rabbi is now the backbone of Israeli politics.
Faced with financial, logistical, and geopolitical challenges, Riyadh has been forced to review its ambitious project, The Line, and critically reassess “economic normalization” with Israel.
Launched in 2017, Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, a sprawling high-tech development on the northwestern Red Sea coast, was introduced as the crown jewel of Vision 2030.
This futuristic desert megaproject, extending over some Jordanian and Egyptian territory, was cast as a bold leap toward economic diversification under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). But, recent geopolitical setbacks have raised significant concerns about the viability of some of NEOM’s components.
Initially celebrated for its revolutionary design, The Line, a linear city within NEOM, was to redefine urban living. Yet, recent reports suggest a dramatic scaling back. Earlier this month, Bloomberg revealed a massive reduction in the metropolis’ scope – from 105 to 1.5 miles – and a decrease in likely inhabitants from 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000 by 2030. Furthermore, funding uncertainties and workforce reductions indicate a project in jeopardy.
While this adjustment does not signify a wholesale failure of Vision 2030, it does prompt a re-evaluation of the project’s most ambitious elements.
Experts suggest that The Line’s original scale was overly optimistic, lacking the necessary urban infrastructure for such an innovative endeavor. Financial and geopolitical challenges, including regional instability and insufficient foreign direct investment, further complicate NEOM’s future.
The drastic downsizing of The Line “appears to be a reassessment of timeline feasibility,” Dr Robert Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, tells The Cradle. “There are many experimental, world-first dimensions within the NEOM gigaproject, and some are eventually going to need rightsizing or rethinking.”
Also speaking to The Cradle, Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Baker Institute Fellow at Rice University, believes the project’s contraction to be a good thing:
Reports that The Line may be scaled back significantly is actually a positive move if it injects greater realism into a project whose initial scale appeared fanciful and difficult to translate into reality. Greater pragmatism in designing and delivering the gigaprojects associated with Vision 2030 is a good thing and means there is a greater likelihood of the projects making it off the drawing board.
Given financial and economic factors, The Line was never feasible as initially presented. Ultimately, the amount of wealth the Saudis generate from oil is not enough to finance the most ambitious of MbS’ Vision 2030 projects. And Riyadh has not been able to lure the levels of foreign direct investment needed to make these extremely expensive vanity projects realizable.
“The vast scope of [The Line] always struck me and many other observers as aspirational rather than realistic,” explains Gordon Gray, the former US ambassador to Tunisia.
Speaking to The Cradle, Ryan Bohl, a Middle East and North African analyst at risk intelligence company RANE, says:
I’d argue that the goals for The Line were unrealistic from the start, given that there’s virtually no urban infrastructure in the area, and it’s very difficult for cities to be started from scratch like that, regardless of the amount of investment poured in. Even if Saudi Arabia had, for example, done something extreme like declare NEOM to be their new capital city, it would still probably struggle to attract residents as we’ve seen from other historical examples like Brazil’s shift of its capital to Brasília.
It attracts attention. That sort of discourse – positive or negative – creates a buzz. That buzz was supposed to attract investors who wanted to be a part of this, help Saudi Arabia build a city of the future, and try to do something completely outlandish and absolutely unconventional.
Gaza: a wrench in the works
The leadership in Riyadh has understood that the success of Vision 2030 heavily depends on attracting substantial foreign direct investment into the Kingdom. Ultimately, stability in Saudi Arabia and the wider West Asian region is crucial.
Consequently, Riyadh’s recent foreign policy has been less ideological, focusing instead on maintaining amicable terms with all major players in West Asia to advance Saudi business, commercial, and economic interests.
Within this context, Riyadh has worked to reach a peace deal with Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, made an effort to preserve the Beijing-brokered 2023 Saudi–Iranian détente, restored relations with Qatar and Syria, and mended fences with Turkiye.
Therefore, beyond financial and economic constraints that require a reassessment of the most ambitious Vision 2030 projects, such as The Line, Israel’s brutal six-month war on Gaza and the expansion of that conflict into the Red Sea have created headwinds for Saudi Arabia’s geoeconomic plans.
As Arhama Siddiqa, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, explains to The Cradle:
Given the current instability in the Red Sea region, investors may hesitate to support a large-scale project like NEOM due to perceived risks. Even if the direct security threat to NEOM is minimal, the overall instability in the area can deter investors from committing substantial resources to a long-term venture. Additionally, the broader [West Asia] conflict further complicates the situation, adding another layer of uncertainty. Addressing these security concerns could require Saudi Arabia to allocate more resources to regional security measures, potentially diverting funds from the NEOM project.
There is no denying that Saudi Arabia’s economic diversification agenda is vulnerable to naval operations in the Red Sea. NEOM and other Red Sea projects require vessels to be able to freely travel from the Gulf of Aden through the Bab al-Mandab and up to Saudi Arabia’s west coast.
The Gaza war’s potential spillover into this vital waterway continues to raise concerns for Saudi officials about the impact on the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.
These dynamics help explain Riyadh’s frustration with the White House for not leveraging its influence over Israel to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. It has led to Saudi Arabia’s decision to abstain from joining any US-led security initiatives and military operations in the Red Sea and Yemen.
The Israel–NEOM connection
Israel’s geographic proximity to northwestern Saudi Arabia, its technological advancement, and its vibrant startup culture position the occupation state as a promising partner for Vision 2030 and the NEOM project, particularly in biotechnology, cybersecurity, and manufacturing.
Writing in March 2021, Dr Ali Dogan, previously a Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, went as far as arguing that “relations with Israel are necessary for Saudi Arabia to complete NEOM.”
Dr Mohammad Yaghi, a research fellow at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, similarly stated that NEOM “requires peace and coordination with Israel, especially if the city is to have a chance of becoming a tourist attraction.”
However, Saudi Arabia’s leadership role in the Islamic world, exemplified by the monarch’s title as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” makes any formal normalization of relations with Tel Aviv highly sensitive.
Initially, it was thought that while the UAE and Bahrain could establish overt relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia would continue to engage covertly, ensuring essential collaborations like those rumored in the tech sector could progress discreetly.
An example being in June 2020, when controversy arose over Saudi Arabia’s alleged engagement with an Israeli cybersecurity firm, which the Saudi embassy later denied.
Yet, almost seven months into Israel’s campaign to annihilate Gaza, can Saudi Arabia still look to Tel Aviv as a partner in NEOM?
It appears that amid ongoing crises in the region, chiefly the Gaza genocide, Riyadh must be careful to avoid being seen as cooperating with the Israelis in covert ways, and full-fledged normalization seems off the table for the foreseeable future.
Nonetheless, after the dust settles in Gaza and the Red Sea security crisis calms down, Saudi Arabia will likely maintain its interest in fostering ties with Israel as part of an “economic normalization” between the two countries. This could be important to Vision 2030’s future, particularly in NEOM.
But Israel’s unprecedented military campaign in Gaza will likely alter West Asia in many ways for decades to come. Even after the current war in Gaza is over, anger toward Israel and the US will continue.
Without a doubt, the Israeli–NEOM connection will be increasingly sensitive and controversial, both in the Kingdom and the wider region – a factor that the leadership in Riyadh cannot dismiss.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
University students across the country, facing mass arrests, suspensions, evictions and explusions are our last, best hope to halt the genocide in Gaza.
PRINCETON, N.J — Achinthya Sivalingam, a graduate student in Public Affairs at Princeton University did not know when she woke up this morning that shortly after 7 a.m. she would join hundreds of students across the country who have been arrested, evicted and banned from campus for protesting the genocide in Gaza.
She wears a blue sweatshirt, sometimes fighting back tears, when I speak to her. We are seated at a small table in the Small World Coffee shop on Witherspoon Street, half a block away from the university she can no longer enter, from the apartment she can no longer live in and from the campus where in a few weeks she was scheduled to graduate.
She wonders where she will spend the night.
The police gave her five minutes to collect items from her apartment.
“I grabbed really random things,” she says. “I grabbed oatmeal for whatever reason. I was really confused.”
Student protesters across the country exhibit a moral and physical courage — many are facing suspension and expulsion — that shames every major institution in the country. They are dangerous not because they disrupt campus life or engage in attacks on Jewish students — many of those protesting are Jewish — but because they expose the abject failure by the ruling elites and their institutions to halt genocide, the crime of crimes. These students watch, like most of us, Israel’s live-streamed slaughter of the Palestinian people. But unlike most of us, they act. Their voices and protests are a potent counterpoint to the moral bankruptcy that surrounds them.
Not one university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza. Not one university president has called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. Not one university president has used the words “apartheid” or “genocide.” Not one university president has called for sanctions and divestment from Israel.
Instead, heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations — including weapons manufacturers — and rabid right-wing politicians. They reframe the debate around harm to Jews rather than the daily slaughter of Palestinians, including thousands of children. They have allowed the abusers — the Zionist state and its supporters — to paint themselves as victims. This false narrative, which focuses on anti-Semitism, allows the centers of power, including the media, to block out the real issue — genocide. It contaminates the debate. It is a classic case of “reactive abuse.” Raise your voice to decry injustice, react to prolonged abuse, attempt to resist, and the abuser suddenly transforms themself into the aggrieved.
Princeton University, like other universities across the country, is determined to halt encampments calling for an end to the genocide. This, it appears, is a coordinated effort by universities across the country.
The university knew about the proposed encampment in advance. When the students reached the five staging sites this morning, they were met by large numbers from the university’s Department of Public Safety and the Princeton Police Department. The site of the proposed encampment in front of Firestone Library was filled with police. This is despite the fact that students kept their plans off of university emails and confined to what they thought were secure apps. Standing among the police this morning was Rabbi Eitan Webb, who founded and heads Princeton’s Chabad House. He has attended university events to vocally attack those who call for an end to the genocide as anti-semites, according to student activists.
As the some 100 protesters listened to speakers, a helicopter circled noisily overhead. A banner, hanging from a tree, read: “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.”
The students said they would continue their protest until Princeton divests from firms that “profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign” in Gaza, ends university research “on weapons of war” funded by the Department of Defense, enacts an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions, supports Palestinian academic and cultural institutions and advocates for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
But if the students again attempt to erect tents – they took down 14 tents once the two arrests were made this morning – it seems certain they will all be arrested.
“It is far beyond what I expected to happen,” says Aditi Rao, a doctoral student in classics. “They started arresting people seven minutes into the encampment.”
Princeton Vice President of Campus Life Rochelle Calhoun sent out a mass email on Wednesday warning students they could be arrested and thrown off campus if they erected an encampment.
“Any individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus,” she wrote. “For students, such exclusion from campus would jeopardize their ability to complete the semester.”
These students, she added, could be suspended or expelled.
Sivalingam ran into one of her professors and pleaded with him for faculty support for the protest. He informed her he was coming up for tenure and could not participate. The course he teaches is called “Ecological Marxism.”
“It was a bizarre moment,” she says. “I spent last semester thinking about ideas and evolution and civil change, like social change. It was a crazy moment.”
She starts to cry.
A few minutes after 7 a.m, police distributed a leaflet to the students erecting tents with the headline “Princeton University Warning and No Trespass Notice.” The leaflet stated that the students were “engaged in conduct on Princeton University property that violates University rules and regulations, poses a threat to the safety and property of others, and disrupts the regular operations of the University: such conduct includes participating in an encampment and/or disrupting a University event.” The leaflet said those who engaged in the “prohibited conduct” would be considered a “Defiant Trespasser under New Jersey criminal law (N.J.S.A. 2C:18-3) and subject to immediate arrest.”
A few seconds later Sivalingam heard a police officer say “Get those two.”
Hassan Sayed, a doctoral student in economics who is of Pakistani descent, was working with Sivalingam to erect one of tents. He was handcuffed. Sivalingam was zip tied so tightly it cut off circulation to her hands. There are dark bruises circling her wrists.
“There was an initial warning from cops about ‘You are trespassing’ or something like that, ‘This is your first warning,’” Sayed says. “It was kind of loud. I didn’t hear too much. Suddenly, hands were thrust behind my back. As this happened, my right arm tensed a bit and they said ‘You are resisting arrest if you do that.’ They put the handcuffs on.”
He was asked by one of the arresting officers if he was a student. When he said he was, they immediately informed him that he was banned from campus.
“No mention of what charges are as far as I could hear,” he says. “I get taken to one car. They pat me down a bit. They ask for my student ID.”
Sayed was placed in the back of a campus police car with Sivalingam, who was in agony from the zip ties. He asked the police to loosen the zip ties on Sivalingam, a process that took several minutes as they had to remove her from the vehicle and the scissors were unable to cut through the plastic. They had to find wire cutters. They were taken to the university’s police station.
Sayed was stripped of his phone, keys, clothes, backpack and AirPods and placed in a holding cell. No one read him his Miranda rights.
He was again told he was banned from the campus.
“Is this an eviction?” he asked the campus police.
The police did not answer.
He asked to call a lawyer. He was told he could call a lawyer when the police were ready.
“They may have mentioned something about trespassing but I don’t remember clearly,” he says. “It certainly was not made salient to me.”
He was told to fill out forms about his mental health and if he was on medication. Then he was informed he was being charged with “defiant trespassing.”
“I say, ‘I’m a student, how is that trespassing? I attend school here,’” he says. “They really don’t seem to have a good answer. I reiterate, asking whether me being banned from campus constitutes eviction, because I live on campus. They just say, ‘ban from campus.’ I said something like that doesn’t answer the question. They say it will all be explained in the letter. I’m like, ‘Who is writing the letter?’ ‘Dean of grad school’ they respond.”
Sayed was driven to his campus housing. The campus police did not let him have his keys. He was given a few minutes to grab items like his phone charger. They locked his apartment door. He, too, is seeking shelter in the Small World Coffee shop.
Sivalingam often returned to Tamil Nadu in southern India, where she was born, for her summer vacations. The poverty and daily struggle of those around her, to survive, she says, was “sobering.”
“The disparity of my life and theirs, how to reconcile how those things exist in the same world,” she says, her voice quivering with emotion. “It was always very bizarre to me. I think that’s where a lot of my interest in addressing inequality, in being able to think about people outside of the United States as humans, as people who deserve lives and dignity, comes from.”
She must adjust now to being exiled from campus.
“I gotta find somewhere to sleep,” she says, “tell my parents, but that’s going to be a little bit of a conversation, and find ways to engage in jail support and communications because I can’t be there, but I can continue to mobilize.”
There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against indigenous peoples. Slavery. The violent suppression of the labor movement that saw hundreds of workers killed. Lynching. Jim and Jane Crow. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya.
The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes.
History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.
It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of the operation launched by Hamas and factions of the Palestinian Resistance on October 7, which forever annihilated the prestige of the Israeli army. Yet the strikes launched by Iran on April 13 and 14 are also truly historic.
For the first time, the backbone of the Axis of Resistance targeted Israel directly from its territory, launching the largest missile attack ever recorded against Israel and the largest drone attack in history. We have entered a whole new phase in the Arab-Israeli and Persian-Israeli conflict, and this is the final one as all the taboos have now been broken, and new equations have been established.
Israel’s deterrence capacity no longer exists. Since October 7, Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah and the Iraqi Resistance have shattered it. Still, these were Resistance movements, not a State with much more to lose. This direct action by Iran is all the more significant as Israel has been threatening to bomb Iran for decades without ever daring to do so, while Iran very quickly carried out its threats.
Iran launched its strike despite U.S. and Western threats, demonstrating unparalleled courage and a readiness to enter into a regional war and directly threatening the United States and its Arab vassals in the region with direct strikes in the event of interference. This audacity foiled the bluff of the Biden administration, which officially declared that it would not support an Israeli response from which it disassociated itself in advance.
Iran’s military prowess was clearly demonstrated. Despite the fact that this attack was known in advance and that the capabilities – both aviation and anti-missile defenses of no less than five military powers directly assisting Israel (the United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan) were unable to stop Iran from striking Israeli territory. Israel’s defense systems were saturated, sirens sounded from north to south for hours, and yet at least twenty direct hits were recorded.
Iran demonstrated its moral superiority. It strictly applied Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of force in self-defense, targeted only military targets (two air bases that were destroyed according to Iran and damaged according to Israel), and gave advance warning of its strike, which enabled the countries affected to close their airspace, thus protecting the civilian airliners that Israel had been endangering for days by massively jamming GPS signals throughout the region.
Finally, as Marwa Osman put it, the failure of Israel’s five layers of defense was compensated for by a sixth layer of media defense, with journalists repeating that Israel and its allies were able to intercept 99% of the projectiles. Given the impacts recorded, this would mean that Iran fired 1,000 to 2,000 drones and missiles, whereas all the Western data puts the figure below 500; the aim of this deceit was obviously to allow Israel to save face and enable it to claim victory as it supposedly was able to intercept 99% of the projectiles.
Sayed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said in 2007,
“Those who make threats should have realized that military threats or attacks against Iran – in the sense of hit-and-run attacks – are no longer possible. Those who invade us will have to suffer from the devastating consequences of their actions.“
While his statement has been mocked many times, particularly given the numerous Israeli attacks on Iranian bases in Syria that have cost the lives of many members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with relative impunity, no one today doubts the seriousness of this assertion. When its territory is hit, as was the case with the blatant Israeli strike against its consulate in Damascus, the aggressor is hit directly. And from now on, as Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, stated following Iran’s attack, any open attack against Iranian interests will be met with the same retribution,
“We have established a new equation with the Zionist entity, responding directly from Iranian territory to any aggression on its part against Iranian interests, property, personalities and citizens in any part of the world. We have opened a new chapter in the confrontation with the enemy.“
This is a truly tectonic shift in the equations of power and deterrence. Those who play down the importance of the attack ignore its long-term political and strategic significance, which is in line with Iran’s vision, shared by the entire Axis of Resistance, of the form, scale and timing of the struggle against Israel. As Fadi Quran, the Campaign Director of Avaaz, pointed out following the attack,
The scale of Iran’s attack, the diversity of locations it targeted, and weapons it used forced Israel to uncover the majority of anti-missile technologies the U.S. and it have across the region. The Iranians did not use any weapons Israel didn’t know it had; it just used a lot of them. But the Iranians likely now have almost a full map of what Israel’s missile defense system looks like, as well as where in Jordan and the Gulf the U.S. has installations. It also knows how long it takes to prepare them, how Israeli society responds…etc.
“This is a huge strategic cost to Israel, while Arab regimes are now being blasted by their peoples, particularly the Jordanian monarchy, for not doing anything to protect Gazans but then going all out to protect Israel. Crucially, Iran can now reverse engineer all the intel gathered from this attack to make a much more deadly one credible. While the U.S. and Israel will have to re-design away from their current model which has been compromised. Its success in stopping this choreographed attack is thus still very costly.”
While Israel proved barely capable of defending itself, at an exorbitant cost of over a billion dollars no less, against an attack that was limited in scope, lacked the element of surprise and cost Iran a measly 35 million dollars, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that in the event of a regional war, Israel’s defense capabilities would quickly be saturated, leaving its territory devastated and its population decimated. The Israeli population is now clearly aware of this, and the depopulation process that has already cost it hundreds of thousands of nationals since October 7 is only set to increase.
For their part, the Palestinian people, abandoned by the world and Arab regimes in particular, were able to enjoy a brief respite. Gaza experienced its first hours of calm since October 7 during this unforgettable night. Palestinians were able to let their joy burst forth when they saw the epic images of the Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset and the Al-Aqsa mosque before striking the hearts of those responsible for their mass slaughter.
Not unlike the psychological shock of October 7, that of the night of April 13 will forever be engraved in people’s consciences. It will galvanize the Resistance while speeding up the process of “reverse migration” of Israeli settlers who have lived through a night of terror and nightmare and are now convinced that their army is incapable of protecting them.
With the senseless act of attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Netanyahu sought to escape the inevitable reality of the bitter military failure of the army of occupation, despite six months of genocide and destruction, and to restore Israel’s illusion of power. The result is the opposite of what he likely expected, with Israel weaker and more isolated than ever.
Israel now has only one choice: to end the war in Gaza or go forward with a suicidal escalation that will set the region ablaze. The United States has clearly announced its desire to calm tensions and reach a ceasefire. The question now is whether Netanyahu’s instinct for self-preservation (his political survival) will take over the general interest. This scenario would put the very existence of Israel at risk.
Editor’s Note: The author of this article has chosen to publish under a pseudonym. This decision stems from residing in a European country where expressing criticism of Israel has become increasingly challenging. Sadly, governmental crackdowns on activism have compelled the author and others to take this precaution to safeguard their ability to contribute to public discourse. We believe it is crucial to respect their decision while valuing the insights and perspectives they offer in their writing.
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
The distance between Gaza and Namibia is measured in the thousands of kilometers. But the historical distance is much closer. This is precisely why Namibia was one of the first countries to take a strong stance against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Namibia was colonized by the Germans in 1884, while the British colonized Palestine in the 1920s, handing the territory to the Zionist colonizers in 1948.
Though the ethnic and religious fabric of Palestine and Namibia differ, the historical experiences are similar.
It is easy, however, to assume that the history that unifies many countries in the Global South is only that of Western exploitation and victimization. It is also a history of collective struggle and resistance.
Namibia has been inhabited since prehistoric times. This long-rooted history has allowed Namibians, over thousands of years, to establish a sense of belonging to the land and to one another, something that the Germans did not understand or appreciate.
When the Germans colonized Namibia, giving it the name of ‘German Southwest Africa,’’ they did what all other Western colonialists have done, from Palestine to South Africa to Algeria, to virtually all Global South countries. They attempted to divide the people, exploited their resources and butchered those who resisted.
Although a country with a small population, Namibians resisted their colonizers, resulting in the German decision to simply exterminate the natives, literally killing the majority of the population.
Since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Namibia answered the call of solidarity with the Palestinians, along with many African and South American countries, including Colombia, Nicaragua, Cuba, South Africa, Brazil, China and many others.
Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza
On Namibian soil, #Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most… pic.twitter.com/ZxwWxLv8yt
Though intersectionality is a much-celebrated notion in Western academia, no academic theory is needed for oppressed, colonized nations in the Global South to exhibit solidarity with one another.
So when Namibia took a strong stance against Israel’s largest military supporter in Europe – Germany – it did so based on Namibia’s total awareness of its history.
The German genocide of the Nama and Herero people (1904-1907) is known as the “first genocide of the 20th century”. The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza is the first genocide of the 21st century. The unity between Palestine and Namibia is now cemented through mutual suffering.
However, Namibia did not launch a legal case against Germany at the International Court of Justice (ICJ); it was Nicaragua, a Central American country thousands of miles away from Palestine and Namibia.
The Nicaraguan case accuses Germany of violating the ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.’ It rightly sees Germany as a partner in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians.
This accusation alone should terrify the German people, in fact, the whole world, as Germany has been affiliated with genocides from its early days as a colonial power. The horrific crime of the Holocaust and other mass killings carried out by the German government against Jews and other minority groups in Europe during WWII is a continuation of other German crimes committed against Africans decades earlier.
The typical analysis of why Germany continues to support Israel is explained based on German guilt over the Holocaust. This explanation, however, is partly illogical and partly erroneous.
It is illogical because if Germany has, indeed, internalized any guilt from its previous mass killings, it would make no sense for Berlin to add yet more guilt by allowing Palestinians to be butchered en masse. If guilt indeed exists, it is not genuine. It is erroneous because it completely overlooks the German genocide in Namibia. It took the German government until 2021 to acknowledge the horrific butchery in that poor African country, ultimately agreeing to pay merely one billion euros in ‘community aid,’ which will be allocated over three decades.
The German government’s support of the Israeli war on Gaza is not motivated by guilt but by a power paradigm that governs the relations among colonial countries. Many countries in the Global South understand this logic very well, thus the growing solidarity with Palestine.
A photo titled “Captured Hereros,” taken circa 1904 by German colonists in Namibia. Photo | German Historical Museum
The Israeli brutality in Gaza, but also the Palestinian sumud, resilience and resistance, are inspiring the Global South to reclaim its centrality in anti-colonial liberation struggles.
The revolution in the Global South’s outlook—culminating in South Africa’s case at the ICJ and the Nicaraguan lawsuit against Germany—indicates that change is not the outcome of a collective emotional reaction. Instead, it is part and parcel of the shifting relationship between the Global South and the Global North.
Africa has been undergoing a process of geopolitical restructuring for years. The anti-French rebellions in West Africa, demanding true independence from the continent’s former colonial masters, and the intense geopolitical competition involving Russia, China and others are all signs of changing times. And with this rapid rearrangement, a new political discourse and popular rhetoric are emerging, often expressed in the revolutionary language emanating from Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and others.
But the shift is not happening only on the rhetorical front. The rise of BRICS as a powerful new platform for economic integration between Asia and the rest of the Global South has opened up the possibility of alternatives to Western financial and political institutions.
In 2023, it was revealed that BRICS countries hold 32 percent of the world’s total GDP, compared to 30 percent held by the G7 countries. This has much political value, as four of the five original founders of BRICS are strong and unapologetic supporters of the Palestinians.
While South Africa has been championing the legal front against Israel, Russia and China are battling the US at the UN Security Council to institute a ceasefire. Beijing’s Ambassador to The Hague defended the Palestinian armed struggle as legitimate under international law.
Now that global dynamics are working in favor of Palestinians, it is time for the Palestinian struggle to return to the embrace of the Global South, where shared histories will always serve as a foundation for meaningful solidarity.
Feature photo | Hon. Yvonne Dausab, Minister of Justice of Namibia, joined representatives of over 50 nations in presenting testimony to the International Court of Justice on the legality of the Israeli occupation. Photo | International Court of Justice
Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel was framed in the West as a reckless attempt to spark a major regional war, but in reality, Israel has been attacking Iran for decades.
As is routinely the case with Western-backed wars, the corporate media’s timeline begins at the moment that suits their narrative. We have seen this play out recently, with the attempt to rob the Gaza war of all contexts before October 7, 2023. Similarly, when it comes to Israel’s conflict with Iran, the two have been embroiled in what is referred to as a “shadow war,” the details of which are pretty shocking.
While the international media’s attention was riveted on Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel, drawing great focus to some 300 drones and missiles used in the attack, no major deal was made of Israel’s strike on April 1 against the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed a dozen people, including seven Iranian officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In this unprecedented act of aggression against Iranian soil, breaking international diplomatic norms, the Israelis were shielded by the U.S. government at the United Nations Security Council, blocking any condemnation of this act.
Despite an admission from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that had the UK embassy been attacked similarly, they too would retaliate, the double-standard argument that Iran shouldn’t respond continues to dominate the airways.
This is as Iran’s IRGC has received condemnation for seizing a container ship in the Persian Gulf associated with the Zodiac Maritime shipping company of Israel billionaire Eyal Ofer and his family. In 2021, the Mercer Street oil tanker, which Zodiac Maritime also operated, was struck by Iranian drones, prompting similar condemnation. Yet, little was to be said regarding the Israeli-owned company’s role in collaborating with the Israeli military and intelligence establishment to ferry arms and operatives around the region and carry out assassinations or reconnaissance missions.
However, the Israel-Iran “Shadow War” did not begin with recent events. Israel has been carrying out brutal assassinations of civilian scientists on Iranian soil since 2010 while also carrying out acts of espionage that have endangered innocent civilians in the country.
As early as in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012, Israeli Mossad agents have been planting viruses designed to cause malfunctions in Iranian oil and nuclear power facilities. Another kind of provocative action occurred in 2018, when it was reported that an Israeli Mossad team had raided an archive facility in Tehran, stealing documents that pertained to its nuclear power program.
In 2020, the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Israel planted bombs inside Iran’s Natanz Nuclear facility, which almost caused an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Later that year, the Israeli Mossad assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in Tehran. Then, in April of 2021, another explosion occurred at the Natanz facility, which the New York Times reported was Israel’s doing.
The Israelis have also trained members of the MEK terrorist group to carry out attacks on civilian targets inside Iran. The list of Mossad-linked cells that have been arrested by the Iranian authorities or carried out acts of espionage and sabotage is simply too numerous to cover at length. Early last year, U.S. officials even told Reuters that a suicide drone attack targeting a factory in the city of Isfahan was an Israeli attack.
More recently, in late December, Israel launched airstrikes on Damascus and assassinated IRGC official Seyed Razi Mousavi. And in January, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, murdering five Iranian military personnel members and Syrian citizens. Then, in early February, Israel was accused of blowing up gas pipelines in Iran. None of these actions, which would likely illicit a response by most nations, provoked Iran to launch a direct strike on Israel.
In addition to all of this, Israel has been the world’s top cheerleader for the West’s crushing sanctions that have significantly impacted Iran’s civilian population, specifically access to lifesaving medical supplies. AIPAC, the powerful Israeli Lobby group in the United States, worked hard to prevent the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal from passing, then pushed for the Trump administration to unilaterally withdraw before pressuring the Biden administration to refrain from reviving the deal despite this being a campaign promise. Israel even played a role in the Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top general tasked with battling ISIS, Qassem Soleimani.
Yet, despite Israel’s long history of documented attacks against Iran and around 30 years of false predictions as to when Iran is supposedly going to develop a nuclear weapon, which is the premise for Western sanctions, the corporate media is still trying to sell the public on the lie that Israel is an innocent victim and that there was no justifiable reason for Iran to retaliate.
Amal Clooney, the internationally acclaimed lawyer, is a liberal icon. She and her organization, the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), never shrink from pronouncing their global verdicts on human rights matters. And yet, despite being Lebanese and of Palestinian descent herself, Time magazine’s 2022 Woman of the Year has maintained complete silence on Israel’s continued bombardment of those very countries – a crime other human rights experts have labeled a genocide.
It has now been six months since the October 7 attack, Israel’s wholesale destruction of Gaza and its attacks on Lebanon, yet Clooney has made no public statement on the matter, either in public or on social media, despite mountingcallsforhertodoso.
CONDEMNING ENEMY NATIONS, IGNORING CRIMES OF FRIENDS
Born in Lebanon to a Druze Lebanese father and a Sunni Muslim mother of Palestinian descent, Clooney’s family sought refuge in the United Kingdom after the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. After practicing law for many years in the U.K. and U.S. in 2016, she founded the CFJ alongside her film star husband, George. “We founded the Clooney Foundation for Justice to hold perpetrators of mass atrocities accountable for their crimes and to help victims in their fight for justice,” the pair explain on their website.
Today, the CFJ works in over 40 countries. This includes many countries the U.S. treats as enemy nations or candidates for regime change. Clooney and her foundation have taken strong stances against many of those nations. She has demanded that Russia be prosecuted for war crimes. “Ukraine is, today, a slaughterhouse. Right in the heart of Europe,” she told the U.N. Security Council in 2022. The following year, the CFJ filed three cases in Germany. The cases accused Russia of many war crimes, including leveling a civilian building in a missile strike on Odesa, killing 40 people, unlawfully detaining, torturing and killing four Ukrainians in the Kharkiv region, and sexual violence and looting in the Kiev region. The CFJ is also suing the Venezuelan government over alleged human rights abuses.
In 2016, Clooney condemned Iran and North Korea for serially abusing their citizens’ human rights. She did this at a conference in the United Arab Emirates, attended by the country’s ruler, Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi. Far from criticizing the UAE’s dismal human rights record, she praised the government and merely offered friendly “advice” to the emirate on how it could improve.
And yet, the Clooney Foundation has been entirely silent regarding arguably the dominant human rights issue of our time. A search for the words “Israel,” “Gaza,” and “Palestine” on both its website and its Twitter account elicits zero relevant results.
While we cannot expect either Clooney or her organization to work on every country simultaneously, it has disappointed many of Clooney’s admirers that neither has even put out a statement about the country of her birth and the country of her ancestry being torn apart by a Western-backed power.
Even when directly questioned about it, George Clooney appeared to dodge the question, stating:
“The whole area [the Middle East] is just on fire, and it is heartbreaking all the way around. All you can do is pray that there is some version of this that comes to some peaceful end soon. But I don’t see it happening in the very near future, and I don’t think anybody does.“
This relative silence on Gaza contrasts with other major Western human rights organizations, who have vociferously condemned the state of Israel. Amnesty International, for example, wrote that “there are alarming warning signs of Genocide given the staggering scale of death and destruction” and that “The collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population by Israeli authorities is a war crime – it is cruel and inhumane.” This sentiment was shared by Human Rights Watch, which noted that “The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime.”
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Why have Clooney and her foundation shown little to no interest in Palestine (or Lebanon)? Firstly, the CFJ is sponsored primarily by large liberal institutions, such as the Ford Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and foreign sources like the German and Swedish Postcode Lotteries, none of whom have shown any interest in pro-Palestine activism.
Moreover, Clooney herself has close connections to many in the Democratic Party establishment, including some of the most hardcore pro-Israel zealots anywhere. In 2016, she and her husband hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton with Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban at their mansion. Tickets for the event cost $34,000 each.
Saban is one of America’s most influential political donors but considers himself a “one-issue guy.” “And my issue is Israel,” he once said. He has also called for “higher scrutiny” of Muslim Americans, suggesting they are a threat to the country’s security, and branded Muslim-American Democrats such as Keith Ellison “anti-semites.” Clinton, who describes herself as an “emphatic, unwavering supporter” of Israel, wrote Saban an open letter promising to stamp out the spread of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement by any means necessary.
George and Amal Clooney, right, pose with Hillary Clinto and Bryan Lourd and Bruce Bozzi at at an event at the Clooney home in Hollywood. Photo | Instagram
Moreover, Clooney has accepted a number of U.K. government posts – positions that rarely go to radical outsiders but rather to those firmly inside the establishment beltway. Those posts include being appointed to the Attorney General’s Office Public International Law Panel, meaning she represented the British government in domestic and international courts. The government also appointed her the U.K. Special Envoy on Media Freedom and the Deputy Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom.
One senior position Clooney publicly rejected, however, was to serve on the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry looking into Israeli war crimes in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (2014). When pressed to explain her decision, she simply cited a scheduling conflict (while refusing to condemn Israel), stating:
“I am horrified by the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, particularly the civilian casualties that have been caused, and strongly believe that there should be an independent investigation and accountability for crimes that have been committed… I am honored to have received the offer, but given existing commitments – including eight ongoing cases – unfortunately could not accept this role. I wish my colleagues who will serve on the commission courage and strength in their endeavors.“
“MORAL MERCENARY”
The refusal to investigate Israeli war crimes is especially notable, given that Clooney has made her career taking controversial posts concerning the Middle East. She previously served as an advisor on Syria to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She currently represents hundreds of Yazidi survivors of ISIS massacres and is in the process of suing cement maker Lafarge. The lawsuit alleges that the French company provided material support to the terrorist group, which kept many Yazidi women as slaves.
In 2014, she defended Abdullah al Senussi, the Former Chief of Intelligence under Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. The International Criminal Court charged Senussi with crimes against humanity, who was alleged to have overseen torture, assassinations and public executions.
Perhaps most surprising, however, was her appointment as legal advisor to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain during the Bassiouni Commission – a royal investigation into the events of the Arab Spring. The people of Bahrain briefly participated in their own popular anti-government uprising before the monarchy called in Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti forces to crush the revolt, killing hundreds and injuring or torturing thousands more. In this instance, Clooney worked on behalf not of the oppressed but of the monarchy, presumably attempting to absolve it of any blame or responsibility for the crackdown on civil liberties, leading one commentator to dub her a “moral mercenary.”
SILENT ON GENOCIDE
It is barely in doubt that Israel is currently engaged in some of the most egregious crimes against humanity seen anywhere in the 21st century, from genocide to attacks on schools, hospitals, mosques and churches to the deliberate targeting of journalists and other civilians, to the leveling of entire cities and the systematic starvation of a people.
And despite this, Amal Clooney, who presents herself as a champion of progressive, liberal values and human rights, has had nothing to say about it. This is doubly noteworthy, given her country of birth and her ancestry. As an ethical leader with a considerable audience, any pronouncement she utters on the issue would likely make a significant impact.
Palestine is so often, however, the rocks on which the moral and ethical underpinnings of liberalism are dashed. While Western liberals constantly speak in the language of human rights, using them as a weapon against enemy states and even justifying the bloodiest military interventions on their basis, they fall silent when allied nations carry out similar barbaric actions.
This “progressive except for Palestine” mentality is pervasive across the Western world and highlights the profound limits of modern liberalism. While foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin, Nicolás Maduro or Xi Jinping (or even domestic ones such as Trump) are considered beyond the pale for their transgressions on human rights, beltway politicians like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are held up as heroes. This is despite their crimes, which range from using jihadists to overthrow the most prosperous country in Africa to bombing seven countries simultaneously.
It should, therefore, be of little surprise that Clooney and her foundation have remained tight-lipped about the current slaughter. Those who are shocked by their inaction underestimate the moral bankruptcy of modern liberalism.
Speaking on a panel with Michelle Obama and Melinda Gates (two other liberal icons), Clooney outlined the “real driving force” behind her work.
“My son drew a picture the other day of a prison, and he was like, ‘Putin should be here,’” she said before continuing:
“I do think about in a few years when they’re more than five when they start to learn about some of these issues that we’re talking about and what’s happening in the world… When they ask us, ‘What did you do about this? What did you say about that?’ I’ve thought about what will my answer be, and I hope it will be a good one.“
If Clooney’s son ever asks her what she was doing as Israel carried out war crimes across the Middle East, she will also have a clear answer: she was silent on genocide.
Nicaraguan lawyer and diplomat Carlos Argüello Gómez speaks to The Grayzone about his case against the German government for its facilitation of Israel’s genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip, its potentially historic implications, and its similarities to the successful case he argued for the ICJ in 1986 which brought massive penalties against the United States for its illegal dirty war on Nicaragua at the time.
A full transcript follows.
VIDEO: Nicaragua takes on Germany over Gaza genocide- an interview with Carlos Argüello Gómez
Max Blumenthal: Why did Nicaragua feel compelled to bring this case against Germany? And perhaps you can fill us in on the latest development?
Dr. Arguello: Yes, thank you. Well, naturally, the main state committing the crime is Israel. The main abettor of what is happening is the United States. But the next one is Germany.
In the first case, Israel, South Africa has brought a case against Israel, of genocide, and that case is pending. Israel has been ignoring so far the orders of the court. In the case of the main abettor, the United States, we don’t have any jurisdiction to bring the United States to the court.
The United States not only does it accept the jurisdiction, but even when it became part of the Genocide Convention, which was 40 years after the convention from 1948 — it wan’t until 1988, that they became a party, with a lot of reservations, saying that they couldn’t be taken to the court, and that it [was] only genocide according to a decision by a court in the United States — with a lot of reservations that make it impossible to go against the United States.
But Germany doesn’t have that type of reservation, and Germany is the second [largest] supplier of weapons to Israel. So our position was a question of principle, beginning with: that it was very important to sit down and to make countries clear that there is an international obligation to prevent these types of situations.
The Genocide Convention specifically says in its first article that all countries have the obligation to prevent and punish genocide. We have the obligation to prevent — that doesn’t mean that the genocide has to have been completed already, that it has to have been determined by a court that there has been genocide. You have the obligation to prevent [it].
So what we have stated in the court, and have proven, is that Germany has had all notice, beginning from the Secretary General of the United Nations from the ninth of October, saying that genocide was possibly being committed. Even the International Court said that genocide was being committed.
Now, you have to understand also that if genocide is being committed, obviously, international humanitarian law is being [violated]. If you are massacring a population, the difference is, if you aren’t massacring with the intention of destroying it completely, which is genocide, you are still violating international humanitarian law.
Now the problem — to divide the situation — is Israel only accepted jurisdiction on the basis of the Genocide Convention. So you can’t claim against Israel violations of international humanitarian law, only genocide. And so that was another of the points that I’ll get to.
But first, going back, the principle involved here is all states have responsibility to prevent these type of crimes, international crimes. The court had already given indication of this 20 years ago, in an opinion that the International Court had given on the construction of a wall in Israel. The Court itself had felt that all states had the obligation to prevent what was happening. All states had the obligation to enforce the humanitarian law conventions, but nobody paid attention.
Germany never paid any attention to what was happening. The court even said that the Palestinians had the right to self-determination in that case. Nobody paid attention. So now we come to when the most crucial genocide is being evidenced — because genocide has been committed for many years. It’s not a question of just the past few months. But it is absolutely in evidence, and the countries continue as if it wasn’t. As if the Genocide Convention and all the international laws had nothing to do with them.
So we thought that as a matter of principle, we had to bring before the court this question. Now, I wish to clarify, because I have been asked: ‘why Nicaragua?’ Well, with Nicaragua, we have a lot of experience in the court. We came to the court forty years ago against the United States, on a question of principle also. It was the principle of non intervention… of the state. In that we made a very important contribution to international law.
And since then we have been in the court many times. We have been in the court more than twice as many times as Germany. So it’s not that we are discovering the court in this situation. We have experience and that’s why, this experience, we wanted to put it to the benefit of the Palestinian people that are being massacred, at the very least, if not committing genocide against them.
Now, another situation, and this is on a personal level: after South Africa brought the case against Israel — and that was at the end of December last year — then in January, I was just listening to interviews, by very important commentators, very important lawyers. Everybody was saying, ‘Well, no, genocide is possible… it’s very difficult to prove that,’ and whatever.
So I think the whole understanding of people who were watching what was happening was: well, obviously, then nothing is happening. It’s very difficult to prove. I mean, that wasn’t the issue. Israel was massacring everybody. It was violating all international humanitarian law. The only thing was that only genocide could be brought against them directly.
So the fact of bringing this case against Germany, which includes not only genocide, but also its obligations, German obligations, to also help prevent the violation of international humanitarian law. All that is on the table with Germany. Against Israel, only the genocide. Against Germany, we have all international law, humanitarian law also on the table. So I mean, that aspect is also very important.
Part of the reason, right, but obviously, Germany will try to avoid [it] and say that, as they said in the court, that we can continue in this case without the presence of Israel. But independently of what is happening, each country in the world, all countries in the world, have the obligation to prevent [genocide]. It’s an independent obligation.
So, I mean, this is more or less where we are. And hopefully, the court will order. There are no third states, I’m sorry, there are no other parties, but Germany and Nicaragua involved in this. There is no reason why the court can not simply order that Germany cease supplying weapons to Israel, which is what we hope will happen.
Wyatt Reed: So the Germans are offering kind of a novel legal defense here. The legal director for the German Foreign Office, Tania von Uslar-Gleichen, said recently that, “Our history is the reason why Israel security has been at the core of German foreign policy.” So the point here seems to be that given that Germany carried out the Holocaust, it’s now compelled to do whatever it takes to defend the so-called ‘Jewish state,’ and apparently, including even facilitating the mass extermination of Palestinians. Is that an accurate reading of the German position here? And if it is, how do you expect that to hold up in court? Are you optimistic about the outcome here?
Dr. Arguello: Well, frankly, in court… Let me make two comments on that. Even before the Germans spoke — when we presented our case on Monday, the Germans responded on Tuesday — we’d already made the distinction. We told them, because I think Germany has always been saying that it is their raison d’etre that they have: the defense of Israel.
So one of the things we told them on Monday is that we understand and that it is a praisable situation, a very laudable situation, that they feel responsible for the Holocaust, and the barbarities that were committed in the Second World War against the Jewish people. But a distinction should be made, Israel is not the Jewish people. What they’re helping is a state that is committing genocide.
That’s one point and a very important distinction. But in the long run, what they are doing is, they are going against the Jewish people, because Israel is causing enormous prejudice to the Jewish [court], the world around. It’s incredible. Frankly, I don’t know how we can understand that position of Germany. If they’re really worried about what they did, or what happened, of their ancestors or the Nazis, or whatever we want to call them. Well, I think the first thing should be, their heart should tell them that they should be helping the Palestinians in this situation. I mean, those are the guys that are suffering. I mean, Israel is not suffering. If they want to really have compassion, or they feel compassion to those that are suffering, Israel is not suffering. Israel is a superpower.
Max: Ambassador Arguello, you mentioned earlier the case that you brought at the International Court of Justice or that the Nicaraguan government brought back in 1984. In 1986, you received a favorable ruling from the ICJ. And this was a case against the United States for its violation of international law, through the CIA’s backing of the Contra death squads, as well as its mining of Nicaragua’s Harbor. The US did not abide by the decision. It simply sat on its hands and waited until its preferred candidate, Violeta Chamorro, won in 1990, and proceeded to withdraw the case. Do you see any similarities between that case and the case you’re bringing now against Germany for its participation in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people? And how do you expect the ICJ or the international community to enforce a decision in the current case, given the brazen attitude of Israel in the United States towards international law?
Dr. Arguello: Well, that’s a very important consideration, and thank you for the comment on the historical background. Yes, I mean, the case we brought against the United States has certain similarities. Some we pointed out during our intervention — the most obvious is that one of the main things we’re requesting [from] the court right at the beginning, was that the United States should cease its supply of weapons in support to the Contra forces that were fighting the government of Nicaragua. And they were, in this case, they were created and supplied entirely by the United States.
Obviously, the State of Israel wasn’t created and doesn’t depend entirely on Germany, but Germany is also supplying weapons and maintaining politically, diplomatically, giving all the efforts in helping possible to Israel. So what we are asking the court, in a certain sense, and we repeated that, was exactly what we were asking against [the] United States forty years ago: to cease this assistance to Israel, in the same way that you will cease the assistance to the illegal forces fighting Nicaragua.
Now, of course, the United States didn’t comply. The United States, in my experience, even before we came before the court — and I don’t want to go lengthy discussion on that, [but] in my opinion, the United States has never respected international law. Any treaty with the United States, any third country that thinks that they are ‘armor’ against anything because they have a treaty, that treaty will only be respected as long as it’s in the interest of the United States. The United States does not respect international law, unless it’s in its benefit.
They want to go: ‘The United States has accepted the jurisdiction of the court.’ But when it became against them, that was it. They didn’t comply, said goodbye to the court. Israel, obviously, is following the example of the United States. Not the example — it’s covered by the same forces of the United States. Israel is the local bully in that area, but it has the big brother bully behind it. So they feel completely armored against anything. But we have the feeling — and… perhaps we’re wrong, I don’t know — But I don’t think that Germany will have the same attitude with a judgment of the court.
I think the United States, obviously, any order of the court, they simply ignore it. And not only the government, but probably even the media, all the traditional media in the United States would probably also ignore it. But I think in Germany, it would be different. I think a judgment by the court order in Germany to stop is going to have a lot of effect. And apart from that, world opinion at this moment, I think, has been mobilized. In that respect, perhaps even these cases before the court are also helping this mobilization. But people, even in German, there’s a lot, currently, of people that are also very, very worried and very ashamed of what’s happening. So I think, I think it will be very difficult. And that’s why I’m hopeful that if the court orders it, it will be an effective order. It’s not going to be ignored completely.
Wyatt: So in recent months after South Africa brought its case against Israel, we saw some attempts in the United States government, specifically the Congress, to pursue some kind of bilateral relations review, effectively implying the threat of sanctions or decreased economic trade activity with South Africa — kind of an implicit threat. So I’m wondering whether Israel has tried to interfere with this case, or whether the US itself has attempted to retaliate beyond the sanctions that it’s already imposing and plans to impose on Nicaragua?
Dr. Arguello: Well, I am not aware at this moment of any particular additional sanctions, or additional positions against Nicaragua. I mean, the United States has been already doing — with different governments — has been doing everything possible to destroy the government of Nicaragua. So it’s nothing, it’s nothing new. They attempted a coup d’etat when Mr. Bolton was in charge of these operations in 2018. We have been sanctioned constantly. So I mean, if that happens, it’s going to happen. I mean, I don’t know what more they can do against us.
We have our moral obligation we feel. As I said at the beginning, I mean, what can we contribute to the Palestinian people? Among the few things we can do — we can’t give them money because we’re not a rich country, we can’t give them weapons. How can we help them? And one of the few things that we have is experience, and we have something, which is the International Court. So when this case began, we said let’s go wholeheartedly here. And I received instructions from my bosses that we should go immediately, and do everything possible. That’s what we’re trying, that’s what we try to do.
Max: And then just on the theme of your moral obligation: the Sandinista municipality in Managua has renamed a street ‘Pista Gaza,’ a major thoroughfare in Managua. The Sandinista party has a traditional affiliation or solidarity with the Palestine Liberation Organization, how does this case fit into the ethos of the Sandinista front and its support for oppressed people and working people around the world?
Dr. Arguello: We had, I mean, right from the beginning, from the birth of the Sandinista party or movement, even before the triumph of the revolution, there’s always been enormous sympathy from both ways — from the Palestinians toward our cause, and from, obviously, our cause to them. And what is happening to Palestine is something that has hurt us enormously, and we have been feeling it for a very long time. When, some years ago, there was this convoy of help that was going from Turkey to Israel, which was intervened, and there was an attack from Israel to stop it, we broke relations with Israel completely. We initiated relations with Israel just a few years ago again, in the hope that things would try to be normal.
But the reality is that Israel has been acting this way. This is among the more blatant – obviously, it’s something that now is indisputable, it’s being watched by even children all over the world. Everybody in the world knows what’s happening. And everybody now sympathizes.
Perhaps 50, 60 years ago, there was less common knowledge of everything that was happening. The media was more controlled by certain groups of states. But now, I think that the sympathy that we originally felt with the Palestinian people, since way back, is now something that is shared with a lot of humanity. So that’s also a hope, a hope we have.
Max: And I guess my last question would be a more general question about international law. It’s clear that the rules based order that the Biden administration in Washington preaches has suffered an enormous blow to its credibility, through the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza and all the violations that we’ve seen. But we’ve also seen institutions, multilateral institutions, like the United Nations Security Council, or the World Court, the ICJ be unable to enforce decisions like the acceptance of the South African case or calls for a ceasefire. So what are your thoughts on the future of international law and these institutions born out of the kind of post World War Two order and their ability to enforce it in the face of these brazen, unilateral — and still very powerful — forces like Israel in the United States? Is there really a future for international law?
Dr. Arguello: If you permit me, I mean, I remember, I have made this comment many times in my career. 40 years ago, when we began, or 38 years ago, with the judgment of the court, the case against the United States — when the United States had already said goodbye to the court and that it wasn’t going to pay any attention to what was happening. That question was always coming up. I mean, what can you do? And what can the court do? I mean, ‘you’ve been wasting your time, coming to the court, the court doesn’t have nuclear weapons to force the United States to obey.’
There was an expression that I took from a French tourist that was, many years ago, wondering: what can you do if a big power doesn’t compile? The only thing left is the mobilization of shame. And if we break that down, this mobilization of shame, even in the United States, the amount of people now informed of what’s happening is increasing. And, Mr. Biden, politicians like him, have no real principles or no real belief in international law. But they believe in their posts. And if people in the United States are changing their opinion, they’re being informed and this shame is mobilizing them, then eventually they will have to mobilize the immovable objects like Mr. Biden. So that’s, that’s the hope with this. Perhaps being too idealistic, but it’s the only weapon we have.
Max: Okay, well, Ambassador, is there anything you wanted to add or touch on? Before we go?
Dr. Arguello: Well, just to thank both of you, your program. I think we’ve more or less covered [everything]. Obviously, we could talk for hours and hours about different things but I think we basically touched base on the main points.
Max: I guess I do have one more question. I guess I have one more question, something I’ve been thinking about, and we’ve been covering a lot at The Grayzone. But when you first brought your case against the United States, at the ICJ, the world was in a different place. The Cold War was still taking place. But now we see the emergence of the Global South and a kind of multipolar order. We see the rise of BRICS, China and Russia are beginning to ally themselves. And Nicaragua is forming new alliances as well. To what extent does this case and the South African case represent the Global South asserting its power in a new way against a declining global hegemony?
Dr. Arguello: Well, I think there must be, there’s an element of that, obviously. In the case of Nicaragua, since we began 40 years ago, as you said, during the height of the Cold War, that wasn’t the main reason for our doing it. Although, I don’t want to be very presumptuous on this, but perhaps that case, at least in the International Court, was the beginning of, let’s say, a movement, that has been followed up and that we are in 40 years later, still continuing. In that respect, that’s what I have told some people in Nicaragua that I feel, even forty years later, that again, we are simply continuing. And, unfortunately, to cite a Nicaraguan poet, he was supposedly a Nicaraguan Patriot in the 1850s against an American, North American invader, taking over the country. He killed one of the soldiers, throwing a rock. So this Nicaraguan poet, 100 years later in the 1930s, wrote a poem that ended something like saying, you know: ‘Andrés, 100 years later, throw the rock. The enemy is still the same.’ Now, forty years later, I feel that I still have the rock in my hand, and the enemy is still the same. Anyway, we still have the rock and we still have the energy, and we have to go on.
Wyatt: David continues the fight against Goliath.
Max: Ambassador Carlos Arguello Gomez, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us. And thank you for your contribution to humanity.
Dr. Arguello: Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me on your program and your contribution to humanity. I told you, I have enjoyed many of your programs and will continue to do so. Ok, thank you very much.
Max: Thank you, and we’ll be following up after the decision.
Germany and the United States along with other Western powers are continuing deep-seated historical crimes by way of their proxy war against Russia.
The repeating of history might seem tragic, even farcical. One may wonder how such apparent madness can be repeated. But the explanation is straightforward when it is understood that the motive force is the same.
The charge against Germany at the International Court of Justice this week of aiding genocide in Gaza is truly shameful. Germany was brought to court by Nicaragua for facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza in breach of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
That convention was created in the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s mass murder of six million Jews during World War Two. Only 79 years after the end of that war, the German state is again in the dock for complicity in an ongoing genocide in Gaza committed by a self-declared Jewish state of Israel.
It seems a shocking and deplorable twist in history. Within living memory, Germany stands accused again of abominable crimes against humanity.
What is even more disgraceful, the German authorities are denying that Israel is committing genocide and that Germany is nobly defending Israel’s security out of a special obligation owing to its heinous World War Two holocaust.
Germany’s supposed rationale for supporting Israel is an astounding perversion of history.
The case against Germany this week is incontestable as was the earlier case brought against Israel by South Africa in January before the same United Nations court at The Hague. A definitive ruling by the court on both cases is pending.
Nevertheless, already world public opinion is in concurrence with numerous international legal and human rights experts that Israel’s military siege of the Gaza Strip amounts to genocide and incorporates multiple violations of international law. Ergo, Germany’s culpability.
Over the past six months, Israel’s wanton destruction of the Palestinian territory has resulted in over 33,000 deaths, including more than 14,000 children and 10,000 women among the victims. The actual death toll is probably more than 46,000 given that 13,000 people are missing under rubble or buried in unmarked graves. It is feared that there will be up to 100,000 dead in the coming months as famine and disease intensify.
Germany is the second biggest supplier of weapons to Israel after the United States. Germany accounts for nearly one-third of all Israeli arms imports.
Israel’s murderous, indiscriminate siege of Gaza involving a deliberate policy of mass starvation of more than two million people would not be happening if it were not for crucial military support from the United States and Germany.
But just as important as the killing machines and ammunition is the unwavering political support provided by Germany, the United States, and all of their Western allies. Unbelievably, Berlin, Washington, London, Paris, and other Western capitals continue to assert that Israel is not committing genocide. Like U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz repeats the cynical and mendacious mantra about Israel’s right to self-defense.
What is going on in Gaza is a bloodbath enabled by Western imperialist powers. The U.S. and all its Western allies are accomplices in egregious war crimes. Live on television every day, and yet the contemptible Western media assiduously sanitize and mitigate the horror. In any sane world, the Western governments and their corporate-controlled “news media” should be irredeemably condemned for their complicity.
However, Germany’s culpability takes on a profoundly disturbing and disgraceful significance, as does the Zionist regime’s. In the name of millions of victims of Nazi Germany, the genocide in Gaza is being perpetrated with a truculence and self-righteousness that is despicable beyond words. It is utterly diabolical that the historic mass murder of Jews by Germany is now being repeated on others by a state that claims to be Jewish – and enabled by Germany. You could hardly make this obscenity up.
It should be understood too that the horror being perpetrated in Gaza is but one element in a toxic eruption of imperialist crimes currently underway across the globe.
In Ukraine, the Western imperialists in the NATO axis are waging a proxy war against Russia utilizing a corrupt NeoNazi regime headed up by a nominally Jewish puppet president who is up to his eyes in money laundering, fraud, and swindling. Germany is the second biggest supplier of weapons to the Ukrainian regime after the United States.
Eight decades ago, Nazi Germany deployed Ukrainian fascists to exterminate Jews and Slavs with a death toll of up to 30 million Soviet citizens. The contemporary Ukrainian regime glorifies these Nazi collaborators. The United States deployed the same Ukrainian fascists after the Second World War to wage covert war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Thus, Germany and the United States along with other Western powers are continuing deep-seated historical crimes by way of their proxy war against Russia.
The same imperialist rogue states are enabling Israeli aggression against Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Israel’s deadly bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus earlier this month was a particularly brazen violation of international law. The barbarity of the Israeli fascist regime is fully enabled and incentivized by its Western patrons. The bitter irony is Washington and Berlin remonstrating with Iran to exercise “maximum restraint” while Israel openly attacks its sovereignty and assassinates its citizens.
Meanwhile, the United States, Australia and Britain are cajoling Japan to join their military alliance to provoke China. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was feted in Washington this week where he signed bellicose new military measures aimed at China and Russia. Kishida linked Ukraine with Asia, claiming that if Russia were to win the war in Ukraine, then China would take over East Asia. The Japanese minion gets its half right. The regions are indeed linked, not by alleged Russian and Chinese misconduct, but by the U.S.-led imperialism that Japan is cravenly serving.
Western imperialism and fascism have come full circle in a staggeringly short span of history. Nearly 80 years after Japan was defeated in the Pacific War in which it was responsible for up to 20 million deaths in China, Tokyo is at the forefront of new plans to wage a potential nuclear war on China. The perversion of Japan joining with the United States in this venture after the latter dropped two atomic bombs on its people in 1945 is yet another sickening twist in history.
The monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan are today rehabilitated because the same forces serve the imperialist geopolitical interests of today.
The twists and contradictions of history are, however, crystallized in one historical force. All the crimes, barbarity, bloodshed and danger of catastrophic world war are the cause of imperialist powers – chief among them the United States and its insatiable quest for hegemonic domination.
Historic failure and systemic collapse of Western capitalism is the motive engine driving the world to war again, as it was in previous periods of the modern age. Colonialist genocide, World War One, World War Two, and now the abyss of World War Three.
Germany in the dock for genocide with Israel is not as incongruous as it might seem. Because imperialism and fascism are on the rampage again across the world. Both Germany and Israel are gang members in the crime syndicate, each with their specific justifying myths and alibis.
Russia and China are arguably the two nations that suffered the most in history from fascism. It is entirely consistent – if not lamentable – that Russia and China today are once again confronted by the same forces.
Germany is once again on the wrong side of history. And so too are the United States and all its Western vassals. Eternal shame on them.
The widening schism between Israel’s secular and ultra-Orthodox communities impacts not only the state’s military and economic wellbeing, but poses an existential threat to the stability of the entire Zionist project.
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, known as the Haredim, is the fastest-growing segment of the country’s population. This demographic shift is occurring amid escalating tensions between secular right-wing and religious-nationalist factions in Israel, raising concerns about the stability of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist coalition – particularly over contentious issues like Haredi military conscription.
Projected to constitute approximately 16 percent of the occupation state’s population by 2030, the Haredim’s burgeoning numbers have triggered a broader societal debate about Israel’s future direction. This includes the challenge of reconciling today’s Jewish ethno-religious identity politics with the original Israeli aspirations for a modern “liberal-democratic” state framework.
In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the controversial ’Nation-State’ law, which officially declared that only its Jewish citizens have the right to self-determination. This law was later cited by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in their reports designating Israel as an apartheid regime.
In order to maintain the idea of a state built on Jewish supremacy, it has to be taken into consideration that Haredi Jews have a birth rate of 6.4, compared to the Jewish Israeli average of 2.5. This makes the ultra-Orthodox community an invaluable asset for Israelis seeking to maintain a demographic balance in which Jewish Israelis remain a clear majority – outside of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Economic and military challenges
In other respects, however, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community presents a number of liabilities for the state, including a significant drain on Israeli resources.
For example, the Haredim population growth has created housing crises for their communities. According to research published by Israel’s Kohelet Policy Forum, an unemployed Haredi father receives an average of four times the amount of government subsidies than a non-Haredi father.
The community’s unemployment rate is double the national average, with only 14 percent of Haredi students receiving a high-school certificate, compared to 83 percent in state and state-religious schools.
But today, arguably the most contentious aspect of the relationship between ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Israeli state is the former’s longstanding exemption from mandatory military service.
In the early years of the occupation state’s history, only a few hundred Yeshiva (Jewish religious school) students were granted this exemption.
However, in 1977, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin extended the exemption to include the entire Haredi community, a move that has persistently divided public opinion, particularly as all other Jewish Israeli citizens are required to serve in the military.
The Haredim’s lack of contribution to the national economy and military, coupled with their extraordinary financial entitlements from the state’s coffers, has made them the “most hated people in Israel.”
Political influence and legal reforms
Despite the public’s animosity, the ultra-Orthodox are extremely important to Israel’s illegal settlement program and now occupy powerful, ‘kingmaker’ positions in both national and local government. According to the Israel Policy Forum, roughly one-third of all West Bank settlers are Haredi, with a similar number distributed throughout occupied east Jerusalem.
The illustrate the growing political clout of this community, the Haredi political faction, Shas, secured 11 seats in Israel’s Knesset in the 2022 national elections, becoming the third largest component of the government’s ruling coalition. Public unease was further exacerbated by the ultra-Orthodox parties’ success in Jerusalem’s City Council elections.
It was no surprise, then, that upon Netanyahu’s election victory, he launched a campaign of controversial legal reforms that critics charged would transform Israel’s secular model of governance into a theocratic one.
The Haredim’s mark on Israeli society can no longer be overlooked. The country’s fastest-growing population is now seeded throughout local and national governments, and thanks to Netanyahu’s uber-fragile coalition structure, it is today able to impact Israel’s every social, political, and military decision.
Conscription or exodus
But these matters are now coming to a head. In late March, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered that ultra-Orthodox Jews be provided government subsidies for religious studies and conscripted into the army.
The ruling came down after Netanyahu delayed a Knesset vote on a bill to renew the extension exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from military conscription. Earlier, in March, Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef had threatened that the Haredim would leave Israel altogether if forced into military service.
The Supreme Court order caused an uproar in the community, with Haredi members vowing to disregard the law and will “never serve in the army.”
Israeli military service has long been discouraged within the Haredim, to the point where its members have and can be de facto excommunicated and shunned by even their own families. In fact, Haredi Jews who have decided to break social norms and join the army have a specific combat battalion set up for them in the West Bank called Netzah Yehuda.
The Supreme Court decision, delivered less than 24 hours before the 1 April conscription exemption renewal deadline, effectively ended funding for 50,000 full-time Talmud students, prompting 18 senior Shas Rabbis to sign a letter condemning the move. The letter reads, “We will not be deterred from going to prison,” and claims that forced conscription is a conspiracy to reduce observance of ultra-Orthodox Judaism.
Israel’s massive economic toll from its ongoing war on Gaza, the Yemeni-imposed blockade on all Israel-linked shipping in several key regional waterways, and Lebanese Hezbollah’s daily military operations in the north have significantly strained Tel Aviv’s financial resources. In recent years, the cost of maintaining subsidies to ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva students alone has skyrocketed to 136 million dollars per annum, providing a strong argument for the Israeli opposition to end the funding.
The fate of Netanyahu’s government
The ongoing debate over Haredi conscription has reached a critical stage, posing potential risks to Netanyahu’s leadership and the stability of his rocky coalition. The wartime emergency government set in place since 7 October, includes opposition leaders like Benny Gantz of the National Unity Party, who challenge the prime minister every step of the way.
Gantz has delivered his own ultimatum: to exit the government if exemptions for the Haredim are passed. His threats come on the back of Netanyahu’s vacillating stances on whether he will enact or oppose the exemptions – illustrating just how carefully the prime minister is forced to tread domestic political lines in the midst of a regional war, and exemptions, and just how fragile his unity government remains.
The dilemma is further complicated by the potential implications for Israel’s settlement expansion and demographic strategy, ultimately impacting the survival of the “Jewish state.”
The schism threatening the state
This issue has also spilled into the growing schism between secular and religious Israeli factions. If the Haredim do not join the army – especially critical during wartime when those numbers are needed – it means that at least 40 percent of Israeli passport holders, including both ultra-Orthodox and 1948 Palestinians (who traditionally do not serve in the military), will be exempt from military service.
The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics’ 2021 survey reveals that 45 percent of Israel’s Jewish population identifies as secular or non-religious. This is a country very neatly divided in terms of religious Judaic observance.
This division is further evidenced by the public’s response to Netanyahu’s proposed legal reforms, with opposition fluctuating between 43 and 66 percent throughout 2023, depending on the polling data.
The Haredim’s political ascent today challenges the traditional Zionist vision of a secular Jewish ethno-state by introducing the complexity of accommodating a significant portion of the population that adheres to religious fundamentalism.
The Haredim’s aversion to integration in a modern capitalist economy – and their role within the framework of a state that aspires to be both Jewish and democratic – is profound. This raises essential questions about the practicality of Zionism as it confronts the realities of a diverse and evolving Israeli society.
Moreover, the juxtaposition of an increasingly religious Israeli government – against the backdrop of a population that includes nearly an equal number of Palestinians – highlights the inherent contradictions within the concept of a “Jewish democracy.”
As secular ultra-nationalists begin to challenge the religious right fronted by Netanyahu, this internal conflict will continue to shake Israel’s foundations. While the occupation state staggers under the pressures of a multi-front, regional war, the likes of which it has never encountered in its short history, it is the Haredim issue today that – internally – poses the biggest existential threat to the entirety of the Zionist project.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Support for the Palestinian cause, at an all-time high globally, is being actively suppressed by Jordanian authorities, under pressure to keep a lid on anti-Israel displays in the kingdom.
For the past fortnight, thousands of Jordanians have taken to the streets of Amman, besieging the Israeli embassy, condemning the Gaza genocide, demanding the Hashemite Kingdom sever all ties with Tel Aviv – and, in particular, tearing up the country’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel.
Jordanian security forces have met these protests with increasing severity, signaling the government’s unease with too much public criticism of Israel. Amidst the turmoil, Saudi Arabia – Jordan’s biggest Arab patron – watches warily, concerned that a surge in Palestinian solidarity might challenge its own regional dominance and sink all prospects of Riyadh’s normalization with Tel Aviv.
Banning ‘Palestine’
This includes banning Palestinian flags, keffiyehs, and banners from protests – a mirror of the restrictions imposed in several pro-US Arab states. Attendees are also subjected to invasive body searches and identification checks, and select individuals are barred from participating.
The crackdowns seem to change by the day – one day, protesters are seen with their keffiyehs, and the next, they are not. The same goes for Palestinian flags. At times, they are visible in the throngs; with the flip of a switch, protesters resort to flashing the flag only on their mobile phones.
The public demonstrations are mainly confined to the heavily barricaded courtyard of Kaluti Mosque, situated near Amman’s evacuated Israeli embassy, and restricted to a duration of only two hours.
During the month of Ramadan, protests commence at 10 PM, following the conclusion of mass Taraweeh prayers. As one protester relates to The Cradle:
Police insist it needs to be over by midnight, then break it off violently or through intimidation if people refuse to leave. Greater restrictions are a huge deterrent to attending, especially having to show your ID – people worry it’ll somehow be used against them later. Due to the barriers, some people often can’t even get in, and those who do can’t move. It’s meant to demoralize us, trapping us in a cage and preventing us from breaking out into the streets.
The banning of Palestine’s flag is an especially sensitive escalation by Jordanian authorities. A small majority of the Jordanian population is Palestinian by birth. They consist of refugees from Palestine and their descendants, as well as residents of the West Bank during the period of Amman’s administration from 1948 to 1967.
As there is no census in the country, the precise figure is unknown. This may be by design, in order to diminish Palestine’s societal and political influence in the British-created Hashemite Kingdom.
A symbolic struggle intensifies
In a hugely symbolic development, violence towards Palestine solidarity protesters in Amman reached its zenith on 30 March, Land Day, which commemorates a fateful date in 1976 when Zionist authorities first began formally confiscating Palestinian territory for settlement.
Six unarmed Palestinians – including three women – were murdered that day by Israeli occupation forces, with hundreds more injured during subsequent clashes. Ever since then, Jordanian officials have attempted to calm the situation and present themselves as committed anti-Zionists.
In their response to the past week of protests, authorities in Amman have tried to strike a quiet balance. Government Communications Minister Muhannad Mubaidin has claimed that condemning Israel is a core national ethos, affirming Amman’s solidarity with Palestine and the citizens’ right to protest despite “violations” committed by a minority of demonstrators.
Yet, as one anonymous Jordanian activist tells The Cradle, “many of us think this is just talk.” After all, many protesters arrested over the past two weeks remain in “administrative detention,” and formal restrictions on the protests have only ratcheted since 30 March.
The X account of the “Jordanian Youth Gathering for the Support of the Resistance” lists the names and photographs of 54 protesters they allege are currently being detained by Jordanian security forces. For supporting Palestine, they remain behind bars during the official Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Jordan’s Palestinian identity crisis
In September 1970, in response to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) using Jordan as a highly effective staging ground for strikes upon the occupation state, Jordanian forces began attacking cities, including Amman, with a substantial fedayeen presence.
Commonly known as Black September, events that month spiraled into what was effectively a civil war, with Palestinians and Jordanians on both sides of the divide. Several protesters who spoke to The Cradle note the obvious parallels between then and now, with one saying banning symbols of Palestine solidarity “seems insane,” given the historical context of such actions in Amman.
Activists also say that accusations against Palestine solidarity protesters in Jordan of serving “foreign agendas” and being directed by overseas actors have reached unprecedented levels.
Although blaming the ‘Other’ is an age-old tactic of authorities to dispel dissent among populations, several activists tell The Cradle it has reached “shocking” and unprecedented levels this time round. The cast of characters who stand accused include the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Hamas, and even the west.
Despite these accusations, the protests have a genuine international component, fostering a spirit of unity among Palestine solidarity activists across West Asia, including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman.
“People in Cairo were chanting against [Jordan’s King] Abdullah II a few days ago, while we chanted against [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah] al-Sisi. We call on each other to rise!” a Jordanian protester proudly tells The Cradle. Such scenes are absolute anathema to various governments within and outside West Asia.
Israel’s counterstrategy
This growing Arab solidarity with Palestine has not gone unnoticed by Israel, which is acutely aware of the horrendous reputational impact its Gaza genocide is having overseas. A leaked US State Department memo has revealed Tel Aviv is recruiting “influencers to help target social media users” in Europe and North America, and “Egypt, Jordan, and Gulf Arab countries” to highlight purported Hamas atrocities.
Accordingly, open-source investigation platform EekadFacts has exposed a number of X accounts, reportedly based in Jordan, posting relentless anti-Hamas messaging.
These cloak-and-dagger activities have done nothing to quell Palestine solidarity in any corner of the world and have thrown pro-US Arab allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, for a loop.
Riyadh’s role
As Lebanese daily Al-Akhbarforcefully noted on 4 April, Riyadh has “launched its press and electronic flies to defend the Hashemite throne” – ironic, given that in 2021, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) attempted to overthrow King Abdullah II and install his brother, Prince Hamzah, as regent. The coup plotters, it should be noted, remain on trial in Amman today.
A largely forgotten component of that failed putsch was Israel’s central involvement. As Al-Akhbar observed, Bin Salman is desperate to crush Palestine solidarity, for such activity interferes with his long-term “ambition to normalize relations with Israel, as a way to obtain American guarantees for the security and safety of the Saudi regime.”
This includes US acquiescence to the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Riyadh and US assistance in establishing nuclear infrastructure that includes a nuclear fuel circuit on Saudi territory – both longtime Saudi demands.
Riyadh and Tel Aviv were on the verge of normalizing relations when Operation Al-Aqsa Flood struck, followed by the brutal assault on Gaza.
Israel’s military blitzkrieg made normalization an untenable proposition. While initially, MbS suggested it was off the table, this was clearly an expedient fudge to uphold his claim that the kingdom “represents the heart of the Muslim world” and “senses the hopes and pains of Muslims everywhere, strives to achieve unity, cooperation and solidarity in our Muslim world.”
By January, he had reversed course, openly and repeatedly expressing “interest” in “recognition” of Tel Aviv – provided Israel agrees to advance the two-state solution and build a “renewed” Palestinian Authority that can, presumably, garner the support of actual Palestinians.
Concurrently, Riyadh has been meeting with representatives of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and UAE to hammer out a “joint plan” for Gaza, post-war. It would see the brutal, collaborationist, British-trained Palestinian Authority take over as the territory’s undisputed ruler, with Hamas frozen out of all official offices and agencies.
It is a proposition neither Palestinian freedom fighters nor Palestine solidarity activists the world over are likely to accept.
The Europeans will never be able to replicate the time-tested Hegemon money laundering machine
The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats tho’ unseen amongst us, -visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.- Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening,- Like clouds in starlight widely spread,- Like memory of music fled,- Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
As the de facto North Atlantic Terror Organization celebrates its 75th birthday, taking Lord Ismay’s motto to ever soaring heights (“keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”), that thick slab of Norwegian wood posing as Secretary-General came up with a merry “initiative” to create a 100 billion euro fund to weaponize Ukraine for the next five years.
Translation, regarding the crucial money front in the NATO-Russia clash: partial exit of the Hegemon – already obsessing with The Next Forever War, against China; enter the motley crew of ragged, de-industrialized European chihuahuas, all in deep debt and most mired in recession.
A few IQs over average room temperature at NATO’s HQ in Haren, in Brussels, had the temerity to wonder how to come up with such a fortune, as NATO has zero leverage to raise money among member states.
After all, the Europeans will never be able to replicate the time-tested Hegemon money laundering machine. For instance, assuming the White House-proposed $60 billion package to Ukraine would be approved by the U.S. Congress – and it won’t – no less than 64% of the total will never reach Kiev: it will be laundered within the industrial-military complex.
Yet it gets even more dystopic: Norwegian Wood, robotic stare, arms flailing, actually believes his proposed move will not imply a direct NATO military presence in Ukraine – or country 404; something that is already a fact on the ground for quite a while, irrespective of the warmongering hissy fits by Le Petit Roi in Paris (Peskov: “Russia-NATO relations have descended into direct confrontation”).
Now couple the Lethal Looney Tunes spectacle along the NATOstan front with the Hegemon’s aircraft carrier performance in West Asia, consistently taking its industrial-scale slaughter/starvation Genocide Project in Gaza to indescribable heights – the meticulously documented holocaust watched in contorted silence by the “leaders” of the Global North.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese correctly summed it all up: the biblical psychopathology entity “intentionally killed the WCK workers so that donors would pull out and civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly. Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won’t move a finger for the Palestinians.”
The “logic” behind the deliberate three tap strike on the clearly signed humanitarian convoy of famine-alleviating workers in Gaza was to eviscerate from the news an even more horrendous episode: the genocide-within-a-genocide of al-Shifa hospital, responsible for at least 30% of all health services in Gaza. Al-Shifa was bombed, incinerated and had over 400 civilians killed in cold blood, in several cases literally smashed by bulldozers, including medical doctors, patients and dozens of children.
Nearly simultaneously, the biblical psychopathology gang completely eviscerated the Vienna convention – something that even the historical Nazis never did – striking Iran’s consular mission/ambassador’s residence in Damascus.
This was a missile attack on a diplomatic mission, enjoying immunity, on the territory of a third country, against which the gang is not at war. And on top of it, killing General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, his deputy Mohammad Hadi Hajizadeh, another five officers, and a total of 10 people.
Translation: an act of terror, against two sovereign states, Syria and Iran. Equivalent to the recent terror attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow.
The inevitable question rings around all corners of the lands of the Global Majority: how can these de facto terrorists possibly get away with all this, over and over again?
The sinews of Liberal Totalitarianism
Four years ago, at the start of what I later qualified as the Raging Twenties, we were beginning to watch the consolidation of an intertwined series of concepts defining a new paradigm. We were becoming familiar with notions such as circuit breaker; negative feedback loop; state of exception; necropolitics; and hybrid neofascism.
As the decade marches on, our plight may at least have been alleviated by a twin glimmer of hope: the drive towards multipolarity, led by the Russia-China strategic partnership, with Iran playing a key part, and all that coupled with the total breakdown, live, of the “rules-based international order”.
Yet to affirm there will be a long and winding road ahead is the Mother of All Euphemisms.
So, to quote Bowie, the ultimate late, great aesthete: Where Are We Now? Let’s take this very sharp analysis by the always engaging Fabio Vighi at Cardiff University and tweak it a little further.
Anyone applying critical thinking to the world around us can feel the collapse of the system. It’s a closed system alright, easily definable as Liberal Totalitarianism. Cui bono? The 0.0001%.
Nothing ideological about that. Follow the money. The defining negative feedback loop is actually the debt loop. A criminally anti-social mechanism kept in place by – what else – a psychopathology, as acute as the one exhibited by the biblical genocidals in West Asia.
The Mechanism is enforced by a triad.
The transnational financial elite, the superstars of the 0.0001%.
Right beneath it, the politico-institutional layer, from the U.S. Congress to the European Commission (EC) in Brussels, as well as comprador elite “leaders” across the Global North and South.
The former “intelligentsia”, now essentially hacks for hire from media to academia.
This institutionalized hyper-mediatization of reality is (italics mine), in fact, The Mechanism.
It’s this mechanism that controlled the merging of the pre-fabricated “pandemic” – complete with hardcore social engineering sold as “humanitarian lockdowns” – into, once again, Forever Wars, from Project Genocide in Gaza to the Russophobia/cancel culture obsession inbuilt in Project Proxy War in Ukraine.
That’s the essence of Totalitarian Normality: the Project for Humanity by the appallingly mediocre, self-appointed Great Reset “elites” of the collective West.
Killing them softly with AI
A key vector of the whole mechanism is the direct, vicious interconnection between a tecno-military euphoria and the hyper-inflationary financial sector, now in thrall with AI.
Enter, for instance, AI models such as ‘Lavender’, tested on the ground in the Gaza killing field lab. Literally: artificial intelligence programming the extermination of humans. And it’s happening, in real time. Call it Project AI Genocide.
Another vector, already experimented, is inbuilt in the indirect assertion by toxic EC Medusa Ursula von der Lugen: essentially, the need to produce weapons as Covid vaccines.
That’s at the core of a plan to use funding of the EU by European taxpayers to “increase financing” of “joint contracts for weapons”. That’s an offspring of von der Lugen’s push to roll out Covid vaccines – a gigantic Pfizer-linked scam for which she is about to be investigated and arguably exposed by the EU’s Public Prosecutor Office. In her own words, addressing the proposed weapons scam: “We did this for vaccines and gas.”
Call it Weaponization of Social Engineering 2.0.
Amidst all the action in this vast corruption swamp, the Hegemon agenda remains quite blatant: to keep its – dwindling – predominantly thalassocratic, military hegemony, no matter what, as the basis for its financial hegemony; protect the U.S. dollar; and protect those unmeasurable, unpayable debts in U.S. dollars.
And that brings us to the tawdry economic model of turbo-capitalism, as sold by collective West media hacks: the debt loop, virtual money, borrowed non-stop to deal with “autocrat” Putin and “Russian aggression”. That’s a key by-product of Michael Hudson’s searing analysis of the FIRE (Finance-Insurance-Real Estate) syndrome.
Ouroboros intervenes: the serpent bites its own tail. Now the inherent folly of The Mechanism is inevitably leading casino capitalism to resort to barbarism. Undiluted savagery – of the Crocus City Hall kind and of the Project Gaza Genocide kind.
And that’s how The Mechanism engenders institutions – from Washington to Brussels to hubs across the Global North to genocidal Tel Aviv – stripped down to the status of psychotic killers, at the mercy of Big Finance/FIRE (oh, such fabulous seafront real estate opportunities available in “vacant” Gaza.)
How can we possibly escape such folly? Will we have the will and the discipline to follow Shelley’s vision and, in “this dim vast vale of tears”, summon the transcending Spirit of Beauty – and harmony, equanimity and justice?
US President Joe Biden’s goals in Gaza align with Tel Aviv’s. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s execution of these objectives is heavily clashing with US interests, undermining its soft power elsewhere in the region.
In an interview with MSNBC last month, US President Joe Biden took a rare firm stance against his staunch Israeli ally, insisting that an invasion of Rafah by the occupation army – devoid of a civilian-focused plan – would cross a “red line.” He then countered his warning by affirming Washington’s unwavering support of Tel Aviv and promising that he would never “leave Israel.” The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, citing unnamed political sources, said that the phone call between Biden and Netanyahu on 4 April was “more difficult than expected.” The White House said that Biden’s tough tone during the call reflected “growing frustration” over Tel Aviv’s lack of cooperation in protecting civilians.
This contradiction in words and behavior highlights the dilemma the White House faces in its interactions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. You can’t have it both ways. While the US aims to temper Netanyahu’s aggressive policies – at least for public consumption – it seeks to do so without undermining the stability of his extremist coalition government.
In short, every word is weighed in public US announcements to balance that fine line. Following a virtual meeting between National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Israeli officials on 1 April, which included talks on the proposed Israeli incursion in Rafah, a statement from the White House merely noted: “The two sides, over the course of two hours, had a constructive engagement on Rafah. They agreed that they share the objective to see Hamas defeated in Rafah.”
On 26 March, an Israeli Defense Ministry briefing revealed that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “expressed the view that Hamas’ remaining battalions in Rafah must be dismantled, that that’s a legitimate goal that we share.” He added that “Rafah should not be a safe haven for Hamas. Nowhere in Gaza should be.”
It is safe to conclude from these bland statements that there is a meeting of the minds between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government over the war’s objectives. From the onset of hostilities, the US has actively collaborated with Israeli decision-making processes, ensuring alignment with strategic goals. High-ranking US officials, including Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary Austin, have participated in Israeli War Cabinet meetings.
Three days after the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood, Biden made it “crystal clear” that “We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.”
Tensions grow with Tel Aviv
Despite this shared strategic vision, recent developments have highlighted emerging disagreements between Netanyahu and Biden. The differences revolve around the methodologies used to safeguard Israel’s security and future. The core of the dispute can be summarized as follows:
The Biden administration views the path to normalization, as set out in the Trump-era Abraham Accords of 2020, as a historic opportunity to strengthen regional peace, with the jewel in the crown being a Saudi–Israeli normalization deal.
Blinken, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, warned that ongoing military operations in Gaza might jeopardize the Saudi–Israeli normalization prospects, which is a major strategic interest for Tel Aviv at the regional level:
“Almost every country in the region wants to integrate Israel, to normalize relations with it, and to “The reality is to help Israel provide protection for it. But this requires in particular the establishment of a Palestinian state, and it also naturally requires ending military operations in Gaza.”
A Palestinian state is, of course, anathema to Netanyahu’s coalition, the most extremist government in Israel’s short history. But US concerns are also growing over the possibility of the war in Gaza leading to a broader regional war, one which the US will be forced into to protect its settler-colonial ally.
From Washington’s perspective, Israel’s identity as a “functional entity” is significant because it fulfills US geopolitical objectives in the region. Conversely, Netanyahu and the Israeli right prioritize Israel’s identity as a Jewish nation-state. This divergence becomes pronounced in the face of existential threats when national identity overshadows functional roles, posing greater risks to Israel than to the United States.
Regional interests and domestic politics
But the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now limiting the US’s ability to provide international support for Israel’s continued warfare, with Netanyahu’s actions exacerbating the situation and destroying the US’ human rights ’advocacy’ reputation across the globe.
In recent months, Washington has been forced to adopt rhetoric stressing the need for Israel to abide by international laws and protect civilians. At the same time, however, it continues to support the occupation state with all the tools necessary to kill the population of Gaza.
US public opinion reflects growing opposition to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, with recent polls showing a majority of Americans against the occupation army’s brutalities. A Gallup poll conducted between 1 and 20 March shows that 55 percent of US respondents oppose Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip, a 10 percent rise from November polls.
Crucially, this public sentiment suggests a growing dissonance between US government actions and voter preferences, with Biden’s popularity plummeting in domestic polls.
Concurrently, the US-dominated global “rules-based” order is coming under sharp fire from peer adversaries like Russia and China, which advocate for a return to international law. Israel’s brutal Gaza assault contradicts everything Washington has preached for decades about its ‘rules.’
Tel Aviv has blanketly ignored the binding UN Security Council Resolution 2728, which stipulates a ceasefire during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, and stands accused of violating all respects of international humanitarian law.
Netanyahu’s government is responsible for the mass murder of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza – two-thirds of them women and children – which saw Israel dragged for the first time to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges of genocide. He then proceeded to violate the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations by targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, on 1 April.
Netanyahu’s fight for survival
Several fundamental reasons drive Netanyahu to support, confront, and even ignore Biden’s stances. At the core is the Israeli premier’s uncertain political future: He is acutely aware that halting the war without securing strategic victories that translate into political capital will devastate his political legacy, making him bear the brunt of all outcomes since 7 October.
Faced with limited alternatives, Netanyahu opts for confrontation, banking on enduring until the upcoming US elections in November.
For Israel, the stakes in the ongoing war are significantly higher than for the US because Tel Aviv’s top brass widely views it as an existential threat. This perspective galvanizes even those within Israeli society and its hawkish military who might not necessarily align with Netanyahu’s policies.
Central to Netanyahu’s resistance is his rejection of a two-state solution. He perceives the invasion of Rafah as a tactic to either circumvent negotiations with Hamas or to weaken the movement’s bargaining position. Importantly, Netanyahu aims to prevent the war’s conclusion from being interpreted as a step towards Palestinian statehood, rightly framing the conflict as a Palestinian liberation struggle.
Meanwhile, the White House continues on its impossible trajectory to balance pressure on Netanyahu with a clear commitment to Israeli security interests, including defeating Hamas. Netanyahu does not miss a beat in manipulating this situation to his advantage, twisting the narrative to ensure Israel’s interests are met, with a keen eye on how this plays out for him politically at home.
Re-evaluating relations
Commentary from both Israeli and US corners is starting to shine a light on the potentially thorny path ahead.
As Doron Matza recently wrote in the Israeli newspaper Maariv:
In the near future, the aid directed to Israel will decrease and be limited, and with it international legitimacy, not to mention the erosion of the Abraham Accords and the challenges represented by additional enemies waiting for the zero hour to turn the 7 October flood into a broader and greater catastrophe.
John Hoffman in Foreign Policy adds a scathing critique, questioning the very fabric of the US–Israel relationship: “The special relationship does not benefit Washington and is endangering US interests across the globe.”
It is time for the US to recalibrate its relationship with Israel. This isn’t about turning Israel into an adversary but about interacting with it as Washington does with any other state – with a measured distance and pragmatism.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 